Perennius looked at Sabellia. Every one. He was very sure of that.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
What irritated Perennius as much as anything the next morning was the pirates’ vulnerability. The band was as disorganized as it was weak. The Germans had posted no guards. It would have taken more than a brief alarm to arouse most of them from the drunken stupor into which they had collapsed. If the burned-out householder had returned that night, he could have avenged his loss at no greater cost than an arm sore with throat-cutting.
But oh! the terrible Germans. Families for miles in every direction had probably run for the hills, tossing their money and plate down the well so as not to risk the time to bury it. The twenty pirates who had survived their brush with the Eagle had panicked the district as thoroughly as their original numbers could have done. Or for that matter, as thoroughly as the thousands of whom these were probably believed to be the outriders.
Well, there might be thousands more coming. That didn’t mean you ran.
It was some hours after the Goths had begun stumbling around again that any of them took notice of their prisoners. Perennius had shivered uncontrollably during the whole night. That was the reaction not only to being stripped and exposed to the cold, wet air but also to the exhaustion of his long bout of kicking the float forward. They must have been very close to shore when Gaius brought the pirates down on them. . . .
“All praise the unconquered sun,” Gaius murmured to the ball that had now climbed over the treetops to the east of them.
In Latin, Perennius said to the younger man, “The story has changed. I’m chief and we’re envoys to the Gothic kings of the Bosphorus. Gallienus is offering eight gold talents to the Goths if they’ll raid the Aegean coasts to soften them up for his own attack on Odenath next year.”
Gaius blinked. “What?”
The agent gave a disdainful shrug. “They’ll believe it. For that matter, I don’t know but what I’d believe it if the right man told me. The things that pass for diplomacy in this world aren’t always the things they explain in staff training.” Pitching his voice a little louder he added, “Sestius. Did you hear?”
Several pirates were returning from a foray into the woods. They were hallooing to their companions. The landing site was a cup out of the Taurus range which fringed the coast. It was an ideal place to beach a few ships in a fair degree of isolation. Off and on for millennia, the little bay had been a base for pirates. One of the ironies of the present situation was that the pirates now were outsiders instead of native Cilicians as generally in the past. The bawl of a frightened, angry cow gave evidence of at least part of the foragers’ loot.
Sestius had been slumped against his post ever since the agent had awakened from his own knock on the head the night before. Now the centurion turned. He moved with a difficulty which did not appear to be primarily physical. Between him and Perennius, Gaius straightened so as not to block the view. It was not the agent to whom Sestius’ attention was directed, however. “Bella,” Sestius called desperately. “Are you all right?”
“Sestius, did you hear me?” the agent demanded. All the Goths were moving around now, and at least a few of them were bound to take an interest in what their captives were discussing.
“Bella!”
The Gallic woman still lay supine. Perennius could see that her eyes were open. From where the centurion sat, she might have been dead. At that, the woman lay as still as death save for the slow, controlled movements of her chest. She could not shift a great deal because of the way her wrists were tied above her head. Even so there was an eerie quality to her stillness. The blood had dried her scratches into a black webbing. The depth of the bruises on her thighs and torso was particularly shocking because her skin was dark enough naturally to hide much of the damage. Sabellia slowly turned her head in the direction of her male companions. Her eyes showed them that the worst damage of the previous night had not been physical at all. “I’m all right,” the woman said. Her voice made a lie of the words, but there was no weakness in it.