drag. The ram surged clear of the water with each pull of the oars.
Hamilcar listened to the rowers sing, their tune changing to match the increased tempo, their words sung on the exhalation of each pull of the oar. The Roman squadron was closing off the port beam, perhaps three hundred yards away, while ahead Hamilcar could not yet see the telltale signs that marked the beginnings of the outer shoals. He looked to the Rhodian, unnerved by his confidence. For Hamilcar the order to increase to ramming speed had come too soon, and he wondered if Calix was perhaps blinded by his own self-belief. He had thrown the final die and committed the Ares to its top speed. The Romans were sure to respond in kind and he tried to calculate the result, deducing only that it would be close. He was tempted to challenge the Rhodian but he held his tongue, and his nerve.
‘They’ve gone to ramming speed,’ Baro shouted. ‘I told you-’
‘Quiet,’ Atticus barked, thrown by the unexpected move. ‘Gaius?’ he said.
‘It’s got to be a mistake,’ the helmsman said. ‘He’s shown his hand too soon.’
Atticus nodded but, regardless of any perceived mistake, the Rhodian’s move had to be countered.
‘Ramming speed,’ he shouted, and Baro needlessly ran to the hatch on the main deck to repeat the order, the drum master already responding to Atticus’s voice.
The Orcus charged forward with the strength of two hundred and seventy rowers, making its ramming speed a shade faster than a quadrireme’s, and Atticus saw Baro nod to Drusus on the main deck, a final salutation of comrades before the fight.
Atticus glanced to the four points of his ship, the waters ahead clear, the shoals off his port beam, his squadron taking up the rear, and the enemy galley sailing desperately to get ahead of the Orcus, their slight lead being eroded with every stroke of the quinquereme’s oars.
‘It’s the Greek,’ Hamilcar said venomously as he recognized the command ship of the Roman squadron.
‘Who?’ Calix asked, perplexed.
‘Perennis, the Greek prefect.’
‘Perennis,’ Calix repeated slowly, taking a greater interest in the lead galley. She had gained over a ship length on the boats behind, a testament to a more skilled crew. He had heard of Perennis, and had remembered his name: a Greek who had risen in the Roman navy, a testament to his abilities in itself. He nodded, feeling a slight tinge of regret that he would best one of his own people.
Hamilcar kept his gaze locked on the Roman galley, less than two hundred yards away, its course locked on a point ahead of both converging ships, and he realized with sickening dread that the Roman galley would reach that point first and block the Ares ’s access to the shoals. There was no escape. Even if they turned inside they would be turning into the entire Roman squadron. There was no choice but to retreat; even then their chances were slim, given that the rowers could not maintain ramming speed for the time it would take to re-cross the lagoon to the inner shoals. The Rhodian had misjudged his run and Hamilcar turned to him with a murderous expression.
‘We can’t make it,’ he said angrily. ‘You pushed them to ramming speed too soon.’
Calix did not respond but held up a hand to silence Hamilcar as he spoke rapidly to the helmsman, both men glancing over their shoulders to some distant point on the land behind. Calix nodded in agreement and then turned to Hamilcar.
‘Forgive me, Hamilcar, but our approach to the channel must be exact,’ he said calmly.
‘We’ll never reach that far. Perennis will cut us off. We must withdraw.’
‘We will yet outrun them,’ Calix replied, and shouted out an order for the rowing deck to make ready.
‘We are already at ramming speed and Perennis’s quinquereme is faster,’ Hamilcar said exasperatedly.
‘His rowers are slaves,’ Calix replied, never taking his eyes off the Roman galley. ‘As are yours, Hamilcar. Therefore you think like a master of slaves. They respond only to the beat of the drum; however well trained they are, they are bound by its beat. Ramming speed is merely the limit of the drum. Any faster and the beats overlap, causing the rowers to lose coordination. But my rowers are freedmen. They were not trained by the rhythm of a drum and for a crew such as mine, coordination is almost instinctive. Strength alone is their only limitation, and I know they have not yet reached that threshold.’
He turned to Hamilcar.
