Guardsman of Gor (10 page)

The girl moaned in misery, unable to obey. I thrust her a step toward the window, holding her by the arm. I looked out I saw no small boats in the vicinity.

"Oh, no," moaned the girl, "please, no!"

I heard men joining Reginald, outside the cabin door.

"I cannot swim," she said.

"Good," I said.

"I am bound!" she protested.

"Excellent," I said.

I then took the wadding from my belt. "No!" she said. Then I pushed it, still heavy and damp, deep in her mouth. Then I secured it in place with a folded, twisted strip from the torn sheet I had decided that she would not now, for the time, be permitted to communicate with me. I would remove the gag from her later, if I chose, at my convenience.

"Luta!" called Reginald. "Are you in there?"

I tossed the board and packet, on its towing rope, outside the window. It caught against her collar. I lifted the helpless girl in my arms.

"Luta! Luta!" called Reginald, angrily. "Are you in there?"

"No one called Luta is in here," I called back, cheerily, through the door, "but there is one here who once was known by that name, "one whom I have renamed 'Shirley,' giving her, as seemed fitting, the name of an Earth girl."

The girl squirmed in my arms, writhing in misery, but could not. free herself.

"Who are you? Who speaks?" demanded Reginald.

"I am taking your slave, who is quite good," I said, "and something else, too, which I have found of interest"

"Who speaks? Who speaks?" cried Reginald.

"Jason," said I, "Jason, of Victoria!" Then I climbed to the shattered window and, holding the girl, crouched there for a moment. She was uttering small, muffled sounds, whimpering piteously. Then I leapt into the water. As I leapt to the water I heard the men outside the cabin begin to hurl their shoulders against the wood.

IX

I ACQUIRE ANOTHER GIRL;

I RENEW AN ACQUAINTANCE WITH TWO OLD FRIENDS

"Who is there?" called the fellow from the gunnels of the Tina. "Speak, or we shall fire!"

"Jason," said I from the dark, cold water, "Jason of Victoria. Help me aboard!"

"It is Jason," said a voice. I recognized it as that of Callimachus. "Help him aboard!"

I was towing the girl by the hair, on her back, behind me, in the water. Attached to her collar, floating to one side, on its double rope, was the board and packet.

Hands reached down toward me. Two men, clinging to the gunnels, clambered down to assist me.

"What have we here?" asked one of the men.

"A female slave," I said, "and something else, which is of value."

The girl was lifted up, by her bound arms, by two men, and hauled over the bulwarks, the board and packet striking against the side of the ship, with her.

I climbed up, after her. In a moment I stood, shivering, on the deck of the Tina.

Callimachus seized me by the arms. "We had feared you were lost," he said

"We must make ready to withdraw," I said. "We cannot withstand an attack in the morning."

"We were waiting for you," said Callimachus.

I bent down beside the girl and removed the board and packet, on its rope, from her collar. "Put this in the cabin of the captain," I said to a man.

"Yes, Jason," said he.

"What is it?" asked Callimachus.

"I shall explain later," I said.

"There seems light and consternation on the deck of the Tamira," said a man. To be sure, we could see ships' lanterns moving about on the Tamira, some two to three hundred yards across the water.

I smiled. I did not think Reginald would be quick to report his loss to the fleet commander.

"What have we here?" asked a man, lifting a lantern, indicating the girl, who was kneeling on the deck at our feet.

I jerked the blindfold down from her head, until it hung about her neck.

"A pretty one," said the man.

"Yes," said another.

The girl looked wildly about, frightened, a prize, among the enemies of her former master.

"You are in the presence of men, Woman," I said. "Put your head down, to their sea boots"

Immediately, kneeling, she put her head down to the deck.

"The Tamira is coming about," said a man. "I think she means to attack."

"She must be very anxious to recover whatever it was which you took," said Callimachus.

The girl lifted her head, startled.

"Not you, Pretty Slave," I told her, "that which was of value."

She looked at me, tears in her eyes, over the gag, angrily. "Tie her legs, and throw her below decks," I told a man.

"Yes, Jason," he said.

"Oarsmen to your benches," said Callimachus. "All hands to your stations."

The Tamira must be mad to threaten three ships," said an officer.

"She is desperate," said another.

"Reginald may be ready to lose his ship," I said, "that his loss may be covered, that it may have seemed unavoidable, a fortune of war."

"Surely he would have no orders to leave the line," said Callimachus.

"No," I said, grinning. A cloak was thrown about my shoulders, to warm me from the chill of the water. The girl, her ankles now bound, was carried backwards, her body over the shoulder of a man, to the nearest hatch, that amidships, leading to the hold. Her eyes were wild over the gag. She would be thrown in the hold, and the hatch would be secured. I realized that she would have to be beaten as she had, earlier, raised her head without permission. Such negligences on the part of a slave seldom go unnoticed on Gor.

"It is clear," said an officer. "Me Tamira plans to attack." He seemed perplexed.

"It is as I had hoped," I said to Callimachus. "She will, thus, open a hole in their lines." To be sure, I had not expected Reginald to notice his loss so quickly. I had hoped to have more time to formulate my plans with Callimachus.

"I shall have the signal horns sounded," said an officer to Callimachus.

"No," I said, "no, Callimachus!"

"Do not sound them," said Callimachus to the officer. "It is not yet time to alert and confuse the fleet."

"Precisely," I said. Orders, at our proximity with the Olivia and Tais, could be, for the moment, verbally conveyed.

"Is it your intention to exploit that aperture in the enemy line?" asked Callimachus. "It will not remain long. The movement of the Tamira will be quickly noted."

"Not directly," I said. "That would be transparent Kaissa, as it is said. Yet the enemy will expect us to dart for that opening."

"Accordingly, they will shift to cover the position," said Callimachus.

