by David Drake
Hell, no; but it’s the state that everything else’s in, Perennius thought. Aloud he said, “I’d like to take a look at those galleys you mentioned. I’m sure something could be arranged about crews … and we wouldn’t need all of the ships, of course.”
Niger stood up. “You think I’m joking?” he asked. “They haven’t touched keel to water in seventy years—and Neptune alone knows when the damned things were built! But come along, you can see for yourself.” He stepped to the doorway by which he had entered. “Rufio!” he called. “Rufio!”
The attendant who had greeted Perennius initially appeared in the hallway. “Sir?” he said.
“I’m taking these gentlemen to Shed Twelve,” the tribune explained. “They want to see what passes for naval power in this wretched excuse for an age.”
As Perennius and Calvus followed him to the stand of government litters and bearers, the agent thought of how many times he had performed this basic task: checking garrisons, fortifications, or supply dumps so that Rome could better estimate the war-making capacity of an enemy. Normally, however, the agent would have been equipped with a packet of documents—forged, of course, but convincing even to a skeptic. It did not strike Perennius as particularly humorous that he was being shown Rome’s own defenses without any of the preliminaries he would have thought necessary as a spy.
* * *
“Well, here they are,” Niger said. His voice whispered back and forth between the brick walls and high roof timbers of the dry dock. “Go on, tell me it’s not as bad as you expected.”
The shed was a single building with six separate roof peaks. The troughs were supported by columns rather than by walls. From where the three men stood on the raised entrance platform, they could see all six of the docked galleys. The murky water of the harbor lapped just beyond the open front of the building, but the hulls were on dry ground. Timber baulks held each upright.
Niger had opened the shed door using a key with two large prongs to turn the wards. Now he stepped to the nearest of the stored vessels and pressed the prongs against the railing without result. Patiently, he tried a few feet further, then further yet. On the third attempt, the iron prongs sank in as easily as if they had encountered a cheese. “There,” said the tribune in gloomy satisfaction, “dry rot. What did I tell you?”
The rear platform of the shed was nearly of a height with the galley’s stern rail. The bowsprit and stern posts of the vessels curved up sharply above either end. The poop itself was raised a full deck above the planking that covered the waist of the ships. Perennius stepped aboard the nearest ship. His hob-nails echoed like rats scurrying along the roof of the shed. Though one whole side of the building was open, its interior was hot and dry and smelled of pine tar.
“All right, these look like what we need,” the agent said. He swung himself down to the main deck with a thump, disregarding the ladder pegged to the bulkhead. “What sort of complement do they carry?”
The agent began to walk toward the bow. The hull, shrunken by years in storage, quivered enough in the baulks to give itself a queasy sort of liveliness. Two long ventilator slots before and abaft the mast step ran most of the length of the deck. The ventilator gratings had been removed and were leaning against their low coaming, giving Perennius a view of the interior as his eyes adapted. In the ovals of gray light through the oar locks, he could see four axial columns of benches. The outboard pair, nearer the hull strakes, were low and barely wide enough for one man and the oar he had to swing. The interior benches were separated by a storage well three feet wide which ran the length of the lower deck, directly above the keel.
“For oarsmen, thirty-six men on the lower bank, seventy-two on the upper,” Niger said. There was a slight pique in his tone at the agent’s refusal to be horrified at the ship’s condition. Perennius had seen border posts whose garrisons were equipped primarily with the farm implements they needed to raise their own supplies. The tribune might think that dry-rotted hulls were a disgrace, but that was because of his youth and the parochialism of a central-government official. “You can use fewer oarsmen, of course, the ship just doesn’t move as fast. If you depend on what I’ve got available, you use a lot fewer oarsmen.”
“It’s a bireme, then?” the agent asked. The main deck was almost flush with the hull. It was capped with a coaming a hand’s breadth high rather than a railing or bulkhead. Outboard of and a step down from the deck proper was a covered outrigger whose frame supported a bank of oars. In a battle the catwalk would permit a rank of Marines to fight with locked shields while archers on the main deck fired over their heads.