‘Now you and Perennis will witness the true speed of a galley,’ and he ordered the rowers to increase their pace, leaving Hamilcar to watch in awe as the Ares accelerated to an incredible sixteen knots.
‘By the gods, they’re increasing speed,’ Gaius whispered, and Atticus ran to the side rail to confirm what he could not believe. The gap between the two ships continued to fall as their courses converged, but now the pace of the quadrireme was outstripping the Orcus. Atticus’s mind raced to try to devise some way to stop the Rhodian, exploring every conceivable course change and discounting it in the same moment. Speed alone would decide the contest and the Rhodian had somehow reversed the outcome.
The quadrireme passed within a ship length of the bow of the Orcus and Gaius swung the galley into its wake, knowing there was little else he could do. Atticus stared at the aft-deck of the enemy ship. There were Carthaginians amongst the mercenary crew, their faces indistinguishable across the distance, and Atticus felt overwhelmed by his frustration.
‘He’ll have to reduce speed once they hit the channel,’ Baro said. ‘We still have a chance.’ And he shouted forward to Drusus to make ready.
‘It’s over,’ Atticus said. ‘We can’t enter the channel. It’s too shallow for us.’
‘You can’t know that,’ Baro argued angrily. ‘We have to stop them.’
‘The Rhodian knew he would be pursued,’ Atticus replied. ‘And he would have picked a channel that he alone could traverse.’
Baro looked to Gaius, but the helmsman remained silent, in tacit agreement with Atticus.
‘How do you know?’ Baro said, turning once more to Atticus. ‘Because he’s Greek, like you? Is that it? You all think alike?’
Atticus’s expression became murderous and he stared into Baro’s face, causing the second-in-command to step back instinctively.
‘It’s over, Baro,’ he snarled. ‘Now get off my aft-deck.’
Baro straightened up and stalked away. Atticus turned to Gaius, the helmsman nodding, and he ordered ‘all stop’, the Orcus drifting to a halt as the quadrireme reached the outer limits of the shoals, when it too reduced speed to navigate the channel. The squadron of galleys behind the Orcus responded to the command ship’s order, fanning out to allow themselves sea room to stop safely. All were given leave to watch the Rhodian complete his passage of the outer shoals, the quadrireme raising sail with impunity to strike away into the west.
Gaius requested further orders, ready to bear away, but Atticus did not hear him, his entire being focused on the escaping galley. He recalled every detail of the chase, every manoeuvre the quadrireme had made, and stored it away beneath his anger, determined that he should use it to find a way to seal the loophole the Rhodian had exposed in the blockade and forge a new defence that would not break so easily.
Scipio watched with a slight smile at the edge of his mouth as the legionaries flogged the trader with the flat edges of their swords, whipping their blades away after each strike with a slight twist of their wrists, causing the leading edge of the blade to cut neatly through the trader’s clothes and score his skin, shallow flesh wounds that would leave scars as a reminder of his crime. He was bent over almost double as he ran, his cries for mercy unheard by the jeering crowd, and the legionaries pursued him all the way to the main gate, stopping only when they reached the threshold to spit and curse at the fleeing trader, shouting unnecessary warnings that he should never return.
In the charged atmosphere of the legionary encampment, the trader’s crime was simple. He was Greek. He was a camp follower, one of more than a hundred who had flocked to the stationary camps offering all manner of wares, from replacement kit to wines and exotic foods, and a taste of the local women. For some it was a full-time profession: they had travelled from Rome on foot for the profits that could be made over an entire campaign season. The Greek was one of these men, a trader who had shadowed the legions in Sicily for years and was well known amongst the quartermasters. He, like the other camp followers, had been tolerated — even liked, Scipio suspected — but that had all changed with the discovery that the surprise attack on the siege towers had been carried out by Greek mercenaries.
Legionaries were conditioned to hate the Carthaginians by the hardships of the campaign and the loss of comrades in previous battles, but the discovery that it was the Greeks who were responsible for the destruction of the siege towers seemed tantamount to treason, given that the Republic encompassed former Greek territories that
