by Talbot Mundy
Tros threw his own cloak off and unbuckled the heavy Roman breast-plate, letting it fall with a clank on deck. Then he tore his shirt to lay bare the huge, hairy breast beneath it, and kicked off his high-laced Roman sandals, for he knew how slippery a swaying deck could be.
He was glad then that the sun went down, being minded to spare Orwic what distress he could. He liked him, liked him well enough to take a chance.
“Clear the poop!” he snarled, drawing the long blade.
He took three steps forward, straight at the committee, who were leaning with their backs against the rail. They had to go or else resist him. Orwic said nothing, so they went, one by one, down the ladder. All the other Britons swarmed up on the midship citadel to watch. But even as they were swaying shadows in the gloom, so were Tros and Orwic no more than dim specters. Nobody could see much. There was a catching of deep breaths, no shouting, no other sound than the creaking of cordage and the splosh of the waves against the rolling galley’s bilge.
“Are you ready?” asked Tros.
Orwic came at him with a leap, whirling a long sword that made the darkness whistle. Tros met him point first, meaning to stand his ground, but the sparks flew and the blows rained on his blade with a din like a blacksmith’s anvil and two hammers going.
He had to sidestep and let Orwic flounder away to leeward down the slippery deck, where he could have skewered him as easily against the poop rail as a butcher sticks a sheep. There was a gasp from the midship citadel, followed by a dozen shouts to Orwic to use the point and not the edge, then silence, broken by a cry from the night and the waves:
“Master! Oh, Master!”
The words were Greek. They sounded to the Britons like the voice of a spirit howling in a wilderness of dark sea. Tros heard them draw their breaths, could almost feel them shudder. He knew the voice, and his heart leaped as he laughed. The old Phoenician had kept faith! Conops! But he had to keep his eyes on Orwic, who was crouching in shadow, watching his chance to spring.
The voice cried again as Orwic drove with the point at Tros’s throat, slipping on the wet deck as he lunged. Tros caught the point under his own hilt, jerking with a sudden movement of the wrist that snapped the Briton’s blade. Then, swift as a loosed bowstring, before Orwic could recover he struck upward at the Briton’s hilt. The broken sword spun overside, humming, and Tros’s point touched the naked skin of Orwic’s throat.
“Now cry ‘Enough!’ Say it! Speak!” Tros ordered.
“Kill!” said Orwic, swallowing and breathing through his nose. He even pressed his throat against the point until Tros lowered it.
“Will you have another sword?” asked Tros, “and fight me till I slay you? Or will you cry ‘Enough!’ and take my hand? It seems to me no shame that you should yield. Caswallon gave a hundred of you into my hands—”
“Master! Oh, Master!” cried a hollow voice across the waves. This time the words were in Gaulish, as if Conops had despaired of his native Greek.
“Lo, the sea answers for me,” laughed Orwic. “Did you offer your right hand?”
Tros passed his sword into his left, and waited. Orwic stepped closer, and Tros hugged him as a father hugs his son, though he was barely four years older than the Briton. It is experience that makes age.
Then suddenly out of darkness Conops climbed the ship’s side, springing for the poop, crying:
“Master! Get the anchor down! Rocks! You’re drifting on rocks!”
The Britons all surged aft off the citadel to find out what was happening, but Tros drew his sword again at the head of the poop-ladder.
“Back!” he thundered. “Every mother’s son! I’ll brain the first who disobeys me! To your oars! Out oars!”
There was no chance that they could row. He gave them something to divert attention. He could hear the sea a-wash among half-hidden rocks. The pounding of waves on a beach had swelled into one continued roar.
“To the oars and save the ship!” he shouted, pounding the sodden drum.
As they fell back, doubting whether to obey him, Conops went scampering between them through the gloom toward the ship’s bow. In another second there were thumps and protests as his knife-hilt struck the ribs of seamen, then the splash of the anchor and the hum of a hawser reeling overside.
“She holds!” he roared between his hands a moment later, then charged back to the poop.
“Where is Hiram-bin-Ahab?” Tros asked him.
