by Talbot Mundy
“Hey! What a crew that was! Will we ever find such another? No drink; no women in the ports; no knifing, no neglect, never an order disobeyed. And seamanly! Hey! Master!
“And yet your father, who had trained them, saw them flogged, saw them flogged to death — hey-yeh-tstchah! And do you suppose, if we gave him a knife, and showed him Caesar, he would kill?”
“Not he,” Tros answered. “But, as I said, I know my own mind. I am not one to balk at killing in extremity. Mind you, I said in extremity. I will have no brawling. I have a father, and I choose to rescue him, whether he approves my way or not.”
It was very nearly sundown. The Phoenician’s sail was a splurge of red on golden water, blurred a trifle by a mauve mist. The galley rolled gently on the swell and all the Britons were leaning overside, their helmets tilted back as they had seen the Roman legionaries wear them.
But there was very little to be seen except shed roofs ashore, the lines of Caesar’s tent tops and the masts of fifty or sixty ships that lay hauled out on balks of timber under the protection of the camp earthwork.
The town itself, such as it was — shops, booths, drinking-dens, and brothels — was invisible beyond the camp. Caesar kept the front door clean.
“You see,” said Tros, watching Hiram-bin-Ahab’s slow, cautious dip and drift toward the port, “in a sense I am the cause of my father’s difficulty. He married, and as long as my mother lived he was not eligible for the higher offices. So they sent him to sea as Legate of the Mysteries. My mother died, but she died giving birth to me.
“So there he was with a son; whereas, if I had not been born, they would have ceased to reckon him a married man and he might have stayed ashore in Samothrace to attain who knows what eminence in the Inner Shrine. Therefore, but for me, he should never have been Caesar’s prisoner. And that, since it makes me responsible, confers on me the right to rescue him.”
“Aye, and in your own way,” Conops answered. He would have agreed with Tros if he had said that the world was round and not flat. “Zeus! But I would like to burn that camp! Look, Master. If the wind blew from the westward, and a man should creep—”
Silence. Then a murmur all along the ship-side. A liburnian, low in the water and rowed at high speed by a dozen oars, put out from the harbor-mouth and headed straight for Hiram-bin-Ahab’s ship. Before the Phoenician could back his sail, the sun went down, leaving the galley no more than a creaking black shadow, invisible from shore. Tros ordered lights out; for he did not want that liburnian to come and hail him.
“To the benches! Out oars!”
He sent Conops to the masthead. Then, muffling the drum, he moved the galley slowly to a new position about three miles to the westward, and waited again, the men resting on the oars. It was a long time before his ears caught the sound of a splash and the creak of cordage.
“Who comes?” he demanded.
“Both!” Conops leaned from the masthead, trying to make himself heard without shouting. “Hiram-bin-Ahab and the liburnian!”
“Man that arrow-engine, Orwic!”
Followed a clicking and squeak as Orwic wound the crank — the rattle of arrows laid in the grooves in a hurry. Then, dimly, Hiram-bin-Ahab’s spar loomed out of the dark and a hail came over the water from the liburnian, invisible astern of the Phoenician.
“Oh, Poseidonius!”
Tros prayed to the gods for a Roman accent. A hoarse voice was his best subterfuge, and his heart in his throat rendered that trick simple. But he waited for the man in the liburnian to repeat the hail; and then, when it came, he almost laughed aloud.
The man was no Roman. By his accent he was from Macedonia or Thrace, one of those adventurers who sold their swords to Rome and often rendered much more faithful service than the Romans did. Tros could talk Latin twice as well!
“Keep away!” he roared. “Smallpox! Half the crew sickening! They’ll try to jump aboard you if you come close!”
The liburnian backed away. He could hear the hurried oars splash. Then Hiram-bin-Ahab’s voice, between coughs, croaking from the poop. Tros could not hear what he said. Then Skell, unmistakable, from the liburnian, in Gaulish, abusing the Phoenician in a voice weak from exhaustion. It appeared he had left money on the ship, and wanted it.
Tros bellowed through cupped hands, omitting verbs because of distance, trusting to the hollow sound to hide discrepancies of accent. The rowers in the liburnian might be Romans, although they probably were not.
