Krozair of Kregen

The leem shadow vanished under the moons’ shadows and was gone.

Water chuckled from our ram and passed rippling down our sides. The oars rose and fell, rose and fell. We glided on.

“I have sailed to Zandikar before,” said Nath the Slinger. “But not by night. But it cannot be too far now. Bolan the Bow guides us well — for an archer.”

“I pray Zair,” said Fazhan, my ship-Hikdar. “I pray the argenter does not pull the bitts out entire.”

“She will not and we will reach the Pharos,” I said.

“The lantern will be dark.”

“Aye.”

A hand ran aft from the forecastle and panted up at us.

“Dolan says three ulms only, Dak.”

“Good.”

One ulm passed. I swear, although an ulm is about one and a half thousand yards, that ulm seemed to me the full five miles of a dwabur. A shape appeared ahead, athwart our course. One minute the sea shimmered empty in the moons-light; the next the lean, low ram-tipped bulk of a swifter lay there, broadside on, beginning to turn. The water frothed pink from the oars. The hail, this time, was sharper, harsher.

“Weng da! Heave to! Back water!”

Now the swifter’s bronze rostrum swung into line. I yelled back, “Strigic of Grodno! Do not make us lose way — we are towing supplies for the prince.”

“Orders of the king! Heave to!”

“But-”

*Heave to or we ram!”

Chapter Thirteen

“Ram! Ram! Ram!”

“By Zair!” I said, enraged. “The cramph means business.” Moons-light shone on the bronze ram of the swifter ahead. She had turned directly into line. Her oars lifted and remained level. Our own wings continued to beat on. Once again the hail reached us, and this time there was no mistaking the violence of the shout, the decision taken on that swifter’s quarterdeck.

“Your last chance! Heave to or we smash your oars!”

I said to Fazhan, “Signal Neemu to come up. Drop the tow.”

“Quidang,” he said and was off.

I shouted in a voice pitched just to reach Pugnarses Ob-Eye, our oar-master. “At the signal, Pugnarses. Full speed.”

We had a few murs’ grace. The swifter ahead, two-banked, fast, designed for patrol and scouting duty, still held her oars leveled. In those few murs we must cast off our tow and hope Neemu would be able to retrieve it and continue to haul in the argenter. I turned sharply as Vax said, a little loudly, “Tow rope cast off.”

“Now, Pugnarses! Full speed! Use ol’ snake!”

We all heard the drumbeat abruptly break, then rattle, and finally settle into a swift and demanding rhythm. The oars thrashed and for a moment I thought they’d lost it, and the rhythm had been broken -

and then the blades churned the water all in line, level as though on tracks, and through our feet we felt the forward surge of Crimson Magodont, that exhilarating onward bounding like a zorca under a rider careering wildly across the plains.

“Starboard!” I yelled at the helm-Deldars.

The forecastle of the swifter moved out of line with the swifter ahead. I could see in the moons-shimmer her oars quiver and then fall, all together, and in a macabre counterpointing echo to our own I heard her drum rattling out the time.

For a couple of ship-lengths we surged on and then I shouted to the helm-Deldars to bring her back to larboard. Crimson Magodont was of that style of swifter short-coupled, chunky, yet still retaining the long, lean lines of a true galley. She could turn on a golden zo-piece. Her starboard bank continued to pull frenziedly and we could hear through the ship noises the sharp sizzling cracking of whips, the shouts of that hateful word, “Grak! Grak!”

The larboard bank dug into the sea. Crimson Magodont spun. Then every oar smashed into the water, the blades churning, and we leaped as a leem leaps.

“Ram! Ram! Ram!”

We took the Grodnim swifter on his larboard bow. We smashed and bashed down a full third of his length. The pandemonium racketed to the starlit sky. I did not think what was going on among the slave benches of the swifter. We spun into the Magdaggian and we wrecked a third of his oar banks and then we eased a fraction to starboard and so ripped away the remaining two thirds before we turned to free our own blades.

The noises from the Magdaggian obliterated the shouts and yells of our men. Those noises spurted hideously against the pink moons’ glow. I held my jaw shut and I could feel my teeth punching into my gums, aching.

Arrows arched. The varters let fly. There would be no boarding. The Magdaggian drifted past, wallowing, one entire wing ripped from her. And here came Pur Naghan! Driving on astern of us, flanking our argenter, he bored on with all his oars thrashing. Pearl surged ahead, like a living lance. Her rostrum struck the Grodnim swifter full abeam. The rending sounds as bronze sheared through wood racketed out. What they were doing aboard the argenter that Pearl towed I could only guess; but she went clear. Neemu had the first argenter’s tow secured and was going ahead. I stared around in the moon-drenched darkness.

There were no other Magdaggian swifters I could see.

“She’s going!” said Vax. He held the hilt of the Krozair longsword and I knew the young devil longed to dive into the fray and use that terrible weapon.

The Magdaggian wallowed lower.

I said, “We cannot abandon the Zairians in her. Take us alongside.”

It was madness. It was folly. The arrangements had been that if attacked Neemu would take our tow and Pearl would continue on. Nothing had been agreed about what to do with any victim of our ram. Fazhan said, “If there are other rasts of Grodnims abroad, the noise-”

“Aye, Fazhan. We must be quick.”

We were quick. I commanded a crew of men who had been Renders, who knew how to raise a swifter’s oar- slaves against their masters. We ravened onto the Magdaggians deck. Arrows flew. I saw Dolan the Bow calmly shooting from the forecastle, sending shaft after shaft in a flowing rhythm into the ranks of the Greens clustered to receive us. And from the quarterdeck, Nath the Slinger flung his deadly pebbles and lozenges of lead, trying to match the speed of Dolan. I drew the Ghittawrer blade and led the charge that cleared the foeman’s quarterdeck. Pearl had ripped a ghastly hole in her side. She’d be gone very quickly.

The slaves were pouring up from below, waving their chains, raving. Many a poor devil had been crushed by his loom, those who had neither the knack nor the knowledge to duck under as the cruel ram smashed down in the diekplus. Our successful diekplus had smashed the first third of the larboard banks; from these benches came very few slaves to join us.

There were plenty of others, though, to join us as we dispatched the Grodnims. The freed slaves leaped joyously onto the deck of Crimson Magodont as the Magdaggian swifter sank in a smother of bubbles and breaking timbers.

Neemu and Pearl, with their tows, had pulled ahead. We followed. I let the scenes of frantic joy blossom on the gangway and forecastle as we pulled in toward the Pharos of Zandikar. Any man released from slavery at the oars of a swifter from Magdag is entitled to leap and cavort, to shout and bellow, to scream his thanks to Zair.