other villagers. He looked like what the rest had proved themselves in fact to be: a red-handed murderer.
The guard turned to face Perennius again. The light from the single oil lamp on the floor opposite him fell slantingly across his face. “That’s close,” he said. His hand worked menacingly on his cudgel. “It’s Erzites. And just what might you know about that, chappie?”
“Hey, friend,” Perennius said. His raised his palms in a gesture of innocence though he knew the bars hid him from the guard more than the reverse. “Nothing meant at all. Life’s too short, right? It’s just that before I went under, I heard Ramphion say something about hauling us out to Azon, shits to a shit. I don’t mean – ”
The cudgel whipped out and slammed the door again. Erzites followed the blow with a kick that must have hurt even though he hit the iron with his sandaled heel instead of his toe. “Those goddam bastards say that?” he shouted. “Goddam, I think sometimes we ought to – ” He caught himself, breathing heavily. “Well,” he said, “they can say what they like. But I know who the really smart ones in this valley are.”
A less experienced man might have pressed Erzites further, while his anger boiled and waited to be released at the nearest target. Perennius instead moved back from the door. Sabellia was massaging the limbs of her man and murmuring quietly. The bands of light which fell across her were too pale to bring out the colors of her skin and hair. With his mind on other things, the agent knelt beside Gaius and began working to arouse him also.
“Have you had a chance to look at the bars?” Perennius asked in low-voiced German.
“Yes, Aulus Perennius,” Calvus responded where someone else might have added, “of course.” She reached past Perennius and began kneading Gaius, under the tunic as if direct contact with his flesh were important. Perennius filed the fact with the way the woman’s hands had drawn much of the fire from his thigh as she bandaged him. “The welds are all too solid for me to break them with my bare hands in these cramped quarters.”
“Hey, you can’t tell that by glancing at it in the dark!” Perennius objected. The courier was beginning to make conscious noises beneath the agent’s hands- or more probably, beneath Calvus’. “Even if it’s not dark to you,” Perennius amended, reminded to his unease that there were facets of the tall woman which were closed to him. “There may be scale in the middle of the best-looking joint in the world. Put pressure on it and it’ll snap like glass. It’s not like you can see through iron, after all … is it?”
“Damn, what the hell’s going on?” Gaius muttered. He tried to roll over so that he could look at the people touching him. His own hands did not quite have the degree of feeling which would permit them to support him.
“No, I wasn’t raised to see through iron,” the tall woman said. Perennius could not be sure whether or not there was humor in her voice. “When the guard struck the grating, though, it rattled as a unit – not as so many discrete bars. They must have been very careful in their work. If one bar could be loosened, I could use it to snap a hole in the remainder; but that doesn’t seem to be the case.”
“Yeah, bastards are careful, all right,” the agent muttered. He lifted Gaius into a sitting posture, ignoring the younger man’s repeated demands for information. “And you can tell that just by hearing a club hit it?”
“Yes, Aulus Perennius,” the tall woman said patiently. She slid herself over to Sestius. The Gallic woman had been listening to the conversation as she continued to massage the centurion.
“All right,” Perennius said. “Would the club be enough of a lever to get things started?”
Calvus paused and looked out into the other room. Erzites was invisible from where she knelt, but the cudgel leaning against his bed was in her line of sight. “Perhaps,” she said. “Perhaps.”
“Well, something better may turn up … and it may not,” the agent muttered. “I figure we’ll go with what we’ve got.” He snorted under his breath. “What we’re going to have if we get lucky.” He stood up again and walked to the door. He was careful not to touch the metal.