Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “‘No,’ he said, ‘it will not do now to send the Spaniards. Who is that man?’

  “So they told him, and I was made to stand before him in the opening of the tent, he striking his teeth with the thumbnail of his right hand. Suddenly he asked me —

  “‘Do you speak the Roman tongue or understand it?’

  “But I pretended not to understand the question, being frightened. I began to beg of him in Gaulish, saying I am poor and have two sons but no more any fishing boat, having lost mine in the storm when I went to catch good fish for Caesar.

  “So he smiled, and when he had thought awhile he began to bargain with me, until at last I agreed to carry Skell’s head to you in a basket and to take all chances that you might slay me.

  “‘But I think he will not,’ said Caesar, ‘because Tros is afraid for his own soul and will not take human life if he can help it.’

  “Then, having agreed how much money and how much land he will give my sons, he tried to catch me, asking suddenly, ‘Concerning the Spaniards, what will you say when Tros asks you?’ But though his words were Gaulish I pretended not to understand his meaning, being fearful he might call the bargain off if I should seem to know too much. I was anxious that my sons should have that money and the land.

  “‘Did you not hear what Skell told me?’ he demanded.

  “So I admitted I had heard that. Skell had told his tale in Gaulish. Caesar said —

  “‘What then will you say to Tros about the Spaniards?’

  “And I said —

  “‘I know nothing of them.’

  “He thought a long while, chin on hand, and at last he said:

  “‘If I had ships to spare, I would send those Spaniards and not you. But since I can not spare ships, I will have my little joke with Tros. It makes no difference what you say about the Spaniards. Say anything you please, since they will not sail. If Tros is still alive when you reach Britain, wait for him in Pevensey and give that head to him, pretending that you bring Skell’s message.”’

  Tros turned his back to hide a grin. He would avenge Skell! The poor knave had done his best to play the man at last. He did not blame him for confessing under torture.

  “Shall we put back to the Thames?” asked Orwic. “No use going any farther now.”

  “Put that man Symmachus in the Northmen’s mess,” Tros answered. “He has done us a good service. Orwic, bring me Rhys’s men from the forepeak.”

  Orwic hesitated. He knew his Britons.

  “If you let them ashore in Pevensey,” he said, “they will find Gwenhwyfar, and the next you know, she and they will be cooking up a mischief for you. You will have to use British harbors until you get more men and—”

  “I will get more men!” Tros answered grimly. “Spaniards.”

  “But we have just heard they are not to leave Gaul.”

  “Credulous horseman! Do you think Caesar would have said they will not sail unless they will? If he had said they will sail, I might have doubted it! Bring me those fellows of Rhys’s.”

  So presently, all blinking at the sunlight, weak-kneed from confinement, filthy from much vomiting in the darkness, Rhys’s men were lined up on the deck below the poop, and Tros addressed them arrogantly, standing with his legs apart, a hand on either hip.

  “I held you hostages for your master’s good behavior. Since sailing, two attempts were made to wreck my ship, and for both of them the Lord Rhys was responsible. Your lives are forfeit!”

  They demurred, very weak and bewildered. They said they knew nothing of Tros’s terms with the Lord Rhys, and nothing of his efforts to destroy the ship. They had been locked up in a dark place where food was thrown to them, and they had all been at death’s door most of the time, so that they supposed the food was poisoned.

  “As hostages, your lives are forfeited to me,” Tros repeated. “But I will give you one chance for your lives. Can you fight? Are you willing to man my arrow-engines against Caesar’s fleet if I give you your liberty afterward?”

  They complained they were unfit to fight. They had no special quarrel against Caesar. They were the Lord Rhys’s men and needed his permission before they might offer their services elsewhere. Their bellies were all watery with sickness.

  “To the oars then!” Tros commanded. “Ye shall work as slaves if ye will not fight freely! Shame on you! Your master played a treachery on me and on the Lord Caswallon. He has tried to sell his native land to Caesar. Have ye no honesty, that ye refuse the opportunity to wipe that shame away? Such dogs as you deserve the lower oar bank!”

