Birds of Prey (19 page)

Sestius broke off a discussion with the man whose calf he was bandaging when he saw the agent approaching. “Sir,” he said, the Cilician accent polished out of his voice by fifteen years of Army. “Four dead, four may as well be.…” He and Perennius glanced together at a gray-faced Marine with a broken spear-shaft showing just below the lower lip of his cuirass. “Three that'll be all right unless they get time for the wounds to stiffen up, which I don't guess they will.” He squeezed the wrist of the man he was bandaging. “Next!”

“Perennius, are you all right?” Sabellia asked, rising from behind the centurion's armored bulk. She flipped to the deck the arrow she had just forced out of a sailor's biceps point-first so that the barbs would not tear the flesh even wider. The woman's arms were bloody to the elbows. Perennius knew that not all the gore resulted from the medical work she was doing at the moment.

“Huh?” the agent said. Sabellia was bent down again with a water-dripping compress before he remembered his wounded thigh. “Blazes, I'll live,” he added with a certainty he could not have offered had he thought about the words. “Sestius, get the casualties stripped, arms and armor collected, and a seaman behind every goddam point or edge of this ship. If they're going to run up on deck screaming, they can damned well stay and soak up an arrow that might waste somebody useful otherwise.”

The man whose arm Sabellia was binding looked up in horror. He was obviously one of the oarsmen who had leaped up on deck just in time to stop a missile.

“Go on, leave the wounded,” Perennius growled to his centurion. “She can handle the rest.” Sabellia lifted her eyes. They were large and dark, and they covered any emotion the woman might have felt the way straw can momentarily cover a fire it is flung on.

The
Eagle
's sluggish wake bobbed with flotsam: bodies, stripped and flung over the side. They would float until their lungs filled or the gulls, wheeling and screaming above, pecked away enough of the soft parts that the rest sank for the bottom-feeding eels. Further off, beyond even the smudgy pall of the vessel they had fought, were the heads of men whose arms still splashed to stave off drowning. The ones still alive in the water would be those who had leaped in unburdened by equipment: oarsmen, driven to panic in the liburnian's belly, Germans who threw away their arms and chose water over fire as a route to Hell. They had no value either as fighters or as hostages. No one on either side would spare a thought for them until long after they had lost their hand-holds on the waves.

*   *   *

But the second pirate ship had sheered slightly from its attempt to close with the
Eagle.
Perhaps the fact that the liburnian suddenly got under way again was primarily responsible for the change. Now the German craft was wearing around to her disabled consort. As Perennius squinted to see past the
Eagle
's high stern, blocks rattled and the pirates' sail dropped smoothly.

“Will they let us go now?” Calvus asked in his usual tone of unconcern.

“Can you make them let us go?” the agent asked.

The tall man dipped his head. “No,” he said, “at this distance—” already a quarter mile separated the hunters from their prey—“I can't affect anyone except my own kind.”

“Then they'll be back,” Perennius said grimly. “They want to know what happened … maybe take aboard some of the able-bodied men, that's all they're doing. But they haven't forgotten us, and unless our rowers are in better shape than I think they are, they've got plenty of daylight to catch us in.” He paused, looking at Calvus with an expression of rueful joy. “You know,” he said, “they gave us an old cow … but she gored a few Germans, didn't she? I keep thinking that the Empire … Ah, screw it, let's find Leonidas and see if he's got any better ideas than I do.”

From the sea astern came the squealing of a windlass. The Germans were raising their sails again. The mechanical sound formed a descant to the pirates' hoarse shouting.

The Tarantine captain rose from the aft ladder as Perennius approached. During brief glimpses caught while the fighting went on, the captain looked cool and aloof in his command chair. The agent had felt flashes of anger, irrational but real none the less when he was bathed with his own sweat and blood in the melee. Closer view provided a reassurance which Perennius needed emotionally if not on an intellectual level. Leonidas too was drenched in sweat, and there was a bubble of blood where he had bitten through his lip during the action. “Right?” he said sharply, turning to meet the agent.

