The Dorna fought her anchors. We had lifted them that she might swing into the wind, and bad then dropped them once more, but still she shook and reared, lifted and dropped into the waters. Her timbers groaned, and I could hear the creaking of the bolts, the irons and great chains that, in places, reinforced her beams.
My fifth wave was divided into two portions, the pin- cer blade striking from the north under the command of the tall, long-haired Nigel, with his fifteen ships, supple- mented by twenty-five of the arsenal, and the pincer blade from the south under the command of Chung, with his twenty ships, supplemented by another twenty, from the arsenal. AU of these ships were tam ships. But I did not see the fifth wave.
I could see, now, approaching — the Dorna, from the east, the reserves, the hundred and five tarn ships, and the ten wide-beamed round ships, lumber ships from the arsenal, whose cargoes were unknown even to my highest officers. I wondered if I should have trusted the Ubars Nigel and Chung.
The command ship of the reserves heaved to within hailing distance of the Doma. With the glass I saw, on her stem castle, Antisthenes, that captain of the council whose name had been always first on her rolls.
The other ships took their places in four lines behind the command ship of the reserves.
And between them, heavy, their hulls buffeted by the wind, even their small storm sails now furled to their yards, came the ten round ships, the lumber ships from the arsenal. Even they, broad-beamed and deep-keeled, pitched and bucked in the roiling waters of late Se'Kara on Thassa.
I turned the glass again to the west, to the smoke in the distance. I saw now that the tam ships of Cos and Tyros were, where possible, not engaging the round ships, but con- centrating their superior numbers on my tarn ships. The round ships, slow, much at the mercy of the wind, were now being abandoned as antagonists.
I smiled. Chenbar was an excellent admiral. He chose to fight wars in which he was most familiar. He would use his superior numbers on my tam ships, leaving the round ships for later, when they might be struck by as many as four or five tam ships simultaneously. The round ships, of course, were too slow to offer the swift, decisive support to my tam ships which they would surely need shortly. I Closed the glass, and blew on my fingers. It was very cold, and it now seemed to me that the outcome of the battle was written on that great board, the width of the horizon, the pieces ships and men, which lay burning and smoking in the distance.
The wind whipped past.
Then I heard a cry from below me, and a cheer. The man on the height of the prow, his builders' glass slung about his shoulder, standing his feet fixed in ropes, was waving his cap'in the air. The oarsmen below were cry- ing out and waving their caps.
I snapped open the glass of the builders. From both the north and the south, like distant black slivers knifing through the cold waters of Thassa, masts down, came the fleets of the fifth wave.
I grinned.
Chung had been forced to beat his way northward against the wind. Nigel, wise in the ways of sea war, had held back his ships, the wind pounding behind them, that the blades of the pincers might strike simultaneously, as though wielded by a single hand and will.
I let the builders' glass, attached to the strap about my shoulder, fall to my side. I crammed the last of the tarsk meat into my mouth and, chewing, climbed down the narrow rope ladder, fastened to the deck near the mast well. I leaped from the ladder to the deck of the Doma and waved my hand to Antisthenes, some hundred yards away on the stem castle of the command ship of the reserves. He, in turn, ran a flag up the halyard running to the height of the stem turret.
I climbed to my own stem castle.
To cries of wonder from my men, and those of other ships nearby, the deck planking of the ten round ships was lifted and thrown aside.
The tam is a land bird, generally of mountainous origin, though there are brightly-plumaged jungle tarns. The tarns crowded into the holds of the round ships were hooded. Feeling the wind and the cold suddenly strike them they threw back their heads and beat their wings, pulled against the chains that bound them to the keel timbers.
One was unhooded, the straps that bound its beak un- buckled.
It uttered its scream, that pierced even the freezing winds of Thassa. Men shook with fear.
It is extremely difficult to take a tarn far out over the water.
I did not know if they could be controlled at sea.
Generally even tarn goads cannot drive them from the sight of land. I took the glass of the builders, and its strap, from my shoulder. I handed them to a seaman.
"Lower a longboat," I told an officer.
"in this sea?"
"Hurry!" I cried.
The boat was lowered to the water. At one of the oars, as though he belonged there, was the slave boy Fish. The oar-master took the longboat's tiller. We approached the first of the round ships on its leeward side.
Soon I stood on the deck of the round ship.
"You are Terence," I asked, "mercenary captain of Treve?"
The man nodded.
Treve is a bandit city, high among the crags of the lari-prowled Voltai. Most men do not even know its location. Once the tamsmen of Treve had withstood the tarn cavalries of even Ar. In Treve they do not grow their own food but, in the fall, raid the harvests of others. They live by rapine and plunder. The men of Treve are said to be among the proudest and most ruthless on Gor. They are most fond of danger and free women, whom they bind and, steal from civilized cities to carry to their mountain fair as slave girls. It is said the city can be reached only on tarnback. I had once known a girl from Treve. Her name laad been Vika.
"You have, in the ten round ships," I said, "one hundred tarns, with riders." "Yes," said he, "and, as you asked, with each tam a knotted rope and five of the seamen of Port Kar."
I looked down into the open hold of the round ship. The wicked, curved, scimitarlike beak of the unhooded tarn lifted itself. Its eyes blazed. It looked like a good bird. I regretted that it was not Ubar of the Skies. It was a reddish brown tam, a fairly common coloring for the great birds. Mine own had been black-plumaged, a giant tam, glossy, his great talons shod with steel, a bird bred for speed and war, a bird who had been, in his primitive, wild way, my friend. I had driven him from the Sardar.
"I will have a hundred stone of gold for the use of these birds and my men," said Terence of Treve.
"You shall have it," I said.
"I wish payment now," said the captain of Treve.
I whipped my blade from its sheath, angrily, and held it to his throat. "My pledge is steel," I said.
Terence smiled. "We of Treve" he said, "understand such a pledge."
I lowered the blade.
"Of all the tarnsmen in Port Kar," I said, "and of an the captains, you alone have accepted the risks of this venture, the use of tams at sea."
There was one other who had been in Port Kar, whom I thought might, too, have undertaken the risks, but he, with his thousand men, had not been in the city for several weeks. I speak of lean, scarred Ha-Keel, who wore about his neck, on a golden chain, a worn tarn disk, set with diamonds, of the city of Ar. He had cut a throat for that coin, to buy silks and perfumes for a woman, but one who fled with another man; Ha-Keel had hunted them, slain in combat the man and sold the woman into slavery. He had been unable to return to Ar. His forces were now engaged, I had learned, by the city of Tor, to quail incursions by tarn-riding desert tribesmen. The services of Ha-Keel and his men were available to the highest bid- der. I knew he had once, through agents, served the Others, not Priest-Kings, who contested surreptitiously for this world, and ours. I had met Ha-Keel at a house in Turia, the house of Saphrar, a Merchant.