“Despatch — Roman Senate — for Caesar! Tomorrow — or next day! Fair wind — tide—”
“Have you food and water?” he in the liburnian called back.
“Yes, for a few days.”
“Keep away then! Anchor outside! Send in your despatch by the Phoenician. If you want stores, they can be put aboard his ship for you.”
“All right,” Tros answered. Then, as he heard the liburnian’s oars go thumping off into the darkness: “Now, you friends of the god of pestilence! Let Caesar only be afraid of catching your complaint from Skell, and I think we have him! Row!”
He beat the drum unmuffled, rolling out the strokes triumphantly, setting a course westward along the coast for the Phoenician to follow. Neither ship showed any lights, so there was no chance of the troops in Caritia knowing which way they had gone.
And because it seemed the gods were blessing the adventure, a light wind blew and wafted them along the coast of Gaul until Hiram-bin-Ahab changed his helm and led the way into a cove he knew. And there they anchored, side by side, a little before dawn. Tros did not dare to leave his Britons so he sent a boat for Hiram-bin-Ahab, who came and sat beside him on the poop.
“There is a village here,” said the Phoenician. “But they will run away inland. They will fear we need rowers.”
“Skell?” Tros asked him.
The Phoenician laughed, and paid for it, coughed for nearly a minute.
“Ahkh — Skell! Sick, yes; but not so very. All the while listening. So he is very sure you are from Ostia; very sure you have a pestilence aboard. He asked whether Tros had gone to Seine-mouth, and in what ship? Hey-yeh! I told him — dung to a dog — lies to a liar!
“He offered me money if I would persuade the commander of this galley to put into Seine-mouth and prevent Tros from escaping before Caesar could come! Hey-yey! I let my sailors take the money. They took it from him just before they dropped him into the liburnian. Yarrh! But he is angry, angry! He is full of spite.”
“Caesar?” asked Tros.
“The men in the liburnian said Caesar drills his troops too much because there is nothing else to do. The ships, he said, are all laid up for the winter — hauled out. He was surprised when I said I thought you had despatches from the Senate. He said Caesar receives despatches overland.
“But I said it was none of my business, only that I was glad to have an escort all the way back to Ostia, and I showed him my permit, signed by you. He could read, but not readily. The seal impressed him.”
“And the pestilence?”
“He dreaded it! He did not want to take Skell, fearing my ship might have caught infection. But I said, unless he would take Skell I would sail into the harbor and put him ashore, having your authority to do that.
“Then I told him Skell had information for Caesar, concerning the Britons, and after that he did not dare to refuse to take him. He laughed, and said, ‘Let us hope Caesar will fear the pestilence, and go away for a while, and give the troops a rest. But I don’t envy Skell,’ said he, ‘because Caesar will order him to the pest-house, which is no good place.’
“But Skell did not hear that, nor would he have understood, because we conversed in Greek. That fellow is a Macedonian from Pontus, a long way from home. He would have liked to sail with me, although he fears the winter storms.”
“Did he ask many questions?”
“Very few. But he said Caesar would doubtless like to talk with me about the Britons. So I said that Skell, being born in Britain, knew more of them than
I did, I being merely a trader in tin, conveying my tin to Ostia for the bronze founders.
“He understood that well enough, but he was puzzled to know why you should risk your galley down the coast of Hispania in winter-time, until I told him Rome was in dire straits for tin and you had been sent to look for me and bring me in spite of winter and storms and everything.”
“Good!” exclaimed Tros. “You are a man after my own heart, a friend, a lordly liar in emergency!”
“We run a great risk yet,” the Phoenician answered. “It may be, Caesar will not believe Skell. It may be, he will not fear pestilence. It may be, he will be there when we go back to Caritia. What then?”
“We will go soon,” Tros answered. “They have hauled out their ships, you say? They can’t condition a ship for fighting in less than three or four days. So, if Caesar smells a rat and sends out the liburnians to seize you, I will rub my Britons’ noses into a fight that’ll do the rogues good.
