The Emperor's Games

by The Emperor's Games (retail) (epub)

  They cleared the hold and stripped the merchantman of every fixture of value with a locustlike efficiency. Correus protested as his trunk and dressing case were carried past. Cerdic gave him a threatening look and raised a hand, so Correus subsided, pulling the folds of his toga around him angrily. It was greatly disheveled, and he had the beginnings of a black eye. Eumenes sat down on the deck beside him and glowered at his captors.

  The liburnians backed carefully away from the merchantman and unshipped the rest of their oars. “Ram her,” the pirate captain said.

  The liburnian made one precise, expert pass, and her ram punched through the merchantman’s hull. The liburnian carried only a slave crew at the oars, but they were well trained and afraid. The penalty for disobedience came too high. They watched as she listed, settled in the water, and sank. For just a moment, the gold bird on the stern caught the first shaft of sunlight as it broke through the fog.

  “Turn about and pick up the crew.”

  “Better not,” Cerdic said softly. “Here’s company.”

  Behind him the lean shape of a Roman patrol galley had appeared, and the swimmers in the water were making for it.

  “Out oars! Double-time!”

  The drumbeat began in the hold, and the blue oars rose from the water, dipped, and pulled. The liburnian leaped away into the thinning fog.

  “You’ll regret this!” Correus’s voice was high-pitched with hysteria. The black-haired captain swung around slowly to look at him.

  “I am Theophanes,” he said distinctly, “and this is my ship. Now you are mine, too.” He had a fillet of gold in his black hair, and a tunic and leggings of fine, bright blue wool. There was a gold collar around his neck, and at his belt a sword with a finely worked hilt inlaid with gold. He had a broad, heavy-boned face with a sickle-shaped scar on the cheek, relic of an old knife fight. His eyes were blue and unexpectedly amused.

  “I am a Roman citizen!” Correus said. He was wet and practically quivering with fury. “My father has a great deal of power! I demand that you put me ashore immediately!”

  Eumenes opened his mouth as if to say something, then shrugged and closed it again. The pirate captain looked at Correus thoughtfully.

  “Cerdic, go and get this gentleman a clean toga. One of his own, mind, and keep your hands off the rest.” Cerdic glared at him and disappeared into the liburnian’s small hold. There was a hoot of laughter from the steersman in the stern, and Theophanes shot him a look that shut him up fast. “I must apologize for my crew,” he said with a half bow, but there was a small smile on his lips. “I make it a point to stay on good terms with Rome.”

  Cerdic returned with the toga, and Correus unwound himself from the wet one and huffily adjusted the clean folds. “If you want to stay in Rome’s favor, you’ll take me ashore immediately. To the nearest port,” he added, noticing the appalling bleakness of the coastline – sand dunes and salty grass and a few stunted trees above the waterline. Theophanes looked like the sort of man who might take that request literally.

  “Your father’s a rich man, eh?” Theophanes tried to put a little worry in his voice, but it wasn’t entirely successful.

  “He is.” Correus appeared to be angry enough to remain oblivious to the pirate’s expression. Theophanes stood stroking his beard, his hand over his mouth. “And he’ll spend every penny it takes to wipe you off the face of the earth, when he hears of this!”

  “Well, now,” Theophanes said, considering, “he’ll be sending a mite to me first, I expect – for our trouble, you know – if he wants you back again with both your ears. And seeing he has so much, I think we’ll up the price a little.”

  Eumenes had been sitting stoically beside his master with the look of a man to whom one slave market is much like another, but a look of amusement passed over his face at that.

  “Now see here—!”

  Theophanes poked Correus in the chest with one finger. “If I were you, I’d behave. You don’t look like you’d fetch much in the slave market as it is, and I wouldn’t want to damage you by mistake.”

  There was another hoot of laughter from the men lounging on the liburnian’s deck, and this time Theophanes made no objection. “I’m afraid my crew are somewhat lacking in manners,” he said gently. “I should avoid antagonizing them.” His expression was pleasant, but his eyes were veiled, opaque, Correus thought, like dark stone.