“If you want to be technical, it’s a liburnian and a sort of trireme,” Niger said, “but I never noticed that putting a name to something made it sail faster. Or found a crew for it. You need a couple dozen seamen, too, you know, unless you expect to row all the way—which you can’t. And I told you what happened to my Marines, didn’t I?”
An animal miasma still drifted up from the rowing chamber, despite its decades of standing empty. Normally the oarsmen would have voided their wastes over the side, like the Marines and the deck crew. That would not have been possible while the vessel was under oars, however. Beyond that was the effluvium of over a hundred men straining in the rowing chamber while the sun baked the deck above them and glanced from the oar-foamed surface of the water. The whole blended in an amalgam sweeter than the vegetable odors of the ship herself, and as permanent as the pine timbers which it had impregnated.
“She’d carry fifty soldiers comfortably?” Perennius estimated aloud. He had reached the bow and was peering over it, past the upcurved bowsprit.
“Eighty on war service,” Niger called, “if she didn’t break up under their weight as she probably would now. You see the bronze sheathing’s gone from the ram, the gods know how long ago. Stolen or turned to coinage, it doesn’t matter. Ram anything with the hull this rotten and the bronze’d be the only thing that didn’t powder.”
Perennius turned and looked back the way he had come. Calvus stood just inside the open street door, spare and silent. Distance and the lighting hid the stranger’s face, but Perennius had enough experience now to imagine its expression of preternatural calm. A damned strange man, but at least Calvus did not complicate with instructions the task he had set for the agent.
The tribune was poised on the platform with one hand on the stern rail. He was shifting his weight from one foot to the other, but he had not quite decided to jump onto the deck as the agent had done. Not a bad kid. Like Gaius, one of those there would have been some hope for, if there were any hope for the Empire they served. “All right,” Perennius said. He began to stride back along the hundred feet of deck separating him from the other men. “How long would it take you to put one of these in shape for a long voyage? If you had the men and stores turned over to you, whatever you said you needed and could be found in the port.”
For the space of six measured strides, the only sound in the drydock was that of the agent’s boots on the planking. When Niger spoke, it was with caution and none of the bitter wise-cracking of his earlier remarks. “Not less than three days,” he said. “Maybe as much as seven. She’ll have to be caulked and repitched.… For that matter, we’ll have to survey all six and see which is most likely to hold the water out. Mast and spar, fighting towers, oars…”
The tribune’s musing aloud paused when Perennius fell below his line of sight past the poop deck. When the agent had climbed the ladder, their eyes met again. Niger looked troubled. “I’d appreciate it if you’d start the list of men and materials required,” Perennius said to the younger man. “Figure out where you could get them if you had a blanket authorization. In an hour or two, that’s just what you’ll have.”
Niger dipped his oiled beard in assent. “Yes, sir,” he said. The animation, the sharpness of tone, was gone as he contemplated the situation. “Sir…” he went on diffidently. “I’ll see to it that she’s put in order to the extent possible. Bu
t she’ll still be an over-age, under-maintained disaster waiting to happen. If she’s really being fitted out for a long voyage … I don’t envy the men aboard her.”
“Don’t envy anybody, my friend,” said Aulus Perennius. He braced his left hand on the stern rail, then swung himself back to the platform with a clash and sparkling of boot studs and concrete. By the blazing Sun, he could still eat men half his age for breakfast, he thought in a surge of pride springing from the exertion. He grinned at the surprised tribune like a wolf confronting a lamb. “No,” he repeated, “don’t envy anybody.”
* * *
The single, unsprung axle of the carriage found a harmonic with the courses of paving stones. The sympathetic vibration escalated what had been a burr into a series of hammering jolts. Perennius, at the reins, had been lost in thought before the jouncing lifted him back to present realities. He clucked to the pair of mules, urging them into the extra half-stride per second that broke the rhythm.
