Now the cook paused halfway to the cow. He was holding out the long knife with which he proposed to cut the beast’s throat. “Hey!” he said angrily to the foragers. “I’m the cook here. Don’t you listen to that – why, I’ll shut the dog-turd up myself!” He stumped purposefully toward Sabellia with a wave of his knife.
One of the foraging Goths stuck the butt of his spear between the cook’s crippled legs. Biarni flopped forward with a squawk. His knife flew out of his hand and bounced harmlessly from Anulf’s trousered calf. Almost the whole band of pirates laughed at the cripple’s discomfiture. The exception was Anulf. The chief kicked the fallen man furiously, shouting curses and following as his victim babbled and tried to roll away from the boots.
The Goth who had speared the heifer now slid the haft of an axe from his studded belt. The weapon was of moderate size, but it had double bitts and the look of hard use to it. The pirate sauntered over to Sabellia, raising his weapon casually.
Perennius tensed. He would have to use his left foot and kick over his injured right leg. If he could catch the Goth at the back of the knee, the man might fall backwards and – and get up to kill them all, but –
“All right, we’ll see what kind of cook you make,” the Goth said. As the agent relaxed, the axe chopped the thong against the post to which it was anchored. The pirate pumped his axehead loose while Sabellia rolled off her buttocks to her feet. Her smile had changed to something very different when the Goth who freed her looked away.
“Frigg’s balls, you scut!” Anulf roared as he saw what was happening behind him. “Who told you to let the bitch loose, Theudas?”
The other Goth had been wiping wood fibers from the nicks in the edge before he put his axe up. Now, gripping his weapon just below the head, he wheeled and demanded, “Who died and made you god, Anulf? I guess you’d let us all starve, wouldn’t you?”
“Yeah,” snarled another of the men who had brought back the heifer. He strode toward the chief from the other side. “Just what have you done besides get most of us killed on this raid?”
Anulf’s one-armed companion was reaching furtively for a spear at the moment tension broke. Biarni had gotten up when Anulf’s attention turned from him. The cook, trying to creep away while he still watched his chief, had immediately fallen again into the coals of last night’s fire. His squeals of pain and terror brought another surge of laughter from the remaining Germans. Their anger melted at the hilarious spectacle of a cripple dancing in a cloud of ashes.
“Here,” Sabellia said. She stepped to Theudas with her wrists, still bound, upraised. The Goth sawed through the knot with his axe. Theudas was nearly seven feet tall. He bent over Sabellia, concentrating on his awkward task like a tailor threading a fine needle. The picture of his care was frighteningly at variance with the agent’s memory of the night before, the huge blond figure kneeling to rape the woman for the fifth time.
Anulf’s companion tried to hand him the spear. The chieftain looked around to see why he was being prodded. The anger that had been directed first at the cook, then at Theudas, now flared up at the one-armed man. Anulf slapped the spear away with a curse. Then he aimed a kick which Grim dodged with the ease born of experience.
Sabellia was draping herself with a cloak of lustrous brown wool appropriated from another of the pirates. It hung down to her knees. The throat, meant for the neck of a big man, hung from her shoulders. She had pinned it up with the hems overlapping. Perennius noted that the woman, despite her present kittenishness, had not brushed
at the grit and leaves clinging to her skin when she stood. “One of you take the loin out of that cow,” she called.
A pirate immediately roared, “Biarni! Get out and get busy or I’ll kick your useless butt back to the Bosphorus!”