"Cut! Cut! Cut!" I heard the officer cry out to the slaves in the punt and, immediately, almost frenzied, they began to hack away at the tangles of marsh vine with their bladed poles.
Throughout the afternoon and evening, unhurried, Telima and I, like a prowling sleen, circled the barges, and, when it pleased us, loosed another of the long shafts of the great bow.
I struck first their helmsman, and soon none would ascend to the tiller deck. Then warriors climbed down to punt, to help the slaves cut marsh vine and sedge, to clear the way, but these warriors, exposed, fell easy prey to the birds of the bow. Then more slaves were put in the punt, and ordered to cut, and cut more.
And when some growth had been cleared and an oar-master would dare to take his seat to call the time for the rowers he, too, like the helmsmen, would taste in his heart the touch of the metal-piled shaft.
And then none would dare take the place of the oar-master.
As darkness fell in the marsh the men of Port Kar lit torches on the sides of the barges.
But by the light of these torches the great bow found the enjoyment of various victories.
Then the torches were extinguisehd and, in the darkness, fearing, the men of Port kar waited.
We had struck from various sides, at various times. And Telima had often raised the piping cry of the marsh gant. The men of Port Kar knew, as I had not, that rencers communicate in the marshes by the means of such signals. The face, delightful to me, taht Telima's skill was such that actuall marsh gants frequently responded to her cries was, I expect, less delightful to those of Port Kar. In the darkness, peering out, not seeing, they had no way of knowing which was a marsh gant and which an enemy. For all they knew, they were encirclesd by rencers, somehow masters of the great bow, That the great bow was used they understood from the time I struck the second helmsman, pinning him to the tiller beam.
Occassionally they would fire back, and the bolts of crossbows would drop into the marshes about us, but harmlessly. Usually they fell far wide of our true positon, for, following each of my fired shafts, Telima would pole us to a new point of vantage, whence I might again, when ready, pick a target and loose yet another of the winged shafts. Sometimes merely the movement of a tharlarion or the flutter of a marsh gant, something completely unrelated to us, would summon a great falling and hissing of bolts into the marsh.
In the darkness, Telima and I finished some rence cake we had brought from the island, and drank some water.
"How may arrows have you left?" she asked.
"Ten," I said.
"It is not enough," she said.
"That is true," I said, "but now we have the cover of darkness."
I had cut some marsh vine and had, from this formed a loop.
"What can you do?" she asked.
"Pole me to the fourth barge," I said.
We had estimated that there had been more than a hundred warriors on the six barges, but not, perhaps, many more. Counting the kills, and other men we had seen, the barges' hulls, there might be some fifty men left, spread over the six barges.
Silently Telima poled our small craft to the fourth barge.
The most of the warriors, we had noted, were concentrated in the first and last barges.
The barges, during the afternoon, had been eased into a closer line, the stem on one lying abeam of the stern of the next, being made fast tehre by lines. This was to prevent given barges from being boarded separately, where the warriors on one could not come to the aid of the other. They had no way of knowing how many rencers might be in the marshes. With this arrangement they had greater mobility of their forces, for men might leap, say, from one foredeck of one barge to the tiller deck of the other. If boarding were attepmpted toward the center of the line, the boarding party could thus be crushed on both flanks by warriors pouring in from adjacent barges. This arrangement, in effect, transformed the formerly purposes, a long, single, narrow, wooden-walled fort.
These defensive conditons dictated that the offense, putatively the male population of one or perhaps two rence communities, say, some seventy or eighty men, would most likely attack at either of the first or the last of the barges, where they would have but one front on which to attack and little, or nothing, to fear from the rear. That the punt might be used to bring men behind attacking rencers was quite improbable; further, had it been used, pressumably it would have encountered rencers in their several rence craft and been threby neutralized or destroyed.
In this situation, then, it was natural, expecting an attack on either the first or the last barge, that the officer, he of the golden slashes on the temples of his helmet, would concentrate his men in the first and last barge.
We had come now to the hull of the fourth barge, and we had come to her as silently as a rence flower might have drifted to her side.
Having no large number of men at my disposal, it seemed best to me to let the men of Port Kar themselves do most of my fighting.
Standing below the hull, quite close, in the shifting rence craft, I made a small clicking noise, a sound that meant nothing but, in the darkness, meaning nothing, would be startling, terrifying in its uncomprehended import. I heard the sudden intake of breath which marked the position of a man. With the noose of marsh vine I dragged him over the sie of the hull, lowering him into the marsh, holding him until I felt the tharlarion take him from me, drawing him away.
Slaves chained at the benches began to cry out with fear.
I heard men running, from both sides toward the place from which came the cries of the slaves.
In the darkness they met one another, shouting, brandishing their weapons. There was much shouting.
Someone was calling for a torch.
Telima poled us backward, away from the hull of the fourth barge.
I picked up the bow and set it its string one of the ten remaining arrows. When the torch first flickered I put the arrow into the heart of the man who held it, and he and the torch, as though struck by a fist, spun and reeled off the far side of the barge. I then heard another man cry out, thrust in the confustion over the side, and his screaming. There was more shouting. There were more cries for torches, but I did not see any lit.
And then I heard the clash of sword steel, wildly, blindly.
And then I heard one cry out "They are aboard! We are boarded! Fight!" Telima had poled us some thirty yards out into the marsh, and I stood there, arrow to string, in case any should bring another torch.
None did.
I heard men running on the gangway between the rowers' benches.
I heard more cries of pain, the screams of terrified slaves trying to crawl beneath their benches.
There was another splash.
I heard someone crying out, perhaps the officer, ordering more men aft to repell the boarders.
From the other direction I heard another voice ordering me forward, commanding his warriors to take the boarders in the flank.
I whispered to Telima to bring the rence craft in again, and put down my bow, taking out the steel sword. Again at the side of the fourth barge I thrust over the side, driving my blade into one of the milling bodies, then withdrawing. There were more cries and clashings of steel.