Birds of Prey (16 page)

Perennius and everyone else on the
Eagle
's deck turned to mark the flight of the bolt. Its steel head and two bronze fins all glittered in the sun. Though the missile did not rotate, it quivered in the air on its long axis with a busy attraction that belied its purpose. The bolt's flat arc seemed to peak some two hundred and fifty paces away. It dropped into the sea at a much steeper angle than it had risen, still well short of the pirate vessel. The shot had been perfectly aligned, however, and there was a pause in the bellowed threats from the Germans.

You may win this, boys, thought the agent. But there'll be a few of you well and truly fucked before it's over.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The young courier and the two seamen he had coöpted as ballista crewmen were alone atop the fighting tower. While the sailors cranked furiously on opposite sides of the cocking windlass, Gaius was readjusting the second bolt by straightening a fin crimped in storage. He greeted with a glance and a curse the oil jar which Longidienus proffered him. “No, take it, Gaius!” Perennius called. “And take this too till I get up.”

The younger Illyrian looked up again, frowning beneath the rim of his helmet. He did not retort to the voice he knew so well. Gaius bent to take the amphora, lifting it with greater ease than the Marine had but without the hysterical abandon of the agent. The jar was stoppered, but it was not sealed with wax. Yellowish, low-quality olive oil sloshed around the plug and seeped down the side of the jar like a slip on the glaze. “Set it on its side,” the agent directed. “We don't need much, it can run if it likes. But don't let
this
bastard fall—” He handed up the pot with the fire.

The mechanism of the ballista clacked. One of the sailors cried, “It's ready, sir.” The sailor's enthusiasm took Perennius aback as he scrambled up the short ladder to the tower. It was beyond the agent's comprehension how Gaius had managed to gain immediate obedience, much less cheerful cooperation, from the sailors in such dangerous, unfamiliar duty. The only sudden emotion Perennius had ever been able to instill in strangers was fear; and he was far too intelligent to think that fear was a basis for getting anything difficult done well. There was a great future opening for Gaius if he wanted it—and if anyone on the
Eagle
could measure his future in more than minutes.

Gaius shot a worried glance at the oncoming pirates, then looked back to his friend. “Aulus,” he said as the agent swung a leg over the low parapet, “I need to load the ballis—”

Both Perennius' edged weapons lay on the deck in their scabbards. He gripped the hem of his linen tunic with both hands and tore it through in a single motion. Gaius stared in amazement as his protector ripped a circuit a hand's breadth wide from the bottom of his garment. “Iron won't stop enough of them, my friend,” muttered the agent. “Like wasps—but we'll burn their fucking hive!”

Oil from the leaking jar pooled along the parapet. Perennius tossed the linen in the pool to soak. He took the other pot from Gaius, whose face was beginning to show comprehension in place of concern. “Cut that cloth,” the agent directed as he flicked away the slotted lid. “Tie half around an arrow and give the rest to me.”

The coals were a nest of hardwood banked carefully on a bed of sand. Perennius took the strip of oily linen from Gaius and dangled it into the pot so that one dripping corner blackened the ash it touched in the very center. The agent blew; a firm, even flow rather than a fierce pulse that would have sent cinders flying and cooled the flame it was meant to raise. His reward was the tongue of fire that ran up the edge of the cloth. The flame was yellow and smoky without the rush that naphtha or pitch could have offered; but it was what they had, and it would serve.

With the oily cloth afire within, Perennius set down the amphora without fear that the sand would shift and smother the coals. “Light that,” he said, nodding to the bolt Gaius held with the linen knotted just behind the head, “and send it to the bastards.” He tore more of his tunic's skirt away. Gaius obeyed, grinning like a fiend. The bolt thunked into the trough of the ballista. Its band of cloth now trailed smoke from a rind of flame. Gaius knelt, sighted between the vertical baulks of wood to either side of the trough, and loosed.

Because Perennius was behind the ballista, its bolt had little apparent motion to him. The missile lifted. It was a glitter against the pirates' sail and a black dot in the sky as it rose above the target. At the peak of its arc, the bolt blurred in a furious yaw, caused probably by the tail of linen tied to its shaft. A dot again after its momentary instability, the missile plunged. For a moment, the guttural bellowing from the pirate craft dissolved into less threatening sounds. A cheer broke out on the
Eagle
's deck.

