Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  For the lightning flashes shone on high white cliffs with foam below them, tossing Caesar’s anchored ships; and he knew old Gobhan had been right about the high tide and the full moon; knew that he, too, had been right when he declared that Caesar and his men were mad.

  For they had beached the lighter ships, and as they lay careened the high tide had reached and filled them. Flash after flash of lightning showed the Romans laboring at cable-ends to haul them higher out of water, while the surf stove in their sterns and rolled them beam-on, while at cable-length from shore the bigger ships plunged madly at short anchor-ropes, without a crew on board to man them if they broke adrift.

  So Tros laughed aloud and sang, and Conops chanted with him. And because they reached the lee of the high cliffs it grew a little calmer; but the Britons thought that Tros, being superhuman, had so ordered it, so when he roared to them to shake out all the reef and man the sheets and stand by, they obeyed him, knowing there would be a miracle.

  They hauled the yard up high and let the full force of the wind into the sail, all sixty of them working with a will. Then Tros put the helm up and turned square before the storm, for he had picked out Caesar’s galley, with the high poop, plunging closer inshore than the rest.

  “Belay the sheets! Stand by to grapple!” he commanded, bellowing bull- throated downwind.

  Conops leaped into the waist to hammer men’s ribs with his knife-hilt and drive them aft along the bulwark ready for the crash.

  They struck the galley head-on, crashing in their own bows on the Roman’s beak. No need then to tell those Britons what do; they had fought too many Northmen at close quarters. The galley’s cable parted at the shock. The sail bore both ships seaward, grinding as they plunged, until the sail split into ribbons and Tros let go the helm at last.

  “Jump!” he roared.

  There was no need. He was the last man overside, scrambling up the galley’s bows as the British longship heeled and filled and sank under the grinding iron beak.

  He was at the helm of Caesar’s ship more swiftly than she swung her broadside to the wind. Before Conops could compel the Britons to make sail — they were bent on looting, and the knife-hilt had to go to work — he got control enough, by straining at the helm, to drift across a warship’s bows and break her cable, sending her loose into the next one.

  Then, wallowing in the trough of steep waves, clumsily and fumbling in the dark with Conops jumping here and there among them, the Britons hoisted sail. And Tros, caring nothing whether the sail held or parted, nor whether he sank the galley and himself too, broke cable after cable down the line until the whole of Caesar’s anchored fleet was drifting in confusion, galley crashing galley, timbers splintering, and here and there the cry of a Roman watchman for help from nobody knew where.

  Black night and sudden lightning shimmering on the white cliffs. Darkness again and the crimson of Caesar’s campfires streaming down the wind. Thunder of the hollow warships dueling together in the trough between the waves.

  Cracking of spars and masts — shouts — panic — trumpet blowing on the beach — and then a roar from Tros as he brought the galley head to wind:

  “Three reefs!”

  He had drifted too far seaward. There was another line of forty ships he hoped to smash. But though Conops, laboring like Hercules and cursing himself hoarse, did make the Britons reef the thundering sail, he found he could not work the galley back to windward.

  So he kept her wallowing shoulder to the sea and watched the havoc on the beach, where men were drowning as they tried to save the smaller vessels.

  “Master, for what do we wait?” asked Conops, climbing to the poop to stand beside him.

  “For Caesar!” Tros answered. “I must see him! He must see me!” But the lightning flashes were too short, and the fires the Romans lighted on the beach too dim and wet and smoky for that perfect climax to a perfect night.

  “If only he might know who did this to him,” Tros grumbled “I could die then.”

  “And your father?” asked Conops. “If we knew that your father was safe,” he shouted, with his mouth to Tros’s ear. “But if he is Caesar’s prisoner—”

  “Ready about!” roared Tros. “All hands on the sheets!”

  Conops sprang into the waist, translating that command with the aid of fists and knife-hilt, bullying but one third of the crew because the rest were searching like a wolf pack for the loot, ripping open sacks and using axes on the chests of stores. The twenty wore the ship around, and Tros headed her south by east.

