John Dalmas - Return to Fanglith

"Got it. Why don't you just call and tell us when to start?"

An idea had been just out of sight, nudging my mind. Now I saw it. "Good idea. I'll call you in Provencal. And listen…"

When I finished explaining what I had in mind, I put my communicator back inside my cape and went up on deck. The other three had watched me the whole time, so I crossed myself before I left, and nodded at them soberly as I went to the ladder.

The pirate ship had gained quite a bit on us, and the evening seemed hardly any darker than when I'd gone below. It didn't look as if we'd stay ahead of them long enough. Besides which, there was no safety or hope ahead of us that I could see, and it occurred to me that our captain might decide to turn back and fight-get it over with.

So I went to him. He was manning the heavy steering oar himself, his eyes sternward toward the pirates. "Captain," I said, "I've been praying to the Angel Deneen. She told me that if we stay ahead of the Saracens till darkness, they'll be destroyed with fire from heaven."

His eyes narrowed. I wasn't sure what he was thinking. "Can we?" I asked. "Stay ahead of them till dark?"

"It is in the hands of God," he said after a few seconds.

"Good," I told him. "We must leave it there, in the hands of God, and not defy him by turning to fight, for he will surely save us."

The captain scowled without saying anything more to me, as if he thought I was crazy. I leaned against the rail to watch the pirates gaining on us.

After a few minutes it seemed to me they weren't gaining on us as fast as they had been. I suppose their oarsmen were getting tired. And the light was noticeably less, though it was still more like daylight than night. Maybe it would get dark before they caught us.

"Larn."

It was the remote I'd left in my ear.

"There are more than forty pirates, not counting the guys who are rowing. And they look really tough. If you change your mind about when, we're ready to put them out of commission."

I didn't take out my communicator and answer her; it wasn't the time or place for that. She'd liave to assume I got it. But I nodded anyway, in case they had me in the viewer under magnification.

There were eleven in our crew, and ten passengers including myself, just about all of us on deck now. Several had shortswords already in hand, but I doubt that any one of them would really qualify as a warrior. Gradually the distance shrank between the pirates and ourselves, and gradually it got darker. It began to look as if it might get dark soon enough after all. And looking upward I could see the scout; it had come down to maybe four or five hundred yards and was barely visible against the darkening sky. You had to look for it-know it was up there-to see it.

The pirate ship was only about two hundred feet behind us. I stepped away from the rail a little and took out my palmed communicator, raising it as if I was lifting up my crucifix. Then I bellowed out as loudly as I could: "Don't be afraid! The Angel Deneen will save us! She has promised!"

Just about everyone on the ship looked at me. None of them looked actually scornful; stories about divine intervention were common on Fanglith. But none of them looked very convinced, either. And the pirate ship came on. After another couple of minutes I looked up again. I could sort of make out the Jav; she was maybe two hundred yards up now, and the pirates not more than eighty or a hundred feet behind. I switched on my communicator. "Angel Deneen!" I shouted. "Save us from the Saracens!"

A heavy-caliber blaster thudded once, and a hissing charge exploded into the pirate ship. We could hear them yelling back there. Then a spotlight speared down from above, drawing every eye, and someone up there- Tarel, I learned later-fired four more single rounds about a second apart. The pirate ship started to burn in the thickening dusk as we pulled away from her, but she apparently sank in a hurry, because the flames disappeared quickly, as if drowned.

Moise:

Even though the slavemaster had slowed the beat somewhat, I was so tired I thought I would die of it. But he was pacing the walkway between us, and I still feared his whip more than death. Besides, I always felt that way when we were chasing some merchant ship, and hadn't died yet. A man can stand more than he thinks.

Ahead on the merchantman, I heard someone call out loudly. We were that close. Soon we would ship our oars and rest while the Saracens boarded her, but until then I had to keep on.

Cool as the evening was, sweat trickled into my eyes, and dripped from my nose and chin to fall on my bare thighs. I gasped for breath. Again I heard a shout from ahead, nearer now-and then the world exploded! My bench was torn loose, thrown back, and I fell on the feet and legs of the oarsman behind me, a Tuscan named Guittone. I had no idea what had happened. As I struggled to disentangle myself from Guittone's legs, there was another terrible sound, and more, and I felt water rising rapidly around me. Men were screaming, some of them calling to Allah to be merciful. None of them knew-none of them could have known-what had struck us, any more than I did then.

The ship sank quickly-indeed, had broken in two- the halves pulling apart, with one swinging to the left and one to the right. The half with the mast had turned onto her side. I was floating free of it, chained to my broken bench. Around me, many of my captors-ex-captors now-were clinging to wreckage or swimming toward one of the halves, and it seemed well to move away from them, although there was no place to swim to except into the near-night. The water was winter-cold. I managed to get my broken bench beneath me, then kicked and paddled away, careful not to overturn again. Minutes later I could not see any of them any longer, although distantly I could hear injured men calling for help.

Tarel:

I hadn't liked shooting into the pirate ship, but it was necessary. There wasn't much question about what the pirates had in mind, but it bothered me to shoot at people who couldn't defend themselves against us. There wasn't even anything they could try to do.

On the target screen I could see their ship almost as clearly as if it were daylight. It surprised me to see it break in two. I suppose it was partly because it was going along pretty fast, for such a primitive ship. The blaster bolts must have torn enough out of the hull that

it acted like a scoop, and the pressure broke it where the explosions had weakened it.

Deneen turned off the spotlight, but I could still see with the target screen. Guys were swimming to the halves of the hull, which were still afloat, one full of water to the gunwales, the other on its side. Deneen felt the way I did-wanted to go down and rescue people-but it would be suicide to take pirates into the Javelin with us.

What she did instead was lift to about two hundred yards again, and we sat there watching, unwilling to just leave. Then I noticed that one guy was paddling away from the wreckage, which seemed peculiar. It occurred to me that he might have been a prisoner or something-maybe one of the oarsmen. They might have been slaves; there'd been a guy with a whip making sure they kept rowing.

"Deneen!" I started, and before I could get any more out, she said, "I see him." She's like that sometimes, as if she knows what you're thinking. We watched him paddle and kick until he was about a hundred yards from the others. Then he slowed down, as if he felt safer now, or maybe tired, and Deneen started to lower us toward him.

At twenty feet or so she hit the control for the door. It opened and I went over to it. We were behind the guy and he hadn't even seen us. It turned out he'd noticed the light on the water in front of him, from the open door, but of course, it never occurred to him what it might be. Meanwhile Deneen lowered us to five feet.