A German had raised his shield to receive the missle. His face was a sunburned blur amid flowing blond beard and hair. The press of his fellows in the bow might have prevented him from ducking away even if he had been willing to show fear. The five-pound bolt, rather a short javelin than an arrow in weight, snapped through the wicker shield and the man who bore it before it crunched into the pelvis of a pirate in the second rank. The men crashed backwards, pinned together in a tangle of limbs flailing spasmodically like those of a spider on a knife point.

Perennius did not cheer with the others. The rag had been stripped on impact and lay as a black smear on the face of the wicker shield. That was not serious. Luck might send a later bolt into the more flammable target. But the agent had seen that the snap of the ballista's acceleration had snuffed the flame out even as the bolt sailed from its trough.

Gaius hooted with glee as he tied more linen around the shaft of the next missile. The fact of the whole plan's failure had been lost in the young man's delight at killing two of the enemy. “Half-cock on the next one, Gaius,” the agent ordered as he opened his own pouch. “Don't draw the string all the way.”

“Blazes, Aulus!” the courier cried. His normal deference to his protector was lost in the present rush of hormones. “It won't get there if we don't cock it!”

“God strike you for a fool!” Perennius roared back. “It doesn't matter if it gets there if the bloody fire goes out in the air!”

Shocked back into the agent's reality, Gaius spun and passed the order to the seamen on the windlass.

The captain's strategy of getting past with both pirate vessels on the port side had clearly failed. The nearer of the pirates, now closing on the liburnian with a rush, had already worked to starboard. The
Eagle
was in theory caught between her opponents. In fact, however, the separation between one German vessel and the other had increased as they raced for their prey. The further pirate had not worked to windward with anything like the finesse of her consort. She was now the better part of a mile distant. That at least permitted the
Eagle
to engage the nearer opponent alone; though Perennius was under no illusions as to his ability to beat off a hundred heavily-armed Germans with the force at his disposal.

*   *   *

Now that the direction of the attack was more or less certain, Sestius led his half-section forward to join Longidienus and the other Marines. Perennius noticed two seamen wearing loin clouts and carrying pikes had joined the Marines. Most of the deck crew had disappeared below. Leonidas held his post in the stern. The captain had belted on a sword. A pair of his men still gripped the tiller behind them. The
Eagle
was as ready as she would ever be.

There was one more datum on the credit side. No short, cowled figure had appeared among the barbarians screaming on the pirates' deck. For now, the
Eagle
had only men to deal with. Bad as that might be, Perennius found it at least better than the alternative.

“Had a pair of these, mule-drawn, in our troop,” said Gaius to the stock of the ballista as he crouched behind it. “Used them at Arlate, though we didn't engage ourselves.…” Perennius had not wondered at or even given thanks for his protégé's unexpected competence with the crew-served weapon. Time enough for that if they got out of what was coming.

After they got out of it.

The ballista was not simply a large bow mounted crosswise in a stock. The arms holding the string were separate, stiff billets of wood, each about thirty inches long. The butt of either arm was thrust into a skein made from the neck sinews of draft oxen. The skeins had been wrenched to the greatest torsion possible in their heavy frame. Only then were the arms drawn back against that stress by the cocking windlass. The bow string itself was of horsehair and an inch in diameter; nothing lighter could transfer the energy of even a rather small piece of torsion artillery to its missile.

With the trough elevated to 45° and the cord drawn only half the three feet of travel possible, Gaius sent a second flaming bolt into the sky. Its arc was clean and perfect from the point it leapt from the weapon to its hiss on plunging into a wave the length of a man short of the pirates' deck. Groans from the Marines mingled with raucous cheers from the Germans; but there was a pool of yellow flame, oil burning on the water, for an instant before the cutwater scattered it.

“Load another,” the agent said in grim triumph. “We've got them now!” And he dropped a bullet into the cup of his own sling.

