Аврам Дэвидсон - Peregrine - primus

Peregrine received these comments in a respectful silence, but said nothing, believing them in any event to be prolegomenal in nature. A short space of time proved him right in this respect. For a moment he and the other observed some water-fowl take wing abaft their seats, trailing their feet in the water a good ways before leaving it entirely. Then the older man lifted his gaze from the birds’ wake and continued.

“I found Nimrunna a mere non-place,” he said, “and in a short while I had made it a hive of industry and commerce worthy of being the seat of a Caesar. Perhaps I was too severe. It may be so. I ought to have allowed more for the flighty side of man’s nature. After all, man liveth not by bread and brothels alone. So be it. I am not too old to learn. I was intended by Providence to be a Caesar, and a Caesar I shall be; if not in Nimrunna, then elsewhere. I have the capacity, and equally to the point, I have—despite the extortions of that snake-snuggling woolmonger—I have the funds. But I have not the folly to think I can begin anew if I begin alone.

“How would you like,” he asked abruptly, “to be the General of my Armies?”

Peregrine blinked. “Of your what?”

“Come, don’t play the fool. ‘Of my Armies,’ is what I said. True, I haven’t a single foot-slogger right now, let alone a single cohort. But what of that? Neither did I have when I first started out. Anyone who can pay soldiers’ wages can find soldiers to follow him. Well. Enough time-wasting. Do you think you’d like that?”

Peregrine said, “I think that I might like it very much indeed.

Of course,” he said, more slowly, “that might depend on what terms . .

“Five bezants a year, and all found,” said Augustus, promptly.

The putative General of the Armies wiggled a finger in an ear and examined it. “Must clean them better,” he commented. “Thought you said ‘five.’ Amusing isn’t it? When of course what you said was ‘five hundred’. .. wasn’t it?”

The jaw of Augustus sank till Peregrine would have thought it could sink no lower, yet it sank still lower; and as it sank, so did his eyebrows raise. “Before whom do you think you stand?” he asked, wonderingly. “Before the very Emperor Himself, by whose hands and mint the very bezants themselves are coined?”

Peregrine looked at him coolly. “I might be standing,” he said, slowly and thoughtfully, “before the future very Emporer Himself, by whose hands and mint the very bezants themselves are coined.”

The jaw of Augustus slowly raised, slowly met its upper, and slowly they clamped together, tightly, tightly, and ever more tightly; as though he were pressing out bezants in a die between his teeth; his eyes became narrower and narrower until they were two slits. He surveyed the young man before him in a silence which was not broken for some still moments.

“Young man,” he then said, “You have youth, audacity, cunning, courage, and a total absence of scruples. I like your spirit. Five hundred bezants a year, then.”

“And all found,” Peregrine added, promptly.

But he had perhaps gone too far. “With Caesar, one does not quibble over cheese and shoe-laces,” said Caesar, loftily. And rose, and drew his cloak around him. “Bring up the ship’s chart,” he directed. “And let us consider the lay of the land.”

t t t t

Peregrine had gone ashore to attend to a private need which could be more privately attended to than aboard, and was walking lazily after the sailing-barge as it floated downstream with its sail limp, when he heard a hiss. He jumped without thinking.

then carefully scanned the ground, but no serpent did he see. The hiss came again, and this time he identified its source as a thicket nearby, and he was eyeing the brush with a mixture of suspicion and annoyance, when its branches were slightly parted and a face peered out at him. It was Claud.

“Pssst! In here,” he said, and thrust out a hand of which one linger wiggled back towards him. Peregrine shrugged, and, the bush being parted more lightly, made his way into it.

“So you escaped, too,” said Claud.

Peregrine stared at him a moment, then burst out into laughter. Claud, not sharing in his merriment, asked what was the joke. It took some moments of explanation, and Claud did not seem as gratified as one might perhaps think he should have been to hear that his friends had escaped torture and massacre. Peregrine, though vaguely aware of his companion’s nonpresence recently, had in truth quite forgotten its cause; though he did not think it judicious to mention that.

“Well,” said Claud, thinking things over. “Well,” he said again, “I’m glad that everything’s all right. Philoxena and I were sure worried.” Philoxena gave Peregrine a glance, and tossed a mischievous lock of hair over her shoulder. If she had indeed been worrying, no traces of it now showed. She looked, in fact, very content.

“Seems like you’ve been more or less having a kind of picnic on the palace lawn,” said Claud, slightly resentfully. “I hope there were enough hard-boiled eggs.”

Peregrine thought it time to divert this trend of thought. “How would you like a position on the staff of a very highlyplaced military officer?” he asked.

“A very highly-placed what?”

“You may address me henceforth,” Peregrine said, carelessly, “as General Peregrine. Strategos, to be'formal, oh, but let’s not be formal. In fact, unless we are actually in uniform, skip the title altogether.”

“What in the hell are you talking about?” It was explained to him. He scowled, tousled his hair, looked at his friend with a suspicious look, then said, “Well, if you say so.”

“I do_say so.”

“I suppose he’s got the money, all right.”

“He certainly does have the money all right.”

Claud shrugged his acceptance of the situation, began to rise, then settled down again, and again he scowled. It was going to be rather embarrassing, he explained, to return to the ship just then. “Under the circumstances,” he said. And he looked rather sheepish. Philoxena looked anything but sheepish.

“Why must we go back?” she asked. “I not wanting to go back. Hun men smelling too badly.” The implication struck Claud very forcefully, and he, with a renewed scowl, put his arm around her, and she snuggled contentedly under it.

“Oh, I don’t want you to go back just now,” said Peregrine. “In fact your being as you are can work out very well, I think. Just kind of keep the boat in sight, keeping out of sight yourselves, though. You’re going to be my Chief of Scouts, at least for the time being.” He opened his pouch. “Here is Caesar’s bread and salt,” he said, breaking off and dipping and handing over. “Do you accept?”

“I accept.”

“Well, what I want you to do is to keep your eyes and your ears open. And each morning and each evening, when the sun is about so high, or so low, I’ll contrive to meet you. You can just hiss again, like before—”

Claud was already well into the mood. “Yes, that was very good, the way I hissed,” he said, complacently. “Got your attention right away, didn’t it. —Go ahead, go ahead,” he said, hastily. “I’m listening . . . very carefully.”

“And report to me of your movements and of your observations. Of men and beasts and birds, of walls and gates, of lands and waters, of all things which occur in the daytime and of all things which pass in the night. —Here’s your first pay, and here’s your first advance on expenses; don’t be too ostentatious in the way you spend any of it, and be careful of how you draw attention to yourself.”

Deeply impressed, Claud said, “Yes, General— I mean, Perry. And, uh, what else?”