by Talbot Mundy
“Grapnels — let go!”
Crash. The thunder of colliding hulls. A slithering volley of javelins from the Roman deck. The battle-roar: “Tros! Tros!” Polished steel and purple, Tros and his ten-Jew bodyguard away in the lead of a steel-shod company that stormed the bireme’s bulwarks like a blast of roaring flame.
“Tros! Tros!”
The unarmed lictors fled into the cabin. Perhaps because they represented Rome’s dignity and majesty, or perhaps because of battle-madness, someone shut them in with an iron bar that passed through iron slots and was locked by a wedge that needed a key to extract it. The Roman sea-infantry stood to their arms and fought with the well drilled fatalism of the the farm-born conscript. The arrow-engine fire had killed most of their officers, but a young tribune leaped to the cabin roof and they rallied around him there, too crowded to use their weapons to advantage. Again and again they locked shields and smashed their way toward Tros, who was javelin-proofed by the shields of his bodyguard. Those who did get near Tros died; his Jews were careful to give him sword-room. But he was hard-pressed.
A Roman centurion rallying men in the bireme’s bow, caught sight of Sigurdsen’s flotilla. Sigurdsen was having trouble with his rowers; they were refusing duty and being thrown overboard; men in armor were manning the oars; Sigurdsen’s cow-horn trumpet blared the news that he was hurrying to Tros’s aid. The centurion hacked through the bireme’s cable, hoping to drift to the eastern bank within reach of the Arab cavalry. Ahiram killed him. The grappled ships began to drift — until the leaky tub that Tros had turned into a warship touched bottom — grounded — held fast. Conops’s vessel and the other bireme, grappled together, a floating shambles, drifted down toward them, struck the sunken ship and hung there, all four vessels locked in one death-grip.
Romans climbed to their masthead and were shot down by Tros’s archers. Tros crashed through the rallying Roman line and leaped to the cabin roof, where he slew the young tribune. Two of his bodyguard were down; four others were back-to-back in the midst of a melee; they lacked Conops to rag and bully-damn them; they had let themselves be wedged apart by the charging Romans; but the remaining four reached Tros. He sent them leaping over Romans’ heads to their comrades’ rescue. He had time for one glimpse, then, of the whole field of battle.
Sigurdsen, in mid-ford, had been engaged by the Arab cavalry on horses that could barely touch bottom, disorganized, plunging, slaughtered by the flotilla’s arrow-fire. Conops appeared to have the other bireme almost won; he was leading a charge along the deck and some of the Romans were leaping overboard. Ahiram, too, had done well; he had taken no prisoners; the forward deck was littered with dead and dying, hard to distinguish at a glance from the fettered oarsmen, slaves who lay under their seats and bleated “servus! servus! parcete servo!” probably almost all the Latin they knew. On the lower bench there was pandemonium; the rowers were trying to wrench their fetters loose; they had broken their oars in the oar-ports and were using the in-board ends for levers. On the western bank, the cohort of the Queen’s cavalry remained exactly where it had been. The fort was silent.
Tros leaped into the midst of the melee on the after deck. He led a charge that swept the whole stern of the ship from mast to taffrail. The Romans were not good at surrendering. Those who didn’t die where they stood, leaped overboard and were drowned by the weight of their armor. The few who did surrender were recruits from the conquered Syrian towns, whom Cassius had levied to replace the wastage of his legions from disease and guerrilla warfare.
There was no time yet to get the bireme under control, nor even to force the cabin door and see who was imprisoned in there. The cabin ports were fastened on the inside. Tros set sentries around the cabin. Then he leaped to the grounded ship and got the arrow-engines to bear on the Arab cavalry. He had to beat his master-archers to their posts; they were mad for the loot of the Roman ship. It was not until Conops leaped aboard and joined him, and Tros himself laid and fired one engine and Conops cranked it, that he was able to bring to bear the full terrific hail of his screaming arrow-blasts and clear the ford for the flotilla. The river was full of dead and drowning horses, dead and drowning men.
Then came Sigurdsen, storm-angry because he was late. Northmen, Cilician ex-pirates, Gauls and Spaniards clambered aboard behind him, and some women behind them, all clamoring for plunder. They began to strip dead Romans of their armor. They had to be flat-bladed by decurions before they would form squads and come under control. Then Tros had time to demand news:
“Where is Hero?”
