Arms of Nemesis Read Online Free PDF

questions, but decided I had taxed his patience enough. I followed him into the afternoon sunlight and caught a whiff of roasted lamb on the bracing sea breeze. My stomach roared like a Hon, and I abandoned curiosity to satisfy a more pressing appetite.
    Mummius was wrong to think that I would be bored with nothing to do on the Fury, at least as long as the sun was up. The ever-changing vista of the coast of Italy, the wheeling gulls overhead, the work of the sailors, the play of sunlight on water, the schools offish that darted below the surface, the crisp, tangy air of a day that was no longer summer but not quite autumn — all this was more than enough to occupy me until the sun went down.
    Eco was even more entranced. Everything fascinated him. A pair of dolphins joined us at twilight and swam alongside the ship until long after darkness had fallen, darting in and out of the splashing wake. At times they seemed to laugh like men, and Eco mimicked the sound in return, as if he shared a secret language with them. When at last they disappeared beneath the foam and did not return, he went smiling to his bed and fell fast asleep.
    I was not so lucky. Having slept most of the day, I faced a sleepless night. For a while the shadowy coast and the sparkle of stars on the water charmed me quite as much as had the luminous afternoon, but then the night grew colder, and I took to my bed. Marcus Mummius was right: the bed was too soft, or else the blanket was too rough, or the faint starlight through the porthole was too distracting, or the noises Eco made in his sleep, mimicking the dolphins' laughter, grated on my ears. I could not sleep.
    Then I heard the drum. It came from somewhere below, a hollow, throbbing beat slower than my own pulse but just as steady. I had been so exhausted the night before that I had not heard it; now I found it impossible to ignore. It was the beat that drove the slaves at their oars below deck, setting the rhythm that carried the ship closer and closer to Baiae. The more I tried not to hear it, the louder it seemed to rise up through the planks, beating, beating, beating. The longer I tossed and turned, the further sleep seemed to recede.
    I found myself trying to recollect the face of Marcus Crassus, the richest man in Rome. I had seen him a hundred times in the Forum, but his visage escaped me. I counted money in my head, imagining the soft jingle of coins in a purse, and spent my fee a dozen times over. I thought of Bethesda; I imagined her sleeping alone with the kitten curled up between her breasts, and I traced a path by memory from room to room through my house in Rome, like an invisible phantom standing guard. Abruptly an image rose unbidden in my mind, of Belbo lying across my portal in a drunken stupor, with the door wide open for any thief or assassin to step inside . . .
    I gave a start and sat upright. Eco turned in his sleep and made a chattering noise. I strapped on my shoes, wrapped the blanket around me like a cloak, and returned to the deck.
    Here and there sailors lay huddled together in sleep. A few strolled the deck, watchful and alert for any danger from the sea or shore. A steady breeze blew from the north, filling the sail and raising gooseflesh wherever the blanket did not cover my arms and legs. I strolled once about the deck, then found myself drawn towards the portal amidships that led down into the galley.
    It is curious that a man can sail upon many ships in his life and never wonder at the hidden motive power that drives them, yet this is how most people live their lives every day - men eat and dress and go about their business, and never give a thought to all the sweat of all the slaves who laboured to grind the grain and spin the cloth and pave the roads, wondering about these things no more than they wonder about the blood that heats their bodies or the mucus that cradles their brains.
    I stepped through the portal and down the steps. Instantly a wave of heat struck my