Guardsman of Gor coc-16

by John Norman

  The wharves, now, were crowded with men. Pirates fell into the water. Others, in the rearward ranks, who could turn, did so, and fled toward the ships. Some ran past me and apparently leaped to oars, trying to hold them and use them to clamber aboard. I heard a man scream, struck, behind me. “Do not encumber the oars!” cried Policrates. I heard a body slide into the water behind me. An outjutting oar struck against the wharf. I heard another body strike the water. Then the ship was out from the wharf. I saw pirates throwing down their weapons, and kneeling on the wharf. There was cheering from the men of Victoria.

  “Well done, Lads!” I called. “Well done!”

  “We shall return!” screamed Policrates to the wharves. “You have not heard the last of us! We’re coming back, you sleen! We’re coming back!”

  Then the stern of the ship struck against another pirate galley, trying to extricate itself from the press of ships. “Get that fool out of the way!” screamed Policrates. Arrows, wrapped with oil-soaked, flaming rags, struck against the ship. The bow swung about, eccentrically. Below me, swirling in the water, I could see eels.

  “Back oars!” screamed Policrates. “Back oars!” cried Kliomenes. “Extinguish the fires!” cried Callisthenes. There was another heavy, grating noise as the stern of the ship was struck again, by another pirate vessel. Blood flowed down the blade to which I was bound, yet I was almost uncognizant of this, so elated I was. On the wharves I could see kneeling pirates, being stripped and bound. They were, too, being roped together by the neck. I did not think that they would find the citizens of Victoria indulgent captors. They would be treated little better than slave girls.

  “Well done, Lads!” I called to the men of Victoria. A spear blade from the bulwarks, thrust down, struck down at me, but glanced off the metal, flashing sparks near my right cheek. I could smell smoke. The flagship of Policrates seemed jammed among the ships, each trying to escape. “Well done, Lads!” I cried. “Well done!”

  “Get those fools out of the way!” Policrates was screaming. The flagship of Policrates moved backward a dozen feet or so, and then again, striking against another ship, or the same, came again to a stop. “Well done!” I cried. The spear blade thrust down again, but again, came short of its mark. I heard a man curse. Then he left the rail.

  “Well done,” I cried. “Well done!” I was elated. I could scarcely feel my pain, or the burns of the ropes. I was only dimly conscious of the wetness of my back. Then something wet and heavy, slithering, leapt upward out of the water, and splashed back. My leg felt stinging. It had not been able to fasten its jaws on me.

  I looked downward. Two or more heads, tapering, menacing, solid, were emerged from the water, looking up at me. Then, streaking from under the water, suddenly breaking its surface, another body, some four feet in length, about eight or ten pounds in weight, leapt upward. I felt the jaws snap and scratch against the shearing blade. Then it fell twisting back in the water. It was the blood which excited them. I strove again, then, to escape, pulling against the bonds, trying to abraid them against the back of the blade.

  I was now, suddenly, alarmed. My struggles had done nothing more than to lower me a few inches on the blade. I now feared I might be within reach of the leaping eels. I tried to inch upward on the blade. Pressing my legs and arms against the blade I could move upward to my original position, but no further, because of the ropes on my ankles, catching on the bottom side of the blade fixture, and it was extremely difficult and painful to hold myself that high on the blade.

  I was sweating, and terrified. Then the flagship of Policrates, responding to another impact, lurched to starboard, and, terrified, I slipped back down the blade. My feet, bound back, on each side of the blade, were little more than a foot from the water. Again, frenzied, in terror, I tried to struggle. But, to my dismay, I was again held perfectly. I could not even begin to free myself. I was absolutely helpless. I had been bound by Gorean men.

  I felt another stinging bite at my leg, where another of the heavy, leaping eels tried to feed. Again I inched my way painfully, by my thighs and forearms, higher on the blade. If we could get to free water I did not think the eels would pursue us far from the wharves and shore.

  Then suddenly I realized I might have but moments before the ship managed to free itself and back into the river. Suddenly I allowed myself to slide down the blade. “Are you hungry, little friends?” I inquired. “Can you smell sweat and fear? Does blood make you mad? Leap, little brothers. Render me service.” I looked down at several of the heavy, tapering heads projecting from the water, at the eyes like filmed stones. “Taste blood,” I encouraged them. I thrust back against the blade. I tried to abraid my ankles against the steel.

