"I will want the hundred stone," said Terence, "regardless of the outcome of your plan."
"Of course," I said. Then I regarded him. "A hundred stone," I said, "though a high price, seems small enough considering the risks you will encounter. It is hard for me to believe that you ride only for a hundred stone of gold. And I know that the Home Stone of Port Kar is not yours."
"We are of Treve," said Terence. "Give me a tarn goad," I said.
He handed me one of the instruments.
I threw off the robes of the Admiral. I accepted a wind scarf from another man. It had begun to sleet now.
The tarn can scarcely be taken from the sight of land. Even driven by tarn goads he will rebel. These tarns had been hooded. Whereas their instincts apparently tend to keep them within the sight of land, I did not know what would be the case if they were unhooded at sea, and there was no land to be found. Perhaps they would not leave the ship. Perhaps they would go mad with rage or fear. I knew tarns had destroyed riders who had attempted to ride them out Over Thassa from the shore. But I hoped that the tarns, finding themselves out of the sight of land, might accommodate themselves to the experience. I was hoping, that, in the strange intelligence of animals, it would be the departure from land, and not the mere positioning of being out of the sight of land, that would be counter-instinctual for the great birds.
Doubtless I would soon know.
I leaped down to the saddle of the unhooded tarn. It screamed as I fastened the broad purple safety strap. The tarn goad was looped about my right wrist. I wrapped the wind scarf about my face.
"If I can control the bird," I said, "follow me, and keep the instructions I have given you."
"Let me ride first," said Terence of Treve.
I smiled. Why would one who had been a tamsman of Ko-ro-ba, the Towers of the Morning, let one of Treve, a traditional enemy, take the saddle of a tam before him? it would not do, of course, to tell him this.
"No," I said.
There was a pair of slave manages wrapped about the pommel of the saddle, also a length of rope. These things I thrust in my belt.
I gestured and the tam hobble, fastening the right foot of the great bird to a huge bolt set in the ship's keel, was opened.
I drew on the one-strap.
To my delight the tarn, with a snap of its wings, leaped from the hold. He stood on the deck of the round ship, opening and closing his wings, looking about himself, and then threw bark his head and screamed. The other tarns below in the hold, some ten of them, shifted and rattled their hobbles.
The sleet struck down cutting my face.
I drew again on the one-strap and again the bird's wings snapped, and he was on the long, sloping yard on the round ship's foremast.
His head was very high and every nerve in his body seemed alert, but puzzled. He looked about himself.
I did not hurry the bird.
I slapped the side of its neck, and spoke to it, gently, confidently. I drew on the one-strap. The bird did not move. His talons clutched the sloping yard.
I did not use the tarn goad.
I waited for some time, stroking it, and talking to it.
And then, suddenly, I gave a cry and jerked on the one-strap and the bird, by training and instinct, flung itself into the sleeting wind and began to climb the dark, running sky.
I was again on tamback!
The bird climbed until I released the one-strap and then it began to circle. Its movements were as sure and as swift as though it might have been over the familiar crags of the Voltai or the canals of Port Kar.
I tested its responses to the straps. They were im- mediate and eager. And suddenly I realized that the bird was trembling with excitement and pleasure, finding itself swift and alive and strong in a new world to his senses. Already, below me, I saw tarns being unhooded, and the straps that bound their beaks being unbuckled, and cast aside. Riders were climbing into the saddles. I saw tarns leaping to the decks of the round ships, and I saw the knotted ropes being attached to the saddles, and picked seamen, experts with the sword, five to a rope, taking their positions. And besides these seamen, each tarnsman, tied to his saddle, carried a shielded, protected ship's lantern, lighted, and, in the pockets of leather aprons, tied together and thrown across the saddles numerous clay flasks, corked with rags. These flasks I knew, were filled with tharlarion oil, and the rags that corked them had been soaked in the same substance.
Soon, behind me, there were some hundred tarnsmen, and below each, dangling, hanging to the knotted ropes, were five picked men.
I saw that the fleets of my fifth wave, the two fleets of forty ships apiece, under the command of Chung and Nigel, were well engaged in their strikes on the flanks of the great fleet.
At this time, before their numbers could have been well ascertained by the enemy, before the enemy could be much aware of anything more than the unexpected flanking attacks, I, followed by the tarnsmen, with the picked seamen, darted through the sleeting, windy skies over the locked fleets.
In the turmoil below, primarily of tam ships locked in battle, and the great round ships trying to close with enemy tam ships, I saw, protected by ten tam ships on each side, and ten before and ten behind, the flagship of Cos and Tyros. It was a great sNp, painted in the yellow of Tyros, with more than two hundred oarsmen.
It was the ship of Chenbar. It would carry, besides its oarsmen, who were all free, fighting men, some one hundred bowmen, and another hundred men, seamen, artillery men, auxiliary personnel and officers.
I drew on the four-strap. Almost instantly the ship was the center of a great beating of wings and descending tams.
My own tarn landed on the stern castle itself, and I leaped from its back. I whipped the sword from its sheath. Startled, Chenbar himself, LJbar of Tyros, the Sea Sleen, drew his blade.
I tore away the wind scarf from my face. "You!" he cried.
"Bosk," I told him, "Captain of Port Kar." Our blades met.
Behind us I could hear shouts and cries, and the sounds of men dropping from their ropes to the deck, and of weapons meeting weapons. I heard the hiss of crossbow quarrels.
As one set of birds hovered over the deck and their men dropped to its planks, the birds darted away, and another set took their place. And then, their fighters disembarked, the birds with their riders swept away, up into the 'black, vicious sleeting sky, to light the oily rags, one by one, in the clay flasks of tharlarion oil and hurt them, from the heights of the sky, down onto the decks of ships of Cos and Tyros. I did not expect a great deal of damage to be done by these shattering bombs of burning oil, but I was counting on the confluence of three factors: the psychological effect of such an attack, the fear of the outflanking fleets, whose numbers could not yet well have been ascertained, and, in the confusion and, hopefully terror, the unexpected, sudden loss of their commander.
I slipped on the sleet-iced deck of the stern castle and parried Chenbar's blade from my throat.
I leaped to my feet and again we engaged.
Then we grappled, the sword wrist of each in the hand of the other. I threw him against the sternpost and his back and head struck against the post. I heard someone behind me but whoever it was was met by one of my men. There were blades clashing at my back. I feared for the instant I might have broken Chenbar's back. I released the sword hand of the admiral of Tyros and struck him in the stomach with my left fist. As he sank forward I wrenched free my sword hand and, holding the sword still in my fist, struck him a heavy blow across the jaw with my fist. I spun about. My men were engaging those who would try to climb to the stern castle. Chenbar had sunk to his knees, stunned. I pulled the slave manacles from my belt and clapped them on Chenbar's wrists. Then, on his stomach, I dragged him to the talons of the tarn. With the rope, taken from my belt, I tied the slave manacles to the right foot of the bird.