Pirates Of Gohar

Chapter 2

The dream-like falling sensation went on until Blade got used to it. It began to remind him of the days he'd been weightless in Riyannah's spaceship on the way to Kanan, during perhaps the strangest and certainly the most far-traveling of his adventures. That time, he'd traveled not only some unmeasurable distance across the Dimensions, but at least a hundred light-years across interstellar space as well.

Blade was just beginning to recall pleasant memories of making love to Riyannah in weightlessness, when suddenly the fall came to an end. Something solid slammed up under his feet so hard that his knees buckled, and he fought for balance as the normal world started to take shape around him.

At first, all he could see were blurred forms, which might have been anything, and he could hear only a muffled whispering like wind or waves. He was clearly aware of his own body, and was relieved to discover that it seemed to be in working condition. He had no trace of a headache, no pains in his joints or muscles, only a slight shortness of breath. It began to look as if Lord Leighton was right about the KALI capsule. It did drastically reduce the stresses of a transition into Dimension X.

Then the world around Blade took shape. He saw that the reduced stress of the KALI capsule was probably going to save his life. He'd joked many times about how one day he might have to fight the moment he landed in a new Dimension. This time it was no joke.

He stood on the foc'sle of a fairly large sailing ship well out to sea. He could see an endless blue horizon all around him, and other ships close on either side. Then matters and people even closer at hand brought themselves forcibly to his attention.

Two men were standing even farther forward than Blade. Apparently he'd taken solid shape before them as they did the same before him. One man turned the color of a dirty bedsheet, and his eyes seemed about to pop out of their sockets. Then his brain pushed his body into motion. With a wild yell he leaped into the air, clearing the railing like a high-jumper and vanishing over the side.

When the other man leaped, he leaped down off the foc'sle onto the main deck. As he came down, he flattened several of his shipmates, who were crowding forward to stare at Blade. Blade used the delay to study the opposition and realize that he had a good fighting chance. He was as naked as usual and totally unarmed, but he couldn't see any guns or bows. Against anything else his unarmed-combat skills should keep him in action long enough to borrow someone else's weapon. Of course it would be even better not to have to fight at all, but-

At this point four sailors started scrambling up the ladder from the main deck. The foc'sle was raised just enough so that the sailors had to use the ladder. Since it was only wide enough for two men at once, this gave Blade an extra advantage.

One sailor of the first pair was totally unarmed, but was nearly as big as Blade. The other carried a short club and had a sheathed knife hanging from his belt. He was obviously the more dangerous of the two.

Blade moved in against the man, who apparently had no idea of what he was facing. He raised his club for a roundhouse swing, which could only have worked against a complete novice or a drunk. Blade had black belts in three different martial arts, plus a knack for plain old-fashioned brawling. He ducked under the swing of the club, grabbed the man's wrist, and punched him hard in the stomach. After that the man was too busy trying to throw up everything he'd eaten or drunk recently to care how the fight went.

The other man now came at Blade, in a bare-handed crouch rather like a gorilla's. He had to come around the first man, giving Blade plenty of time to choose his attack. Blade leaped to the side, pivoted on one foot, and drove the other into the big man's ribs. The man went clear over the edge of the foc'sle, knocking one of his shipmates off the ladder as he did so. Both men landed with a crash, but after a moment of listening to their cursing Blade knew they couldn't be seriously hurt.

Either luck or foresight had made the last man snatch up a short sword with a curved single-edged blade, rather like a machete but with a heavily weighted pommel. The sailor held his sword low and to one side, and waved a length of red cloth in the other hand.

Does he think I'm a bull? thought Blade. Then the man was coming in, much too fast to be a joking matter. Blade dodged, and saw that one end of the red cloth was wound around the man's wrist. As he closed again, Blade snatched up the club dropped by the first man, and with his other hand grabbed the end of the red cloth. A tremendous jerk with all Blade's weight and strength behind it yanked the sailor off-balance. Then Blade brought the club down across the sword arm. He heard bone crack and the sailor scream, knew he'd struck harder than he intended, and snatched the sword from the sailor's limp fingers.

