Chapter fourteen
We drop in on the ShanksSmashed into a million splinters of light, the sea sprayed away from the thrusting ram of the swordship. The vessel heaved herself through the sea at every stabbing thrust of her oars. Straight as an arrow she hurled herself for the flank of the Leem Lover’s craft.
Somebody on the forecastle began to sing those outrageous verses from the more boisterous sections of the song “The Worm-eaten Swordship Gull-i-mo.”
Others took up the refrain, beginning low-voiced, building as Redfang surged onward into a full-throated chorus. A chanted paean of defiance, flung before us at the Shank, rolled across the sea.
The breeze remained dead. The sweeps across that narrowing gap of water churned with a motion betraying the frantic efforts of the oarsmen to pro
