enjoy leaving you here and watching you being disappointed.’
‘I told you this ship would never reach Rome.’
‘That wasn’t too difficult to predict,’ Vespasian said with a malicious grin, hefting the priest over the rail. ‘Rome’s not a seaport; it was never going there, it was going to Ostia, so bollocks to you and your predictions.’
He and Artebudz threw the priest on to the trireme where he landed with a loud thump and a yelp. Artebudz followed him over and dragged him away.
Gaidres cut the sternmost rope and the quinquereme lurched again; bodies started to slither down the deck. ‘For the love of Bendis, hurry,’ he screamed, ‘I can’t hold her much longer.’
Desperate cries issued from the slaves manacled to the trireme’s oars as they watched the water rise ever closer to the oar-ports.
Arrows hissed through the air, the archery duel intensifying with the arrival of more and more Thracians and their unlikely allies forcing the pirate ship to lay off.
The last of the crew were leaping across as Magnus came scrambling up to Vespasian with their bags and they jumped on to the trireme. Rhaskos was the last man over the rail, clutching a strongbox and his speaking- trumpet. Gaidres and Drenis cut the final two ropes. The trireme immediately surged upwards, almost clearing the surface, and then fell back down with a jolt and a loud splash. Every one of the two hundred and more men on deck sprawled on to the deck. The pirates took good advantage of the temporary lack of return fire and many did not get back up again.
Vespasian pulled himself back on to his feet; the roar of rushing wind caused him to turn. Just behind him the quinquereme’s stern flicked upright, towering almost seventy feet above the waves, cracking the mast in two under the intolerable pressure and catapulting dead bodies through the air to land with a quick succession of splashes, like a handful of shingle cast at the sea. Foul air billowed from the oar-ports as churning water surged up through its belly; it started to slide under. Its timbers creaked and groaned in anguished cries as the once proud ship was sucked down into the depths of Poseidon’s dark kingdom to the accompaniment of cheering from its ex- oarsmen.
With a final explosion of water, which rocked the trireme, it was gone. The archery battle, which had tailed off as both crews had stopped to watch the awe-inspiring death agonies of the huge ship, resumed again with vigour as Sabinus screamed at his men for a faster rate of volleys. The pirate ship started to back its oars to escape the relentless hail of arrows. After a couple more volleys Sabinus called a halt. The two ships lay a hundred paces apart; too close together for them to be able to build up enough momentum to do much damage to each other’s oars, let alone crack open a hull, and too far apart to threaten each other with archery. They were in a stalemate.
The air became still.
As it stood, with more than 250 men on the Thracian deck, many of them bow-armed, they could not be taken by a boarding party but equally they would not have enough provisions to get to Ostia. It was obvious to Vespasian that they had to attempt to take the pirate, either to capture the ship outright or to, at least, take off its victuals before it sank. They needed to move forward, yet they were still stationary, their oars limp in the water.
He ran back to the stern where Rhaskos had taken up his position. ‘Why aren’t we moving, Rhaskos?’
‘We’re in trouble again, my friend, may the gods preserve us,’ the trierarchus replied, raising his palms to the sky. ‘The pirate slave-masters killed more than a hundred of the rowers at their oars before our men could get to them, so we can’t manoeuvre. And when the pirates realise that they’ll pull back until they’ve got enough sea-room to get up the speed to ram us.’
‘Then we need some of our rowers to take the dead ones’ places — and fast.’
‘Yes, but now they’re free how will they take rowing again, especially shoulder to shoulder with slaves?’
‘We free the slaves; I would have done so anyway as a lot of them will have been taken from Roman ships. Talk to our rowers and send a hundred down to me.’
Calling Gaidres to follow him, Vespasian made his way down on to the oar-deck. It was a scene of carnage. Corpses lay slumped over oars, despatched by vicious thrusts through their backs and chests. The survivors were sitting, hollow-eyed with fear, staring vacantly at four Thracian marines who were unshackling the dead bodies and slithering them out of the oar-ports.
‘Release the slaves first, then get rid of the bodies,’ Vespasian ordered the Thracians. They looked at him, puzzled.
‘You heard him; do it now!’ Gaidres shouted.
The Thracians shrugged and carried out their orders.
‘You will stay in your seats,’ Vespasian shouted so that all of the slaves could hear. ‘We need you to row, but now you will row as free men. If you refuse, we will all die. Are there any Roman citizens here?’
Over twenty men raised their manacled hands.
‘You’re excused rowing, go up on deck and find a weapon each.’
There was a growl of protest from the rest.
‘Silence!’ Vespasian roared. ‘A citizen of Rome does not bend his back to an oar. You, however, do not have the protection of citizenship so you will row. If we survive, we’re going to Ostia where you may leave the ship or, if you prefer, you can return east with it; it’s down to you.’
There was a muttering of assent.
The Thracian stroke-master clambered down the ladder from the main deck followed by the rowers. He looked at Vespasian, who nodded at him to take his place behind the round ox-skin drum.
With a real sense of urgency the oar-deck was cleared of bodies and the replacement rowers took their positions. Vespasian and Gaidres hurried back up on to the deck.
The mournful cries of gulls, attracted by the flotsam and jetsam of the sunken ship, filled the air as they circled overhead and dived on edible morsels that littered the sea.
‘Looks like they’ve had enough, sir,’ Magnus said, pointing to the pirate ship; it had turned and was now a quarter of a mile away, rowing quickly west.
‘Let’s hope so,’ Vespasian replied dubiously. ‘Rhaskos, the oar-deck’s ready. What do you think we should do?’
‘Pray to the gods.’
‘And then what?’ Vespasian exploded, storming up to the old trierarchus, ‘go to sleep and hope for another helpful dream? Be practical, man! Do we try and take the pirate and get his supplies? Or do we make a run for it and worry about what everyone’s going to eat later? You’re the trierarchus, you decide what we humans on this ship should do right now.’
The vehemence of his outburst caused Rhaskos to blink his eyes quickly and then look around. ‘They’re not running,’ he said lucidly, ‘it’s as I said: they’re preparing to ram us because they think that we’re still crippled. We need to sail west anyway so we should go straight at them, then they can choose: fight or run.’ He picked up his speaking-trumpet. ‘Attack speed,’ he shouted down to the stroke-master, who reacted immediately. The steady booming started; slow at first, as the ship got under way, then quickly accelerating as the oarsmen, now free and with a real stake in the survival of the ship, willingly put their backs into the matter at hand.
The pirate ship made a hurried turn as their trierarchus saw that the Thracian ship was no longer disabled but was under full oars and coming straight towards him.
‘He’s mad if he thinks he can retake this ship,’ Magnus said, coming up to Vespasian and Rhaskos, who were watching the distance start to close between the two ships.
‘He’s not mad, he’s angry. He’s lost one of his ships but he’s not lost his judgement; he won’t board us, he’ll try to sink us,’ Vespasian replied, loosening his gladius in its sheath for the second time that day. ‘There’s no way that he can win but it is still possible that we can both lose.’
‘Archers ready,’ Sabinus shouted, running to the bow.
Despite losing a hundred or so rowers to the oar-deck there were still over a hundred men on deck.
The Thracian ship shifted course slightly to the left.
‘What are you doing, Rhaskos?’ Vespasian shouted.
‘What I’m good at,’ Rhaskos replied, his eyes fixed firmly on the oncoming vessel. ‘You just worry about your job and let me concentrate on mine.’