Despite the fact that the battle was only half over, the anger which had flared earlier between the two men was gone. The tension which had fueled the earlier outbursts had burned away in the open fighting. Each of them was intelligent enough to have noted how the other handled his duties during the crisis. “We're doing what we can,” the agent said simply. “The fire was a fluke. I doubt we'll fight them off a second time, even arming some of your seamen. What're the chances that you'll be able to run us clear?”

From below them came a human babble and the clash and rattle of wood. Injured men were coming up the hatchway. Some of them were slung like sides of meat if their own damaged limbs could not get them out of the way unaided.

“Fucking none,” Leonidas said bleakly. “But we're trying, too. Getting the rowing chamber clear.” There were splashes alongside as broken oars slid into the sea. There was no time to fit the replacements carried in the hold, but at least their burden and awkwardness could be disposed of. “Capenus'll have a stroke of some sort going any time now, but Fortune! That won't do more than add minutes, the shape the men and hardware is below. Fortune! But we tried.”

“How will they approach us this time, Captain Leonidas?” asked Calvus as the two shorter men started to return glumly to tasks they viewed as hopeless.

The Tarantine's eyes glittered at what seemed now an interruption, but the question's own merit struck him. “Likely the same way. Our poop's high—” he rapped the bulkhead beside him with a palm as hard as a landsman's knuckles. “Can't board us by this. Their little boats aren't high enough to lay alongside, either.
That
they'll have learned from the first try.” He grinned in fierce recollection. “Damned if the oars didn't lay out more of them than your lobsters on deck did—not to knock the way the Marines fought, sir.… But they've got the legs to overhaul us, the shape we're in below decks. If they're smart, and if they're not too afraid of your ballista—” a nod to Perennius—“they'll lay along the starboard bow again, where there's the most length of hull without the oars to fend them away.”

Oar blades curled into the water on either side. It was a ragged stroke with jolts like mallets knocking as shafts fouled one another, but it brought a cheer from the men on deck. Perennius could glimpse the second pirate ship now. It was nosing past the rising curve of the
Eagle
's poop at a distance. The Germans were standing off wide to starboard instead of closing directly on the stern of their prey. Little more than half the liburnian's oars were moving, given the damage to the oars and to the men who should have worked them. Besides that, the rowers must be exhausted from their earlier pull. Their second wind could not last long.

“I'd better go help Gaius with the ballista,” the agent said abruptly. “We were lucky once.” He turned.

“Wait,” said Calvus, touching Perennius' arm. “Why don't we ram them this time?” he went on. His dark eyes held the Tarantine's.

Leonidas' rage was predictable and this time uncontrolled. “Listen, fishbrain, I told you why we don't ram! We—” Calvus raised his index finger in query. The captain's flowing recapitulation choked off, though Leonidas himself seemed puzzled at the fact.

“I understood what you said,” the tall man agreed. Leonidas' eyes bulged. The agent watched Calvus with a care dictated by more than present words. “We will lose our mast and sail, and our own hull may very well be hopelessly damaged. While there were two pirate ships pursuing us, those were valid arguments against ramming. Are they now?”

“Dammit, I'm not going to sink my ship!” Leonidas shouted.

“Blazes!” Perennius shouted back, aware that they were drawing attention away from the pirates. “We'll sink ourselves, when the bastards drop us overboard, won't we? Do you think it's a joke, that they sacrifice prisoners to their sea gods? Or do you think they'll just turn us all loose when they've stripped the ship?”

The Tarantine's face worked as if he were forced to chew tar. “Pollux,” he muttered, “but we can't stand to be boarded again, I know that.…”

Calvus touched the captain's wrist. “You don't want to shatter a thing that is in your charge, a thing that's important to you,” he said softly. “That's good. But there are times that we have to sacrifice things of greatest personal importance for the good of the race.”

For the Empire, Perennius thought, though he was no longer certain that Calvus had the Empire in mind when he spoke. In any case, Leonidas licked at the blood on his lip and said, “All right, I'll do what I can.” The captain smiled bitterly. “She's not much, you know,” he said. “Wallows like a pig and maybe won't give us the angle we need as quick as we'll need it. But we'll do what we can. Fortune bless us.”

