‘A coward?’ Septimus ventured without conviction.
Atticus eyebrows raised in question. ‘Have you known many Carthaginian cowards?’
Septimus shook his head slowly. Then it struck him; ‘By the Gods, Atticus, whoever is commanding that galley has sacrificed the other ships to make his escape.’
Atticus nodded, ‘Which means it’s someone important.’
Septimus looked to the quinquereme once more. She was less than four hundred yards away and a half-mile from the line of battle, with no sign of any other pursuit.
‘With only thirty men fit for duty, the best we can do is take the aft-deck and hold it until reinforcements arrive. There’s no way we can push the fight to the entire ship.’
Atticus nodded again. He had surmised as much.
‘Then we’ll attack over the stern rail,’ he said, knowing the odds of stopping the quinquereme to be near naught. ‘Maybe we’ll get lucky and take out her rudder,’ he added, knowing only Fortuna could grant him that.
The Carthaginian galley was now less than three hundred yards ahead, the Aquila coming up on her starboard stern quarter, a course that would put her in the quinquereme’s wake within minutes. Atticus looked to the battle once more. None of the Roman quinqueremes had broken through yet. The Aquila was alone.
‘Roman galley still on an intercept course!’
Hamilcar turned and looked out over the stern rail for the fourth time. The enemy trireme was now directly in the Alissar’s wake two hundred yards behind.
‘Shall I increase speed?’ Hamilcar turned to find the captain standing beside him.
‘No,’ he replied. ‘Maintain battle speed. Order the archers to the aft-deck and have fifty men brought aft.’
The captain saluted and left Hamilcar to look out once more at the Roman galley. He was sorely tempted to increase his pace but the rowers would only be able to maintain attack speed for fifteen minutes. After that they would be spent and the Alissar would be dead in the water and with the battle line only a mile behind, there was still time for a Roman quinquereme to emerge and give chase, a far more deadly foe than a mere trireme. Her ram would be useless against the Alissar, not only because she was a heavier built galley but also because the Alissar was travelling at eight knots away from the line of attack which meant the ram would strike her with a momentum of no more than five or six knots, not even enough to scratch her back. The only vulnerable point on the stern, and Hamilcar’s only concern, was the rudder, but again, with an open seascape before him the Alissar could run a straight course without the rudder long enough to take her out of danger.
Hamilcar nodded to himself. The odds favoured maintaining battle speed and allowing the Roman to approach. But then, Hamilcar vowed, he would unleash fury on the impertinent trireme and release some measure of the battle lust that he and his crew had been forced to contain.
‘Fifty yards,’ Corin yelled.
‘Shields up,’ Septimus ordered at the call. ‘Prepare for incoming.’
Moments later the first arrows struck home, many on a flat trajectory that plunged the arrows deeply into the weathered timbers of the Aquila, others lofted high to fall like deadly rain on the upturned shields of Septimus’s thirty men formed up behind the corvus. Sporadic cries of pain rang out as exposed flesh was pierced by the murderous assault, Septimus registering the fall of one of his men behind him as he grimly stared ahead through a gap in the shield wall, measuring the distance between the converging galleys, now forty yards, now thirty.
‘Pila!’ he shouted and the legionaries emerged as one from under their defensive cover, their eight foot long spears held at the ready. The onslaught of Carthaginian arrows intensified, striking down another legionary, then another, their exposed ranks easy prey for the fury of Apollo. Septimus held firm, suppressing the urge to let fly and throw up his shield, his eyes judging the pitch and roll of the Aquila’s deck, waiting for the perfect moment.
‘Loose!’ he roared and the legionaries roared with savage revenge as they unleashed their spears. The pila seemed to hang in the air for a heartbeat, suspended over the water immediately behind the Carthaginian aft-deck before crashing down into the massed ranks of the Punici. Cries of pain and death washed over the foredeck of the Aquila as the spears wrought a brutal carnage, the iron shanks tearing through leather, finding the gaps between shields to impale and maim, the force of the deadly fall nailing men to the timber deck.
