Sabellia’s wrists were tied to another post. Early on, two of the cheering pirates had probably held the woman’s ankles outstretched also. That was no longer necessary. Sabellia’s face lolled toward the agent. The eyes were open with fully-dilated pupils, but there was no mind behind them. Her mouth was drooling. The pirates had carried out their business with no more than the requisite brutality. The bloody lip might very well have been self-inflicted. The scratches on Sabellia’s breasts and flat rib-cage were the results of individual warriors’ teeth and harness, not deliberate whipping. Even the bruises already starting to appear were most likely the result of enthusiasm and the rocky soil.
Only once before had Perennius seen eyes that looked as Sabellia’s did now. He had been with the detachment which crucified a slave who had murdered his master. At the last, the victim no longer had the strength to stand on the spike which had been driven through the instep of his feet, pinning them to the base of the cross. The man’s knees sagged, drawing his wrists down against the nails that held them to the crossbar. In that position, the diaphragm could not inflate the lungs against the full weight of the torso pressing down on it. The eyes of that slave, beyond pain and fear of the suffocation which would kill him in a few minutes, were as empty as Sabellia’s.
A huge, blond Goth wearing a mail shirt but no trousers lowered himself onto Sabellia. He was accompanied by the encouragement of several of his fellows. The attempt to equal the Herulian’s feat looked doomed to limp failure, especially since the victim’s labiae were swollen from the bruising.
“Yeah, the funny bald one,” Anulf was saying. “I took her first myself. None of the others would have dared, but Anulf fears nothing!”
“Dare?” shouted the Herulian with the chalice. It spilled as he turned. He pointed at the Gothic chieftain’s face. “What do you know about daring when you lie on your back all the fight?”
The wrists of the figure beyond Sabellia were tied to a post just as the Gallic woman’s were. Perennius stared beyond the frustrated mumbling of the would-be rapist and the mewling woman beneath him. There was no one astride the second victim at the moment. She squirmed into a sitting position against the post. The motion implied either double-jointed shoulders or more slack than was to be expected in the straps that held her. She looked back at the agent. Her face was at first void. Then it quirked with the tiny smile that had become an expression increasingly common with her.
Perennius knew why “Lucius Cloelius Calvus” had always worn at least a tunic while in company. Of course the agent had never thought that “Calvus” was a real name.
The fire crackling beneath the pig halved lengthwise gave Anulf’s beard a redder cast as he turned to the interruption. The Herulian had paused to take a slurping drink from his cup. No one else seemed to be paying much attention.
Calvus’ chest was as flat as a man’s, flatter than the agent’s because Perennius’ chest muscles bulged even at
rest. Calvus’ pectorals lay in sheets that belied their demonstrated strength. Her nipples were small and pale, even though the firelight emphasized contrasts. Her body for as far as Perennius could see was as hairless as her head. Presumably Calvus’ genitals had determined her sex even to Germans who were taken aback by her appearance.
The story that Perennius had sketched out, that Calvus was an envoy and the rest of them were on “his” staff, had become absurd at the moment the pirates tore off the traveller’s tunic. Well, the agent would come up with another story.
Even now, the most feminine thing about Calvus was the lack of a prominent Adam’s apple in her slim throat. Perennius found it hard to believe that he had overlooked that feature for so long, but – a bald woman six feet four inches tall?
Anulf wore wooden-soled boots. They were cross-strapped up his calves. He flicked his head to the left, drawing the Herulian’s eyes toward the cooking fire. Then Anulf kicked out fiercely, planting the sole of his right boot in the Herulian’s groin.