to the Aquila years before. They had fought together many times, against each other over Hadria, but on the same side against every enemy. He thought of the absolute trust they had always placed in each other in battle and their mutual conviction to stay and fight, side by side, against any foe. The war had yet to be won, the fight was not over, and Septimus knew he should honour the friendship that had been forged in the fires of battle.
He turned to Atticus, his decision made. ‘When the fleet sails, the Ninth will sail with them, and I will ask to be assigned to the Orcus. As a prefect you could overrule that request, given my previous resignation…’
Atticus never hesitated, a smile breaking out on his face once more. ‘The command is yours,’ he said, and in that simple acceptance the last vestiges of their previous conflict were swept away.
‘Duilius has told me of the Ninth’s training,’ Atticus said, breaking the silence that followed. ‘What’s your assessment?’
‘Given time they’ll be ready, Atticus,’ he said with total conviction. ‘Fully trained to the standard of any marine on the Aquila before the war.’
Atticus nodded. ‘I’ve already seen how the fleet performs. The remaining experienced captains and I still have a lot of work to do, but by the time the winter storms pass the new crews will be ready to sail south.’
‘Then we’ll go back to war,’ Septimus said, looking forward to the time when the Ninth would once more become a front-line legion.
‘We’ll go back,’ Atticus said. ‘Only this time, we’ll face the Carthaginians as equals, on their terms.’
‘Rome victorious,’ Septimus said.
‘Rome victorious,’ Atticus responded, the phrase taking on a new meaning for him, one that spoke of the loyalty to his comrades that he now knew could never be broken.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Hamilcar looked up at the verdant slopes of the mountain soaring up from the shore of the ‘sacred island’ to the clouds racing overhead. The sky was a reflection of the sea, the heavy swell following the course of the clouds, racing to keep up under the force of a strong westerly wind. He placed his hand on the side rail, gripping it tightly as the Alissar rolled beneath him, and he gazed about him at the Carthaginian fleet holding station in the lee of the island.
Over the winter months, Hamilcar had slowly assembled a fleet of one hundred and sixty galleys in Carthage. Hanno had refused to re-release the Gadir fleet and so Hamilcar had been forced to draw his forces from the minor fleets guarding the African coastline and trading routes. They were skilled sailing crews but he had been forced to admit that they lacked the battle-hardiness of the Gadir fleet, and the cold months had had to be spent reinforcing their training, while waiting for news from Rome that the enemy fleet had sailed.
Reports had arrived four days before, not from Rome but from Lilybaeum — disastrous news that the Romans, with a fleet of two hundred ships, had taken the undefended port of Drepana in a surprise attack from the north. Hamilcar had hastily set sail with his fleet, his course taking him directly to Hiera, the sacred island of the Aegates, to find Himilco already waiting there for him with the ninety galleys of the Lilybaeum fleet, the very ships they had captured from the Romans at the battle of Drepana over a year before.
Himilco had abandoned the port, fearful of being blockaded and, knowing that a battle with the Romans was inevitable, he had taken with him the entire garrison of a thousand men. It was a bold and decisive move that Hamilcar approved of, although he knew Lilybaeum was now ripe to fall. If the Romans were to attack from the landward side, the population might well panic, and without a garrison to control them they would throw open the gates to save themselves. It was imperative, therefore, that his fleet reach Lilybaeum with all haste, but Hamilcar had nevertheless waited for a favourable wind to give his approach an additional advantage in what were now enemy-infested waters.
With a combined fleet of two hundred and fifty galleys, Hamilcar was confident that he could challenge any blockade of Lilybaeum; but, given the Roman’s boldness in bypassing Panormus and taking Drepana, he knew that blockade would never materialize. The Romans were seeking battle. It was surely why they had attacked Drepana without warning, for they had expected to find a Carthaginian fleet there.
