The guns forward were now firing so fast that smoke streamed back from them almost continuously. Kukon seemed to be ploughing through a thick fog of her own making. Blade could only occasionally manage to see anything beyond the ship's sides.

He saw that Sukar's flagship had lost both masts but still flew battle standards from both stumps. She seemed to be moving crabwise, as if she had lost too many oars on one side. Then two pirate galleys swept in toward her, all the guns of all three ships fired at once, and smoke blotted them out.

He saw a pirate galley trailing a steadily swelling mass of black smoke with red flame pulsing at its base. At least her rowers were not chained. If the fire gained control, they could take their chances with the sharks rather than burn to death.

There was a tremendous clang from forward, a peculiar thud, then screams of horror and a second thud. Blade saw one of the gunners sprawl backward on the deck, something like a stepped-on fruit where his head had been. A shot must have struck the ram and bounced upward, smashing up under the man's jaw.

The guns fired again. They made a continuous roaring in Blade's ears, rising and falling like the sound of a stormy sea on a rocky coast. At the same time the roaring came to him more dimly, as if the clouds of powder smoke were packing his ears full of cotton.

The drummer to port increased his beat still more, to the ramming stroke. Blade and all the other rowers on his side hurled themselves at their oars, then heaved them savagely backward, arms straining and backs painfully bent. The galley began to swing to starboard as the furious beat of the port bank of oars turned her. Then the starboard drummer increased his beat as well, the starboard oars thrashed just as furiously, and Kukon straightened out, racing in toward whatever prey her captain had picked out. Blade had no idea what that might be. Ahead he could see nothing except a solid wall of gray-white smoke, seamed with columns of black from burning ships and every now and then lit up with the orange furnaceglow of guns firing.

Then the masts and bulwarks of a pirate ship burst out of the smoke, the black paint scarred by shot and glistening in places with fresh blood or mangled bits of human flesh. On her foc'sle her gunners frantically struggled to swing their pieces around to rake Kukon.

Before they could do so, Kukon's pounding oars drove her ram hard into the pirate's side. Oars flew into the air, a few of them with the rowers still holding onto them. Blade saw one pirate flung high, to smash down on Kukon's deck head first and lie still. The tons of sharp iron and massive timber at Kukon's bow tore through the pirate ship's hull like a knife through parchment. Planks shattered, knees cracked, ribs bent inward and split apart. Then Blade heard the gurgle of green water foaming and flooding in through the huge breach in the pirate's side.

The ramming shook Kukon from stem to stem. Every piece of wood and metal in her seemed to be adding its own separate voice to the uproar. Blade was hurled forward, crashing into a man on the bench in front of him. They both went down, sprawling on the deck in a tangle of arms and legs as the oars flailed wildly over them. They were both luckier than the rowers who didn't duck under the oars. Blade saw an oar shaft fly up and strike one man under the chin. He flew backward as if he'd been kicked by a mule and fell to the deck, his head bent at an impossible angle on his shoulders.

Blade gently pushed the other man's head out of his stomach and tried to gather his legs under him. The slavemasters dashed up and down the gangways, screaming at the top of their lungs and waving their whips furiously. Blade saw one wrap his whip around the mainmast so violently that he fell off the gangway with a crash. The soldiers and sailors forward were all firing bows and muskets into the men on the pirate's deck. The rest of the soldiers and sailors were rushing forward to join them. Blade saw the captain running with them, his sword out, his face no longer expressionless and pale but black with powder smoke and half hysterical with battle rage.

Blade saw swords and spears tossing about wildly on the foc'sle. Some of the pirates were pressing forward, trying to board Kukon across the precarious bridge made by her ram and the splintered oars and timbers of their own ship.

Two of the guns on Kukon's foc'sle had been dismounted in the ramming. The gunners were frantically struggling to reload the others as arrows and musket balls from the pirates whistled about their ears. Finally they succeeded. The guns crashed out together, and a veil of smoke swept across Blade's vision, blotting out the scene forward for a moment. It did not blot out the hideous chorus of screams that exploded from the pirate's deck.

Then the smoke cleared. Where a mass of pirates had stood on the deck of their ship was a mass of bodies and pieces of bodies. Some of the bodies were still moving and screaming. Most lay still. Kukon's guns must have been crammed halfway to the muzzle with musket balls or small stones. The massed pirates could not have been more thoroughly slaughtered by a pair of machine guns.

Blade thought for a moment that Kukon's fighting men would now board the pirate ship. But the slavemasters were shouting and lashing out again, to get the rowers back on their feet and back to the oars. The drummers began pounding a frantic reverse beat as the oars clattered out.

A moment later Blade saw why. Out of the smoke to starboard loomed another pirate ship, bearing down on Kukon at full speed. Her oars leaped forward and back and foam curled from her ram. On her foc'sle musketeers and archers blazed away at Kukon. Blade saw the bo'sun stagger and fall to the deck, clapping his hand over a spouting wound in his thigh.

Kukon drew clear of the rammed pirate ship with a great cracking of timbers. Both forward and aft her gunners furiously worked to bring their guns to bear on the oncoming enemy. The men at the heavy gun aft made it first. Blade turned his head in time to see the master gunner apply his match to the touchhole. Then a vast sheet of flame and smoke erupted from Kukon's stern as the gun exploded.

Jagged chunks of iron the size of a man's bead flew in all directions at the speed of musket balls. Blade threw himself flat on the deck, with a dozen men under him and a dozen more on top of him in a packed mass of panic-stricken humanity. He was momentarily blind, but not deaf. Nothing could drown out the screams of those torn apart in the explosion of the flying fragments of iron.

Like a swimmer struggling up from deep water, Blade rose out of the tangle of bodies and stood up. He took the single step that was all his chain would allow him, nearly tripped over a severed head, then slipped on a patch of plank covered by a man's scattered guts and fell backward. Fortunately, the man he landed on was already dead or at least beyond feeling Blade's two hundred and ten pounds crashing down on his chest.

Before Blade could make a single move to rise again, the pirate galley drove her ram into Kukon's side. It did not go in deeply, but the starboard oars were scattered in all directions. For the moment Blade didn't even try to get up. It would do nobody any good if he got his skull split open by a swinging oar.

Then the screams and the clattering of oars gave way to shouts and shrill war cries. The pirates were swarming forward along their deck to board Kukon.

Blade sprang to his feet, looking around for something he could use to cut himself free or at least to defend himself. He didn't know what the exploding cannon might have done to Kukon's fighting men. He doubted if there were enough of them left to defend her against the boarders.

In the smoke and confusion he saw Dzhai making his way along the port gangway. He had a sword thrust into his belt and his axe over his shoulder. Blade cupped his hands and shouted. Dzhai turned and stared. Blade shouted again, waving one hand furiously.