Reinforcements cut off, the Linyati shrilled glee and closed on the pirates.

A man wearing finery on the deck above was shouting orders. Gareth saw an unfired musket on the deck, had it, knelt, and shot the officer down.

But the Linyati's fighting calm didn't break.

The pirates were forced back, toward the bow of the merchantman.

"A hand here," Thom Tehidy shouted, pushing at a squat cannon. Labala, unnoticed blood dripping from a sword-slash across his chest, was beside him, helping.

Laboriously they pulled the gun back from the battery. Tehidy slashed the breeching rope, and they turned the gun around, pointing across the ship's main deck.

Someone tossed a torch through the air, and Labala had it, rammed it against the cannon's touchhole just as Gareth wondered if the thing was loaded, and the squat cannon belched fire across the deck, grapeshot scattering the Linyati.

Pirate gunners sheathed their swords, and hurriedly began reloading the gun.

Gareth heard a high squealing he remembered from his first encounter with a Linyati warship, just as the Revenge came alongside and reinforcements poured over the railing.

A cabin door on the deck above the fighters slammed open, and a nightmare burst out.

It was an enormous, tailless lizard, half again as tall as a man, with a long, fanged head like a crocodile. Its skin was composed of rainbow-hued scales, and it carried a forward-curving sword in each four-clawed hand. It moved impossibly fast, leaping down the ladder, slashing into pirates, spinning away from counterthrusts and lunges, squealing all the while.

Gareth shot at it with one of his pistols, missed, and, guts clenching, went for the monster with his sword.

Then the cannon went off again, and balls riddled the creature. It fell, but was up again, and then Labala came from nowhere with a huge ax and smashed it into the reptile's skull.

It shrieked, writhed, and fell. Labala, not taking any chances, yanked the ax free and smashed it down again, beheading the monster.

Very suddenly, the battle was over. Surviving Linyati seemed to lose all heart. Some dropped their weapons and slumped to the deck; more ran for the side and leapt overboard.

Gareth paid no mind. He gaped at the dead monster as its muscles curled and spasmed.

Labala was shaking.

"That's their god?"

"Or demon," Gareth managed.

"Forget him," Thom said. "He's dead. You and you, put this overside, just to make sure."

The two ordered pirates, pale-faced, picked up the creature, staggered to the railing, and rolled it over. Then one looked at the slimy ichor on his hands, and threw up.

The companionway was opened, and the bottled-up crew of the Steadfast stormed out, to find no one left to fight.

Gareth went to one of the Linyati, pulled him to his feet. The man slumped as though he was boneless.

"What was that?" Gareth demanded.

He had to ask twice more before the man looked at him.

"We call them Runners," the man said slowly, dully.

"What are they? Your gods? Demons?"

"No."

"Are they your priests?"

"No."

"Magicians?"

"They have great magic, but they aren't just our wizards."

"Then what?"

"Runners," the Slaver said.

"You follow their orders?"

The man nodded.

"Where did they come from?"

The man shook his head.

"Why do you follow them?"

"Because," the Linyati said, "they made us."

"They created you? Are you not-men?"

"We are men," the Linyati said.

"What do you mean, then?"

But the man refused to answer any other questions.

Gareth was considering whether he could stomach putting the man to torture, thought the Linyati still wouldn't answer, when someone shouted.

"Cap'n Radnor! Come below!"

He put the matter aside to think on, followed the voice down a ladder into the hold.

Three pirates with torches stood, gaping.

The hold gleamed silver, gold, other colors at them. Carefully lashed down was an incredible treasure, from golden ingots to strangely wrought, small statues in metal Gareth had never seen to hand-worked ceremonial weapons in gold.

He picked up a small, perfect onyx statue of a naked woman, then heard the burble of water.

"We holed her," he said. "One of our shots must've gone low."

He went to the hatch, called up to Thom Tehidy.

"Thom, get men down here! The ship's sinking, and we'll not let it go down with this cargo!"

Pirates streamed down and the riches were cut free, passed to the deck, and overside into the Steadfast and Revenge.

Two Kashi went overside to see if a sail could be fothered to seal off the hole the cannon had made. They surfaced, shaking their heads.

"The gun tore away several timbers," one called up to Gareth, "and the sea has taken others away. This ship is dying."

