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red.
Blade clanged against blade. My Ghittawrer longsword sang above my head. Aye! It sang as I whirled it
up and down. I smashed with full force, seeing a head spin off, seeing a black-masked face abruptly
disappear into a ghastly red mask, seeing an arm spin up and away as a back-hander curled beneath a
blow. It was all over in scant murs. We panted. I dragged in a great lungful of air and then, dismounting,
walked over to my Lady, who lay in the sand. Her green veiling remained in place, for she had one hand
to it. But she knew me.
"Gadak! So you rescue me again."
"Aye, my Lady. You are unhurt?"
She stood up. She put a hand on my shoulder. Her left hand. In her right hand, smothered in blood, she
still gripped the slender, jeweled dagger.
"I am unharmed. They tried to at the end when they saw you coming. But "
"Yes, my Lady. You yourself created a Jikai, I saw." Then I smiled I, who am a surly beast and with
a face like the ram of a swifter. "I am minded of another lady, my Lady."
"I would not have thought " she began, and then stopped and threw the dagger to the sand. She took
her hand from my shoulder and drew herself up. She put that clean left hand to her hair. Typically, the
next words she said were, "And my lord? How goes the battle?"
"The battle will go well enough."
She sighed.
She, like myself, had been Zairian once.
"I returned to the camp, Gadak, and they were waiting for me. Men in black. Stikitches kidnappers
for a space but real stikitches, nonetheless."
"Aye."
My men were inspecting the corpses. The swifter was gone, pulling madly out to sea.
Grogor turned one body over with his foot and then cocked an eye at me. I looked down.
The brown face with a livid scar all across it showed where Golitas, who had received that scar from the
hands of Pur Dray, had died in agony.
"It would be best to heave these carrion into the sea." Grogor took out his knife. "But first My Lady,
would you please retire for a space, for there are things that must be done."
She understood well enough. A warrior maid, for she had fought magnificently, now she was a practical
lady with a man to protect. So we disfigured the corpses so that they would never be recognized and
heaved them into the sea. When we had finished we escorted my Lady back to camp and had anyone
challenged us he would have been a dead man.
We had saved my Lady of the Stars for Gafard, Sea-Zhantil; we had saved her from the clutches of
King Genod himself and no one to point the finger of accusation at us. Also, a man who knew my face
was dead. Besides the safety of my Lady that was of no importance at all.
Chapter Sixteen
Grogor surprises me
Black magbirds flew overhead. To larboard the lesser Pharos passed at the end of the mole. The stones
gleamed in the slanting lines of masonry, and the curve of stonework opened out into a broad view
across the outer harbor. Two swifters rode to their moorings here, their yards crossed, and the last
preparations caused a bustle on their long, lean decks as they were readied for sea.Volgodont s Fang
glided on, the oars pulling with a slow, steady rhythm that drove our stem through the water with a low
musical chinkle.
The frowning stone gateway to the cothon, the inner basin, lined up directly with our ram. Nath ti Hagon
stood staring directly ahead, lining up the ship, giving quick, direct orders to the oar-master in his
tabernacle and to the two helm-Deldars at their rudder handles. These two old tarpaulins turned the
curved steering oars with cunning, smooth movements that kept the swifter dead on track.
The group standing with me on the quarterdeck included Gafard, but he was in this matter quite content
to let his trusted first lieutenant conn the ship. Hardly a breeze ruffled the still surface of the water in which
reflections stood out in perfect mirror-images.
The entrance to this cothon had been excavated widely enough to accommodate the spread wings of a
swifter. Many cothons have narrow entrances, so that a galley must be drawn through by pulling-boat or,
more usually, by gangs of men hauling hawsers from the dock side, all heaving together at the crack of a
whip and the yell of "Grak!"
We glided on smoothly. I had no doubts that Nath would take the ship fairly through the center of the
narrow channel with not a single oar splintered. Swifters habitually carry as many as half the number of
oars again to replace broken oars, for breaking oars is a familiar hazard to the swifter captains of the
inner sea.
Once we were fairly through the whistles shrilled and the drum-Deldar tapped his peculiar terminal notes
and every oar lifted and remained level. Swifters of the size ofVolgodont s Fang are reasonably stable in
the water, unlike the smaller swifters that rock so much a man must step lightly and the oars must rest in
the water to ensure stability.
How familiar the details of bringing a vessel into port!
I watched, storing away the nostalgic memories and refusing to become maudlin. The sides of the cothon
were lined with the long, slanting ship-sheds, narrow structures, two slips to a roof, inclined toward the
water. Ingenious capstans and pulleys were arranged so that the swifters might be drawn up out of the
water and gangs of slaves whipped to the work. The open fronts of the sheds with their ornate columns
and Magdaggian arches could be closed by wooden doors in inclement weather of which there is,
thankfully, very little in the Eye of the World and as they clustered closely together they presented a
compact, crowded nesting effect. Little over the width of a swifter, probably not one being more than
forty feet wide to accept the apostis, they were long, a hundred and eighty feet or more. This was not the
king s harbor. Over there the sheds were, of course, larger. The massively impressive building rising to
the rear, sculptured almost like a temple, was the Arsenal of the Jikgernus the warrior lords and
there were kept the multifarious stores demanded by the swifters. The smell of that place could waft me
away and away four hundred light-years in my mind s eye.
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