  “Where to, then, now?” asked Conops, climbing to the poop again, breathless and exhausted. “Caritia?”

  “In Caesar’s ship? With such a crew? To fight ashore with one or two of Caesar’s legions?” Tros answered. “Nay. I am not so mad as that.”

  “What then?” asked Conops.

  “I think we have given Caesar all his bellyful. I think he will return to Gaul, if he can gather ships enough — for if he doesn’t, Caswallon will destroy him.

  “Then I will claim that Caswallon owes a debt to me. I think that he will pay it. He is worth ten Caesars. He will help me free my father. Find me one of those British captains. Shake him from the loot and bring him here before they ax the ship’s bottom loose!”

  Conops returned with two of them.

  “Gold!” one Briton exclaimed, gasping. “Chests of gold coin!”

  “Can you find the way up Thames-mouth to Lunden?” Tros roared, making them stand downwind where they could hear him plainly. For the wind shrieked in the rigging.

  They nodded.

  “Do you dare it in this weather?”

  They nodded again, hugging armsful of plunder beneath stolen Roman cloaks. All they craved now was to take the plunder home, and time to broach the wine-casks in the ship’s waist.

  They were afraid of nothing any longer, except Tros; he had not quite lost his superhuman aspect. But he knew the end of that would come as soon as they should broach the wine-casks.

  “With a different crew and a south wind I would dare it too,” said Tros. “You Britons will never become sailors if you live a thousand years, but I must make the best of you. Do you think, if you were dead, that you could work this ship to windward?”

  They shook their heads as if they had not understood him.

  “You can do it better with your life in you? Well then, throw all that wine overboard — all hands to it! You have your choice of dying two ways. I will kill the man who dares to broach a cask. And if you think you can kill me and then drink Caesar’s wine, you will all die of a burning bellyache!

  “You doubt it? Hah! That wine was meant for Caesar’s gift to Caswallon. He poisoned it with gangrened adders’ blood and hemlock! Drink it, will you? Heave it overboard, if you hope to live and see Thames River!”

  They doubted him, and yet — he had done wonders; it was hardly safe to doubt him. It was difficult to rig a tackle in that sea. They were very weary.

  “Die if you wish,” said Tros. “Or make Thames-mouth if we can; for I am ready to attempt it. Choose!”

  They elected to obey him and, to save hard labor, broached the wine into the ship’s bilge, where not even a rat would care to drink it.

  “How did you know that Caesar poisoned it?” asked Conops, as the empty casks went overside one by one.

  “I didn’t,” Tros answered. “But I knew we could never make Thames-mouth with a crew of drunken Britons. And a lie, my little man, well told, on suitable occasions, sounds as good in the gods’ ears as a morning hymn — as good as the crash of the breaking of Caesar’s ships!

  “Set ten men in the bows on watch. Bring those fisher captains back to me to help me find the way. Then turn in, and be ready to relieve me at the helm.”

  He turned and shook his fist at Caesar’s campfires.

  “Ye gods! Ye great and holy gods! This were a perfect night if only Caesar could know who smashed his ships! Who has his pay-chests!”

  CHAPTER 15. Early
Autumn: 55 B.C.

  It is not victory, which either side may win by chance, but what ye do with victory that weighs for or against you in the eternal scales.

  — from The Sayings of the Druid Taliesan

  TROS found the Thames. His stolen bireme with a long slit in her sail and half of her cordage hanging overside, lolled on the in coming tide up Thames-mouth. The shore, far away on either hand, was mud with dense forest behind it. Thousands of sea-birds flock and screamed over the mussel beds, and hundreds followed the ship’s wake; but the five and sixty men on board had had no rations for two days, so there was no waste for the gulls to get excited over. The crew was even short of water.

  Tros sat on the only water-cask on the high poop, beside Canops who held the steering oar. There were half a dozen sullen Britons in the bow. The remainder sat, chin on knees, in the ship’s waist, abaft the low, square citadel.