Sigurdsen stared. Conops, with the sweat of battle on him and the blood running down from a scalp-wound because nothing could make him wear his helmet out of sight of Tros, no matter what the odds against him, flared like something spilled in hot fat:
“You Baltic herring-eater, do you mean you’ve lost her?”
“I haven’t seen her,” said Sigurdsen, speaking to Tros. It was beneath his dignity to answer Conops. “Hero sent her slave on horseback. I have the hag with us. The horse was half-dead; it drowned when she swam the river to our island. She said Hero was in hiding near Pelusium and we were to come in a hurry. Now what? And whose are the cavalry? I never saw such slaughter. I have a prisoner, but I can’t understand him, nor he me.”
Tros gave his orders to Conops:
“Clear away the grapnels but stay fast to the sunk ship, ready to let go. Set a sharp watch — keep an eye on the horsemen on both banks. Then count dead and wounded. Tell Ahiram to get the Roman rowers under control. He may tell ’em they’ll be set free if they behave. Count Roman prisoners and put them under guard on the stern of my bireme.”
“Aye, aye, master.”
It was already “my bireme.” Tros returned to it. Sigurdsen followed. Tros wrenched at the iron bar on the cabin door. It wouldn’t yield. Sigurdsen battle-axed the woodwork; three blows and the bar was loose enough for Tros to break it from the slots. Six of his bodyguard came and formed up behind him as he wrenched at the door. It opened outward. He expected a rush of armed men. Stale air came forth and a kind of solid silence. He could see the red cloaks of lictors lined against the forward bulkhead. It was too dark to distinguish much else except a table down the midst and a number of men in a group, all standing.
“Open those ports!” Tros commanded.
Someone opened one port. He could see then. The cross-light fell full on Hero’s face. She was gagged. She was being held by two men with her hands tied behind her. A third man, from behind, held the edge of a dagger so close to her throat that if she had moved it would have drawn blood.
“Do you recognize me, Tros? I am Alexis,” said the man’s voice. “You have while I count ten, to pledge your oath in the name of Samothrace, and Philae and the holy Mysteries, that you will let everyone — you understand me? — everyone in this cabin go free, unquestioned, unmolested, armed and unpursued. Otherwise, at the word of ten, I will cut this woman’s throat.”
There were plenty of men who had heard and who could see through the open door. Tros could not make signals to them; Sigurdsen was in the way, peering over his shoulder. He knew Alexis too well to risk a sudden rush. Alexis would cut that graceful throat without hesitating, and very likely stab himself to death afterwards. But there was an archer staring into the cabin through the open port. The man was a crack shot, but a dunderhead. He might or he might not dare to put an arrow through Alexis’s ear without being told to do it. Hero’s eyes were gallant, angry, unyielding. Alexis began to count.
“One — two — three — fo—”
The word ended in a gasp. A dagger struck him from behind, in the neck. He fell backward. His own dagger dropped to the floor. The dagger that had killed him flicked out through the open port and clattered on the deck, where the archer pounced on it. Tros went into the cabin in three strides and the men who had been holding Hero flinched away, crowding the lictors. Someone’s armor clanked as he sat down on a bench in a shadowy corner. With his dagger Tros cu
t the bandage from Hero’s mouth, severed the cord that bound her wrists. “Hurt?”
“No, not much. All well?”
“Aye.”
He stared around him. “Open all ports!”
Sigurdsen opened them. From outside, battle-grimy faces crowded for a view of the cabin. Sigurdsen’s fist struck one face. Tros’s bodyguard attended to the others, stumbling over shadowy legs as they hurried to deliver their punches through the ports. Then the decurions cleared the doorway and the low-roofed cabin filled with light. Tros stood chafing Hero’s wrists as he counted prisoners and examined faces. Some were standing. Some were seated behind the others, as if they expected no quarter and might as well show no courtesy. One man lay on a cot against the starboard bulkhead, with a scarlet cloak over his blanket and his head on a pillow, in shadow. Including ten lictors, all those who were standing seemed unimportant. Tros stared at the seated men, one by one, and named them, changing the inflection of his voice to convey his opinion of each in turn. It was a notable assembly.
