If they were backed to the mast, it was over. Even if and when they pulled free, the force of the armed boarders would be too much for the Lion’s crew to overcome. They needed a game-changer and they needed it now, or all aboard would die.
47
Below the Salt
Caroline stood against the bulkhead of the tiller deck, her eyes locked on the horrors at the bow. She gripped the haft of the spear until her hands ached. Praxus was by her side, mewling to himself in fear, his tiny dagger clutched to his chest.
At the back of the massed company of Lion hands, Ahinadab stormed from beam to beam calling orders to the rowers. His voice was growing hoarse even as his frustration and rage burned hotter.
The boys with slings stumbled back away from the deadly storm of pellets streaking down at them. They left a number of their own, lying still on the decking.
From her vantage point, Caroline could see the deck of the Carthaginian ship was canting toward them. The sail threw an inky shadow over the moonlit deck of the Lion as the tall mast leaned over their deck. The trireme was taking on water from the wounds to its hull. The combined weight of the incoming seawater and the heavy ram stuck fast beneath the water line would capsize the bigger ship and draw the prow of the Lion down with it. Both ships would broach and then flood if they were not freed of their deadly embrace, and soon.
Yada grumbled orders above her. The Nubian helms boy dropped down by her in a crouch. He gripped her by the arm and squawked at her. She could only shake her head, uncomprehending.
“Atem wants us to go with him,” Praxus said.
The Nubian ordered the frightened slinger boys to come with him as well. When they hesitated, he swatted at them. They followed along with Caroline and Praxus as Atem made his way below decks past the laboring banks of rowers and down into the hold.
Caroline felt her way through the dark with fingers brushing the ribs of the hull. The remaining sand that covered the keel was damp under her feet. Rats were racing sternwards away from the bow section. She followed Atem’s voice forward. The sand grew wetter until she was bent near double with sloshing water to her calves. Her eyes adjusted to the dark, taking in the moonlight shining through the gaps in the deck above. The other boys were crushed in with her where the hull curved to a point. Above them they could hear the thud of feet and the ringing clatter of arms over the voices of struggling men and the screams of the wounded.
The Nubian boy handed mallets to some of them. Others were given thick wooden pegs. Atem crouched in the filthy bilge water and ran hands over heavy posts set against the beams of the ship by iron cleats secured to the strakes of the hull with wooden dowels. Cross beams were joined over the confined space with iron bands also set in place with dowels.
Caroline understood that these posts and beams and rusted cleats were what held the claw-shaped ram to the prow. They were below the waterline here. The sea was spraying through gaps widened between the cedar planks by the punishment of two impacts and the efforts to free the ram that followed. The damage the Lion had suffered in the last two days had also taken a toll. The water here was to their knees and rising. She didn’t need the note of urgency in Atem’s voice to know that time was running out. They would get this ram unshipped or drown trying.
The Nubian boy set them to work. One boy would hold a peg to the end of a securing dowel while another would hammer the peg to knock the dowel clear. Praxus took a peg and Caroline a mallet and they went to work. The others hammered away as well in the cramped space as the water climbed the hull.
Atem worked harder than the others. He spat curses and pounded at a peg held by a quivering boy. The securing dowels were swollen with damp and refused to budge. The wet wood was soft where it met the surface of the iron cleats and it parted like cardboard. They were making slow progress. Some of the boys wept as they worked, and the Nubian barked at them in irritation.
The timbers around them groaned. Caroline was aware of the weight of the slowing capsizing trireme bearing down on them. She tried to put it out of her mind even as the slimy boards beneath her feet tilted more and more radically to the bow. She forced herself to shut down her galloping imagination and focus on the work at hand. Grunting with each blow, she felt the peg in Praxus’ fists give way, and the fat dowel finally fell free on the opposite side of the beam. It was a small victory. Each cleat was secured with four dowels, and there were dozens of cleats.
Despite the gang of bodies close by her in the dark, Caroline felt alone. She wanted to be out of here. She ached to be up on the deck with Dwayne no matter what happened. She only wanted to be with him at the end. Neither one of them belonged here. They should never have come. But the thought of dying here, separated from the only friend she had in this world, this time, was an agony greater than fear.
Caroline swallowed hard and shrank her world to the end of the peg before her and hammered and hammered and hammered away.
48
High Tide
Dwayne Roenbach had been in tight spots before. On forlorn mountainsides in the Hindu Kush and bloodied asphalt on highways in Iraq. He’d been bushwhacked, mortared, enfiladed, blown-up, cut off, and shot down. He’d walked away from firefights, ambushes, crossfires, and clusterfucks,
