"Now," screamed Quintus; his voice cracked and was very shrill in a way he had not heard before, least of all the rest of the boys. They moved backwards and forwards, with obvious strain, and they finally broke down the door. It was small inside; there was only a table and two chairs with one of them shelved and the other before the table. On it sat Gallus. He had on that same armour he wore since before the afternoon for Percius' interrogation; perhaps he had never taken it off at all out of fear for some resistance, even a mutiny. The mutineers filled the room and Gallus remained seated. He gazed about as Varrus, the last, entered the room and shut the door. Gallus looked a bit more, and he began to talk whilst he stared at the moving Varrus. "You gentlemen must have been unhappy, of course. We didn't treat you well, exactly. Look there, for instance. The man I'm pointing at is Percius Mercius, a once honourable drillmaster from faraway Skingrad. I wronged that good man, and I put him aboard this ship on dubious charges, but now he is labelled a criminal, and he cannot hope to set foot on the soil of the Imperial Province. I could now point at each else one of you gentlemen, and repeat a similar sad story, and my villainous part in it, but I won't. Come, kill me." Before anyone could say a word, Varrus had grabbed a shortsword from someone's scabbard; he charged at Gallus while he screamed, and he ran him down with the sword. He raised him up against the wall, and he frantically stabbed Gallus in his guts repeatedly, with each slash ignoring his armour. When he was done, the wall against the door was smeared in blood and Gallus, First Watch of the Imperial Guard, had his corpse split gorily in two. The air inside was stuffy then, and the smell of messy blood was undesirable; the men of Colovia rushed out and they met upstairs and outside next to the broken mast. There, Varrus stood on a box, and he looked down at them. He was still clutching the bloody shortsword in his hand, and whatever was on it was dripping down below from his wrist. He raised the sword, and he uttered a cry. The men responded in unison with their voices, and they raised their beaten wrists.
The new crew of Colovia quickly assigned themselves a wheel captain. He was a younger lad called Fidelus; he was able with his hands, and with him at the wheel, the new crew of Colovia anticipated smooth sailing. Elsewhere, the men threw off the soldiers' bodies to the water. Percius was there helping, and after noon Quintus approached him with sad eyes. "Percius," he said in a low voice. "Come and let's sit about that broken mast there. I need to say my fill."
"Thanks. I'll just get right into it, Percius. I haven't had much sleep last night. It was a stormy night, and when I closed my eyes, I saw Varrus. Not the great Varrus that we've come to know as our fraternal leader, but the one that made us roar in the aftermath of Gallus' death while the men were wounded. Look at me, Percius. I'm sober and I'm sullen. I've just gotten uneasy with Varrus after that moment, and since we men follow his authority on the ship now, I'm uneasy with this whole situation. No, don't mistake me; I am glad me mutinied. Although I do feel Varrus has had something enough after Gallus, and he will steer this ship now, for better or for worse, and maybe I'm just foreboding because I haven't seen Varrus steer anything before."
