The enemy might retreat or he might plan some fresh attack. Ruori did not intend that it should be either. He megaphoned:
“Put about! Face that scum-gut!” And led a rush down the shrouds to a deck where combat still went on.
For Hiti’s gang had put three primary harpoons and half a dozen lesser ones into the gondola.
Their lines trailed in tightening catenaris from the blimp to the capstan in the bows. No fear now of undue strain. The Dolphin, like any Maurai craft, was meant to live off the sea as she traveled. She had dragged more than one right whale alongside; a blimp was nothing in comparison. What counted was speed, before the pirates realized what was happening and found ways to cut loose.
“Tohiha, hioha, itoki, itoki!” The old canoe chant rang forth as men tramped about the capstan. Ruori hit the deck, saw a Canyon man fighting a sailor, sword against club, and brained the fellow from behind as he would any other vermin. (Then wondered, dimly shocked, what made him think thus about a human being.) The battle was rapidly concluded, the Sky Men faced hopeless odds. But half a dozen Federation people were badly hurt. Ruori had the few surviving pirates tossed into a lazaret, his own casualties taken below to anesthetics and antibiotics and cooing Doflitas. Then, quickly, he prepared his crew for the next phase.
The blimp had been drawn almost to the bowsprit. It was canted over so far that its catapults were useless. Pirates lined the gallery deck, howled and shook their weapons. They outnumbered the Dolphin crew by a factor of three or four. Ruori recognized one among them—the tall yellow-haired man who had fought him outside the palace—it was a somehow eerie feeling.
“Shall we burn them?” asked Atel.
Ruori grimaced. “I suppose we have to,” he said. “Try not to ignite the vessel itself. You know we want it.”
A walking beam moved up and down, driven by husky Islanders. Flame spurted from a ceramic nozzle. The smoke and stench and screams that followed, and the things to be seen when Ruori ordered cease fire, made even the hardest veteran of corsair patrol look a bit ill. The Maurai were an unsentimental folk, but they did not like to inflict pain.
“Hose,” rasped Ruori. The streams of water that followed were like some kind of blessing. Wicker that had begun to burn hissed into charred quiescence.
The ship’s own grapnels were flung. A couple of cabin boys darted past grown men to be first along the lines. They met no resistance on the gallery. The uninjured majority of pirates stood in a numb fashion, their armament at their feet, the fight kicked out of them. Jacob’s ladders followed the boys; the Dolphin crew swarmed aboard the blimp and started rounding up prisoners.
A few Sky Men lurched from behind a door, weapons aloft. Ruori saw the tall fair man among them. The man drew Ruori’s dagger, left-handed, and ran toward him. His right arm seemed nearly useless. “A Canyon, a Canyon!” he called, the ghost of a war cry.
Ruori sidestepped the charge and put out a foot. The blond man tripped. As he fell, the hammer of Ruori’s ax clopped down, catching him on the neck. He crashed, tried to rise, shuddered, and lay twitching.
“I want my knife back.” Ruori squatted, undid the pirate’s tooled leather belt, and began to hogtie him.
Dazed blue eyes looked up with a sort of pleading. “Are you not going to kill me?” mumbled the other in Spaflol.
“Haristi, no,” said Ruori, surprised. “Why should I?”
He sprang up. The last resistance had ended, the blimp was his. He opened the forward door, thinking the equivalent of a ship’s bridge must lie beyond it.
Then for a while he did not move at all, nor did he hear anything but the wind and his own blood.
It was Tresa who finally came to him. Her’ hands were held out before her, like a blind person’s, and her eyes looked through him. “You are here,” she said, flat and empty.
“Doñita,” stammered Ruori. He caught her hands. “Doflita, had I known you were aboard, I would never have . . . have risked—”