Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  — From the Log of Lord Captain Tros of Samothrace

  That night the wind shifted to the northeast, nearly dead ahead. Tros hove to again to rest the tired oarsmen. He summoned a conference in the midship deckhouse — himself, Hero, Sigurdsen, Conops; the wounded Ahiram, lest the touchy Phoenician should feel slighted; Herod, whom he had a far-reaching motive for wishing to flatter. He explained his plan and encouraged discussion, but no one said much. Even Hero had nothing to say. Its audacity staggered them all.

  Presently he sent for Cassius, and even for Tarquinius, who had been making himself very useful indeed among the wounded. Tarquinius was conscious of Tros’s contempt. Of Hero’s, too. True, he had saved Hero’s life by killing Alexis; but it had been he who betrayed her, again and again. He was shrewd enough to know that Tros would have kicked him off the ship if he hadn’t a use for him — equally too shrewd to expect to be trusted. But he took care not to intrude into the cabin until Tros gruffly ordered him to a seat at the table, where he sat with his Adam’s apple dancing from repressed surprise.

  Cassius sat facing Tros, green and comfortless. More seasick than Tarquinius, he couldn’t relive himself by vomiting. He was corpse-faced. His dark eyes glared ill temper. He snarled because his slave was forbidden to enter the cabin. He accused Tros of trying to put him at a disadvantage by depriving him of the service of his personal attendant. Tros was at no pains to calm him.

  “Cassius,” he said, “when you treacherously murdered Caesar, who had spared your life, men said — for I heard them say it — that they saw Caesar’s spirit, in the form of a comet, winging toward heaven. If so, he must have left behind his cruelty and meanness for you and Brutus to inherit. You have Caesar’s arrogance without his magnanimity; his treachery without his generosity and courage.”

  “Caesar is dead,” he answered, with a gesture that dismissed that episode. “Gratuitous impertinence won’t help you to impress me. I resent your insults in the presence of this female, and of these subordinates. I will not forget them. However, what do you want?”

  “Absolutely unconditional compliance with my demands,” Tros answered.

  “Don’t make yourself ridiculous, you pirate! Are you fool enough to doubt that I know your predicament? If Cleopatra could catch you, she would have you crucified — you and this silly young fool of a sister of hers, who threw away the throne of Cyprus to follow your piratical career. You are a pirate; you can’t safely enter any Roman port. Your only chance is to accept whatever terms I choose to offer.”

  Sigurdsen growled in his beard. Conops’s one eye watched Tros like a ferret’s. Tros smiled.

  “Let us hear your offer.”

  Herod chuckled. “Bid high, Cassius!”

  Cassius snarled back at Herod. “Who asked you to speak, you homeless ingrate? — Tros, I warn you to begin with: Brutus’s and my admiral, Ahenobarbus, has a fleet of forty warships. He is at least your equal as a sea-commander.

  “I know where Ahenobarbus is,” Tros answered. “You needn’t stretch your imagination about that. What is your offer?”

  Cassius leaned forward, resting his hands on the table, staring at Tros’s eyes.

  “I offer you an admiral’s commission! Think that over, Captain Tros. You have no safe harbor — nowhere to water, refit and provision — no reserves of men — probably no money. I am willing to treat with the proper contempt your deliberate offenses against my dignity. I can’t forget them, they were too gross. But I will agree not to retaliate.”

  Hero spoke up: “Cassius, if I had my way, I would order you drowned like any other graceless cur.”

  “Right!” exclaimed Sigurdsen. “As a king’s daughter she speaks!”

  Cassius sneered: “Fat old King Ptolemy’s daughter!” Herod stroked his pointed beard and repeated:

  “Bid high! Better to bid too high than to low, Cassius!”

  Tros laid his hand on Hero’s. “Girl, that you can draw a bowstring to your ear is not a proof of wisdom. Be silent.”

  She parodied Conops: “Aye, aye, master!”

  Conops yelped delight. He was already wearing Tros’s cloak; Hero’s slave had cut it down and hemmed it in a hurry. He felt flattered to hear himself quoted; and the full significance of Tros’s plan had had time to ripen in his mind.

