Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “Little man, little man!” he exclaimed, “that Roman’s avarice will thwart a worse rascal than himself! Caesar, for this once at least, shall fail!”

  CHAPTER 11. The Expedition Sails

  Ye have heard, ye have seen the sea and all its waves come thundering against the cliffs. Lo, it fails; it is hurled back upon itself. But does the sea cease? Neither shall envy and all its armies cease. It shall thunder and roar and suck and undermine, until ye learn, at some time in this Eternity, that Motion is Law. But ye think of the motion of chariots, whereas I speak of the growth of Wisdom.

  — from The Sayings of the Druid Taliesan

  NOTHING further happened until midnight. Then the trumpets sounded. There began the steady tramp of armed men and the sharp, staccato orders of centurions. After that, Caesar’s voice, hard, brilliant, not saying much, but saying it with vigor. Then a shuddering clang as two whole legions raised their shields — a pause, two deep breaths long — and a roar like the bursting of a wave on fanged rocks.

  “Ave!”

  Short, sharp commands and the clang of shields, as cohort after cohort tramped away in fours toward the harbor. Silence at the end of half an hour, and then a dog howling and screams from a woman prisoner. At last gruff voices and a heavy tread at Tros’s door, a glare of torchlight through the crack, a clang as a bronze shield touched another one — and the door opened slowly.

  “Come!” said a pleasant voice. Tros, whispering to Conops to keep close behind him, strode out into the torch-glare. The red light shone on the bronze body-armor of a veteran-officer, who beckoned and turned at once, leading through the opening in the prison-yard wall, where half a dozen legionaries sprang to the salute. The two men who had held the torches stayed behind to search the hut for anything worth appropriating.

  The officer led toward mid-camp, where Caesar sat on horseback, erect and splendid in his scarlet cloak, surrounded by a dozen torches and about two- score officers on foot, who were crowding in to listen to his last instructions.

  No finer horseman ever lived than Caesar; he looked like a god in the glare of the sputtering firelight, and the helmeted faces peering up at him shone with enthusiasm. His voice was calm, confident, unforced, and it vibrated with authority.

  “Who is that?” he demanded, as Tros stepped into the zone of light. Tros bulked bigger than any Roman near him, standing like a monarch in his gold- edged purple cloak. Sea-water stains and the dirt of travel did not show at midnight.

  “Tros the pilot, General.”

  “What? Has he been put to an indignity? Where is his sword?”

  Caesar frowned, glaring at the faces all around him, but omitting Tros. Some one ran away into the darkness, shouting as he ran. Caesar leaned forward and spoke to a slave who stood near him with tablet and stylus.

  “Write,” he commanded: “‘Caesar will ascertain who submitted Tros to indignity and will punish the offender.’ Pilot,” he went on, meeting Tros’s eyes at last, with a smile that would have mollified an angry woman, “not all of Caesar’s men are as thoughtful for Rome’s friends as Caesar is. On the eve of great events mistakes occur. You will understand that this indignity was not inflicted by my order. The offender shall be called to strict account for it.”

  The man who had deprived Tros of his sword was standing in the torchlight almost straight in front of Caesar; he turned his head and looked at Tros brazenly, unblinking, with a faint, sarcastic smile. Some one came running through the darkness and thrust Tros’ sword into his hands. The same man gave Conops his knife.

  “That is better,” said Caesar. “I don’t doubt that now you feel better.”

  He surveyed the sea of faces.

  “Officers,” he went on, “learn from this that there is nothing Caesar overlooks.”

  With that he pressed his greave against the horse’s flank and rode away at a walk, the torchmen marching to his right and left hand and the officers following in a group, their helmets gleaming, Caesar’s scarlet cloak like a symbol of Rome’s majesty looming above them.

  Tros was not left alone; two officers marched with him, one on either hand, and he knew himself, as they intended that he should, as much a prisoner as ever. Conops was no more noticed than a dog that follows a marching regiment.

  All was in darkness along the harbor side, but Tros noticed that the usual beacon fires around the camp were burning as brightly as if the troops were still there.

