The agent had fallen when the bars gave. Now, panting heavily, he allowed Gaius to help him to his feet again. Perennius felt a mingled pride and embarrassment. He knew that Calvus could have made a surer job of it if he had asked her to. But Perennius had succeeded . . . and it had been important to burn away in action some of the emotions raised by the bloody fight he had just finished.
Sabellia crawled through the opening without being told. Military discipline held back the other men until Perennius said, “Right, but don’t go out of this hut.” He nodded Calvus through with a rueful smile. She most of all of them must have recognized his doubtful judgment in using the prybar himself. Well, she’d seen him use worse judgment too, in that alley in Rome. Perennius was damned if he knew why she trusted him. . . .
The others were peering through the doorway. They made room for the agent when he joined them. Perennius lay flat and scanned as wide an arc as he could without actually sticking his head outside. The situation was about
as he had expected. They were in one of the huts, differing in no external respect from the others to either side of it. Perennius had not checked the hinges on the iron door, but he suspected that they could be unpinned and the door removed at need. Even a careful search of the village would display nothing more than that the locals were Christians . . . illegal but common, and of no particular concern outside cities where they came into violent conflict with other communities.
From the circular tower of the church came the faint sound of singing. The door might open at any moment to a procession that would soon become the head of a hunting party.
Erzites screamed. The sound was so unexpected that Perennius dodged sideways before he even looked to check the cause. As he did so, Sestius struck the villager a second time with the sword.
“Hell and Darkness!” the agent shouted. He leaped up, grappling the centurion from behind and immobilizing the bloody sword. He was too late. Azon’s weapon had done its work. Erzites still whimpered and clutched his neck, but there was no disguising the arterial pulses from between his fingers. Perennius shook the bigger man in fury until the sword dropped. “I told him he could live if he helped us!” the agent said as he pushed Sestius away.
“I didn’t tell him that,” Sestius said. His eyes were on the floor. He was rubbing his wrists.
Perennius swore again and returned to the door. He did not care about Erzites, whose bare heels were now thumping the floor. He cared very much for the principle of keeping faith with agents, however. It always mattered, because you always knew you had played false before; and in the uniquely personal relationship of intelligence principal and agent, more passed between the two than either intended.
So be it. There was other work waiting.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Perennius pointed. He crooked his elbow to keep his hand inside the hut. “Calvus,” he said, “do you see the wagon they were loading with hay down there? The half-full one.”
“Yes, Aulus Perennius,” the woman agreed. It was an ordinary, rugged farm cart with two wheels and a shaft to which a pair of donkeys could be harnessed. A saw-bladed hay knife projected from the stack from which the cart was being filled. The load was presumably intended to feed the draft animals in the stone corral. Work had been broken off when the strangers were announced.
“Can you move it to the church?” the agent asked. The haystack and the building were a quarter mile apart. There was no direct road, and the ground was only nominally level.
“Yes,” said Calvus. The simplicity of her answer was disquieting, because it seemed inhuman. It was also the only thing simple about Calvus. . ..
“The hut our gear was stored in should be the third one over,” Perennius continued. He gestured with his left thumb. “The rest of you go, take weapons – not armor – and some gold. Run for it till you get to the head of the valley. Don’t take animals, that’ll cause a stir and they’ll slow you down. By the time you get there, you ought to know if it’s safe to come back and load up properly. If it isn’t, get to the nearest post and report this … hive. You’re on your own from there.”