“Ah, wild horseradish,” Sabellia said. She pointed toward a juniper outside the cleared area. In the juniper’s shade grew a moderate-sized plant topped by a spray of hooded yellow flowers. “That one,” she directed, “the pretty yellow one. But only bring the root, it’ll lie just beneath the surface.”
A Goth sprang to obey. He drew his dagger for a makeshift trowel.
“And now, boys . . .” the Gallic woman went on. She paused to squeeze again the arms of her nearest consorts, both of them laden with greens. “Now, the beef!”
The band roared with enthusiasm. It began to tramp toward the bloody carcass.
The agent had not been as hungry as the labor he had done since he last ate would have justified. That was due in part to the chill, first of the sea and then of the night on his damp body. Nausea from the rap on the head had contributed also. The pirates had really not cared whether the folk they dragged from the water lived or died. Perennius suspected that Calvus, still locked in his – her! – trance state had something to do with the fact that the others had not been clubbed as hard as was Perennius himself. They could not have been. At least one would have died of a crushed skull by now if they had all been treated as the agent was.
Sight of the dripping loin brought Perennius’ appetite back with a rush, however, though his taste ran more to seafood than to beef when there was an option. Biarni had hacked the muscle out with unexpected skill. Cooking among the barbarians tended to be a process of boiling gobbets of flesh. The originals could be cows, pigs, sheep – or horses, if you happened to be with a raiding party on the eastern steppes. When haste required something different, like grilling, the results was apt to be the sort of disaster the pirates had faced – and had gorged on nevertheless – the night before. The crippled cook had shown despite that a familiarity with the heifer’s anatomy. He had even gone beyond his instructions and had skewered the loin on an iron rod from the ship’s furniture.
That initiative was a mistake, as Sabellia was quick to inform him. “No, no,” she cried, “we’re not going to burn this like last night, are we boys?”
There was a chorus of cheers. One pirate aimed a kick at Biarni on general principles. “We need a platter. A big platter or a table.”
The platter that two Goths produced was obviously loot and not part of the normal shipboard gear. It was solid silver and over thirty inches in diameter. Sabellia directed it to the ground by pointing her finger. Then she had Biarni slap the meat onto it with a similarly imperious gesture. “Now,” she said to the assembled pirates, “who has a knife? A really sharp knife.”
Perennius shifted the post with his shoulder, then pulled it forward with his wrists. All eyes were on the woman. The agent thrust upward, wincing at the flexion of his wounded thigh. The post itself would make an adequate club in the chaos of bleeding men jumping away from –
Sabellia took the dagger the blond giant at her side was handing over. She smiled, knelt, and began chopping at the beef with quick, expert movements.
On the beached vessel, Anulf was rumbling drunken curses to himself below the level of the gunwale. Neither Sabellia nor the men around her paid any attention to the chief. Even Biarni seemed fascinated by the woman’s skill with the knife. “Call this sharp?” she bantered, tossing the weapon back to its owner after a moment. “Come on, really sharp, I want to shave this, not gnaw it into hunks.” Someone else passed her a knife in replacement.
Other pirates began drawing the short blades most of them were wearing. They tested the edges. One enterprising fellow began to sharpen his knife, using a block from the farmhouse’s limestone foundation as a whetstone. Soon the smoldering ruin was ringing with Goths scraping at stones with their blades. Some of them were so inexpert that they were dulling such edge as years of neglect had left.