"Stand by, O Káj!" he whispered. "Got your cutlass? I'm going for my hanger."
Reith strode quickly back to his cabin, moving silently because, like his companions, he had formed the habit of going barefoot on shipboard. He came out of the cabin pulling his baldric on over his head. Then he paused at the gangway, hand on his sword hilt.
As Reith reached the gangplank, nebulous figures emerged from the fog at the shoreward end. Reith caught shreds of talk in the Majburo dialect: "Go on, faintheart! ... The sentry first ... All together, now ... Seize them alive ..."
"All hands out!" bellowed Reith, drawing. "We're attacked!"
Another cry of warning came from the bargeman in the bow. Then a drumming of feet announced the rush to board.
Since the gangplank was barely wide enough for two abreast, Reith sprang up on it, thinking he could make a better stand there than on the deck. He could not count his assailants in the fog, but he guessed that there were at least a dozen.
A moment later, the first Krishnan was upon him. The fellow came straight at him with a dagger in his extended fist. Reith straightened his arm in a stop thrust, and the fog-mazed Krishnan ran upon the point.
Reith shoved desperately, forcing the attacker over backwards. As he jerked his blade free and the knife man slumped to the gangplank, the second assailant stumbled over the body and fell to hands and knees.
Reith slashed in the dark and felt the blade strike home. The wounded Krishnan screamed and pulled back among his fellows' legs. The moonlight and the yellow gleam of the stern lantern showed part of his face hanging down in a bloody flap below his jaw.
"At him! At him!" shouted a voice from behind. "All at once, and you'll have him! Seize his limbs!" Reith recognized the Terran accent and guessed that the gang had been recruited by his old foe Warren Foltz.
Now Reith encountered two attackers on the narrow way, one with a bludgeon and the other with a half-sword. The fellow with the club aimed a blow. Reith jerked back. The end of the bludgeon missed his nose by a centimeter; he felt the wind of its passage.
Pressing forward, he thrust at the club wielder, hoping to drive home before the Krishnan could recover; but his point was stopped by some metal fitting on the fellow's clothing. The recruit with the half-sword thrust at Reith before he recovered, and Reith had to leap back to avoid the blade.
The three combatants feinted, thrust, and swung. The pressure of those behind propelled the attackers forward and forced Reith back. Several times he saw an opening, but he had to guard himself against the other fighter's weapon and could not exploit the opportunity. For their part, his attackers were hampered by lack of space.
Then both attackers moved in unison, the swordsman with a thrust, the club man with a swing. Reith was forced back again. This time his foot met air, he had backed off the inboard end of the gangplank. Down he went in a heap on the hardwood deck, while the club swished through the air where his head had been a few seconds before.
All at once, the deck was crowded with the Zaidun's people. Someone stepped on Reith and fell across his legs. As Reith scrambled up, he found himself crowded by Marot wielding a sword on his left and Captain Ozum swinging a cutlass on his right. Swords clanged, and everyone seemed to be shouting at once.
The attacker with the club disappeared with a loud splash, while the Krishnan with the half-sword lay gasping out his life at Reith's feet. A Majburo voice cried:
" 'Tis useless. They're all alert and armed!"
"Let me at them, cowards!" snarled Foltz's voice. As Reith sprang back on the gangplank, Foltz pushed to the front and launched a flèche or running attack. He tried to catch Reith's sword in a double bind, whipping the blade around in a circle before thrusting home.
Reith disengaged and straightened up in another stop thrust. As Foltz plunged forward, Reith's blade pierced the deltoid muscle of his right arm. Foltz gasped as his weakened arm dropped, letting the point of his weapon touch the deck. Ozum, reaching out over the rail, chopped at Foltz's calf.
Despite two crippled limbs, Foltz made a resolute effort to shift his sword to his left hand while remaining upright. But Reith caught the wrist of his injured arm and jerked him forward, so that he fell on the deck on top of the dying half-swordsman.
Suddenly the shoreward end of the gangplank pulled away from the pier and dropped, catapulting several of Foltz's gangsters into the river. Leaning on his bloody sword and panting, Reith was relieved to realize that one of the bargemen had cut the mooring lines, setting the Zaidun adrift downstream with the gangplank trailing in the water.
Standing on the deck, besides Marot, Ozum, and the crew, Reith saw Alicia. She was holding a boathook and bending over the rail.
"Alicia!" gasped Reith. "What are you doing with that boathook?"
"I pulled the guy with the club off the plank, and I was looking to see if he swam away. I don't see him."
"Most of these city rats can't swim," said Reith, setting a foot on Foltz's sword lest the paleontologist try to pick it up again.
"Me, I rosed one in the arm," said Marot, wiping his blade on the clothing of the half-swordsman's body.
"You mean, you pinked him," said Reith. He nudged the body with his toe. "Who got this one?"
"That was our gallant captain. What shall we do with this?"
Marot pointed his blade at Foltz, who sat huddled on the deck, clutching his wounded shoulder.
"If you idiots let him go again ..." muttered Alicia.
"Let's question him," said Reith. "Help me to pull him into my cabin."
Oozing blood, Foltz sat on the floor of the cabin with his back to the bulkhead. The three Terrans and Captain Ozum stood guard over him; even Alicia, who had picked up Foltz's sword, scowled at him from where she sat with her weapon ready.
"If you mean to kill me," rasped Foltz, "let's get it over with."
"We haven't decided," said Reith. "First, we have some questions for you."
"You might at least bandage my wounds," said Foltz. "I can't answer questions if I pass out from loss of blood."
"There's merit in that," said Captain Ozum. "Besides, I'm not fain to have my ship beslabbered with's alien blood." He shouted for one of the bargemen, who brought two strips of cloth and bound them around Foltz's arm and leg.
"Now," said Reith, "what have you been doing since our trial at Jeshang? We know something of what's happened, so it won't help you to lie."
"I've been through a lot," said Foltz in a self-pitying whine. "Kharob's escort took me to the Mikardando border. Before they pushed me over the line, they stripped me, leaving me with no money, no clothes, not even shoes. I'd have died if a kindly peasant hadn't taken me in, given me some old clothes, and lent me a few karda to buy food on the long walk to Mishé. There, by claiming that I was a friend of yours, I established credit."
"A friend of mine!" howled Reith. "Why didn't you tell them you were Napoleon or Muhammad?"
"While I was recovering in Mishé," Foltz continued, "from that three-hundred-hoda hike, I heard the Bákhites had risen and shut the Dasht up in his palace.
"As you know, I'd become something of a pet of old Lazdai. Not that I believe her theology, but for obvious reasons I had to pretend to be a fanatical convert." Foltz studied his knuckles. "Since I'd lost everything at Zora, I needed money to get my researches going again—perhaps in a geological formation outside of Chilihagh."
"Get to the point," snapped Reith.
"I'll get there, if you let me say it in my own way. Well, I rode back from Mishé to Jeshang, stopping off to repay that peasant the money he'd lent me, with interest. In Jeshang I found Lazdai in control and wild with rage because you'd slipped through her fingers three times. Anyhow, she offered me enough money from the treasury of Bákh to keep me digging for the rest of my life, if I'd bring the three of you back to Jeshang, along with Aristide's specimen. By the way, do you still have that thing?"