  “Master — I mean, Lord Captain — we could easily seize Gaza! It’s only a bit of an undefended harbor — land-locked — no room to deploy — we could slip in after dark tomorrow evening and storm those Roman ships. The Philistines and Jews would give us anything we want, and what they didn’t give, we’d take. We’d have it easy.”

  Tros smiled. “Five Roman legions at Jericho — or is it six, Cassius?”

  “Six,” said Tarquinius.

  Cassius glared.

  Tros eyed Cassius steadily: “Elaborate your offer. What else?”

  Iron-willed against the vertigo that sickened him with each lurch of the ship, Cassius governed his face. He forced a smile that made his thin lips arrogantly condescending.

  “I was shut in this cabin, so you captured my biremes and me without my seeing how you did it. But I observed the battle today, and I know something of your record. I have formed a high opinion of your ability as a fleet commander. My army and that of Brutus require quantities of corn, that can be had nowhere else than from Egypt. At the same time, corn must be prevented from reaching Rome, in order to starve out the Triumvirate. Is that clear?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “Very well then, Captain Tros. I offer you the command of eleven biremes that I have in Gaza.”

  “In your own name, or that of Brutus, or both?”

  “Our joint authority.”

  Tros laid a folded letter on the table but said nothing about it at the moment.

  Cassius pointed a finger at Tros:

  “You and Ahenobarbus combine your fleets. Raid Alexandria. Seize the palace and the reins of government as Caesar did — that should be easy enough. Dagger that Ptolemy wanton Cleopatra; throw her carcass to the crows. Hold Egypt in the name of Rome until I and Brutus shall have dealt with the Triumvirate.”

  “And then?”

  “Whatever you will,” said Cassius. “I and Brutus will restore the Republic that Caesar betrayed. The senate shall govern Rome. I and Brutus will be consuls for a year. Then Brutus shall have Gaul, I Egypt, as proconsuls. Ahenobarbus is an unambitious man; but you may have whatever you wish, subject to the senate’s approval, and I can promise you that. Meanwhile, you will of course deliver hostages to me: Herod as security for the behaviour of certain clans in Idumaea and Syria; and in guarantee of your own good faith, this young woman whom you address as Hero. She shall be well treated.”

  Tros roared with laughter. Sigurdsen rose to his feet in fury, but Tros clapped him between the shoulders and he, too, saw the humor of it; he out-roared Tros. Hero’s laughter galled Cassius even more than the others’ did. Conops howled. Even Ahiram joined in, though it hurt him to laugh and he was almost too near delirium from wounds to know what it was all about. Tarquinius’s blue-red Etruscan beak and steely eyes suggested anything but humor, but he leered with the majority and calculated cunningly behind a hand that hid his face from Cassius.

  “We thank you, Cassius,” said Herod, “for the entertainment. Now, if you could dance for us, or sing a little—”

  Cassius interrupted: “No insolence from you, Herod!” He was livid with anger — a conceited egotist who couldn’t believe himself ridiculous. His eyes were glancing instinctively in search of a weapon; given a chance, he would have stabbed Herod to death. Conops, whose principal job in life had been to bully-damn and break the impudence of saucy-egotists at sea, heaped fuel on the fire:

  “You’re no true Roman! Why don’t you hold us all as hostages for luck and fair weather, while you go and conquer the world! If I were the Lord Captain, blast me Boreas if I wouldn’t string you to the yardarm for forgetting how conquering Romans behave!”

  Tros’s fist crashed
the table.

  “Silence!”

  He had learned by inference, from the nature of Cassius’s offer, all that he needed to know in addition to what prisoners had already told him. He had given Hero, Sigurdsen, Ahiram and Conops a sensation of being consulted; and he had used his favorite tactic, letting Tarquinius overhear everything, that his treacherous mind might weigh the circumstances well; thus he would be able to predict Tarquinius’s treachery, and to outwit him and use him. He knew everyone’s mind, his own included.

