Raiders of Gor by John Norman Page B

fifty men left, spread over the six
    barges.
    Silently Telima poled our small craft to the fourth barge.
    The most of the warriors, we had noted, were concentrated in the first and last
    barges.
    The barges, during the afternoon, had been eased into a closer line, the stem on
    one lying abeam of the stern of the next, being made fast tehre by lines. This
    was to prevent given barges from being boarded separately, where the warriors on
    one could not come to the aid of the other. They had no way of knowing how many
    rencers might be in the marshes. With this arrangement they had greater mobility
    of their forces, for men might leap, say, from one foredeck of one barge to the
    tiller deck of the other. If boarding were attepmpted toward the center of the
    line, the boarding party could thus be crushed on both flanks by warriors
    pouring in from adjacent barges. This arrangement, in effect, transformed the
    formerly purposes, a long, single, narrow, wooden-walled fort.
    These defensive conditons dictated that the offense, putatively the male
    population of one or perhaps two rence communities, say, some seventy or eighty
    men, would most likely attack at either of the first or the last of the barges,
    where they would have but one front on which to attack and little, or nothing,
    to fear from the rear. That the punt might be used to bring men behind attacking
    rencers was quite improbable; further, had it been used, pressumably it would
    have encountered rencers in their several rence craft and been threby
    neutralized or destroyed.
    In this situation, then, it was natural, expecting an attack on either the first
    or the last barge, that the officer, he of the golden slashes on the temples of
    his helmet, would concentrate his men in the first and last barge.
    We had come now to the hull of the fourth barge, and we had come to her as
    silently as a rence flower might have drifted to her side.
    Having no large number of men at my disposal, it seemed best to me to let the
    men of Port Kar themselves do most of my fighting.
    Standing below the hull, quite close, in the shifting rence craft, I made a
    small clicking noise, a sound that meant nothing but, in the darkness, meaning
    nothing, would be startling, terrifying in its uncomprehended import.
    I heard the sudden intake of breath which marked the position of a man.
    With the noose of marsh vine I dragged him over the sie of the hull, lowering
    him into the marsh, holding him until I felt the tharlarion take him from me,
    drawing him away.
    Slaves chained at the benches began to cry out with fear.
    I heard men running, from both sides toward the place from which came the cries
    of the slaves.
    In the darkness they met one another, shouting, brandishing their weapons.
    There was much shouting.
    Someone was calling for a torch.
    Telima poled us backward, away from the hull of the fourth barge.
    I picked up the bow and set it its string one of the ten remaining arrows.
    When the torch first flickered I put the arrow into the heart of the man who
    held it, and he and the torch, as though struck by a fist, spun and reeled off
    the far side of the barge. I then heard another man cry out, thrust in the
    confustion over the side, and his screaming. There was more shouting.
    There were more cries for torches, but I did not see any lit.
    And then I heard the clash of sword steel, wildly, blindly.
    And then I heard one cry out “They are aboard! We are boarded! Fight!”
    Telima had poled us some thirty yards out into the marsh, and I stood there,
    arrow to string, in case any should bring another torch.
    None did.
    I heard men running on the gangway between the rowers’ benches.
    I heard more cries of pain, the screams of terrified slaves trying to crawl
    beneath their benches.
    There was another splash.
    I heard someone crying out, perhaps the officer, ordering more men aft to repell
    the boarders.
    From the other direction I heard another voice ordering me forward, commanding
    his