Norman, John - Gor 16 - Guardsman Of Gor v2.txt

by Guardsman of Gor [lit]

  "We cannot take another attack," said a man.

  We listened to the signal horns from the Voskjard's fleet.

  "They are drawing back," said a man.

  "Perhaps they will go away," said another.

  "They are regrouping," said a man.

  "There will be another attack," said a man.

  "Of course," said another.

  We had begun the morning with eleven ships. Of Port Cos, we had had the _Leda_ and _Tais_; of Ar's Station, we had had the _Olivia_ and _Portia_, and four prize ships; of Fina, we had had the _Talender_; of Victoria, we had had the _Mira_ and _Tina_. Of these eleven ships, now only five remained, the _Tais_, _Olivia_, _Talender_, _Tina_ and _Hermione_, which had been taken as a prize. It was a slender line which we had to present to the might of the Voskjard, surely still some twenty-eight or twenty-nine ships, now being marshaled off our bows.

  "The _Tais_ should make a run for it," said a man near me, a native of Victoria, a survivor of the _Mira_.

  "She remains in the line," said a man.

  "Who would have suspected it of the sleen of Cos," said a soldier of Ar near me, one of several whom we had taken aboard, from the careening decks of the sinking _Alcestis_, which, yesterday, had been taken as a prize by the men of Ar. Without such men we could not have manned our oars.

  "Interesting," said one of his fellows.

  "Perhaps there is courage, other than in Ar," speculated another.

  "The sleen of Cos have fought well," said another.

  "Yes," said another.

  "Where is Callisthenes?" inquired the fellow from the _Mira_.

  "I do not know," I said.

  "We are out of stones and pitch," said a man.

  The sound of battle horns drifted across the water towards us.

  I watched one of our archers, with a knife, removing an arrow from the wood of the stem castle. He worked carefully, in order not to damage it.

  "They are running flags on their stem-castle lines now," I said.

  "It will be soon," said a man.

  "Their oars are outboard now," said a man.

  Again we heard the sounds of battle horns.

  "To your stations, Lads!" called an officer.

  We hastened to our places.

  "Oars outboard!" called the oar master.

  We slid the wood through the thole ports.

  "They are coming now," said the man behind me.

  "Why is there silence?" called Callimachus from the stem castle. "Can we give no response?"

  Men looked at one another.

  Then, from the scarred, half-shattered, smoke-blackened stern castle of the _Tina_, first from one trumpet, lifted by a fellow who was little more than a boy, and then from another, and from another, there resounded notes of defiance. The trumpeters on the stern castle of the _Olivia_, too, seized up their instruments, and then, too, from the _Tais_, and from the _Talender_ and _Hermione_, came the clear, unmistakable, brave sounds of men determined to stand together.

  The hair on the back of my neck rose, and I was proud. I gripped the oar.

  "Ready!" called the oar master. "Stroke!"

  And the five ships of our small line sallied forth to meet the stately advance of the Voskjard's fleet.

  "The _Hermione_ is down," said a man.

  "The _Talender_ has been taken as a prize," said another.

  We rested on our oars.

  "I had not thought we could survive that attack," said a fellow.

  On our starboard side was the _Olivia_, and on her starboard side was the valiant _Tais_.

  "They are coming again," said a man.

  "It will be the end," said another.

  "There is shouting on the stern deck of the _Olivia_," said a man, rising at the bench.

  I, too, stood up.

  "There is commotion there," said another, standing now on his bench.

  "What is it?" asked a fellow, his head down, leaning over his oar.

  "There was then, too, a cry from our stern castle. "Ships! Ships astern!" cried an officer from the stern castle.

  "It is Callisthenes!" cried a man.

  I stood up on the rowing bench, clinging to the top of the rowing frame.

  "Callisthenes!" cried a man.

  "Keep your benches!" cried the oar master.

  "Callisthenes!" cried other men.

  On the horizon, astern, like tiny dots, sped toward us a flotilla, of ships.

  "Callisthenes! Callisthenes!" we cried. Hats were flung into the sir. Rejoicing, we embraced one another. Tears of joy streamed down grizzled faces. Even soldiers of Ar, at our benches, crying out, seized up shields and bucklers, and smote them with the blades of spears and the flats of swords.

  "The tide turns!" cried an officer. "The tide turns!"

  Callisthenes commanded twenty ships.

  "Keep your benches!" called the oar master. "The fleet of the Voskjard approaches!"

  "Callisthenes!" we cried, joyfully. "Callisthenes!" Joy, too, reigned on the decks of the _Olivia_. We could hear cheering even from the _Tais_, alongside of the _Olivia_.

  "We are saved!" cried a man.

  Callimachus, alone on the deck of the stem castle, with a glass of the Builders, surveyed the fleet, flung out across the horizon, advancing astern.

  I climbed, joyfully, to the top of the rowing frame. The galleys, I could see, stretched from horizon to horizon. Suddenly I felt sick. "It cannot be Callisthenes," I said. "There are too many ships."

