Kingdom of Royth.

byJeffrey Lord.

CHAPTER 1.

The official Rolls-Royce carrying J toward the Tower of London was not quite like the advertis.e.m.e.nts-so quiet that all he could hear was the ticking of the electric clock. But it was almost that quiet, and otherwise there were only faint traffic noises outside. It was eleven o'clock on a spring night, and London was either going to sleep or already asleep.

J would normally have been in bed and asleep also. Part of his rise to the position of head of the special intelligence branch MI6 was the result of years of rising early, not only before the dawn but before his rivals (and his enemies). But tonight Richard Blade was being hurled through Lord Leighton's gigantic computer on his ninth journey into Dimension X. J would sooner have violated the Official Secrets Act than not be on hand when his best agent-almost like a son to him was hurled off into some fantastic other world to live or die by his own quick wits and superb physical prowess.

Blade had made the same journey eight times. The first time it had been by accident, when an experiment indirectly linking one of Lord Leighton's earlier computers to Blade's mind has gone spectacularly awry. The remaining times, however, his journeys had been part of a deliberately contrived project to explore what was now called Dimension X, for the benefit of England. Over the short time of its existence, Project Dimension X had grown from a bee in Lord Leighton's white-haired bonnet to a ma.s.sive undertaking housed in a self-contained complex more than two hundred feet below the Tower. Its financing swallowed money to the tune of better than half a million pounds a year. It drew on the talents of some thirty of England's most brilliant men-scientists, engineers, psychologists-without letting them know what they were serving. Only four people in the whole world-J hoped-knew full details. Blade, Lord Leighton, the Prime Minister, and J himself.

In spite of the Prime Minister's generosity with priorities, financing, and staffing, Project Dimension X still had a weak point. That weak point was Richard Blade himself. J grinned wryly at the notion of Blade, with his mind and body and experience, being a "weak point." Then the grin faded.

It was true. Dimension X could not be explored or exploited without somebody going through the computer. So far, the only person able to go through the computer and return alive and sane was Blade himself. One other man had tried; he had returned permanently insane. A dozen others had been considered; all had been rejected. All fell short of Blade's perfection.

But however perfect Blade might be, there was a limit to what he could take. Sooner or later his brain would suffer major damage from too much stress placed on it too often by the computer. Even worse, somewhere out in Dimension X his mighty strength might not be great enough, his lightning reflexes not fast enough, and he would not come back at all.

It was absolutely necessary to find at least one other man, and preferably several, who could survive a trip into Dimension X, both physically and mentally. They needed to take the strain off Blade for his sake. Even more, if he cracked or vanished before they found somebody else, the whole Dimension X project would come to a standstill, possibly for good. That would benefit n.o.body and nothing.

All of which explained why J was in the official Rolls-Royce heading into London. An hour ago he had been high over the Atlantic in an airliner. To all eyes he had been a tall, elderly impeccably Establishment businessman or civil servant. He had just completed a mission to Washington, a mission personally ordered by the Prime Minister. He had been discreetly inquiring of the Americans whether they had any good agents that might be available for a joint Anglo-American project. Making the inquiries widely enough to get useful information but not so widely that American curiosity was aroused and they started inquiring in their turn had been one of the most delicate jobs of J's whole career. He thought it had gone well. At any rate, he already had seven names and the promise of a thorough search of the staffs of American intelligence agencies for more. Between that and the Prime Minister's equally discreet inquiries in England's armed forces, something should turn up.

Of course, it would be preferable for the Project to remain an all-British affair. If the Americans provided men, they would also be sure to demand a share of any benefits from the Project. But even dividing the benefits with the Americans was preferable to suspending the Project entirely. And it was even more preferable to keeping it going with Blade alone until it destroyed him.

J caught himself. Was he thinking too much of saving Blade and not enough of their common duty to England? If he was, it was time to face the fact that he was getting old and hand over his job to a younger, more dispa.s.sionate man. Then he remembered that even if he retired as chief of M16, he would still be involved with Project Dimension X. The Prime Minister had specifically asked him to stay on even after retirement as the Government's representative with the Project. He had agreed. The Prime Minister had tried to present this as a high honor, and J supposed that in a way it was. But, and here he grinned again, it was also an easy way of saving the Prime Minister from having to deal directly with Lord Leighton very often. Leighton might be England's most brilliant scientist, and he might have forgotten more about computers than any other five men in the world had learned. But that didn't make him any less eccentric, irritable, or maddeningly difficult to work with.

