Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “Now that is a strange state of affairs,” said Tros. “They look to me like Britons.”

  “They are Britons,” said the druid.

  “Don’t they know this harbor? Can’t they take a boat from here?”

  The druid nodded, putting two and two together, frowning:

  “You are too late, Tros! That will be the messenger whom Commius sent to Caesar. They who are helping him to launch the boat belong to Etair, son of Etard, who is against Caswallon, whereas the men of Hythe are for him. They plan to reach Caius Volusenus’ ship ahead of you. They will succeed, because it will take us too long to procure a crew. The men of Hythe are doubtless on the hills behind us, tending cattle and watching Caius Volu—”

  The druid coughed, for Tros clapped him on the back so suddenly that he bit a word off midway.

  “Quick!” said Tros. “Show me a boat with a sail!”

  “But a crew?” said the druid.

  “I have one!”

  “Those horsemen? They can hunt deer; they can drink and sing and fight, but—”

  “I said, I have one! He is enough! Make haste, man!”

  That druid never hurried faster in his life. They found a boat within a quarter of an hour, whose sail had not been carried ashore and hidden. They found oars and a pole in another boat, and from a third boat lifted a dozen yards of good hemp rope with which to repair the running gear.

  Tros said good-by to the escort, gave them all the gold out of Caswallon’s purse, and nearly broke the hand of one in his hurry to get the good-byes over and be gone. Then he kissed the druid on both cheeks, cried out to Conops to raise the sail and shoved the boat out from the reeds, jumping in as the keel slid free of the mud.

  It was a strong boat, but awkward and as slow as a drifting log, although they labored at the oars like Titans.

  But at last they worked their way over the bar at the harbor mouth and caught the southwest wind that laid her over until the gunwale was awash. Then Tros took the steering oar and made experiments to discover the best point of sailing, but he found her a clumsy tub at best.

  Her blunt bow checked her constantly, and he had hard work to keep from being swamped by the rising sea. Conops was bailing half the time.

  They had made a drenching, wallowing mile of it, and Caius Volusenus’ ship seemed farther off than ever, her hull down out of sight between the waves or rising over a big one with her nose toward the sky, when Conops shouted, pointing shoreward:

  “They have launched that other! They are giving chase!”

  It was a faster boat and a bigger one, manned by half a dozen men, who had forced her through the surf at last and were following in Tros’s wake. Her big square lug-sail bellied in the wind and lifted her along a good three yards for his two.

  Rolling dangerously as the helm changed, she began to work to windward, not more than a quarter of a mile astern, two men with bows and arrows standing in her bow and a very big man in a bearskin coat leaning his weight against the steering oar.

  “He is reckless — they have promised him a fat reward for our two heads!” said Tros.

  “Master, make for the shore!” urged Conops. “They are too fast and too many for us!”

  But Tros headed farther out to sea, edging his boat craftily to keep the quartering waves from swamping her. He lost a little speed by doing that, and Caius Volusenus’ ship was still a good six miles away.

  “The tortoise who runs, and the hare who fights, are equal fools!” he growled in Conops’ ear.

  But Conops drew his long knife nervously, returned it to its sheath and then drew out Tros’s sword, examined its keen edge and drove it home again into the scabbard.

  “We two against seven — and no arrows!” he said in a discouraged voice.

  But Tros, making no remark, continued his experiments, discovering a trick the awkward hull possessed of falling away from the wind stern-first whenever he relieved the pressure from the oar. Nothing saved her then from swamping but the pressure of the wind that heeled her over and exposed more broadside to the waves — that, and instant skill at the helm.

  As Tros eased her off from one of those experiments, an arrow hummed into the sail and stuck there. “Take cover below the weather gunwale,” he ordered; so Conops knelt, begging leave to take the oar and run the risk himself.

  “For if you die, master, and I live, can I save your father?”

  Tros paid no attention to him. He was watching the approaching boat and her crew out of the corner of his eye and considering the flight of three more arrows that winged their way into the sail. The pursuing boat was to windward now, nearly abeam, changing her course so as gradually to reduce the distance between them.

