For a short space the pirates drew back.
Duhrra appeared a gleaming mass of crimson.
"I think it will not be long now, Dak."
"We’ll have ’em yet! Look at their hangdog faces!"
" ’Ware shafts!" The cry went up from the mercenaries.
Arrows flew.
I spread my fists on the Ghittawrer blade as best I could, ready to ward off the arrows. Three I batted away and then the fresh howls shrieked to the brilliance of Zim and Genodras at our backs. I risked a quick glance aft.
Captain Andapon and the remnants of his crew were being bundled forward, struggling and laying about them. But the renders had broken through aft. Now the crew of the argenter was trapped between the two render parties, and, as Duhrra had said, it would not be long now.
"By the Black Chunkrah!" I said. "We’ll take a fine crew of ’em to sail with us across the Ice Floes of Sicce!"
We were ringed in.
Now the renders ceased loosing shafts for fear of hitting their own men. I sized up the men opposite me, selected a likely looking Kataki with his steel-armed tail, his low-browed face fierce and leering upon us. I sprang.
"Hai! Jikai!" I bellowed.
He swung his blade up and I sidestepped, caught the vicious stab of his tail in my left hand, pulled. He staggered. I took the time to slash right-handed at a fellow who tried to cut me down from the side and then brought the longsword blurring around to chop through the mailed junction of the Kataki’s neck and shoulder. He dropped. I dropped his tail, cut savagely left and right, and so leaped back to the ranks of the crew.
If I was going to take that last trip to the Ice Floes of Sicce, then this little affray was going to be a true Jikai. I’d see to that. I dislike using that great word Jikai except when the fight is a Jikai — if this was a mere pirate’s brawl on the inner sea, all well and good. If it meant the end of me, then it was damn well going to be a high Jikai.
The renders hesitated, hanging back.
The crew around me, no doubt heartened or depressed by that flashy show-off charge of mine, prepared to go down fighting. The renders yelled — deep wolfish howls and shrill wolfish howls; they were all one in the bedlam — and charged.
We met them fiercely. Blurred, scarlet impressions flashed before me: of smiting and hacking, of thrusting and ducking. Against mail a good solid meaty blow is necessary. I gave plenty of those. Now one or two strokes slid in from directions where a comrade should have been standing. I felt a smash against my left side and before the Brokelsh could recover my blade lopped his arm. I had to leap wildly thereafter to keep off a Rapa who insisted on engulfing my blade with his throat. He fell. Another took his place. The deck slipped and slimed in blood.
"Hai, Jikai!" someone was yelling.
"Fight, you cramphs!" I bellowed.
Captain Andapon was down, still shouting, weakly trying to flail his sword up against two men who would have taken his head had Duhrra and I not stepped across and spitted them both. There were precious few of Menaham left.
A squawking shrill lofted. The renders, still struggling, fell back. No one, for the moment, understood the meaning of the hail. Then a woman, high on the poop, shrilled and pointed. We all looked. For the moment the fighting stopped and we all gaped out to sea like loons. Smothered in green flags a swifter pulled in toward the argenter, white water smashing away from her ram. Armed men crowded the narrow deck aft of her arrogant prow and the beak was lifted, ready to be dropped and run out. The three banks of oars rose and fell, rose and fell like the wings of a great bird of prey.
"Swifter!" yelled a render. And then, immediately, "Magdag!" Thereafter we could watch the educational sight of the renders madly rushing from the sinking argenter, clambering down to jump and sprawl into their three boats, and to push off frantically. The crew began to row. Their oars worked in a frenzied manner, hauling the three away in different directions.
"Saved!" said Duhrra. "And by Magdag."
"Thank the good Pandrite they came up when they did," said Captain Andapon. He had staggered up and now, gripping his wounded side, stared hungrily at the swifter.
What followed was even more educational than seeing renders fleeing a sinking ship. Whoever commanded the swifter knew his business.
Every oar blade rose and feathered together, every oar in unison. We could hear the double roll of the drum-Deldar as he banged out the rhythm. White water creamed away from the long, low bronze ram, that cruel rostrum that could degut a ship and leave her shattered and sinking. Now the Magdaggian swifter captain swerved his ship as though on tracks, lined up on the first render boat. We all saw the ram hit, saw the planks fly up, bodies go pitching into the water.
The swifter did not halt. One bank of oars backwatered and the other pulled ahead. The swifter spun. Like a great leem pouncing on lesser predators she smashed the second boat. The third knew it could not escape. The oars faltered and came to a clumsy halt. Men were standing up in the boat, waving rags. The swifter did not hesitate.
Straight over the boat ran the galley, her sharp bronze ram crunching timber and flesh, strewing the sea past her lean flanks with wreckage.
We heard the yells and then the peculiar double rat-tat of the drum. Whistles blew. Every oar dug in and held. The swifter came to a stop in an incredibly short space. A boat lowered. Another boat swayed out from her center deck space. One boat went to pick up the half-drowned wretches of renders, the other pulled for the sinking argenter.
The argenter’s crew, or what was left, babbled with near-hysterical relief. Men were running below to bring up their possessions. Captain Andapon had quite forgotten he had just been saved from death, had near enough forgotten his wound. He raved on like a maniac.
"My ship! My beautiful Chavonth of Mem! Those rasts have sunk her!" He glared about, distraught, one hand in his hair, tugging, his eyes wild.
"You’ve your life, Captain."
"My life! My life! And my goods! The profit on the voyage! Oh, why has Opaz forsaken me now?" Well, it was understandable. He’d be stranded in the inner sea, too. The boat from the swifter hooked on and men came over the side, hard, tough men, overlords of Magdag. I nudged Duhrra.
These newcomers took in the scene: The deck cumbered with dead men, running with blood; the few survivors frantically hauling out their dunnage; the captain raving and moaning about his beautiful ship and his lost fortune; and two hard-faced fellows, smothered in blood, who stood where the fighting had been the thickest.
I realized we must stand out, must be noticeable.
"Get some of our dunnage up, Duhrra. Act like the others." The Hikdar with the green robes and the gleaming helmet and the mesh mail picked his way delicately between the corpses and sidestepped the worst patches of blood. He saluted the captain.
"Your ship is sinking, Captain. You will accept the hospitality of our swifter." He looked at me.
Again he saluted, his arm raised in that particular Grodnim way. I replied.
"You wear the green, dom. You are of Magdag?"
"No," I said. I had to say something. "I am of Goforeng." It was one Grodnim city of which I knew a little, having raided there and made myself a nuisance — many and many a year ago — and it was a damned long way away to the east.
"They breed fighters in Goforeng it seems."
I knew the correct answer to that.
"You are too kind. But it is we who must thank you for saving us. We were nearly finished."
"So I see." He did not look about him to underline his remark. He was probably the swifter’s first lieutenant, a Hikdar being a nice middle-of-the-hierarchy rank. "You had best come aboard at once. This vessel has not much longer to live."