I watched the long, looping trajectory of a bowl of flaming pitch, trailing a streamer of smoke, near us, and then fall with a hissing splash into the water nearby.

"Save your fire. Steady!" called Callimachus. Then, later, he called, "Back oars!"

An occasional stone, or globe of pitch, was lofted towards us, but fell short.

Callimachus, with a glass of the builders, surveyed the chain.

"Look, Lads," called he. "See what small respect they have for you!"

I, and some others, went to the bow. Some five longboats were crossing the chain.

"Places, Lads!" laughed Callimachus.

I had no station, so I remained in the bow. The others, mostly oarsmen, returned to the benches, and the stern.

The men in the longboats carried swords and grapples. Did they truly think to engage us? Our galley, like most of Gorean construction, was low and shallow drafted, but still its bulwarks would loom above the gunnels of a simple longboat.

The _Tina_ knifed toward the chain. We rode over the first longboat, shattering it, its bow and stern snapping upward, its crew screaming and leaping into the water. Another was fouled in the oars of our starboard side and capsized. The other three fled back toward the chain.

I saw then that their action had been diversionary, to occupy us while other longboats, fixed with wicker shields, of the sort used for naval bowmen, lay along the chain. Behind those shields, like shapes and shadows, distinguishable behind the wicker, men tore with saws at the chain.

The diversion, though, had been too brief.

Once again the _Tina_ approached the chain, swinging about now, broadside to the chain.

"Fire!" cried Callimachus.

Arrows lanced into the heavy wicker but, though several pierced it by a foot, they did little damage. The shafts were caught in the heavy wicker. Too, now, from the pirates' galleys, protecting their longboats, there sped a fierce counterfire. The wicker shields of our own archers were now bristling with feathers and wood.

A heavy stone broke away the railing of the stern castle of the _Tina_.

"Closer! Closer!" called Callimachus.

I heard the hiss and snap of our catapults, the twisted ropes snapping loose. When the largest one fired I could feel the reaction in the deck boards beneath my feet.

Flaming pitch was flung at close quarters. Arrows traversed the air in swift menace.

An arm suddenly appeared over the bulwark. Then a man, wet, scrambled aboard. I met him with the sword and, grappling, kicking, I forced him back overboard.

Burning pitch spattering and exploding out of a clay vessel skidded across the deck.

I could hear battle horns to port and starboard.

Not more than a dozen feet away I could see a pirate longboat behind the chain, protected by wicker shields.

Stones and pitch, at point-blank range, pounded and exploded between ships.

I could see, clearly, the eyes of pirates, no more than a few feet away, we separated from them by the chain, and a few feet of water.

A man rose from behind the bulwarks of the enemy vessel, bow in hand.

Then he was reeling back, an arrow in his chest.

I heard the chain scraping at the side of the _Tina_, then the shearing blade on our starboard side, swinging to starboard, struck the wood of a longboat. We slid along the chain, then, the oars on our starboard side striking loose the wicker shielding of another longboat, too close to the chain, and spilling men into the water.

I saw pirates, on the galley opposite, shaking their fists at us.

But the _Tina_, the chain cleared, was now swinging about. There was the wreckage of two longboats in the water. Half submerged, a wicker shield floated behind the chain.

I heard men behind me extinguishing the flames on the _Tina_.

"Back oars," called Callimachus. And the _Tina_ backed away again from the chain, her bow facing it.

The pirate vessels, too, had withdrawn from the chain. It was near the tenth Ahn, the Gorean noon.

Callimachus descended from the stem castle, leaving his officer at that post. He took some water in his helmet and, using it as a basin, splashed his face with it.

"We have held them at the chain," I said to Callimachus. He wiped his face with a towel, handed to him by a fellow.

"For the time," he said.

"Do you think the Voskjard will now withdraw?" I asked.

"No," he said. He handed back the towel to the fellow who had given it to him.

"What will we do now?" I asked.

"Rest," he said.

"When do you think the Voskjard will try again?" I asked.

"What do you think?" he asked.

"Tonight," I said.

"Of course," he said.

Slowly, in the darkness, the _Tina_ prowled the chain. The sound of the oars, softly entering the water, drawing and lifting, was almost inaudible.

"They are out there, somewhere," said Callimachus.

"Still?" I asked.

"Of course," he said.

Two ship's lanterns, suspended on poles, thrust over the bow, to port and starboard, cast pools of yellow light on the water. In the light of the starboard lantern, here and there, where the chain was visible above the water, as it was between certain pylons, we could see the dark links; generally, however, it was invisible, concealed by the surface.

"Quiet," said Callimachus. "Hold!" he called, softly, back to the oar master, who stood now behind the stem castle. The oars of the _Tina_ lifted and slid partly inboard. The ship, with its momentum, drifted forward, south along the chain. We heard the chain grate then, on the hull, below the starboard shearing blade.

"What did you hear?" I asked.

We looked over the side, at the chain, suspended some six inches here above the water, and at the water, flickering in the lantern's light. "They were here," said Callimachus. "I am sure of it. Do not enter the light."

I drew back.

"It is hopeless," he said, dismally. "They may come and go as they please, withdrawing at our approach."

"There is little we can do about it," I said.

"Extinguish the lanterns," said Callimachus. "Wait! Bucklers and swords! Bucklers and swords, Lads!"

Almost at the instant that he had spoken grappling iron looped over the bulwarks and snapped back, the points anchoring in the wood. We saw tension in the irons as men climbed the ropes secured to them. But they were met, as dark shapes at the bulwarks, screaming and cursing, by fierce defenders, thrusting them back with bucklers, darting steel into their bodies. They were emerging from longboats and must climb up and over the bulwarks; they could not, bulwark to bulwark, leap to our deck; the advantages were fully ours; only one reached the deck, and we threw his lifeless body, thrust through in a dozen places, back into the Vosk, after its retreating fellows.

Callimachus wiped his sword on his cloak. "Additional insult have they done to us," he grinned. "Do they think we are an undefended merchantman, to assail us so boldly, so foolishly?"

"As you slew a man," I said, "you cried out with pleasure."

"Did I?" asked Callimachus.

"Yes," I said.

"When you, too, drove your blade into the body of a man, I thought you, too, cried out with pleasure," said Callimachus.

"I could not have done so," I said.

"You did," grinned Callimachus.

"I do not recall it," I said.

"In the press of battle," said Callimachus, "it is sometimes hard to be aware of all that transpires."

"You seem exhilarated," I said.

"I am," said he, "and so, too, seem you."

"No," I said, uncertainly, "it cannot be."

"But it is," said Callimachus.

"I do not think I know myself," I said.

"You are a man," said Callimachus. "Perhaps it is time that you made your own acquaintance."