"You're a fool, Rickli Manlove. This isn't your fight." But the Earthman wore a smile.
"Maybe. Stay out of the way till I get muster."
Other vessels, too, began readying weapons and sail. The chaos on Landing diminished as crews found their ways to their ships.
Through the confusion came a wedge of five tall men in outlandish clothing. Rickli stared. They were heavier than his people, more muscular. Even from a distance he could see that there was no humor in their faces.
"These are your enemies?" he asked.
"Some of them. Watch the little one. The one who seems the least. He's their leader, Gaab Telle. There're blood debts between us. I'll keep out of sight." He slipped down into the galley.
Rickli called his armorer.
The five came aboard as if they owned Rifkin's Dream. Their not having asked permission aggravated Rickli's predisposition to dislike them. The light one spoke with Homewood and Blackcraft, then came aft. All five had hard, dark eyes. Fenaja eyes.
"Where is he?" Telle asked. He glanced speculatively at Rickli's stump.
Quiet as death, with an expression as grim, Thomas slipped from the galley, his talisman in hand. He nodded.
"Right behind you," Rickli replied.
They turned. The leader went pale. "You!"
"Of course. I take some killing. How's the universe been treating you, Telle? Not well, I hope."
"But..."
"As a writer once said, the reports of my death were exaggerated. You didn't send enough shooters."
So, thought Rickli, this was the man who had tried to kill Thomas. He signaled his armorer. Crewmen began selecting weapons.
Men of Quiet Sea almost never used weapons against one another. Rickli doubted his men could now. But maybe the Outsiders wouldn't recognize the bluff.
"I'll make sure this time. This's one operation you're not going to wreck." He didn't seem impressed by the martial display.
Thomas pointed his talisman.
The leader laughed. "Bluffing with a dead lasepistol, von Rhor? Six years old? Gotta. Take him."
One man took one step.
There was a dazzling flash. The man fell, steam twisting from a small black hole in his back.
Pandemonium. Crewmen scattered. The augurs fled to the bows. The tableau of confrontation remained a tense pocket of false calm amidst the confusion.
Telle and his men seemed stricken. And Thomas, too, as though he could neither believe what he had done nor that his weapon had actually functioned.
Rickli took his ivory-gripped harpoon from the captain's equipment rack. A great calm, like that of the last moment before the cast from a racing chaser's sprit, descended upon him. The sight of one man killing another had not shaken him as much as he thought it should. Maybe he would react later, after the tension had passed.
"Six years, Telle. Six years I've sailed the quiet sea, without a hope, yet cherishing this thing. My only regret had been that you were still alive, that I'd failed and you were still peddling your death dust.
"I don't expect to live through this. I tried to avoid it because it'll cost these good people. The augurs think you're benefactors, yet you're raising the drug right in their front yard. When I die, you'll carry the candle to light my way into Hell."
"Spoken like a true hero," Telle sneered. But most of his arrogance had faded.
"Rickli," said the Earthman. "A favor."
"Anything, Thomas." "Have them stripped. Move the shooters forward." "Thomas?" Telle asked. "What happened to Nicholas von Rhor?" Don't mean anything here, Telle. And just between us, that's not it either." The bodyguards moved away. "Actually, it's Soren Deatherage."
"The Hell Stars'"
Rickli did not understand the exchange, but the winds of hatred blowing between the men made it clear they had hurt one another deeply and often. Maybe Thomas would explain later. But he doubted it. He had learned more about Hakim in the past ten minutes than in all the years before.
Thomas handed his talisman to the armorer, began shedding his own clothing.
Rickli had never seen Thomas unclothed. Now he frowned. The Earthman was older than he had suspected. His body hair was heavily salted with grey. "In the fleets we settle personal disputes by wrestling," said Hakim.
"Man to man, Telle. I'll be thinking about what you did to my wife."
A smile ghosted across Telle's thin lips. "Then I'll remember Karamar and the Hell Stars." With a swiftness that stunned Rickli, he picked.
Thomas was lighter, shorter. All the disadvantages seemed his. Yet he held his own.
He moved as suddenly as Telle, throwing an openhanded finger punch Rickli was unable to follow. Telle blocked with a forearm as he whipped past, flicked a kick at Hakim's groin. Thomas took it on his thigh, unleashed a kick of his own that connected with the back of Telle's pivotal knee as he turned. Telle went down. As he did, he caught Thomas's foot and dragged the smaller man with him. They rolled across the deck, kneeing, gouging, biting, then broke, bounced up, and squared off. They traded feints and counterfeints almost too subtle for Rickli to follow.
This, he thought, was another new facet of Hakim. The style of fighting was quick and deadly. He was glad Thomas hadn't lost his temper under the heavy, needling of his first few years aboard. He might not be able to work ship, but he could kill.
The fighters came together in a flurry of punches and kicks. Then Hakim was on the deck, bleeding from one cheek. Telle circled him warily while Thomas awaited a chance to regain his feet.
Thomas seemed less practiced and clearly had less stamina than his Opponent. Rickli worried.
Hakim suddenly seemed to do three things at once, reversing their positions. Now he circled cautiously while Telle awaited a chance to rise.
It went on and on, time weighing ever more heavily on the Earthman. He was getting slower. Telle began moving with more confidence.
The larger man suddenly moved in, forcing a contest of strength. For long minutes the two strained in one another's grasp; then there was a loud crack. Thomas gasped. His left arm went slack. Telle stepped back with a look of satisfaction — and Thomas loosed a kick that destroyed his knee as thoroughly as the Fenaja harpoon had destroyed Rickli's.
Telle went down with an expression of pained surprise.
Holding his broken arm with his good hand, Thomas circled, waiting to kick again.
Telle seized an ax from a nearby weapons rack, threw. Thomas dodged, but not fast enough. The blade opened a gash on the outside of his left thigh. He fell, his blood staining the deck. He tried to rise, groaned, fell back, dragged himself to the mizzenmast, placed his back to it.
Telle pulled a sword from the rack, crawled toward the Earthman.
"Thomas!" Thomas Hakim!"
The Shipwrecked Earthman looked Rickli's way. Manlove threw the ivory-gripped harpoon.
It slapped Thomas's hand. He held on.
Crossing the Finneran Bank by night again, Rickli Manlove peered at the Spiderfish. Unnatural stars had been blooming there since before sundown, Thomas's people had come searching for their enemies. Hakim's message, sent on Telle's Landing equipment, had gotten through.
Quiet Sea would never be the same.
Riekli thought of Hakim's talisman, of the battle, and of Outside as Thomas had described it before Rifkin's Dream had departed Landing. He wondered if, knowing of those things, the augurs would have pulled the Earthman from the sea six years ago.
Too late now.
"So it goes," he murmured, surveying the running lights of the fleet. "When the grunling aren't running, the blackfin are."
Changes due or no, there was work to be done. Fish to be caught, sandweg to be harvested, Fenaja to be fought, stone to be transported to Landing. He had enough to concern him here on the quiet sea.