‘Not if we co-ordinate it and do it very swiftly. Listen out for my shout then quickly give ground.’
Sabinus nodded; Vespasian disengaged and rushed around the rear of the melee. He found Gaidres with Sitalces and Drenis hacking down on the tightly packed shield wall with brutal swipes of their rhomphaiai but doing little to stop its slow advance.
‘Gaidres, with me,’ he shouted. ‘Sitalces, keep the left of the line firm when the right falls back.’
The huge Thracian shouted his acknowledgement and continued to beat ferociously down on the shield in front of him.
With Gaidres closely following, Vespasian ran, downhill, to the melee at the bow. Bodies littered the deck. The ex-slaves’ furious onslaught had driven the pirates back, with heavy losses on both sides, on to their ship. Here they were fighting desperately to prevent their wild, long-haired opponents from boarding them, whilst the trireme’s rowers backed oars in an effort to extricate the ram from the quinquereme’s hull.
‘Gaidres, I need at least fifty of our rowers to follow me; can you control them?’
‘I’ll try,’ the marine replied, looking nervously at the frenzied horde.
A high-pitched, teeth-chilling, rasping grate of wood scraping wood cut in above the screams and clash of weapons and the deck listed ominously; the trireme had released itself. With the support of the ram gone the quinquereme’s bow sagged lower into the water.
‘Hurry, Gaidres,’ Vespasian urged, ‘we don’t have long.’
With a grimace Gaidres waded into the baying mob, shouting for order. Those ex-slaves armed with bows had begun a frantic exchange of fire with the crew on the retreating trireme. Men from both sides plunged howling into the churning water clutching at shafts embedded in their dying bodies.
Gaidres soon managed to get most of the ex-slaves into some sort of order and ready to charge. Checking that they would not be threatened from behind Vespasian looked over to the retreating trireme, now thirty paces away. For a brief instant he made eye contact with a familiar figure standing in the prow: the wounded pirate trierarchus from the sanctuary. His one eye blazed with fury and he hurled a stream of oaths at Vespasian before ducking down under the rail in the face of another volley from the bow-armed ex-slaves.
Thrusting the shock of the coincidence to one side, Vespasian bellowed at the top of his voice: ‘Sabinus, now!’
At the other end of the ship Sabinus heard his brother’s call and he and Magnus pulled back immediately, taking the Thracians to their left with them. Sitalces held his position in the centre and the line pivoted on him. The pirates surged forward, not sensing the trap as Vespasian and Gaidres charged up the sloping deck with more than a hundred matted-haired, shrieking savages behind them.
With their blood-lust far from sated they crashed into the pirates’ backs, ripping them open in a deluge of blood and offal with a savagery that shocked Vespasian, even as he killed. The joy of once again feeling alive was magnified for the ex-slaves as they took life after life in a killing spree almost as brutal as their existence had been for the past few years.
Caught between the torrent of rage behind them and the flashing, two-handed swipes of rhomphaiai to their front the pirates knew that they were doomed and, expecting no quarter, resolved to sell their lives dearly. They fought with an intensity that matched their foes for the last few moments of their lives as their numbers were quickly whittled down and their line thinned.
Vespasian plunged his sword into another exposed back and twisted his wrist sharply, left then right; the man screamed, throwing his head back which, with a sudden jolt and a flash of iron, toppled from his shoulders. Blood spurted from the gaping neck as the man’s heart pumped on, spraying over Vespasian. The body collapsed and the red rain cleared leaving Vespasian staring at Sitalces, eyes aflame, teeth bared, swinging his rhomphaia back towards him. With an instinctive jerk, Vespasian pulled his shield up in front of his face and the blade slammed into its rim in a cloud of sparks.
‘Sitalces, stop!’ he yelled, lowering his shield.
Sitalces paused and peered at Vespasian, then grinned apologetically. In that instant a blood-covered ex- slave leapt at him with a howl and drove a knife into the huge Thracian’s throat.
