Something occurred to me then, and I couldnot hide my worry as I asked, “What if they have spare oarsmen aswell?”
Motius responded immediately, and with nodoubt, shaking his head and explaining, “They do not, at least notenough to make a difference. These pirates do not use slaves, andthey are all expected to fight when the time comes, so they do notneed a larger crew.”
His tone was what I found more reassuringthan the words themselves, so I accepted his explanation.
“Once it gets dark, how do you plan onlosing them?”
Now his manner changed—slightly, butnoticeably—though to his credit, he did not try to avoid thesubject.
“That is what we need to talk about,Centurion. While we will change course, I am certain that you arenot going to like it.”
This puzzled me, certainly, but it also mademe uneasy, yet when I pressed him, he said, “Once it gets dark,Cador will come down to the cabin and explain to you where we willbe heading.” My initial reaction was to think that the news must beso likely to anger me that Motius was sending Cador down intoharm’s way, but he clearly understood this, because he lowered hisvoice so that the two crewmen here at the stern could not overhear,while Cador was currently at the bow serving as lookout. “If we donot want to arouse Cador’s suspicion that I know what he did toVellocatus, then you need to act as if he is now the master of theship, is that not so?”
“That,” I admitted, “is true.”Glancing up at the sun, I agreed with his assessment that we hadabout two parts of a watch of daylight left, saying, “Then we’ll bewaiting to hear from the…master of the ship.”
When I returned below, Alex had a flask ofwater and a chunk of bread, which I wolfed down, but when Idemanded more, he shook his head.
“We’re on half rations, Gnaeus,” hereminded me. “If I give you more now, you may not have anythinglater.”
He was right; I knew he was right, but thatdid not stop me from grumbling at him. I realized that I wasextremely tired, and I decided to try and catch up on sleep nowthat matters had settled down. I lay there for a moment, listeningto the drumbeat, and even with my relative lack of time aboard aship, I could feel that the vessel was moving more jerkily thanbefore, although I was not alarmed. After all, the boys areLegionaries, I thought, not sailors. With this thought, I driftedoff.
When Alex shook me awake, I saw that whileit was close to sunset, there was still a fair amount of timebefore it would be completely dark, and I was about to ask him whyhe had not let me sleep a bit more when his words cut through thefog.
“Saloninus needs you; there’s aproblem.”
Of course I moved quickly, and when Ientered the main compartment, I understood immediately whySaloninus was alarmed. Since the men were facing me, it only took aglance at their faces to understand two things; that they weretiring much more quickly than the slaves had, and that we shouldhave anticipated this. Not that it would have changed our decision,since this was the only possibility for escape, but this did notmake me feel any better, my stomach suddenly threatening to send myrecently digested chunk of bread back up.
“They’re not in shape for this,” Imurmured to Saloninus, whose only response was a grim nod. “Ishould have thought about this.”
“We all should have,” he repliedquietly. “I didn’t think about it any more than any of us did,Gnaeus.”
Before I could talk myself out of it, Imoved down the walkway towards the bow, both worried that what Iwas about to do might not work and ashamed that I was going tostoop to this.
“You boys look tired!” It was not justthe volume, but the tone I employed that I hoped would do the job.“Is that it? You’re tired?” I walked back and forth, looking sideto side, but while some of the men nodded or muttered something,they remained in rhythm, however poorly. My bellow of laughter notonly caught them by surprise, but I saw that it angered a goodnumber of them. “I just think you’re soft!” I shouted scornfully.“This isn’t the Fourth Cohort I know! This isn’t the Fourth Cohortthat my father led!” This finally elicited a stronger reaction, butthe shouts of protest some of them offered were too scattered andtoo half-hearted. I needed them to be unified, and I needed them tobe angry, so I spun about and stalked over to one of the men whohad shouted from the top row. “Did you say something, Tappo? Areyou arguing with your Centurion?” I sneered, and when he broke eyecontact, I said, “I didn’t think so. You don’t have the balls todisagree, because deep down, you know it’s true!” Shaking my head,I continued sadly, “No, this isn’t the Fourth I know.” Suddenly, Istopped in my pacing, frowning as if something had just occurred tome. “While I was gone, did something happen? Eh? Did theslaves overpower my men and taketheir tunics? Is that what happened? That I’m looking at a bunchof slaves?”
It was a ludicrous thing to say, of course;there was no comparison between my men who, as lean as they were,still looked sleek and well-fed compared to the slaves, not tomention their hair wasn’t matted with filth, nor did they havebeards. And under any other circumstances, the men of the First andSecond would have laughed off my insinuation as what it was, adesperate attempt to get under their collective skins. But I hadseen their expressions, and even more importantly, their bodyposture; yes, they were still hauling on their oars, and yes, theywere still in a passable rhythm, albeit barely, but the worstpossible thing had happened to my boys that can happen to asoldier. They had begun to doubt themselves. As their fatigue grew,it opened the door a crack for that doubt to creep in, for the ideathat they were not up to this challenge, and I was positive that alarge proportion of the force that was
