Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 7: March 2014 (37 page)

Hannibal snarled: “What do you mean, you big cotton-head? You lie around all day, too lazy to turn over, and then you dare criticize me—”

“All I said,”
growled
the Vandal in his clumsy, deliberate Latin, “was that the next time I caught you, I’d report it. Well I did, and I’m going to.”

“I’ll slit your lousy throat if you do!” yelled Hannibal.

Fritharik cast a short but pungent aspersion on the Sicilian’s sex life. Hannibal whipped out a dagger and
lunged at Fritharik. He moved with rattlesnake speed, but he used the instinctive but tactically unsound overhand stab. Fritharik, who was unarmed, caught his wrist with a smack of flesh on flesh,
then
lost it as Hannibal dug his point into the Vandal’s forearm.

When Hannibal swung his arm up for another stab, Padway arrived and caught his arm. He hauled the little man away from his opponent, and immediately had to hang on for dear life to keep from being stabbed himself. Hannibal was shrieking in Sicilian patois and foaming a little at the mouth. Padway saw that he wanted to kill him. He jerked his face back as the dirty fingernails of Hannibal’s left hand raked his nose, which was a target hard to miss.

Then there was a thump, and Hannibal collapsed, dropping his dagger. Padway let him slide to the floor, and saw that Nerva, the older of the two assistants, was holding a stool by one leg. It had all happened so quickly that Fritharik was just bending over to pick up a short piece of board for a weapon, and Thomasus and Carbo, the other workman, were still standing just inside the door.

Padway said to Nerva: “I think you’re the man for my next foreman. What’s this about, Fritharik?”

Fritharik didn’t
answer,
he stalked toward the unconscious Hannibal with plain and fancy murder in his face.

“That’s enough, Fritharik!” said Padway sharply. “No more rough
stuff,
or you’re fired, too!” He planted himself in front of the intended victim. “What was he doing?”

The Vandal came to himself. “He was stealing bits of copper from stock and selling them. I tried to get him to stop without telling you; you know how it is if your fellow employees think you’re spying on them. Please, boss, let me have one whack at him. I may be a poor exile, but no little Greek catamite—”

Padway refused permission. Thomasus suggested swearing out a complaint and having Hannibal a
r
rested; Padway said no, he didn’t want to get mixed up with the law. He did allow Fritharik to send Ha
n
nibal, when the Sicilian came to, out the front door with a mighty kick in the fundament. Exit villain, sneering, thought Padway as he watched the ex-foreman slink off.

Fritharik said: “I think that was a mistake, Martinus. I could have sunk his body in the Tiber without
anybody’s knowing
. He’ll make trouble for us.”

Padway suspected that the last statement was correct. But he merely said: “We’d better bind your arm up. Your whole sleeve is blood-soaked. Julia, get a strip of linen and boil it. Yes,
boil
it!”

(
to
be continued in Issue 8)

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