Goths with sticky patties of meat in their hands tended to try to gulp them there at the tray. Their unfed fellows quickly jostled them aside. “Hey!” Sabellia called, “where’s the captain?”
“Hel take Anulf!” cried someone from the press. “I’ll eat his too!”
“Maybe Anulf’s got his own raw meat in the boat!”
Theudas suggested loudly. “Maybe Grim’s got three legs to make up for only one arm.”
“Whew gods it’s hot!” somebody added amid the laughter. “Where’s the fucking wine?”
The movement of pirates toward the ship was more a saunter than a charge. It obviously boded ill for the chieftain none the less. The Goths had let out their frustrations the night before against the Herulians. Their situation was not the better in the morning. Theudas saw personal advantage to himself in directing the frustration this time toward the chief who had led them into the disastrous fight with the liburnian.
Anulf’s one-armed companion stood and faced his fellows with an uncertain smile. A pirate reached over the gunwale and snatched Grim out of the ship by his leg. “Come on, Grim,” he roared, “it’s good and it’ll grow hair on your stump!”
Grim was not a small man despite his handicap, but when three more of the pirates seized him, he covered his frown with a smile. “Sure, guys,” he said. “I’m hungry.” He scurried over to the small group still around Sabellia.
Anulf stood up with his sword drawn. His face in its fury was the same mottling of gray and purple as the platter of chopped loin. “Right,” he said in a thick voice. “And who’ll be the first to try stuffing that filth down my throat?”
Half a dozen of the pirates were close enough that they might have reacted immediately. Anulf was wearing his armor, however. The old scars on his face and forearm were a reminder of all of them of the truculence that had made him their leader in the first place. The gunwale was only three feet above the beach, low enough for any of the band to leap. Any of the band willing to lose both legs to a sword-stroke.
Theudas shifted almost imperceptibly, twenty feet away from his chief. Sabellia was now holding the tray and the remnant of the meat. The blond Goth’s right arm moved slowly. Perennius could not see what Theudas was doing because the big man’s body hid it; but the agent understood the signs very well.
“You, Respa?” the chieftain demanded. He jabbed in the direction of the gray-bearded veteran nearest him. The pirate indicated by the long sword jumped back. He knew as well as Anulf did that the chieftain could not fight them all. He knew also that the first man to rush would be spitted on Anulf’s sword.
When the chieftain’s sword and eyes flicked toward Respa, Theudas acted. He brought his arm and the axe it held around in a fast overhead throw. Anulf saw the glitter out of the corner of his eye. He leaped back with a shout and a crash of equipment. The axe-helve spun in the arc it drew around the polished head. The bitt that caught Anulf on the forehead rotated another fraction of a turn as well, splitting the septum of the chieftain’s nose before it and he smashed to stillness on the deck.
“Hail King Theudas!” Sabellia cried in a high voice.
Respa had drawn his own sword as he jumped away from Anulf’s. Now he studied the bigger, blond man for a moment. Fragments of chopped meat still clung to Respa’s grizzled beard. “Well, let’s see we’ve finished the job,” he said. He climbed over the gunwale with his sword out. After a moment, he reappeared brandishing Theudas’ axe. Its head was smeared with blood and pinkish brains. “Hail Theudas!” he roared. The rest of the pirates echoed the shout as they crowded around their new chief.
It was almost inevitable that the Goths would jostle the tray from Sabellia’s hands. Perennius noticed the fact only because he was trying to notice everything in hope that there would be something useful in the confusion. Sabellia herself reacted with the rage and horror of a housewife staring back at the rat in her flour bin. She cried out and tried to force away the nearest of the men. They ignored her. Germans trampled the meat into the dirt, each of them twice her weight and strength. Sabellia had guided the band of pirates with skill, but she could no more overpower them than she could halt an avalanche. The agent realized that he had been seeing a cruder example of the influencing technique that Calvus had described herself as using. An example both of the technique and of its limitations.