  They replied that They were honest men, trained to use weapons not oars.

  “Honest?” Tros looked them over one by one. “Orwic, take charge of them. See that they clean themselves on deck where the air can blow the stink away. Feed them. Then give them their choice between the arrow-engines or the lower oar bank. If they choose oars, chain them to the benches! Sigurdsen, man the capstan! Haul short! Conops, take those five boats that lie astern of us, set their crews ashore and break a plank from each boat’s bottom. We don’t want any spy work done for Caesar for a few days! Lars, Harald, Haarfager, masthead men aloft! Oar crews to the benches. Out oars! Ready for slow ahead to come up on the anchor! Cymbals and drums, stand by!”

  Of all the certainties on earth Tros knew the surest was that Caesar would be swift. If, as seemed proven, he was planning to throw Britain into discord by sending foreign troops to help one rival king against another, he would send them now, not wait for events to rearrange themselves. Already he had had three days to man the ships since Skell revealed to him the discovery of Gwenwynwyn’s and Rhys’s plot against Caswallon. He would not be likely to give Caswallon time to oppose the Spaniards’ landing.

  The arrow-riddled cloak and the letter describing the wreck in the Thames would be in Gaul before night, for the wind was fair and if the sailboat men knew anything about the tide they could lay a V-shaped course that would bring them to Caritia at sunset. That news should be enough to make Caesar act in any case, supposing that the Spaniards were not already on the sea.

  As he worked the ship seaward under oars, with Conops crying soundings from the chains, his brain was busy with those Spaniards, for he knew what difficulties the Romans had in that forever turbulent and plundered province. He conjectured the five hundred would be levies who had not exactly mutinied at being brought to Gaul, but who were neither loyal nor safe to be brigaded alongside other troops. All Roman troops, including the Italians themselves, were likelier than not to mutiny if given much encouragement, and it was an old game for a Roman general to transfer disaffected portions of his army to some outlying district where their behavior toward the inhabitants might lead to trouble and thus provide an excuse for an expedition, loot and easy laurels for the general himself.

  “If Caesar thinks me dead, then I will soon have a ship full of good spirited men,” Tros told himself. “If those Spaniards are such firebrands that Caesar is glad to risk them on any venture, then they’re just the lads for me! Better spend time taming good men than waste it coaxing dullards. They’ll quarrel with my Britons. Yes, and it’ll do the Britons good.”

  He began to pace the poop, his eyes sweeping the horizon, then came to a stand again where all could see him.

  “Done with the oars!” he roared. “Make sail! Taut on the port preventer stays! Deckhands to the sheets! Aloft there. Shake her down!”

  He watched the big sails sheeted home, felt the ship heel to the wind with a white wake boiling from under her, and laughed. “Gods, give me but the opportunity!” he prayed. “I’ll use it!”

  CHAPTER 65. The Fight off Dertemue

  How few there are who know that victories are not won on the field but in a man’s heart.

  — from The Log of Tros of Samothrace

  TROS made for Dertemue with all the speed his ship could show, experimenting with the sails, putting the oars to work whenever the wind dropped to less than a strong breeze, making his men slee
p by their stations, watching his three water clocks, calculating, fretting and yet letting no man see that he was worried.

  He kept well away from the coast of Gaul and anchored for the night under the Isle of Vectis, partly because he feared the tide-race in the dark but also because he suspected some of Caesar’s light ships might be lurking thereabouts, and to have fought them would have taken time, with the added risk that they might escape and carry the news to Caesar that the Liafail was not wrecked after all.

  Nearly all next day he had to use the oars, for wind failed, but when night fell, he carried on with all sail set, considering the coastwise lights that burned not far above the level of the beach. Sigurdsen begged him to anchor.

  “Wreckers!” he said. “All Britons ply that trade. They set those lights to tempt raiders on to the reefs, and now and then they catch a merchant- ship.”