  I knew that the fastening of those jaws, in a fair bite, could gouge ounces of flesh from a man’s body. Too I knew that the eel seldom takes its food out of the water, that such strikes, in all probability, had not been selected for. Accordingly, the only inward compensation for the refraction differential would presumably have to be learned by trial and error. More than one of the beasts had already struck the blade and not my body. But, too, they might not understand that the blood source was my body; they might understand, rather, only the point at which blood was entering the water.

  The waters beneath me now fairly churned with activity. The ship moved backward a yard. “Help me swiftly, little friends,” I begged. “Time grows short!” A large eel suddenly broke the surface tearing at the side of my abraded leg. I felt the teeth scratching and sliding along my leg, its head twisted to the side. Then it was back in the water. “Good, good,” I called. “Nearly, nearly. Try again, big fellow!”

  I watched the water, giving it time to swirl and circle, and then again, aligning itself, leap toward me. My left ankle, cut deliberately on the back of the blade, oozed blood, soaking the knotted ropes that held it. With the small amount of play given to me by the ropes on that ankle I must manage as best I can. Then, almost too quickly to be fully aware of it, I saw the returning shape erupting from the water. I thrust, as I could, my ankle towards it. Then I screamed in pain. The weight, thrashing and tearing, must have been some fifteen or twenty pounds. It was some seven feet in length. I threw my head back, crying out. My left ankle was clasped in the clenched jaws, with those teeth like nails. I feared I might lose my foot but the heavy ropes, doubled and twisted, and knotted, like fibrous shielding, muchly protecting me, served me well, keeping the teeth in large measure from fastening in my flesh.

  The beast, suddenly, perhaps puzzled by the impeding cordage, shifted its grip. It began to tear then at the ropes. Its mouth must have been filled with blood-soaked, wire-like strands of rope. The blood doubtless stimulated it to continue its work. Its tail thrashed in the water. It twisted, and swallowed, dangling and thrashing. Then, its mouth filled with rope, pulled loose, it fell back into the water. Again I struggled. Again I was held. I struggled yet again, and this time heard the parting of fibers, ripping loose. I twisted against the blade, my ankles free, and, by the ropes on my wrists, swung myself up and behind the blade, getting my right leg over the upper part of the blade fixture.

  “Ho!” cried a voice, angry, above me and to my right. I saw the spear blade draw back to thrust. I clung to the blade, crouching on the flat blade mount. Ropes were on my wrists, but my hands were separated by, say, a foot of rope, as I had been bound on the blade. When the spear struck toward me, I seized it, behind the blade, at the shaft rivets, and jerked it toward me. The fellow, unable in the moment to release the weapon, was dragged over the rail. He struck against the blade and, screaming, half cut open, slid into the water. The spear shaft was twisted from my grasp. The water churned beneath the blade. Bubbles exploded to the surface. It seemed scarlet. “Feed, little friends,” I told them. “Feed well, and be thanked.”

  The flagship of Policrates was now, unimpeded, backing into open water. I sawed apart the rope joining my wrists on the cutting edge of the great blade. I heard battle horns. I did not understand
this. On the wharves and along the water front I could see hundreds of citizens of Victoria. They were waving and brandishing their weapons. Pirates, naked and bound, roped together by the neck, lay on their bellies before them.

  A ship to my left, Spined Tharlarion, the flagship of Ragnar Voskjard, was aflame. I heard a ram strike a ship nearby, with a great splintering of wood. This made no sense to me, for the pirate ships, so closely packed, so struggling, could not, even by accident, have achieved the momentum for such an impact.

  Smoke stung my nostrils. I clung to the blade. The flagship of Policrates was now swinging about. I heard more battle horns, from both-upriver and downriver. I heard the devastating impact of yet another ram pounding into a hull somewhere. There was screaming from pirate ships.

  I leaped from the blade mount to the port rail and, struggling, pulled myself upward. In a moment, crouching, I was on the deck of the ship. A man lunged toward me, with a sword. I dove under the blade and, seizing his ankles, utilizing his momentum, threw him upward and over my shoulders. He disappeared over the rail, grasping at it, screaming. Another man struck down at me and I, slipped to the side, seized him about the chest with my right arm and hurled him back against the forward wall of the high stem castle. He grunted. With the heel of my right hand under his chin I smashed his head back into the wood of the stem castle. He slumped to the deck. His sword was mine.

