The long-range artillery duel went on as we drifted closer to the island and I grew more and more miserly in my husbanding of shafts. The swifters in which I had commanded varters had soon, under my brand of discipline, acquired accuracy and speed in rate of loosing. A King’s Ship with the ever-present memory of Nelson to jog heart and mind and sinew is the best training ground for rapid shooting, even if accuracy is a subject scarcely mentioned, to my annoyance. But these swordship varter-men were plainly inept. Only twice they hit us. One chunk of rock smashed clear through the aftercabin and destroyed the crockery the storm had left unsmashed there. The other mashed three crewmen into a red puddle. That was all.
There is callousness and callousness. Do not think I did not grieve for those three men, still practically strangers; but I had seen all this before, and Tilda, Pando, and Inch were on my mind.
“Not long now, Dray Prescot,” said Captain Alkers. He held his rapier in his hand, and he fiddled with the gay golden tassel dangling from the hilt. “We will give them a fight, though, before they take us.”
I had seen on the nearest swordship a man strutting importantly on the low forecastle, shouting at the varter-men, and before I answered Captain Alkers I spitted the swordship varterist through the chest. He fell over the side and was much beaten by the oars, which pleased me. Then I answered the captain.
“We can hold them off long enough to get the women and children off and into the island, can we not?”
There is callousness and callousness, as I have said. That varterist did not merit overmuch regret, I warrant.
In this, as you will hear, I perhaps did the man an injustice.
On that particular swordship, a larger vessel with three masts, a bowman had been having a go at me with some consistency. His arrows had sung past my ears, three had buried themselves in the timbers of Dram Constant’s rail shaving close, and one had slain a Rapa waister who had been set to collecting incoming arrows. Captain Alkers cursed.
“I didn’t mean the fool Rapa to collect an arrow in himself, Opaz take him!”
These arrows, of which I took only the automatic notice of a fighting-man engaged in an archery duel -
which meant that I examined them with minute care — were feathered all with lush and lovely royal blue flights. Although I had never seen that gorgeous lambent shot-silk blue before, I knew exactly what they were and from which bird they had been taken. Seg had told me. They were the flights from the king korf, the largest bird of Erthyrdrin. The king korf was large; but it was nowhere near the size of the corth of the Hostile Territories; it was not a saddle bird. From this I knew I was up against a master bowman of Erthyrdrin on that swordship. It was extraordinarily difficult to pick him out on the deck clustered with men shooting. On the forepart of the aftercastle that extended into a quasi-quarterdeck stood a figure in brilliant and, the fleeting thought occurred to me, dashingly discordant clothing. A pendulous figure, with a mass of plumes waving above its helmet, the shine and wink of gems all about it, in a profusion; yet I caught the impression of uncaring scruffiness there. Twice I had shot at this figure, which appeared to me to be the captain of the swordship, and twice a mere chance had deflected the shafts. Captain Alkers came back, cursing.
“We will strike the shore in a jumble of wreckage with the other two argenters. One is poor Captain Loki’s Tombor Adventurer. The other is too far gone for me to be really sure just who she is-”
At that moment a blue-flighted arrow sprouted from the deck between us. I jerked it free, ran my fingers along the shaft to feel the sweet trueness of it, saw the head was a plain arrow-barb, nocked it, drew, loosed, and lost that flaunting blue in the mass of men crowding the deck of the swordship. Now we were within close range of the shore the movements of the ships became more discernible. The sword-ships were swooping up and down in the sea. We surged on, sluggishly, and in a moment the shattered stump of our bowsprit tangled with the tattered bravado of the sterncastle of Tombor Adventurer and together, with the other argenter now a mere waterlogged mass disintegrating visibly, the three ships grounded. We swung broadside amid a great rending of wood. Outside of us now the swordships nosed in. Our keel grated on sand, we heeled, heaved as a wave caught us, and smashed down solidly onto the sand. Dram Constant had made her last landfall. Some confusion ensued. I put it like that to let you understand that some of us wanted to stand and fight and some wanted to run into the shrouding vegetation of the island. Inch appeared with his great ax cocked over a shoulder, carrying our most precious possessions bundled into a canvas dunnage bag in the other hand. Tilda kept fast hold of young Pando, who was brandishing a dagger. Captain Alkers formed his crew. The swordship carrying the blue-flight archer with whom I had been having that duel bumped our seaward side, going up and down like an elevator through the giant plants of Aphrasoe. I glanced back. People were pouring off the three ships and racing up the beach. A number of the swordships had landed farther along and pirates were running from them, waving weapons.
“Inch!” I put all the old deviltry and arrogance and unpleasant authority into my voice. “Take Tilda and Pando and get into those trees. Hurry! I will join you later.”
“But — Dray-”
“Don’t argue, man! Move!”
He looked at my face. He nodded, once, and his own lean face went tight and intense. He and Tilda and Pando hared off.
We met the first pirate rush in a smothering welter of blades that left many a sea-bandit screeching and toppling into the water in the gap between the two hulls. The sword-ship was going up and down confusingly. Men tried to leap aboard, and missed, and so were crushed. Others reached the decks and were cut down. I had been handed a fresh sheaf of arrows by a Fristle deputed to the task, and with these, standing back a little, I shot out those men who climbed the rigging in their passionate attempts to board. Arrows splintered the deck about me and one sliced my thigh; I did not think I could last much longer.
A quick glance showed me the beach deserted, and the pirates from the grounded swordships now preparing to attack us from the landward side. Men on the other two argenters were yelling and fighting and dying. Pirates forced their way onto the foredeck of Dram Constant. Captain Alkers was yelling his men on, clutching his left arm from which the blood splattered.
“Get into them, you calsanys! Fight! Fight!”
I slung the bow and ripped out my long sword. I leaped for the deck where the pirates were now shoving and pushing aft, shouting in triumph. I leaped — and I, too, shouted.
“Hai! Jikai!”
The Krozair brand gleamed brilliantly silver in the air; then it reeked a crimson gleam more dreadful as I lifted it for the next blow. With the argenter’s crew I pressed forward. The pirates fought well, employing a miscellany of weapons; but we concentrated our strength and, just for the moment, were too many for the few who had boarded. We cleared the deck. But now, from the two shoreward ships came fresh sounds of conflict. In moments we would be attacked on two sides.
Captain Alkers’ arm was bandaged; blood soaked through already. He glared about, panting, the rapier in his fist dripping blood.
“They want our valuables and our goods. They will overpower us for sure. We have done all we can, as honest sailors.”
One of his mates, blood seeping from a slash across his forehead, shouted: “By Pandrite the Glorious!
We have done that, Captain!”
“Abandon ship!”
Of that call so horrific to a sailor, Captain Alkers made a benediction and a curse, all in one. I knew he was right I suppose, left to my own devices and being in the middle of a little fight, I might have stayed and tackled the swordship renders for the sheer hell of it. It is not in my nature to run from a fight. But I had the responsibility of Tilda and Pando — as well as Inch — and so I, Dray Prescot also went with the crew as we jumped across the other argenters which were already deserted, leaped to the sand, and after a brisk rearguard action gained the shelter of the trees.