“Understand me, Hiram-bin-Ahab: I am no Prince of Samothrace. If I don’t get my father, I will do such damage to the Romans as shall make them remember me.”
CHAPTER 24. Rome’s Centurion
He who is loyal and faithful to false gods, and who beareth himself manfully in a false cause — aye, and though that cause mean ruin for all who obey him, and all who oppose him — that one, in the scales of the Eternal weigheth well. Aye, he is infinitely greater than the fool who serveth Wisdom with his lips, but in his heart serveth malice, greed, ambition, fame or any other of the weaknesses that strength despiseth and that Wisdom no more knoweth than the Light knoweth darkness. Hold ye fast to faith and loyalty; and though ye slay me for a false cause, ye shall stand forgiven.
— from The Sayings of the Druid Taliesan
THOUGH Tros was not a Prince of Samothrace, he had lived in much too close association with his father, who was one, not to be influenced by the occult philosophy that governed every detail of his father’s life.
The secrets of the Inner Mysteries Tros did not know; the power that Samothracian Hierarchs could wield, should they decide to do so, over circumstances and events he thoroughly believed in. He simply was unwilling to pay the price, in abstinence and selflessness, required of aspirants to Initiation, and it was against the drastically administered law of the Mysteries for his father to oblige, persuade or even to invite him to make that effort.
Necessarily, however, he was influenced by his father’s views. He habitually ascribed to an Unseen Force things which to other people appeared as mere coincidence.
Tros was less superstitious, more devout, and a vastly more intelligent believer in the Unseen, than most men of his generation. He acknowledged a whole pantheon of gods, but never prayed to them, believing them to be innumerable aspects of a First Cause, whose formless Being was unthinkable, and whose name — supposing anybody knew it — it was blasphemy to utter.
Hiram-bin-Ahab, steeped in strange monotheism tinged by Jewish teaching, was a member of a minor Mystery to which Tros, too, belonged. The world was full of such secret brotherhoods, some based on the Jewish Cabala, some on eastern lore, and all intended to preserve the idea of Brotherhood in the face of cruel superstitions and a growing atheism.
So Tros and Hiram-bin-Ahab — good pious opportunists — were of one mind at dawn, or a little after, when Conops returned from a scouting venture ashore and announced that Caesar had already passed through a near-by village.
“The gods,” said Tros, “have been instructed to make this easy for us.”
He did not believe that any gods did more than that; the rest was left to human energy.
“Certainly,” Hiram-bin-Ahab agreed. “Your noble father must have seen with his third eye what we are doing. He has summoned the gods to our aid. We can not fail.”
Conops had his own opinion.
“Master, you have more brains than a shipload of kings’ uncles! Caesar left Caritia at once. I found one fisherman ashore there, and he lame. He said a chariot came summoning all hands to a place a three hours’ journey inland to repair a road, Caesar having passed along it in the night and complained of its bad condition.”
“The tide serves. No storm — no storm!” Tros warned the weather gods, his eyes on the horizon. “Up anchor, Conops!”
So with oars and flapping sails, for the wind only came in capsful, they dawdled back toward Caritia, keeping well off-shore and timing themselves to arrive again at dusk.
Tros dropped anchor five miles out, but this time he left Conops in charge of the galley and, divesting himself of Roman clothes and armor, wrapping his head in a knotted handkerchief, had himself rowed to Hiram-bin-Ahab’s ship, where one of the crew curled his beard for him in the Phoenician style.
“Sail in as close as you dare,” he said, pacing the Phoenician’s poop. But as the masts of Caesar’s ships and the tent tops began to appear in detail through the haze — and that was nearly half an hour before the sun went down — two liburnians came rowing at top speed from the harbor mouth, a man in the leading one signaling with a red cloth to the Phoenician to come no farther.
The crews of both liburnians stopped rowing when they came within hail. The man with the red cloth stood up in the stern, bellowing through a speaking trumpet:
“Caesar’s orders! You are not to put in to Caritia! Smallpox! Stores — water — elsewhere! Away with you! Proceed at once to Ostia.”
