The pirates broke so suddenly that the exhausted Marines had no time to pursue. Gaius alone followed them. The courier had a deep cut on his left shoulder and the light of battle in his eyes. Blood rippled into droplets from the point of his long sword as he brought it around in a final arc. A Herulian with a wolf-skin kirtle screamed as the Roman blade severed one heel even as he threw himself overboard. In the water, men drowned or splashed to hand-holds on the pirate ship’s gunwale.
And there were no pirates alive on the Eagle.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Perennius was dizzy, sick with blood loss and reaction. He tried to rise but found that even holding himself on knees and knuckles required all his concentration until the moment of vertigo had passed. God of Morning, he thought with his eyes closed. Let your servant behold you once again. But it was now late in the afternoon, and the second pirate vessel was luffing toward them with men at her rail.
Hell, he was never very good at resting anyway, the agent thought. He rose carefully. Calvus’ hands were at his shoulder and wounded thigh. Their dry warmth offered more comfort than the burden they took from Perennius’ own muscles.
The Eagle was not entirely clear of the first pirate vessel, for that matter. The survivors of that smoldering craft seemed as disinterested in continuing the fight as were those standing in the carnage of the liburnian’s deck. Neither ship was under control. Because the Eagle’s sail was set and her sides were higher than those of the pirate craft, she was drifting downwind faster than the Germans were. That was not going to be sufficient so long as the liburnian shared the sea with an undamaged shipful of pirates.
The captain, Leonidas, was obviously aware of that. He was shouting at the mate. That officer in turn was holding a pair of seamen and actually placing their hands on the shroud he wanted trimmed. Both sailors were blood-spattered and slack-faced. Perennius recognized one of them from the ballista crew. No wonder the mate was having difficulty raising him out of shock. A wonder that the man had survived at all, the way Gaius had rushed them into the melee.
Calvus was bandaging Perennius’ thigh. The tall man was using a length of wool and a jeweled brooch that the agent had last seen fastening the cloak of a Goth he had killed. The wool provided absorption and a compress, all you could do while you waited to see whether the wound festered and killed you. … “Can you make the winds blow the way you want?” Perennius asked. He rotated the spear in his hand so that its iron ferule rapped the bloody deck.
The traveller straightened. “No,” he said. He pointed at the bandage, partly visible beneath the torn edge of the agent’s tunic. “It will hurt as it heals, and there’ll be the usual stiffness,” he said. “But no infection.”
All over the deck, men were sorting themselves out. Leonidas had disappeared down the after hatch. Missing seamen were beginning to reappear on deck for their officers to put to work. Speaking harshly under the rein that kept him from rushing back to present needs himself, the agent demanded, “How did you separate us from the pirates?” He waved at the shallow, wallowing craft which was now well astern of the Eagle. “How?”
“You said we had to loose ourselves from them,” the tall man said simply. “I could not have reached the line without being killed myself, but I could push the ships apart with my pike. Eventually the line would give or the hooks would pull out.” Calvus’ tongue touched his lips in a gesture of hesitation which Perennius did not remember the traveller showing in the past. “That meant that I could not help you fight, but . . . you need little help in that.”
Perennius closed his eyes, then opened them to snarl with a frustration directed against the world, “Could you lift this fucking ship? Could you do that?”
“No, Aulus Perennius,” the traveller said.
The agent spun on his left heel. “Let’s see what we’ve got left to kill the next hundred with,” he said.