“A scant mile away, sir, anchored in a cove to leeward of the rocks you came near splitting on!” Conops glanced about him, baring his teeth at Orwic. “Any fighting before we work her out of here? She’s riding in twice her depth within a ship’s length of the reef. We’d better move.”
But Tros could trust that hawser and knew, too, what a frenzied panic the Britons would make of oar work unless he should wait for the sea to die down a bit. There was no top on the sea, but it rolled along, high backed and heavy ahead of the tide.
“Get into your boat and get the sail first, if there’s any of it left!” he answered. Then, standing by the poop-ladder: “Man the benches!”
Half of the crew was still doubting whether to obey him. “What does she look like?” he asked, turning his back to the crew to give them a chance to obey him without feeling they were being driven.
“Fine in the dark,” said Conops. “She looks twice her size. I didn’t know the cloth was all ripped off the wickerwork until I lay alongside in the boat. If we show up off Caritia Sands at dusk, the Romans’ll never doubt us.”
He went overside with three of the British seamen and spent half an hour disentangling the sail to spill the water out of it before he shouted: “All clear!”
Then Tros stood over the rest of the twenty and made them haul the sail on deck. Meanwhile, the mist had shifted, gathering itself into a dense bank and following the tide. He could see the reef now and the white line of breakers on the beach beyond it.
“Lud of Lunden Town!” he muttered. “Britons, not being sailors, haven’t yet spent their sea-luck!”
He shivered. The reef was almost near enough to spit on. “Out oars!” he shouted, and this time they obeyed him. Conops ran to the bow to use his knife-hilt on the seamen’s ribs again, forcing them to man the hawser and haul in the slack. Tros pounded slowly on the sodden bull-skin drum, ready to roar to Conops to let go if the rowers should come to grief and lose the steering way.
The oars dipped deep when the galley rolled and scudded on the wave tops when she hove her side skyward, but the anchor came home foot by foot, and Conops let it swing until there was half a mile between them and the reef.
Then, after taking a sounding or two, he let it go and they rolled to it in safety until dawn, with Hiram-bin-Ahab’s small boat dancing astern at a long painter’s end.
The two men who had come with Conops were a godsend then, for there was the sail to bend on and they had it done before the light wind came that blew away the mist banks and showed Hiram-bin-Ahab’s ship rolling easily at anchor, like a living thing that laughed. The great eyes painted on her bow — so that she might see the way home — seemed to wink when the waves half covered them.
“And Skell?” asked Tros, when Conops came up to the poop for a moment’s rest.
“First, when the Northmen hove in sight off Thames-mouth, Skell swore he knew them and could make terms,” said Conops. “He proposed to show the Northmen the way to Lunden, saying Northmen would not harm a merchant ship but would be generous in return for such aid as that. He said the Northmen’s harvest must have failed and they were coming to seize foothold in Britain.
“But Hiram-bin-Ahab agreed with me there would be a storm before long, and he determined to save Lunden from those pirates if it might be done. So, being sure he had the faster ship, he shortened sail a bit to let them come within arrow range. Then he fired a volley at the nearest one, and shook out reefs, and ran, they giving chase since he had forfeited his rights.
“So he decoyed them until the
storm broke and, what with wind and tide, it was too late for them to turn into the river-mouth for shelter. Hey! But he knows how to handle his crew, that old Phoenician! And he handles a ship as if she were a king’s mistress!
“When he changed the helm a bit, so that the sea took us under the quarter, Skell was seasick, and riding at anchor hasn’t helped him to recover. When I came away he was lying like a dead man on a coil of rope on top of the cargo.”
“Is he hurt? You haven’t—”
“No, sir. He did call me a liar, as you said he might perhaps. He spoke truth: I changed the lie so often, that he could not do less than turn on me at last.
“No, sir, not the blade, although he tried to use his; no, sir, I didn’t tie him; he didn’t need it. Those heavy men fall hard. There’s a world of chin sticks out under that red beard of his. For a minute or two I feared I’d broken it adrift, and he carries a lump there now as big as a Joppa orange, but the bone’s in one piece.
