by Talbot Mundy
But the attack had evidently failed for good. He could see the barge, away up-stream, surrounded by a swarm of boats whose occupants were picking up survivors, keeping well to windward, and attempting to steer the gutted hulk into shallow water by shoving it with long poles.
Some one in a boat near the far bank kept on bellowing, but Tros could no longer catch the words, so he supposed the boat had begun to follow the retreat. But the bellowing ceased abruptly, and he heard one long yell mixed of fear and anger. Then silence and, after a while, the steady thump and swish of oars that he knew were his Northmen returning.
He ordered the ladder let down, but Orwic cried out for a rope. Four Northmen climbed the ladder and began hauling on the rope, hand-over-hand, in great haste, as if there were a hooked fish on the end. The rope shook, and from the darkness overside Orwic’s voice half-laughed a breathless warning. Suddenly a thing flopped on the deck and struggled, slipping about on the wet planks like a fish. Orwic arrived up the ladder and pounced on it, heaving it upright — a woman! He ripped off the bandage that gagged her, letting loose her wild hair that fell in heavy, rain-wet coils. She threw her head back and howled once like a wolf, then bellowed, “Help! Help! Rescue!” in the self-same booming voice that had directed the attack.
Tros clapped a hand on her mouth, and she bit him, drawing blood. He shook the blood off, ordered Sigurdsen to take charge of the ship, and pointed to the after deckhouse — the same place where he had had his interview with Rhys. It took four of the Northmen and Orwic to hustle the woman in there, she screaming and bellowing alternately, but presently they forced her on to the bench where Rhys had sat and lashed her arms to the wall. There by the light of the whale-oil lamp Tros looked her over.
“Gwenhwyfar!” he said, coughing up one of his monosyllabic laughs. He shook blood from his hand again. His mind went back to the time when he had first set foot in Britain. Gwenhwyfar, wife of Britomaris, had made love to him, and cursed him for not responding.
“Aye!” she said, using her third voice. It was quite unlike the battle bellow she had sent across the river, or the wolf-howl. It was low and pleasing, though it shook with anger. “I am Britomaris’ wife. And you are Tros, who might have been king of Britain.”
Orwic whistled, grinning, wiping off blood from his handsome face where Gwenhwyfar had gouged him with her nails. Tros leaned against the table, sucking his bitten thumb and laughing silently.
“Where is Britomaris?” he inquired after a long pause.
Gwenhwyfar glared, straining at the cords to test them. She was better than good-looking, even so, all disheveled, with hate in her eyes. The great amber ornaments heaved on her breast and her thin lower lip flushed crimson where her white teeth clenched it.
“If you have not made Britomaris, who obeys you, king of Britain, how could you have hoisted me to that throne?” Tros inquired. “Is the Lord Rhys the man you favor for the kingship nowadays?”
Gwenhwyfar did not answer. Orwic spoke up.
“She is always looking for a man to ditch Caswallon. Caswallon laughs. I suppose you won’t kill her, either. Keep her till morning and watch her swim.”
Tros ignored him.
“Gwenhwyfar, it appears to me the gods have brought you.”
“Nay, nay! It was I who brought her!” Orwic laughed. “She clung by the nails to my face, or I might have lost her overside!”
“In the nick of time,” Tros continued. “Either you shall tell me what you know about the Lord Rhys’s plans, or you shall go to Caesar nailed up in a box. Caesar will keep you to walk at his chariot tail when he enters Rome in triumph. After which you will be sold at auction to the highest bidder.”
Gwenhwyfar only glared, and Tros made a mistake.
“In Rome they pay extravagant prices for fair-skinned slave women,” he said, “and Caesar uses all expedients to fill his purse.” She did not exactly smile, nor did her eyes soften, but there passed over her a wave of pride that her price would be high. Half Britain knew her as “Caswallon’s scornling.” She burned for even one hour of glory. Tros read her — knew she saw herself glorious, in chains at Caesar’s triumph, then on a block at auction, haggled for by all the wealthy men of Rome.
