into white foam. It powered towards the pirate trireme, which had now spotted them and was in the process of hurriedly disengaging from its newly acquired prize. The skeleton crew left aboard the trader cast off the grappling hooks and the trireme, with surprising speed, executed a 180-degree turn, bringing it round to face the quinquereme. They were not going to run.
Gaidres immediately started to organise the crew into small units, each commanded by one of his marines, and positioned them around the ship ready to pump volleys of arrows into the pirate’s crowded deck. A couple of deck-hands were circulating with skins of water. Magnus pushed through the milling crewmen with Sitalces, Artebudz and Drenis in tow.
‘Looks like they mean to take us head to head,’ he observed calmly, handing a bow and quiver each to Vespasian and Sabinus; he then adjusted the rhomphaia he had taken from the dead Ziles, which hung down his back, and took his place at the rail.
Sabinus notched an arrow and smiled grimly, all traces of seasickness having disappeared beneath the rush of adrenalin. ‘A few good volleys should see off this rabble before they get anywhere near us,’ he said with confidence as the quinquereme passed the headland at the northern tip of Cythera.
The ships were now less than a half-mile apart. Vespasian’s mouth dried as the distance between them lessened with every beat of the stroke-master’s drum. He reached for his sword hilt and pulled on it slightly, checking that the weapon was loose in its scabbard, and then drew an arrow from his quiver. All around him men were going through their various personal rituals before combat; there was a tense silence on deck broken only by the rhythmic drumbeat and irregular whip-cracks from below.
At two hundred paces the pirates let off an ill-disciplined volley that fell short, bringing a half-hearted cheer from the Thracian crew. Gaidres shouted encouragingly in Thracian and they cheered again, this time with more conviction.
As the quinquereme’s bow was raised by the swell a second long-range volley found its mark but the shots were spent and most bounced off the hull. Of those that reached the deck only a few retained enough velocity to pierce the planking. One crewman went down with an arrow dangling from his shoulder; it was soon extracted and he took his place again, bleeding lightly, back in the line.
Gaidres shouted in Thracian and the crew raised their bows and took aim. Vespasian, Sabinus and Magnus followed suit and waited for the order to release. Gaidres lifted his arm in the air and paused, judging the rise and fall of the trireme’s bow.
At a distance of ninety paces his arm flashed down.
Over fifty arrows tore towards the pirate ship. The volley hit as its bow slipped down a trough exposing more of its deck and the hundred or so men within, felling almost a dozen of them as they let fly a ragged reply.
The drumbeat quickened and the quinquereme lurched forward into ramming speed.
Vespasian quickly reloaded and waited for the order to shoot, confident, as were the rest of the cheering crew, of Gaidres’ ability to judge the moment correctly.
Gaidres’ arm flashed down again and they released another perfectly timed volley.
The celebratory cheering as they reloaded was cut short by a cry from the larboard watch. The cheers turned into a collective groan. Vespasian looked over his left shoulder to see another ship emerge from under the lee of the headland, a mile behind them, and head straight towards them.
They were trapped.
‘There’s fuck all that we can do about them at the moment,’ Sabinus shouted, having seen the threat. ‘Let’s deal with these bastards first.’
The trireme was now less than thirty paces away. Gaidres’ arm came down again but he mistimed it; most of their third volley slammed into the pirate’s hull, causing little damage.
At a shouted order from Rhaskos the Thracian crew grabbed the side of the ship.
‘That was brace for impact,’ Vespasian shouted at Magnus and Sabinus.
‘Thanks, sir,’ Magnus shouted back gripping the rail; he had never really got the hang of Thracian.
Vespasian tensed his body against his arms and spread his feet, one in front of the other as the two ships hurtled towards each other.
At what seemed to be the very last moment the trireme veered to its left and shipped its starboard oars.
