‘Any chance you’ll stay on the aft-deck this time?’ Atticus heard and he turned to see Septimus standing behind him.
He gave the centurion a quizzical look, not understanding the insinuation.
‘That wound,’ Septimus said, a half-smile on his face but an underlying seriousness in his voice as he pointed to Atticus’s chest. ‘I don’t want you spilling more blood on an enemy deck.’
Atticus smiled, perplexed at Septimus’s request that sounded very much like an order. He was tempted to point out why, on the last occasion, he had been on the enemy’s deck in the first place. ‘I doubt you’ll get a chance this time either,’ he replied, nodding to the centre of the Roman line. ‘Those quins will see all of the action.’
Septimus followed Atticus’s gaze and then looked across to the approaching enemy.
‘Unless one or two of them attempt to break out?’ he ventured.
‘Any trireme will be easily run down by one of our quinqueremes,’ Atticus said, but the prospect did leave him with a lingering thought and he turned to discuss the point with Gaius. If a trireme did attempt to break out, he wanted the Aquila to be ready.
‘Attack speed!’ Hamilcar roared and his voice carried clearly to the two triremes immediately flanking his own ship. They increased speed immediately and the order was carried down the line with an alacrity born of experience and age old naval discipline.
The enemy ships were less than four hundred yards away and Hamilcar’s professional eye began to take in every detail. The quinqueremes were almost identical to the Alissar, no doubt copies of the Melqart that was seized at Mylae although with one glaring difference, a hideous deformity that marred the foredeck of each, the cursed boarding ramp behind which unseen ranks of Roman legionaries lay in wait.
The sight sobered Hamilcar and he realised that his order to sail headlong into battle was rooted in frustration. The fleet was near full strength in Carthage and he had planned to order it to Tyndaris in less than a week, to firmly establish the supply depot and base of operations his invasion plan so vitally needed, and await the infantry who were currently fighting their way east, a force he would be free to release to the invasion once Hiero switched his allegiance to secure Hamilcar’s flank.
Now the Romans were poised to expose and destroy his preparations at Tyndaris and thwart his plan at the moment of its fruition. The thought enraged him once more and for a second he was filled with the same abandonment that roared at him to ram his galley down the very throats of the enemy and be damned, to drench his sword in Roman blood as he had at Thermae and die honourably in defence of his city. Again his mind cleared, this time at the thought of Carthage. If he was to fall this day then his city would be at the mercy of Hanno, a man who would abandon two hundred years of settlement on Sicily without hesitation.
There was still time. He could disperse his ships and flee from the Romans. They would give chase but with thirteen targets sailing in different directions the confusion would allow at least half to escape. If battle was joined then all would be lost, including the Alissar. As proximity increased the sound of Roman war cries, Hamilcar realised what he had to do; realised he had to commit a dishonourable act that only an honourable commander could undertake.
Hamilcar took his gaze off the approaching enemy and turned his back on them, walking slowly to the helmsman.
‘Order the triremes on the port and starboard to tighten in against the Alissar,’ he ordered and the signal was immediately relayed, the galleys minutely adjusting their course to bring them as close as possible to the quinquereme. Hamilcar nodded as the manoeuvre was completed. The captains on the triremes would no doubt be perplexed by his order, a risky manoeuvre at attack speed but they had followed it nonetheless, their loyalty unquestioning. It made his choice all the more difficult to endure and although he had made the decision he knew to be right, Hamilcar couldn’t stop the foul bile of ignominy rising in his throat.
Varro roared with the rest of the crew as the Victoria accelerated to attack speed. She was a behemoth in comparison to a trireme and Varro felt invincible, standing on the same deck as the senior consul of Rome, a hundred marines formed in tight ranks behind the corvus, the beat of the rower’s drum pounding out sixty beats a minute. The enemy galleys were a hundred yards away, their own decks packed with warriors, a host of spear tips and shields, impossible to count.