Hamilcar had always known the Romans to be arrogant, but given their defeat over a year before in these very waters, their return and audacious attack displayed a level of arrogance that was staggering to behold. Hamilcar’s fleet was inexperienced but nonetheless they were Carthaginian, and he outnumbered the Romans by at least fifty ships.
After Drepana he had wanted to push the war to a final conclusion. Now the Romans were handing him that chance, confronting him like a dying warrior reaching for his last weapon, marshalling his final strength for one last great effort. They would not succeed, Hamilcar thought triumphantly; he would end them, here, in the cold grey waters off the Aegates Islands, and with a shouted command that carried on the wind, he called his fleet to battle stations, knowing that between the sacred island and Lilybaeum he would meet and finally destroy the greatest foe he had every known.
Atticus stood on the foredeck of the Orcus, his tunic soaked through from the sea water crashing over the bow rail, the cutwater of the quinquereme slicing through the endless rows of wind-driven waves. The drum master was hammering out standard speed, but the quinquereme was only barely making headway, while Atticus squinted into the wind to the grey horizon and the distant island of Hiera.
He glanced over his shoulder to the rest of the fleet taking shelter around the southernmost headland of Aegusa, the largest of the Aegates Islands and the closest to Lilybaeum, five miles away to the east. He wiped the sea spray from his eyes, searching again for some flash of movement, some sign of colour, anything that would betray the exact position of the Carthaginian fleet in the shadow of Hiera.
He turned and looked back along the length of the Orcus. Catulus, the junior consul, was on the aft-deck, standing by the helm, his personal guard close at hand. He stood with his legs apart, braced against the pitch of the deck, his gaze reaching past Atticus to the western horizon, his bearing one of total confidence. The senior consul, Aulus Postumius Albinus, was also the flamen martialis, a member of the priesthood, and was forbidden by religious taboo from leaving the city. The position of overall commander had therefore fallen to Catulus.
The junior consul had quickly chosen the Orcus as his flagship, wishing to sail with his most experienced prefect, and from the outset he had consulted with Atticus at each stage, reminding Atticus of another junior consul years before on the eve of the battle of Mylae. Catulus knew the limits of his experience, and was content to allow Atticus to make front-line decisions, giving him effective command of the fleet.
Atticus looked to the heavens, knowing that Fortuna was continuing to toy with him. His approach from Rome had been flawless; his tactic of keeping the bulk of the fleet out of the normal trading lanes and away from the sight of land, coupled with avoiding Panormus, had allowed him to take Drepana completely by surprise. But only then did Fortuna reveal her presence. Drepana had been abandoned by the Carthaginian fleet, and although Atticus had been gifted a secure harbour, his ultimate goal to bring the enemy fleet to battle had been thwarted.
He had sent out patrol ships, through which he’d received reports that the only ships the Carthaginians had in the area had fled Lilybaeum and sailed west, another stroke of bad luck that was neatly reversed when the enemy fleet was seen approaching from the south to take up position at Hiera, a staging post for a run at the port of Lilybaeum. Atticus had immediately ordered his fleet to Aegusa, knowing the Carthaginians would have to sail past, but again Fortuna had spun her wheel, stirring up a strong westerly wind that churned the sea into a heavy swell.
Atticus had continued the training of the fleet during the winter, and his confidence had increased during the voyage south from Rome, the disciplined formations of the fleet holding even during the hours of darkness. Individually the seamanship of the Romans would never be of the standard the Carthaginians possessed, a skill learned over a lifetime, but in a massed battle the finer subtleties of seamanship mattered little, and Atticus was confident that his men were trained to a high enough standard to match the enemy.
But now the gods were conspiring to foul those odds, giving the Carthaginians the advantage of a tail wind and the Romans the potentially ruinous disadvantage of facing into a heavy swell. The Roman rowers would have to work twice as hard to take up position against the Carthaginians, and if any of the crews misaligned their hulls, the swell would turn them out of position, leading to collisions and exposing their broadsides to the enemy rams.
Atticus glanced at the new helmsman. He was a master of his craft, a skilled navigator and pilot, but