Atticus watched and heard the opening blows with a dispassionate stare, his mind totally focused on the aft-deck of the Punic galley, his raised hand making barely discernable gestures that triggered Gaius’s hand on the tiller. All around him and on the main deck the crew of the Aquila continued to work stoically amidst the random fall of arrows, the hand of Pluto ranging over the galley to strike down the ill-fated, each casualty eliciting a shouted order from Lucius for the man to be taken below.
‘Ten yards,’ Gaius said aloud, cursing the corvus anew for robbing him of a true line of sight to the enemy rudder. ‘We have her.’
Atticus nodded but kept his silence, uneasy about the bitter fight that faced Septimus and his men. Minutes before, a hundred yards out, Atticus had felt that the Carthaginian might yet run but he had dismissed the idea almost before it was fully formed, trusting his earlier deduction that the Carthaginians would try and stave off the smaller ship rather than run. That meant a desperate fight awaited Septimus, a fight that would only be relieved when reinforcements arrived.
‘Steady, Gaius,’ Atticus said almost to himself, the words allowing him to refocus his thoughts on the attack, the line of the Aquila’s ram and the enemy’s rudder. ‘Steady.’
‘Now!’ Hamilcar roared and the deck almost reared beneath him as the helmsman threw the tiller hard over a heartbeat before the Roman galley struck the stern of the Alissar, a manoeuvre that threw the rudder out of the path of the blunt-nosed ram. Hamilcar felt the strike of the ram against the hull through his feet but he smiled savagely, knowing the blow had done little damage and he screamed a war cry in defiance, a shout that was taken up by his men ranged across the aft-deck, a defensive line against the storm to come.
A flurry of grappling hooks flew across the narrow gap between the galleys, the men in the front line ignoring them, their eyes instead locked on the sight of the massive Roman boarding ramp that towered over the foredeck of the smaller enemy galley. A Roman command was heard above the roar of battle and a moment later the ramp began to fall, slowly at first as if a mighty hand was staying its course but then accelerating suddenly, the weight of its thirty-six foot length an unstoppable force and the front line waivered as the threefoot-long spike stabbed down into the deck.
Hamilcar screamed the order to advance even as he watched a massive centurion charge up the slope of the ramp, the unequal heights of the two galleys doing little to slow the momentum of the Roman legionaries. The Carthaginians surged to the ramp and the two forces collided at the head, the centurion and then many more legionaries punching into the Carthaginian line with their massive shields to create a bridgehead on the Punic aft- deck. Hamilcar remained still, his crew rushing past him as he stood immobile, his steady gaze absorbing the Roman attack, the simple brilliance of the ramp and the savage courage of the legionaries. He stepped back, briefly looking over his shoulder, searching for the captain, finding him instantly at the head of the aft-deck, his eyes locked on Hamilcar. The Carthaginian commander smiled again as he turned once more to the melee only yards away. The Romans had a dozen men across, now fifteen, their bridgehead expanding, the Carthaginian defence descending into a vicious futile assault against an ever-advancing Roman wall of shields. Now they were committed. Hamilcar turned. The captain was staring at him as before. Hamilcar shouted the order, knowing his voice would not be heard above the noise of battle but also knowing the captain was waiting for this one command and Hamilcar wanted to roar out the death knell for the Roman legionaries.
‘Attack speed!’
Atticus was thrown to the deck as the Aquila suddenly jerked forward, his instincts causing him to immediately look to the stern rail, expecting to see an enemy galley rammed into his own.
‘By the gods,’ he heard Gaius shout and he looked to the helmsman, the colour drained from his face as he stood transfixed. ‘She’s re-engaged her oars!’
Atticus could hardly comprehend Gaius’s words and he spun around, looking once more to the quinquereme, the fury on her aft-deck now forgotten as he stared at her oars.
The Aquila jerked forward again, this time coming up to speed as the initial inertia of the seventy-ton hull was overcome and within seconds she was accelerating even as her oars remained raised.
‘Lucius!’ Atticus roared, running forward to the main deck. ‘Attack speed now!’
From the corner of his eye he saw the second-in-command run to the slave-deck hatchway, saw him mouth the shouted command. Atticus swept aside his fears that the Aquila’s oars would not hit the water in unison. It was