“Pausanias! Retiring Commander of Pelusium! I regret, Pausanias, that we should meet thus.”
Pausanias scowled, with his beard to his chest. He looked immensely dignified and said nothing, but he leaned forward and laid his jewelled sword on the table.
Tros named three others, who were all Pausanias’s subordinates. Beside them were two Romans whom he didn’t know; he ignored them for the moment, but Sigurdsen took their swords and laid them on the table. Tros faced about, toward the port side.
“Herod! Exquisite Prince Herod! Trying to steal a kingdom!”
The ringleted, ringed, dark-intelligent Idumaean smiled. Instead of laying his scimitar on the table with the others he offered it to Tros, who touched the hilt before he let Sigurdsen take it. He neither trusted, admired nor respected Herod, but he couldn’t help liking him. Herod was a graceful and resourceful rogue who had the wit to see life as a game. That wasn’t Tros’s idea of life, but it was better than the ravening envy of the Wolves of the Tiber.
An even more surprising person sat beside Herod. He was looking comfortless but magnificent in the splendid uniform of a captain of the Queen’s Guard.
“Well, Leander, you laughed when I betted Have you finished laughing?”
Leander laid his sword on the table. “Tros,” he said, “you are the only man in this cabin who has a sense of humor!” He glanced at the cot on the starboard side. The man on the cot was hardly visible because the lictors had moved, so that three stood between him and Tros.
A man in the shadowy far port corner stood up. Blood from the dead Alexis’s neck had splashed his tunic, but he looked very smart in a Roman tribune’s uniform. He had a mean face, hook-nosed and alert.
“Lars Tarquinius, the Etruscan! I had it in mind to slay you on sight, Tarquinius!”
“Captain Tros, you waste words. Do you think I didn’t know that?”
The Etruscan’s insolence was perfect. He didn’t even offer to toss his sword on to the table. “I have bought my life, so spare your homilies!” He kicked the dead Alexis. “If it hadn’t been for my dagger, you would be needing a new woman.”
Hero interrupted, laughing. “Give the dog his life, Tros, as a favor to me! If it weren’t for his treachery, I might be in Cyprus yet. Forgive him for having betrayed me to a better fortune!”
“Take his sword,” Tros commanded. Sigurdsen strode forward and took it.
And now the choice morsel. He had saved it for the last. He had known from the first who lay so silent on the cot behind the lictors’ cloaks. He knew his man. He knew perfectly how to stir the sour spleen of Caesar’s murderer. The man who had ganged a group of malcontents to stab his benefactor for being too ambitious, and who now aped his victim’s power-lust without that victim’s skill, was likely to be touchy of Roman dignity.
“Throw out those lictors, Sigurdsen! Strip them. Throw their fasces in the river, and set the lazy lackeys to scrubbing decks!”
Sigurdsen took two of them by the necks and hurled them toward the door, where they were seized by eager arms and dragged out. Two more followed and their sacred fasces were pitched after them. He on the cot sat up suddenly.
“Tros, you vile pirate, you will pay with your life for this, if it takes all Rome’s resources to bring you to book!”
Out went two more lictors. Sigurdsen compelled the others to carry out Alexis’s corpse. He slammed, the door behind them. Herod laughed. Conops’s face peered through a port on the starboard side.
“All ship-shape, master. Ready now to cast off. Cavalry on both banks doing nothing. Thirty-two men dead or dying. Thirty-seven wounded. Ahiram is hurt. I’ve ordered corn and wine for the fettered rowers; they’re acting sensible; they’re mostly Jewish prisoners o’ war. Not counting rowers, nor the badly wounded that we’ve pitched overside, we’ve forty-one prisoners, three of ’em Romans and the others Gauls and Syrians in Roman armor. Along near the ford on the east bank there’s a crowd o’ Pelusiumites, men, women, children — all scared, doing nothing, curious. The women that Sigurdsen brought along are starting trouble. They want—”
“Clout them! Put them to work keeping the flies off our wounded.”
“Aye, aye, master; but there’s one here I can’t manage short of killing her. She’s bit me. She’s a tough hag. A crack of a knife-butt only ires her. I’ve got her roped—”
“Let her in,” said Hero.