J was still running futures-Blade's, his own, and the Project's-back and forth in his mind when the Rolls drew up at the entrance to the Tower. He climbed out, then smiled broadly as a tall figure with an escort of dour Special Branch men loomed up out of the darkness. It was very decent of Richard to come out to meet him here on the surface, even though they couldn't exchange any serious words until they had left the escort behind.

They did that at the ma.s.sive, gleaming bronze doors marking the head of the elevator shaft down to the complex far below. The door swished shut behind them and the elevator began its unnerving plunge downwards. J turned to Blade and thrust out his hand.

"How are you; Richard? I'm sorry I couldn't get back until just now. I wouldn't have been able to do even that if the P.M. hadn't sent an official car out to the airport for me."

Blade grinned and took the offered hand in a strong grasp. "It wouldn't have mattered. Lord Leighton said we were going to wait before starting the sequence until you arrived, however long that might be."

"Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned!" J's eyebrows rose. "I'm almost prepared to believe that Lord L is developing some human feelings at last."

"Quite possibly. He-" Blade was interrupted as the elevator sighed to a stop. The doors slid open, revealing the familiar long corridor stretching away under the lights.

As they stepped from the elevator, Lord Leighton popped out of a side door like the White Rabbit. He looked even more like an industrious gnome than usual as he scuttled ahead of them down the corridor on his polio-twisted legs. His hunchbacked body bounced inside the grimy white laboratory smock. As they moved along through the familiar series of electronically guarded doors, he kept up a cheerful stream of comment.

"Very glad you could get back in time, J. Richard knew you'd want to be around for the send-off; talked my arm and half my leg off persuading me to wait. No good reason not to, of course. We can start the main sequence any time we choose. The problem's always going to be making adjustments once the sequence is started. So far we haven't had any malfunctions in the middle. We'll have to make some modifications in the sequencing procedure, though. Put in a provision for "holds" like the Americans use on their s.p.a.ce launches. Don't want to put Richard halfway into Dimension X and leave half of him here, do we?"

J found Leighton's cheerfulness more than a trifle ghoulish and his technical comments about as intelligible as if they had been in Chinese. But it again occurred to him-might Leighton possibly be developing some human sensibilities about the whole Project? Was the cheerful patter an effort to conceal a sudden nervousness of his own, as well as to attack the nervousness he a.s.sumed J and Blade were feeling? J certainly didn't mind admitting to having the wind up a bit, as usual. He turned to look at Richard, striding along in ma.s.sive silence beside him. Blade's lips wore a very faint smile, but it seemed to be pasted on, out of keeping with the rest of his manner, which was preoccupied and a bit tense. Hardly surprising, that. Blade had been a first-cla.s.s field operative for MI6 for the better part of twenty years and had survived more unexpected dangers than most men would encounter in ten lifetimes. But even the worst field a.s.signment didn't throw an agent literally naked into a situation about which he knew absolutely nothing beforehand. So far, Blade's physical and mental qualities had brought him through safely. But this sort of good luck couldn't last indefinitely.

As if he had been thinking along the same lines, Blade turned to J and said, "How was the American mission, sir? Do I plan to retire on my laurels after this trip?" There was a note of self-mockery in Blade's voice that made J feel a little better. Richard was as ready as ever to take whatever the world-this or any other one-might throw at him.

"Don't start planning your retirement yet," J replied in the same light tone. "It's too soon to see if the Americans can come up with anybody good enough. I have a few names, but that's all for the moment. I haven't yet even worked out a proper cover story for bringing them over here for testing."

Blade nodded. "Lord L thinks he may be on to a method for the advanced testing of candidates. Not just physically, but mentally as well."

J nodded grimly. He thought of the ruined sh.e.l.l of a man locked away for the remainder of his life in a North County inst.i.tution because his mind had not survived the trip into Dimension X, even though his body had returned. Lord Leighton turned around and also nodded.

"If the mental breakdown was the result of some physical effect that the computer has on the subject's brain, we're barking up the wrong tree. And if it turns out that Richard is the only man in the world with a brain immune to that effect-well, we're in a nasty situation. But if it's simply a question of a man's being unable to adapt to such a fantastically different environment, one of the psychiatrists thinks he may have developed a new method of testing for stress tolerance. If it-ah, here we are."

