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.

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 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 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 dessicated 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, fringed with reefs extending out two or three miles. All, that is, except for one channel leading to an equally narrow slash in the cliffs. Behind that narrow slash, half a mile long but no more than a hundred feet wide at most, lay an immense landlocked harbor, large enough to accommodate three times the Brotherhood's two hundred ships. Climbing up the steep sides of that harbor were all the buildings that housed the Brotherhood and all the activities needed to sustain their power. Looming over fleet, harbor, and town alike was the vast gray bulk, visible fifty miles away on a clear day, called only the Mountain. It separated the southern portion of the island from the northern. Over winding, easily blocked paths the meat, grain, and garden stuffs from the farms and herds that filled the northern portion of the island came in to feed the Brotherhood and fill its storerooms. Those storerooms, Tuabir said, never held less than a year's ample rations. The Brotherhood could loll in comfort in its fortress and sneer at any opponent for far longer than that opponent could keep a fleet near or an army on the island. They had in fact done so three times.

Tuabir ordered the sails furled and the masts lowered into their cradles amidships. The rowers manned their benches, and the drums began to beat a slow, creeping cadence. Thunderbolt was just approaching the entrance to the channel, marked by two squat buoys with glass oil lanterns mounted on them, when a red flag went up on a pole jutting out from the cliff to the left of the passage through the rock.