With rapid strokes, the heavy triremes were turning stern on to the beach, steering oars raised out of harm's way.
'Invaders,' hissed Jatta as they all saw some movement on the sand.
With a rush that drowned out his words, the heavy triremes drove for the shore. They grounded hard, barely still before armoured men poured down the stern ladders, plunging through the waist-deep water, swords drawn. Dark-skinned men erupted from the tree line, howling wordless, meaningless cries.
The hair on Kheda's neck rose. 'They sound like beasts.'
'Let them die like beasts,' said Telouet fervently.
'Indeed.' Kheda heard the savage howling broken by screeches of pain with vengeful satisfaction.
'Are they breaking?' Jatta was watching the greater contingent of archers that had been gathered on the Horned Fish. They were sending a storm of arrows across the beach, heavier than a rainy-season squall.
'I can't see.' Kheda ran lightly along the Scorpion's landward-side deck to the bow platform, Telouet at his heels. Kheda's spirits rose at the better view of the carnage ashore. 'It's true,' he marvelled. 'They're only using wooden clubs and spears.'
He pointed as Chazen and Daish blades flashed in the sunlight, cutting down the shrieking savages.
'Which can still crack a skull or skewer a man like a roasting fowl.' Telouet scanned the shore, keeping himself between Kheda and any unseen, unanticipated threat. 'And we don't know they've no slings or arrows of their own. Get behind the bowpost, my lord.'
'They're the ones being skewered.' Doing as Telouet bade him, Kheda nevertheless saw invader after invader fall to ruthless sword blows. The Daish warriors weren't even having to call on the skills honed by years of training, with no armour to foil, no razor-edged blades opposing them, ready to punish any errors of timing. A second wave of yelling men came charging out of the trees but arrows felled half before they joined battle with the steel-clad line of swordsmen now advancing up the beach.
'Let's hope we take back every island as easily as this one,' said Telouet with satisfaction.
'It's not won yet.' Apprehension kept a tight grip on Kheda's guts. 'Let's hope we don't suddenly find ourselves facing magic'
'What's that?' Telouet started at some commotion on the Horned Fish's stern platform, everyone pointing to the shore and shouting.
Kheda's heart missed a beat when he saw what was happening. 'It's Chazen's own islanders!'
'Come out from their sanctuaries,' approved Telouet with a spreading grin. 'They'll want to play their part in taking back their homes from these despoilers.'
'They've got them caught between a storm and a windward shore now.' Kheda shook his head slowly. 'This is a slaughter.'
'Good,' said Telouet robustly.
Fisherman slashed at the savages with boathooks and fishing poles. Those used to tilling the soil swung hoes and rakes. Hunters carried the broad curved blades that they used for hacking through underbrush and tore into the naked backs and legs of these unforeseen foemen. Chazen islanders who'd arrived empty-handed picked up wooden spears fallen from nerveless fingers and thrust them to deadly effect. The clamour on the beach rose to a new pitch of ferocity until Atoun blew a throbbing blast on his horn. A tense hush fell pierced only by groans of agony.
Kheda saw Chazen Saril already beckoning to a row-boat creeping cautiously out from beneath a fringe of swamp trees. 'Telouet, we're going ashore.'
'My lord.' The slave didn't bother trying to argue the point, following his master back to the stern platform.
Chazen Saril waved up at Kheda from the little boat. 'My lord Daish! Let us visit our victory together!'
'Nice of him to share the credit,' muttered Telouet. 'When we brought five times his warriors to the party.'
'Rekha Daish will make him pay what he owes us.' Kheda followed Telouet deftly down the Scorpion's stern ladder to join Chazen Saril in the rowboat.
As they approached the shore, the little vessel nudged aside bodies bobbing in the sluggish wavelets, blood vanishing in the silty water. They looked as if they'd been savaged by wild dogs; arms and bellies ripped open, gashes gaping in ruined faces.
Train your men as the most ferocious swordsmen and your domain will be protected. It will also be more at risk, because all such men want to do is fight, while you doing your duty as their warlord means they seldom get the chance. A ruler's life is full of paradoxes.
Telouet was marvelling at the corpses' scant loincloths and few paltry ornaments of feathers and paint. 'What kind of fool goes into battle naked as a newborn pup?'
Kheda shot him a hard look. 'A man who believes he has something more powerful to rely on than leather and steel.'
'But there was no fire.' Chazen Saril was looking confused. 'There was so much fire, before.'
Eager hands reached out to draw the rowboat high on to the shore so that both warlords could step out on to dry land. Chazen and Daish warriors pressed close, swords still drawn.
'Go, speak to your people.' Kheda caught Saril by the elbow and turned him towards a slightly built man who stood wringing his hands anxiously. 'Find out just what else we might be facing. Telouet, let's see what the wounded have to tell us.'
With his slave close by, Kheda hurried along the shore where the Chazen islanders and those who'd come to rescue them were dispatching fallen wild men with ruthless efficiency.
'Wait,' Kheda commanded curtly as he saw a Daish sword raised above an invader felled by a blow that had left his knees a ruin of white bone in a mess of torn flesh now blackened with flies, his lifeblood soaking into the dry ground.
'It's all very well remembering your training,' Telouet commented to the Daish swordsman. 'But when a man's not wearing a hauberk, why not just run him through?'
'True enough.' The Daish warrior smiled ruefully.
The dying savage thrashed from side to side, scrabbling for some weapon. He tried to throw sand into the Daish men's faces but his strength failed him and his arm fell back. Telouet scowled and planted a heavy foot on the savage's wrist, nodding to the swordsman to do the same.
'Who are you? Do you understand me? Do you know who I am?' Kheda crouched down beside the invader.
'He doesn't look barbarian,' said Telouet, puzzled.
'Not like any northerner, certainly,' agreed Kheda. Though, similar as his features might be to any Chazen or Daish man on the shore, this wild man was taller than most Aldabreshi by half a head, even the coastal people of the largest islands who tended to top hill dwellers by much the same measure. On the other hand, he was darker-skinned than even the people of the remotest heights.
'What's that in his hair?' Telouet prodded cautiously at the man's head with the tip of his sword. Even with his strength visibly failing the man tried to twist away, spitting at the blade.
'Paint of some kind?' Kheda couldn't tell if the savage's hair was inclined to curl like a hill dweller's or fall straighter, more like those with coastal blood, since it was caked solid with some thick red substance. 'Or just mud?'
The man writhed weakly, muttering something with harsh defiance.
'Does that sound like any tongue you've ever heard, any dialect from some distant reach of the Archipelago?' Kheda looked up at Telouet and the Daish swordsman.
'No, my lord.' Both men shook baffled heads.
'I've never heard the like,' Kheda admitted. 'Nor seen the like.' He stood and looked down at the dying man struggling for breath. His ribs rose and fell beneath a crudely daubed pattern of red and white discoloured with stains and sprays of drying blood. 'All right. Put him out of his misery.'
As Telouet's sword thrust ended the wild man's torment, Kheda looked around the beach. Beneath their raucous paints, the next corpse and a wounded man just beyond looked remarkably similar to the body at his feet. 'Wherever these people come from, they don't get much new blood, do they? They look close as brothers.' Kheda turned from the sight of a ruthless islander smashing the wounded man's skull with an oar shaft. 'What exactly were they using for weapons?'