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Oshawal Rida's son, a full Brother and Captain, may ask the right to join the
Brotherhood and take Oshawal's place."
Before Blade could decide how to answer, there was a scream from behind him.
The door to his left flew open with a crash and two pirates dragged a
half-naked Alixa out onto the deck. The other pirates stared, and Blade saw
eyes open and tongues drawn across lips. Before anyone else could move or
speak, he stepped forward and placed his sword across Alixa's shoulders.
"Hold!" he roared. "If I am worthy to join your Brotherhood, then I claim
protection for this lady, my betrothed, and for that man with the swords at
his throat, my sworn comrade. Accept them also, or start guessing how many of
you will die before I am slain!"
There were black looks of frustrated lust in Blade's direction. Somebody
growled, "They said the daughter too," before somebody else snarled, "Shut up,
you loose-jawed fool!" Blade took a firm grip on his sword, prepared to first
give Alixa a quick death, then sell his own life at the expense of as many
pirates as possible.
The small man raised a hand, and the mutterings died away. "It is not writ so
in the Law of the
Brotherhood. But for such a fighting man as you seem, the Law can be eh, bent,
I daresay. Silence!" to the men behind him. "Those words of the Law were to
give us good fighting men. Any of you yapping dogs who think this be not a
good fighting man, step forward and best him as he bested Oshawal. Then
I'll own you true and rightful chief." The silence finally came. "Then so be
it." He stepped forward and stretched out both hands to take Blade's.
CHAPTER 7
«^»
That evening Blade stood at the railing of the late Oshawal's galley,
Thunderbolt, and watched the flames roar up from Triumph. To one side of him
at a discreet distance stood Alixa and a little beyond her
Brora, and to the other side stood Oshawal's first mate, the wiry little
pirate who had offered Blade entrance into the Brotherhood. His name was
Tuabir.
Blade was contemplating the road by which he had traveled to his new status as
a pirate of Neral, or at least a candidate for the status. It was a precarious
position, but almost certainly better than waiting around as a high-ranking
prisoner until it was discovered that no ransom would ever be forthcoming for
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him. And he had made it less precarious than it might have been by a stroke of
practical leadership.
In answer to the grumbling among Oshawal's men about taking an
ignorant fighter, perhaps a landlubber, as captain, Blade had climbed on
the railing and spoken to them.
"Oshawal Rida's son was a mighty warrior whose prowess will be sung for
centuries. And he was also a wise man in the ways of the sea. Before I am
worthy to step into his shoes, I must gain some small part of that same
wisdom. When we reach Neral, I shall ask some worthy Brother and Captain to
take me on as mate and teach me the ways of the sea. When I have learned
enough, I shall return to take my place aboard Thunderbolt. Until then, follow
Tuabir. I will not lead brave men into danger through not knowing the ways of
the sea." In the wake of that speech, the grumblings turned to cheers, the
black looks faded, and he caught sight of Tuabir nodding and grinning.
Of his two companions, the realistic Alixa, grief-stricken as she was for her
dead father, had yet accepted Blade's stratagem with a shrug of her graceful
shoulders. Blade, after all, had used a ruse much like what she herself had
planned. Moreover, she admitted that it was one that would quite possibly
offer
them both a much better chance of safety than hers. Still, he did not venture
to approach her or speak to her that evening as she stood by the rail of
Thunderbolt, wrapped in her blue cloak and watching the flames roar up from
Triumph in an eye-searing pyramid.
Brora, on the other hand, had nearly thrown himself overboard rather than
accept the protection of someone who had turned traitor to all honest seamen
by joining the pirates. Blade was even less willing to approach the tough
sailor that evening. He knew Brora would have preferred to be, if not a corpse
burning in the flames, at least one of the shackled slaves in the lower
benches and holds of Thunderbolt and her sister vessels. Blade knew that only
learning he had joined the pirates with the intention of escaping as soon as
possible would make Brora respect him again. But that intention was something
he would have to keep secret for some time to come and pay whatever price
might be necessary.
Certainly he had no idea of how it might be accomplished, the morning after
the burning of the ship, when a sea flecked with whitecaps tossed burned
timbers about. Even Indhios' gold could not keep a fleet of Neraler pirates
together beyond the moment of victory. The fleet was breaking up. Those ships
that had lost too many men for safe navigation or further fighting began the
long beat to the northwest, homeward bound for Neral. Those still strong
enough for further raiding or with crews greedy for more loot turned the
opposite way, to spread out along the shipping lanes in search of their next
prey.
With her captain and fifteen of her men dead, Thunderbolt was one of those
that turned for home.
Day darkened into night, which in turn faded into day, and so it continued for
seventeen days and nights.
Although the lateen-rigged Thunderbolt could sail closer to the wind than any
square-rigger, it was still a long beat. On more than one occasion Tuabir
abandoned hope of making any progress against the contrary winds. Then the
drums beat the crew and the slaves to man the sixty oars and pounded out the
cadence that kept those oars moving until the winds blew right again. And on
one occasion they had to furl the sails, batten down oarports and hatches, and
run helpless as a canoe shooting rapids before a howling northwest gale that
blew for two days.
It was during that gale that Alixa decided to make the best of the fact that
she and Blade would be much in each other's company for a long time, and there
would be none to judge what they did except the rough and bawdy pirates. Blade
realized they would wonder if a lusty man betrothed to such a magnificent
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specimen of female did not indulge himself as often as possible. Nor did he
really disagree with Alixa's notion that there was no point in observing the
proprieties conjured up by the desiccated chaperones of an over-civilized
court. He had always been a man to take his pleasures as lustily and as
frequently as possible. So Alixa spent most of those two nights and others
afterwards in Blade's bed, and by no means all of that time was spent
sleeping.
They had eleven days of voyaging after the storm blew itself out,
eleven days of fair skies, cooperative winds, and seas sometimes
whitecapped but never wild.
On the evening of the seventeenth day just before sunset the lookout called
down, "Land ho." An hour later Blade on deck saw the line of the horizon that
was Neral. Tuabir told him that it was customary to lie off until morning
unless one was being pursued and not enter the harbor by night. When morning
came and Blade, after a bout with Alixa and a refreshing sleep afterwards,
came on deck, he saw why.
And he also saw why Neral had never been taken or even seriously threatened
since the Brotherhood had made it their base some hundred or more years
before.
The island was a natural fortress further improved by human ingenuity. It
stretched away some forty miles to the north. But it was the south end, the
one they were approaching, that was the heart of its strength. The entire
southern end of the island was sheer cliff more than two hundred feet high,
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