Perennius had awakened too many times to the sight of a Frankish raider, a man, wheezing blood. The Frank’s hands were always locked on the spear that a young Roman soldier had just rammed through his chest. It was not an experience Perennius wished to magnify for one he was beginning to think of as a friend.
You could separate naked, two-legged creatures quite easily into humans and things you must kill. The danger was that at some point your rage might expand the second category until it wholly engulfed the first.
After a few minutes, Gaius and Sestius joined the agent. Both of them used spears. It was business, necessary because they dared not chance the recovery of even one of the pirates while the five of them were nearby.
“Are we going to take their ship?” the younger Illyrian asked with a nod at the pirate vessel.
Perennius had found a long spear for himself as well. He withdrew it with a crunch. “Might,” he said. “Sestius, do you know anything about sailing?”
The Cilician grunted. “A little,” he said. “Enough to know the few of us wouldn’t even be able to slide this one off the beach.”
The agent glanced back at Calvus. The tall woman was wearing a tunic again. Perennius’ own experience with the traveller’s strength suggested that Sestius was probably wrong in detail. The basic opinion was valid, however. Main strength and awkwardness might get the ship launched, but it would not help them work it in a squall. “We can buy something to ride,” he said aloud. His eye brushed over the silver tray, the jeweled sword gripped by the Goth he had just finished. “Buy any kit we want, I suppose. The gods know, we aren’t short of money right now.”
Perennius turned, eyeing the forested foothills of the Taurus Mountains. “For choice,” he went on, “we’d have the century of Marines we were supposed to. But we’ll get by.” He slammed his spear into the chest of another moaning pirate and the ground beneath. “We’ll get by.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
The gong cleft the pale air with a note as thin as a bird’s cry.
“Say, what is that?” asked Sestius. He was leading while Gaius, the other healthy warrior among them, brought up the rear. The party was not straggling, however.
Perennius pointed full-armed past the centurion. A face of rock soft enough to have been weathered into a spindle overlooked the track by which the party proceeded. It was still about a quarter mile distant. The figure near the spire’s tip was hidden against the pink-touched gray of its surface. Sunlight blinked rhythmically from the stick the figure swung against his gong.
Sestius paused. He switched the spear he carried to his left hand so that he could try the slip of his sword with his right.
“Watch that!” Perennius snapped. “Nothing hostile.” The agent began waving his own spear, butt-upward, toward the watchman. “If we act like we’re a bunch of pirates, they’ll turn us into fertilizer as soon as we’re in bowshot. And I wouldn’t blame them.”
A bell began to chime at a distance beyond the high cone of rock. The stick ceased to flash. A measurable moment later, the last gong-stroke rolled down to the agent and his party. “Well, we’ve been hoping to find a village, haven’t we?” Gaius said aloud. The unusually high pitch of his voice showed that he too was aware that the first meeting was likely to be tense.
“It’ll be all right,” Perennius said. He knew as he spoke that the words were as much sympathetic magic as a reasoned statement. “Let’s get going.”
As the party walked on, it was noticeable that they all were trying to proceed quietly, even though they were already discovered. “We’ll be all right,” Sabellia said aloud in unconscious echo of the agent. “Three armed men – four – ” a nod toward Calvus who trudged fourth in the file – “they’ll talk, not try fighting right away. And then they’ll see we’re peaceful.” She did not sound convinced either.
Beyond the rock spire, the twisting defile by which the party proceeded broadened into a valley. It was planted in wheat. The only interruptions in the smooth, green pattern were the ragged lambda shapes where the soil was too wet for the crop to have taken hold. The stems and leaves of the wheat beyond the gaps were a darker color than the sunbleached heads which alone were visible elsewhere. There were no evident fences or even corner stones.