It was Tros who answered, giving a rich Greek accent rein:
“We know Caesar is not in Caritia! We have Caesar’s command in writing to bring away a prisoner named Perseus, who is to be taken to Rome for trial on charges of conspiracy.”
“Who are you?” demanded he in the liburnian, bringing his boat a few lengths closer. It was growing very dark.
“Mate of this ship.”
“Why doesn’t the captain speak?”
“His voice fails. He coughs,” Tros answered, signing to Hiram-bin-Ahab to stand up and be seen.
“When did you receive Caesar’s order?”
“Last night, when Caesar visited a cove in which we dropped anchor.”
“Did the commander of the bireme deliver Caesar’s writing to you?”
“Yes. Smallpox. Five of his crew are down with it. He hopes to reach Vectis, where he may land the crew for a while without risk of desertions or of spreading the sickness among Roman troops. Thereafter, if the winds permit, he will proceed to Ostia.”
There was a conference between the captains of the two liburnians. They appeared to be men of the centurion type — the noncommissioned backbone of Rome’s army — men used to emergency in every corner of the empire, not supposed or encouraged to be original, but marvelous disciplinarians, obedient unto death.
“Caesar’s orders are: ‘No communication with you!”’ one of them shouted at last.
“Our order, in Caesar’s writing, supersedes that,” Tros retorted. There was another conference. Then:
“The prisoner you seek is dead or dying.”
Tros swore under his breath. There was a long pause before he could get his voice under control. His only chance of success was to seem utterly indifferent. His impulse was to sink the two liburnians and drown their crews.
“Torture!” he growled under his breath, and Hiram-bin-Ahab nodded.
“Maybe Caesar hopes the pestilence may finish him!” he roared at last, for the liburnians had backed away. “Put him aboard. The outcome is none of your affair!”
The liburnians came closer again.
“Put Caesar’s writing into something that will float, and throw it at us,” shouted a centurion.
“No!” roared Tros. “Poseidonius the Roman, who commands the bireme, spoke thus: ‘Give them the writing in exchange for the prisoner. Not otherwise!’ Poseidonius must answer to the Senate, Shall he give you his authority and whistle to the wide seas for his man? What kind of officers are you, to try that trick? Bring out the prisoner! There may be a wind before morning, and we want to make the tide.”
There was another conference, and then the liburnians rowed away. Tros shouted after them:
“Poseidonius says this: ‘Unless you deliver the prisoner promptly, he will sail into the harbor at dawn, and you must take your chance with the pestilence. Having Caesar’s writing, he will not be delayed. He is in haste to proceed to Vectis.’”
Hiram-bin-Ahab gestured and croaked from out of his doubled and redoubled shawls:
“A mistake! A mistake! They will not believe a bireme dares to land a crew on Vectis. A trader, yes. A warship, no.”
Tros clicked his teeth irritably.
“I had to tell them some place! Maybe they will think you told me of Vectis. You are a trader. They may suppose I don’t know the people of Vectis are warlike.”
But Hiram-bin-Ahab shook his head. He looked like an old vulture of ill omen. Then worse happened — and worse again! Over the water from the galley came the noise of singing and a row of dots of light gleaming through the cabin ports.
“They have broached the mead!”
Tros thrust a paper into the Phoenician’s hands.
“Don’t part with that until they hand my father over. Hoist him aboard with the halyard. Satisfy yourself that he really is Perseus, Prince of Samothrace. Then throw them the document. If I don’t quiet those idiots they’ll—”
He went overside into a small boat like a squall out of a dark sky, and the British rowers nearly broke their backs to try to please him. Ten minutes later he leaped up the galley’s side, and the first thing he saw was Conops lashed hand and foot to the mast with a gag in his teeth. He cut him loose and rushed into the cabin under the poop.
Orwic sat on the table drinking mead, surrounded by as many as could crowd themselves into the place. The remainder were in the citadel. They were roaring a long chorus about Lunden Town.
Tros stood back to the doorway, his strong teeth glinting in the light of the horn lantern, until surprise took full effect and all grew silent.
“You’re a fine shipload of meat-fed Romans with the smallpox!” he growled, grinning. “Were you going to eat Conops next?”
