Men who could not swim waved their arms frantically as the merciless god called gravity pulled them under, and those that could swim either tread water or tried their luck trying to board and take the closest boat, which Bahadir and Calliope resided on. The pirate woman cut them apart without giving quarter, her eyes flashing with anger and bloodlust as her sword moved like a zephyr, leaving red to pour off the side of the boat as Bahadir turned the craft around. At the back, a cunning slave with a knife in his mouth, one of the few that had survived the capsizing of his own shoddy craft, pulled himself out of the water and leaped at Bahadir, blade swiping. Bahadir let go of the rudder and backed away, using his arm to block. Better a limb get pierced than a vital area. The blade cut into his muscled forearm, but Bahadir's body was tough. His own eyes flashed with murderous rage, and he took hold of the slave's knife arm and shattered it with a twist of his hands, bending it an unnatural angle. The man screamed in pain, and then sucked in his breathe when he was subsequently lifted off the boat, and launched like a javelin over the water with a great heave. Bahadir watched as the flailing man, beginning to scream again, landed on a spike at the edge of the wall, his body falling atop it to be spit like a roasted pig. 

Across the expanse of the water, the other two ships had traded javelins, arrows, even a few swords thrown in haste. Bahadir watched as scarred man with a burn mark on his face climb the mast of his ship, for a reason he could not fathom. The crowd's roar waxed and waned like a squall as the violence continued. 

"Bahadir!" Calliope called, her saber raised like a beacon. The pit-fighter turned, and sharing just one look, he nodded and took hold of the rudder again. She grinned, but turned to the men who were happy to just sit and watch their enemies kill one another. The captain snarled, pointing at them, speaking broken Arabyan with a few sprinkled in words of reiskpeil. "Get rowing you lazy dogs, or it's you we'll come after next!" 

They could understand her well enough, and took to the oars to row. The water sprayed from the wind and the oars slapping into it as they slowly turned to barrel toward the two boats, both now having struck one another head on, their 'crews' trading platforms as they threw themselves at one another in a bloody assault. One of the masts, the one with the burned man atop it, had broken and even now Bahadir saw it collapse into the other ship, crushing a slave and squashing the one that had taken it as a roost. A screaming man, skinny as bone, had ran through a slave who looked barely old enough to grow facial hair of his own, and tossed him into the water before he too was cut down by a man wielding twin daggers. Splotches of dark red had begun to grow in the virulent sea of the arena, like islands of death. 

Bahadir and Calliope's boat was approaching at a good coasting speed, and at this rate they would strike into the middle of the two in a few more seconds. 

"Let go of the rudder!" The corsair called, and Bahadir obeyed, letting the platform move freely as he took his spot next to Calliope, picking up the axe he had dropped. A few of the men in the other craft had noticed their approach, but most were now either wounded or still locked in combat, and they were about to be hit by a fresh crew of hardened men. Calliope laughed, and as the ship struck the two fighters leaped, Calliope's sword whirring and Bahadir hitting the 'deck' with a drop kick that sent an assailant flying off the platform to hit the wall. 

The western section of the stands cried in rhythmic unison: "Mamba! Mamba! Mamba! Mamba!" 

The eastern crowd whooped: "Namir! Namir! Namir! Namir!" Using the Arabyan word for Tiger. 

The battle was over in less than a minute, the slaves too weak and confused from their own battle to survive the maelstrom of Calliope, Bahadir, and their slave fighters. With a last, contemptuous cut of her sword, Calliope slashed the throat of the last enemy slave, his body tumbling into the water to join the rest of them, swallowed by Manann.