Vespasian heard Rhaskos scream an order and felt the ship reel to the right in an attempt to prevent the trireme raking its starboard oars. The pirate trierarchus was ready for this and, as the heavier quinquereme’s bow came round, he shipped his larboard oars and, with a sharp push on the steering-oars, brought his smaller, more manoeuvrable ship back into its original course to grate down its opponent’s larboard side, disgorging a close-range volley followed by a boarding party as it went by.
Whether Rhaskos’ last order included anything about shipping oars, Vespasian could not tell, but, if it had, it came too late. The pirate trireme crashed into the quinquereme’s larboard oars, cracking the thick wooden shafts like twigs, with sudden, explosive reports that belied the ease with which they snapped. The ships shuddered violently with each impact, throwing defenders and attackers alike to the deck. The slaves below shrieked in tormented agony as their oar-handles, to which they were manacled, were punched back, crunching into their faces or throats or shattering their ribcages and hurling them, bodily, off their soiled benches only to be abruptly restrained by their leg-irons, fastened to the deck. As the momentum of the trireme pushed the stumps of their oars ever back those slaves who had the misfortune not to be killed outright suffered the added torture of being stretched between their shackles until the sinews in their wrists could take it no more; hands ripped off under the intense pressure, flying through the air like macabre missiles to land with sickening thuds around the deck, causing the rising hysteria of the unharmed slaves on the opposite side to overflow into outright panic.
They ceased to row.
Without the purchase of the starboard oars the quinquereme started to spin, pulling it away from its tormentor which carried on in a straight line, its bow clearing the oars as it came level with the mast and leaving the thirty-man boarding party temporarily stranded. The violent shuddering ended and the deck became stable.
As if upon a given signal everyone got to their feet as one, each man knowing that an instant’s delay could spell death. Too close for archery, the two sides hurled themselves at each other. Vespasian leapt forward, drawing his sword as rhomphaiai hissed from their scabbards all around him; he threw himself at the shield of the nearest opponent. With no shield of his own, his left shoulder cracked into the leather-covered, wooden hoplon, knocking its wielder back a pace. A flash of iron through the air as the pirate brought his weapon down in an overarm cut caused Vespasian to parry his sword above his head, meeting his assailant’s wrist. His sword juddered and blood spurted on to his tunic as the pirate retracted his arm with a scream, leaving his hand, still grasping the sword, to clump to the deck. A quick jab to the throat put paid to the howling man; swiftly Vespasian grabbed his shield, squatted, and glanced around. To his right Sabinus and Artebudz were both grappling hand to hand in desperate wrestling matches. To his left Magnus and Sitalces were scything their way, with Gaidres, his marines and the rest of the crew, through the outnumbered and disorganised boarding party, like harvesters in a wheat field. More used to attacking ships in the southern Aegeum, where the defenders fought with swords (if at all), the pirates were buckling under the vicious assault of so many long, slicing blades, wielded two-handed, out of reach of the thrusts and cuts of their shorter weapons. Without the discipline to form a military shield wall, they let the Thracians in amongst them and they paid with their limbs and heads that now littered the blood-soaked deck.
Advancing steadily to his right, Vespasian thrust the point of his sword down through the eye of Sabinus’ opponent and then squared up to a young, desperate-looking man pointing a shaking sword nervously before him as he took a step back, on to the rail. A head spun through the air between them, spewing gore that flecked the young pirate’s face. Vespasian pounced forward; with a yelp the man threw himself overboard. Vespasian laughed.
‘What the fuck are you finding so funny?’ Sabinus growled from behind him.
Vespasian spun round to see his brother, spattered in blood, looking incredulously at him. All around the pirates, and a few Thracians, lay dead. The fighting was over.
‘I just met someone who would rather drown than die with some degree of honour,’ he replied through his mirth. ‘Although why that’s funny I don’t know,’ he added, getting himself under control.
A screamed order from Rhaskos abruptly ended the conversation. The brothers looked up. A hundred paces away the trireme had unshipped its oars and was turning back to face them, but, more worryingly, the second ship was now just half a mile away and approaching fast. As they watched it they heard the unmistakable sound of the
