Guardsman of Gor Read Online Free PDF Page B

starboard. Her immediate support ship, fifty yards astern, could not check her flight. Her ram took the lead ship in the stern, tearing away wood and breaking loose the starboard rudder. Almost at the same time the seven ships of Port Cos, fanning out, each choosing an undefended hull, exposed, helpless before the hurtling strike of the ram's brutal spike, to the tearing of wood, the rushing of water, the screaming of men, made contact with the enemy. Efficiently did they address themselves to the harsh labors of war.
    I did not see how Ar, in her disputes with Cos upon the Vosk, could hope to match such ships and men. The ships of Ar's Station, with the fleet, seemed more round ships than long ships. Some lacked even rams and shearing blades. All were permanently masted. Few of these ships boasted more than twenty oars. All seemed undermanned. Ar, I thought, might be advised to tread lightly in her politics on the Vosk.

The ships of Port Cos, led by the Tais, backed from the subsiding, shattered hulks they had smitten. The Voskjard's fleet was in confusion. Ship struck ship. Signal horns sounded frantically. Ships struggled, crowded together, trapped in the wedge, to come about. Again, and again, hunting as single marine predators, the Tats and her sisters, prowling the outskirts of that confused, sluggish city of wood, almost at will, almost fastidiously, selected their victims.
    How could Ar, I asked myself, compete with such men and ships upon the mighty Vosk?
    Laughable were the miserable, squat ships of Ar's Station when compared with the sleek carnivores of Port Cos or, indeed, those of Ragnar Voskjard.
    "The Tais has made her third kill!" cried a man.
    There was cheering upon the Tina.
    On each of the ships of Ar's Station there were long, heavy sets of planks, fastened together by transverse crosspieces. These heavy constructions were some twenty-five feet in length, and some seven or eight feet in width. They were mounted on high platforms near the masts, one at each mast, and could be run out on rollers from the mast, to which they were fastened by adjustable lengths of chain. At the tops these constructions leaned back toward the masts, to which, at the top, they were secured by ropes. Projecting outwards from the top of each of these constructions there was, like a curved nail, a bent, gigantic, forged spike.
    "The fleet is coming about!" criers a man.
    To be sure, amidst the wreckage and crowding, and even grinding against the chain, the fleet of the Voskjard had managed to come about.
    "Fleet" cried a man near me to the crews of the Tais and her sisters, as though they could have heard him over the water. "Fleet"
    "They must run or they will be crushedl" cried a man. The rams of the Voskjard's fleet swung toward the Tais and her sisters. Between them, drifting apart, listing or awash, lay what must have been the wreckage of some eighteen ships. Several had already gone down.
    "Runt Runt" cried more than one man near me. But the Tais and her sisters of Port Cos lay to.
    "The fleet of the Voskjard has been marshaled," said a man next to me.
    "Pity the brave lads of Port Cos," muttered a man.
    "Stroke!" called Callimachus.
    "Stroke!" called his officer.
    "Stroke!" cried the oar master. The ringing of the coppercovered drum struck with the fur-wrapped wooden mallets suddenly rang out behind us.
    "Yes, yes!" I cried. "The Voskjard has exposed his flank to us!"
    The Tina and her line movers forward.
    "Withdraw! Reform!" called Callimachus.
    That island of wood in the midst of the Vosk, those grating, striking ships, twisted at the chain. Rams now, and concave bows, threatened us.
    We backed from the wreckage.

We, the line of our ships, had caught the fleet of the Voskjard in its right flank, as it had turned to confront and punish the Tais and her sisters of Port Cos. This audacious act on our part had taken the fleet of the Voskjard by surprise. That ships such as those of Ar's Station and of the independent towns,