nervously along the catwalk between the rowing benches, shrieking encouragement and flicking laggards with a ' long switch. The law did not permit the whipping of I freemen, citizens of Rome, without trial; but the nearest * magistrate was a dozen miles away, and there were two shiploads of Germans in between.
The galley was not intended for cooking while the Eagle was under way. The liburnian had no sleeping accommodations for the oarsmen, one for every foot of her hull length. Thus she virtually had to be docked or beached every night. The galley did provide a location for the cook to chop vegetables and grind meal for the next day's bread, however, and to cook under cover when conditions on shore were particularly bad. Men bore cold rain under a leather tarpaulin far better with a hot meal in their
bellies than they did without. The ship's ready stores were kept in amphoras, pottery jars whose narrow bases were sunk in a sand table to keep them upright while the ship rolled.
And with the foodstuffs was another jar which held the coals from which the oven and campfires would be kindled when the ship made land. That had been a source of unspoken fear to Perennius in the past days. He had seen a warship burn in the harbor at Marseilles, the pitch and sun-dried wood roaring into a blossom of flame with awesome suddenness. Startled sailors had leaped into the sea or to the stone docks with no chance to pick a landing spot, some drowning, some smashing limbs. But at this juncture, the danger of self-destruction was outweighed by the certainty of what the pirates would do if the agent did not accept the risk.
'Oil!' Perennius snapped to the cook who jumped back as if the finger pointed at his face were a weapon.
'Which is the bloody oil jar?' the agent shouted. He began opening the stores containers and flinging their clay stoppers behind him in fury. Grain, grain . . . fish sauce, half-full and pungent enough to make itself known against the reek of the rowing chamber -
The cook's assistant, an Egyptian boy, had not cringed away from Perennius' anger. He reached past the agent and tapped an amphora with the nails of one smooth-fingered hand.
Perennius grunted thanks and gripped the jar by its ears. The amphora was of heavy earthenware with a clear glaze to seal it to hold fluids. It was held so firmly by the sand and the adjacent vessels that the agent's first tug did not move it. With the set face of one who deals with a problem one step at a time, Perrennius lifted again with a twist. The oil jar came free with a scrunch of pottery, allowing the jars beside it to shift inward. The cook stared in amazement. He would not have tried to remove a jar without knocking loose the wedge that squeezed all six into a single unit.
'Longidienus!' the agent shouted to the open hatchway as he swung with his burden. The watch-stander and a majority of his Marine section were already staring into the galley in preference to watching the oncoming pirates. 'Take this and hand it up to Gaius in the tower!'
The Marine reached down and grunted. He had been unprepared for the amphora's weight by the ease with which it had been swung to him. Perennius ignored the oil jar as soon as it left his hand. What he needed now was the container with the fire. Its slotted clay stopper identified it with no doubt or frustration, with only a thrill of fear.
'Help the Legate with his jar!' Longidienus ordered the Marines as he shuffled toward the tower with his own load. His men looked in concern at one another. The Latin command was not one they had practiced during the voyage. In any case, Perennius had no intention of trusting the fire pot to any hands but his own at the moment. The earthenware was startlingly warm to the touch; not so hot that it could not be handled, but hot enough that the flesh cringed at first contact as it would from a spider leaping onto it unseen. Perennius locked the jar between his left forearm and his tunic as he climbed the ladder. It felt first like a warm puppy, then like the quiet beginnings of torture. On the main deck again, the agent paused and gripped his amphora by the ears, just as the ballista fired with a crack like a horse's thigh breaking.
Perennius and everyone else on the Eagle's deck turned to mark the flight of the bolt. Its steel head and two bronze fins all glittered in the sun. Though the missile did not rotate, it quivered in the air on its long axis with a busy attraction that belied its purpose. The bolt's flat arc seemed to peak some two hundred and fifty paces away. It dropped into the sea at a much steeper angle than it had risen, still well short of the pirate vessel. The shot had been perfectly aligned, however, and there was a pause in the bellowed threats from the Germans.