  “They shoot across the wind, yet all the arrows find their way into the sail,” he said at last. “That is not bad shooting. That is done on purpose. They propose to make us prisoners. Let them see you throw up your hands!”

  “Master! We have had enough of being prisoners!”

  “Obey!” commanded Tros.

  So Conops stood, throwing his hands up, while Tros edged his boat cautiously toward the other, which turned at once and came downwind toward him.

  “They are seven,” he growled between his teeth, for he did not want it seen that he was talking. “Return your knife to its sheath, Conops! Four of them will jump aboard us. See! They stand ready in the bow. That leaves three for us to tackle. When I give the word, jump! I like their boat better than this one. Leave the big man in the bearskin coat, and that other, to me. Take you the fellow with the bow and arrows who kneels by the mast. Are you ready?”

  As he spoke, a big sea lifted both boats, and in the trough that followed the man in the bearskin shouted, shoving his helm hard over. They rose together, side by side and almost bumping on the crest of the next wave. Tros suddenly let go the sheet, exactly at the moment when the four men in the other boat’s bow jumped.

  They had calculated on his veering away from them, if anything; but it was his stern that fell to leeward; his bow came up into the wind. They missed, the pitch and roll assisting Tros as he plied the helm.

  Three sprawled into the water and the fourth just grasped the gunwale, where he clung until the two boats crashed together and the force of the collision shook him off.

  The man in the bearskin roared an order, leaning his whole strength against the steering oar, but he was too late; the collision spilled the wind out of his sail and he shipped the top of a wave over his stern that almost swamped him.

  Tros, calculating to a hair’s breadth, had timed the turn so that his bow struck the stranger amidships and, continuing the swing, he let the other boat bear down on him until for a second they lay parallel and bumping, facing opposite directions.

  “Jump!” he shouted then. He and Conops sprang for the bigger boat, where the three men stood to receive them with drawn knives. But each of them had to cling to something with one hand to preserve his balance because the boat was beam-on to the sea and wallowing, as the loose sail flapped and thundered.

  Tros took his oar with him, and landed with the blade of it against a man’s throat. That man went backward overboard, and Conops’ knife went home to the hilt into the third man, striking upward from below the ribs.

  The man in the bearskin thrust at Tros, but stumbled over the dead man, who flopped and slid to and fro, bleeding in knee-deep water. So the blow missed, but the butt of Tros’s oar did not; it struck the out-thrust hand and spun the knife overside.

  The fellow in the bearskin, shaking his hand because the blow had stung him, jumped in on Tros with a yell; but the boat lurched; Tros had the better sea legs. Roaring to Conops to keep his knife away, he seized his opponent by the neck and slowly forced him backward overboard.

  “Haul on the sheet!” he shouted then, jumping for the steering oar that swung and banged in its iron bracket. In a moment they were paying off before the wind, and the boat they had left was down between the waves a hundred yards behind, half-full of wat
er and sinking.

  “Take that bucket and bail for your life!” Tros shouted; conning the rising sea as he headed up a bit toward the wind; for the tide set inshore; they had made a lot of leeway while the short fight lasted.

  For a long time after that he made no remark, until Conops had bailed most of the water overside.

  Then Conops, with his back toward Tros, searched his victim carefully and, finding nothing worth appropriating, picked him up and threw him into the sea to leeward. When he had seen the body sink he came and sat down by his master.

  “Clean up the blood!” Tros commanded.

  Conops went to work again, using a piece of sail-cloth that he found in a box under a coil of rope. Presently he returned, and resumed the seat.

  “So now you have a dead man to account for,” was all Tros said, sparing him one swift glance as they rose over a big wave. Conops looked surprised, indignant, irritated. He had expected praise.

  “It was him or me,” he answered after a moment’s pause. “Well — you killed him. Can you give him back his life?” “But, master, you killed two men!”

  “Not I! I gave them leave to swim!” said Tros.

  “They could not swim. They are all drowned, master.”