  I heard, from somewhere to starboard, the splintering of another hull. Policrates was crying out orders on the height of the stem castle above me. I thrust the sword into the wood above me, where I could seize it, and, putting my feet and hands into the ornate carving of the stem castle, climbed a yard and a half from the deck. My heart leaped.

  The river seemed alive with ships. I saw the Tais, captained by the indomitable Calliodorus, and other ships of Port Cos. They must needs be the fleet which Callisthenes had commanded, and had withdrawn to Port Cos, not permitting them to engage in the battle at the chain. With them, too, I saw ships with the banners of Tafa, Ven, Tetrapoli and even distant Turmus. They had come from the west, from downriver.

  To starboard, from upriver, the river bristled with armed merchantmen. I saw the colors, there, of more than a dozen towns. The banners and pennons of Victoria were there, and of Fina and Hammerfest, of Sulport, Sais, Siba and Jasmine, of Jort’s Ferry and Point Alfred, of Iskander, of Tancred’s Landing and Forest Port. Too, among other pennons, I saw colors hailing from so afar east as White Water and Lara, at the very confluence of the Vosk and Olni. The patience of the honest men had at last been exhausted.

  I drew the sword from the wood and leaped down to the deck. The flagship of Policrates rocked, struck by another pirate ship, it lurching to port. I lost my footing, and then regained it. I ran to the starboard rail and leaped down to the starboard shearing blade.

  “Jason!” cried Callimachus, bound upon it.

  In an instant I had severed the bonds which held his ankles and, holding his arms, cut apart the ropes that bound his wrists. He drew himself, trembling, to the blade mount. “You are free,” he said “What is going on?”

  “The towns are rising,” I said. “They come from the east and the west, from upriver and downriver, with men and ships. In their heart is war. Policrates and the Voskjard are finished!”

  “Get me a sword!” said Callimachus.

  “Are you strong enough?” I asked. “There is little you need do.”

  “A sword!” said Callimachus. “I must have a sword!”

  I grinned. “Doubtless one may be found on deck,” I said.

  Scarcely had we climbed to the deck than the pirate ship to starboard, shifting, grated laterally along the flagship. The shearing blades locked and we felt timber being torn from the sides of the ships.

  “Back oars!” screamed Policrates, on the stem castle. “Back oars!” We heard a pirate ship, somewhere to starboard, being boarded. Callimachus strode to an oarsman. Oarsmen, of course, face the stern in rowing, for greater leverage. Callimachus drew the fellow’s sword from his sheath. He looked about and then, white-faced, hurled himself over the rail. Callimachus looked up the stairs to the height of the stem castle. It was then that Policrates saw him. Behind him was Callisthenes. Two men rushed down the steps toward Callimachus. Policrates and Callisthenes drew their swords. I saw the two men fall, one to each side of Callimachus. I had scarcely seen his blade move. He was not unskilled with the weapon. Policrates and Callisthenes, white-faced, regarded him. “I am with you,” I told him. “No,” said Callimachus, “these are mine.”

  I regarded him. He smiled. “Fetch Ragnar Voskjard,” he said. I grinned, and turned away from him. Behind me, in a moment, I heard the sound of swords.

  I looked over the port rail. Some forty yards away, across the water, some hundred yards or so out in the river, off the wharves, half afire, I saw the ship of Ragnar Voskjard. Timbers and wreckage strewed the waters between the ships. I could almost cross to his ship on the debris between us. More battle horns sounded. Not far off I could hear the clash of weaponry betokening yet another fierce ingress of boarders upon the deck of some vessel of hapless buccaneers. A dozen ships off the wharves must have been in flames.

  I bit at the leather binding on the handle of the sword I carried. I tore loose a strip of it and, with this cordage, improvised a wrist sling. If it were necessary to use my hands in the water I did not wish to risk losing the weapon. Then, clutching the weapon, the sling about my wrist, I vaulted the rail and, feet first, entered the water. I swam to a raft of planking. There is commonly little danger of eels near Victoria, save near the shadows and shallows of the wharves themselves.

