pected anything of the sort," he said. "They - you see, we're used to dealing with th-them in a different aspect. It's easy to underestimate them, because the individuals are treated as so many blood cells, so many flakes of skin. But the gestalt . . ." He turned his palms upward. "My arrival here would have caused an enormous shift of energies. We didn't think they would be able to detect it. Obviously, they detected something. Perhaps it was that."
The hyenas stank with a feline musk which made the agent's stomach turn even in the general reek of the harbor. He stared at the spotted, scabby beasts while his hands rested lightly on the weapons beneath his cloak. There were a dozen of the hyenas, each of them a man's size or larger; and Perennius thought he understood the frustrated rage with which they glared out of their crates. "How are chances that they can keep right on tracking you?" the agent asked. He spoke toward the beasts.
"If they simply located my - point of arrival," Calvus said, "then they have no more way of following us when we leave the vicinity that anyone else in this age would have. They will be waiting, of course, but you will still determine how and when to strike." He paused as if to take a deep breath; though in fact, Calvus' breathing was, as always, mechanically regular.
"That's one possibility," said Perennius to the hyenas.
"Yes," Calvus agreed. "And yes, they may be able to locate me at all times, wherever I am, whatever I do. In that case, I see very little possibility that our mission will succeed."
"Yeah, that was how it looked to me, too," the agent said. He met the tall man's eyes again. Neither of their faces held any particular expression. "Let's get aboard," Perennius said. "We'll assume that they'll lose us as soon as we get under way."
The three and a half hours of unexpected delay which followed would have grated on Perennius even if Calvus had not given him a specific reason to fear delay. He tried to react as he would have done if he were simply waiting for a Bay of Naples ferry to cast off to take him back to base from a brothel. The stocky Illyrian stood in a curve of the poop rail, letting his senses absorb the confusion around him while his mind saw only the dance of sunlight on the murky waters.
The problem was the oars. Perennius was not familiar with the process of fitting out a large warship - nor, for that matter, were many of the crewmen and dockworkers involved. Because the liburnian was decked, there was no practical way that the twenty-two foot long upper-bank ' oars could be inserted from inside the seventeen-foot wide rowing chamber. Instead, each oar handle had to be thrust through its port by men on the quay, then grasped and drawn in by the oarsmen inside the vessel. The oarsmen were experienced sailors and generally used to the shattering drudgery of rowing, but the Eagle's cramped rowing chamber was new to them and thus chaotic. Most merchant ships - all but the monstrously largest ones - carried a few pairs of sweeps to maneuver them in harbor or to make landfall when the inshore breeze failed at evening. Such work, and that of trawling with a dingy, were just as hard as anything the liburnian demanded. The Eagle ranked over a hundred men in blocks of six, with four feet separating oars horizontally and only one vertical foot between the ports of the upper row and the lower.
Upon consideration, it was not surprising that it took so long to position the port-side oars, then to warp the starboard side to the quay and repeat the awkward process. It was not something Perennius had considered ahead of time, though, and only by excising his consciousness from the events could the agent restrain his fury. Under certain circumstances, he could wait with the patience of a leopard. Now, however, there was no kill in prospect.
"Cast off bow!" a ship's officer called, and the halves of Perennius' mind segued into alignment again.
A pair of sailors in the bow were thrusting at the quay with boathooks, while someone on the dock loosed a hawser from the bollard holding it. The cavalry squadron had remounted. It was forming in column of twos, while wagons and stevedores bustled on other quays. The face of one of the onlookers was unexpectedly familiar: Terentius Niger, the tribune who had handled the arrangements with verve and skill. Perennius saluted him. Those virtues
made up for any lack of security-consciousness the younger man had shown.
"Where the hell is Sestius?" the agent asked suddenly. He had been ambivalent about the Cilician initially. Now, given the size and quality of the Marine complement, Perennius did not care to miss even a single trained soldier—whether or not the soldier knew the ground where the operation would climax.
"He and his friend boarded just as they were about to raise the gangplanks," Gaius said. He stood near Perennius, but he knew the agent too well to intrude on his brown study until called to do so. "I thought they'd come back here, but they've stayed up in the bow." He nodded. Perennius, following the motion, caught sight of the centurion in a group of Marines. "I didn't think you'd want to be disturbed, so I didn't say anything."
"Cast off aft!" cried the officer. The shaft of a boathook missed Calvus' gleaming pate by inches as a sailor swung the tool over the rail.
"Let's go see him," Perennius said. He wondered with a certain humor what would happen if Calvus were brained in a boating accident. He had a gut feeling that the whole fantastic nightmare would melt back to the reality of a few weeks before.
Though that reality was nightmare enough, the Sun knew.
"Hope to blazes his friend's a soldier," the agent muttered as he stepped down the ladder. "That's the least of the help we need."
A drum thudded in the rowing chamber, thudded again, and then the coxswain began screaming curses forward as oarblades clattered together. The officer responsible below decks was trying to ease the vessel out of harbor with a few oars, leaving the rest shipped until the Eagle gained sea room. Even that conservative plan had not proven an immediate success.
"I thought of using a merchant ship," Perennius said to the tall man. Calvus had not asked for an explanation, but the obvious chaos seemed to Perennius to demand one. "Might've been faster, and for sure it was simpler.
But I just came from those waters. I don't see us making Tarsus without having to run or to fight at least once."
The ship lurched forward as a dozen oars bit the water simultaneously. A Marine stumbled against Perennius and caromed off as if from a stone post. The soldier's tunic hung over his bones as if from a rack, and he cringed away from the agent as if he expected a boot to follow the contact. "Right now," Perennius added gloomily, "I'm praying that it's run."
The fighting towers were wooden and six feet in each dimension. At one time they had been painted to look like stone. In combat they gave both vantage and a little extra wallop to missiles flung at an enemy from them. For carriage, the towers were knocked down and laid flat on the decking where they would be erected at need. The forward tower thus made a slightly raised table. A number of enterprising Marines had already started a dice game on it. Sestius and others looked on. As he approached the centurion, Perennius' face began to go blank. Gaius knew him well enough to know the expression was more threatening than another man's open rage.
"I haven't met your friend, yet, Quintus," the agent said in a tone that only a ferret might have thought was friendly and bantering.
The centurion had watched them approach, at first out of the corner of his eye but at last with a stiff smile of greeting. Sestius moved a step toward the unrailed edge of the deck, drawing his companion along with a gesture. "This is my friend, Sabellius," he said nervously. He converted the summons into an introductory gesture. "He'll be a lot of help to us." Froth scudded off in the breeze as the oars feathered. It spattered Sestius' high-laced boots and the Gallic trousers of his companion.
Perennius paced toward his quarry, past the oblivious Marines and a pair of sailors checking the forestays of the mast. Calvus and Gaius followed him like the limbs of a V. The courier's face showed a concern which the tall man never seemed to feel. The agent was staring at Sabellius. Shorter than Sestius, Sabellius wore a waist-length cloak over tunic and trousers. The hood of the cloak was raised over reddish, rough-cut hair. The gar-