Birds of Prey (45 page)
Authors: David Drake
Sunlight past the pillars in the other direction had been a cool white. The light which seared from the cavern now was white also, but white of a palpable intensity that made the air scream. It calcined the stone it touched. Perennius remembered Calvus' eyes and the scenes he had watched through them, the blasts ripping rock and the crawling aliens. He understood now the weapons Calvus' folk had chosen to replace the mechanical ones which had failed them against the aliens.
The gout of fire shifted from white through yellow to red, so suddenly that the intermediate step was an impression rather than a sight. The rosy glow lingered somewhat longer. It was diluted by the radiance of the cave walls themselves until they cooled. There seemed to be no sound at all until Sabellia whispered, “Aulus? Is it over?”
Perennius was carefully spreading his bare hands. Part of his mind found it amazing that the play of muscles and tendons beneath the skin proceeded in normal fashion. “Sure, it's over,” he said. He did not look at his companion. “She wouldn't have failed, would she?”
“Then we canâ” the woman began. She started to grasp one of the agent's hands again, but the motion stopped as her voice had when she saw his face. After a moment Sabellia resumed, “Aulus, your job is over too, then. We could ⦠you know. Quintus was going to retire with me, after this mission was completed.⦔ She stared at her own fingertips, afraid of what she might see elsewhere.
Perennius laughed. He put an arm around Sabellia's shoulders. “Retire?” he said. “My, you'd make an administrator, wouldn't you?” The agent quelled the trembling of his arm by squeezing Sabellia the tighter. “I'll make a pretty good administrator too, I think. Time I got out of the field.” He glanced at the burnt stone overhead and out toward the sunlit gorge in which a dragon and other things lay. They would be beginning to rot. “I'm getting too old for this nonsense.”
Sabellia touched the hand on her right shoulder. “You didn't think,” she said, switching deliberately from Latin to the Allobrogian dialect she shared with the agent's youth, “that you could survive the frustrations of a bureau.”
Perennius laughed again. “That,” he said, “was when we were losing.” He stood up with the clumsiness demanded by muscles cramped in his legs and torso. “The job's still got to be done. It doesn't have to be aâreligion, now that I know we're going to win.”
The woman took his offered hand. She was careful not to put any weight on the battered agent as she rose herself. “We?” she repeated. “You and Gallienus?”
“Civilization,” Perennius said, “as I guess I was raised to mean it.” He used Calvus' term “raised” in pity and in homage. The image of Gaius in imperial regalia rippled beneath memory of the traveller's calm face.
“Need to convince that Gallic kid,” Perennius said as he and the woman began climbing the path, “that I didn't kill his mother. Blazes! With the things I've done, people don't need to imagine reasons to hate me.”
“I thought I was coming to kill him myself,” Sabellia said, looking at her hand and the agent's. “But he was lying there, so young, and I ⦠If you left him alive, Aulus, I would.”
The agent paused and turned the woman gently to face him. A spray of dogwood overhung the trail edge. It brushed Sabellia's hair with white flowers. “I've been making an assumption,” Perennius said. “I've been assuming that you'd want to come with me. As my wife.”
“Oh, thank God,” Sabellia said. She stepped closer, hugging Perennius with a fierce joy.
Perennius nuzzled her red hair. When he closed his eyes, he thought he could feel Calvus watching them with a smile.
David Drake
(born 1945) sold his first story (a fantasy) at age 20. His undergraduate majors at the University of Iowa were history (with honors) and Latin (BA, 1967). He uses his training in both subjects extensively in his fiction. David entered Duke Law School in 1967 and graduated five years later (JD, 1972). The delay was caused by his being drafted into the US Army. He served in 1970 as an enlisted interrogator with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, the Blackhorse, in Viet Nam and Cambodia. He has used his legal and particularly his military experiences extensively in his fiction also. David practiced law for eight years; drove a city bus for one year; and has been a full-time freelance writer since 1981, writing such novels as
Out of the Waters
and
Monsters of the Earth
. He reads and travels extensively. You can sign up for email updates
here
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Look for all these TOR books by
David Drake
BIRDS OF PREY
CROSS THE STARS
THE DRAGON LORD
THE FORLORN HOPE
FROM THE HEART OF DARKNESS
SKYRIPPER
TIME SAFARI
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Contents
Look for all these TOR books by David Drake
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This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
BIRDS OF PREY
Copyright © 1984 by David Drake
All rights reserved.
A TOR Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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New York, N.Y. 10018
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ISBN: 0-812-53612-6
CAN. ED.: 0-812-53613-4
eISBN 9780765387059
First eBook edition: July 2015