Skipping like melonseeds, the pirate vessels closed on the fat liburnian. They sailed at an angle the Eagle could not have matched except when she was driven solely by her oars. It was obvious now to the agent why Leonidas had been unwilling to try to flee into the wind.
Perennius would have cheerfully granted sailing excellence to the Northerners if the Eagle had aboard the eighty trained soldiers whom he had requested. Physical danger frightened the Illyrian less than other aspects of life did; but even so, the threat they faced – he and Calvus and the mission – with twenty ex-slaves chilled him. The pirate ships were not being rowed, though they surely had some provision for sweeps. One of the reasons the oars were not in use was the fact that both ships were packed to the gunwales with men.
There must have been over a hundred Germans on the nearer vessel, though the way they crowded into the bow permitted only a rough estimate. Nearer to their enemies, nearer to slaughter and gory .. . Many of the warriors wore scraps of armor, a breastplate or helmet or even, in one case, a pair of bronze greaves which must once have guarded the shins of some gladiator. The glittering metal gave more the impression of gaudy decoration than it did a fear of wounds, however. The Germans’ clothing was a similar melange. It ranged from skins worn flesh-side out, through the booty of civilization – tunics of linen and wool, and a flowing silk chlamys which must have draped a very wealthy lady indeed at formal gatherings – to more or less total nudity.
In a few cases, the nudity might have had a religious significance, but Perennius suspected that in general it was merely a response to the sun reflecting from the southern sea. Besides body armor, most of the Germans carried shields. These were either simple disks of wood or wicker, or heavier items captured from the imperial forces.
Axes, swords and daggers were common, but every man seemed to carry a spear in his right hand. As they neared their victim, the pirates began clashing the flats of their spear-blades against their shields while they howled. There was no attempt to shout in unison. The deliberate cacophony rasped over the waves. It had the nerve-wracking timbre of millstones grinding with no grain between to cushion their sound.
Gaius called from the fighting tower. Longidienus was trying to grab the agent’s arm. “No time!” Perennius shouted as he swept past. The forward hatch was closed. Perennius wrenched it up with a bang. The galley was the area forward of the rowing chamber where the bows narrowed. As the hatch lifted, the boom of the coxswain’s drum and the grunt of the oarsmen in unison hammered the agent’s ears. Six faces stared up in terror – the cook and his assistant, and four slaves, probably brought aboard. as officer’s servants despite Perennius’ orders to the contrary. Even in the present crisis, veins stood out in the agent’s neck at proof that his will had been flouted.
Ignoring the companion ladder as usual, the stocky Illyrian jumped below. A slave squealed and rolled out of the path of the hobnails. The lower deck was a stinking Hell, its air saturated with the sweat of men rowing for their lives. The drum boomed its demands from the coxswain’s seat in the stern. The coxswain’s assistant paced 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