  But Tros believed he saw a system in the lights. They were too bright, spaced at too regular intervals, and did not look innocent enough to be wreckers’ decoys. They were signals. He had often seen what care the Roman navigators took, when about to cross uncharted water with a fleet of ships, to send men in advance in the liburnians to build great bonfires, near the headlands as much as possible, but in any case in a long line to guide them to their destination if the fleet should become scattered in the night. They would follow the long string of lights until there were no more of them, and know by that that they had reached their port, when they would wait until dawn should show them the harbor entrance.

  He did not know how far it was to Dertemue, but he knew the length of the southern coast of Britain more or less, and he was beginning to learn to judge the ship’s speed, though it was so much greater under sail than he had ever dared hope it might be that he hardly trusted to his calculations yet. Even without her topsails she would boil along with a following or a beam wind, the clean tin-coated hull reducing friction to a minimum. And she would sail faster and closer into the wind than any ship he had ever known. However, they had toiled a whole day under oars, the half of the time against the tide, so he kept well out to seaward of the longshore lights, and doubted when he reached the last one, doubted that it really could be Dertemue.

  He took a sounding, but the water was too deep, and he laughed at Sigurdsen’s suggestion that they should use the oars and work in-shore in search of anchorage. Orwic agreed with Sigurdsen.

  “If that is Dertemue, we should be ready to enter the river-mouth at dawn, and so catch Caesar’s Spaniards as they enter.”

  “They never shall enter!” said Tros. “My genius is best at sea. Caesar’s on land. I wait here.”

  So he shortened sail and hove to; but he did not wait long before the masthead lookout cried that he heard cordage creaking in the dark. Great banks of clouds obscured the moon and there was wind enough to fill the rigging with the sea-wail that deadens hearing. How a Northman could hear cordage creaking through all that sound Tros found it hard to understand; he leaned far over the taffrail, straining eyes and ears.

  The Northman warned again, and the man at the helm said something about ghosts in awe-struck undertones. But at last Tros’s eyes detected blackness blacker than the night, considerably lower on the water than his own great ship, not more than half a cable’s length away. There were no lights, nothing but that spot of utter darkness and a mere suggestion of a sound that did not exactly harmonize with the orchestra of sea and wind.

  Rhys’s men who had made their choice without much hesitation when the wind had blown the sickness out of them were sleeping by the midship arrow- engines, ready for Orwic to captain them when an engagement should begin. The catapults were useless in the dark, but every Northman had a bow within reach in addition to his ax and dagger. Twelve of the big stinkballs had been set on deck in Conops’ charge, the oil-primed fuses ready to insert, a firepot and a torch stowed under cover nearby. Below, the drowsy rowers rested on oars indrawn until the blades lay on the ports all ready to be thrust out at a signal.

  Tros looked sharply at the shore, and then at the spot of darkness. It was moving very slowly seaward, not toward the coast. It was therefore not a Roman ship. The moon was behind Tros’s back as he leaned over the taffrail; clouds obscured it, but the sky was a shade less dark there than in any other direction. Therefore, obviously, since Tros could see the approaching ship, however dimly, whoever was aboard her must have seen the Liafail. Yet the ship came on.

  “They believe I’m a Roman,” Tros muttered.

  He turned to the Northman beside him and ordered —

  “Stations! Silence!”

  The Northman vanished on the run, with Orwic at his heels and there was presently a stir below deck where the sleepy oarsmen were awakened, followed by the clanking of the arrow-engine cranks. Somewhere forward, Conops rolled a stinkball closer to the bulwark.

  Hove to, the Liafail was drifting gradually seaward, away from the approaching ship, almost bow-on to the stranger, whose captain, likely enough, if he could see three masts, might think there were three ships in the darkness. Suddenly Tros cried aloud in the Roman tongue.

  “Ho there! Is yonder port Dertemue?”

  The answer came in Celtic —

  “Are you Septimus Flaccus with the Spaniards?”

  “I am admiral of Caesar’s fleet!” Tros answered. “Come along.”

  Some one on the approaching ship could understand the Roman speech. She changed her course that instant, looking almost ridiculously undersized and awkward as she came near enough for Tros to see her outline. He touched the helm, not taking it, but guiding the Northman’s hand.

