driven to panic in the liburnian’s belly, Germans who threw away their arms and chose water over fire as a route to Hell. They had no value either as fighters or as hostages. No one on either side would spare a thought for them until long after they had lost their hand-holds on the waves.
But the second pirate ship had sheered slightly from its attempt to close with the Eagle. Perhaps the fact that the liburnian suddenly got under way again was primarily responsible for the change. Now the German craft was wearing around to her disabled consort. As Perennius squinted to see past the Eagle’s high stern, blocks rattled and the pirates’ sail dropped smoothly.
“Will they let us go now?” Calvus asked in his usual tone of unconcern.
“Can you make them let us go?” the agent asked.
The tall man dipped his head. “No,” he said, “at this distance – ” already a quarter mile separated the hunters from their prey – “I can’t affect anyone except my own kind.”
“Then they’ll be back,” Perennius said grimly. “They want to know what happened . . . maybe take aboard some of the able-bodied men, that’s all they’re doing. But they haven’t forgotten us, and unless our rowers are in better shape than I think they are, they’ve got plenty of daylight to catch us in.” He paused, looking at Calvus with an expression of rueful joy. “You know,” he said, “they gave us an old cow . . . but she gored a few Germans, didn’t she? I keep thinking that the Empire . . . Ah, screw it, let’s find Leonidas and see if he’s got any better ideas than I do.”
From the sea astern came the squealing of a windlass. The Germans were raising their sails again. The mechanical sound formed a descant to the pirates’ hoarse shouting.
The Tarantine captain rose from the aft ladder as Perennius approached. During brief glimpses caught while the fighting went on, the captain looked cool and aloof in his command chair. The agent had felt flashes of anger, irrational but real none the less when he was bathed with his own sweat and blood in the melee. Closer view provided a reassurance which Perennius needed emotionally if not on an intellectual level. Leonidas too was drenched in sweat, and there was a bubble of blood where he had bitten through his lip during the action. “Right?” he said sharply, turning to meet the agent.
Despite the fact that the battle was only half over, the anger which had flared earlier between the two men was gone. The tension which had fueled the earlier outbursts had burned away in the open fighting. Each of them was intelligent enough to have noted how the other handled his duties during the crisis. “We’re doing what we can,” the agent said simply. “The fire was a fluke. I doubt we’ll fight them off a second time, even arming some of your seamen. What’re the chances that you’ll be able to run us clear?”
From below them came a human babble and the clash and rattle of wood. Injured men were coming up the hatchway. Some of them were slung like sides of meat if their own damaged limbs could not get them out of the way unaided.
“Fucking none,” Leonidas said bleakly. “But we’re trying, too. Getting the rowing chamber clear.” There were splashes alongside as broken oars slid into the sea. There was no time to fit the replacements carried in the hold, but at least their burden and awkwardness could be disposed of. “Capenus’ll have a stroke of some sort going any time now, but Fortune! That won’t do more than add minutes, the shape the men and hardware is below. Fortune! But we tried.”
“How will they approach us this time, Captain Leonidas?” asked Calvus as the two shorter men started to return glumly to tasks they viewed as hopeless.
The Tarantine’s eyes glittered at what seemed now an interruption, but the question’s own merit struck him. “Likely the same way. Our poop’s high – ” he rapped the bulkhead beside him with a palm as hard as a landsman’s knuckles. “Can’t board us by this. Their little boats aren’t high enough to lay alongside, either. That they’ll have learned from the first try.” He grinned in fierce recollection. “Damned if the oars didn’t lay out more of them than your lobsters on deck did – not to knock the way the Marines