  Tros’s amber eyes were heavy from lack of sleep. The gold band across his forehead that held his heavy black hair in place, was awry, giving him a drunken look. His purple cloak, creased and sea-stained, was torn; one slit looked as if it might have been done by some one’s knife. The knuckles of his left hand were bruised and bleeding.

  One Briton in the ship’s waist kept feeling at his teeth, as if to count those that remained.

  Forward, on the ship’s bow, there were two machines for shooting flights of arrows. There were two more on a kind of citadel amidships and two on the poop. But all except those on the poop had been put out of commission by removing the gut strings. The Britons had no knives nor any other weapons and looked sullenly aware of it.

  Conops, after hauling at the long steering oar half a dozen times to keep the ship from drifting beam-on to the tide, cocked his one bloodshot eye at Tros.

  “Master, they have not drunk since yesterday.”

  “Nor I. Nor you,” Tros answered.

  “Better give them a drink now, master, else I think they will come at us again. They look ugly. They are close to home.”

  “Aye, too close.” Tros hitched his long purple scabbard so that the sword hilt lay readier to hand.

  “When a man has been paid off he is no more use until he has spent the money. When a thirsty Briton has had drink — back there!” he roared, striding toward the ladder that led down into the ship’s waist.

  His hand was on his sword hilt. The Britons retreated and sat down again. But an iron bolt thrown from forward of the citadel missed Tros by the thickness of the whiskers on his dark, determined jaw. He squared his shoulders.

  “Bring me that man!” he commanded.

  For a moment or two there was no response. Conops let go the steering oar, fitted the iron crank to one of the after arrow-machines and, laying twelve long arrows in the grooves, wound the bow taut. Four of the Britons went then and fetched a man who was hiding forward of the citadel, hustling him aft, toward the poop ladder. He climbed up alone and stood glaring at Tros — dark-skinned, dark-eyed, nearly a head shorter and not so broad as he, but lithe and active looking, with a week’s growth of straight black hair on his face and a desperate stare in his eyes.

  “What have you to say?” Tros asked him.

  “I threw. I missed. If I loved you, I would not have thrown. If I were not parched and hungry, I would not have missed.”

  Tros laughed, with his hands on his hips and his head thrown back. His was a volcanic “Ho-ho-hoh!” that shook his shoulders. “That is a man’s answer! Hah! I like it. So you love me not? Let us see whether the sea-gods or the gods of Britain love you.” Suddenly he tripped the man, seized him as he fell and, lifting him by arm and leg, hurled him down among the others in the ship’s waist, where a dozen of them broke his fall because they could not get out of the way in time. Tros stood, arms akimbo, and laughed again.

  “I am a better shot than he was,” he remarked. “How many have I hit with one bolt? Six-seven. And the bolt still good for a day’s work. Man the oars now, every mother’s son of you, before I—”

  He made a gesture with his thumb toward the arrow-engine, but his eyes were scanning the northern riverbank. One Briton dived off the bow and began swimming like a seal toward a drifting log.

  “Down off that bow, the rest of you!” roared Tros, and Conops took aim.

  They had more sense than to wait for a flight of arrows that could hardly miss one of them. They might have hidden forward of the ship’s citadel, but panic is uncalculating stuff. They went to the oars instead. Thirty oars on each side went out through the ports and the steady thump and swing began, Tros beating time with his sword hilt on a Roman soldier’s bronze shield — Caesar’s own, for aught he knew; it was a work of art, embossed with figures of Alexander of Macedon and his generals, in high relief.

  “Now!” he shouted. “Two hours’ strong rowing, and I broach the water barrel. You shall drink as you shall row — enough or not enough. My word on it.”

  Conops no longer had to strain at the steering oar. The galley steered easily with all that way on her. He and Tros watched the swimmer, who was steadily pushing the log in front of him across the tide toward where three crowded, unsafe looking craft had put out from a creek two miles away.

  “Better shoot him, master. Of twelve arrows, one would surely hit.”

