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After seeing the wounded carried ashore and a small guard posted, the three leaders retired to what was left of the after cabins. They had to decide which of them should be the new captain. All knew that a ship could have only one.

Inevitably, the choice fell on Blade. He was a nobleman and the only one who had commanded a warship in the past-although he didn't tell them when or where. He also knew gunnery, tactics, and swordsmanship enough to be the best leader in any fight. Last, he was by far the strongest of the three. That could be important with Kukon's assorted and perhaps unruly crew. Her new captain might have to back up his authority with his own fists and sword.

The next morning the new captain of Kukon addressed his crew. Blade stood on the galley's ram. The tide was out, and twenty feet of the ship's bow rested on land. Luun and Dzhai stood on the damp sand at the water's edge, one on either side of the ram. Both held drawn swords. All the rest of the men who could stand stood in a rough half-circle facing Blade and their ship.

«Men of Kukon,» he began. «You have fought in a great battle and won a victory. Three galleys of the pirates of Nongai will never sail again because of your victory.» Everyone cheered loudly. Blade held up his hand for silence.

«You and your ship have come away from this victory and come safely to land. There are repairs to be made and then another voyage to make.

«When Kukon sets forth on that voyage, she will not be as she was before the battle. Then she was a galley of the Imperial fleet of Saram. She is one no longer, and she will never be one again?» More cheering, much louder than before, practically all of it coming from the rowers. They were half hysterical with joy. Most of those who had been free stood silently.

«We sail for the Five Kingdoms and whatever fate awaits us there. All of us shall work to make Kukon fit for the voyage, but no man shall sail to the Five Kingdoms who does not wish to go. No man aboard her shall be chained by the ankle, or have a whip lashed across his back, or a sword pointed at his throat.

«There are those among you who were slaves at our ship's oars. There are also those who were freemen, soldiers, sailors, gunners. It does not matter to me what you were before the battle. When we sail for the Five Kingdoms, all of you will be the men of Kukon, no more and no less.

«There may be some among you who do not wish to sail for the Five Kingdoms. So be it. You will not suffer in any way for this choice. It is yours to make. Come to me, say that you have chosen, and I will inscribe your name on a list. All on that list will be set ashore where there is food, water and people who may send messages. All of them will have the chance to return to the service of His Sublime Magnificence Kul-Nam of Saram.»

Blade rolled out the name of the Emperor as sarcastically as he could. He drew a good deal of laughter, and he was interested to see that not all of it was from the rowers. Apparently some of the freemen felt as Blade did and were happy to be able to show it, now that they were for the moment beyond the Emperor's reach.

Blade again waved the men to silence and continued. Now both his face and voice were grim. «If you do not return to Saram, do not think to continue serving the Emperor by trying to betray your shipmates. The first sailor or soldier who speaks a word or raises a hand against us will not only be ending his own life. He will put all those who were his comrades in danger. We sail as the men of Kukon, with no place aboard for traitors or cowards.» He touched the hilt of his sword to give extra force to his words.

Blade did not care to end his speech with a threat, but he didn't feel he had any choice. There were too many men aboard of the sort likely to respect nothing but force, or at least the threat of it. The men of Kukon, were not yet a band of brothers, and there was no sense in thinking otherwise.

Most of the freemen were glad to stay beyond the Emperor's reach if Blade was willing to have them and lead them. Very few came to ask him for help in returning to Saram. Most of them were older men, with families or property at home. None of them had much hope of saving their own lives by returning home. The Emperor's wrath would fall on anyone who had been at all involved in the disaster to Sukar's squadron. But they all hoped to keep their homes from being razed into rabble, their wives sold to brothels, their children sold as farm slaves, and the old or infirm among their families killed outright.

Blade felt sorry for these unfortunate men and determined to find some way of avenging them. Fortunately, there were less than thirty of them. The attitude of the rest was summed up fairly well by the words of one young gunner.

«Captain Prince Blade, I haven't anything to keep me in Saram, thank the gods. I can live better on crusts of bread out of Kul-Nam's reach than on beef and fine wine in Saram. The Five Kingdoms for me.»

When everyone finished making up his mind, Blade found he had more than a hundred and eighty able-bodied men. That would not be enough to take Kukon into battle. It would be more than enough to take her across to the Five Kingdoms.

Then everyone went to work. Trees were cut down, trimmed, then wedged and tied into place as new masts. Water barrels were refilled, fish and birds caught and salted down, and edible nuts and roots picked or dug and stowed away. The gunpowder was dried out in the sun. The smashed decks, gangways, and cabins were patched up as well as possible. In the smelly darkness of the hold, twenty men worked night and day with timber, nails, pegs, and a barrel of tar, patching up the hole torn by the pirate galley's ram.

All of this took ten days-disagreeable and nerve-wracking days for Blade. He was the captain of a ship as helpless as a beached whale. Every day spent here meant one more day when either pirates or Imperial galleys might enter the cove and finish the work done in the battle.

Thanks to Blade's driving leadership and the hard work of everyone under him, Kukon's work was finished first. On the eleventh day he took her out to sea for a brief trial cruise. On the morning of the twelfth day, Kukon's men saluted their shipmates who lay buried on the shore of the cove, then weighed anchor and set sail for the Five Kingdoms.

Chapter 16

The voyage from the coast where the cove lay to the nearest landfall in any of the Five Kingdoms normally took a week in good weather. Blade hoped they could slip across the Silver Sea without seeing anyone or being seen. Although Kukon and her men could now fight something more than three old women with brooms, Blade still had no wish to risk his undermanned, battered ship against an enemy. A few of the hotter-headed crewmen thought otherwise, but Luun and Dzhai kept them in line.

Kukon made it across the Silver Sea without even sighting another ship. She also made it in five days instead of a week, but she nearly went to the bottom in the process. A freak gale blew up out of the northwest, driving them along faster than Kukon had ever gone before. Both the jury-rigged masts were lost, as were half the remaining oars. But the oars didn't matter, because no one was rowing. Those who weren't manning pumps and buckets to keep the galley afloat were huddled in corners out of the wind and spray, vomiting or praying or both.

Blade, Luun, and Dzhai got very little sleep during those five days. If they were not urging on the men at the pumps, they were struggling with the tiller. If they were not struggling with the tiller, they were helping to lash the cannon securely. Several of the wounded died, and several able-bodied men were maimed when half the water barrels broke loose, smashing themselves to pieces and drenching the powder all over again.