As Blade raised both the sword and the club, the disarmed sailor decided he was too much to tackle now, and went back down the ladder as fast as he could. Blade let him go. He'd driven off the first attack without killing or apparently even seriously hurting any of his four opponents. Now perhaps the ship's crew would realize they couldn't easily stamp him into the deck. Then they might be willing to talk peace.

Blade saw that the ladder up to the foc'sle was only tied in place. Two quick slashes cut the ropes, and a push sent it clattering down onto the main deck. Now it would be even harder for the crew to get to close quarters over Blade's objections. Then he laid down the sword, slowly and carefully so that everyone on deck could see him do it, and raised his right hand in a gesture of peace.

The suddenly widening eyes of the men closest to Blade gave him part of the warning, and the sound of metal on wood behind him gave the rest. Blade whirled, bending to snatch up the sword as he did so, and saw two sailors scrambling over the railing. They must have climbed along the hull outboard of the railing and below Blade's angle of vision. He didn't have time to admire their agility, but he did have the sword. This was lucky, because one of the sailors had a sword of his own and the other held a six-foot spear with a barbed head.

Blade chopped down with the sword as hard as he could, taking off the spear's head and two feet of the shaft. With the club he blocked a sword cut. The spearman dropped the stump of the shaft and started to draw a knife from his belt. Before he could complete the movement Blade closed with the swordsman, immobilized his weapon, grabbed the man, and swung him around. Blade got his living shield into position just as the other sailor thrust hard with his knife. Fortunately he only stabbed his shipmate in the buttocks. The first man let out a yell, struggled wildly, and cursed fluently. Blade couldn't tell if he was cursing his enemy or his shipmate.

Blade put an end to the curses by squeezing the man's right wrist until he dropped his sword, then picking him up like a sack of flour and heaving him off the foc'sle. The second sailor had the courage to try facing Blade armed only with his knife, but this didn't do him any good. Blade cracked the man hard across one knee with the back of his sword. Then he twisted the knife free and sent the knifeman flying after his shipmate. He landed squarely on top of the swordsman, but once again the amount of noise floating up from the main deck told Blade that both men were more or less in one piece.

Less reassuring was the fact that the main deck of the ship was now filling with armed sailors. At least a dozen of them held spears, and two of them had bows and quivers of arrows. None of them were armored and none of them were saying anything, but none of them looked particularly friendly either. Blade realized he might have rather overdone the job of showing them he wasn't an easy victim. Now he'd better start talking before one of those archers let fly, and hope they wouldn't consider his trying to talk peace a sign of weakness.

Again he raised one hand in a peaceful gesture. This drew some harsh laughter, and one of the archers nocked an arrow to his bow. Blade had a thoroughly unpleasant feeling that this trip to Dimension X was about to become his shortest and possibly his last.

«No! Listen to me!» he bellowed, in a voice that carried from one end of the ship to the other. The words formed themselves in his mind in English, but they came out in the guttural growls of the sailors. Somehow, each time he passed from Home Dimension into Dimension X, his brain was altered so that be both spoke and understood whatever languages he'd need there. Even Lord Leighton had several different theories about how this happened, and nobody else had more than guesses. No matter how it happened, Blade was glad it did. Not having to learn new languages each time he entered a new world saved time, and here it might save his life.

All the sailors jumped at Blade's shout, but the archer also began to draw. «No, listen! I'm not your enemy!» Blade shouted. He was also trying to decide if he should jump down on to the main deck and attack, or jump over the side and take his chances there.

Before the archer could finish drawing, the door to the aftercastle flew open and a short, black-bearded man came stamping out. Unlike the rest of the crew he wore armor, a short jacket of metal discs sewn on leather, and carried two swords. He waved one over his head so wildly that several sailors had to jump back in order to avoid being struck. As he strode forward through the sailors, he cursed them eloquently without raising his voice above a normal tone. By the time he was standing below the break of the foc'sle, looking up at Blade, he had the attention of every man on deck.

While the bearded man-the ship's captain, no doubt about it-was cursing his crew, Blade had time to consider how to explain himself. Apparently he'd appeared out of thin air, as if by magic, so there wasn't much point in giving a purely natural explanation for his arrival. Sailors were a superstitious lot in any case, and they might not accept a natural explanation even for a less spectacular arrival.

