The Concordia seemed stuck fast, her ram embedded deep in the wreckage of the other ship. This crew was quicker-thinking than the other Goths. Already, grappling hooks trailing lines of thick rope were curving through the air towards the theme's prow.
'Back water! Push, you fuckers! Push!' The helmsman's shouts sounded desperate. 'Marines, use the boarding pikes to fend her off!'
Straightening up, Ballista set off at a painful run to the prow. If they did not get clear, they would be sitting ducks when the other two Goths came up. Grabbing a boarding pike, he moved to the rail. As he got there, a bearded face appeared over the side. From the right, Maximus's shield punched into the Goth's face, sending the man sprawling and bloodied to the deck of his ship. Ramming the pike into the hull of the rapidly settling longboat, Ballista pushed with all his strength. A marine joined him. Maximus held his shield over them. For what seemed an eternity, nothing moved. Out of the corner of his eye Ballista saw a marine leap up on to the rail itself. Somehow, the man balanced there, swinging an axe down on to one of the ropes that now bound the Concordia to the Gothic ship. After three cuts an arrow caught the marine in the thigh. With a yell he fell over the side. By the time Ballista had drawn two or three laboured breaths a second marine was on the rail. One powerful swing of his axe, the rope parted, and the marine jumped back down on to the deck.
'One, two, three, PUSH!' Ballista realized that it was he who was shouting, trying to get the words out despite his aching chest, trying to make them heard above the terrible din of battle. 'PUSH!'
At last, with a wrenching sound, the Concordia began to move. Slowly at first, then gathering way, she backed away from the Goth. Twang, slide, thump, the crew of the two forward bolt-throwers had the presence of mind to add to the problems of the Gothic crew. A three-foot artillery bolt punched through one Goth's mail shirt and nailed him to the mast.
The barbarian vessel was unlikely to sink to the bottom. Wooden warships tended to become waterlogged, settle in the water and eventually break up. The Goths in the water or clinging to the wreckage could be left to drown of their own accord or, if there were time, used for target practice later. Either way, they were no longer of any account in this battle.
Ballista needed to know what the other Goth ships were up to. Peering from well behind his shield, he saw that the two unengaged vessels were already turning away. They were still almost half a mile away, and the Concordia had a tired crew. There was no point in thinking of giving chase. Ballista ran to look over the stern. The Goth ship they had raked had managed to redistribute its remaining oars and was trying to limp from the scene.
'Helmsman, put us about a hundred and fifty yards away from that ship. We will call on them to surrender. But we will be ready to fight them.' As his order was carried out, Ballista, with Maximus at his right shoulder as ever, moved along the deck, talking to the marines and deckhands; words of praise here, sympathy for the wounded there.
The optio who had been wounded early on made his report. There were just three dead, including the captain, but ten wounded, including the optio himself. All the casualties were marines except one. As he finished, he stood awkwardly, fidgeting with the bandage on his arm. Then Ballista spoke the words the optio had been praying for. 'With the captain dead you will assume command of the ship as acting trierarch until you return to Ravenna.'
As the Concordia manoeuvred into position, Ballista reflected that it said a lot about Roman thinking on the respective status of the navy and army that the captain of a trireme was equivalent in rank to a centurion in the legions, yet a trierarch commanded nearly three hundred enlisted men and a centurion usually not more than eighty.
'Surrender!' Ballista called in German.
'Fuck you!' The Borani accent was strong, but there was no mistaking the words.
'I am Dernhelm, son of Isangrim, Warleader of the Angles. I give you my word as one of the Woden-born that your lives will be spared, that you will not go into the arena.'
'Go to hell! Mercenary. Serf. Slave!'
'Think of your men.'
'They have given me their oath. It is better that we die on our feet now than live a long time on our knees. Like you!'
For two hours the bolt-throwers of the Concordia bombarded the Gothic ship. Out of effective bowshot, the Goths could do nothing but wait. For two hours, the awesome force of the bolts pierced the sides of the ship and tore through the leather and metal that failed to protect the soft flesh within. Some bolts ripped through two men at once, grotesquely pinning them together.
When there was no danger of resistance, Ballista ordered the Concordia to ram the Goth amidships.
'So many of them. They were brave men. It is a pity they all had to die,' said Ballista as the trireme backed away from the wreck.
'Yes,' agreed Maximus, 'they would have fetched a good price.'
Ballista smiled at his bodyguard. 'You really are a heartless bastard, aren't you?'
IV
It was so frustrating. About half a mile to the left, Demetrius could see Cyprus, the island of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, sliding past. All his young life the Greek boy had wanted to visit her shrine there, but now there was no time to lose. It had been like this ever since the encounter with the Goths. It seemed to have energized Ballista. Fighting northern barbarians had stirred his blood in some strange way, made him keener to get at eastern ones. He had fretted away the four days on Syme that it had taken to repair the Concordia (the hypozomata, whatever that was, had needed tightening). Meanwhile, the dozen captives that had been fished out of the wreckage of the first Gothic boat were sold to slave traders. No promises had been made them; their future was not good. The Kyrios had paced the decks on the one-day crossing to Rhodes. His impatience was infectious, and when Cyprus appeared after three days, Maximus, Mamurra and Priscus, the acting trierarch, were pacing about as well.
During the crossing from Rhodes to Cyprus, the first time on the voyage when the Concordia had been deep out at sea, even the bookish Demetrius had realized that a trireme was a terribly crowded place. There was nowhere for the rowers to exercise or wash. They had to sleep at their benches. There was no provision for hot food. The routine whereby, if possible, a trireme came to shore twice a day – at midday for the crew to eat lunch, and again at dusk for them to take supper and sleep – now made complete sense.
The twin necessities of practicality and observing social niceties had enforced a two-day stop at New Paphos, the seat of the Roman governor of the island of Cyprus. He outranked Ballista and thus could not be ignored. The proconsul received them in a large house, well sited, towards the end of the headland, to catch any sea breezes. It had been an occasion of some formality, which had taken up much of the first day.
On the second day the travellers had each pursued their own duties or interests. Demetrius walked half a mile or so to the agora to buy supplies; the kyrios, accompanied by Calgacus, returned for more discussions with the proconsul of doings in the eternal city. Priscus and Mamurra fussed over the Concordia. New concerns with something called the parexeiresia had joined the ongoing worries about the hypozomata. Maximus went to a brothel and came back drunk.
The next day at dawn the Concordia pulled up her boarding ladders and left her mooring. The rowers took her out of harbour until a northerly air filled her sail and she stood away south-east from the island. Demetrius leant on the port rail by the stern. They were sailing away from one of the most sacred places in all the Greek world. Here, at the very dawn of time, Cronus had castrated Uranus and thrown his severed genitals into the sea. From the foam Aphrodite had been born. Somewhere just to Demetrius's left was the rock which marked where she had stepped from the scallop shell and, naked, first set foot on land.
A mile or so inland, Demetrius thought that he could see the walls of her sanctuary. This had been Aphrodite's first dwelling. It was so ancient that the cult object was not a statue made by man but a conical black stone. When taken in adultery it was here that Aphrodite had fled. Here, the Graces had bathed, anointed and dressed her,
