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 marvellous. 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.