(eng) Alan Burt Akers - Dray Prescot 14 by Krozair of Kregen

Author:Krozair of Kregen [Kregen, Krozair of]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

“Ram! Ram! Ram!”

“By Zair!” I said, enraged. “The cramph means business.” Moons-light shone on the bronze ram of the swifter ahead. She had turned directly into line. Her oars lifted and remained level. Our own wings continued to beat on. Once again the hail reached us, and this time there was no mistaking the violence of the shout, the decision taken on that swifter’s quarterdeck.

“Your last chance! Heave to or we smash your oars!”

I said to Fazhan, “Signal Neemu to come up. Drop the tow.”

“Quidang,” he said and was off.

I shouted in a voice pitched just to reach Pugnarses Ob-Eye, our oar-master. “At the signal, Pugnarses. Full speed.”

We had a few murs’ grace. The swifter ahead, two-banked, fast, designed for patrol and scouting duty, still held her oars leveled. In those few murs we must cast off our tow and hope Neemu would be able to retrieve it and continue to haul in the argenter. I turned sharply as Vax said, a little loudly, “Tow rope cast off.”

“Now, Pugnarses! Full speed! Use ol’ snake!”

We all heard the drumbeat abruptly break, then rattle, and finally settle into a swift and demanding rhythm. The oars thrashed and for a moment I thought they’d lost it, and the rhythm had been broken —

and then the blades churned the water all in line, level as though on tracks, and through our feet we felt the forward surge of Crimson Magodont, that exhilarating onward bounding like a zorca under a rider careering wildly across the plains.

“Starboard!” I yelled at the helm-Deldars.

The forecastle of the swifter moved out of line with the swifter ahead. I could see in the moons-shimmer her oars quiver and then fall, all together, and in a macabre counterpointing echo to our own I heard her drum rattling out the time.

For a couple of ship-lengths we surged on and then I shouted to the helm-Deldars to bring her back to larboard. Crimson Magodont was of that style of swifter short-coupled, chunky, yet still retaining the long, lean lines of a true galley. She could turn on a golden zo-piece. Her starboard bank continued to pull frenziedly and we could hear through the ship noises the sharp sizzling cracking of whips, the shouts of that hateful word, “Grak! Grak!”

The larboard bank dug into the sea. Crimson Magodont spun. Then every oar smashed into the water, the blades churning, and we leaped as a leem leaps.

“Ram! Ram! Ram!”

We took the Grodnim swifter on his larboard bow. We smashed and bashed down a full third of his length. The pandemonium racketed to the starlit sky. I did not think what was going on among the slave benches of the swifter. We spun into the Magdaggian and we wrecked a third of his oar banks and then we eased a fraction to starboard and so ripped away the remaining two thirds before we turned to free our own blades.

The noises from the Magdaggian obliterated the shouts and yells of our men. Those noises spurted hideously against the pink moons’ glow.

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