father, were now sailing south round the island. Most of the ships were merchant galleys commandeered against the wishes of their owners; they were aboard a proper trireme, its three banks of oars manned by fighting men, which had been fetched round from Brindisium, taken from its normal duty of subduing piracy on the eastern trade route.
He loved it; the rise and fall of the waves felled Titus from the first day, but not Marcellus. The smell of the salt water, the feeling of unlimited space, the way that the ship steered when he was given a turn at the great sweep that stuck out from the stern, lifted his heart. He had a turn on an oar, eliciting some admiration from the other rowers for his stamina and for his determination to keep up, though the effort left him an exhausted heap on the deck. Marcellus was back as soon as he recovered, keen to master the art and progress to the peak of efficiency achieved by those who manned the ship.
With the wind dead astern, and the great square sail drawing taut, they sighted Agrigentum just after dawn on the third day. The master, at the request of a slightly green Titus, cleared the ship for battle, taking in the sail and sending all the rowers to their stations. The man at the drum started to beat time causing the sleek trireme to edge forward and as the tempo increased the rowers strained harder, increasing the strokes without ever losing their rhythm. The catwalks above the rowers’ heads were lined with soldiers, the first shock wave in an attack, who would be joined by those below once the need to manoeuvre had passed. The trireme head-reached the accompanying merchant ships with the water flying in a great spray over the prow.
They could see the few vessels in the harbour, grain ships, which the defenders had spread across the mouth, the sides lined with heavily armed men, which would be precious little use against the weightier Roman ships, Quadremes and Quinqueremes, built for close combat rather than ramming. But Titus and Marcellus were in a trireme and the master felt it was his duty to point out some of the limitations inherent in such a vessel. They were aboard a ship built for speed, whose prime method of attack was to ram the enemy, then board, but they were alone, so any conflict would be costly. He pointed instead to another galley, busy laying a wooden boom. The insurgents were using a wide beamed merchant ship to lower great tree trunks into the water, attached to each other by stout chains. Titus, eager for a fight, and dying to assault the enemy’s main strength, nevertheless deferred to the captain, who brought his trireme round a touch, so that the bows were aimed directly at the ship laying the boom.
The men aboard her were not soldiers and the galley, of a type used to transport stone, was slow to manoeuvre. As they realised that they were the intended victim, they abandoned their task and tried to turn for the inner harbour, well aware that they were ill-equipped to withstand an attack. The other rebel galleys, which had already pulled in their anchors, took some of the men off the deck to man their sweeps. Marcellus saw the rows of oars swing back and down, biting into the water, sensing the strain that was being exerted to get these ships into motion. They rose and fell, and the water began to cream down the sides as the ships got under way.
‘We should haul off, sir,’ said the master, who had not foreseen this development. ‘We cannot take on such heavy odds.’
That did not please Titus, who, at the prospect of action, seemed much improved. ‘If we can prevent them laying the boom it will make any future attempts on the port much easier.’
The master, a grizzled sailor with a tanned, weather-beaten countenance, shook his head fiercely. ‘If we ram that ship we’ll be stuck in her when the others come up. We won’t last two minutes against all those soldiers. I decline to risk my ship.’
Marcellus was looking at the galleys, on course to intercept. He did not see Titus’s eyes on his back, did not know that the legate, who had the power to command this grey-haired sailor, decided against an attack because he had no wish to risk the only son of Lucius Falerius Nerva.
‘Very well, Master, you may decline the action.’
The sailor was aware that he had displeased Titus, who was certainly powerful enough to break him, and not knowing the legate, he was unaware of his innate fairness. It could be the beach for him if he did not do something to salvage his reputation.
‘Be a pity to without giving them something to chew on, sir.’
He called out a series of orders, bringing the trireme round on a converging course with the nearest of the grain ships. Marcellus, in the bows, watched closely as the distance between the galleys shortened. He ran back along the catwalk and begged for a spear, grabbing it eagerly and heading back, past the waiting soldiers, into the bows. Titus opened his mouth to order him below, but he said nothing, suspecting that the boy, close to his first taste of real battle, would probably ignore him. They were nearly on them now and the leading grain ship edged round to avoid being rammed, the side crowded with armed men, spears at the ready. That was when the master gave his order, reasonably sure that no one aboard the vessel he was attacking had ever seen a trireme in action.
The drum beat faster and the speed of the Roman ship increased slightly so that they were closing on their enemy rapidly. The first javelins started to fly, falling into the water between the ships as the master, leaning on the sweep, aided by men hauling on ropes, yelled another command that had the drum beating an almost continuous tattoo. Marcellus saw the oars beneath him disappear inboard and the trireme swung round. With perfect timing, the other oarsmen first raised their oars out of the water, held them for a second, them dipped then again. Their action brought the trireme in close to the grain ship, running alongside, and the prow took the first enemy oar almost immediately.
Marcellus felt the ship shudder and he held his arm up, spear ready, choosing as his target the biggest man on the grain ship, a huge fellow with a thick black beard. Oars were snapping like twigs beneath his feet as the trireme glided along the side of the grain ship, whose rowers, less disciplined than the Romans, had not pulled in their sweeps, despite the desperate orders being yelled at them to do so. As he came level, the black-bearded man, distracted like his fellows by the mayhem below decks, looked up just in time to see the danger. He raised his shield and his spear, his arm hauling back for a powerful throw.
Marcellus beat the shield by a fraction, his spear skipping over the very rim as the man raised it, and embedding itself in his chest. A well-aimed foot took Marcellus’s legs away and he fell heavily onto the trireme’s deck, just as the men on either side of his victim cast their spears in return. They flew harmlessly overhead, to land in the sea on the other side. Marcellus lifted his head and looked into the smiling face of Titus Cornelius, who was crouched protectively over him with his shield shutting out any danger.
‘I think more men die in their first fight than at any other time. I can’t quite decide whether that is because of excitement, or stupidity.’
Marcellus, hauled onto his knees, found himself staring at the stern of the grain ship as it spun round, totally disabled, with a mass of wounded men on the deck. Every fighter aboard the Roman ship had cast at least one javelin as the trireme cleared the oars from the side of the enemy ship and now, as if by magic, their own oars reappeared from the ports and as they bit into the water, the master hauled on the sweep and the trireme spun round, in its own length, to outrun the other enemy galleys coming up to engage. Titus and Marcellus made their way back to the stern as the master handed over the sweep to one of his subordinates and pointed to the pursuing ships.
‘If I can get them to chase me far enough, we might get that boat laying the boom after all.’
As if they had heard his words, the oars on the rebel ships shot up in the air, completely clearing the water. Below decks the men who had rowed those ships would be hunched over their sweeps, gasping for breath. There was no way that galleys like these could pursue a trireme, even one rowing easy in an attempt to draw them on.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Titus threw his few troops ashore as soon as he could, setting up a proper Roman camp in a bay about five miles from the city, well inside the river barriers to the east. They would never hold the place if the slave army chose to attack but it served to remind both the runaways and the inhabitants of Agrigentum that Roman power still existed. The trireme was given the task of patrolling the approaches to provide early warning of any intended incursions from the sea and Marcellus spent most of his time aboard the ship perfecting his rowing, never straying far from the master between shifts, pestering the man with an endless stream of technical questions.