“Tros,” said the man on the cot; he pointed; his hand trembled with malarial ague, “there is only one possible way for you to save yourself from vengeance for this insult to the Roman people! You will be hounded, caught, crucified—”
Sigurdsen opened the door and slammed it again behind a broad-bodied hag, who fell at Hero’s feet and kissed them, blubbering a torrent of mixed Greek and some other language. Tros kicked her for silence, but it was not until Hero had stooped and dog-patted her that she swallowed her sobs and sat still. She was Esias’s wedding-gift — the slave that Hero had picked from a dozen or more.
Cassius sat upright, pale, his eyes alight with fever, thin-lipped, lean. He laid an elbow on his knee and pointed again, about to speak. But Tros spoke first:
“Gaius Cassius Longinus, in case your dignity is so offended that you find life unendurable, you may have your choice of these swords. I would like to watch you kill yourself.”
Cassius glared. He glanced self-consciously around the cabin and then leaned back against the bulkhead.
Herod laughed.
CHAPTER XXXII. “And now you, Cassius!”
As to whether there are gods, or not, I am ignorant. I have never set eyes on a god, nor seen, nor heard anything, anywhere, that seems to me to justify belief in gods, or to suggest that, if gods there be, their doings justify respect.
But I have been observant all my days. Whoever believes there is no such force as Destiny directing us and our occasions, would waste breath seeking to unconvince me. I have been in the grip of Destiny, have seen its shape, have felt the weight of its hand. I know.
— From the Log of Lord Captain Tros of Samothrace
Conops reported again: a boat from the eastern bank containing two officers, one Roman and one Arab, with a palm branch, asking armistice and parley. Tros ordered them admitted, without their weapons. They came in and stood staring — a big Arab, smelly with horse-sweat, who stared at Herod, and a red-haired Roman who saluted Cassius with a splendid gesture and then eyed Tros with unqualified admiration, even envy.
“Half our force dead!” he remarked, cheerfully. “I would like to catch you on land! Who are you?”
“Father of arrows!” said the Arab.
Sigurdsen gathered the surrendered swords and stood them in a corner. Tros laid his own sword across the end of the table farthest from the door. Sigurdsen laid his battle-ax beside it. Tros sat down facing the door, signing to Herod to be seated at his right hand, Sigurdsen on his left. Then he ordered his bodyguard outside and called to Conops to set a deck-watch, to prev
ent eavesdropping and to be ready to enter the cabin if summoned.
“Cassius,” he said then, “you may take the seat opposite me.”
Cassius sneered. “You pirate, you will listen to my remarks from where I choose. I am ill. I have been seasick. I have the ague—”
“And you have my leave to live,” said Tros, “if you obey. Not otherwise. Assist him to the table, someone.”
Tarquinius offered his arm. Cassius snarled:
“You vile traitor, don’t dare to soil me with your touch! You serpent!”
He got to his feet unaided and went and sat down with his back to the door between two of his Roman officers, who whispered to him. Herod went and sat on the cot, where he could keep his liquid, laughing eyes on Hero. Herod spoke beautiful Greek:
“Tros, if promises are what you crave, my tongue can utter them in golden words, as good as anyone’s. But I advise you that Cassius’s gold is more substantial. I have none, as it happens. Cassius has plenty. As proconsul he has had opportunities, haven’t you, Cassius?”
“You Jew!” snarled Cassius.
Herod’s beautiful white teeth flashed in a malicious smile.
“I wish I were. The Jews call me a Roman, which I thank whatever gods there be I am not either. Tros, hadn’t you better kill us all except me? Cut throats are messy but they don’t recriminate.”
“I would rather show you no discourtesy,” Tros answered. “May I enjoy the favor of your silence?”
“Yes,” said Herod. “There are going to be some curious evasions of the truth. I, too, would like to listen to them. I will save my equivocations until the pious Cassius has spent his.”
But the key to the truth sat at Tros’s right hand. He began with Hero, speaking to her as if she were one of his officers.
“By whose orders,” he asked, “were you gagged, with your throat against Alexis’s dagger?”
“Lars Tarquinius suggested it. Cassius ordered it.”