As always, the main computer room, filled with the great shadowy bulks with their crackled finish and the swarm of writhing multicolored wires reminded J of an abandoned temple of some fantastic and sinister religion overrun by the jungle. And the squat black chair in its gla.s.s cubicle in the middle looked like an altar for sacrifices of a highly unpleasant sort.

Blade, however, seemed entirely relaxed and at home. He turned to J and said, "Well, sir, it looks like that time again. No point in making Lord L wait any longer." They shook hands, and Blade stepped into the dressing room.

Inside, he quickly stripped naked and began smearing on the black paste that protected him from electrical burns as the computer's immense power surged through his body. Now that the time was drawing near, he felt his tension slipping away. It was replaced by antic.i.p.ation. Apart from what it might bring for England, the whole Project offered him an endless series of challenges and adventures. And it was a love of these that had helped bring him into the intelligence service in the first place.

This time, of course, he was not running away from a broken love affair or running toward some place he hoped might cure an inexplicable and maddening impotence. He had resigned himself to a series of fleeting relationships with women as long as he was working on the Project. As for his virility, neither he nor any of his recent partners could have any reasonable complaints on that score. No, it was just a case of going out once more to do what he did well and, when you got right down to it, enjoyed doing.

He pulled on the loincloth. This was purely a gesture, since it had never yet survived the trip. He stepped out into the chamber and strode over to the chair. He knew the routine by now to the point that he felt like twiddling his thumbs as Lord L adjusted the net of restraining straps, then began attaching the cobra-headed electrodes to every part of Blade's body. This went on until he was festooned with wires-blue, green, yellow, red-leading off in every direction into the guts of the computer, like some mad artist's vision of an octopus.

Then there was a further wait, while Blade's impatience began to build. Of course Leighton had to double-check everything. Still, why did he always have to be so b.l.o.o.d.y slow about it? Blade took several breaths as deep as the straps permitted and tried to relax.

Finally everything was ready. J moved aside and raised a hand in farewell as Lord L stepped slowly up to the main console and poised his hand over the master control switch. He turned and looked inquiringly at Blade. "Ready, my boy?"

"Ready, sir."

"Good luck."

The gnarled hand pressed the master switch. There was a hum of surging power, then the shrill wailing of a hundred thousand flutes filled the chamber and made the air turn a liquid green. Everything around Blade turned green too, except for the figures of J and Lord L. They turned blue, then shrank and became dwarfed and monkeylike, scratched themselves and clambered frantically up the face of the computer. The electrodes writhed and twisted and pulled themselves free from his body, turning to snakes as they did so. The snakes wriggled furiously across the floor and swarmed up the face of the computer after the fleeing monkey figures.

Just as the snakes reached them, the face of the computer itself cracked open in a hundred places. Blade cringed as the great slabs of facing came pouring down on him and then poured through him, and a tangible blackness flooded out from the vast hole where the computer had been, gushing out until Blade was completely surrounded by it and the snakes and monkeys were both gone.

Then the blackness receded slightly, and Blade was standing on a concrete block with harsh blue lights pouring down on him from all around. A voice was chanting tonelessly, "Five-four-three-two-one-LIFT-OFF!" Fire spewed out from under the block and he and it together began to rise into the sky. Quickly they were out of the blue lights, rising again into thick blackness, until the flames gushing from the block died and it fell away. Blade hurtled alone through the dark, then felt himself slowing. His climb ceased; he rolled over and began to fall, silently, with no sensation of air rushing past or of anything except the falling, the endless falling.

CHAPTER 2.

Blade suddenly realized that he had made the transition into Dimension X. The fall was now a real, physical one. Before he had even had time to wonder where he was going to come down, he hit water with a tremendous splash. He plunged deep enough for the light to turn green, then kicked his way to the surface. The water was cool enough for the coolness to be noticeable, but not enough for it to be uncomfortable. That was fortunate. He might have landed in the local equivalent of the Arctic Ocean, in which case he would have been dead within three minutes. Even so, this was the first time he had found himself in water immediately after a transition.

