At once everything was confusion.
Viridia screamed orders, Arkhebi ran shouting and gesticulating. I walked quickly forward and repeated my actions on the foremast
“Dray! You madman! Stop that!”
Viridia came leaping across the deck toward me and her four Womoxes followed, shaking out their swords, their ugly faces blank with anticipation of bloodletting. I knew they did not like me, and they were ferocious and powerful in the extreme.
“We cannot take that argenter, Viridia, that is all. The damage aboard here can be cleared up in no time.”
Men surged in confusion, and the ship rolled, falling off as her crossjack swung her around so that any moment she would be in irons. I didn’t care. Just so that I gave Pando’s ship time to make good her escape. Immediately she had seen our plight she had at once worn and gone haring off across our bows, heading for the shelter of the islands which were smudges low on the western horizon. If I had hoped that Viridia harbored any sentiment for me that would halt her vengeful orders I was mistaken.
Valka and the other men of my little group I could see clustered a little to one side and, quite clearly, they were at a loss. They couldn’t understand my actions.
“That ship was from a country friendly to me!” I roared. “No man ravages my friends. Remember that!”
“And no man stands between me and plunder!” shrieked Viridia. She was absolutely furious, her face as red as my breechclout. She jerked her hand at her bodyguard.
“Seize him — do not kill. I will talk to him when you have bound him in iron chains!”
I saw two redheaded men lower their longbows, and so I knew I had a chance. I threw down the ax.
“I will not kill, then, also!” I shouted.
Then the Womoxes charged.
They sought to beat me down, to wound, not to kill. They rushed in with so furious an onslaught that I was beaten back and half to my knees. I used the length of timber to push myself back onto my feet. Then, gripping it as I would my own Krozair long sword I jammed the splintery end into the guts of the nearest Womox. Before he was down, vomiting, I had swung my wooden long sword full at the head of the next. He ducked with the instinctive grace of the fighting-man, but the timber cracked against one of his horns and splintered it redly from his head. He screamed. I was already dodging and weaving away from the blades of his fellows, and with that scream ringing in their ears they were out to kill. Blood-lust dominated them completely.
They thrust now with every intention of spitting me.
I heard Viridia yelling. I ignored her. By rapid and eye-deceiving movements, by a constant flow of action and blows I held the two Womoxes off until I could lay that wooden long sword across the ribs of one and then, as he doubled, short-arm the splinters into his face. He reeled back, spraying blood.
The second had recovered from the loss of a horn and bored in. The last lowered his head as he fought and sought to rip my eyes out with his horns. I skipped back, swung the timber, cracked his skull wide open. The first one, who had been winded, joined his comrade and they rushed me together. Here was the danger. I circled them, weaving the wooden long sword. I do not believe they had experienced a long sword in the grip of a man who knew how to use one before. I dazzled them with a series of passes, ignored their daggers, which took skin from my ribs and slashed my wooden brand down across the face of one of them. He reeled back and I back-struck at the last, smashed in his rib cage and then leaped forward and finished off the sole survivor.
The fight had been hot and brisk, but nothing was settled yet — or so I thought. Viridia was standing with her hand to her lips, her body gross in the swathing robes and armor.
“Dray. .” she whispered.
“I bear you no malice, Viridia. But your bodyguard no longer exist.”
At that moment I heard Valka’s voice, high, screeching.
“Dray! Behind you!”
I whirled. The Brokelsh, an ax high, was swinging at my defenseless back. I sprang aside and as he lunged on with all the vicious power of his swing, I smashed the timber down upon his own back. He went on into the deck. But my wooden long sword, sorely abused, snapped clean across.
“You men!” I roared, brandishing the splintered stump. “We are comrades. There are plenty of fat ponshos sailing the seas. Another will be borne by the wind any time!”
Viridia stood as though turned to stone. Even then I did not fully comprehend the disaster to her personally. I stepped close to her side. I tried to speak gently, although, Zair knows, that was difficult enough with the reeking blood splashed upon me.
“Please, Viridia. Try to think. Only do as I ask in this, that you respect the flag of an ally, and all will be well.”
“You do not understand, do you, Dray Prescot?”
Before I could answer, a hail reached us.
“Sail ho!”
The reaction was immediate and unthinking. Everyone rushed to the rail, so great is the greed for plunder in a render’s breast.
She was a broad-beamed argenter from Jholaix, as we could tell from her blue flag with the bright red amphora in its center. At sight of her I was inspired. Jholaix was fair prey. I sprang up into the ratlines. I threw away the splintered stump of that long sword that had served me so well, albeit the brand was wood, a mere length of lumber. I drew my rapier.
“See!” I roared. “See what the gods have brought! Did I not say so?” I pointed with the rapier. “And you all know, you sea-leems, what a ship of Jholaix carries!”
“Aye!” they yelled back. “Aye, Dray Prescot! Wine of Jholaix, the best in all the islands!”
With that we set to like maniacs to repair our rigging. The task was accomplished with much cursing and bellowing and by the time our main yard was up and the canvas sheeted home our consorts had drawn level. Together we bore down on the wine ship from Jholaix. She offered not the slightest resistance, and we took her without loss of life.
By the time the twin suns had set across the sea with the distant humps of the Hoboling islands rising against that sheeting crimson and emerald glory most of the hands were rolling merry with bellies full of Jholaix wine. The ship carried a fortune in fine wines.
I drank a little of the best, and was well pleased.
Viridia approached me as I stood by the taffrail. She carried no sword. Her armor hung over her arm, limp, a sheen of mesh-steel in the growing light of She of the Veils.
“So, Dray Prescot, you have taken command.”
I was astonished. “Not so, Viridia the Render-”
“Do not mock me, Dray Prescot! You are captain now.”
“Why should you suppose that? Because you chose to set your beasties on me and I was forced to dispose of them? I want nothing of command of a crew of cutthroats like this! They are yours, still.”
“They follow you, now. You have proved yourself. You are a lucky captain, for you conjure the best wine of Jholaix from the sea, when we have not seen an argenter from there for many a long cruise.”
“I am a man of peace, Viridia.”
“So I notice.” In that flood of moonlight the slight curl to her upper lip was pronounced, and distressing. I did not, then, and I admit this with some strangeness, relish Viridia the Render’s contempt.
“Put your armor back on. I do not wish to take your crew or your ship from you. You will find other bodyguards.”
She stared at me. “I told them not to kill you, and so they did not use their Womox swords. But then-”
“They tried to kill right enough, Viridia. You saw that.”
“Yes.”
So we stood for a space, and I do not know what she thought.
Looking back, it occurs to me that perhaps you are wondering, as I was so obsessed with the desire to sail to Vallia and claim my Delia, why I did not assume command of the pirates. Then I would have a ship and could command my men to sail to Vallia. It would not have been as simple as that, of course, for a swordship would have made heavy weather of the passage. I can only say that such a course did not occur to me as being a course with a grain of sense in it. Why this should be I do not know. During the night I heard a harsh and ominous croaking from the moonshot sky above; but when I looked up I could not see the Gdoinye with the scarlet and gold feathers I knew was circling up there in wide planing hunting circles.