Gareth thought of stripping off and diving down to see for himself, decided there wasn't time.

There were still other Linyati ships to be taken.

a a a Within moments after the corsairs had streamed back to their own vessels the great Linyati merchant ship began listing heavily, going farther and farther over as each minute passed. Its railing went under, and the sea flowed, unchecked, into the open hatch. The hulk rolled, and its stem lifted, showing the cannon wound that had doomed her.

Then her nose went down, and her stern rose high in the air, and she slid under.

"Now, let's look for another victim," Gareth ordered, and they raised sail and turned east.

The shattered Linyati convoy was a melee of ships, some still with headway, fighting with their cannon or trying to flee. These were being pursued, or brought to battle with gunfire or boarding.

The battle was not one-sided. Gareth saw a ship with the black flag at its truck sinking, a scattering of boats pulling away.

There was no question of stopping to pick up survivors while the treasure ships were still to be taken. After the battle there'd be time a and riches a enough for mercy, and no pirate expected otherwise.

Gareth wished he had something better than signal flags to let Dafflemere know about these Runners, and to try to bring them down, for it seemed, mostly, to break the Linyati's spirit.

But not always.

The Freedom and the Naijak found them. They'd boarded the two Linyati who'd rammed each other, and also found great treasure, although the Naijak had been swept with two broadsides as the boarders were going across, losing men on its gun deck and its mizzen mast.

But there were no Runners aboard, so unless the monsters had gone overboard, or hidden, they weren't always to be found. But these Linyati fought to the last man.

Again, a puzzlement, and for another day.

This day was for loot.

The Revenge and the Steadfast caught up with another merchantman, this one less full of fight than the first. They stood off and cannoned its guns into submission, the little Goodhope nipping here and there like a terrier after a bull.

Again they boarded, and this time the Linyati dropped their arms and stood, waiting to be killed, after a few minutes. But they found no Runner, and Gareth wondered if there was only one with the treasure fleet.

One of the handful of surviving Linyati warships attacked, and the Revenge fired chainshot, bringing down its main mast in a clutter of canvas and wood, leaving it dead in the water.

They looted the merchantmen, filling their holds with gold. Now they disdained unknown metals and silver, keeping only gold and jewels.

Gareth watched his men pass treasure into the Steadfast's hold, noticed that the wind had changed, and now was blowing onshore. Dafflemere's spell must have broken. But the change would bring no good to the Linyati a" the swifter, more maneuverable pirates could chase them right to the beach.

"This," Labala said, "is a day to remember. I guess my dream of sharks was false, or that we are the sharks."

"It is a great day," Gareth said. "We'll have a worthy homecoming, and a" "

He was interrupted by a cry from the masthead: "Sail ho! Many ships to port!"

In these waters they could only be Linyati.

"More treasure for the taking," Labala said.

"Maybe," Gareth said, and went to the lookout's position with a glass.

They weren't merchantmen, not with the three rakish sails of the Linyati warships. But these were bigger than any he'd seen.

He counted fifteen, in two inverted V formations, creaming waves at their prow, the wind at their stern, sailing hard toward the battle.

Gareth went down the mast quickly.

"Cut away from that ship," he ordered Thom Tehidy, who looked bewildered, then saw the onrushing Linyati.

Gareth ordered signal flags up to alert the other pirates and found a speaking trumpet.

"All hands! All hands!" he shouted. "Back aboard your ships, and make full sail! We've fallen into a Linyati trap!

"Now it's our turn to run!"

Thirteen.

The pirates, no longer wolves but the broken herd, fled in all directions under full sail, all organization broken.

"What orders, Cap'n?" Tehidy shouted.

The wind, possibly magical, was driving them toward shore, favoring the attacking Linyati who, offshore, now held the weather gauge.

"Due east," Gareth ordered, and the Steadfast, flanked by the other four ships in his Company, drove away from the battle.

They weren't sailing at top speed, all of them heavy-laden with treasure. The Naijak, missing its aft mast, was trailing to the rear.

"Look there," Tehidy said, passing Gareth a glass. Gareth saw the Thruster, Dafflemere's ship, being attacked by three Linyati warships, then something more important: Five of the Linyati, holding close formation, were coming after him.

"Labala!"