Birds of Prey (31 page)

“Just like you weren't even human,” Perennius sympathized. “Say, any chance of getting some wine? I know, I don't suppose we're meant to have it, but just a taste'd sure make—”

“Shit!” the guard said. “
You
get wine?
I
don't get wine, not a sip. It's a fucking sacrament, it's only for
them
when they're nailing somebody up, don't you know. Wine.” He turned away from the door. As he walked back to his couch, he muttered, “I hear other places people just drink wine any time they feel like it.” His couch squealed under his weight. “They don't have to steal a cupful and hide when they drink it.…”

“That's right, Erzites,” the agent said. Perennius was irritated at the pleading note he seemed to hear in his own voice. That was bad form for a pitch like the one he was making. “And you know, smart men like you and your brother could make it big with help from—”

“Shut the hell up!” the guard shouted. “I don't want to hear about it, you know? Shut up!”

Perennius slipped back a step into the protective darkness of the cell. His companions watched him silently. All of them were now alert. The agent spread his arms, drawing the others' heads close to his by suggestion rather than by actual contact. The couch continued to creak in the other room as their guard settled his weight. “We need to get his attention,” Perennius said softly, “and we need to get it on one of you. Now, I don't like the choices, but it seems to me the only thing we've got to offer is sex.…”

Sabellia's sudden tautness was no greater than the tension that had gripped Perennius' bowels for minutes, while his mind planned and his mouth had spoken friendly words. The agent continued to speak now as if he were ignorant of the effect he was having.

Because like it or not, they had no other choice.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“Hey, Erzites?” Sestius called in a husky whisper. There was no need for silence, but the tone seemed appropriate to the purpose.

The greatest problem had been to convince Sestius of what he must do. The centurion had foreseen Sabellia's role in the skit, but it had been a shock to him that he would have to act as her pimp. Sestius could see that Perennius had to remain as far out of focus as possible; and it was obvious that neither Gaius nor Bella herself spoke enough Cilician to carry out the task. The centurion had still balked, with an increasing and unreasoning anger that came near explosion. That would have called Erzites' premature attention, so the possiblility had Perennius measuring Sestius for a rabbit punch.

It was only after Calvus laid long fingers on the centurion's cheek and throat that Sestius had grown calm again.

Even that had not ended the discussion—or rather, had not brought Sestius around to what the others regarded as reason. He had shuddered frequently while Perennius pressed his case. No one suggested that Calvus could do the talking. Though the woman had not spoken a word of Cilician in his hearing, the agent was sure of her fluency in that dialect. Her grotesque appearance—grotesque if one knew her real sex and did not know her as a person—made her a dangerous risk for the job, however.

The darkness had been enhanced by the fact that the prisoners were huddled in a back corner of the cell. The two large pots along the wall, for water and their wastes, screened them further. Sabellia had whispered abruptly, “Morals don't matter. You can do it easy, you
have
to do it if we're going to get out. You didn't watch them crucifying the fellow they brought in, you were gone by then. I don't want to be up on that wall next.”

“Easy!” the centurion sneered. “Sure, I saw
you
prancing with those goddamned Germans, I
saw
you—”

“Did you see me before that, too?” the woman rasped back. Her right hand gripped Perennius' shoulder. He could feel her tremble like an arrow drawn to the head. “Did you watch them rape me, Quintus? Twenty-three times. I counted every one, I could only count.… Did you want that to go on every day until I—don't you turn your head away! Every day till I bled out! Is that what you wanted?”

“I'm sorry, Bella,” the centurion had mumbled.

“Don't be sorry,” she snapped back. “Act like a man and it won't happen again.”

The Cilician had nodded. “All right,” he said, “all right.”

Now the guard turned to his charges. They had waited until he got up and tore off a piece of a loaf from the hamper of food near the lamp. Every moment's delay increased the risk that the current victim would die and the congregation would come out in force to choose another. The escape attempt would certainly fail, however, if Erzites were angry at being awakened. Even now there was a hostile rasp in the guard's voice as he replied, “You'll get food when I'm damned good and ready to feed you.”

