"Drake,.David.-.Birds.Of.Prey" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

Perennius threw himself forward with a cry. The weapon that had pierced his leg was a poor grade of iron and not even particularly sharp. It had the strength of a hulking, two-hundred-and-fifty pound pirate behind it, however. Blood leaped after the black iron as the agent drew himself off the point. The pirate grunted and raised his weapon to finish the job.
Flat-footed on deck, the Goth was as tall as the fighting tower. To thrust over the parapet, he had to raise his spear overhead with both hands, but that awkwardness was slight protection to Perennius. The German wore silvered chain mail, but his head was bare. His blond hair was long. It was gathered on the left side by a knot close to the German's scalp, so that it streamed like a horse's tail past his shoulder.
The agent's sword lay somewhere on deck. His shield was packed in the cabin with his body armor. With a bullet in its cup, the sling would have been an effective flail even though the range was too short for normal use. And any thought of further retreat ended with the crunch of iron against the mechanism of the ballista behind him. The German who had driven Perennius to the back of the tower had not forgotten the slinger either.
If Perennius jumped forward, the Goth would spit him on the shaft of his rising spear - but the agent might get close enough to kick the bastard's brains out. Perennius tensed, and the Goth tensed, and the boat-pike Calvus swung like a flail dished in the side of the pirate's skull.
Sabellia and Calvus had appeared around the swollen belly of the sail. They held pikes from the rack on the mast. The Gallic woman was screeching as she thrust at another pirate around the corner of the tower. Her pike thumped his breast plate, leaving a bright streak on the bronze disks and a scar on the leather backing when it skidded off. The point did not penetrate.
The strength required to swing the full length of a fourteen-foot pike was amazing even by the standards Calvus had already demonstrated, but it was also an absurdly awkward way to use the thrusting weapon. The traveller must have been watching Sabellia even as he clubbed down the Goth. He shifted his grip. He was still holding the pike well behind its point of balance. The pirate Sabellia had struck now raised his shield and stepped forward again. The long, round-tipped sword in his right hand was poised for an overhand cut.
Perennius held the free end of his sling and flipped the handle-weighted length of it down to entangle the German's sword wrist. Calvus lunged, ramming his pike through the shield, the startled pirate, and an inch or more of the fighting tower beside. The crackle of wood and bones was as sharp as nearby lightning.
Perennius sprang down. His right leg collapsed as he had expected, but it held him again when he thrust himself back off the deck with both hands. The Goth pinned to the tower's planking was thrashing. His arms and legs hammered the wood as all his muscles retracted simultaneously, relaxed, and clamped again. The whites of his eyes had rotated up. His sword dropped beside him. The agent snatched the German-made weapon, careful to keep his right leg straight as he bent over.
Sestius and his Marines held a surprisingly solid line between the fighting tower and the mast. Gaius was still on his feet, the agent saw with relief. The young Illyrian stood in the center of the fight, everything a commander should be with his bright armor and his long, bloody sword. The pirates had so awkward a path to board that their numbers could not tell fully. Beyond that difficulty, it was clear that the strength and enthusiasm of the men who remained to board the liburnian was less than that of the individuals in the first wave.
The German leader, if he were still alive, had shown as little of generalship as had Perennius himself. Unlike the Imperial agent, the mixed force of Germans had no subordinate officers to make up for defects in command - the way Gaius, Sestius, and Leonidas on the poop had done. Only two Goths had circled the fighting tower instead of charging straight for the line of Marines. A serious attempt - and one aimed at the shieldless backs of the Marines instead of the galling slinger on the tower - would have ended all resistance on the liburnian's deck in a minute or less. Now the ignored path around the flank was Perennius' to exploit - as point man and not as commander, of course.
Sabellia was trying to turn and face the main German threat. Sestius himself held the tower end of the Marine line. The Gallic woman clearly wanted to be beside her lover. She was not large even for her sex, however. Her pike weighed over twenty pounds and was very clumsy besides. When Sabellia tried to raise the shaft and turn, the pike head fouled one of the forestays of the mast.
Calvus was trying to withdraw his own weapon. When he tugged backward, the point squealed out of the tower. The Goth remained hopelessly impaled. Clearing that pike was obviously a task for whoever survived the battle. To the agent's amazement, the traveller continued to jerk at the shaft as if he could somehow overcome the friction of perforated wood, bronze, and bone with nothing more than the corpse's mass to hold against his tugging.
"Blazes!" screamed the agent. "Take hers and come along with me!" For all that Calvus seemed genuinely dim-witted about practical things, his demonstrated strength was too obvious an asset now to be neglected. Sabellia's instincts and courage were all that Perennius could have hoped for at his back - but a man who could drive a pike like a ballista bolt was utterly beyond a soldier's hopes.