Treading water, he took stock of the situation as he had done eight times before. As always, he had a splitting headache. And as always, the loincloth had gone, leaving him as naked as any fish that might swim in this-river, lake, sea?-where he had landed. He licked his lips. Salt. So it was an ocean or sea. Next question: how far was he from sh.o.r.e? He was a powerful swimmer-twenty miles was nothing to him-but if he was out in the middle of something the size of, say, the Atlantic Ocean, he was in a sticky situation. Before, it had been a question of landing in the middle of battles or at least of some inhabited territory where he had to fight or at least communicate with the local inhabitants immediately. Now, half his problem was the lack of people.

The headache had faded enough now so that he could raise his head and look around. The sea was calm, broken only by a gentle swell no more than two or three feet high. Above its surface nothing moved except the faintest of breezes. The air itself was warm and moist, faintly scented with something Blade at first had trouble identifying. Then he realized it was the smell of smoke. Smoke? In the middle of an ocean? He resumed his scanning of the horizon-not far away, for a man in the water.

It was apparently late afternoon, with a westering sun sliding down from a flawless blue sky. But the western horizon itself had sprouted several tall columns of smoke, coiling greasily straight up into the sky for hundreds of feet before they plumed out at the top into broad, feathery clouds. There was the source of the smoke odor, but what lay at the base of those columns and clouds was invisible just beyond the horizon. Still, whatever might be there was more likely to be a source of help than the empty ocean nearer at hand. Or at least it could provide information about what sort of beings inhabited this particular Dimension. Steadily, taking his time and conserving his energy, he began to swim towards the smoke columns.

It was well over an hour before what lay at the base of the columns lifted over the horizon. Drifting sluggishly on the sea, five ships were burning. Around them like sc.u.m on a stagnant pond floated a wide circle of wreckage-spares, rigging, planking, chests and boxes, overturned boats, human bodies. Blade was elated. Here was a better chance of survival than swimming about aimlessly in the sea. He quickened his strokes. In a few more minutes, he reached the fringes of the circle, climbed on to the bottom of an overturned boat and looked more closely at the burning ships.

He now noticed that they were of two distinctly different kinds. Two of them were large, broad-beamed merchantman types, with high castles fore and aft and bluff bows. As far as he could tell from what he could see through the smoke and what the battle had left standing, they had possessed two masts, with two or possibly three square sails on each.

The other three ships were smaller, low-slung, with jutting bows apparently ending in rams. They also had two masts, but lanteen-rigged, and there were definitely oar ports in their low sides amidships.

Merchantmen and war galleys-two distinct types. Two distinct sides perhaps? And with all five ships on fire, and wreckage and bodies littering the sea, that suggested a recent battle. Blade found himself scanning the horizon again. The survivors of such a battle, if any, might not be welcome company for a man naked and unarmed. It was time to see what he could scrounge in the way of survival gear from the flotsam spread out over more than a square mile of ocean.

The boat was far too heavy in its waterlogged condition for Blade to right it by himself. But there were plenty of floating spars trailing rigging and still half-wrapped in sails. Kicking hard with his feet, he pushed two such together, added a third, then tied them together with as much rope as he could salvage without a knife to cut it. After half an hour's work, he had a ramshackle raft, three feet wide and about fifteen feet long. It rode half-submerged, like a floating log. But it saved him from having to swim or tread water continuously. And in the course of a.s.sembling his raft, he found a small piece of timber that balanced well enough in his hand to make a serviceable club.

The sun was noticeably lower in the sky now. One of the galleys finally dipped its bow under and sank with a great hissing as the fires were drowned and a great bubbling and gurgling as the last of the air escaped from the vanishing hull. Bits of charred wood popped to the surface in the disturbed water it left behind. One of the merchantmen was also visibly lower in the water. The sight of the sinking ship and the thought of oncoming night reminded Blade of the need to get himself a better weapon than the improvised club and, if possible, clothing as well. In the darkness, any survivors of the battle returning to the scene would probably be in a "strike first and ask questions afterwards" frame of mind. Blade didn't blame them, but neither did he want to be a helpless victim. He slid off the raft and swam toward the nearest of the floating boxes and chests. He hoped it hadn't belonged to the captain's mistress and so was full of her cheap jewelry and by now thoroughly waterlogged cosmetics.

