Kingdom Of Royth

He took a few seconds to size up the situation. In that few seconds the men ramping and struggling on the deck had time to turn and notice the apparition that had burst onto their deck-a colossal naked man, with skin burnt dark by sun and wind stretched over masses of rippling muscles, swinging an axe in one hand as though it were as light as a quill pen. Then he bellowed «Cayla!» in a terrible roaring voice and charged forward. Pirates and navymen sprang aside from his path.

Blade's few seconds of observation had told his trained eye that here at least the pirates had the edge of it, having hurled the navy boarding parties back onto their own decks and then gone over to the attack. He crossed the galley's quarterdeck in a half dozen long strides, the axe whirling in his right hand, and sprang down onto the main deck in a single bound. Once again he was a killing machine, and now the small part of him still fully rational knew that Cayla was almost within his grasp, and both reason and the urge to kill drove him onward together at a frightening pace.

A pirate whirled, aiming a sword thrust at Blade's stomach. Blade danced to one side, brought the axe up, saw the head sink into the man's stomach, and felt the handle smash into his arm. The man's sword flew into the air. Blade snatched it from the deck and parried a pike thrust with it almost in the same motion. Another pirate ran at Blade, also wielding a pike. Blade feinted left with the sword, brought the axe up as the pirate responded, then leaped aside and brought it down on the man's skull. The pirate was dead before he hit the deck and Blade sprang over the falling body to engage two more.

One of these had a shield and Blade launched a kick at the man's knee to force the shield down, then thrust over the top into his face with the sword. Simultaneously he whipped the axe up in time to take the other pirate's frantic downstroke on the axe-head. Sparks flew, metal clanged, the shock half-numbed Blade's arm. But the other pirate's sword flew from his hand and before he could leap back Blade swung his left arm with the bloody sword across and thrust the man through the belly.

Blade had now cleared a space around him, and the pirates were begi

Then from both forward and aft, the navymen charged out in a full-scale counterattack, the bowmen dropping their bows and pulling out daggers and swords and engaging in a fight so utterly entangled that even Blade was hard put to tell friend from foe. There was a wild moment of balance, when the kettle-mending sound of clashing steel rose to a deafening din. Thrusts and slashes came at Blade so fast that in that moment all even he could do was parry and dodge and occasionally wince as steel slashed his bare skin. He was bleeding from half a dozen minor wounds when a trumpet blared close in his ear. The pirates gave way, those who still could move fast enough. Blade saw them dashing for the railing, leaping up on it, and hurling themselves across to the comparative safety of Witch's deck.

And beyond them, for the first time since he boarded the galley, Blade saw Cayla standing out straight and proud amid the swirl of battle and the retreat of her crew. With no thought of odds or anything else except coming to grips with her, he sprang onto the railing and leaped across onto Witch's deck.

Once again, men drew back at Blade's appearance. Naked, blood-smeared, eyes blazing with fury, he cleared a space around him by his mere presence, without a single stroke of sword or axe. But Cayla saw her crew giving way before Blade and screamed out in a voice raw and shrill with fury:

«There is only one, and he is only a man! Are you men?» As if wakened from a trance, the pirates sprang to life and hurled themselves against Blade.

He almost went down under the assault; there were at least fifteen coming against him, and he had already been fighting men and monsters for hours, apart from his wounds. He had to give way in his turn, retreating to the railing and making his stand there, sword and axe whirling like some deadly machine. The barrier they made between him and his opponents was impenetrable. Even worse for the pirates, at any slackening of the attack sword or axe would leap out into their ranks, a deadly tongue of steel licking out, smashing, ripping, maiming. There were so many of the pirates that they blundered into each other's way as they sought to get at Blade, and to make a blunder against Blade was a death sentence. There were fifteen pirates to begin with, then twelve, then ten.

Blade found a moment to appreciate the fact that he was nearing the end of his adventure in this Dimension as he had begun it-fighting single-handed against a mass of Neraler pirates. But he was filled with yet more fury that these poor fools he kept smashing down to the deck were keeping him from getting at Cayla. There were moments when a pause in the swirl of bodies before him let him see her, standing with one hand on her hip and the other urging her men on with flourishes of her sword. Then she disappeared for a time, and when he saw her again, she was stalking away down Witch's deck, hands busy with the straps and buckles of her armor. At that sight Blade's fury boiled still higher, and he bellowed like a bull and launched himself like a battering-ram against the men in front of him, lunging under sword and pike strokes.

The sheer impact of his giant body hurtling forward at full speed threw half the men opposing him to the deck, some of them stu

She was already many yards ahead of Blade by the time he hit the water and rose from his dive to follow her, and she was gaining every second. She might have been easy to overtake for Blade at his full strength, but he was far from fresh, and his disabled arm slowed him down even though he had also dropped his axe. But his remaining arm, his legs, and a single desperate thought drove him ahead at a muscle-wrenching, throat-searing pace. It was the thought that he must catch up with Cayla, must silence or stun her, before her serpent allies could respond to her call to rise out of whatever part of this bloody sea they now swam through and destroy him.

He soon realized she was making straight for shore. She was keeping well ahead of him, but the gap between them was no longer widening, and she had never found a second chance to pause and call the serpents. On and on they churned, through water now spotted thickly with floating bodies, balks of timber, masts complete with sails and rigging, overturned boats, odd bits of wood, and personal gear. Again, Blade felt he was ending this adventure as he had begun it-swimming through a wreckage-strewn sea-and again reminded himself that the true end to it all swam twenty yards ahead of him, white limbs thrashing along as tirelessly as his own.