  “Aye, but what use, Conops? If he drowns, that is the gods’ affair, and his. The men in those boats have already seen us. If they think we are some new kind of northern rover, I like their spunk. If they recognize this for a Roman galley, I admire their spunk still more. It is no child’s play, Conops, to put out in skincovered baskets and offer fight to a warship! And I think these Britons of ours may help us fight them off — plunder being plunder.”

  “It looks to me as if there are at least thirty or forty of them in each of those boats,” Conops answered. “Look! Three more boats. Spunk? They will come close and throw fire into us.”

  “Not they,” said Tros. “What plunder is there from a burned ship? They will follow until the tide turns, or our rowers tire, or until we stick our beak into a mud bank. Then they will try to fight their way aboard, as wolves attack a cornered stag. And it would be no use ramming them,” he mused. “That basket-work they build with wouldn’t crush; they would simply climb over our beak.”

  “That swimmer will tell them we are only two, and our crew against us. Turn, master! Put to sea again,” Conops urged, making ready to throw his weight against the steering oar.

  “Without water enough for a day!”

  “But look! There come three more of them.”

  “Four more, making eight. There will be others as we go upriver. We have but a netted fish’s chance, Conops, unless we get a slant of wind. They are all pirates along the riverbank. Unless we reach Lunden and find Caswallon this will be our last journey in this world, little man. Keep her more in midstream; we need the full force of the tide.”

  Tros went and stood by the poop ladder, watching the rowers. One of them drew his oar back through the port and offered argument:

  “What is the use? Our friends come. Wait.”

  “Out with that oar and row!” Tros thundered. “If you don’t, you shall sizzle like eggs on a skillet, for I’ll burn the ship before one Briton comes aboard without my leave.”

  Eight days of thrashing to and fro in storms, from Kent to the coast of Belgium and half way to Germany before they made Thames-mouth at last, had taught them that he did everything he said he would, including the breaking of heads.

  They rowed steadily for half an hour, but the galley was heavy; two feet of solid water flopped in her bilge. The pursuing Britons gained, as the rowers could see from time-to time, when their heads swung by the oar ports and the galley turned at a bend in the river. He who had been a captain, and was still one in his own opinion, gave tongue again, but this time did not slacken at the oar:

  “You are a fool, Tros. You make us work for nothing. They gain on us all the time, and now the river narrows. We have no anchor. When the tide turns we sh
all drift into the mud, and there they will have their will of us, unless we come to terms. For how can we fight? You made us all throw our new knives overboard.”

  “Aye, a fool, and none can argue with a fool,” said Tros. “I am like the tide, that has not yet turned. Row, you sons of fish-wives! Row! Row harder!”

  He resumed his beating on the shield, and then, because the crew was obviously weakening, he broached the water-barrel and, taking the helm himself, sent Conops down to give them drink one by one — Conops with a two-edged knife in one hand and a copper bowl in the other, ready to jump and fight his way back to the poop. The Britons were less afraid of him than of his lion-eyed master.

  The drink did the rowers good. But even so the pursuers gained. A rather futile and ill-shapen arrow plunked at the planking of the poop deck and stuck there quivering within a yard of Tros’s foot. He called Conops back to the helm, swung the arrow-engine around on its swivel and fired it.

  Twelve arrows swept into the crowded boat that had ventured closest. There was an answering yell, but six or seven men dropped out of view below the gunwale and, at once, all the pursuers fell back out of range, presently dividing themselves into two columns that began again to overtake the galley, four long, crowded boats on either hand, with withes erected all around them now, crossplaited into a sort of screen to protect the crews. They had set up the withe screens incredibly swiftly.

  They were unsafe, unseaworthy looking craft, too narrow for the length and having to be bailed incessantly. The men who manned the paddles were inconvenienced by the screen erection around the sides, but nevertheless comparatively safe at anything but very close range, because an arrow would have to be marvelously aimed to strike straight between the withes except by sheer luck. In the bow and the stern of each boat there were skin-clad men who brandished shields and yelled to the paddlers, exposing themselves recklessly and dancing to attract attention.

  “They have fought many Northmen,” Tros remarked to Conops. “They know how to draw a longship’s fire and to protect the paddlers.”