“Nail her in the Lord Rhys’s water-cask!” he ordered. There was no use arguing with a woman while she dreamed such dreams as that.
She began to mock him. She used words that made Tros set his teeth and brought the blush to Orwic’s cheek. Wharf-rat language would have left them utterly indifferent, but she said things of Tros’s dead wife that pierced all sense of decency, as knives cut nerves. And when the Northmen loosed her from the rings in the deckhouse wall she fought them like a she-wolf.
“She will never go to Caesar,” Orwic said, when they had carried her below. “She will sooner kill herself. Gwenhwyfar is no bird that can live in a cage.”
“Has she ever been to sea?” Tros asked, and laughed.
He ordered a mattress laid on the poop, where he lay down to sleep until dawn. He knew what the morning would bring. He proposed to be ready for it.
At daybreak the tide was still making, and there was nothing to be gained by wearying the rowers. Stiff they were from yesterday’s short effort, and ill-tempered because there was no milk for breakfast. They could see no sense in cleaning down a ship that still smelt of new paint, and they objected to wet benches, to the herrings and bread served out to them in wooden bowls, to the draft through the oar-ports and to being made to fold their blankets. They wanted to sit shivering with the blankets wrapped around them and, above all, they insisted they could row no more until the stiffness, that they thought was rheumatism, left their muscles.
So when the tide changed there was a little whip and a lot of swearing, before the anchor was hauled in at last and the glittering serpent’s tongue began to flicker to the awkward oar-swing and the Liafail made headway to the sea.
Tros gave the helm to Sigurdsen and spent the first two hours inspecting blocks, sheets, halyards, stays, shrouds, and telling off the Northmen to their stations, while he conned the sky at intervals and hoped for a favoring wind. Not he nor, as far as he knew, any man had sailed a ship with three masts, and he would have liked a day or two to break the oarsmen in and get them used to ship-board before shaking down the furled sails. For he would need all his Northmen then to man the ship, and there would be none to spare to keep the slaves in order.
But he knew that presently he would have to use the sails or else anchor again, and the thought of losing time while Caesar’s Spaniards might be on the way, moved him to run all risks except such as were unseamanly.
So he set a man to splice the warp Gwenhwyfar’s men had cut, told off the rest of the Northmen carefully, assigning each to the work best suited to him, went below for a while to watch Conops moving from bench to bench instructing oarsmen, then stood beside Sigurdsen at the helm to await the inevitable.
First came the wind, a steady, fresh breeze on the starboard quarter, good enough. And presently it heaped the flowing river into regular, smooth waves that swept under the ship and lifted her. Two-score oarsmen endured that for a while, then ceased to keep time. There was blasphemy below deck because others, finishing their swing, were struck in the back by the oar handles of other men who groaned and vomited. The sick men swore it was the herrings they had had for breakfast. The word poison emerged more than once through the opened hatch.
Then, nearing the bar, where the river’s banks spread away into the distance and the curious, perplexing currents from the mud flats and mussel shoals went hurrying seaward, there were lumpy waves that changed the easy motion into roll and dip. Oar after oar came in then, resting with its blade just showing through the port, and the din through the open hatch was like the voice of the infernal regions where the souls of unforgiven men lament. Eleven oars still slapped the water in spasmodic jerks and Conops raised his one inquiring eye above the level of the hatch. He said nothing, but held up his whip at arm’s length to draw
Tros’s attention.
“Cease rowing! Stow oars!”
Tros’s voice held laughter that had nothing to do with the slaves’ predicament. His ship at last, his wonder-ship should try her wings! It thrilled him as no fight had ever done, nor any sight of woman, nor even the thought of a finish-fight with Caesar!
“All hands make sail!”
The words were Tros’s orison to the keepers of his deep-sea destiny, a challenge of his soul to make full use of him and ship and all he had, a greeting to the lords of opportunity. It was a big, bull-throated roar, heart-whole, that shook him as they say great Jove’s nod shook Olympus.
