Chapter 9: Battle Test

Babble of speech, cries, sounded muffled to Ross, made a mounting clamor on the deck. Had the raiders’ ship been boarded? Was it now under attack? He strove to hear and think through the pain in his head, the bewilderment.

“Loketh?” He was certain that the Hawaikan had been dumped into the same hold.

The only answer was a low moan, a mutter from the dark. Ross began to inch his way in that direction. He was no seaman, but during that worm’s progress he realized that the ship itself had changed. The vibration which had carried through the planks on which he lay was stilled. Some engine shut off; one portion of his mind put that into familiar terms. Now the vessel rocked with the waves, did not bore through them.

Ross brought up against another body.

“Loketh!”

“Ahhhhh ... the fire ... the fire--!” The half-intelligible answer held no meaning for the Terran. “It burns in my head ... the fire--”

The rocking of the ship rolled Ross away from his fellow prisoner toward the opposite side of the hold. There was a roar of voice, bull strong above the noise on deck, then the sound of feet back and forth there.

“The fire ... ahhh--” Loketh’s voice rose to a scream.

Ross was now wedged between two abutments he could not see and from which his best efforts could not free him. The pitching of the ship was more pronounced. Remembering the two vessels he had seen pounded to bits on the reef, Ross wondered if the same doom loomed for this one. But that disaster had occurred during a storm. And, save for the fog, this had been a calm night, the sea untroubled.

Unless--maybe the shaking his body had received during the past few moments had sharpened his thinking--unless the Foanna had their own means of protection at the sea gate and this was the result. The dolphins ... What had made Tino-rau and Taua react as they did? And if the Rover ship was out of control, it would be a good time to attempt escape.

“Loketh!” Ross dared to call louder. “Loketh!” He struggled against the drying strands which bound him from shoulder to mid thigh. There was no give in them.

More sounds from the upper deck. Now the ship was answering to direction again. The Terran heard sounds he could not identify, and the ship no longer rocked so violently. Loketh moaned.

As far as Ross could judge, they were heading out to sea.

“Loketh!” He wanted information; he must have it! To be so ignorant of what was going on was unbearable frustration. If they were now prisoners in a ship leaving the island behind ... The threat of that was enough to set Ross struggling with his bonds until he lay panting with exhaustion.

“Rossss?” Only a Hawaikan could make that name a hiss.

“Here! Loketh?” But of course it was Loketh.

“I am here.” The other’s voice sounded oddly weak as if it issued from a man drained by a long illness.

“What happened to you?” Ross demanded.

“The fire ... the fire in my head--eating ... eating...” Loketh’s reply came with long pauses between the words.

The Terran was puzzled. What fire? Loketh had certainly reacted to something beyond the unceremonious handling they had received as captives. This whole ship had reacted. And the dolphins ... But what fire was Loketh talking about?

“I did not feel anything,” he stated to himself as well as to the Hawaikan.

“Nothing burning in your head? So you could not think--”

“No.”

“It must have been the Foanna magic. Fire eating so that a man is nothing, only that which fire feeds upon!”

Karara! Ross’s thoughts flashed back to those few seconds when the dolphins had seemed to go crazy. Karara had then called out something about the Foanna. So the dolphins must have felt this, and Karara, and Loketh. Whatever it was. But why not Ross Murdock?

Karara possessed an extra, undefinable sense which gave her contact with the dolphins. Loketh had a mind which those could read in turn. But such communication was closed to Ross.

At first that realization carried with it a feeling of shame and loss. That he did not have what these others possessed, a subtle power beyond the body, a part of mind, was humbling. Just as he had felt shut out and crippled when he had been forced to use the analyzer instead of the sense the others had, so did he suffer now.

Then Ross laughed shortly. All right, sometimes insensitivity could be a defense as it had at the sea gate. Suppose his lack could also be a weapon? He had not been knocked out as the others appeared to be. But for the bad luck of having been captured before the raiders had succumbed, Ross could, perhaps, have been master of this ship by now. He did not laugh now; he smiled sardonically at his own grandiose reaction. No use thinking about what might have been, just file this fact for future reference.

A creaking overhead heralded the opening of the hatch. Light lanced down into the cubby, and a figure swung over and down a side ladder, coming to stand over Ross, feet apart for balancing, accommodating to the swing of the vessel with the ease of long practice.

Thus Ross came face to face with his first representative of the third party in the Hawaikan tangle of power--a Rover.

The seaman was tall, with a heavier development of shoulder and upper arms than the landsmen. Like the guards he wore supple armor, but this had been colored or overlaid with a pearly hue in which other tints wove opaline lines. His head was bare except for a broad, scaled band running from the nape of his neck to the mid-point of his forehead, a band supporting a sharply serrated crest not unlike the erect fin of some Terran fish.

Now as he stood, fists planted on hips, the Rover presented a formidable figure, and Ross recognized in him the air of command. This must be one of the ship’s officers.

Dark eyes surveyed Ross with interest. The light from the deck focused directly across the raider’s shoulder to catch the Terran in its full glare, and Ross fought the need for squinting. But he tried to give back stare for stare, confidence for self-confidence.

On Terra in the past more than one adventurer’s life had been saved simply because he had the will and nerve enough to face his captors without any display of anxiety. Such bravado might not hold here and now, but it was the only weapon Ross had to hand and he used it.

“You--” the Rover broke the silence first, “you are not of the Foanna--” He paused as if waiting an answer--denial or protest. Ross provided neither.

“No, not of the Foanna, nor of the scum of the coast either.” Again a pause.

“So, what manner of fish has come to the net of Torgul?” He called an order aloft. “A rope here! We’ll have this fish and its fellow out--”

Loketh and Ross were jerked up to the outer deck, dumped into the midst of a crowd of seamen. The Hawaikan was left to lie but, at a gesture from the officer, Ross was set on his feet. He could see the nature of his bonds now, a network of dull gray strands, shriveled and stinking, but not giving in the least when he made another try at moving his arms.

“Ho--” The officer grinned. “This fish does not like the net! You have teeth, fish. Use them, slash yourself free.”

A murmur of applause from the crew answered that mild taunt. Ross thought it time for a countermove.

“I see you do not come too close to those teeth.” He used the most defiant words his limited Hawaikan vocabulary offered.

There was a moment of silence, and then the officer clapped his hands together with a sharp explosion of sound.

“You would use your teeth, fish?” he asked and his tone could be a warning.

This was going it blind with a vengeance, but Ross took the next leap in the dark. He had the feeling, which often came to him in tight quarters, that he was being supplied from some hard core of endurance and determination far within him with the right words, the fortunate guess.

“On which one of you?” He drew his lips tight, displaying those same teeth, wondering for one startled moment if he should take the Rover’s query literally.

“Vistur! Vistur!” More than one voice called.

One of the crew took a step or two forward. Like Torgul, he was tall and heavy, his over-long arms well muscled. There were scars on his forearms, the seam of one up his jaw. He looked what he was, a very tough fighting man, one who was judged so by peers as seasoned and dangerous.

“Do you choose to prove your words on Vistur, fish?” Again the officer had a formal note in his question, as if this was all part of some ceremony.

“If he meets with me as he stands--no other weapons.” Ross flashed back.

Now he had another reaction from them. There were some jeers, a sprinkling of threats as to Vistur’s intentions. But Ross caught also the fact that two or three of them had gone silent and were eyeing him in a new and more searching fashion and that Torgul was one of those.