“Naw, not like that,” Sestius said in a clumsy attempt to be ingratiating. Perennius was moving slowly to the grating by the centurion's side. “Look, you can't have much fun with these crazies, right?” Sestius continued. “I don't mean just wine. I mean sex. I'll bet you've never been laid, not the way a man as strong as you has a right to be.”

The guard began to laugh unexpectedly. He walked toward the door, slapping his club against his palm. There was real humor in Erzites' laugh. The twitching cudgel was a motion and not a threat. “Say,” he said, “I'll bet you're going to offer to get my ashes hauled, ain't you? Going to have one of the women do it, or do you figure I'd rather have the kid?
Sure,
I'm going to open the door for that. Or maybe you were going to say I could just stick my cock through the bars and let somebody get his teeth in it?” Erzites slammed the knotted head of his club against the iron in another burst of anger. “You think I haven't heard it?” he shouted. “You think I haven't heard it all?”

In Perennius' right hand was a shard from the waste jar. The two pottery vessels were the only source of solid weight in the cell. Calvus had broken the waste receptacle by the pressure of her fingers on the rim. There had been a popping sound like that of the tendons of a knee going out, but there was no sharp crash to bring the guard's attention. Erzites would not have taken any action—if the prisoners wanted to slide in their own slops, that was their business. But it would have made the guard curious and even more cautious than before.

“Look, I'm going to tell you,” Erzites was saying. He was dangerously cheerful, in charge and aware of it. The Cilician had dropped the chunk of bread in his flash of anger. Now he picked it up, wiped it on his trousers, and took a bite. Erzites' teeth were as strong and yellow as a camel's. “The old man made do with what came in trade, sure, and that was damn all,” the guard said through the wad of bread. “None of the others—” “others” tripped out so naturally as a term for the sectaries that it was obviously the one the brothers used between themselves—“would give him the time, of course, and the bastards wouldn't let him keep a pretty one around until the next lot came through. Not even after Ma died.”

The villager walked back to the hamper and drew out a skin of water. He was obviously pleased to have an audience. Perennius suspected that Father Ramphion and his fellows circumscribed to the extent possible all intercourse, not just sexual, with the two Ophitics. Out of the guard's sight, behind the rock of the wall, the agent was carefully coiling again the sash tied around the potsherd. Perennius would have liked to double the length, but he was afraid that a knot in the middle of the line would throw off his cast.

“Well, the old man knew some field expedients from his army days,” Erzites continued. He smirked. The guard was obviously relaxed, but the habit of caution was so well ingrained that even now he remained at a safe distance from the bars. “Brought me and my brother up on it, too. Donkeys.” He pumped his cudgel up and down. “And I tell you, women don't compare to a stump-broke jenny. Nor boys, neither, though the others wouldn't let us use them since my brother wasted one.” Erzites frowned at the memory. “Weren't his fault the brat bled out.”

Perennius had not realized quite how much of reality he had saved Gaius from until then. The younger Illyrian began to gag in the background of the cell. Apparently he understood enough Cilician to get at least the drift of the description. Erzites laughed. Then he noticed that the agent was almost touching the bars. “Move back, damn you!” the guard ordered with a gesture of his club.

Not quite close enough.

“Calvus, can you make him come closer?” whispered the agent as he obeyed by a step.

Sabellia had been hovering behind the centurion. She was waiting for the moment she would strip for the guard's inspection. The grating was not wide enough for her to see past the torsos of the two men in front. Now Calvus eased the nervous Gaul aside. “Erzites,” the bald woman called over Sestius from her greater height, “that sounds marvelous. Do the women here make love to donkeys also?”

Sestius looked back in shock. Perennius could imagine the slim-fingered hand gripping the centurion where Erzites could not see it. The soldier shifted out of the way.