This time Calvus did not intervene as Leonidas and the agent turned to their respective tasks.

“You didn't know anything about ships when you came aboard, did you?” Perennius asked quietly as he strode forward beside the tall man. “You didn't know a damned thing about fighting in that alley in Rome. Blazes, that's why I wanted you shut in the cabin, so you wouldn't get in the way. What's going on?”

Calvus smiled again. “Logic is the same, Aulus Perennius,” he said, “whether the units are ships or game pieces. Or men, of course.” It was a moment before he went on. The timbre of his voice was no longer quite the same. “The other, I think, concerns me more than it does you. The woman, Sabellia, said ‘They'll never hold. Come on, there's spears at the mast,'… and I followed her. That shouldn't have happened. It wasn't what I was raised for.” He looked down at the Illyrian. There was no frown on his calm face, but the agent was sure that the statement of concern was true.

“I'm glad you got involved. You saved my ass,” Perennius said. He was trying to react to a problem which, as the traveller had suggested, he could not himself imagine. “All except my ass, I mean.” The agent attempted a smile. He was more nervous at the moment about a situation he did not understand than he was about the German pirates already drawing ahead of the
Eagle.
Perennius knew as well as any man
how
to deal with the Germans. The only question that remained was his ability to do so under the present circumstances. That would sort itself out very quickly.

“I'm glad for the results, my—companion,” the tall man replied. “But when a tool begins to act in unexpected ways, one naturally becomes concerned that it may no longer be fit for the job for which it was forged.”

“Tools!” the agent snorted as they joined the motley gang of armed men—and Bella, not to forget Bella—around the fighting tower.

“Aulus, the fucking ballista's out of action,” Gaius said as he saw the agent. “Do we have a spare skein in one of the lockers? Fucking spear took three layers out of one of these!”

“All men are tools, Aulus Perennius,” the traveller concluded softly. “The tools of Mankind.”

“Sir, the coxswain won't give me any oarsmen,” Sestius announced, “and I think he's grabbed everybody whole from the deck crew besides. I can arm some of his castoffs for show—” the centurion's glance swept the deck amidships where oarsmen sent up with broken limbs had congregated. They knew they would get no sympathy except from each other. “Or I can go below and show him that your orders are to be obeyed.”

Perennius nodded. He was glad that Sestius appreciated that the situation might have changed since he got his orders. Battles had been lost by the determination of hard-bitten subordinates to carry out instructions despite the manifest absurdity of those instructions. “Right, use what you've got on deck,” the agent said. “Looks like we need the rowers most at the moment, though blazes! I'd like those other sixty Marines.”

The agent paused. He was glad to be back in the midst of bloody disaster, out of the metaphysical swamp into which Calvus kept leading him. “Gaius,” he said, “let's look—” his wound chewed up all the nerves on the right side of his body as he stepped toward the fighting tower. “Blazes! Well, I'll take your word for it, and it's maybe a good thing anyhow.” Perennius recollected how the damage had probably occurred. “Anyhow, it kept a spear out of my back. Another spear. Take the ballista apart, look like you're working on it, and make sure those bastards see what's going on.”

He waved toward the Germans. They were still more than a bowshot away and well up on the liburnian's forequarter. The German commander seemed to have enough influence with his men to keep them balanced across the deck of his ship for now. With luck, that discipline would break down as the pirates made their run in.

Gaius looked startled at his protector's orders. “But s-sir,” he said, “we can bluff them with the ballista even if we can't fix it. If I dismantle the thing, they'll know they don't have to be afraid of fire.” He peered at Perennius as if he were expecting to see evidence of a head wound in addition to the bandage on the agent's upper thigh.

“We're going to try something different,” Perennius said. He did not care if Gaius knew they were planning to ram, but he was worried about the effect on the others. If the Marines suddenly ran sternward for fear that the deck would lift beneath them, it might give the plan away to the pirates. And it was, despite the danger, the only plan that Perennius could imagine having even a chance of success. “We want this crew to come in just the way the first ones did.”