You may win this, boys, thought the agent. But there'll be a few of you well and truly fucked before it's over.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The young courier and the two seamen he had coopted as ballista crewmen were alone atop the fighting tower. While the sailors cranked furiously on opposite sides of the cocking windlass, Gaius was readjusting the second bolt by straightening a fin crimped in storage. He greeted with a glance and a curse the oil jar which Longidienus proffered him. 'No, take it, Gaius!' Perennius called. 'And take this too till I get up.'
The younger Illyrian looked up again, frowning beneath the rim of his helmet. He did not retort to the voice he knew so well. Gaius bent to take the amphora, lifting it with greater ease than the Marine had but without the hysterical abandon of the agent. The jar was stoppered, but it was not sealed with wax. Yellowish, low-quality olive oil sloshed around the plug and seeped down the side of the jar like a slip on the glaze. 'Set it on its side,' the agent directed. 'We don't need much, it can run if it likes. But don't let this bastard fall - ' He handed up the pot with the fire.
The mechanism of the ballista clacked. One of the sailors cried, 'It's ready, sir.' The sailor's enthusiasm took Perennius aback as he scrambled up the short ladder to the tower. It was beyond the agent's comprehension how Gaius had managed to gain immediate obedience, much less cheerful cooperation, from the sailors in such dangerous, unfamiliar duty. The only sudden emotion Perennius had ever been able to instill in strangers was fear; and he was far too intelligent to think that fear was a basis for getting anything difficult done well. There was a great future opening for Gaius if he wanted it - and if anyone on the Eagle could measure his future in more than minutes.
Gaius shot a worried glance at the oncoming pirates, then looked back to his friend. 'Aulus,' he said as the agent swung a leg over the low parapet, 'I need to load the ballis—'
Both Perennius' edged weapons lay on the deck in their scabbards. He gripped the hem of his linen tunic with both hands and tore it through in a single motion. Gaius stared in amazement as his protector ripped a circuit a hand's breadth wide from the bottom of his garment. 'Iron won't stop enough of them, my friend,' muttered the agent. 'Like wasps - but we'll burn their fucking hive!'
Oil from the leaking jar pooled along the parapet. Perennius tossed the linen in the pool to soak. He took the other pot from Gaius, whose face was beginning to show comprehension in place of concern. 'Cut that cloth,' the agent directed as he flicked away the slotted lid. 'Tie half around an arrow and give the rest to me.'
The coals were a nest of hardwood banked carefully on a bed of sand. Perennius took the strip of oily linen from Gaius and dangled it into the pot so that one dripping corner blackened the ash it touched in the very center. The agent blew; a firm, even flow rather than a fierce pulse that would have sent cinders flying and cooled the flame it was meant to raise. His reward was the tongue of fire that ran up the edge of the cloth. The flame was yellow and smoky without the rush that naphtha or pitch could have offered; but it was what they had, and it would serve.
With the oily cloth afire within, Perennius set down the amphora without fear that the sand would shift and smother the coals. 'Light that,' he said, nodding to the bolt Gaius held with the linen knotted just behind the head, 'and send it to the bastards.' He tore more of his tunic's skirt away. Gaius obeyed, grinning like a fiend. The bolt thunked into the trough of the ballista. Its band of cloth now trailed smoke from a rind of flame. Gaius
knelt, sighted between the vertical baulks of wood to either side of the trough, and loosed.
Because Perennius was behind the ballista, its bolt had little apparent motion to him. The missile lifted. It was a glitter against the pirates' sail and a black dot in the sky as it rose above the target. At the peak of its arc, the bolt blurred in a furious yaw, caused probably by the tail of linen tied to its shaft. A dot again after its momentary instability, the missile plunged. For a moment, the guttural bellowing from the pirate craft dissolved into less threatening sounds. A cheer broke out on the Eagle's deck.
A German had raised his shield to receive the missile. His face was a sunburned blur amid flowing blond beard and hair. The press of his fellows in the bow might have prevented him from ducking away even if he had been willing to show fear. The five-pound bolt, rather a short javelin than an arrow in weight, snapped through the wicker shield and the man who bore it before it crunched into the pelvis of a pirate in the second rank. The men crashed backwards, pinned together in a tangle of limbs flailing spasmodically like those of a spider on a knife