The agent looked over at his companion. Calvus had braced himself firmly with one hand on the seat and the other locked on the frame holding the carriage top. They had taken the vehicle from Rome to Ostia because Calvus had said he had never ridden a horse. Perennius had the feeling that the tall man had never ridden a carriage, either, now that he had watched him in one. Calvus seemed to have no subconscious awareness of where the next bump would come from and how he should shift to receive it. He was using his surprising strength to keep from being literally bounced out of the vehicle, but the battering that earned him must have been equivalent to all-in wrestling with a champion. Calvus never complained, though.
“How did you get that imperial rescript?” Perennius asked without preliminaries.
“The way I told you,” the other man said. “I can’t force a decision, but I can influence one. Like the wheels just now.”
“Eh?” The agent glanced back from the road, but only for an instant. They were overtaking an official carriage. Common sense and the quartet of tough-looking outriders enjoined caution.
“Normally the vibrations of the wheels cancel themselves,” Calvus explained. “There for a moment, the bumps and the period of oscillation of the carriage were perfectly in tune. Instead of a constant tingle, each bounce was higher and higher—until you changed the rate at which we encountered the bumps.”
He paused. The agent continued to watch the road as they swept by the larger vehicle. Nothing in Perennius’ face betrayed emotion. He was gathering information. From past experience with Calvus, it would make sense eventually.
The bald man went on, “I can advance an idea. Nothing complex, nothing like—what the ability was meant for. Pure communication with my siblings. But ‘Help this man’ or ‘Believe this’… or simply, ‘Run!’ A little prodding of the recipient’s mind at a level of which he isn’t aware, so it becomes his thought. And it keeps returning, a little stronger each time, until he acts on it. Nothing that he might not have done anyway, of course, but there are so many actions that are within the capacity of an imperial usher, for instance, that it isn’t hard to find one that prepares for the next stage of action. And at last, the Emperor comes to believe something which is in fact true but which he would probably not have acted on if approached in any other fashion.”
The rumble of their iron wheels on the road made Perennius’ bowels quiver and his head nod toward the sleep it had not gotten the night before. Everything was going smoothly now. He had conceived his plan and put it into operation. The agent’s mind was ready to relax, now, until the next of the inevitable disasters lurched into its path to be dealt with. “Calvus,” the Illyrian said.
“Yes, Aulus Perennius,” the other replied.
“Don’t screw with my mind. I know myself pretty well. If I ever find myself acting … some way I don’t, I’ll come after you. It … This world doesn’t always seem to have a lot for me in it, but that’s always been my own.”
“Would you file the edge of a good sword?” asked the tall man.
Perennius had been avoiding Calvus’ eyes. Now he glanced back at the tall man. “Hell no,” he said.
“Neither would I, Aulus Perennius,” Calvus said.
They were nearing the formal boundaries of the city. Both sides of the road were lined with tombs and funerary steles. In recent years, many of those who could afford it were being buried whole instead of being cremated as their ancestors had been. Instead of a single stone plate with a prayer for their spirits and a base on which a wine and food offering could be left by relatives, they wanted to be embalmed to await resurrection. Fools and their mystery religions, their Isis and Attis and Christos. But when there was increasingly little hope or security in the world, how could anyone blame people who looked for hope elsewhere?
Perennius muttered a curse. Easily. If the damned cowards would buckle down and do something about the present, they wouldn’t need to despair about it. Miniature pyramids, polished granite sarcophagi with peaks on the corners in Syrian style … Those were the fancy ones. For the poor, there were boxes of tufa, so strait that even short men must have their legs folded at the knees or separated by a bone saw.
The agent’s face stayed blank, but his hands were gripping the reins so tightly that the skin striped white and red over his knuckles. Calvus watched him closely. With the care of a scout trying to disarm a deadfall, the tall man said, “I couldn’t have affected the gang which waylaid us last night, even if I hadn’t been immobilizing the Guardian’s weapon. There were too many of them, too hopped-up, and it was too sudden. But I did encourage the group behind us to run, after you killed the Guardian.”
