“What is going on?” I said, to anyone, for there were several about, trying to see the beach, perhaps as unclear as I was, as to the confusion, the motion of the torches.
Aeacus took back the glass, and then, in a moment, handed it to another.
“Tarnsmen,” I heard, “to saddle!”
It was the voice of Tarl Cabot.
“No!” said Lord Okimoto, at the rail, barefoot, his robe awry.
I did not know the whereabouts of Lord Nishida.
I saw Tyrtaios, with others, on the ratlines, peering toward the shore.
I heard the poking noise of the crutch of Seremides.
“Roll back the great hatch!” called Tarl Cabot.
“Do not do so!” exclaimed Lord Okimoto. Men drew back.
“Lord!” protested Tarl Cabot.
“No,” said Lord Okimoto.
The secret of the tarns, I gathered, was to be kept.
Some two thirds of the armsmen and mariners, following some fifty Pani, from the men of Lords Nishida and Okimoto, over several Ahn, beginning yesterday evening, had gone ashore.
“Launch the galleys!” cried Aetius, from amidships.
I gathered then that the first galley had been returned to the ship, following the landing.
“No!” said Lord Okimoto.
I gathered that he was unwilling to lose another galley.
Tarl Cabot seized a fellow who was clambering aboard, from one of the small boats. “Go back!” he cried. “Go back!”
“No,” said the man, wildly, shaking his head. “No!”
Cabot struck him to the deck.
“Go back,” he cried to others, returning to the ship.
“The galleys must be launched,” said Tarl Cabot.
“No,” said Lord Okimoto.
Tarl Cabot turned on his heel, angrily, and rushed toward a flung-open hatch. He paused at the opening, looking about, in frustration. It was there I caught up with him. “You will need oarsmen,” I said.
He clasped my hand. “Good Callias,” he said. “Let us be fools together!”
“There will be several below decks,” I said. “They are unclear, as I, as to what has occurred.”
“Summon them!” said Cabot. “Send others about, as well, to summon others.”
“To the galleys?”
“Any who can draw an oar,” said Cabot.
“In whose name?” I asked.
“In the name of Lord Okimoto,” said Cabot.
In a quarter of an Ahn three galleys had been lowered and, half manned, were about the ship, and moving amongst small boats, toward the shore.
I and the others were armed, as we had obtained weapons, in the issuance, hoping to go ashore in our turn.
I glanced back, to see Lord Okimoto, high above, at the rail of the great ship.
Cabot was at the helm of the galley on which I drew an oar. Across from me, alone on his bench, as I was, was Philoctetes. To starboard, back a bit, was another galley, also with a handful of oarsmen, it commanded by Pertinax, and to port, further back, was the galley of Turgus, more amply manned, as men, later gathered, had come to the last galley nest.
More than once the galley turned, and slowed, rocking, men from the water clinging to the oars. The other two galleys were similarly impeded. “Bring them aboard!” called Cabot. “Put them at an oar.”
“Flee, Commander!” wept a man, drawn aboard. “To the ship!”
“We are going in,” said Cabot.
“There are too many!” said the man. “It is hopeless! All will die.”
“We are going in,” said Cabot.
There was a cheer from small boats about us.
“Get to the ship, and then go back!” said Cabot.
There was another cheer.
Men clinging to oars came aboard, and took their places on the benches.
The galley’s bow swung toward the beach, and Cabot, from the helm, called the stroke, and, water running from the lifted and dipping oar blades, the galley crested the night waters, and sped, like a gull, toward the torches and confusion on the beach. “Stroke!” called Cabot, “stroke!”
The fellow who had haplessly wept was now beside me at the oar, steady, and strong.
As we made our way through the small boats, most moving toward the ship, we began to hear the cries on the beach, the clash of metal.
It was now clear that quarterless war, red with blood, reigned upon the beach. Some hundreds of our men, in lines, were being forced back, away from the high beach, and the defile, toward the water. Glaives prodded them and struck at them. Swords flashed in the torches. Many, we had later learned, had perished in the defile, from concealed arrow fire, but arrows, now, save at short range, a yard or two, given the proximity of the combatants and the confusion, could scarcely find congenial targets. The arrow, ignorant of its purpose, might with equanimity bestow indiscriminate death.
Several yards from the torchlit, screaming, raucous shore, the clash of metal, the cries of enraged men, of frightened men, of dying men, Cabot turned the galley. “Back oars!” he commanded, and the stern of the galley, backing, pushed its way through small boats and wading men, and, a moment later, he cried “Hold!” and we lifted the oars, and we felt the keel of the galley grate on sloping, submerged sand, at the foot of the shore. We were some dozen or so feet from the beach. Dozens of terrified men rushed about us, wading in the water, seizing oars, trying to climb aboard. Shortly thereafter the galleys of Pertinax and Turgus, turned as well, lay to, at the shore, and were similarly subjected to clambering men. I saw several of the small boats returning to the shore from the ship. They had come back for their fellows. My heart was gladdened.
“Callias!” called Cabot to me, and I rose at the bench, amongst the swarming men.
“Commander?” I called.
“Prepare to command,” he said. “I am going ashore.”
“With commander’s permission,” I said, “I, too, am going ashore.”
“Stay aboard,” he said.
“I am coming with you,” I said.
“You understand the danger?”
“Certainly,” I said.
“I do not expect to return to the ship,” he said.
“Neither then, commander,” I said, “will I.”
“You are indeed a fool,” he said. He then called to Philoctetes. “Take the galley back to the ship. Return. Save whom you can!”
“Yes, commander,” said Philoctetes.
“Let tarnsmen, armed, who dare, return with you,” said Cabot.
“Yes, commander,” called Philoctetes. There were now three or four men at a bench, which should hold two, and the galley was crowded amidships, and fore and aft. Then Cabot, I following him, leaped into the water amongst men trying to board the galley, and, water to our waist, we waded to shore. Once on the beach he paused only to issue similar instructions to Pertinax and Turgus.
“I am coming with you!” cried Pertinax.
“No, you are not,” warned Cabot, with an unexpected ferocity that brooked no demur.
“Oars,” called Pertinax, taken aback, his voice cracking with misery, “Stroke!”
The galley now captained by Philoctetes had already moved from shore, outside the light of the torches. I watched the galley of Pertinax, now crowded, low in the water, pulling away, toward the ship, dark in the distance. Small boats were about it, some coming, some going. In some of the small boats there were lanterns. A number of men were about, some back of us, in the water.
“Your friend wished to accompany you,” I said. “Might his sword not have been of value?”
“He is a high officer,” said Cabot. “He is not to be risked.”
“Surely you are higher than he,” I said.