"Producing numerous realignments of ships, and perhaps consternation," I said.

"The very wall may be dismantled," said Callimachus, "opened, in a dozen places"

"It will not be understood why the Tamira left her position," I said. "It may be assumed by many ships that the attack has been ordered."

"The Tamira is bearing down upon us," said an officer. "Shall we engage her?"

"No," cried Callimachus. "Helmsmen, hard to starboard! Oar Master, full stroke!" "Full stroke!" called the oar master. "Port oars inboard!" cried Callimachus. "Port oars inboard!" echoed the oar master.

The Tamira, her port shearing blade passing to port like a quarter moon of steel, slid past our hull, between us and the Olivia.

"There are lights on other ships!" called an officer. Across the water, here and there, we could see lanterns moving. We heard battle horns.

"Draw alongside the Olivia, Callimachus," I begged. "Orders must be swiftly issued, and unhesitantly obeyed."

"Do you plan escape?" asked Callimachus.

"I plan not only escape," I said, "but victory."

We could hear the shouting, as though of a pirate victory, coming from over the water.

My feet slipping on the sand bar I thrust my shoulder against the hull of the Tuka, which had been the lead ship in the first major attack against us three days ago. She had been rammed and wounded, and had been abandoned, left aground on the sand bar, near the chain, half in the water, half on the bar. It was a well-known ship of the Voskjard. Near me other men, with their shoulders, and using oars as levers, pried at the hull, its keel sunk in the sand. On either side of the bar, the Tina and the Tais, with stout ropes, four inches in width, strained, too, to free the Tuka.

The shouting carried over the water. There was a reddish glow to the east, from flames.

"They will soon realize they were tricked," said a man near me.

"Work, work harder," I said.

In the confusion and darkness, and in the movement of ships, we had set the Olivia afire, her sails set and her rudders tied in place; she was moving eastward, which would be the likely escape route toward towns such as Port Cos, Tafa and Victoria. Like a majestic torch she would sail into the midst of the enemy. Using this as a diversion the Tina and the Tais, with Aemilianus, and the crew and men of the Olivia, with captured pennons from prize ships taken earlier from the

Voskjard, had permitted other ships, like sharks, to pass them, following the light of the Olivia, taking that light for the locale of battle. Soon, of course, if it had not already occurred, it would be discovered that the Olivia was unmanned.

"Work harder!" I said.

We grunted, and pressed our weight against the hull of the stranded
Tuka.
The great ropes strained. Near me I heard the snapping of an oar, it breaking under the force of the four men using it as a lever. Other men, with spear points, scraped at the sand under the keel.

"I fear there is little time," called Callimachus from the rail of the
Tina.

"It is hopeless," said the man near me.

The great weight of the
Tuka,
so dark, so heavy, so obdurate, so seemingly resistant and fixed in place, suddenly, unexpectedly, straining, with a heavy, sliding noise, the keel like the runner of a great sled, leaving a line in the sand, thrust by our forces, moved by the water, slipped backward, six inches.

"Work!" I whispered. "Push! Work!"

The
Tuka
slipped back a foot. Then another foot. There was a cheer. "Be silent!" I cried.

I left my position and, hurrying, ankle deep in sand and water, lowering my head to pass under the ropes between the
Tina
and the
Tuka,
made my way along her hull until I came to the river, and there entered the water, and swam about her stern quarters. I joined the men on the other side, on the bar, where the great rent had been torn in her side three days ago by the ram of the
Tais.
The splintered, gaping hole was easily a yard in height and width, the result not only of the ram's penetration but of the tearing and breakage in the strakes attendant upon its withdrawal. The strike had been well above the water line, when the vessel would ride on an even keel. Yet, in the rolling and wash of battle, it had sufficed, at the time, to produce a shippage of water sufficient to produce listing. Rendered unfit for combat her captain and crew had abandoned her, doubtless with the intention later, at their leisure, to repair and reclaim her. I peered into the rupture in the strakes. The ropes strained again and the
Tuka
slipped back another yard. She would soon be free of the bar. I considered, as well as I could, from my position outside the hull, what time and materials might be requisite to restore the

Tuka
to seaworthiness. Such repairs, of course, must be made upon the river, and in flight. I did not wish to leave her as she was, of course, for she was important to my plans. She was, it was said, a well-known ship of the Voskjard.

"There is a ship approaching!" I heard a man cry.

"No," I cried out, angrily. "No!"

"It is a derelict," said another man. "She is dark. Her rudders are free!"

It must, then, be a ship drifting unmanned, lost, and carried by the current from the concourse of ,war. Even if it should be a trick, it was but one ship. Given the men of Ar we had, though only two fighting ships, and the
Tuka,
crews enough to man at least five vessels.

The
Tuka
slipped another yard back, toward the water. With two `hands I hoisted myself through the rupture in the hull of the
Tuka. I
drew my sword. The men of the
Tais, I
knew, after her disabling, had briefly boarded her. She had, at that time, been abandoned. I did not doubt but what she was now, too, empty. Yet I did not know that. My sword was drawn. The
Tuka
is a large ship and I could stand upright within her first hold. I felt her move beneath me, impelled again by the ropes and men, toward the river. It was dark in the hold. As the
Tuka
slipped in the sand, being drawn backward into the river, water from the hold rushed about my feet, for a moment some six inches in depth. It then drained through the rupture. I could feel the wet wood beneath my bare feet. Beneath the first hold is the lower hold, but this is little more than a damp crawl space, containing the bilge, and sand, which, on Gorean vessels, commonly serves as ballast. I stood back from the rupture. I was uneasy.

I listened. The hold was dark. I seemed to hear nothing. It had been nothing. Surely it had been nothing.

I did not move. I was uneasy.