  A nearly full moon shone on rows of ships that had been pushed off from the shore and anchored; only one ship, and that the highest pooped and longest of them all, lay broadside to a wooden wharf, from which a heavy gangplank with handrails reached to her deck amidships.

  Most of the officers stepped into small boats and were rowed off to their separate commands, but Caesar, followed by five of them, rode straight to the wharf and urged his horse across the gangplank, laughing cheerfully when the animal objected.

  Two legionaries started forward along the plank to seize the horse’s head, but he ordered them back sharply and compelled the horse to do his bidding.

  “A good omen!” he shouted, as the horse reached deck. “The gods, as ever, befriend Caesar!”

  “Ave!” roared the legionaries, packed so closely in the ship’s waist they could hardly raise their shields; and the soldiers in the other ships took up the roar, until across the moonlit water in the distance came the last dull din of the salute.

  An officer nudged Tros, motioning toward the gangplank, so he walked aboard, followed by Conops, and neither man dreamed of going anywhere except to the high poop, swinging themselves up the ladder as if the ship belonged to them. Then men on the dark wharf pulled the gangplank clear, and some one lighted a beacon in the ship’s bow.

  A man on the poop roared an order at once. Rowers, ready on the benches, thrust their long oars through the port-holes and shoved the ship clear of the wharf.

  Then another sharp order, and they swung together in the short, quick starting-stroke, their heads in line resembling the remorseless to-and-fro beat of a battering ram. That illusion was heightened by the thumping in the oarlocks and the hollow clang of metal striking on a shield as some one marked the time.

  Caesar stood gazing astern, with his scarlet cloak wrapped tightly, and a shawl over his shoulders, watching the other ships haul their anchors and follow one by one. There were a dozen biremes, clumsy with engines for hurling stones and shooting volleys of arrows, their great iron dolphins swinging from heavy yardarms and their midship sections looking like a fortress.

  But the remainder — nearly a hundred ships — were for the most part unarmed transports and high-sided, heavy-laden merchant ships with corn, oil, wine, munitions and supplies.

  The harbor became noisy with the thump of oars, but there was no shouting, and no light on any of the ships but Caesar’s, where half a dozen men stood by the beacon with sand and water, ready to extinguish sparks.

  There was no wind outside the harbor. Caesar’s ship worked out beyond the shoals and waited until nearly all the fleet was clear and had taken station in four lines behind him. Then, in keeping with Caesar’s usual luck, a light south wind began to fill the sails. He turned at once to Tros:

  “Pilot,” he said, “make haste now and show me that anchorage on the shore of Britain. I will show you how Caesar leads Roman soldiers.”

  Tros went and stood beside the helmsman, a Roman making way for him. There was a great deal of low-voiced talking on the poop, where a dozen officers were gathered; it annoyed him, he was trying to recall what Gobhan had explained about the tides, and to remember where the quicksands lay. He ordered the ship headed up a point or two to eastward, and Caesar noticed it.

  “Pilot,” he said, “this is a Roman fleet. Each ship will follow me exactly. Carry that in mind.”

  Then he turned to laugh and talk with his staff officers. There was excitement in his voice. He was like a boy setting out on a great adventure, although the moonlight shining on the back of his b
ald head considerably weakened that illusion. He was the only Roman on the poop who wore no helmet and one of the officers warned him of the night air, so he tied the shawl over his head, and he looked like a hooded vulture then.

  “For two years I have longed for this!” he exclaimed with a conceited laugh. “It will interest the Roman crowd, won’t it, to see Britons walking in my triumph! They paint themselves blue. We will have to take some of their blue paint along with us to redecorate them before we enter Rome.

  “I want it understood that any pearls taken in the loot are for me; I need them for the Venus Genetrix. I will be generous with everything else — you may tell that to the men.”

  Tros changed the course another point or two to eastward. Caesar noticed it again. He came and stood beside him, staring toward the coast of Britain, where two or three enormous fires were burning on the cliffs that would have resembled dark clouds except for those dots of crimson.