All right, then, he'd give a supernatural explanation. He'd been sent by the gods-no, that might not be a good idea. He had no idea of what gods were worshipped here, or how. There was always the risk of being denounced as a liar and blasphemer and punished accordingly. Even if they believed him, claiming to be a messenger from the gods always threw him into local religious politics, which could be even bloodier than the normal kind.

So forget about the gods. If he didn't come from this world or from somewhere Up Above, where else was there?

Of course. The future. He couldn't be sure what kind of gods these people worshipped, but he could be nearly certain they had some concept of a past and a future. If he said he was from-

«Huh, stranger,» said the captain, rapping the edge of the foc'sle with one sword to get Blade's attention. «You said you weren't an enemy. You certainly aren't of Gohar, so what are you?»

«My fathers a thousand years before I was born might have been of Gohar,» said Blade. «I do not know. I do know that I come from a time when your children's children's children are only a distant memory.»

The captain sheathed his sword and looked Blade up and down so intently that Blade had the feeling the captain was counting each scar or even each hair on his body. Or perhaps the captain was just trying to decide whether he faced a man from the future or an escaped lunatic.

At least the sailors were quiet while their captain examined Blade. The archers still held their bows, but no longer drawn. The men with spears let them trail on the deck. Satisfied that the sailors accepted their captain's authority and were no immediate danger to him, Blade looked around him. For the first time since his arrival he got a really good look at the ship.

She was about a hundred feet long and nearly thirty feet wide, heavy-timbered, high-sided, probably slow and clumsy, almost certainly built for carrying capacity rather than speed. She had two stout masts, each supporting a large square sail of coarse cloth, reinforced with strips of leather. The sail on the foremast showed a badge-a blue bird with outspread wings.

Looking over the port railing, Blade saw a series of ports in the ship's side a yard or so above the water, covered by stout wooden hatches. No doubt these were ports for sweeps, which the sailors could man to get the ship into or out of port against Contrary winds. She was certainly too heavy and too clumsy to row in the open sea.

At the stern an aftercastle rose one level above the main deck. Spears and axes were racked along either railing. In the shelter of the aftercastle two men stood at the long tiller, feet braced wide apart and chests slick with sweat. Apparently the people of-Gohar, the captain had said-had invented the stern rudder for their ships.

Beyond the railings, a blue sea rose and fell gently under a paler blue sky spotted with puffy white clouds. If Blade had been in England, he would have called it a perfect day for sailing. A hundred yards to either side of Blade's ship, two others kept pace with her. One was the same type as Blade's, but slightly smaller and with her foresail showing a large green hexagon as a badge. The other ship was much smaller, with no castles at either bow or stern and only a single mast.

Astern Blade could see another trio of ships, also lined up abreast. Beyond them he caught a glimpse of a seventh ship, apparently bringing up the rear by herself. This last ship seemed to be low, two-masted, and painted black all over.

Before Blade could make out any more details of the little fleet, a wild scream jerked everyone's attention aloft. On the lookout platform at the fore masthead, a sailor was hanging over the railing and waving his arms frantically.

«Pirates! Pirates! Pirates to the northwest! Three ships! Three Bloodskins!»

The captain raised his eyes to heaven and his hands to his head. He clutched at his hair, and Blade could tell what the man was thinking almost as if he'd been speaking out loud.

Pirates! Pirates now, of all times, with a madman aboard and some of my men unfit to fight! The captain turned toward the archers, and his fingers twitched as if he was about to signal them to shoot. Blade spoke quickly.

«Captain, I'm sorry about your men. I wouldn't have hurt any of them if they hadn't attacked me. I don't think most of them are too seriously hurt to fight.

«But I do owe you something for what I did to them. Give me some clothes and weapons, and I'll stand with you against the pirates.»

The captain looked from Blade to the archers, then toward the horizon, then back to Blade. His head jerked in a brief nod. «All right. But HemiGohar help you if you're lying.»

«I'm not lying about being a fighting man,» said Blade. The captain looked at the sailors either still unconscious or slowly picking themselves up, then somehow managed to laugh.

«No, you're not lying about that.»