Treading water, he took stock of the situation as he had done eight times before. As always, he had a splitting headache. And as always, the loincloth had gone, leaving him as naked as any fish that might swim in this-river, lake, sea? — where he had landed. He licked his lips. Salt. So it was an ocean or sea. Next question: how far was he from shore? He was a powerful swimmer-twenty miles was nothing to him-but if he was out in the middle of something the size of, say, the Atlantic Ocean, he was in a sticky situation. Before, it had been a question of landing in the middle of battles or at least of some inhabited territory where he had to fight or at least communicate with the local inhabitants immediately. Now, half his problem was the lack of people.
The headache had faded enough now so that he could raise his head and look around. The sea was calm, broken only by a gentle swell no more than two or three feet high. Above its surface nothing moved except the faintest of breezes. The air itself was warm and moist, faintly scented with something Blade at first had trouble identifying. Then he realized it was the smell of smoke. Smoke? In the middle of an ocean? He resumed his scanning of the horizon-not far away, for a man in the water.
It was apparently late afternoon, with a westering sun sliding down from a flawless blue sky. But the western horizon itself had sprouted several tall columns of smoke, coiling greasily straight up into the sky for hundreds of feet before they plumed out at the top into broad, feathery clouds. There was the source of the smoke odor, but what lay at the base of those columns and clouds was invisible just beyond the horizon. Still, whatever might be there was more likely to be a source of help than the empty ocean nearer at hand. Or at least it could provide information about what sort of beings inhabited this particular Dimension. Steadily, taking his time and conserving his energy, he began to swim towards the smoke columns.
It was well over an hour before what lay at the base of the columns lifted over the horizon. Drifting sluggishly on the sea, five ships were burning. Around them like scum on a stagnant pond floated a wide circle of wreckage-spares, rigging, planking, chests and boxes, overturned boats, human bodies. Blade was elated. Here was a better chance of survival than swimming about aimlessly in the sea. He quickened his strokes. In a few more minutes, he reached the fringes of the circle, climbed on to the bottom of an overturned boat and looked more closely at the burning ships.
He now noticed that they were of two distinctly different kinds. Two of them were large, broad-beamed merchantman types, with high castles fore and aft and bluff bows. As far as he could tell from what he could see through the smoke and what the battle had left standing, they had possessed two masts, with two or possibly three square sails on each.
The other three ships were smaller, low-slung, with jutting bows apparently ending in rams. They also had two masts, but lanteen-rigged, and there were definitely oar ports in their low sides amidships.
Merchantmen and war galleys-two distinct types. Two distinct sides perhaps? And with all five ships on fire, and wreckage and bodies littering the sea, that suggested a recent battle. Blade found himself scanning the horizon again. The survivors of such a battle, if any, might not be welcome company for a man naked and unarmed. It was time to see what he could scrounge in the way of survival gear from the flotsam spread out over more than a square mile of ocean.
The boat was far too heavy in its waterlogged condition for Blade to right it by himself. But there were plenty of floating spars trailing rigging and still half-wrapped in sails. Kicking hard with his feet, he pushed two such together, added a third, then tied them together with as much rope as he could salvage without a knife to cut it. After half an hour's work, he had a ramshackle raft, three feet wide and about fifteen feet long. It rode half-submerged, like a floating log. But it saved him from having to swim or tread water continuously. And in the course of assembling his raft, he found a small piece of timber that balanced well enough in his hand to make a serviceable club.
The sun was noticeably lower in the sky now. One of the galleys finally dipped its bow under and sank with a great hissing as the fires were drowned and a great bubbling and gurgling as the last of the air escaped from the vanishing hull. Bits of charred wood popped to the surface in the disturbed water it left behind. One of the merchantmen was also visibly lower in the water. The sight of the sinking ship and the thought of oncoming night reminded Blade of the need to get himself a better weapon than the improvised club and, if possible, clothing as well. In the darkness, any survivors of the battle returning to the scene would probably be in a «strike first and ask questions afterwards» frame of mind. Blade didn't blame them, but neither did he want to be a helpless victim. He slid off the raft and swam toward the nearest of the floating boxes and chests. He hoped it hadn't belonged to the captain's mistress and so was full of her cheap jewelry and by now thoroughly waterlogged cosmetics.
The first box he opened was far from useless, though not quite as useful as one containing weapons. It held bolts of coarse, garishly colored cloth, like burlap bags dyed purple, bright blue, red-orange. Trade goods for some primitive tribes somewhere on the remote shores of the ocean? Blade could not help speculating about the people of this Dimension, little evidence though he had as yet to go on. He appropriated the blue cloth and with a good deal of effort-it was tougher than he had anticipated-improvised a loincloth and a rough hood for his head and shoulders, which were already beginning to sting from their exposure to the sun.
He was no longer naked, but he was still practically weaponless, and there were other boxes and chests and crates to examine. Some had been opened already; most of these were as empty as a scraped-out bowl. Others had stout bolts or locks, and he could not swing his club hard enough to smash them open while he was in the water. He had to laboriously push them over to the raft, hoist them on to it and precariously balance both them and himself while he hammered away at the fastenings. He usually fell off two or three times while working on each box, and the box itself usually slipped off the raft into the sea at least once. It was well into twilight, with a raw red and orange glow sprawling across the western horizon, and his own temper blazing nearly as brightly as the sunset, before he finally found what he was looking for.
The chest had not been completely filled with weapons, or it would probably have sunk with the weight of the metal inside. Apparently it had held the personal possessions of an officer of one of the ships-colored tunics, white breeches, a belt, a pair of black boots, linen underclothing, a green silk sash, a small enameled brass box for valuables, all jumbled together as though somebody had been hastily pawing through the chest before abandoning ship.
But there was also a sword-a rapier, all point, light and supple, and not a ceremonial weapon. The steel of the blade was good and the hilt and guard plain heavy brass without fancy ornamentation. He flexed the blade experimentally and tried a few thrusts. It would serve quite well against any opponent who wasn't wearing enough body armor to stop the point. And Blade had enough confidence in his own skill with weapons to believe he could find chinks in armor into which to drive the point.
Now he had weapons and clothing of sorts, but no food or water. He was prepared to survive several weeks without food, or with only what he could catch from the ocean. But he had to find some water before another two days had gone by. He would not be dead by then, but he would be almost past the point of being able to save himself, and perhaps to the point of making some foolish mistake (like drinking salt water) that would finish him off quickly. Unfortunately, finding water was probably going to be difficult. He would not be likely to see it bobbing about in chests or boxes in the ocean. Possibly some of the water barrels in the holds of the ships were still intact.