Warrior of Scorpio by Alan Burt Akers

gunwale, and hauled. I could feel the expected snap of gigantic chank jaws and expected to pull a legless torso aboard.
    When my feet hit the bottom boards the jolt came as a reassuring bolt. I was light-headed, for I would not have attempted to leave the water had I anticipated the chank could return to the attack before I could clear the surface.
    The muldavy bounced.
    The chank — or another — had returned and was trying to overset us.
    I saw Delia standing up, lithe and lovely in a blue short skirt and tunic, hefting the water breaker up over her head. She tensed and then,
whoosh —
down went the water breaker over the side to bash the chank on the snout. With a flick of his tail he took himself off.
    She stood there above me, gazing down, her water-soaked garments shining and clinging, and she smiled — she smiled!
    “Dray!”
    We were in each other’s arms, then, and if the muldavy had rolled over spilling us into the chank-swarming sea I do not believe we would have noticed.
    When we returned to a semblance of sanity a hail reached us and I saw the swifter turning and moving gently down on us, twenty or thirty oars clumsily splashing. Seg shouted again.
    “You are all right?”
    I waved and shouted something.
    “Thank the veiled Froyvil for that, then!”
    “Thelda!” Delia said suddenly, her sweet face changing expression to one of concerned alarm.
    “If that is the buxom hell-cat who near scratched my eyes out back there in the cabin,” I said, “friend Seg took her off me. Thank the Black Chunkrah,” I added, lapsing into a blasphemy of my Clansmen.
    “I am glad,” Delia said. “For Thelda means well.” And she laughed in that old thrilling spine-tingling way. How incomparable a woman is my Delia of the Blue Mountains!
    The muldavy was hoisted aboard the swifter. Thelda rushed to Delia and gathered her in her arms, cooing and sighing and sobbing. Thelda’s hair, already drying in the suns-light, was a darker, deeper brown than Delia’s without those glorious auburn highlights. She tended to plumpness — I would not go so far as to say fatness — and she bubbled with eagerness. She was all over Delia. Her ripe red lips smiled easily. I saw Seg giving her his undivided attention, and sighed, for I foresaw only problems for him there. In that, as you will hear, I sadly underestimated the whole truth.
    Somewhat on the stocky side was Thelda, but she was built magnificently, with thick ankles somewhat detracting from her attempts at languorous beauty when she remembered to forget her eagerness. I cannot be too cruel to Thelda, for Delia clearly suffered her with a good heart.
    The first order was obtained. With so many men aboard unchained I had thoughts of mass rape; but the knowledge that I was Pur Dray, the Lord of Strombor, a famed and feared Krozair of Zy, corsair of the Eye of the World, had impressed the ex-slaves. Very willingly they agreed to return to their oar benches, this time as free men, and pull for Sanurkazz. I took hands with many of them, and was not surprised to feel that secret sign of the Krozair from many of them. Also there were men of The Red Brethren of Lizz, and others from the Krozairs of Zamu — famous fighting Orders of Chivalry dedicated to Zair. But none, as I had known even before I was one, as strict, as famous, as notorious where it mattered as the Krozairs of Zy.
    One of the ex-slaves who had given me the secret sign, a man of superlative musculature, as must any man possess if he is to survive at the oar, a massive black beard and a head of that curly black Sanurkazzian hair, gripped my hand and said: “You do not recognize me, Pur Dray?”
    I studied him closely. Seg was taking care of the girls as I sorted out the swifter. I shook my head, then halted that instinctive negative.
    “By Zim-Zair! Pur Mazak! Pur Mazak, Lord of Frentozz!”
    We clasped hands again.
    “We shared a raid against Goforeng, you and I, Pur Dray. You with your
Zorg
and I with my
Heart