  “When that patrol galley catches up, they’ll crucify you from the closest tree.”

  “I wouldn’t put your faith there,” Theophanes said. “Look.”

  Correus turned to the stern where the liburnian’s wake rippled away in a torrent behind the steering oars. The Roman galley was losing distance fast. As he watched, the oars slowed from their frantic stroke to the measured movement of a ship in no hurry. Slowly the galley began to turn.

  * * *

  The camp lay among the sand spits and islands that made up the spreading delta of the Rhenus. The coast was always shifting here, the sand dunes changing shape with each new season, and the mist hung low over the sodden fenland almost unceasingly. It was a fine hiding place, Correus thought, for a few ships and a crew that wanted to go unnoticed. There were more galleys beached above the waterline and covered in brushwood. As long as they weren’t followed back by boats from the shipping lanes and the Roman canal that linked the north channel of the Rhenus with the coast, there was little chance that they would be found. The man who discovered them by chance would go missing in the fenlands somewhere, Correus suspected.

  The defenses were the fenlands themselves and Theophanes’s three concentric rings of pickets. Within, the permanent camp had become a village, self-contained. The longhouses had cattle pens at one end and sleeping cubicles for the ships’ crews at the other. Three women sat mending a net on the threshold of the largest house, and another was nursing a blond baby with a coral bead around its neck. There were a surprising number of women about.

  Dogs and chickens ran barking and squawking among the outbuildings, and there were slaves, apparently permanent residents, who moved freely about the camp. A locked slave house held the rowing crews and the prisoners not worth ransoming, who awaited transport to the inland slave markets. The transport, both for slaves and loot, must come from outside the camp, Correus decided. The pirates didn’t keep enough pack animals to manage it on their own. He filed that observation away thoughtfully.

  Theophanes and the young liburnian captain, Ennius, came for them the next morning, having left Correus and Eumenes to spend the night with their hands tied behind their backs and then to each other’s wrists, in a bare, wood-floored cubicle that made their muscles ache like fire after a few hours. Ennius (Roman, Correus thought, by birth, at any rate) untied their hands and shoved a grimy scrap of parchment into Correus’s.

  “Now,” Theophanes said, “you will write. You will explain your situation to your father, and then I will read it.”

  “Yes.” Correus reached a hand around and rubbed the small of his back. “Uh, look here—” His toga was filthy now, and his hair was sweat-dampened and hanging in his eyes. He had the look of a man who has been thinking things over, overnight.

  “I don’t want you to think… uh, that is, if I was rude yesterday… well, what I want to say is, I’ll cooperate.”

  “Good. I am glad that we see eye to eye on that,” Theophanes said. “Now write.”

  “Yes, of course.” Correus began to inscribe his message on the parchment.

  Theophanes whistled. “Both of you? Your father must be richer than you said.”

  “No, no,” Correus said hastily. Theophanes might decide to up his price again, and while the money that the emperor was willing to spend was substantial, it did have its limits. “But I couldn’t leave Eumenes. Father wouldn’t hear of it. Eumenes’s father served my father for years. He’ll pay for us both, I assure you.”

  Theophanes looked at Eumenes and set the sum at twice his slave-market value. The old fool probably would pay
, he decided. If he didn’t, well, there were always the slave markets. He took the parchment from Correus and inspected it, his expression daring Correus to make remarks. Correus wisely kept his mouth shut and wondered where on earth Theophanes had learned to read.

  When Theophanes had satisfied himself that the message was suitably conveyed, he stuck it in his tunic, and Correus let out his breath.

  “I take it you were a touch uncomfortable last night?” Theophanes’s amused look was back.

  “I’d rather sleep on a pile of rocks with a Fury for company,” Correus said frankly. “My father will pay better if I’m not returned to him bent double like a hairpin.”

  “I’m glad to see you so sensible,” Theophanes said. “It’s amazing what a little discomfort and thought will do. Now that the preliminary unpleasantnesses are finished, Ennius will take you to your quarters.”

  They followed Ennius out across the sandy open space between the houses. A stocky, brown-haired woman with large, practical-looking hands was washing out clothes in a rain barrel.

