The pirate changed direction to match. At a distance of two hundred paces apart Rhaskos veered back on to the original course; the pirate followed suit. Now they were not quite head on, leaving the pirate with a choice: to go for an oar-rake or come round more to his left and try to ram at a slight angle. With the ships a hundred paces apart he chose to ram.
‘Ramming speed!’ Rhaskos shouted through his trumpet. As the stroke accelerated he veered away from the pirate, to the right, leaving the Thracian ship broadside on to their attackers but now rowing fast enough to pass them.
‘Release!’ Sabinus shouted. Scores of arrows shot away towards the pirate ship, now less than fifty paces away; they peppered its hull and deck bringing down half a dozen more of its crew. After the first volley the Thracians kept up a constant stream of fire, forcing the pirate crew to take shelter behind the rail.
Vespasian could see the huge pirate trierarchus by the steering-oars, impervious to the rain of arrows, screaming at his men to return vollies as he tried to bring his ship back on to an interception course. But it was too late; with the ships just thirty paces apart Rhaskos ordered another turn away to the right and the pirate was now directly behind them, chasing. A smattering of arrows fell on the tightly packed Thracian deck; a few screams from the wounded rose up above the pounding of the stroke-master’s drum and straining grunts of the 180 willing oarsmen below. The archers continued their relentless barrage.
Vespasian pushed his way through to Rhaskos. The old trierarchus was grinning broadly. ‘How about that?’ he shouted. ‘I out-steered him without a single prayer; may the gods forgive me.’
‘Why did you pass him?’ Vespasian asked. ‘I thought that we were going to try and take him.’
‘Because, my young friend, when he came about and headed straight for us I realised that you were wrong. He had lost his reason; he was prepared to lose his ship just to destroy us, out of spite. It was madness and I never like to fight a madman; who knows what they will do next?’
Vespasian looked over Rhaskos’ shoulder to the chasing pirate. ‘What do we do next? He’s gaining on us.’
‘We keep running, we can keep at ramming-speed for longer than he can,’ Rhaskos replied with a wink. ‘Gaidres, send the spare rowers down in batches of twelve to relieve the others, two sets of oars at a time starting from the bow.’
Gaidres acknowledged the trierarchus and started to round up the rowers without bows.
Vespasian joined Sabinus, who was now at the stern rail. The pirate was less than twenty paces behind them and gaining slowly as the slaves on its oar-deck were whipped mercilessly to squeeze every last drop of energy from them. The swell made accurate shooting between the ships almost impossible and the pirate trierarchus still stood at the steering-oars, shouting for all he was worth, despite Sabinus’ repeated attempts to shoot him down.
‘That man’s got a charmed life,’ he muttered, notching another arrow and taking careful aim. Again the shot went wide. ‘He’s got balls just standing there, I’ll give him that.’
Gradually the relieving of the blown rowers began to reap benefits as fresh limbs pulled on straining oars. Even the Roman citizens had volunteered for duty, realising that the privileges of citizenship did not extend to the dead. The Thracian ship was beginning to pull away when the first few oars on the pirate fouled as the exhausted slaves collapsed and it started to lose way. The pirate trierarchus pulled his ship off to the south, towards Cythera, and roared his defiance until a volley of arrows sent him ducking under the rail.
‘Cruise speed,’ Rhaskos shouted.
The drumbeat slowed gradually as did the ship.
‘My thanks to Amphiaraos for showing me the way,’ Rhaskos called to the sky. ‘I will sacrifice another ram when we reach Ostia.’
‘If we get there,’ Vespasian said. ‘How are we going to feed all these people?’
‘The gods will provide. I have no doubt of it as they showed us how to escape the pirates.’
‘They didn’t show us how to defeat the pirates,’ Sabinus scoffed. ‘Wasn’t your dream about how to preserve the crew and get rid of the slave fever?’
Rhaskos looked pleased with himself. ‘Yes, but you can’t deny that releasing the slaves did preserve the crew against the pirate attack. As to stopping the sickness spreading through the slaves, I gave orders that only the ones without the fever should be released; the ill ones down in the bilge all drowned on the ship. We are free of the fever now and should be able to complete our voyage.’
Vespasian could see the truth of it: the oracle had indeed shown Rhaskos the answer to his question. He walked to the rail and, whilst enjoying the calming effects of a cool breeze and a warm sun on his skin, contemplated everything he had seen and heard at the sanctuary of Amphiaraos.
‘It seems that the sanctuary was quite a powerful place, Sabinus,’ he said quietly to his brother a short while later as they watched the pirate and the captured trader disappear to the south, past Cythera. ‘What do you make of the prophecy now?’
‘I don’t know,’ his brother replied. ‘But one thing’s for sure, I will never forget it.’
‘Neither will I,’ Vespasian agreed as their ship left the strait of Cythera and entered the Ionian Sea, heading on towards Ostia.
PART IIII
CHAPTER X
An intense profusion of contrary smells assaulted Vespasian’s olfactory senses as the trireme docked against one of the many wooden jetties in the port of Ostia: the ravenous mouth of the city of Rome. The fresh, salt tang of sea air clashed with the muddy reek of the Tiber as it disgorged the filth of the city, just twenty miles upstream, into the Tyrrhenian Sea. The decay of decomposing animal carcasses bobbing between the ships and wharves conflicted with the mouth-watering aromas of grilling pork, chicken and sausages that wafted across from the smoking charcoal braziers of quayside traders, eager to sell fresh meat to stale-bread-weary sailors. Sacks of pungent spices — cinnamon, cloves, saffron — from India and beyond, were offloaded by Syrian trading ships next to vessels from Africa and Lusitania disgorging their cargoes of high-smelling garum sauce, made from the fermented intestines of fish. Unsubtly perfumed whores solicited unwashed seamen; garlic-breathed dockworkers took orders from lavender-scented merchants; sweat-foamed horses and mules pulled cartloads of sweet, dried apricots, figs, dates and raisins. Rotting fish, baking bread, sweating slaves, resinated wine, stale urine, dried herbs, high meat, hemp rope, ships’ bilges and warm wood: the combinations made Vespasian’s head spin as he watched the Thracian crew secure the ship and lower the gangplank to the constant shouted entreaties of Rhaskos.
‘At times I thought that we’d never make back, sir,’ Magnus said, joining him at the rail, ‘but that is definitely Ostia.’
‘Having never been here, I’ll just have to take your word for it,’ Vespasian replied, smiling at his friend and sharing his relief at finally getting home.
It had not been a straightforward journey, purely for the foreseen logistical problems of feeding so many men. The provisions that they found in the hold had only been sufficient for a few days and, although Rhaskos had been able to buy, with the gold in his strongbox, sacks of hardtack, chickpeas and dried pork at ports along the way they had been forced to stop for two or three days at a time to hunt sufficient game to keep the 350 or so men onboard from going too hungry. Their voyage, therefore, had taken almost thirty days from Cythera, much longer than intended but it had, at least, been without incident.
With the ship finally secured Rhaskos came pushing through the crowded deck. ‘So, my young friend, here’s where we say goodbye,’ the old trierarchus said, sweating profusely from the exertion of so much shouting at his crew. ‘Although how I shall get home I don’t know, as I’ve used up all the gold that the Queen gave me for the