Several of the Germans were shooting arrows into the sea with self bows—bows which depended on the tension of a single staff of wood to power their missiles. The composite bows of the horse lords of Scythia and Mesopotamia were far more effective weapons. Perennius would not, however, have traded the sling he held for even one of those fine recurved bows and the skill to use it.

The sling was marvelously compact in comparison to any other missile weapon save a hand-flung rock. There was a short wooden grip, a leather pocket for the bullet, and two silken cords a yard long to provide leverage. Perennius used silk cords because they were strong and because they were not affected by the damp. In a downpour, leather stretched and the sinew and horn laminations of composite bows could separate from the wooden core. The silken sling was affected only to the extent that rain made its user uncomfortable; and that, for Aulus Perennius in a killing mood, was not at all.

Now the agent grinned, sighted, and snapped the sling around his head in a single 360° arc. He released the free cord while still holding the wooden handgrip. The bullet slashed out over the ballista and the two startled seamen cocking it. Six hundred feet away, a German died as two ounces of lead crushed his skull. Perennius' mouth was still set in humorless curve of an axe-edge. He set another bullet in the pocket and resumed the business of slaughter.

The sling would throw anything within reason, including clay balls that would shatter and could not be thrown back. Pebbles would do in default of prepared ammunition. Perennius preferred almond-shaped bullets of lead. Their density carried them further through the air than bulkier missiles, and their double points could punch through the armor of cataphract horsemen at shorter ranges. The ammunition the agent had brought to his pouch had the word “Strike!” cast in the side of each bullet. At worst, the hope expressed by some armorer did not make the bullets less effective, for they struck like deadly hail as the vessels closed.

The ship-jarring thud of seventy-two oars striking their locks in attempted unison had been a part of existence since the pirates were sighted. Now the sound ceased. It was replaced by a continuing clatter and the hiss of the liburnian's hull cleaving the water on sail-power and momentum. Gaius cursed as his forehead bumped the ballista he was sighting. Perennius ignored the change except to shift his bracing foot as he shot, then shot again.

The agent's whole upper body, not just the strength of his arms, was behind the snap of each bullet. It was for that reason that Perennius could not wear armor, though he knew as well as anyone that he would be the target of every German archer when they realized what he was doing. A chieftain as gray and shaggy as his wolf-skin cape suddenly squawked and pitched forward, under the bows of his own ship. A bullet had broken his shin. A moment later, the man who had pushed into the vicim's place collapsed in turn. A lozenge-shaped fleck had appeared in the weathered surface of his shield. The German did not cry out as he died. The bullet had lodged in his diaphragm after punching through his lindenwood buckler.

Perennius had aiming points, but for now he was not really trying to choose his targets. The range and relative motion of the ships would have made it difficult to snipe at individuals—though it was a thing he would have managed, trust the gods and his own trained eye, if one of the chitinous Guardians had shown itself with the pirates. Now there was no need to be choosy. The Germans were clustered too thickly to miss. A round glanced from the bronze helm of one and into the throat of the fellow screeching just behind him. Both Germans fell in a confused tangle of limbs and weapons. One pirate was much the same as another, with the champions and bare-chested mad-men of the front rank more likely as more worthy victims.

An arrow with a barbed iron head thumped the parapet of the tower. An inch higher and it would have been in the agent's knee. The archer was a naked man who squatted amidships near the
beitass,
the pole which stiffened the forward leech of the sail. Perennius ignored him as he ignored the handful of other archers. Statistically, they were not a serious threat; and there was no way to get through the next minutes save by trusting Fortune and the best chances offered.

The short German bows were unlikely to disable any of the armored Marines if they hit, and accurate archery from shipboard was almost impossible anyway. Waves and fluctuations in the breeze kept moving vessels trembling up and down even in calm seas. That did not affect a slinger, since the bullet would hold the plane of its arc no matter what the ship did in the instant between aim and release. Perennius could not have called the gyroscopic effect by name, but he used its results like any good empiricist. A one-inch twitch in the arrowhead meant the shot missed by a man's height at a hundred feet—that was if it had been properly aimed in the first place. Perennius had the gravest regard for the rush of a hundred German swordsmen; but their archers, like thirst, were simply a factor that had to be ignored in battle.