The guard also was surprised, in part by the grammatically-correct Cilician coming from a prisoner whom he had never before heard speak. Calvus smiled at him and continued, “I've always wanted
real
satisfaction, you know, Erzites.” She pressed close to the bars. “Tell me about the donkeys. Tell me about their—members.” Her hands touched the lower hem of her tunic. Instead of lifting it, as even Perennius expected at that point, Calvus tore the tough homespun as if it had been gauze. She extended the tear upward at a deliberate pace as she straightened. Sestius muttered something behind her. Erzites' eyes were drawn, but it was under a frown of puzzlement. The guard was taken aback by more than Calvus' hairless groin. “Quit that,” the villager muttered uneasily.

“Do you ever let the jacks mount you, Erzites?” Calvus asked, spreading the halved garment away from her body. The tall woman was thin, even by male standards. There was nothing conventionally attractive about her form. Perennius beside her felt himself oddly moved. The effect on Erzites was quite different—but the agent was sure it was
intended
to be different, despite the woman's phrasing. “I think that would be
really
satisfying,” Calvus said. “I'd
die
for that, you know, a member so long and thick.…”

“Don't talk about that, woman!” the guard shouted as he took a step backward. “A donkey on
me?
That's—” He broke off because he could not think of an adequate word for the feeling which the concept engendered in him.

Calvus pressed her groin forward against one of the vertical bars. She rubbed up and down it. Her torso was thrown backward to emphasize the obscenity of what she was doing. “You know what I mean by satisfying, don't you, Erzites?” she said. Then she froze like a wax mannequin.

“Quit that!” Erzites screamed. He lunged, ramming his cudgel at the narrow pelvis kissing the iron. The root-wood smacked, just as Perennius flipped his weighted cord around the guard's neck.

Erzites jerked back and swung at Perennius. The head of the club rang on the grating. If the guard had instead unwrapped the single coil from around his neck, he might have been free before Sestius clutched wildly and caught his right ankle. Erzites shouted again. Perennius yanked hard at the sash. Because the other end was not knotted, it slid loose when the guard bent toward the pull. Erzites' club slammed down against Sestius' gripping arm. The centurion yelped and lost the hold he had just taken.

Calvus, recovering from the brutal blow, shot out a hand and caught Erzites' club wrist. There was no fumbling to hold the big villager, only a straight pull that hauled his arm back through the grating like a gaffed trout. The iron boomed at the soggy impact. Erzites' forehead hit a bar a millisecond after his shoulder made the first contact. That fractional delay and the force absorbed by his torso saved the guard's skull from crushing. He sagged unconscious. There was a line of blood across his forehead and cheek.

“Get back!” Perennius ordered as Gaius and Sabellia tried to grab handfuls of the guard. The agent sprawled over Sestius. The centurion was moaning and clutching his bruised arm to his chest with the good hand. Perennius wrapped the sash around Erzites' arm and one of the bars against which Calvus held it. Alone of the six people in the hut, the tall woman was not gasping for breath. The splotch of blood on her left hip was her own. The club had cut her flesh by smashing it against the wing of her pelvis.

Perennius snugged the loop against the guard's arm, then locked it with a square knot. The sash would not hold Erzites permanently, but neither would it have to. The agent straightened. “There, you bastard,” he gasped. “Try and get loose from that and I'll break your arm besides.”

Sabellia reached under the lowest crossbar and snaked the cudgel inside. She handed it silently to the agent. Then she cradled Sestius in her arms to help him slide back from the door where they were in the others' way.

Perennius was still breathing rapidly and through his mouth. He handed the knobbed, arm's-length club to Calvus. “You all right?” he asked.

“Here, let me try that,” Gaius said. He was puzzled that the agent had given the lever to the woman instead of using it himself. If the older Illyrian was injured or exhausted, then the younger man was more than willing to show his own mettle.

Calvus and Perennius ignored him. Gaius' attempt to push past the woman and take the cudgel failed unremarked. Calvus carefully set the knobbed end of the stick so that a vertical bar provided a fulcrum with which to pop one weld of a crossbar. “I'll be all right,” the tall woman said. “I didn't care for it, but it was necessary.” The agent could not be sure whether her answer was limited to the blow she had taken on the hip. As Calvus now knelt, the tear in her tunic had fallen closed again.