There was a splotch on the ragged edge of the agent's tunic. The wound oozed, however, with none of the fierce arterial spurting that would have meant the agent's death by now. It made him weaker and slower, but he was Aulus Perennius. When a black-bearded German faced him with a shout at the starboard side of the tower, Perennius cut him down. The blow would have decapitated the German if the sword-edge had been up to the job.
The confusion on the pirate vessel itself was suddenly more than raucous blood-lust. Genuine flames amidships were rolling clouds of smoke as white as steam out of the crumpled sail. Half the men still aboard the shallow vessel were either trying to fight the fire or were shouting at it in pointless terror instead of trying to board the Eagle.
Perennius saw a chance and took it. The two ships were rotating slowly about their common center. In a few minutes, the Eagle would be taken aback, her untended sail fluttering back against her mast as the combined momentum of the vessels torqued her into the wind. At the moment, however, the liburnian's canvas and bluff side were downwind of the pirates. If the ships had not been linked by the grappling lines, they would already have begun drifting apart.
And there were only two lines still fastened.
The axe-wielding Herulian who had been facing Sestius danced back, aiming a cut and a curse at the Roman agent who had just appeared on his right flank. Perennius ducked his upper body away from the blow. He made no attempt to parry the heavier weapon with his sword. More surprisingly to anyone who had seen Perennius fight before, the squat Illyrian did not exploit the German's loss of balance. The fellow stood with his shield wide to the left fronting Sestius. His axe pulled the right side of his body around to follow his backhand blow.
The Herulian was not the most important target. Perennius squatted and cut at the horsehair rope reeved through the shaft of the nearest grapnel. His sword tore chips from the edge of the runway which acted as his chopping block. The wound in Perennius' thigh burned and his leg threatened to buckle, but he could not have reached the hawser without bending at the knees.
A Goth clung to the rope as his feet slid on the shaft of the oar he was trying to climb. He screamed and tried to thrust his spear at the agent left-handed. To the other side, the Herulian with the axe cried out also. Sestius had used the diversion to pin his opponent's knees together by thrusting below the German's wicker shield. The Herulian fell backward as the government-issue spear tore through ligaments and the porous ends of the leg bones. The Herulian might still have swung at Sestius' ankles while the centurion drew his sword, but Sabellia slipped past her lover with something bright in her hand. As Perennius had suspected before, the finger-length blade of her knife was long enough to let out all a man's blood through his throat.
Oarsmen were fighting their way onto the deck by both hatches and through the ventilator whose grating had been lifted by the initial shock. If the sailors had been armed and trained, their numbers would have been decisive. As it was, their terror was likely to demoralize the Marines who had been holding steadily despite their losses. Flight was obvious suicide, but the instincts of battle are housed far deeper in a man's brain than is the intellect which seeks to direct them. Perennius cursed and cut again. Both ends frayed into anemone-tufts of horsehair as the hawser sprang apart under tension. The Goth's despairing spear-thrust nocked the side of the Eagle as the man himself hit the water. He was dragged instantly to his death by his equipment and his inability to swim.
The agent levered himself to his feet, using the Gothic sword as a crutch. The blade bowed under his weight. It did not spring back when he lifted its point from the wood.
There was no way this side of Hell that Perennius could reach the remaining grappling line. It was fast in the outrigger, twenty feet aft of where he stood. Already fresh Germans boarding the Eagle were running toward the agent instead of joining the rank that faced the Marines.
The grapnel Perennius had cut free lay on the deck before him. The released tension of its line had sprung free the one of its three hooks which had been embedded in the liburnian's deck coaming. The agent thrust the point of his sword under a hook and flipped the iron up into his left hand. He could not afford to bend over. Perennius' right thigh was spasming even though he was trying to keep his weight off it. "Cut the other line!" he shouted in Greek. He brandished the grapnel, holding it by its eighteen-inch shaft as an explanation and a way to call attention to himself in the tumult.
Wailing, bloody oarsmen forced their way up from the chaos in the rowing chamber. Some of them were even throwing themselves over the port side, though they could be only a brief salvation even for those who could swim. "We've got to separate the ships!" shrieked Perennius in a hopeless attempt to be heard above their clamor.
The Goth who rushed Perennius along the outrigger's runway wore a helmet of silvered iron. Its fixed visor flared over his brow like the bill of a Celtic woman's bonnet. There was nothing feminine about his long sword or the strength with which he cut at the agent's torso with it.
Perennius interposed the grappling iron as if it were a buckler. The claws were thumb-thick and forged from metal as good as that in the Goth's sword. Sparks flew from both objects. The shock to Perennius' left arm was severe, but the two feet of greater leverage almost tore the quivering sword from the Goth's hand.
