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.