The first box he opened was far from useless, though not quite as useful as one containing weapons. It held bolts of coa.r.s.e, garishly colored cloth, like burlap bags dyed purple, bright blue, red-orange. Trade goods for some primitive tribes somewhere on the remote sh.o.r.es of the ocean? Blade could not help speculating about the people of this Dimension, little evidence though he had as yet to go on. He appropriated the blue cloth and with a good deal of effort-it was tougher than he had antic.i.p.ated-improvised a loincloth and a rough hood for his head and shoulders, which were already beginning to sting from their exposure to the sun.

He was no longer naked, but he was still practically weaponless, and there were other boxes and chests and crates to examine. Some had been opened already; most of these were as empty as a sc.r.a.ped-out bowl. Others had stout bolts or locks, and he could not swing his club hard enough to smash them open while he was in the water. He had to laboriously push them over to the raft, hoist them on to it and precariously balance both them and himself while he hammered away at the fastenings. He usually fell off two or three times while working on each box, and the box itself usually slipped off the raft into the sea at least once. It was well into twilight, with a raw red and orange glow sprawling across the western horizon, and his own temper blazing nearly as brightly as the sunset, before he finally found what he was looking for.

The chest had not been completely filled with weapons, or it would probably have sunk with the weight of the metal inside. Apparently it had held the personal possessions of an officer of one of the ships-colored tunics, white breeches, a belt, a pair of black boots, linen underclothing, a green silk sash, a small enameled bra.s.s box for valuables, all jumbled together as though somebody had been hastily pawing through the chest before abandoning ship.

But there was also a sword-a rapier, all point, light and supple, and not a ceremonial weapon. The steel of the blade was good and the hilt and guard plain heavy bra.s.s without fancy ornamentation. He flexed the blade experimentally and tried a few thrusts. It would serve quite well against any opponent who wasn't wearing enough body armor to stop the point. And Blade had enough confidence in his own skill with weapons to believe he could find c.h.i.n.ks in armor into which to drive the point.

Now he had weapons and clothing of sorts, but no food or water. He was prepared to survive several weeks without food, or with only what he could catch from the ocean. But he had to find some water before another two days had gone by. He would not be dead by then, but he would be almost past the point of being able to save himself, and perhaps to the point of making some foolish mistake (like drinking salt water) that would finish him off quickly. Unfortunately, finding water was probably going to be difficult. He would not be likely to see it bobbing about in chests or boxes in the ocean. Possibly some of the water barrels in the holds of the ships were still intact.

He turned back to the ships, which he had largely ignored during his hunt for survival gear. Another of the galleys had gone down, and one of the merchantmen was so low in the water that Blade knew she also had only a few more minutes afloat. The other merchantman was still blazing too brightly to make it safe to board her. But the remaining galley had burned herself out and was floating, a charred and smoldering hulk, but yet one which might be boarded and even explored safely.

It was now almost dark, with only a faint pearly sheen in the western sky to mark the final fading of daylight. Blade recalled that in the tropical seas of Home Dimension, nightfall meant large, hungry fish roaming about, seeking what or whom they might devour. This felt like a tropical ocean; he hoped the parallel would not extend farther. It case it did, however, it was time he got moving.

The burning merchantman was spreading a pool of golden light across the surface of the sea, and as Blade turned, his superb peripheral vision caught something moving on the outer fringes of that pool. He froze, turning only his head to get a better look. Then he slowly flattened himself on his raft.

A boat was rowing out of the darkness toward the floating hulks and wreckage-a ship's boat, crowded with men and rowing about five oars a side. They were rowing very badly, Blade noticed, with much splashing and catching of crabs. The oarsmen were either untrained or nervous or both. However, that wasn't an important question. They were other human beings. Unfortunately, there was no way of knowing which side they belonged to. At least neither side had any compelling reason to be violently hostile to him, the proverbial innocent bystander. And these people were certainly a better alternative than either exploring smoldering hulks in search of water or sitting on his raft until he died of thirst. He took a firm grip on the rapier, stood up and HALOOOOED at the top of his powerful lungs.

The sound carried well over the water to the boat. Blade saw it suddenly swing around as the oars stopped. There was a dead silence that lasted until Blade wondered if his hail had stricken everyone in the boat mute or dead. Then a harsh shout came back over the water.

"Who goes there?"

