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the latter consideration far outweighed the former.
    At that instant a gleam of sunlight speared through an opening where a man leaped down onto the deck. The light glanced off a gleaming, sweaty bald skull, highlighted a dangling scalp lock of hair.
    "Duhrra!"
    "You’re just in time! They’re breaking in like leems!"
    The last boat’s crew poured in to help those of their fellows who had smashed in during the attack we had repulsed up on the forecastle. Now we faced them in the semi-gloom and, by Krun, there were a lot of them.
    In among the rough furnishings of the forecastle we struggled hand to hand. It was all a dimly seen business of cut and thrust, of muffled chokes and gasping grunts, of men abruptly shrieking as the steel bit red.
    They were sure of themselves, these renders of the inner sea.
    My stolen Ghittawrer blade flamed. Men leaped and shrieked and died.
    Men were falling about me as the sea-wolves cut their way through. Duhrra and I stood together and presently we were back to back, our blades dripping red.
    I’d fought with Viridia the Render, up along the Hoboling Islands of the Outer Oceans. She and her crew of cutthroats would have been at home here. So we fought. Step by step we were forced back, back to the low wooden door leading from the forecastle into the waist. I swirled Duhrra around so that I faced the pirates.
    "Dak!"
    "Get outside and chop the first cramph who follows me."
    He ducked through without another word.
    I leaped, slashed three quicktimes, left, right, left, dropped three of the screeching hellions, then turned and bolted for the door. As I shot through so Duhrra’s bulky shadow blotted the suns.
    "Hold, Duhrra!"
    "Aye! Do you think I’d take off your head?"
    And down, swish, thwack, squelch, came his longsword, neatly decapitating the first render incautious enough to thrust his head and shoulders through after me.
    The door could not be shut.
    Other renders leaped through, swirling their blades, shrilling in triumph.
    I fancied that familiar victory yell would die in their throats now we had room to swing a blade.
    Duhrra and a few of the mercenaries of the ship — Rapas, Brokelsh, Womoxes — bashed in again. We held the pirates for the moment. The wind hung breathless. The suns burned down. The deck became slippery with spilled blood. And still our brands flamed and cut and thrust and kept that vengeful seeking steel from our own throats and guts.
    For a short space the pirates drew back.
    Duhrra appeared a gleaming mass of crimson.
    "I think it will not be long now, Dak."
    "We’ll have ’em yet! Look at their hangdog faces!"
    " ’Ware shafts!" The cry went up from the mercenaries.
    Arrows flew.
    I spread my fists on the Ghittawrer blade as best I could, ready to ward off the arrows. Three I batted away and then the fresh howls shrieked to the brilliance of Zim and Genodras at our backs. I risked a quick glance aft.
    Captain Andapon and the remnants of his crew were being bundled forward, struggling and laying about them. But the renders had broken through aft. Now the crew of the argenter was trapped between the two render parties, and, as Duhrra had said, it would not be long now.
    "By the Black Chunkrah!" I said. "We’ll take a fine crew of ’em to sail with us across the Ice Floes of Sicce!"
    We were ringed in.
    Now the renders ceased loosing shafts for fear of hitting their own men. I sized up the men opposite me, selected a likely looking Kataki with his steel-armed tail, his low-browed face fierce and leering upon us.
    I sprang.
    "Hai! Jikai!" I bellowed.
    He swung his blade up and I sidestepped, caught the vicious stab of his tail in my left hand, pulled. He staggered. I took the time to slash right-handed at a fellow who tried to cut me down from the side and then brought the longsword blurring around to chop through the mailed junction of the Kataki’s neck and shoulder. He dropped. I dropped his tail, cut savagely left and right, and so leaped back to the