  “Cassius,” said Tros, “do you wish this letter to be sent to Brutus? This—” he held it up, “you recognize it? — is Charmion’s letter to you, acknowledging yours to her. She quotes you as having offered to abandon your ally Brutus, who strongly objects to an Egyptian alliance. She promises to submit your offer to the Queen at the first propitious moment. But she doubts that the Queen will agree to enter into an offensive and defensive alliance with you, even though she may concur with your opinion that Brutus would be ground between two forces, and that Antony might, for a while, be satisfied to govern Asia. Do you wish Brutus to see this letter?”

  Cassius looked savage. “That was merely a diplomatic trick,” he answered.

  “I intend to heave to, off Gaza, tomorrow noon. You will stand in the bow of this bireme, covered by a maniple of archers, who will shoot you instantly if you disobey me by as much as a gesture. One of my boats will enter the harbor with a letter from you, in which you will command the captains and the fighting crews, but not the seamen and not the rowers, of all your eleven biremes, and of every other warship, great or small, that is in the harbor, to go ashore without their weapons.”

  “Look here, Tros—”

  “I have not yet finished.”

  “Very well, you pirate, name your terms and take the consequences! But mark me: you shall suffer for it! I will close all ports against you.”

  “I will then visit the ships. I shall require full complements of rowers, full stores of provisions and water, all the arrows and other war munitions in Gaza, and all the Greek fire that I know was sent to you by Brutus from Piraeus.”

  “You are misinformed. I haven’t any Greek fire.”

  “I demand, and I will have, the thousand packages of Greek fire that were sent to you by. Brutus from Piraeus to Gaza, in a ship named The Hound of Artemis.”

  Cassius sat silent. He glared at Tarquinius. Tros continued:

  “You will give your permission to sail with me, to any of your men who wish to do so, and whose service I care to accept. I will not take Roman citizens.”

  “You may have as many Jews as you please,” said Cassius.

  “The dogs are incorrigible. Perhaps Herod can teach you how to discipline them!”

  “I demand all the money in your treasury in Gaza.”

  “There is none.”

  Herod laughed. Tros waived that point. Cassius had taxed the country to the verge of devastation, but there was nothing likelier than that he had removed the money inland.

  “According to Tarquinius, Herod and other informants.” Tros continued, “you, legions at Jericho mutinied for their arrears of pay, a month ago. You couldn’t make them march toward Egypt. They demanded to be led northward to join Brutus’s army. Your biremes in Gaza that were supposed to follow you to Pelusium, put about and returned to Gaza because of rumors of plague in Egypt. That is how you came to be caught with only two ships at Pelusium.”

  Cassius set his teeth and drummed lean fingers on the table. He said nothing. Tros continued:

  “Consequently, unless your officers have decided to take matters into their own hands, my final demand should be very easy for you to comply with. You will order the fighting crews, who leave the ships, to march on Jericho, excepting fifty men, who may remain as your personal escort. Tarquinius will accompany those crews to Jericho.” The Etruscan looked alarmed, but he said nothing. “Tarquinius will bear a letter from you, commanding all the legions that are camped near Jericho to break camp instantly, burn their camp behind them and march northward. You will appoint a rendezvous at Damascus. You may leave this ship, and take your fifty men, and march to Damascus to join, your legions, as soon as Tarquinius brings me proof — remember, I say proof, not hearsay — that the legions have burned their camp and are well on their way northward. Have you understood me?”

  “These are ridiculous terms!”

  “They are final. You will accept them or not, as you please.”

  “The alternative?”

  “I will treat you as you treated Caesar.”

  “You scoundrel!”

  Tros pushed parchment and pen toward him:

  “Write! Your proconsular seal is in the box beneath the cot here. I will affix it. Write!”

  “Cassius, I warned you to bid high!” said Herod.

  CHAPTER XXXIX. “You crow like a dunghill cock, but wait and see!”

  The incomparable depth of stupidity is that of the commander who invariably does that which his enemy expects, because tradition justifies it. The only time when traditional strategy and tactics are fit to employ, is when the enemy expects something new and therefore mistakes old methods for a ruse.