“What?” Perennius said. Curiosity dissolved from his mind the anger directed at his whole world. The agent’s muscles relaxed to the normal tautness of a man driving a pair of spirited mules. “What were you doing to the thunderbolt thing? That is what you mean?”
The bald man nodded. “For the weapon to work, two small metal parts had to touch each other inside it. While I could, I kept them from touching by keeping a layer of—” he risked a gesture with his left hand—“part of the air between them. Until I was hit on the head, that is.” He smiled.
Perennius had the impression that the smile was real, not a gesture trotted out for a suitable occasion. That lightened the agent’s mood as much as did the interesting problem which the statement posed. The stable from which they had rented the carriage was in sight. Wheeled vehicles were unlawful in the city during daylight, and only goods wagons were permitted on the streets even after dark. They would walk to Headquarters. Perennius had a dislike for sedan chairs, a fear of being closely surrounded by four strong men who had every reason to dislike him as a burden. No doubt chairmen who really did hate the folk who hired them soon enough found another line of work, but the feeling persisted.
“Then you can make things move without touching them,” Perennius asked in a neutral voice. Calvus’ abilities interested him, but he was able to discuss them without concern except for when they involved meddling in his own head.
“Nerve impulses, very easily.” the bald man said with what was only the semblance of agreement. He buffed his thumb against the two fingers as if there were something in between. “Tiny bits of the air, not so easily … but that too. If you mean move a sword or a key, no. No more than you could lift those mules and throw them.” He nodded toward the team. The mules, familiar by years of experience with the route, had left the road without command and were turning into the stable to be unharnessed. Calvus held onto the frame with both hands again as the wheels rang over the curb. “It’s important that you know my limitations, you see.”
“Whoa,” called Perennius to the mules. They had already stopped, and he drew back on their reins needlessly. The ostler was walking toward them, turning a sharp eye on the condition of his animals. Habit, habit. The agent jumped down to the stable yard and walked around the back of the vehicle to help Calvus dismount. “Just remember,” Perennius said as he reached a hand up to his awk
ward companion, “I have limitations too. I’m only human.”
“Actually, Aulus Perennius,” said the tall man as he stepped down, “you aren’t even that, not entirely … not at least as we would define the term, my people.” He released the callused, muscular hand that had just braced him. “That’s what makes you so valuable, you see,” Calvus concluded with a smile.
CHAPTER TEN
The crew was marching aboard the forward gangplank of the liburnian Eagle under the eyes of a squadron of Household Cavalry. Working over the stern gangplank was a gang of a dozen slaves with their tunics knotted up around their waists. The slaves were singing cheerfully as they brought aboard the last of the provisions, grain and wine in sealed pottery jars. Their light-heartedness was in stark contrast to the attitude of the free crewmen.
“Blazes,” Gaius complained as he squinted against the sunlight, “what prison do you suppose they rounded the crew up from?”
Perennius was on the Eagle’s poop with Gaius, Calvus, and a pair of preoccupied ship’s officers. The agent watched the shuffling column with an interest equal to his protégé’s and with far greater experience to draw from. The number of sailors was right or close to it. The men were more or less of working age, with the swarthy complexions and muscles of men used to labor outdoors. For that matter, they seemed to be in good health when one made allowance for the sores, scars, missing limbs and eyes, and the other similar blemishes to be expected in any group of sailors. “No,” the agent said, “they were probably all free men until last night or so when the Army swept some fishing village.” He frowned as he considered. “Or maybe some boarding houses here in Ostia. Bad in the long run. Bad for taxes, bad for trade … bad for the Empire, I guess, for an imperial decree to affect its citizens like—” he gestured to the glum file of seamen—“this. But in the short run, it had to be done.”