  A man looked at me, startled, disbelievingly.

  "It can only be ships of the Voskjard," I said.

  This insight was not unique to me. Almost simultaneously the cheering on the _Olivia_ and on the _Tais_, too, ceased. Our three ships, silent, rocked on the water. We could hear battle horns, now, from not only the forces of the Voskjard moving towards us, off our bows, but we could hear, too, the notes of battle horns drifting across the water towards us from astern.

  "It is the attack," said a man, reading the notes.

  "We are trapped," said another man.

  "To your stations, Lads!" called Callimachus.

  I took my place at the oar. I was in consternation, and stunned. These ships, advancing from the south, were clearly ships of the Voskjard. But they could not approach from the south in such force, for the south was guarded by the fleet of Callisthenes. To bring a fleet in such force through the cut chain would seem impossible. Presumably it would have been brought, beached and on rollers, about the south guard station. This was the major danger we had anticipated in defending the river. It was for such a purpose that we had placed the twenty ships of Callisthenes at that point, to guard against this major weakness in our defenses. That the new ships of the Voskjard were bearing down now upon us, and in such force, suggested that they had not been opposed, that either they had been permitted to cut the chain and advance unmolested, or, more likely, perhaps, that they had been permitted to circumvent the chain by the use of the beach route about the south guard station.

  "Ready!" called the oar master.

  Callisthenes must have withdrawn his ships from their position. Too, his information on the power of the Voskjard had proved haplessly inadequate. The error in his intelligence on such matters must have been of the nature of a factor of almost three. His sources had been proved again, and even more seriously, unreliable. The ships of Callisthenes had been essential to our defense of the river. They had failed to support us in our fight at the chain. Now, it seemed, they had failed, too, even to prevent the third fleet of the Voskjard from making an unimpeded entry into the waters east of the chain, from which position, of course, they could take the defensive fleet in the rear. Callisthenes must have abandoned his post. He must have withdrawn his ships. He must, perhaps feeling battle fruitless, have retired to Port Cos.

  Battle horns, then, from off our bows and astern, shattered the air of the Vosk.

  "It is the end," said a man behind me.

  Notes of answering battle horns, from our
stern castle, and from the stern castles of the _Olivia_ and the _Tais_, almost lost in the din of enemy signals, gave response.

  "Stroke!" called the oar master.

  The _Tina_ shuddered in the water, and then, once more, with her sisters, the _Olivia_ and the _Tais_, her oars catching at the water, her ram half lifting, dripping, from the Vosk, defiant and gallant, leapt forward.

  Chapter 7 - I AGAIN SEE THE _TAMIRA_; I GO FOR A SWIM

  "There is the _Tamira_," said a man, pointing to starboard, at one Voskjard ship among others.

  I discarded my sword, and seized up a knife from the deck. I placed it between my teeth. I dove into the water, from the bow railing of the _Tina_.

  I was then among slashing oars and swimming men. An arrow pierced the water near me, then bobbed to the surface.

  Behind me I heard hulls grinding together.

  Voskjard ships crowded about the _Olivia_, the _Tais_ and _Tina_. On bloody decks men held discourse with steel. The twang of bowstrings rang in the air.

  I clung to a piece of wreckage. A man clung, too, to the other end of the section of planks. I did not know if he were a pirate or not.

  It was late afternoon.

  It was like a lake of bloody wood in the center of the Vosk. The ships of the Voskjard so pressed about our three ships that they could not use their rams or shearing blades. More than one Voskjard ship had been set afire by flaming pitch cast from another. More than one, at the waterline, or on her decks, it falling among crowded men, had been smitten with stones cast from the catapults of their own ships.

  Fusillades of javelins, struck from springals, hailed down on pirate ships as frequently as they did on ours. Even arrows, as often as not in the fray, in the mixings and shiftings of men, indiscriminately, to the consternation of pirates, found unintended targets.

  There was a movement in the water behind me, and I twisted suddenly to the side, turning, and catching the arm, its knife in hand, striking toward me. "For the Voskjard!" hissed the man. We struggled, in the water. I dragged him to me. I got the knife from my teeth and, under the water, thrust it, edge up, into his abdomen, and then drew it, deeply in him, diagonally, upward and to the right. The smell came up through the water. I kicked him away from me and, half submerged, he floated backwards away from the wreckage.

  I turned to the fellow who had been clinging to the wreckage with me. "I am from the _Mira_, from Victoria!" he said.

  "No, you are not," I told him.

  "I am!" he cried.

  "Who was the commander of the _Mira_?" I asked him.

  Swiftly then did the fellow, turning white, swim from the wreckage. I did not pursue him. Temus, who had been the captain of the _Mira_, had been taken aboard the _Olivia_, that he might, by his skills of seamanship, give aid to the men of Ar.

  A longboat was some twenty yards away. Archers were in it. They were hunting the waters. Already the men of the Voskjard were killing survivors.