  “That is their affair. I never forbade them to learn to swim.”

  “But that fellow clad in a bearskin — how could he have swum? His coat drowned him.”

  “He never asked my leave to wear that coat,” said Tros. “I could have slain him with my sword as easily as you slew your man. But I spared him. I gave him leave to swim. No enemy of mine can hold me answerable for the bearskin coat he wears!”

  “I am glad I slew,” said Conops, glaring fiercely through his one eye.

  “Laugh, if you wish,” said Tros. “But a man should mind his own business. At some time or another, you will have that fellow’s life to answer for, which should have been his business and not yours.”

  Conops was silent for a long time.

  “Well. At least you have a stolen boat,” he said at last.

  “So?” said Tros. “When, then? One I borrowed, by a druid’s leave. This one I exchanged for that one; and who started the exchange? I tell you, Conops, you have nearly as much as Caesar has to learn about the art of living! It is a coward’s act to kill, if there is any other way.”

  “Then you call me a coward, master?”

  “Yes,” said Tros, “but not as bad a one as Caesar; which, if you were, I would contrive to get along without you, instead of trying to teach you wisdom. Ease off the sheet a little — so — plenty. Now get forward and see whether Caius Volusenus signals us.”

  CHAPTER 10. Caius Julius Caesar

  Ye invite me to blame the conqueror. But I find fault with the conquered. If ye were men, who would truly rather die that eat the bread of slavery or bow the knee to arrogance, none could conquer you. Nay, none I tell you. If ye were steadfastly unwilling to enslave others, none could enslave you. Be ye your own masters. If ye are the slaves of envy, malice, greed and vanity, the vainest, greediest, most malicious and most envious man is far greater than you. His ambition will impel him to prove it. Your meanness will enable him to prove it.

  — from The Sayings of the Druid Taliesan

  TROS went about between two waves as he came nearly abreast of the plunging galley and, falling away before the wind as close to her side as he dared, shouted for a rope. But none was thrown to him. He had to work like fury at the steering oar, bump the galley’s side and jump for it, thanking the clumsy shipwrights who had left good toe- and finger-hold.

  For that galley had been thrown together by unwilling Gauls at Caesar’s order, very roughly in the Roman fashion under the eyes of Roman overseers, and had been rendered fit for sea by laying strips of wood to hold the caulking in the seams.

  Tros and Conops clambered aboard and let the small boat drift away. There were seasick Romans lying everywhere — they all but stepped on two of them — but not a sign of Caius Volusenus.

  Lemon-countenanced and weak from vomiting, a legionary summoned him at last. He came out of his cabin below the after fighting deck and dropped himself weakly against the bulkhead — a middle-aged man, dignified and handsome even in that predicament, with his toga nearly blown off in the wind and his bare knees trembling. His eyes were a bit too close together to create instant confidence.

  “How dare you keep me waiting all this while?” he grumbled, trying to make a weary voice vibrate with anger. “We might have lost the ship, plunging in this welter at a cable’s end!”

  “You will lose her yet!” said Tros; but his eye was up-wind, and he knew the wind was falling. “Have you a spar to make fast to the cable? You had better let the anchor go and make sail as she turns before the wind.”

  Caius Volusenus doubted that advice, but Tros was in haste now to return to Caesar, so he talked glibly of a lee shore and a gale, and pointed to the rocks where the tide would carry them.

  One thing was certain — that the crew was much too weak and discouraged to haul the anchor up; so while Caius Volusenus and two young decurions aroused and bullied the crew into a semblance of activity, Tros and Conops lashed a spar to the cable-end and tossed it overboard.

  Then, when Caius Volusenus gave the signal, they slipped the cable and the galley swung away before the wind with three reefs in her great square- sail.

  Tros took the helm and no man questioned him. It was not until they reached mid-channel and the wind fell almost to a calm that Caius Volusenus climbed up to the after-deck and leaned there, yellow and weak-kneed, resuming the command.

