The second shock was the language Calvus used. The traveller was speaking to Sabellia in Allobrogian Celtic. There was no chance that any of these South-Baltic Germans would speak the dialect, but it was very familiar to the agent himself. In his youth, Allobrogian had been his language of love, the language of his love. . . .
"Don't become overanxious," Calvus was saying. "You've done very well. Now it's time to wait and not attract attention."
A shudder went through the Gallic woman, showing that she had heard. Her head lowered from the fixed aim she had been holding like the trough of a ballista. Use of a dialect from her childhood had cut through her black reverie as well as hiding the advice from the pirates.
Sabellia turned. She eyed the line of her fellow captives. Her face was as lifeless as clay with reaction to the façades of moments before and the emotions underlying it. Biarni used a dagger to spear gobbets of boiled meat and toss them to his fellows. The cripple was not the center of attention, but at least he was no longer the fool of a foreign slut.
"Don't try anything now," the traveller continued. Calvus lowered her voice to make the fact that the prisoners were conferring less obvious to their carousing captors. "It's too early, and in broad daylight you'll be seen. Only act when you have to; the later the better."
Sabellia nodded. Her expression was tired and disinterested.
"And if you can free only one of us," continued the gentle whisper from the agent's past, "it should be Aulus Perennius."
At that instruction, Sabellia looked up. As if Perennius were not present - and she might not know that the dialect was more than nonsense syllables to an Illyrian like him - she said, "He's wounded. I thought Quintus or perhaps the young one. He handles a sword...."
"Lady," said Perennius, "don't worry about my leg." Sabellia stared at him. Calvus was watching also. The tall woman's face wore its normal calm and a trace of the new smile. "If you get a chance to cut us loose," the agent continued, "one swordsman won't do a lot of good. I might. I just might."
"Hey, shut the fuck up!" Respa shouted. He threw a shoulder blade at the agent. The heavy bone bounced off the post as Perennius jerked his head aside. The missile left behind the smell of cooked flesh and a bubble of laughter from the Goths seated for toasts and boasting.
Calvus' advice, to wait and attract as little attention as possible, was good. Perennius had a great deal of experience in waiting. Let them get drunk or whatever the traveller had in mind. The agent quietly flexed his muscles against each other or against the post. His wounded thigh was far less knotted by the trauma than it should have been. He wondered if that had something to do with the tingling Calvus' fingers had left behind as they bandaged the wound.
Perennius kept his own smile inside. He had experience in doing that, also. When he let his emotions show on his face while he prepared, people shied away as if they had seen a shark grinning.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Three hours later, the pirates were slurping the last of their wine. A Goth named Veduc was describing, victim by victim, the seventy Romans he had slain the day before. It was the sort of performance that followed each victory; and a night's drunken stupor had turned the disaster of the previous day into the triumph of the present. Veduc swept his arms outward and fell on his back with a crash. The shield with which he had been gesturing clipped Grim. The one-armed man leaped up, cursing and dabbing at his bloody ear. Veduc began to mumble and raise his legs as if he were trying to walk forward, straight up the sky.
There was laughter, but not the raucous gales that the drunkenness should have heightened. Several of the Goths seemed to have slumped on their sides. Perennius' eyes narrowed. Respa, the veteran who had first hailed Theudas, now leaned forward. He started to crawl toward the center of the circle on all fours. Respa kept scrabbling at the ground, turning over and over a pebble as he shuffled through the midst of his fellows.
"Whoo, Respa's past it!" crowed a black-haired Goth wearing a Roman helmet. The speaker's face changed abruptly. He doubled up and began to vomit. His hands pressed to his belly. In between the wracking tremors, he gave squeals of animal pain.
There were more men suddenly on their feet or trying to get there. Hulking pirates swayed, looking around in horror as if the landscape were a sea of flames around them. One of them dabbed at his face with both hands. At first he patted gently. After a moment he began giving himself brutal slaps that stained his moustache with his own blood. "It's not there!" he cried. His voice was slurred. "I can't feel my face and I can't feel my hands!" He began to cry. Again and again he squeezed his palms to his cheeks as his hands slipped away.
Theudas rose. The man standing beside him whimpered and laid a hand on the chieftain's shoulder. "Storar?" Theudas said, looking at the pirate who had grabbed at him. Storar screamed and clutched himself as if he were trying to hold in his slashed bowels. His sphincter muscles opened. A gush of half-digested waste poured down his pants legs. The stink of it had enough impact, even among the surrounding horror, that Theudas backed away with his nose wrinkling.
The circle of boasting, drinking heroes had scattered like a straw fence in a windstorm. Nearby, oblivious to them as they were to him, Biarni was clutching the cooking tripod to keep himself upright. Biarni's eyes were glazed. The iron leg must have been very hot, but the cook showed no sign of feeling the damage. One of his palms slipped. His twisted body fell in a cloud of ash that mounted on the column of hot air. The pot and tripod overset, clanging. Boiling water sloshed on the coarse soil. It did not touch the flames that Biarni's struggles were stirring in the heart of the fire.
That, Perennius thought, was the measure of the disaster which had struck the pirates. A cripple was being burned alive, and not one of the Germans around him was laughing.
Theudas backed away from his band. His big hands were clenching as if he hoped in an instant to grapple with the cause of the catastrophe. His boot rang on the fallen silver tray. The blond Goth looked down.
"Now, Sabellia," Perennius whispered to the woman. She was huddled against the post to which she had earlier been tied.
Flies had buzzed around the dish of chopped loin even while Sabellia was preparing it. They coated the remnants of the confection in the dirt. Many of the insects lay on their backs, quivering with bursts of furious motion but unable to fly or even to crawl. The ground was black besides with still forms which were beyond even that. Their systems had been destroyed as thoroughly as those of the Goths, by the aconite root which Sabellia had called "wild horseradish."
The Gallic woman moved swiftly to Perennius. She knelt behind the fence post as Theudas turned. The Goth's surmise became furious certainty. Sabellia cut the thongs at the agent's elbows, then those at his wrists, with quick passes of the knife. To its broad blade still clung smears of the poisoned meat which she had served with the weapon.
Perennius stood and took the knife. The woman tried to hand him her cloak as well, to wrap around his arm in place of a shield. "Get the hell out of the way!" the agent shouted. He braced his left hand against the top of the post. Perennius was stiff, but a bow is stiff also and it kills none the less....
Theudas charged. He had drawn his axe even before his eyes lighted on Sabellia. The Goth was no berserker, but sight of the slender woman who had played him for a fool drove him momentarily over the edge. The glint of dark steel in Perennius' hand brought Theudas up again. The woman scampered nude into the trampled garden.
"Sure, try me first," the agent said with a smile. "You aren't afraid of me, are you? Just because your mother used to suck my cock when we were - "