Then he took the helm from Sigurdsen, and as the bellying sails were sheeted home he felt the thrill of the contenting sweetness of the ship’s response. She steered to a touch, yet steadily. With creaking cordage and a boiling wake, her serpent’s tongue aflash in the golden sunlight as she plunged over the lumpy waves, she heeled to the increasing wind and raced for the open sea.
Tros laughed. He had designed her right! His dream had come true, and the seas of all the world were his to conquer and explore! He wished he had bent on the purple sails with the great vermilion dragons rampant on them for the first voyage. But thrift had prevented that. The unbleached linen glistened in the sun like gull’s wings, and for an omen, as the clean, tin-covered hull gained speed and he ordered the sheets hauled closer, he beheld a golden eagle soaring overhead, that circled thrice around the ship and vanished northward, effortless, climbing and climbing the blue, windy reaches of the sky.
“I am a man! I live! I laugh!” he said, and with his fist struck Sigurdsen between the shoulder-blades.
CHAPTER 61. A Letter to Caesar
I know but one worse fault in a commander than to doubt his own intelligence; and that is, to doubt his enemy’s.
— from The Log of Tros of Samothrace
ONE AT A TIME they sorted from between decks Britons who were not so seasick as the rest and put them to the deck work, four to a Northman overseer, trying them out, rope’s-ending them a time or two until they learned to jump at the word of command and haul on a sheet all together. That set a few of the Northmen free for Orwic to experiment with. Orwic’s genius was battle. He devised swift ways of getting up the ammunition from the magazines and studied how to aim the catapults, allowing for the pitch and roll.
In Orwic was no thrift. He wanted to use the loaded leaden balls for practice, even brought them up on deck and would have fired away a dozen without wondering where new ones could be had. He would have used the catapults without first greasing down the blocks and slides and the ingenious bronze levers that multiplied the speed of the falling weight. But Tros had foreseen that. He had provided stones that weighed almost exactly what the leaden balls did, and he forbade the firing of a catapult three times without regreasing.
So Orwic squandered stones and grease, and for a while, to the crash of the falling weights on basketwork, the sea was spattered with wild shooting, until at last a hit was made on a floating piece of wreckage half a mile away, and the whole deck crew went frantic with delight. Tros inspected the wheels at the top of the thirty-foot up-rights, examined the whole mechanism, ordered the wooden box-work greased that guided the falling tons of lead to the basketwork below, observed that the basket cushions took up the concussion without injury, and let them use up all the stones, appointing Orwic his artillery lieutenant and instructing him to choose the steadiest marksmen from among the Northmen.
Then, after a long look at the wind and sun, he went below to where the water-casks were strapped in rows on chocks and, taking a whale-oil lantern, peered through a square hole into the end one, which had not been filled. He heard a groan.
“Have you had enough, Gwenhwyfar?” he inquired and knocked on the echoing cask with his sword-hilt. The answer was a curse, choked midway, followed by a louder groan.
“Will you go in this cask to Caesar or will you come out now and tell me what I want to know?”
“Air!” Gwenhwyfar answered. “Air! I smother!”
Tros chuckled and struck at the cask again, bracing himself against the motion of the ship, not troubled by Gwenhwyfar’s cravings. He knew that, though the fire and water torture may not wring confession from a strong-willed prisoner, the motion of the sea will do it always, given time enough. In the dark, when the world goes round and round, all secrets come up with a stomach’s contents. All that is needed is patience and a pair of ears.
“You have air enough, unless you propose to speak. But on deck it is very pleasant,” he remarked. “The sun shines.”
He heard her vomiting. Then:
“Mercy!” she gasped and, between gulps, “Tros, pity me! Throw me overboard!”
He laughed.
“I will set you ashore if you tell me what I want to know,” he answered, rapping on the cask again, for it occurred to him that probably the drumming din did not increase her comfort.
The ship was “talking,” as all newly built ships must, each plank and beam complaining of the changing tension. The dark hold was a sea of noises and immeasurable motion.
Gwenhwyfar groaned.
“Are you lying?” she asked.
“Not! Nor bargaining for lies,” he answered. “Tell the truth.” He paused. Her hands clutched the edge of the square hole as she dragged herself upright.
