John Norman - Guardsman of Gor

I lifted my head, wildly. The ships were now drifting apart. They were held close only at the sterns. I smelled fire. I saw a man on the Tina plunge backward, his hands clutching at an arrow protruding from his forehead. In two steps I climbed the archer’s platform and leaped behind the blind. I passed my blade into the fellow’s body, and he fell, turning, from the platform, arrows spilling, like rattling sticks, to the deck. A pirate leaped toward me and I cut him from the platform. Arrows sped toward me, two of them, and caught, tearing, in the wicker. Behind me I could see another pirate vessel looming. Near the stem castle I saw some of my fellows cutting through pirates. Burning pitch flamed upon the deck.

“This way, Lads!” I called, leaping down from the archer’s platform. An arrow struck into the deck at my feet.

We sped down the deck. The ship shuddered as the great catapult loosed a stone which shattered into the rowing frame on the port side of the Tina .

In moments I and the others, now some seven men, cutting at pirates, severing ropes, separated the two vessels and, as they slipped loose of one another, leaped onto the stern of the Tina , falling upon the pirates who had boarded her there.

The pirates, pressed by our defenders, and attacked now from their own vessel, fought for their lives. We forced them to the railing, and over it, those who were not cut down, into the Vosk.

“Are there no more?” I inquired.

“Are you disappointed?” asked a man.

“Our decks are cleared of the sleen,” said a man.

“They fought well,” said a man.

“They are men of the Voskjard,” said another.

Our deck was run with blood. It was splintered. Arrows protruded from it. The port rowing frame was half struck away. Damage had already been incurred by our stern castle in an earlier engagement. Our starboard shearing blade was awry.

We sought our men in the water, throwing them ropes. “Aiii!” I cried.

“What is it?” asked a man.

“That ship,” I said, pointing, to a vessel less than some hundred yards away, engaged in war. “That is the Tamira !”

This legend was emblazoned on her starboard bow. Doubtless it appeared, as well, on her port bow. The same legend also appeared on her stern. Gorean merchantmen are often identified at these three points.

“So what of it?” asked a man.

“She is not our ship,” said another.

“She flies the pennons of the Voskjard,” said another.

“She is the ship which, in the Vosk, east of the chain, with the Telia , captained by Sirnak, of the men of Policrates, took the Flower of Siba !” These things I had learned while held captive in the holding of Policrates.

“What of it?” asked a man.

“She is captained by Reginald, in the fee of Ragnar Voskjard,” I cried. “She is the scout ship of Ragnar Voskjard.”

“What of it?” asked a man.

“She came to clear the way for the passage of the Voskjard east,” I said. “But,” I said, anxiously, “was the rendezvous with the Voskjard’s fleet at his holding or was it in the river?”

“What difference does it make?” asked a man. He threw a rope to one of our fellows, struggling in the water.

“Perhaps no difference,” I said. “Perhaps no difference.”

“Would you engage her?” laughed a man.

“She is supported by heavy galleys,” said another man.

“That she is!” I said, elated.

“That pleases you?” asked a man.

“It suggests to me that the rendezvous was, indeed, made in the river, and not at the Voskjard’s holding.”

“Is that good?” asked a man.

“It could be splendid,” I said. “But, too, it might make no difference.”

“You are mad,” laughed a man.

We then heard again battle horns. Swiftly I gave my aid to drawing two more men from the water. They were survivors from the Claudia , she of Point Alfred.

Fifty yards astern we saw the jury-rigged ram of the Sita , a converted merchantman of Jort’s Ferry, take a ship of the Voskjard in the stern.

“To the benches!” called an officer. I, too, ran to the benches and seized an oar.

Behind us we heard the rending of strakes. The Sita herself, extricating herself from her victim, sluggish, half-listing, under-oared, was stove in on the port and starboard sides by ramships of the Voskjard.

“Where are the ships of Callisthenes!” cried a man.

“Stroke! Stroke!” called the oar master.

“To starboard, hard to starboard!” cried an officer.

The helmsmen thrust against the tillers.

“Oars inboard!” cried the oar master. The great levers, scraping, were hauled inboard.

A ramship of the Voskjard, her ram missing our port bow by inches slid rapidly past. Arrows struck solidly into the rowing frame.

We heard oars of the enemy snapping against our hull. Then there was a crash and tearing astern as our port rudder was torn away.

“Oars outboard!” called the oar master, and we slid the wood through the thole ports.

The Daphne of Port Cos was in flames. The Andromache and Aspasia had already gone down.

Abeam on the starboard side we saw a ship bearing down upon us and then, suddenly, though it could have smote us, it veered away.

“It is a ship of the Voskjard!” cried a man.

“No!” said another. “It flies the pennons of Ar’s Station!”

“Ar’s Station has no such ships,” cried a man.

“It did not strike us!” a fellow pointed out.

As the ship slipped past we saw, indeed, that it bristled with the helmets of Ar’s Station.

“How can it be?” asked a man.

“It is reinforcements!” cried a man, elatedly.

“No!” said a man. “That is not a ship of Ar’s Station. They do not have such ships. It is a ship of the Voskjard! It has been taken as a prize!”

“How could that be?” asked a man. “Ar’s Station is unskilled upon the river. Their ships are undermanned!”

To be sure we had noted, earlier, the wreckage of at least four of the ships of Ar’s Station, including two of her heavy, class galleys, the Tullia and the Publia . It seemed to me not unlikely that others of her galleys, as well, might by now have met a similar fate. It was not clear to me why Ar’s Station had resorted to such vessels as she had. They were too squat and sluggish; their holds were too large; their lines were clumsy; they were too slow, too unresponsive to their helms; they seemed little other than fat merchantmen, fit less for war than for the placid transportation of weighty cargoes. Did Ar’s Station truly think to match such swollen, ponderous freighters against the swift, sleek menace of the Voskjard’s warships? And to aggravate the situation the ships of Ar’s Station seemed undermanned. What luscious fruit they must seem for picking. How attractive, how inviting, they must appear to the predators of the Voskjard!

A mighty rock, then, suddenly, not more than ten feet from my bench, plummeted through our deck, splintering the wood upward, exploding it upward, in a shower of sharpened fragments. We had not even seen from whence the stone came. A looping bowl of flaming pitch traced its trajectory off our starboard bow and fell into the water.

“Stroke!” called the oar master.

We began to nose our way among flaming and shattered ships.

Our benches vibrated as our own major catapult hurled a stone skyward.

The smell of burning pitch was in the air. I heard men crying out in the water.

“We must seek our sister ships, to stand with them!” called the oar master. “It is thus that Callimachus commands!”

“The Portia is off the starboard bow!” called an officer. “She is sorely beset!”