Guardsman of Gor by John Norman

hopeless," said the man near me.
    The great weight of the Tuka, so dark, so heavy, so obdurate, so seemingly resistant and fixed in place, suddenly, unexpectedly, straining, with a heavy, sliding noise, the keel like the runner of a great sled, leaving a line in the sand, thrust by our forces, moved by the water, slipped backward, six inches.

"Work!" I whispered. "Push! Work!"
    The Tuka slipped back a foot. Then another foot. There was a cheer. "Be silent!" I cried.
    I left my position and, hurrying, ankle deep in sand and water, lowering my head to pass under the ropes between the Tina and the Tuka, made my way along her hull until I came to the river, and there entered the water, and swam about her stern quarters. I joined the men on the other side, on the bar, where the great rent had been torn in her side three days ago by the ram of the Tais. The splintered, gaping hole was easily a yard in height and width, the result not only of the ram's penetration but of the tearing and breakage in the strakes attendant upon its withdrawal. The strike had been well above the water line, when the vessel would ride on an even keel. Yet, in the rolling and wash of battle, it had sufficed, at the time, to produce a shippage of water sufficient to produce listing. Rendered unfit for combat her captain and crew had abandoned her, doubtless with the intention later, at their leisure, to repair and reclaim her. I peered into the rupture in the strakes. The ropes strained again and the Tuka slipped back another yard. She would soon be free of the bar. I considered, as well as I could, from my position outside the hull, what time and materials might be requisite to restore the
    Tuka to seaworthiness. Such repairs, of course, must be made upon the river, and in flight. I did not wish to leave her as she was, of course, for she was important to my plans. She was, it was said, a well-known ship of the Voskjard.
    "There is a ship approaching!" I heard a man cry.
    "No," I cried out, angrily. "No!"
    "It is a derelict," said another man. "She is dark. Her rudders are free!"
    It must, then, be a ship drifting unmanned, lost, and carried by the current from the concourse of ,war. Even if it should be a trick, it was but one ship. Given the men of Ar we had, though only two fighting ships, and the Tuka, crews enough to man at least five vessels.
    The Tuka slipped another yard back, toward the water. With two `hands I hoisted myself through the rupture in the hull of the Tuka. I drew my sword. The men of the Tais, I knew, after her disabling, had briefly boarded her. She had, at that time, been abandoned. I did not doubt but what she was now, too, empty. Yet I did not know that. My sword was drawn. The Tuka is a large ship and I could stand upright within her first hold. I felt her move beneath me, impelled again by the ropes and men, toward the river. It was dark in the hold. As the Tuka slipped in the sand, being drawn backward into the river, water from the hold rushed about my feet, for a moment some six inches in depth. It then drained through the rupture. I could feel the wet wood beneath my bare feet. Beneath the first hold is the lower hold, but this is little more than a damp crawl space, containing the bilge, and sand, which, on Gorean vessels, commonly serves as ballast. I stood back from the rupture. I was uneasy.
    I listened. The hold was dark. I seemed to hear nothing. It had been nothing. Surely it had been nothing.
    I did not move. I was uneasy.

Suddenly in the darkness there was the rush of a body toward me. I stepped to the side. Steel slashed down. I heard it cut into the wood at my left almost at the same time that I turned and, in the darkness, slashing, cut at it. I knelt beside it. With my left hand I felt it. The neck, struck in the back, had been half severed.
    I then rose to my feet. I stood there, in the darkness, and in the silence, my sword ready.
    Then I felt soft lips press themselves against my feet. "Please do not kill