Blade was no longer surprised at his ability to understand and speak the local language from his first moment in a new Dimension. Lord Leighton of course found it a fascinating psychological and physiological phenomenon and had once devoted several hours to an enthusiastic and, to Blade, totally unintelligible consideration of the various possible explanations for it. He shouted back.

"Friend!"

There were audible mutterings in reply to this, followed by another moment's silence. Then someone shouted an order and the boat swung back on course towards Blade, the oars splashing away as busily and as sloppily as before. In five minutes the boat was close enough for Blade to make out its occupants clearly-and for them to make him out also. At that point the boat stopped again. Blade grinned as he realized that this must be the result of his own appearance. If these were the survivors of the battle, the sight of a huge man whose near nakedness revealed ma.s.sive muscles and whose hand held a long and businesslike rapier would understandably be enough to make them hold back. He lowered the rapier to the raft and spread both hands out in a conciliatory gesture.

"I said 'Friend,' d.a.m.n you! What do I look like?"

That started the mutterings off again. He even heard one or two laughs. Apparently they couldn't make up their minds. Finally, one man, bare to the waist but with the air of a leader about him, stood up and shouted across.

"What was your ship, fellow?"

"None of these." Blade gestured at the hulks. "I hail from the south. My ship sank two days ago."

"Howfor it sank? No storms this part of t'ocean of late. Or did ye meet pirates too?"

"Pirates?"

"By Druk's sea-green beard, you're from a distant land if ye've no beard o' the pirates of Neral." The man's eyes narrowed. "Less'n ye be one yourself. Forbye-" and he began to rattle off a stream of words that Blade guessed must be some sort of slang. He went on until the blank incomprehension-partly natural, partly a.s.sumed-on Blade's face brought him to a stop. Then he shrugged. "If ye be not knowing the Neralers' cant, ye be none of them, tho' who ye be else I know not. Throw me over that pigsticker ye be wavin', and then swim over to us bare as a babe. I'll be leavin' no seaman here for the Neralers if they come back. But I'll not be riskin' my men either."

Blade complied. When he was safely in the boat, the man looked him over again carefully and said, "Ye look like no man I've ever seen, but Druk's not a liker of sailors who abandon a man to the sea or the Neralers. Still, ye'll be sittin' quiet and makin' no moves for a weapon, or ye'll be spitted and fed to the fishes. If-"

"Brora! Look!" somebody behind them shouted. Blade and the other man spun about to see two low-slung boats swing out from behind the abandoned galley and move towards them. Blade knew instinctively that these were the Neral pirates Brora had mentioned. He also realized that if they found him in a boatload of their enemies, they would kill him along with the rest before he could explain who he was. Even a chance to explain might not do him any good. It was time to fight.

Brora was shouting to his men. There were clatters and sc.r.a.pings of metal as swords and daggers were drawn. He raised his hands to heaven and bellowed, "Druk, save us now!" and muttered under his breath, "Why did we come back like a pack o' fools?" Blade took advantage of the distraction to s.n.a.t.c.h up his rapier. Brora turned, started, glared at Blade.

"d.a.m.n it, Brora, I told you I was a friend! The pirates will kill me just as readily as they will you! Don't waste your time distrusting me!" Brora frowned, but then nodded and handed Blade a dagger. The pirates were almost up to them now. There was no room to run, only to fight.

If the pirates had had arrows, the fight would have been hopeless. But they had only the same swords and knives as their opponents, so they had to close. As the two pirate boats moved in, oars thumping in a trained rhythm, Blade rose from the bottom of the boat to a half crouch and stared at them, trying to guess their tactics.

One boat was going to cut off their retreat; it was swinging around behind them. The other was coming straight in at full speed. In a moment Blade knew it was going to plough into them, trying to capsize them. But Brora knew his business. He yelled to the oarsmen, and they s.n.a.t.c.hed up the oars. Clumsy though they were, their frantic efforts pivoted the boat around.

The boats met bow to bow with a crash and a shock that threw practically everybody in both off their feet with curses and a clatter of weapons. Practically everybody-except Blade. Before the pirate crew could regain their feet, he was over the side of their boat, flourishing both his weapons.

