I turned in time to see the _Tamira_, stern first, slip under the water. I fought back against the undertow. Then, again, the water was calm.
"Help!" I heard. "Help!"
My heart leapt. I swam toward the sound. I came to the two men struggling in the water.
"I cannot support him!" cried a voice.
"I shall help you!" I said.
I reached out and clutched the iron collar locked on the man's neck. "Do not struggle!" I told him. His hands, in manacles, on a single chain passing through a loop on the collar, thrashed at the water. Too, from the manacles other chains disappeared beneath the surface of the water.
"Do not struggle, Master!" begged the other man.
"Can you stay afloat? Can you swim?" I asked them.
"Our feet are chained!" said the man who had spoken.
"Hold to your fellow," I said. "I can support you."
I then drew them through the water to a piece of floating wreckage. I drew the first man upon it. The second climbed painfully, hampered by the chains, to its surface.
"I had not thought to meet you thus," I told them. "Strange indeed can be the fortunes of war."
"We are alone, in the river," said the first man, he whom the second had addressed as 'Master. "It is night. We are among enemies."
"Not all are enemies," I reassured him.
"What hope is there?" he asked.
"There is hope," I assured him.
A vessel, a lantern at her bow, nosed towards us.
"We are lost," said the first man.
"Jason, is it you?" inquired a voice from the bow of the vessel.
"It is," I said.
"Come aboard," said Callimachus. "There is little time. We must make away."
I helped the two chained men to stand on the wreckage, that they might be lifted aboard the _Tina_.
"Who are your friends?" inquired Callimachus.
"Krondar, the fighting slave," I said, "and Miles, of Vonda."
Chapter 10 — WHAT HUNG AT OUR PROWS; HOW WE GREETED KLIOMENES
I crossed the wrists of Lola and, with the dark strap, bound them tightly together, before her body. I then tied the line about her wrists, that strung through the prow ring. I signaled the sailor and he lifted her from her feet and threw her over the bow rail. In a moment, caught and held by the line, she dangled, an exhibited prize, at the prow. In a river galley of the construction of the _Tina_, her legs fell on either side of the heavy, wooden concave slope of the bow to the water and ram.
Shirley, whom I had taken from Reginald, captain of the _Tamira_, said once to have been of Tafa, hung at the bow of our lead ship, the _Tuka_, that vessel said to be a well known vessel of the Voskjard. Our _Tina_ was second in our line. The _Tais_, which we feared might be recognized, brought up the rear. Both girls were naked. Both made lovely adornments to our ships.
Preferably, of course, a stripped free woman hangs at the prow of the ship, that the degree of the victory may be made even more keen and manifest, but we were forced to make do with mere slaves. Free women are not often found in the vicinity of pirates. After a free woman has once been at the prow, there is nothing to do with her later, of course, but to make her a slave.
Our three ships made their way unhurriedly through the channel leading to the holding of Policrates.
"I would stand back," said Callimachus.
I did so. It would not do to be recognized. In my tunic, against my body, there was a mask of purple cloth. I had made it in Victoria before venturing west, there to join the _Tina_ at the chain. It was identical to that which had been worn by the masked fellow who had tried to obtain the topaz from me in Victoria. I was certain that he had been the true courier of Ragnar Voskjard. I had thought that it might, in certain circumstances, prove useful. I did not, however, don it. I did not know if the courier would be expected to travel with the fleet of the Voskjard or not.
On the _Tuka_ the rowers were singing, lustily. They wore an odd assortment of garbs. Insignia had been torn from clothing. Crests had been ripped from helmets, identificatory devices pried from the convex surfaces of shields. It was not a song of Ar they sang, but a river song, a song of pirates and brawlers, "The Ten Maids of Hammerfest," in which is recounted the fates which befell these lovely lasses. I was mildly scandalized that the stout fellows of Ar, soldiers and gentlemen, as Gorean gentlemen go, would even know these lyrics, let alone sing them with such unabashed gusto. I gathered that those of Ar's Station, as well as those of Port Cos and the other river towns, knew well what to do with women, providing, of course, they are put in collars.
I saw the flags run out on the stem-castle lines of the _Tuka_. The signals were those prescribed in the documents I had obtained from Reginald.
I saw answering flags run up on the walls of the holding of Policrates.
"Stay back," warned Callimachus.
I stepped back, further, but maintained still a position whence I might gauge the issuance of the action.
The _Tuka_, under the command of Aemilianus, lay to now, before the great sea gate of iron bars. Her rowers were now silent.
On the stem castle of the _Tuka_ stood Miles of Vonda, one who was not of the river towns, and one who was almost certain to be unknown to the denizens of the holding. When freed on the _Tina_ he had first expressed his desire to be put ashore, when possible, to make his way to Turmus, but, upon learning that a certain slave, one called Florence, was confined within the high walls of the holding of Policrates he had begged instead to be granted a place on a bench and given a sword. These things had been granted him. He had permitted his beard to grow and, over one eye, had placed a patch.
I did not think that even Simak, who was a captain of Policrates, he who, with Reginald, had waylaid the _Flower of Siba_, should he still be in the holding, would be likely to be able to identify him, to detect in the bearded ruffian on the stem castle of the _Tuka_ the former refugee landowner from Vonda. We thought it otherwise with Krondar, the fighting slave. It would be difficult, once seen, to ever forget the massively scarred, misshapen countenance of Krondar, a veteran of many bouts with the spiked leather, and the knife gauntlets, in Ar. Krondar, sword in hand, with many of Ar's Station, crouched below decks in the hold of the _Tuka_.
My heart leaped. I saw a figure emerging on the walls. It was that of Kliomenes.
On the night of our escape from our encirclement on the river, we had set afire the _Olivia_, our slowest and clumsiest ship, and directed her eastward against the enemy's shifting lines, opened and disarranged by the departure of the _Tamira_ from her position. This, we had hoped, would create a diversion, and lead the pirates, in the confusion and darkness, to assume that we were moving eastward, and that the _Olivia_ had been set aflame by their own forces. We had then lain to, in the movement of ships, pennons of the Voskjard on our lines should we fall within the light of passing lanterns. We had then withdrawn west to the chain, where we had salvaged the _Tuka_. At this point the _Tamira_, which had tenaciously kept with us, and despairing of support, desperately attacked. She had fallen prey to the swift _Tais_. Twice struck, she had soon sunk.
I had managed to rescue Miles of Vonda and Krondar, his slave, from the dark, wreckage-strewn water. Following the _Tuka_ and the _Tais_, by prearranged plan, we in the _Tina_ had then rowed southward along the chain until we came to the point where the northward-moving portion of the Voskjard's fleet, that which we had once mistaken for the support vessels of Callisthenes, had cut the chain. We did not think that the pirate vessels had been brought on rollers about the beach south of the chain's terminal pylons to the south. It had shown no sign of combat or damage. Thus, it had not been opposed by Callisthenes. Accordingly, unopposed it would have cut the chain rather than engage in the arduous task of beaching and moving over fifty ships some two or three hundred yards overland.