Now Blade was alone on the enemy's deck. For the moment there was no way for his shipmates to follow him, but he'd attacked so fast that the pirates didn't realize they only faced one man. Now he went into action so furiously that most of the pirates didn't live long enough to learn the truth. Blade's ax danced and whirled around him, until approaching him was rather like trying to grab a rotating buzz saw barehanded. He cleared a circle around him, then started forward, stepping over the bodies and parts of bodies he'd strewn across the deck.

Before he'd gone three steps he found merchant sailors crowding around him, grabbing his arms and shoulders to pull back and shouting in his ear: «Enough!»

«Love o' the gods, no more!»

«Ye've done ten men's work today.»

«We'll not lose our lucky man!»

Blade shook off the hands and was about to reply when all the sailors started cheering so wildly they couldn't have heard him. While he was fighting on the deck of the first pirate ship, the last one had taken aboard all the survivors from both and cast off. She was a hundred yards away and her sails were filling as she turned to flee. Most of the survivors were crowded amidships. Some must have gone below and manned the oars Blade saw thrusting out of ports below the side platforms.

Blade didn't think that either oars or sails were going to get the ship clear in time. The black galley was racing in toward her at a speed rowers couldn't hope to keep up for more than a few minutes. They wouldn't have to, either. The galley would intercept the pirate ship long before the other could either gain speed or come about on a new course. A lateen-rigged ship can sail closer to the wind than a square-rigger, but a galley driven by hard-worked oars can ignore the wind entirely.

The gap between the pursuer and the pursued shrank to two hundred yards, then one hundred. The decks of the galley were almost deserted, and now Blade saw why. She'd left half her fighting men to defend the second merchantman and board the pirate attacking her. The rest of the crew was now below at the oars. Dividing your forces this way was always a gamble, but here it looked like a winning one. Blade hoped he'd have a chance to meet the galley captain, who seemed to know his business.

As the black galley closed in, the pirates saw they weren't going to escape and instead turned to meet their enemy. The pirate's oars thrashed, trying to turn the ship around in spite of the drag of her sails to meet the galley bow to bow. The pirates didn't succeed. The galley swept in, her oars suddenly trailed as her rowers braced themselves for the crash, then her ram drove hard into the pirate's port side. Even across several hundred yards of water Blade heard the screams from pirates crushed by the ram or maimed by flailing oars. Other pirates flew into the air, as if from a springboard, as the port-side platform buckled under them.

The pirates started throwing grappling hooks, and if they'd been able to hold the galley they might still have boarded her. Instead the galley's rowers backed water furiously, pulling clear of their crippled enemy before any hooks could land. The galley's oars trailed again as the rowers poured up on deck, snatching up weapons apparently laid out ready for them.

As it turned out, there wasn't much further work for the galley's crew. Before she was well clear of the pirate, the other ship was listing sharply to port. A few pirates dropped their weapons and began leaping over the side. The rest clung to the rigging, apparently determined to go down with their ship. The galley made no effort to pick up the swimmers. In fact, as soon as they were within range, the men on her deck started hurling spears and stones and shooting arrows at the pirates in the water. One by one they screamed and thrashed out their lives in a flurry of blood and foam, or just quietly sank. By the time the last of the swimmers was gone, so was the pirate ship. Nothing was left behind except a dozen or so floating bodies, and a patch of sea faintly tinted pink.

The cheering around Blade had stopped when the galley rammed the pirate. Now it started again, and much of the cheering was for Blade. If the deck of the pirate ship hadn't been slick with blood and swaying gently to the waves, some of Blade's shipmates would have tried to lift him on their shoulders. As it was, they pounded his back and shoulders and embraced him until he felt he wanted some armor to keep his ribs intact. Most of the Goharans were smaller than he was, but they seemed to be nearly all muscle.

At last Blade pushed his way clear of the sailors and scrambled back aboard the merchant ship. If the Goharans fought the pirates without taking prisoners, Blade wanted to get back to the pirate chief he'd stunned and protect him. As a matter of principle, he'd be damned if he was going to let anyone kill a man he'd taken prisoner. Also, he wanted to learn more about the pirates than he suspected the Goharans would care to tell him. He was on the Gobarans' side for now, but that sort of thing could very easily change in Dimension X.

Blade was wrong about the Goharans taking no prisoners when they fought the pirates. The men the galley left behind aboard the small merchantman quickly cleared her deck of pirates, then boarded the pirate ship alongside. By the time the rammed pirate ship sank, the galley's men were well on the way to capturing the last enemy. A few more minutes, and some of the pirates started jumping overboard, to drown themselves or be shot by archers. Many of the rest tried to surrender, and about twenty succeeded.

By the time Blade learned this, the pirate chief he'd stunned had recovered consciousness and would have been sitting up if he hadn't been bound hand and foot. Now that he could get a close look at one of the pirates, Blade realized that they were both more and less human than he'd realized. In addition to the red-scaled skin and the webbed clawed hands and feet, they had no hair and oversized, slightly pointed ears. On the other hand, they had basically human proportions-Blade had seen plenty of men with equally massive torsos and short thick legs. The faces were definitely human, except for oddly thin lips and broad noses with nostrils like slits. The genitals were entirely human, and there were no spines or gills.

At this point in Blade's examination, the pirate's wide dark eyes not only opened but focused on the Englishman standing over him.

«You did me-no good-saving me,» the pirate chief said. He spoke Goharan, but so softly and with such an accent that Blade could understand him only with difficulty. Fortunately the pirate also spoke very slowly.

«I don't kill brave fighting men when they're no danger to me,» said Blade.

«You didn't, but-the Island of Shells-will.» Apparently he noticed Blade's blank expression, since he went on at once. «Island-the Goharans send us there to dive-and die.»

«You can escape from any prison, but not from being dead.»

«Not escape from-dishonor.»

Blade didn't laugh. He didn't want to hurt the pirate chiefs already battered feelings, and in any case he'd never found anything to laugh at in the notion of «honor.» Some of the things people called honor were fairly silly, and so were many of the things they'd do to protect it. Still, there were things Blade himself would die rather than do or let be done, and even those who sneered loudest at «honor» probably also had their limits.

Blade nodded. «Perhaps. But among my people it takes more than merely being captured to lose honor. It's dishonor to become a faithful servant of your captors, but I don't see you doing that.»

The pirate chief managed a feeble smile, showing yellowish, ridged triangular teeth. Then he looked Blade up and down. «Your-people? You-not of Gohar?»