by Talbot Mundy
“Your man was too full of his own importance,” Orwic drawled. “He actually knifed a friend of mine. Where’s Caesar? Are we ready to start back? Here — have some mead.”
Tros drank with him. There was only one barrel of the stuff aboard, supposed to be for medicine. The best plan seemed to be to finish it.
“If you’ll hold your tongues,” he said, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, “and make those young asses in the citadel douse the lights and be quiet, I’ll give you a crack at Caesar before you’re two days older. Otherwise, I’ll guarantee you at the bottom of the sea by midnight! Suit yourselves!”
Orwic strolled forward to the citadel, his apparently casual eyes alert for Conops, who fingered an empty sheath and glared at him. Presently the singing ceased and lights went out. Tros sat on the table, playing boon companion, for there was no other way just then of managing those gentry.
“Here’s your knife,” said Orwic cavalierly, tossing the thing to Conops as he came back out of the darkness. “Keep it for your equals, or your betters will have to have you whipped.”
“Don’t you young idiots know,” said Tros, “that the gloomiest place on earth is a Roman bireme that has been two months at sea, as we’re supposed to have been? The crew are always down with scurvy. You have smallpox in the bargain!
“To enforce discipline, the commander has used the scourge; he has thrown men overboard; he has chained unruly rowers to the benches. He’s as sick and ill-tempered as the rest of you. He has boils on the back of his neck. The omens are all wrong; they always are when a man has specks before his eyes.
“You’ve been fed dry meat, which a Roman hates and moldy bread, which sickens you to look at. There are rats in the water casks, so you’re afraid to drink. You’re short of fuel, so you can’t boil water or cook your rations. There’s a curtain of weed a yard long on the galley’s bottom, which trebles the labor of rowing. The bottom leaks and you have to man the buckets day and night.
“The sail won’t draw, because it’s full of holes, which your fingers are too swollen and cracked to mend. The ship stinks. Such blankets as you have are full of vermin. You hate one another even worse than you hate your officers.
“If those people in Caritia get a hint that you’re merry-making, they’ll not stop to argue. They’ll know we’re no Romans from Ostia! As you love Lunden Town and hope to see it, be miserable!”
He had to carry on in that vein. He had to tell them tales of Roman ships he had seen in foreign ports, coming in with a crucified man at the masthead and the rowers so rotten with scurvy that their teeth had fallen out and the skin fell away from them like scales from a decaying fish.
“You’re supposed to be feeling like that,” he insisted.
And when they had finished laughing at him, being Britons, they found an entirely different reason for doing what he asked. “You’re a foreigner, so I suppose we must make allowances,” said Orwic.
Tros got up the anchor and set them to rowing, lest the liburnians sneak out on him in the darkness to investigate. The Romans were quite capable of that. Julius Caesar had been known to swim broad rivers under cover of the night, to do his own scouting when he doubted the tales that were brought to him. But if liburnians had come, their crews would have heard such dismal groanings at the oars, such cries of anguish, as might have made them believe it was a prison ship.
Orwic, with some pitch smeared on his arms and legs to represent the scurvy, walked up and down the plank beside the rowers flourishing a cord with which he made believe to flog them, and nothing would satisfy them until Tros sent a man to the masthead to pretend he was crucified up there. Now that they were over seasickness they seemed to understand no middle course between comedy and mutiny.
Tros, forgetting that man at the masthead, for he soon grew tired of groaning, steered the galley slowly toward Hiram-bin-Ahab’s ship, arriving within easy hail about a minute before the liburnians came thumping through the night. Then he implored his crew to be silent, gesticulating with both fists, and the Britons leaned on the oars to listen, not that they could understand a word of Latin. There was nothing visible except the dim, shadowy outline of the Phoenician’s ship.
“Here’s your man!” cried some one.
“What is his name?”
That was Hiram-bin-Ahab’s voice, wheezy and suspicious.
“Perseus.”
“Is he alive? I won’t take him if he’s dead.”
“Yes, he lives. Come on, throw a line! And hand over that written order!”