To the left and right the other quinqueremes were keeping pace, their hulls dipping and rising with each oar stroke, their blunt-nosed rams crashing through the white horses, creating a fine mist of spray that fell across the entire deck. On the extreme flanks Varro could see the triremes were falling behind, unable to match the gruelling pace set by the larger galleys, powered by the might of two hundred and seventy rowers.
Varro looked ahead once more. Eighty yards. He could see individual Carthaginian faces, many contorted in defiance, screaming challenges that were caught and whipped away by the wind. Fifty yards. A flight of arrows shot across from the Carthaginian galleys. Cries of pain and anger split the air. A centurion roared in command and a swarm of spears flew forth from the main deck, striking the Carthaginian force, a hail of carnage on the packed deck. Thirty yards. Varro braced his legs against the blow to come, his hand tightly gripping the hilt of his sword, the power of Rome surrounding him.
‘Now!’ Hamilcar roared. ‘All stop! Come full about!’
The Alissar immediately broke ranks; her speed cut away until her bow was clear of speeding galleys on either side and the helmsman threw the tiller hard over, the Alissar turning away from the line of attack as the order was given for battle speed.
Hamilcar kept his eyes firmly on the enemy line, less than thirty yards away, visible through the narrow gap the Alissar had left in the line, a gap that no quinquereme could thread at attack speed without striking the oars of the triremes that had flanked the Alissar, a clash that would foil their own and break their speed.
Seconds later the air was filled with the crack of tortured timber and shattered wood as the two forces collided, the cacophony followed a heartbeat later by the lesser sound of a dozen Roman boarding ramps plunging down, a death grip for every Carthaginian trireme. War cries of anger and hate swept over the Alissar as she came full about, the din of battle now firmly in her wake and Hamilcar turned his back to stare straight ahead into an empty sea. An order rose to his lips, a command to turn once more into the fight, his warrior instincts roaring at him to join his doomed countrymen in the forlorn battle. He swallowed the words, the taste of them foul in his throat. He had sacrificed a dozen ships to make his escape, not to save his life but to save the life of Carthage; to save her fate from lesser men. As a commander the order was his only choice. As a warrior, the order desecrated his very soul.
‘Three points to port!’ Atticus shouted. ‘Swing around their flank!’
Gaius responded immediately, the Aquila maintaining her attack speed even as the other triremes on the right flank slowed their speed and held station, the battle joined in the centre was an obvious mismatch that would soon be over.
Atticus’s gaze was dragged to the melee that was the collided lines but as the Aquila reached, then rounded the southern tip of the line the open waters revealed a sight that caught the attention of all on board.
‘Enemy galley on easterly course!’ Corin shouted.
‘The quinquereme,’ Atticus muttered, the galley plainly visible a half a mile away.
Septimus approached him on the aft-deck. ‘What do you make of her?’ he asked.
‘The command ship, no doubt about it, centre of the line, the only quinquereme.’ ‘So why is she running?’ the centurion asked.
Atticus was silent for a moment, then he suddenly turned to Septimus. ‘We have to catch her,’ he said and he turned to the helmsman. ‘Gaius. Intercept course. Lucius!’
The second-in-command ran across the aft-deck.
‘Orders to below. Maintain attack speed. Bring up the reserve rowers.’
Lucius nodded and was away.
‘You want to attack a quinquereme?’ Septimus asked sceptically.
‘Why is she running?’ Atticus asked, his eyes darting from Septimus to the enemy galley dead ahead and then to the line of the Aquila’s course. ‘One point to starboard!’ he shouted. He turned back to Septimus.
‘Because she faces certain defeat,’ the centurion answered.
‘Then why commit to battle in the first place?’ Atticus asked.
Septimus thought a moment. The Carthaginian’s actions were bizarre. The quinquereme could have turned anytime before now, in fact the whole Carthaginian line could have turned and yet the quinquereme had led them into battle only to flee when every other Punic galley was committed.