“What troubles him most is his belly. He vomits more than you’d believe a man could hold. Now he thinks he’s dead, and now he fears he isn’t, but he’ll be fit enough for mischief when you land him.”
“Good,” said Tros. “Get back to the Phoenician and tell him, if we both live and ever meet again, there’s nothing he mayn’t ask of me and see it done! Then come and tell me what this galley looks like from a distance. Try to imagine yourself a Roman in Caritia at dusk.
“If we show up at dusk, we’ll have another good excuse for not putting in — shoals, tide, wind. But I want to know whether that basketwork looks like the real thing from a mile or two away. If it does, tell Hiram-bin-Ahab to sail the minute there’s a fair wind for Caritia, but make sure he understands we’re to turn up there at dusk. Wait! Has Skell seen this galley yet?”
“No, sir. He’s lain below ever since seasickness took him.”
“Tell Hiram-bin-Ahab to use every ruse he can think of to make Skell sure this is a Roman galley straight from Ostia. Let him begin talking smallpox now. Let him ask Skell whether he knows a remedy against it.”
CHAPTER 23. Tros Makes a Promise
Have I spoken of your folly? Aye, times out of number. But ye are wizards, ye are paragons of judgment and wisdom compared to the braggart who pretendeth to wisdom that he hath not. Again, and again, and again I have said: if brawl ye must, because of follies ye have not outgrown, then brawl like men. I brawl not, because I hate not. Ye who hate, shall ye avoid the pains of hatred by pretending to a virtue that ye have not? It is better, I say, to die in battle than to do lip-service to the Wisdom whose outer threshold ye have not the strength of character to cross.
— from The Sayings of the Druid Taliesan
ALL that day and most of the night following, they lay at anchor while Conops spread pitch liberally on the bows and stern and Tros coaxed his Britons back into a friendly frame of mind. First he had to reestablish Orwic in their estimation. Orwic had plainly mishandled the mutiny, and some of them were disposed to think he had deliberately lost that hand-to-hand fight in the dark.
So he began by asking whether they thought they had a better man than Orwic. He offered to fight any ten of their own choosing, two at a time, which was sheer guile, because he knew their code of honor did not permit of two men fighting one. They catcalled at him from the benches, but none offered to match swords, and they listened when he uttered his great rolling laugh and spoke his mind.
“Orwic is blood of your blood. I am not. He had to listen to you, because you are all his equals more or less. But not I. I am the master of this ship. Who gainsays that?”
There was no answer until after a long pause; Tros was not avoiding issues, he was forcing one.
A bow oarsman shouted the word “coward” at him.
“Since when?” Tros asked, and waited.
But that man did not answer. It was another who shouted: “You ran from two Northmen’s ships!”
“As I have eyes, it was the Northmen ran,” Tros answered.
“As I have eyes, it was Orwic’s work that put them both to flight! As I am a sailor and ye are horsemen, it was impossible to follow. But for my hand at the helm, ye would all be among the fish this minute, belly upward, with the sea-birds pecking at your dead eyes!”
“This minute the Northmen are burning our villages!” another voice retorted, and at that there was a murmur of assent.
A heavy man with brown hair down to his shoulders, who pulled the stroke oar on the port side, shouted: “Sail in search of the Northmen now, and we will catch them at Hythe or Pevensey.”
“Since when have ye so loved the men of Hythe?” Tros answered. “I was there when Caswallon came to summon them to join him against Caesar, but not a man from Hythe would go. They said they would hold Hythe, and no more. If they were so sure they could hold it then against the Romans who had beaten such gallant lads as you are, can’t they hold it now against mere North Sea rovers? What are two ships when Caesar had more than a hundred ships full of well-armed Roman infantry?”
He had struck the right note, and he knew it. There was no love lost between Lunden and Hythe and Pevensey since the men of Lunden and a handful from eastern Kent had to stand off Caesar’s legions without assistance.
“Now listen to me!” he thundered. His hairy breast was naked, which was intimation that he stood there ready to fight whoever challenged him.