“There goes the line-catch! Yarrh — what duffers! Throw again there, you. Now. What’s that? No! I’ll throw you down the writing when I’ve seen the man. Put the rope under his armpits. Gently now — haul away — gently, gently, gently!”
Silence, in which everybody held his breath. Then the Phoenician’s voice:
“All right. Here is the writing. Catch.”
Tros sighed relief. The Britons, all eyes on his silhouette against the poop rail, saw the shoulder movement and sighed with him, swinging the oars for the dip. The man at the masthead heard that, and accepted it as leave to play the idiot — he had a gallon of good mead under his painted leather armor.
“Wow!” he yelled. “Hoi! You there, Romans! Tell Caesar, next time he tries to conquer Britain—”
“Silence!” Tros thundered, but too late.
There was a roar of laughter from the hold. The liburnians came hurrying to investigate, their oars churning the water in short, sharp strokes.
Their officers knew Gaulish when they heard it, even if they had not caught the words. Hiram-bin-Ahab, making no sound, let his ship swing slowly on the tide. There came the sudden creak and rattle of his mainsail going up, and a man in one of the liburnians shouted to him to drop anchor.
“Poseidonius! O Poseidonius!” cried a voice from the other liburnian, nearly alongside.
Tros did not answer. He pounded the drum and the oars began to thump in unison. But he had to swing the ship before he could hoist sail. There was hardly any wind at that, and the liburnians could out-row him two for one. A low, dark, skillfully maneuvered vessel shot in under his stern, and again a voice hailed him:
“Hey, there! Poseidonius!”
“Drown him!” yelled the Britons. “Plug him full of arrows!”
The man at the masthead offered himself for a target to the Romans, waving arms and legs and caterwauling. Tros had to make the best of it.
“Come aboard,” he suggested in his choicest Latin, speaking drily, imitating Caesar’s voice as nearly as he could. Then:
“Stand by that arrow-engine, Conops. Man the crank there, you! Come aboard, Centurion! Did you hear me? Come aboard!”
He beckoned. Orwic and a dozen Britons left the oars and crouched under the bulwark. The liburnian had come in under the galley’s counter, too close for the arrow-engines, its bow nosing in under the starboard oars. The other liburnian was keeping a safe distance.
Tros lowered a thick rope with knots in it. The centurion, half curious, half conscious there was nothing else he could do unless he chose to be shot or sunk, came up hand-over-hand.
He was allowed to reach the poop before the Britons pounced on him and took his sword away. He offered no resistance so they let him stand, with Orwic close behind him and two others ready to jump on him if he should move. He stood like a man, with his chin high and a short, stubby, pugnacious beard sticking out under it.
“What is this?” he demanded.
He was not afraid. He was scandalized that a foreigner should dare to take such liberties with Rome. Tros loved him.
“Centurion,” he said, “tell me first, is my father unharmed? I am Tros, the son of Perseus, Prince of Samothrace.”
“So you are he?” said the centurion. “Your father has been treated as you will be, when Caesar catches you! They who conspire against the Senate and the Roman People, all get their deserts in time!”
“Has Caesar tortured him?”
“I believe he was racked.” Tros ground his teeth and spoke to Orwic over the centurion’s shoulder.
“He is your prisoner. What do you wish?”
“He is yours,” said Orwic. “Do what you like with him.”
“Do you hear that?” said Tros. “You are my prisoner.” The centurion nodded. He seemed perfectly indifferent. “Take back your sword then and obey me. Tell Caesar, when the day comes I will deal with him and not with a centurion! Tell Rome, the Senate and the Roman People, that I, Tros, am the enemy of Rome from this day forth!”
Tros signed to the Britons to stand aside.
“No enemy of Rome lives long!” the centurion answered. “Farewell, Tros!” There was a clank of bronze as he saluted. “I will deliver your message, although I think you are a fool. Caesar will crucify you for it.”
CHAPTER 25. “God give you a fair wind, Hiram-Bin-Ahab!”
