“Look, Bagor the wild leem! Look!”
A primitive lust for killing swept over the decks of King Doghamrei’s sky ship, Hirrume Warrior. Lips ricked back from teeth, eyes showed a devilish gleam, weapons were more fiercely grasped. Pride of Hanitcha slowed, hovered. I saw the black rocks tumbling down. I saw the iron pots spouting fire screaming down through the air to burst upon the spotless deck below, to spread and grow and devour the galleon, flickers of flame mounting with horrid swiftness up shrouds and stays, bringing down yards and spars, utterly consuming that marvelous galleon, so far from her home port in Vallia. I could not weep, for I was paralyzed.
“See, you rast! Now we burn the other — and you, Bagor the kleesh, will be the first torch to be flung down on her decks!”
They wheeled up an iron cage stuffed with combustibles. A torch glared in Ob-Eye’s hand. His one eye was quite mad.
“Thrust him in, put the torch to him, and throw him down upon the Vallian ship!”
Chapter Twenty
They stuffed me in the iron cage among the combustibles.
They wheeled the cage to the bulwark.
They lifted it on tackles.
They swung it out over the water.
Ob-Eye himself put the torch in.
Flames crackled up about me.
By Zim-Zair! This was no way for a Krozair of Zy to die and leave this wonderful world of Kregen and go reiving among the Ice Floes of Sicce! By the Black Chunkrah! What would my maniacal clansmen say, riding their voves like the wind across the Great Plains of Segesthes? By Vox! How would my people of Valka take the news? By Djan! My Djangs would nod their heads and say a man needed four arms, by Zodjuin of the Silver Stux! And Strombor. . and Delia, my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains?
Flames sprouted about me and I felt nothing.
Hirrume Warrior, captained by Hikdar Hardin, had not quite reached the correct position in the sky from which to release the flaming cage of combustibles onto the deck of the Vallian. The galleon I had not recognized had been burned. The one below now, creeping apparently slowly back toward us as we crept up along her wake, was Ovvend Barynth. A fine galleon, she was, belonging to the Kov of Ovvend, farther along the coast from Delphond, and I had been aboard her in the crowded harbor of Vondium in my capacity as Prince Majister of Vallia. In a few murs she would be a flaming volcano, and I the blazing human torch of her destruction.
The flames touched me.
Like a high-spirited zorca responding to a clumsy rider’s spurs, I felt the kiss of flame. I felt the heat. I felt the searing pain. I jumped.
I jumped!
Whether the drug needed the stimulus of pain to drag its victim back to life, whether I just shattered through my agony all the chemical bonds holding me, I did not know. What I did know was that strength and feeling flooded back to my arms and legs, to my shoulders and back — and to my rear, which felt as though my trousers were on fire.
I leaped.
I got a hand to the cable above the cage and I got the other onto the little wooden derrick. I hauled myself in hand over hand and gave a last barbaric kick at the flaming cage, knocking it free. It dropped away with a great hissing and roaring of flame — I did not stop to watch it drop all the way into the sea. I knew in the inferno of sensations clamoring at me that it would drop short of Ovvend Barynth. Even as I handed in along the derrick I caught a faint ironical cheer breaking up from the deck of the Vallian galleon. Trust my sailormen of Vallia to jeer at an enemy’s mistake!
Ob-Eye was glaring at me, openmouthed, his hands half-raised. Someone had done half the job already on him. All I needed to do as I came inboard was to smash my fist into his one good eye, and knock him flat. A stux flashed past my ribs. A thraxter chunked down past my head, biting deep into the bulwark. I ignored all of them for the fiery pains shooting and darting up my backside. I was aflame, all right; my pants were well alight.
I couldn’t stop. I charged headlong into the crowd of idlers who had gathered to watch me burn and bomb. They scattered, yelling, and thraxters flashed before my eyes. I seized the nearest guard, broke his neck, took his thraxter, slashed the faces of the next three who came at me, won a space in which it might be possible to extinguish the fire in my rear.
I hurled myself onto the deck and rolled over and over in a vile stink of burning cloth and singed flesh. When I leaped up a fresh group of skymen faced me, ready to overbear me. I knew exactly what I must do. I was alone, stranded on the decks of an enemy sky ship stuffed with foemen, and I had a job to do. There was some satisfaction in it as I bellowed out, high and hard and as loud as I could, “Hai! Jikai!” I hurdled the group opposite me, put in a couple of thwacks as I cleared their prostrate bodies, gripped with my left hand onto the rail and went for the next bunch. They thought they had me penned between them and the control area, where Hikdar Hardin gaped like a loon above the skymen at the levers. These men were protected by a wrought-iron screened cage and I wrenched the door open so that the hinges squealed. Hardin clapped his mouth shut, whipped out his sword, and came for me. I did not kill him; a Bladesman pass and his sword went whirling up, end over end, sparkling. I thumped him alongside the temple with the hilt, just below the rim of his helmet, and showed my thraxter-point to the two skymen at the levers.
One babbled, “Do not kill me, Notor! I know nothing-”
The other went for his dagger.
Him, I clouted and stretched senseless. The other one cowered back, screaming. Faces showed beyond the perforations in the wrought-iron screen. The door groaned. So I had to hit this screaming wretch, knocking him out. I bundled his unconscious body atop that of his comrade’s and wedged the Hikdar’s body across both, using the captain as a wedge. The wrought-iron door in the screen would not open easily now.
I leaped to the levers. These, with Delia’s tuition fresh in my mind, I could understand. Hard over with the speed-forward lever. This, I knew, would bring the two silver boxes linked to the controls beneath my feet closer together. The boxes would most probably be in a well-armored compartment in the center of the ship. The other lever, that controlling attitude, I thrust to starboard. Now the two silver boxes would be rotating around each other in their concentric rings of wooden and bronze mountings. Hirrume Warrior responded instantly. The sky ship picked up speed and swung on to her new course. All this time the frenzied yelling outside the bridge-like control area mounted in fury. I laughed. I, Dray Prescot, laughed. Let them fume! To the Ice Floes of Sicce with all of them — and with that yetch Lem to keep them company!
Through the forward screens, more pierced to afford a good view, I could see Pride of Hanitcha, the Queen’s sky ship, turning with contemptuous solid ease there in the thin air, swinging back to find out why we had not burned the second galleon. On our respective courses, which I found I could feel with the same instinctive feel I had for a frigate ghosting in under reduced canvas between shoals, I saw Pride of Hanitcha would cross directly above Ovvend Barynth. When sky ship crossed galleon more hideous spouts of fiery destruction would tumble down. .
The speed lever was notched over as far as it would go. I hammered it with the flat of my hand. Outside that wrought-iron screen the crewmen of the sky ship howled and danced. Now they had brought up a timber and were using it as a battering ram. The sky ship hurtled on through thin air. I held her course. The wrought-iron door bulged, screeching, and one of the skymen’s arms was trapped, acting as a wedge. The Hikdar draped across, closing off movement. The door jerked again as the timber struck. The note boomed like a gong of battle.