The pirate leader had been ready to lead his men into the enemy's boat, so he was the first to die. Blade's longer weapon and immensely longer reach gave him a decisive advantage. The pirate leader died with the rapier jutting out the back of his neck while his own cutla.s.s whistled through the air futile inches short of Blade. Another pirate lunged forward past the leader. Blade kicked him in the stomach and laid open his throat with a slash of the dagger while jerking his rapier free to confront a third opponent.

This one bobbed and weaved, making three of Blade's thrusts miss by inches. Then the pirate sprang in and under the rapier, bringing his cutla.s.s down in a whistling slash that missed taking off Blade's arm but crashed into the guard of the rapier so hard that it flew out of Blade's hand and over the side. But the pirate was off balance for a moment, long enough for Blade to thrust the dagger into his stomach, then s.n.a.t.c.h the cutla.s.s out of the air as the man's hand unclasped. Almost with the same motion he slashed down to take off the head of a fourth pirate trying to get around the dying man.

He had killed four men in something under thirty seconds, and now the men in the boat behind him were waking from their amazement and crowding forward. But a moment later they had their own battle to fight. Out of the corner of his eye Blade saw the second pirate boat sweeping in. With a crash it smashed into the merchant sailors' boat, pushing it away from the first pirate boat. With yells and howls its crew hurled themselves on their opponents.

Blade was too busy to watch any more of that. He was alone in the bow of the first boat now, alone against eight or ten armed and furious pirates. The cutla.s.s was shorter and heavier than the rapier, but it had an edge as well as a point. He chopped down with it like a butcher chopping meat while the dagger flickered in and out. The pirates could only get at him one or two at a time without going over the side. One bolder or more imaginative type tried that. But as the man rolled himself over the side of the boat into the water, Blade parried a thrust with his dagger, slashed his current opponent across the belly with a cutla.s.s stroke, and leaped across the falling body to bring the cutla.s.s up, over, and down on the bold one's back. He felt the blade chop through the spine. The man went limp and rolled into the water with a splash, vanishing like a lead statue.

There were eleven bodies in the boat when Blade finished, and the bottom was awash two inches deep in blood. If there had been any survivors of the crew, they had thrown themselves over the side and thrashed frantically off into the darkness to get away from this monster that had hurled himself upon them. Gradually, as the fury of battle faded from his mind, Blade became aware of someone calling.

"Hoy, friend! Be ye hurt? By Druk's coral trident, that were fightin' like none ever seen!" Blade turned about and saw Brora standing in his own boat some twenty yards away, surrounded by the survivors of his own men. Another thirty yards beyond, the second pirate boat was limping off, only two or three raggedly plied oars on each side in action, and blood visible on some of the oarsmen. Brora saw Blade looking, and grinned savagely. "Aye, they be goin'. We were hard at it for a bit, but we took six or seven o' them to four of us. Then they saw what ye'd done o'er there and that were enough for 'em. Hold where ye be, friend. We'll come clean those sharks out o' their boat and take it for our own."

After the dead pirates had been stripped of usable gear and clothing and dumped over the side, the merchant sailors redistributed themselves among the two boats. While this was going on, Brora drew Blade as much out of earshot as possible and looked hard at him, with a faint smile on his weatherbeaten face.

"From the south, ye say?"

Blade shrugged. "As much as any place. I'm a footloose type by nature."

"And a fighter. I've seen no sailor who could fight like that, tho' we do reckon ourselves fair tough in any sc.r.a.p."

"I wasn't a sailor. Down south-" Blade hoped there was enough of a "south" in this Dimension to make his story plausible "-I was a professional soldier. A freelance. There are many such."

"So I hear," said Brora, and that was apparently as much as he was interested in inquiring into Blade's origins. "Well, I tell ye-whatever ye think ye be worth as a fighter, any shipmaster of Royth would give ye double it or more were ye to sign on w' him as a guard. Ye've seen what the pirates are like. 'Tis a miracle sent by Druk to aid honest sailors that we found ye." He thrust out his hand. "Brora Lanthal's son swears friendship with ye from now 'til death divides us. What say ye?"

Blade clasped the hand and shook it vigorously. "I say yes, Brora."

"Well and good. When Brora speaks, no few o' the Sailor's Guild listen. And we sailors be half the honest men of Royth these days." Before Blade could ask any further questions, Brora turned away and began issuing orders about shifting supplies and raising sail. Blade took the chance, a welcome one, to sit down and rest.