  “Not for Caesar — not even for Caesar,” he grumbled, “will I take charge of a ship again on this thrice cursed sea! He would not trust a crew of Gauls. He said they would overpower us Romans if a gale should make us seasick. Well, I would rather fight Gauls than vomit like a fool in Neptune’s bosom. What news have you?”

  “News for Caesar,” Tros answered.

  “Speak!” commanded Caius Volusenus.

  “No,” said Tros. “You are a faithful soldier, I don’t doubt; but you are not Caesar.”

  Caius Volusenus scowled, but Tros knew better than to let his information reach Caesar at second-hand, for then Caius Volusenus would receive the credit for it. He, Tros, needed all the credit he could get with Caesar, and on more counts than one.

  “Well, there are two of you,” said Caius Volusenus. “I will have them flog that man of yours, and see what he can tell me.”

  He stepped toward the break of the deck to give the order to a legionary who was standing watch beside the weather sheet.

  “Better order them to row,” said Tros. “There is not enough wind now to fill the sail. Flog Conops, and you injure me. Injure me, and I will fashion a tale for Caesar that shall make you sorry for it. Hasten to Caesar, and I will say what may be said in your behalf.”

  Caius Volusenus turned and faced him, his skin no longer quite so yellow since the wind had ceased.

  There was an avaricious, hard look in his eyes, not quite accounted for by the ship’s rolling over the ground-swell.

  “Did you find pearls?” he demanded.

  “Plenty,” said Tros after a moment’s thought.

  “Have you any?”

  “No. But I know how to come by them.”

  He thought another moment and then added:

  “If I should return as Caesar’s pilot, and you, let us say, were to lend me a small boat in which to slip away by night, I could lay my hands on a good sized potful of pearls, and I would give you half of them.”

  Caius Volusenus ordered out the oars and watched until the rowing was in full swing, beating time for the discouraged men until the oars all moved in unison. Then he turned on Tros suddenly:

  “Why should I trust you?” he demanded.

  “Why not? By the gods, why not?” Tros answered. “Have I played you false? I might have stayed in Britain. I might have wrecked this ship. For the rest, you shall hear me speak in praise
of you to Caesar’s face. What do you find untrustworthy about me?”

  “You are a Greek!” said Caius Volusenus.

  “Nay, not I! I am a Samothracian,” said Tros.

  Caius Volusenus did not care to know the difference. He snorted. Then he ordered the idle sail brailed up to the spar; and for a while after that he beat time for the rowers, who were making hardly any headway against the tide that was setting strongly now the other way.

  At last he turned again to Tros, standing squarely with his hands behind him, for the ship was reasonably steady; and except for those too narrowly spaced eyes he looked like a gallant Roman in his fine bronze armor; but he spoke like a tradesman:

  “If you will swear to me on your father’s honor, and if you will agree to leave your father in Gaul as a hostage for fulfillment of your oath, I will see what can be done about a small boat — in the matter of the pearls. You would have to give me two thirds of the pearls.”

  “Two thirds if you like,” said Tros, “but not my father! He knows these waters better than I do. He is a better pilot and a wiser seaman. Unless Caesar sets him free on my return, Caesar may rot for a pilot — and all his ships and crews — and you along with him!”

  Caius Volusenus faced about again and cursed the rowers volubly. Then, after a while, he ordered wine brought out for them and served in brass cups. That seemed to revive their spirits and the rowing resumed steadily.

  After a long time Caius Volusenus, with his hands behind him, came within a pace of Tros and thrust his eagle nose within a hand’s length of his face.

  “Where are these pearls?” he demanded.

  “In a woman’s keeping.”

  “Why did you bring none with you?”

  “Because, although the woman loved me nicely, there was scant time, and she has a husband, who is something of a chief. She begged me to take her with me. But I did not see why Caesar should have those pearls, and I had thought of you and what a confederate you might be.”

  Conops, squatting on the steps that led to the after-deck, was listening, admiring, wondering. Greek to the backbone, he loved an artful lie. His face rose slowly above the level of the deck; his one eye winked, and then he ducked again.