  I saw a man stroking toward me, knife in fist. He was a bearded, vicious-looking fellow. "For the Voskjard!" he said.

  I slipped beneath the water. I came up behind the fellow and took his neck, bending back his head, in the crook of my left arm.

  Almost at the same moment I saw the fellow at the tiller of the longboat turn it towards us. Archers stood between its thwarts, arrows fitted to the strings of their bows.

  I lifted the bloody knife in my right hand. I let the fellow I had seized drift away from me.

  "For the Voskjard!" I grinned, brandishing the knife.

  The archers lowered their bows. "Well done, Fellow," said the fellow at the tiller of the longboat.

  I treaded water, and watched the longboat draw away. I heard, several yards behind me, the rending of strakes, taken by a ram. One of the Voskjard's ships, in the press of battle, had struck her fellow.

  The _Olivia_, the _Tais_ and the _Tina_ were still afloat. They were protected from the rams and shearing blades of their enemies by the closeness of the quarters. They had managed, almost like a fortress of wood, three ships jammed together, surrounded, under fire, beleaguered, to repel assault after assault, pouring over the rails of enemy vessels. The infantrymen of Ar, in their numbers, inordinate for the vessels involved, and their skills in war, uncommon on the river, stiffened the resistance of the remnants of our small fleet.

  Because of the closeness of the quarters, and the ships about, we could not be easily approached, and those who could approach us, actually attempting to board us, must, toe to toe, make the acquaintance of the warriors of Ar. By the buffeting of those mighty shields, by the thrusting of great spears, by the swift, ringing flash of well-tempered steel, wave after wave of boarders was repelled, cut to pieces, swept back like rabble. Yet I knew that in the end even the mighty larl, if chained, must eventually succumb to the attack of endless streams of hissing urts. The tiny gnawings, the miniscule lacerations, the drops of blood extracted, must in their cumulative effect take their inevitable toll.

  I looked at the sun. There was blood in the water about me. It was late in the afternoon. A ship of the Voskjard, a hundred yards away, back from the immediate press of battle, was aflame. A Vosk gull had alit on the wreckage to which I had earlier clung. I put the knife in my teeth and swam slowly toward the _Tamira_.

  Chapter 8 - I CONDUCT BUSINESS UPON THE _TAMIRA_; I RETURN TO THE _TINA_, BRINGING WITH ME SOME THINGS WHICH I FIND OF INTEREST

  I, knife between my teeth, in the water, clung to the starboard rudder of the _Tamira_. Then, lifting myself from the water, clutching at the rudder, I inched my way upward. It was some eight feet in length. I then had my feet on the broad blade of the rudder and grasped the upright shaft. The tarred cables, some four inches in width, moved. The rudder creaked.

  I looked over to the windows of the stern cabin. These were high, and formed of a lacing of wood and glass. The _Tamira_ had once been an ornate, richly appointed merchantman. This guise, doubtless, still served her well in her work for the Voskjard. Her darker offices would not be evident from her respectable and stately exterior.

  I climbed upward, and swung on ornamental grillwork, toward the windows. Then I stood beside the sill of the port window, back that I not be visible through it. This cabin, surely, would be that of Reginald, her captain. I had little doubt but what I sought, either it or a copy, would lie within.

  The _Tamira_ shifted in the current. I reconnoitered, as I could, moving the side of my head slightly. I peered into the cabin. I saw a table, and charts. I could not see his berth. I could not see the entire cabin. I assumed the cabin was empty. Surely Reginald himself, captain of the _Tamira_, would be above decks and forward, presumably on the stem castle taking note of the course of the battle. On the other hand if he should be in the cabin, or if it should be otherwise occupied, I must enter swiftly and without warning, that I might, if necessary, strike before being struck. I wiped the knife on my thigh. The preservation of the life of Reginald, or of another within, was not essential to the pursuit of my objectives.

  With a shattering of glass and wood I crashed into the cabin.

  She screamed, suddenly rising to a kneeling position in the berth, clutching the scarlet sheet about her throat.

  I stood between her and the door, half-naked, the knife in my hand.

  "Who are you?" she cried.

  I backed from her and then, turning, tried the door. She had been locked within, as I had speculated. From the inside, then, scarcely taking my eyes from her, I dropped the heavy bar into place, in its brackets, securing the door from the inside. I then, with its chain, and ship's lock, secured the bar in place.

  "Who are you?" she demanded, holding the sheet high about her.

  "Lower the sheet to your shoulders," I told her.

  She looked at me, angrily. Then she obeyed. There was a close-fitting steel collar on her neck.

  Seeing that she was a slave, no longer did I fear to compromise the modesty of a free woman. "Discard the sheet," I told her. She, kneeling in
the berth, dropped it to her knees. "Completely," I told her.

  She cast the sheet aside.

  She was voluptuous, and blond, and blue-eyed. I saw that she would bring a high price in a slave market.

  "I shall scream," she said.

  "Do so, and I shall cut your pretty throat from ear to ear," I said.

  "Who are you!" she demanded.