  “Do you have wives here, or are they all slaves?” Correus asked curiously. Somehow the brown-haired woman looked like a wife.

  “Some one, some the other,” Ennius said. “Sometimes it changes. If a man takes a fancy to a woman in a market lot, he can always meet Theophanes’s price for her. It can be risky, though,” he added with a grin. “Old Commius took a liking to a woman off a merchant ship and spent half of his last share to buy her. Now he leads a hell of a life, poor old soul. She was a lady’s maid and very high in her ways. She stuck a knife in his foot the first night when the dinner didn’t suit her. And now he doesn’t get in her bed unless he’s bathed.”

  He led them to one of the larger longhouses and held back the hide flap over the door. “You’ll be comfortable enough in here. But don’t get any notions. Those fen bogs are tricky. The last man who ran got stuck in one, and we couldn’t get him out. He screamed for about an hour before he went under.” Eumenes shuddered. Ennius pointed at a cubicle with straw and hides on the floor and prodded the other occupant with his toe. The sleeper opened his eyes, and then widened them at Correus, taking in his toga, somewhat the worse for wear, but draped over a tunic with the thin purple border that denoted an equestrian house. The fine, soft wool and the heavy gold ring on his left hand meant money.

  “Come in,” he murmured. “We are all fish in the same net.”

  “Don’t pay attention to Ranvig,” Ennius said, shooting him an odd glance. “He draws his philosophy out of a beer horn every night.”

  Ranvig sat up and brushed the straw off himself. “There is very little else to do,” he said with dignity, “but sit in a swamp and count how many days it will take your thieves to get to my family and back again with your blood money.”

  Ennius looked as if he were about to retort but thought better of it and left with a parting admonition to Correus and Eumenes to remember the fens and the pickets and stay put. Correus wondered how often Ranvig baited Ennius. They seemed to have settled into a grudging acquaintance. He studied Ranvig curiously. The man looked to be close to thirty and was a German by his dress and speech. Theophanes had spoken a rough dog Latin, which most of his crew seemed to understand; but Ennius’s Latin had the sound of a native tongue, and Ranvig had followed it well enough to answer in the same language, although with a strong German accent. Ranvig had had some education, then.

  He was blond, as most of the Germans were, with long, pale braids that hung over his shoulders, and he was clean shaven, with an odd, crooked face. His blue eyes were set slightly askew, and his front teeth were crooked also, and vaguely wolflike. When he smiled, his mouth slanted upward farther on one side than the other. His hands were long fingered, and the fingers were very nearly all the same length; Correus remembered a German telling him once that that was supposed to be a sign of the elves’ blood. The whole effect was surprisingly pleasing, as if one oddity somehow balanced another.

  “I can’t say I’m sorry to see you,” Ranvig said. “The company here hasn’t been overly pleasant.”

  “We ain’t found it much to our taste, either,” Eumenes remarked. There were straw and hides to sleep on now, an improvement over last night, and a woman had brought them soup and barley bread to eat as soon as Correus had written his letter. But the cubicle had little else to recommend it. “I could go plain crazy in here in a hurry,” Eumenes said.

  “As long as you aren’t thinking of running for it, they won’t take much notice of you,” Ranvig said. “Go where you want to. Just don’t try to cross the fence.” The village was bordered by a low wooden palisade, intended more as a protection for the stock that roamed the compound than as a defensive barrier.

  “I’ll remember that.” Eumenes hitched up his soiled cloak and repinned it. “It might be I can talk the trunks out of them. We’ll have lice if we live in these for long.”

  Correus shuddered expressively. “Do try.” He sat and leaned back against the upright that supported the wickerwork partition between their cubicle and the next. “I’m too tired to move.” Correus’s accent had undergone a subtle change, Eumenes noticed. It was still the educated Latin of the upper classes, but it had acquired a stilted tone and a mild drawl. It was fashionable in Rome these days to sound slightly bored. The drawl had come on when Theophanes’s crew had first boarded the merchantman. Eumenes suspected it would disappear again when they left the village. If they ever did.