The agent tried to thrust at his opponent. His bent blade and the weakness of the leg that should have carried him made the attack more of a stumble. The German skipped back anyway, disconcerted by his numb sword-hand. As the pirate did so, the deck lurched and he lost his footing. Screaming, he fell backward onto the oar-blades. Despite the desperate clutching of his hands, the Goth slipped off and went head-first into the sea.
Perennius went down also. The wind blew a pall of smoke from the other vessel. It reeked of leather and wet wool. Out of it came another German with his metal-shod shield raised and his spear poised to stab the kneeling agent.
There was nothing wrong with Perennius' right arm. He hurled his sword against the warrior's trousered shins. The weapon clanged and cut. The pirate gave a yelp and pitched headlong. His helmet fell off and he dropped his shield to scrabble at the deck coaming with his left hand.
Perennius hit him on the temple with the grappling iron. The German's legs relaxed, but there was still life in his arms until the agent struck twice more. The body slid sideways off the runway, as the other had done before it.
Blazes, there was open water between the ships!
A freak of the breeze sucked away the bitter smoke for the moment. The ships had lain parallel with their starboard bows interlocked. Now there was a broad V of water between the liburnian's bow and the cutwater of the pirate vessel. There was still a grappling line snubbed to the Eagle. Even as Perennius stared, the hooks of that iron tore free. They took with them a foot of the deck coaming. The Eagle lurched again. Without the drag of the smaller ship, the wind was already starting to swing her head to leeward.
The agent risked a glance over his shoulder. Behind him, Calvus was straightening. The tall man held the boat-pike near the butt as he twitched its head free of the pirate's hull planking.
The traveller had just pushed the two ships apart single-handedly.
The Eagle's defenders could not see what had happened. The roar of despair on their own vessel was enough to cause the pirates who had boarded already to glance around. There were less than a dozen of them. The Marines' tight ranks and full armor had made them dangerous opponents when there was nowhere for them to run.
Perennius grabbed a fallen spear to replace the sword which had splashed over the side. He was still on his knees. "Get'em from behind with your pike!" he cried to Calvus, but when he looked around he saw that the tall man was stiff in his trance state.
The line of Germans broke from the flank nearest Perennius and his companion.
It was as sudden and progressive as cloth ripping under tension. A red-bearded pirate flung the spear with which he had been sparring with Sestius. It clanged on the centurion's shield boss. The German dropped his own shield and ran. He launched himself from the deck of the liburnian and into the waist of his own vessel despite the widening gap that separated them. Behind him came his companions.
The pirates broke so suddenly that the exhausted Marines had no time to pursue. Gaius alone followed them. The courier had a deep cut on his left shoulder and the light of battle in his eyes. Blood rippled into droplets from the point of his long sword as he brought it around in a final arc. A Herulian with a wolf-skin kirtle screamed as the Roman blade severed one heel even as he threw himself overboard. In the water, men drowned or splashed to hand-holds on the pirate ship's gunwale.
And there were no pirates alive on the Eagle.


CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Perennius was dizzy, sick with blood loss and reaction. He tried to rise but found that even holding himself on knees and knuckles required all his concentration until the moment of vertigo had passed. God of Morning, he thought with his eyes closed. Let your servant behold you once again. But it was now late in the afternoon, and the second pirate vessel was luffing toward them with men at her rail.
Hell, he was never very good at resting anyway, the agent thought. He rose carefully. Calvus' hands were at his shoulder and wounded thigh. Their dry warmth offered more comfort than the burden they took from Perennius' own muscles.
The Eagle was not entirely clear of the first pirate vessel, for that matter. The survivors of that smoldering craft seemed as disinterested in continuing the fight as were those standing in the carnage of the liburnian's deck. Neither ship was under control. Because the Eagle's sail was set and her sides were higher than those of the pirate craft, she was drifting downwind faster than the Germans were. That was not going to be sufficient so long as the liburnian shared the sea with an undamaged shipful of pirates.
The captain, Leonidas, was obviously aware of that. He was shouting at the mate. That officer in turn was holding a pair of seamen and actually placing their hands on the shroud he wanted trimmed. Both sailors were blood-spattered and slack-faced. Perennius recognized one of them from the ballista crew. No wonder the mate was having difficulty raising him out of shock. A wonder that the man had survived at all, the way Gaius had rushed them into the melee.
Calvus was bandaging Perennius' thigh. The tall man was using a length of wool and a jeweled brooch that the agent had last seen fastening the cloak of a Goth he had killed. The wool provided absorption and a compress, all you could do while you waited to see whether the wound festered and killed you. ... "Can you make the winds blow the way you want?" Perennius asked. He rotated the spear in his hand so that its iron ferule rapped the bloody deck.