  Scarcely had I ascended the heavy planking then, approaching rapidly, bearing down on me, I saw a medium galley, thrusting itself between the flagship of Policrates and Spined Tharlarion, the flagship of Ragnar Voskjard. It flew the banners of Tafa. I dove to the port side of the vessel. In a moment I was caught in its bow wave and, lifted, hurled toward Spined Tharlarion. Sputtering, lifting my head, spitting water, trying to clear my eyes, I saw another shape approaching. I struck out for the hull of Spined Tharlarion.

  The encroaching shape seemed to veer toward me, and then I realized, to my horror, that she intended to shear the starboard oars of Spined Tharlarion. I was now between the two vessels. There was a grating, shearing noise and snapping oars. I put out my hand and touched the strakes of the shuddering Spined Tharlarion. I saw the shearing blade sliding toward me. Scarring and ripping timber, snapping oars, it scraped and scored its way toward me. I dove under the ship. The greatest danger to a swimmer, incidentally, is not the blade itself, for its lower curve is usually at least a foot out of the water, and it is not difficult to avoid it. Indeed, one may even go between the blade and the ship on which it is mounted, if one wishes. The greatest danger to a swimmer, usually, is the grating together of hulls, behind the blades. Few captains are so skillful as to manage a clean, parallel shearing. Both ships are moving, and the angles vary instant by instant.

  Looking above me, up through the water, I saw the long, lean hull of the attacking vessel pass overhead. Then there was a rending noise as it gouged the starboard strakes of Spined Tharlarion. It had come in at too sharp an angle. The hulls then, grinding, swung together. When I saw the light of open water between them I surfaced. I found myself in a welter of debris and splinters. Oars were thrusting out from the attacking vessel, to force the ships apart. I seized a broken oar from Spined Tharlarion, its blade gone, its shaft swinging loose in the thole port. I climbed on the oar, the sword dangling from its wrist sling. I got my hand to the wood beside the thole port. I could see the bench inside had been abandoned. I gathered many of the crew of Spined Tharlarion had abandoned the vessel.

  Using the oar and thole port I drew myself upward. In a moment I was over the rail and on the deck of Spined Tharlarion. The stem castle was empty. The few men on the decks did not attack me. I saw the attacking vessel moving backward, trying to maneuver. She would try to com
e in with her ram, and, doubtless, later board. The stem castle was empty. There was a figure on the stern castle. His back was to me. I saw him ripping away the insignia of the captain from his robes. Two pirates leapt overboard, on the port side. I hastened down the deck and raced up the stairs to the stern castle. He spun to face me, the golden cordage of the captain in his right hand. “Greetings, Ragnar Voskjard,” I said to him, “I have come to fetch you.”

  He reached for his sword, but the point of my sword was in his belly. He removed his hand from the hilt of his blade.

  “That is better,” I said. “Now, on the deck, on your belly, to be stripped and bound.”

  He looked at me, in fury. I grinned, and, loosing the wrist sling of the sword, flung it into the deck beside me.

  He looked at the sword, upright in the deck beside me.

  “Now,” I told him.

  His eyes glinted.

  Swiftly he attempted to draw his blade. Instantly I was before him and caught him with a balled fist, driven upward into his gut. He looked at me, sick, bent over. I then measured him, and, at my leisure, from the balls of my feet, with the full force of my shoulders and arm, struck him, spinning, from his feet. I walked over to where he had fallen. I dragged him back by his ankles to the center of the small, high deck of the stern castle, where I put him on his belly.

  “You would be troublesome,” I told him. I knelt across his body. “I was once a fighting slave,” I told him. With strips of cloth cut from his garments I tied his hands behind his back. “Perhaps you even, at one time or another, have bet upon fellows such as I was.” He moaned. “It is amusing, is it not,” I asked, “that the great Ragnar Voskjard is now naught but the prisoner of an ex-fighting-slave?”

  “Free me,” he begged. I tightened the knots that confined him. “I will pay you much,” he said. “What pay could compare with the pleasure of taking the Voskjard prisoner?” I asked. “Mercy,” he said. “No,” I said. “You need not have tied me so tightly,” he said. “It amused me,” I told him. I smiled to myself. It was a Gorean answer.