  “Druids at their beastly practices!” said Caesar. For a moment he looked piercingly at Tros.

  “Some one may have told them I am coming; they are probably burning human sacrifices to ward off the Roman eagles! However, they will find the eagles take their sacrifices in another way!”

  Suddenly his mood changed, and the tone of his voice with it; he became even more conceited as he toyed with condescension — he would probably have called it mercy.

  “I hope for their own sakes the British will not be foolish. The Gauls have shown them what must happen if they oppose Romans under Caesar’s leadership! Is there any wisdom outside Rome, I wonder? Sometimes I am forced to think not. I trust that you are wise, Tros. I reward as richly as I punish.”

  He returned to the group of officers and chatted with them for a while, Tros seizing the opportunity to head the ship a trifle more to eastward. But Caesar noticed it. He came and stood by the helm again.

  “Show me the place for which we are sailing,” he commanded; and Tros pointed out the highest cliffs that overlook the channel from the British shore.

  “Why not sail straight for them, as a Roman road goes straight over hill and valley?” asked Caesar.

  Tros dissertated about tides and currents, that would carry the fleet too far to westward unless they made good their easting before the ebb; and for a moment after that as he watched Caesar’s face he trembled for the whole of his plan and for his friend Caswallon.

  “Why not westward?” Caesar asked. “Those cliffs frown gloomily. To me they look ill-omened — an inhospitable shore. Yonder to the westward, there are no cliffs.”

  And, as Tros well knew, there were harbors to the westward, where a fleet might anchor safely through autumn storms.

  “Swamps!” he answered curtly. “Mud, where ships stick firm until the high tides fill them! Unseen quicksands! Rocks! However — it is your business.”

  He made as if to change the helm, but Caesar checked him:

  “No, I hold you responsible. You are the pilot. It will be my pleasure to reward or punish.”

  The wind increased, and the following fleet began to lose formation, the heavily loaded provision ships falling behind and the others scattering according to their speed. Caesar’s ship was fastest of all and was a long way first to reach the “chops,” where wind and tide met and the sea boiled like a cauldron.

  Most of the legionaries, crowded in the waist, groaned and vomited, and Caesar’s war-horse had to be thrown and tied to prevent him from injuring himself.

  Then Tros swore fervidly between his teeth, and Conops came to him to find out what was wrong, leaning on the rail behind him, tugging his cloak to call attention.

  “Wrong?” groaned Tros. “I am! I have missed the quicksands!”

  “Then we live!” laughed Conops. “I see nothing wrong with that!”

  But Tros swore again.

  “I misjudged the tide. An hour earlier, and all this fleet had—”

  Caesar returned to find out what the talking was about; his sharp ears possibly had caught a word or two of Greek. He stood and stared eastward, swaying, watching where the current boiled around shoals. The moonlight gleamed on the projecting spur of an island that was hardly above sea level. There was white water within an arrow-shot of the ship’s side.

  Caesar stared at Tros coldly and then looked southward for a glimpse of following sails; the nearest ones were sweeping westward; tide, wind and current all combining to carry them clear of the shoals. Tros felt the goose- flesh creeping up his spine.

  “You Romans are no sailors,” he remarked. “If Rome were an island, you would be a vassal nation. Do you see those shoals? A Roman pilot would have wrecked this whole fleet on them. As it is—”

  Caesar nodded; he could hardly keep his feet on the heaving deck; a cloud of stinging spray burst overside and drenched him; he clung to the rail.

  “Let me not doubt you again, Tros,” he answered grimly. Tros laughed.

  “Caesar,” he answered, “do you let your troops doubt you? When danger seems imminent, do you let them doubt you?”

  “You are a bold rogue,” Caesar answered.

  “Yet you live — and I could drown you easily,” said Tros, “as easily as any of your men could kill you with a javelin in battle. Yonder is Britain, Caesar. There are no more shoals.”

  Caesar did not answer, but kept glancing from the ship’s bow, where a long stream of sparks from the beacon flew downwind, toward the fleet, that had been forbidden to show lights. The rowing had ceased long ago; all sails were spread and glistening like wall ghosts in the moonlight.