‘Nooooo!’ Vespasian shouted as Sitalces collapsed with the maddened savage stabbing repeatedly at his throat. Vespasian grabbed the man’s tangled hair and hauled him off. He twisted round, screaming unintelligibly, and thrust his knife towards Vespasian’s thigh; a blade arced down and took his arm off at the elbow and then swiped up to sever his head.
‘You filthy little cunt,’ Magnus raged, slashing his rhomphaia back down, unnecessarily ripping open the corpse’s belly.
All along the line similar scenes were playing out as the ex-slaves came through the last of the pirates and face to face with the Thracians. Warning shouts ripped through the air as the two sides collided. Although heavily outnumbered, with the longer reach of their weapons and better discipline, the Thracians managed to hold their allies off, but not before the slave-master and one of his mates had been set upon and hideously cut up. The perpetrators were summarily despatched by a hiss of rhomphiaia blades, which seemed to bring the rest out of their frenzy and the two groups lowered their weapons and stared at each other with wary distrust, breathing heavily.
An eerie silence fell over the ship.
Vespasian glanced behind him; the bow of the ship was now almost completely submerged; the quinquereme was afloat still solely because the pirate ship, now devoid of its fighting crew, was fastened to it by four straining ropes. The second trireme was now speeding towards its sister ship in an attempt to board it and prevent the Thracians from taking it as a prize.
‘Transfer to the trireme,’ Vespasian yelled, ‘and prepare to repel boarders.’
The shout suddenly brought home the precariousness of their situation to the exhausted men and the two groups silently and mutually called a truce and then quickly set about abandoning ship.
‘Archers with me,’ Sabinus shouted, leaping over the rail and on to the trireme whose bow was slowly being forced down by the weight of the sinking quinquereme. ‘We’ll hold them off as long as possible.’
Fifty or so bow-armed crew and ex-slaves followed him.
‘We take all our wounded with us, even the ex-slaves,’ Gaidres called out so that all could hear. ‘How’s the big man?’
Magnus knelt down by Sitalces and checked for signs of life. There were none. ‘He’s dead,’ he said blankly.
‘I’ll get his body on to the trireme; the Queen will want him buried with honour. Drenis!’
‘Where’s Rhoteces?’ Vespasian asked.
‘I left him with Artebudz at the stern,’ Magnus replied, watching Gaidres and Drenis bearing Sitalces away through the remaining crew and ex-slaves who were busily checking the fallen for those still alive.
‘I’ll get him; you go and get our stuff, especially that scroll.’
Magnus did not react.
‘Come on, otherwise we’ll all be joining him.’
With a start Magnus snapped out of his reverie and dashed off to retrieve their belongings from the small cabin in the stern of the stricken ship.
Bodies floated all around in the gently swelling sea; the waterline had reached the mast, down which a crewman was climbing, having saved the Thracian royal standard. Vespasian found Artebudz in amongst the chaos, hauling a screaming Rhoteces by his manacles towards the trireme. Arrows started to fly overhead as an archery duel with the second pirate ship flared up.
The quinquereme pitched suddenly. Gaidres had cut the forward rope to ease the pressure on the trireme, which was so low in the water now that its lower oar-ports were only a hand’s breadth above the surface.
‘Hurry, Artebudz,’ Vespasian called, steadying his balance as the ship settled.
‘He doesn’t want to go, sir,’ Artebudz said, pulling the struggling priest another couple of paces across the now severely lilting deck.
‘Come on, you little shit,’ Vespasian said, grabbing him by the tunic. ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you want to leave your precious cursed ship?’
‘My gods will pluck me away only if I remain on a Thracian ship,’ Rhoteces screeched; religious fervour burned in his bloodshot eyes. ‘The other pirate vessel will kill you all but I will be saved if I remain here.’
‘Don’t be stupid.’ Vespasian laughed as they reached the crowded rail. ‘If you weren’t so valuable to me I’d