  “Stand by to grapple!” he roared suddenly. “Out fenders!”

  He thought of his new paint even in that crisis, and swore suddenly between his teeth, for as usual, Orwic let go a flight of arrows without waiting for the word. There was tumult aboard the other ship. They put the helm hard over trying to go about, their shrouds missing the great serpent’s tongue by inches. It was clumsily done, but it saved them from a second of Orwic’s volleys.

  “Cease arrow-fire!” Tros roared, his hand on the helm again. A second later there was a crash as the bower-anchor and a great eight-pronged grappling hook beside went down on to the small ship’s deck, splintering the timbers.

  “Who are you?” Tros shouted. For as much as sixty breaths there was no answer. Sigurdsen came running aft to report that the grapnel held and that six Northmen were on the small ship’s deck to make sure none should cut it loose. Tros bade him take the helm and keep the ship hove to.

  “Who are you?” he roared again. An indignant voice answered him:

  “I am Britomaris and a pilot with me. Is it so you treat your friends?”

  Tros laughed.

  “Come aboard, Britomaris! Come before I sink you.”

  He threw a rope ladder overside and Britomaris climbed it, standing before Tros, startled and indignant.

  “Tros?” he said, bending his head to peer into the darkness. Tros looked like a big black shadow on the poop.

  “You thought me sunk in River Thames, now didn’t you!” Tros answered, chuckling. “Ho, there! Bring a lantern, some one.” By the light of it he studied Britomaris, wondering that a man so good to see, who stood so upright in his furs and handled a spear so stately, should be such a moral weakling as he knew this man to be.

  “You are caught in the act, Britomaris,” he said. “Do you know of any reason why I should not take you to Caswallon?”

  “Do you dare to fight me, Tros?” Britomaris answered. It was his only possible way out. He did not look as if he liked the prospect. Tros laughed.

  “You are a prisoner. I don’t fight prisoners. Give me that spear. Now the sword. Now the dagger. So.” He threw the weapons on the deck, where a Northman gathered and examined them. “Do you know of any reason why I should not denounce you to Caswallon?”

  Britomaris tugged at his moustache, attempting to look dignified, but plainly worried. The Northman who held the lantern
grinned.

  “No answer? Well, I will tell you a reason. I promised your wife Gwenhwyfar. I have told her I will save you from this infamy.”

  “Told her?” Britomaris stared at him.

  “Aye. She and I turned friends at last. When do you expect the Romans?”

  “Now. I thought you were—”

  “Landlubber!” Tros interrupted. “When saw you a Roman ship like this one? Blind mole! How many ships will the Romans bring?”

  “Two, full of Spaniards. Four biremes to protect them.”

  “Who said so?”

  “Caius Rufus, the Roman.”

  “When did he come?”

  “Since nightfall, post haste in a liburnian to bid us light the beacons and to have a pilot ready. He said Caesar had moved with his wonted suddenness since learning that Tros is dead.”

  “Zeus! But that fellow is swift!” Tros said admiringly. “Gwenhwyfar’s message saying I am dead, with my cloak and a letter to prove it, can hardly have reached Gaul before sunset night before last, and now — aloft there! Use ears and eyes! The wind’s against them. The Romans will come rowing!”

  “They will come with lights,” said Britomaris.

  The man had no resistance in him. He was as plastic in Tros’s hands as if the two had been master and man for a generation.

  “Caius Rufus said they will burn a lantern at each end of the spar of each ship. Will you battle with them, Tros?”

  “You too!” Tros answered. “You shall boast to Gwenhwyfar that you played the man this once! Forward with you! Into the deckhouse and take Orwic’s orders!”

  “Orwic?” said Britomaris, and his jaw dropped.

  “Aye! Caswallon’s nephew, Orwic! Fall away!”

  So Britomaris let a Northman lead him to the deckhouse, and Tros sent Conops overside to clear away the grapnel. But he took no chances; the smaller ship still might warn the Romans.

  “Cut away their rigging! Send their sail up here!”

  The Northmen’s axes answered. They even chopped the mast away.

  “Out oars now, and off home!”