Better far the good faith of one stranger to another than a thousand times a thousand vows upon the altars of gods who look, I say, for deeds, not promises.
— from The Sayings of the Druid Taliesan
THE other liburnian tried to head off Hiram-bin-Ahab and force him to drop anchor, but the wind came athwart tide and current, lending the Phoenician heels and forcing the smaller craft to run for shelter. Tros paced the poop, fretting at the galley’s slowness as he followed in the Phoenician’s wake.
The Britons were all cock-a-hoop and skylarking, Orwic imitating the centurion, thrusting out his throat and chin exactly as the Roman did. And one of the others took off Tros so perfectly, hilt forward, arms akimbo, feet apart, teeth showing in a large, alert grin, that even Tros came out of his dudgeon at last and laughed.
“You young dogs! You have lost Caesar for me! You would laugh if Lunden burned.”
“Lost him? Wait and see,” said Orwic.
“See? You shall see a fight, or I don’t know the Romans. They can overtake Caesar with a message much faster than we can sail to Seine-mouth. That is why I gave that centurion something for the messenger to say.”
“Why then go to Seine-mouth? Why not leave Caesar whistling?” Orwic suggested.
“I told Caswallon I will go to Seine-mouth, and I will. I told Hiram-bin- Ahab I will escort him, and I will. I told Caesar, by the mouth of Skell, that I will go to Seine-mouth. So I will. I have promised you a brush with Caesar. You shall have one.”
He was grateful for the rising sea, that made it dangerous to approach the Phoenician closely. He did not want any conversation with his father just then, felt too sure the old man would forbid vindictiveness, with his dying breath, perhaps. Tros could not stomach such an interview. He knew that if his father should exact such a promise from him he would make it and keep it. He preferred not to run that risk.
“Let the gods attend to it,” he growled, turning to face Conops at the helm. “My father and the gods are intimates. If it is right for him to bind me in his violenceless peace before he dies, let them bring us together.”
Conops did not answer. He knew that mood just as well as he knew that he and Tros could cross that intervening quarter-mile of sea in a boat, if Tros cared to do it.
They had sailed much rougher seas together, in worse boats than the hide- and-wicker thing they carried. Conops, lacking an eye because he had dared to answer Caesar pertly, also would have obeyed Tros’s father if commanded with the old man’s dying breath to let bygones be.
Like Tros, though, he craved no such injunction. He respected the old man as much as Tros did. Like Tros, loved him well enough to run all risks to snatch him out of Caesar’s hands. But, like Tros again, knew too well, from grim experience, that the peace of non-resistance is a warfare that does not suit uninitiated men. It is easier and more exciting to fight Caesars than to wrestle with emotions in oneself.
So they boiled and plunged along in the Phoenician’s wake, he standing well out from the shore, until dawn found them nearly out of sight of land and the gale increasing. It was almost too rough to keep footing on the deck, but Tros made Orwic drill the Britons with bow and arrow and train them at imaginary floating marks with the well-oiled arrow-engines. They grumbled because he would not let them use up ammunition, even threatened to defy him.
“Very well,” he answered. “Fight with bare hands if you choose. Caesar will be lying up for us in Seine-mouth with all the ships he can find. If we come on him at night, and see him first, we may burn his ships. If not, and if he sees us first, we shall be hard put to it to guard that old Phoenician’s rear while he makes his escape homeward.
“As I know Caesar, we will need every arrow we have, and pray for more before we’re through with him!”
So they loosed bows at an imaginary mark, practicing the quick combination of hand and eye at any angle that is the secret of efficient marksmanship.
“Speed,” Tros urged them. “Speed! Three arrows in the air at once, and all aimed straight.”
“Caesar will have no arrow-engines,” Conops reminded him. “His warships are laid up for the winter. The best he can get will be Gaulish fishermen or merchantmen, slow, slower than we are, low in the water, leaky. Give us half a gale like this one, and—”
“I know Caesar,” Tros retorted. “That fox will have a trap set.”
And he paced the poop again, pounding his palm in his fist, pondering, matching his wits against the cleverest Roman of them all.
