The Torian Pearls

One raised an axe, then reeled back with a hand missing and the axe falling from the other hand. As the second man slashed down at Blade with a sword, several tons of gunpowder went off farther inland. The long rumbling explosion and the searing flash of light paralyzed the man, breaking his attack. Blade kicked him in the knee, slashed his thigh as he fell, and cut off his head as he landed. Then he snatched up the fallen man's sword and met the next attacker with two weapons dancing in his hands.

With the two swords Blade wove a steel curtain around himself for several minutes, killing one attacker after another. He was never sure exactly how long he fought or how many he killed. He knew that in the end there was a litter of dead and dying Vodi on the beach around him, and others stumbling or crawling off in the darkness to die there alone.

He also knew that he saw two boatloads of Vodi rowing in toward him. There were at least twenty men in each boat. They would be too few to help with the battle in the camp, but they would be more than enough to kill him if he didn't run. Since he couldn't see there was anywhere to run to, he decided to stay where he was and take his chances. He waited for the two boats, clearheaded and cool enough to even pick out his first opponent from each one.

Then dark shapes rose from the water alongside each boat, and dark objects soared into the air to land with faint thuds in the boats. Before any of the Vodi could react, spluttering blue lights dropped among them. Then the standing and sitting men were silhouetted against sheets of flame as the naphtha blazed up.

Most of the men died screaming in those flames or dragged down by the weight of their armor and weapons as they leaped overboard. A few were strong swimmers or sailors who wore no armor. Some of them were dragged down as they swam by Hauri with sharp knives, that would slit open human throats as well as green sharks. Two or three made it to shore.

Blade ran to meet them. A sailor swung an oar at him, knocking one sword out of his hand. Blade ran the man through with the other. A soldier got to the fallen weapon before Blade. He advanced on Blade with the sword in one hand and an axe in the other, water dripping from his beard, mail coat, and the horns of his helmet. A lithe dark figure rose from the water behind him, ran lightly through the shallows, and struck at the base of his skull with a long staff. The soldier went forward on his face without a twitch. Blade retrieved his sword from the dead hand and went forward to embrace Loya.

Now a battle was begi

Meanwhile, more bags of naphtha flew up onto the decks of ships and into boats, and more blue torches followed them. Flames roared up from a dozen ships, then from twenty more. Blade saw the flames race up tarred rigging, leap into sails, and strip them from the masts in a minute. Explosions began to boom as the flames reached ready-to-use powder on deck, and masts began to topple in showers of sparks and clouds of steam. The ports of ships glowed as the fires spread below decks. Other ships, still intact, began to drift as Hauri swimmers cut their anchor ropes.

Blade shouted and danced in delirious triumph at the spectacle of the Vodi fleet dying before his eyes. Meanwhile explosions thundered and roared behind him as well, as the attackers swarmed into the camp and went to work on the powder magazine. Some of the explosions were violent enough to throw burning timbers and pieces of human bodies all the way to the beach, where they landed around Blade.

Beside him, Loya danced and capered just as wildly.

Gradually their attention settled on one large ship in the center of the enemy fleet. A continuous roll of gunfire there told of a particularly vigorous defense. It was gallant, but in the end it was useless. The Hauri drifted a canoe filled from stern to stern with bags of naphtha against the ship, then set their fires. The ship's stern vanished in a sheet of flame that towered up and seconds later engulfed the mainmast. Sailors with their clothes on fire hurled themselves from the yardarms, falling like meteors into the water. The flames spread forward, the foremast became a torch, powder on deck went off violently enough to toss several guns overboard-then the magazine deep down inside the ship exploded.

The ship's deck rose; its sides blew outward; both masts simply vanished. A sphere of flame sat on the water where the ship had been, its surface dotted with planks and guns and human figures. Then the flames shrank into themselves and vanished while the wreckage and the bodies hissed down into the water or fell with thuds on the beach. In the silence that followed the explosion, Blade put his arm around Loya. They stood there for a moment, deaf and blind to everything except each other, then turned back to the battle.

There wasn't much left of that battle. Perhaps the exploding ship had been the flagship of the whole expedition. In any case, the explosion seemed to take all the fight out of the Vodi. They fled or tried to flee or tried to surrender if they had no hope of fleeing. Blade was able to save a few prisoners, but only a few. The Torians were giving no quarter, and neither the Kargoi nor the Hauri felt much like arguing with them on the point.

Dawn came, and Blade was able to write the epitaph for the Vodi expedition. In the commanders' tents he found papers that made it clear the Vodi had put nearly the whole military and naval strength of their people into the expedition. They had lost nine out of ten of the men, two-thirds of the ships, all their siege guns, equipment, and supplies-in short, they'd met complete disaster.

Blade decided to stop worrying about the Vodi being driven to ally themselves with the Menel. It would be a generation, possibly two, before the Vodi had enough fighting men to be worth anything as allies. If the Menel did accept Vodi support, they'd be saddling themselves with an ally even weaker and more helpless than they were.

Blade met Queen Kayarna as she rode about the battlefield on a horse, her fourth of the night. Unable to walk, she'd ridden the other three right into the battle until they'd been killed under her.

She rode up to Blade, a triumphant grin on her face. The grin faded as she saw Blade's arm around Loya's waist. Whatever she'd been about to say died on lips that tightened into a straight line. She turned her horse and cantered off, her back rigid.

Loya was equally sober-faced as she watched the queen's receding figure. «She did not like seeing us together, I think.»

«No, she didn't,» said Blade wearily. «I hope she may think otherwise, someday-or at least be silent about it. If she is jealous, though…»

He could not quite find the energy to finish the sentence. He'd thoroughly disposed of all the problems involved in wi