“Caswallon gave you into my charge, holding me answerable, bidding you obey me and be valiant. I will neither flinch nor turn aside. Ye shall obey me, or I will fight you one by one! It is not Hythe ye love, or Pevensey. It is your own town and the honor of your women and the fun of burning the Northmen’s ships behind them.”
There was a cheer, but he raised his hand for silence.
“And now ye help me rescue my father, in which there shall be no fighting if I can help it, since he loves fighting no more than the druids do. But does any man accuse me of not paying what I owe? Has my word ever failed you? I think not. Then hear ye this.”
He paused dramatically, but the histrionics were a ruse. He was scanning faces, making sure that the moment was ripe for the master argument.
“Ye shall obey me first, and I will do my business. Then ye shall have your bellyful of Northmen, for I will lead you on such a raid as ye have never imagined. No matter whether we catch those two ships, or whether they escape us, or whether they have wrecked themselves along the coast, or whether the men of Hythe have slain them all. I will take this ship, or another, and as many of you as dare come with me, and we will raid the Northmen in their own roosts in midwinter when they least expect us. We will let them feel for a change what burned homes mean! Now — ?”
He had them. They roared him an ovation, knowing he did what he said he would do. None doubted that promise, except Tros, who made it; it was far too prophetic for him to believe; but it served a purpose. They wanted to get the oars out then and hurry through the business of catching Caesar, who was unimportant in their minds compared to the hereditary enemies who had ravaged their coasts and villages since, according to legend, Britain first rose from the sea.
The Roman was an incident. Northmen were a habit, like wolf hunting and marrying and feasting. Besides, the Northmen fought according to accepted and unwritten rules, which made a sport of it, whereas Caesar was no gentleman; he fought in armor, and used cosmetics, and wore skirts, and — from what they had heard of him — couldn’t even carry liquor handsomely.
There was no more trouble after that, not even need for Conops to keep watch while Tros slept. Tros forbade it, rather than let the Britons think he doubted them. And, two hours after midnight, came the favoring wind, a light air that hardly filled the sail, so that they had to row to keep Hiram-bin- Ahab’s curved spar in sight, that could ghost along two ships’ lengths to their one.
The wind failed by morning, but they were out in mid-channel then, so that it was an easy matter to time their arrival off Caritia, dawdling along as if they had picked up the Ph
oenician at sea and were adjusting their speed to his. Hiram-bin-Ahab kept a good three miles away. There was no risk of Skell detecting anything wrong.
Three miles to the windward of Caritia sands Tros backed the oars and dropped anchor, hoisting, as agreed, a white cloth signal at the yardarm, which meant that the Phoenician should proceed.
Hiram-bin-Ahab had all the necessary documents. Tros’s father’s chance depended solely now on whether the Phoenician should act his part artfully or make some unforeseen mistake.
Tros had a strange, impersonal respect for his old father mixed of many contradictions. As a seaman, who understood strange seas better than most priests know human nature, he almost worshiped him. As an obedient emissary of the Hierophants of Samothrace, he thought him an impractical old visionary.
In theory Tros was willing to admire the mystery-teaching of non- resistance and no vengeance. But in practice he had hung back from initiation beyond the novice’s degree — which imposed few obligations — and he forever chafed at his father’s prohibitions against taking life. Besides, he knew that his father had been a storming swordsman in his youth.
“Conops,” he said, watching the Phoenician’s ship through a light mist that dimmed its outline, “that old mariner knows his own mind. He keeps a promise, Romans or no Romans. You know yours. You are a faithful man. I know mine. I will snatch my father out of Caesar’s hands by any means. But who shall know my father’s mind? I think he may blame us all because our method is unethical, as if ethics could influence Caesar.”
Conops was not quite sure what ethics were, but he knew Tros’s father, having sailed under him since Tros and he were old enough to learn to splice ropes.
“Master, a Prince of Samothrace must be a dreadful thing to be,” he answered. “He is not meek, for you and I have quailed under his wrath when we displeased him. So it is not that he does not feel anger or suffer when Caesar orders the crew beaten to death before his eyes.