Would anyone on either side live through this night? Blade wondered if they would go on tearing at each other, hour after hour, even day after day, until the last man on both sides slumped to the ground dead.
Another wave of Steppemen came in, mounted and trying to ride their horses into the battle. Kukon's guns blasted scores of them out of their saddles. Blade and Prince Durouman led their men in against the rest, ducking low, thrusting or slashing up at the bellies of the horses, then clubbing the riders out of their saddles.
Kukon's guns roared again. Blade turned to see her backing away from the shore, a few Steppemen clinging to her ram. They still clung to it as it submerged. Some of them surfaced briefly, to thrash about screaming until they sank.
Kukon nearly backed into two pirate galleys moving in toward the shore. But both ships had alert rowers, and both swung wide and continued to approach the beach until they could bring their guns to bear on the Steppemen without hitting the men around Blade and Prince Durouman. All the guns crashed out and more Steppemen died. Farther along the beach, Blade could see other flashes of gunfire as pirate galleys moved in to bombard the Steppemen's camp. Flames were rising there also. Landing parties must have made it to shore and gone to work among the tents.
Then the shouts and drums signaled more Steppemen coming in, both on foot and on horseback. Blade and Prince Durouman had time to shake hands and slap armored shoulders dented and caked with blood. Then the battle swept them apart again.
To Blade's mild surprise, the battle did not go on forever. It ended shortly before dawn. All the Steppemen who were still on the shore lay dead or dying. All the Steppemen who still lived were fleeing inland as fast as their own legs or their horses would carry them. The pirates counted more than three thousand Steppeman bodies strewn along the shore between the two camps.
The pirates' casualties were not light. More than three hundred were dead, twice as many wounded. The tribesmen had lost their share as well. They had primitive weapons but stout hearts and only one simple idea of what to do with an enemy: kill him. It had been a good night for such simple, practical philosophies.
Kukon had twenty-five dead besides Dzhai and fifty more wounded. All the unwounded men were exhausted, and there was hardly a cupful of gunpowder left aboard. This was the price paid for disposing of better than five hundred Steppemen and, for all practical purposes, saving the whole battle.
There was no denying it, and the pirates didn't try. The work of Kukon's landing party and Kukon's guns had broken up the Steppemen's first attacks, saving the boats and giving the pirates on land time to rally. Without Kukon, there would have been no rallying-and three thousand pirates lying dead on the beach when dawn came.
Emass put the pirates' gratitude eloquently, although he spoke from a cot where he lay with one leg bandaged from thigh to calf.
«Prince Durouman, Prince Blade. The Free Brothers of Nongai owe you their future. We did not expect that our alliance would bear such a mighty fruit so soon. Now that it has, we have only one question to ask of you.
«How may we best serve you?»
Prince Durouman's answer was nearly as brief. «Gather all the ships and all the fighting men, all the guns and powder and stores you can. Bring all of them to Parine as fast as you can.
«Sail in strong fleets-thirty or more galleys together. Do not waste time and powder attacking the Emperor's scout ships. Protect and defend the ships of the Five Sea Kingdoms wherever and whenever you find them in need. Lose no time for anything else. We have only one goal now-Kul-Nam's fleet.»
«We have another,» sail Blade. «Kul-Nam's head. And after that, a third. The Eagle Crown of Saram, on your head.»
Prince Durouman's face was unnaturally sober as he nodded slowly. Emass smiled. «It shall be done as you wish, Your-Your Magnificence Who-Is-To-Be.»
There was little else to do. Kukon was undamaged-the grounding had done no harm. Her dead were buried, her wounded carried ashore, and her magazine replenished. Fifty pirates came aboard to fill the gaps in her crew. Five hundred would have gone if there had been room for them.
Just before sunset Kukon weighed anchor. Her sails filled, and her rowing drums sounded the cruising stroke. The cheers of the pirates on shore and aboard their galleys roared louder than the night's battle. Kukon turned and headed out to sea.
Chapter 24
They first guessed what had happened to Parine when they were a day's sail away.
Kukon took a course that swung to the east of the principality, toward the coast of Nullar. In those waters there would be less danger of meeting the Imperial fleet. There would also be a greater chance of meeting a ship from Nullar or one of the other Five Kingdoms, one that could take the message of the new alliance to the kings and fleets on the mainland.
They found neither. Instead, they found a fishing boat of Parine, drifting aimlessly. Aboard were four men, three dead and one dying. All four of them showed the unmistakable signs of prolonged and horrible torture in the style of Saram. The dying man died without speaking a coherent word, but no one aboard Kukon needed to be told what had happened. Blade doubled the lookouts and pressed on.
Two hours later they began to smell smoke on the wind that blew out of the west-from Parine. Just before sunset they passed a mass of floating timber, much of it charred black. They moved on through the darkness, the rowers setting a fast cruising stroke whether the drummers beat it out or not. The smoke smell grew stronger hour by hour. Three more times they passed floating wreckage or abandoned fishing boats.
Then the dawn came, and with it gray smoke smeared all across the western horizon. Under that smoke they found Parine, but so changed that it hardly seemed right to call it by the same name as the island they'd left. It was as if mad giants had swarmed across the island, killing everything that lived, burning everything that would burn, and stamping into rubble everything that was neither living nor burnable.
They swung in close enough to the harbor and town to see that the harbor was a mass of floating wreckage and the town a mass of rubble that still trickled smoke. The main fort on top of the cliffs had been blackened and split open by a tremendous explosion.
Bodies floated or lay everywhere-men, women, and children of Parine, soldiers of the forts' garrisons and the princess' household troops, mules and horses and goats, and a surprising number of the soldiers and sailors of the Empire of Saram.
«Our friends of Parine died hard,» said Prince Durouman quietly. «I hope the gods give them better thanks for that than I can.»
Blade nodded. «I wonder-did they all die?»
The two men's eyes met. Each knew without a word what was in the other's mind. Finally Prince Durouman shrugged.
«We can only go and find out.»
Kukon left the ruined town and harbor and headed toward the north coast of the island. The shortest overland route to the little white palace in the valley started there. Blade did not want to take much of an overland journey now or leave his ship very long. Some of Kul-Nam's soldiers might still be roaming the interior of the island or his galleys sweeping along the coast.
They found nothing except more death and destruction all the way to their landing place. It was no different when Blade and Prince Durouman led inland a party of forty men, all of them armed to the teeth. The only variation was the number of Kul-Nam's soldiers among the corpses. Usually there were a great many-sometimes half the total. Blade's spirits could not rise among such ghastly scenes, but he began to wonder just how many men Kul-Nam had lost here on Parine. Enough to weaken him? Perhaps.