His main objective was to escort the Phoenician to open sea and safety. Would Caesar guess that? Much would depend on what Skell night have told. If they had thrown Skell into a pest-house and conversed with him across the dung heap that surrounded it, Skell might have said almost anything.
Tros made up his mind at last that, whatever Skell had said, Caesar would conclude now that it was all part of one and the same trick. Caesar would learn by messenger that two ships, one a trader, one a captured Roman galley, were acting with forged documents in close cooperation. He would do his utmost to catch both ships.
And if he believed that Seine-mouth story at all, he would probably take such ships as he could get and put to sea, with the idea of bottling both in the river-mouth if they should enter. Failing which, if the whole tale were a ruse, he would stand a good chance of catching both ships in the open. Caesar was the last man in the world likely to sit still and let things happen to him.
The second objective — and Caesar might guess that too — was to place his father, dead or living, among friends. If he should die there were rites that he, Tros, only he, could properly perform. Dry land, Britain, Lunden, with the druids helping, was the proper place for them.
The third objective was to punish Caesar drastically, to capture Caesar if he could.
He finally made up his mind that Caesar would be no such fool as to risk his own life in a hurriedly conditioned ship, without very definite information as to where the enemy might be. He would send his men to sea, and wait for the cavalry, or whatever other troops he might have available, at some point whence he could signal and conduct the operations.
But he was sure of this: That wherever the fighting should take place, there Caesar would arrive, if it were possible, to take command if his men were having the worst of it and to seize for himself the credit in any event.
High noon saw Tros still thinking and Hiram-bin-Ahab hove to, waiting for him, with a big sea wetting the ships’ decks as they plunged with a couple of miles between them, nearly out of sight of land.
When Tros had brought his galley within hailing distance and had quieted his Britons so that he could hear, the Phoenician’s mate howled to him that the man at the masthead had reported three sails low down on the horizon near the Gaulish shore, proceeding westward. He added that Tros’s father was unconscious in the cabin.
“Has he spoken?”
Tros waited for the answer with his fingers clenched into his palms, and sighed enormously when it came at last, howled through a speaking trumpet:
“No-o-o! No word!”
“Th
en we are not forbidden!”
He slapped Conops on the shoulder.
“Tell your master,” he bawled back, “to keep behind me until nightfall!” Then he took the lead and set full sail, in order to arrive within sight of Seine-mouth as near sunset as he could, sparing his Britons all labor at the oars, making them eat and rest, using every trick he knew to make them conscious that the effort of their lives was coming.
There was no more sign of Caesar’s ships, although he had Conops at the masthead, and Conops’ one eye was worth a score of other men’s. There was no sign even of fishing boats, a fact not wholly accounted for by the high sea that was running. Men who fish for a living often have to haul their nets in half a gale. The sea was empty, in the way the fields are when a thousand men lie ambushed.
He dropped anchor and lowered his sail within sound of the surf that pounded on the mud banks off the estuary, a little too near sunset to satisfy him entirely, wishing Caesar keener vision than the eagles whose images were perched on Roman standards.
And there he waited, rolling comfortably in the mud bank’s lee, studying the color of the water and the inshore landmarks, until Hiram-bin-Ahab came within hail and dropped anchor astern of him. Then he and Conops rowed to the Phoenician’s ship.
“What now?” asked the Phoenician.
But Tros went straight to his father, down under the poop in the cabin crowded with skins, wicker baskets and a hundred other marvels for the Alexandrian trade. There were several nightingales in a wicker cage, and a starling with a cut tongue, who could talk a dozen words.
Tros’s father lay on the Phoenician’s bed, calm as in death, his eyes closed and the tortured wrists crossed on his breast. His long gray beard appeared to have been combed by one of Hiram-bin-Ahab’s men, and the torn skin of his ankles had been wrapped in linen.
“Tchuh, tchuh, tchuh! They racked his joints apart!” said the Phoenician.
Conops knelt by the tortured feet, muttering Greek blasphemies. Tros stood scowling, hands behind him, grinding strong teeth.