  — From the Log of Lord Captain Tros of Samothrace

  Gaza was a bad port. It was difficult to enter with a north wind, because of shoals, reefs and a narrow entrance. That was the season of normally fair weather,’ but only a combination of emergencies could have induced such an experienced commander as Cassius to make use of Gaza as a base, even for a contemplated raid on Egypt. It was impossible for a fleet bottled in there to come out in a hurry to engage an enemy. Eleven big biremes and three small liburnians, with their complement of boats, so filled the tiny harbor that they could only move one at a time to come out or to defend themselves. True, there was a small fort at the harbor entrance that commanded the narrow channel, but a vigorous landing party could have taken that by assault in an hour.

  Gaza itself was a rather strongly fortified town, about three miles from the sea. The roofs of barley sheds and camel compounds could be seen through the silvery green of great groves of olives. There was plenty of water, several square miles of grapevines, and a tolerably good road between town and harbor. But the place looked deserted, almost dead. It had felt Cassius’s ruthless heel. His ill-disciplined legions had forayed, plundered, raped and terrorized the country until even the caravans that brought the frankincense and myrrh from Arabia had learned of it and turned back. There was no more trade. Almost every able-bodied inhabitant had been sold into slavery, for inability to pay the assessments of Cassius’s tax-extortioners.

  But the fleet looked good. They were eleven new biremes, built in Sidon of Lebanon cedar. The three liburnians looked fast and seaworthy. And there were two stout merchant vessels, close to the shore, that were evidently store-ships, full, deep-laden.

  Tros stood in the bow beside Cassius, just far enough from him to give the archers a chance if Cassius should try any tricks. Like Caesar, he might be a prodigious swimmer, although he didn’t look it. Tros had let him wear his imperator’s cloak, so Cassius was feeling less humiliated than he had been. But a boat that had come out to greet him had been turned back by Tros’s vedette, and that had made him indignant:

  “You compel me to mistrust you!”

  Tros glanced at the archers and smiled. He probed with calculated insolence that irritated Cassius beyond the verge of self-control. He gave him no chance to think calmly.

  “For a man of your military experience, Cassius, you are strangely reckless. Have you been trying to imitate Caesar’s genius? True, to impress his legions, Caesar used to go alone in advance of them. But the legions followed him. Why didn’t yours follow you?”

  “Mind your own business, pirate!”

  “Caesar would not have left a fleet for me to capture. He would have used it or burned it. No vedette boats! Caught in a land-locked harbor!”

  Fuming with irritation, Cassius sneered the truth that Tros wanted
to know. He had had it from Tarquinius, and he had heard it, too, in Alexandria, and from some of the Jew prisoners, and from one or two of Cassius’s wounded officers whom he had left behind in Pelusium. But it was better from Cassius’s lips:

  “You crow like a dunghill cock, but wait and see,” Cassius sneered. “You have been very lucky, but your little success won’t last long. Even though I owe you thanks for hastening my march northward to join Brutus, when I and Brutus have defeated the Triumvirate, if not sooner, I will have you caught and crucified as surely as that you and I now face each other!”

  That was what Tros wanted to know. It confirmed a dozen reports that Brutus’s spies had been at work among Cassius’s officers and men to persuade them to compel Cassius to march northward. It meant that concentrating had begun; the advance, to compel Octavian and Antony to fight before they were ready, was actually commencing. Cassius and Brutus probably would cross the Hellespont and establish a base in Macedonia, or even nearer than that to Italy, in order to dry up all Rome’s eastern sources of supply. Octavian and Antony would be in dire straits, with the element of time against them. Egypt’s turn could wait until Octavian and Antony were defeated by famine and fabian warfare. Two letters in Cassius’s chest revealed the impatience with which Brutus had opposed the idea of raid on Egypt.

  Tros kept up the irritation, to keep Cassius from throwing off his morbid mood and becoming again suddenly the quit thinker that he once was.

  “You and Brutus are both incompetents. You are little, mean men trying to be great. Brutus burns, murders, tortures and enslaves in the name of piety. You do it from jealousy and baulked ambition, but it amounts to the same thing. You are both impostors. That you don’t trust each other, is the only wisdom that you have in common. Being right about each other’s character won’t make you conquerors of Rome.”