  Eumenes went outside and stood for a moment under the overhang of the eaves. There was a fine drizzling rain coming down. A chicken darted up to him, clucking furiously, and settled herself in a flurry of feathers in the shelter of the eaves.

  She bobbed up and down, and after a moment an egg rolled away into a mud puddle.

  “You aren’t much of a mother,” Eumenes said. He picked up the egg and stuck it in his cloak. Eumenes wasn’t sure how much Theophanes was planning to feed them, and he had been hungry before.

  * * *

  Theophanes had every reason to feed the hostages who were to be ransomed. If Eumenes had thought with his brain instead of his belly, he would have known that; in the end, somewhat self-consciously, he gave the egg to a man from the rowing decks. Eumenes had earned his own respect for food on an oar bench. Bad diet brought disease, and a sick man didn’t pull his weight, although generally he was left on the bench until he died. To a man on an oar bench, one egg could make the difference for a while between living and dying.

  The prisoners to be ransomed ate freely of whatever the pirates ate, which was better fare than in most of the German coastal villages: wine and grain and strange delicacies from the captured ships; fruit and vegetables bought in some careful, roundabout fashion from the town markets of the German coast; fish from the rivers; and pig and deer meat from an occasional day’s hunting when no ship was expected in their waters. And they always knew the night before when a ship was expected, Correus discovered.

  He could measure their knowledge in their drinking, although he was careful not to notice. Twice in his first two weeks in the camp, the pirates launched their ships and came back on the last tide with amphorae of wine or olive oil, raw wool in bales, or the Eastern spices that were almost worth more than gold. Usually there would be a frightened handful of men and women tied to each other in a line like pack ponies. There was always a market for slaves, both in the Roman zone and the barbarian country.

  On the night before these expeditions the crews stayed scrupulously sober, with Theophanes’s wrath to face if they didn’t. Otherwise there was wine and beer in plenty, enough to drown in, Eumenes said, and any other distractions a man could find to take his mind off the bleak fenland and the constant cold and drizzle.

  Except for the fact that Correus, Eumenes, and Ranvig stayed carefully within the limits of permitted territory, the pirates treated these three much as they might one of their own. Eumenes taught old Commius to play a game with colored pebbles and spent much of his time thereafter che
ating him at it. Correus was regarded with a sort of tolerant amusement when he threatened them all with immediate extinction as soon as his father should discover that they held his only son hostage. Only the young captain Ennius kept his distance from the Roman, and Correus wondered what it was that Ennius might have run from in Rome.

  Theophanes seemed to find them all of little interest until he discovered that Correus could speak Greek, which proved to be the pirate captain’s native tongue. Correus was startled to find that Theophanes spoke it cleanly, with none of the cant that characterized Eumenes’s speech. How a man born to a good family, or at least a good education, had come to this ill-fated profession was something Theophanes was plainly disinclined to explain. But they slipped into a peculiar truce marked more by the factor of birth and class, by their difference from the others, than from likeness to each other. Correus found Ranvig pleasant, occasionally humorous, company, but Theophanes remained an enigma, a brigand who could quote Homer.

  For further entertainment, there was a battered harp, taken from some long-ago captive, which was passed from hand to hand in the central hall of the largest longhouse. Each man knew a story or song of some sort, and each was loudly and drunkenly applauded whether his language was intelligible to his listeners or no. Theophanes’s first mate, Cerdic, had a woman – a dark-haired creature, reputed to have the evil eye and possessing also a heart-stopping beauty – who sang like a bird and was much in demand. Cerdic didn’t care who looked at her, but Correus noticed that no man got close enough to touch her, even by accident. Whether that was the evil eye or Cerdic’s temper, he wasn’t sure.

  Ranvig, when the harp came around to him, played inexpertly on it and sang a song that made Correus’s ears prick up. Ranvig’s singing wasn’t appreciably better than his playing, but Correus had heard the words before – Forst had a habit of singing the same song to calm a restive horse. Ranvig took long drinks from his beer horn between verses, but seemed to grow no drunker. He forgot the last verse, but they cheered him, anyway.