  Suddenly a ship a mile astern lighted a warning beacon and changed course westward. Fifty ships answered, and a blare of trumpets, like the bleating of terrified monsters, came fitfully downwind.

  “Romans! Romans!” Tros exclaimed. “The Britons sleep deep, eh? Will you blame me if they know now how many ships are coming?” he asked Caesar, jerking his head in the direction of the crimson flares that dotted the dancing sea for miles around.

  Caesar walked away to leeward and sat on a camp-stool where his staff, most of them seasick, were sprawling on the wet deck.

  “He suspected you,” Conops whispered. “Master, he was nearer death that minute than ever you brought him. My knife was ready.”

  Tros made a sound between his teeth. “Any fool can slay a Caesar,” he remarked.

  “What would you have done to him?” Conops asked resentfully. “Was it accident that—”

  “I would have given him a true emergency in which to play the Caesar.”

  Conops was puzzled.

  “Then — then you favor him, master?”

  “If I ever should, may my guiding star forget me.”

  “Then—”

  “I gave the gods an opportunity to do their part,” Tros went on. “It may be there are honest men on these ships, for whom the gods have other uses than to drown them. Or it may be that the gods prefer a second opportunity; the gods are like men, Conops; they delight in choosing. I will offer the gods a second choice. Bid that Roman yonder to set his crew of duffers hauling on the main sheet, if they are not all seasick. Up helm a little. So.”

  CHAPTER 12. The Battle on the Beach

  It is better to die in battle than to emerge victorious. Is the victor not convinced that violence prevails? How seldom he perceives, until too late, that what he has gained at another’s cost is nothing — aye, and less than nothing. But he who dies in battle may have learned that nothingness. When he returns to earth for another existence, he may be wiser. He will at least be no more foolish. Whereas the victorious, convinced by violence, proceed from one stupidity to worse. But battles happen. They are a consequence of cowardice, not of courage; of deceit and treachery, not of truth and high ideals; of contemptible lies, not of honor and virtue. But they happen, because ye are liars and worse. So face the consequences of your own self-slavery to treasons such as animals believe are necessary. Eat the consequences. Die. And in death ye may advance one step at least, toward the man
hood that ye claim.

  — from The Sayings of the Druid Taliesan

  THE WIND grew flukey toward morning, and at dawn it died away. The white cliffs of Britain loomed out of a gray mist as Caesar’s men unlashed the coverings of the war-engines and set basketsful of arrows in position.

  A doctor moved about among the men reminding them how to apply first aid, and two or three veterans inspected the armor of the younger men. The standard-bearer and his chosen inner-guards stood erect and splendid in the bow, and beside each rower two men stood ready to protect him with their shields and two more to fight for him.

  But there was no sign of the fleet. A few lone trumpets bleated through the mist in proof that the ships were not entirely scattered, and the sound stirred the gulls; thousands of them swooped and circled alongside, filling the air with melancholy.

  One of Caesar’s staff officers approached him on the poop and, in a voice that every man on the ship could hear, announced:

  “Caesar, we Romans are ready!”

  But Caesar ordered a delay until at least a few more ships should come within hail; so the rowers dipped lazily, just keeping steering way, and the men in charge of the commissariat served coarse dry bread in basketsful.

  At the end of an hour’s drifting a light breeze scattered the jeweled mist and Britain’s cliffs shone dazzling in the sun, hardly a bowshot distant. To seaward the fleet lay spread over a dozen miles of steel-blue water, the supply ships almost out of sight and only eight or ten of the lighter galleys near enough to come within hail in less than an hour; but among those, and almost the nearest of them, Tros recognized the small ship with the heavy fighting top commanded by Caius Volusenus.

  Caesar ordered the trumpets sounded; and almost before the blast reechoed from the cliffs an arrow plunked into the water fifty feet away; whoever had shot it was invisible, but along the summit of the cliff, beyond the range even of the war-machines, there had appeared a swarm of men, who looked like dots against the skyline.