“I will tell! Rhys promised to have Britomaris slain and to make me his own wife if I could wreck your ship. Now, let me out! Let me out!” she screamed. “I have told you.”
“Tell me all,” Tros answered, drumming again on the cask.
“Rhys heard Skell had gone to Pevensey. Let me — oh-h! — Tros, let me out! I can’t talk here.”
“You shall come out when you have told all.”
She fell to the floor of the cask and groaned awhile, then presently got on her knees and spoke in great haste, as if to force out the words before her last strength failed:
“Rhys sent a man to overtake Skell, thinking I might fail to wreck you. The man was to bribe Skell to betray you to Caesar. Unless Skell agreed, the messenger was to kill him. Oh-h! Let me out!”
She fell to the floor of the cask. Tros waited.
“Tell me every last word!”
She spoke from the cask floor, her voice booming hollow, like a ghoul’s through a hole in a sepulcher.
“The messenger — oh-h! The messenger was to instruct Skell to find out where Caesar will set a trap for you. Skell was to bring you a false message. There, that is all! Let me out!”
Tros thought a minute, drumming with his fingers on the cask, then pulled a hammer from the rack below the deck beams and knocked the cask-head loose. Then he reached in and lifted Gwenhwyfar by the arms, she groaning, and carried her up the ladder hanging limp across his shoulder. Presently he had a mattress laid on the floor of the after deckhouse and placed her on it, locking the door and stationing a Northman on guard.
“Wine!” he commanded.
A slave brought it, but he did not dare to trust a Briton in alone with her, seasick or not.
He went in and knelt beside her, lifting up her head and forcing wine between the pale lips, spilling most of it. He had had no training in the bedside arts. The spilt wine stung her eyes. A mouthful of it choked her. But the strong stuff brought the blood back to her cheeks. She cursed him.
“Gwenhwyfar,” he said, “you missed greatness by the width of your ambition! I asked you last night, where is Britomaris?”
“He is nothing of yours,” she retorted. But she sipped more wine and presently sat up, holding to the bench and looking scared and dizzy. Catching a glimpse of swaying sky through the deckhouse port, she gasped, lay down again and shut her eyes.
“I think Britomaris is all the husband you are ever likely to have, Gwenhwyfar,” Tros said pleasantly. “None of us grow younger as the years roll on. Where is he?”
“I don’t know,” she answered, burying her face in the mattress. Tros stood up and paced back a
nd forth a time or two from wall to wall, pausing to glimpse through the after port at the poop and Sigurdsen.
“Rhys,” he said pleasantly, “might slay Britomaris. He would never make you his wife. More likely he would have you slain, too, on a charge of treason, to seal your tongue. Trust me, not Rhys. I am an honest enemy. Rhys is a false friend. Tell me, where is Britomaris?”
She stared at him, her eyes red-rimmed and watery, her lower lip protruding, her hair an uncombed chestnut mass.
“Tros,” she said, “I could have made a king of you!”
He answered: “Where is Britomaris?”
“Gone!” she answered. “Gone to the west of Britain to meet Caesar’s men. Rhys bribed him. Britomaris is to trick Gwenwynwyn of the Ordovici, who is a coward of no account, on whom five hundred soldiers would be wasted. Britomaris is to meet the Spaniards, to persuade their Roman officer and to lead them near to Lunden, where the Lord Rhys will join them with a thousand men and have at Caswallon.”
“Not he!” Tros answered, hands behind him, throwing back his head in one of his discerning grins. “Rhys may raise a thousand men, but he will play both sides and await the outcome. He will help Caswallon if he thinks Caswallon wins and, after that, denounce poor Britomaris and yourself, claiming the half of your heritage for his reward! If he thinks Caswallon loses, he will join the Romans openly, cause Britomaris to be stabbed and presently denounce you as public enemy, because you know too much about him!”
Tros stroked his chin. There was important information he must gain yet. He pondered how to go about it without letting Gwenhwyfar know she had a trump remaining in her hand.
