Imperial Vengence, page 14
‘We should get those transports under tow,’ Hierax added. ‘If the wind picks up they’ll be knocked all over the sea.’
Two hours later, and every galley trailed a cable astern, towing a line of transport ships. The sea was rising, long waves coming in from the east, and the Artemisia pitched and rolled, her keel spur bursting water. The oarsmen sweated and groaned on their benches, and the lee rail was lined with puking men. Castus gave a silent prayer that he had never been prey to that.
Another hour, and they felt the first headwinds swooping in from the north-east around the cape of Mount Athos. Spume flew from the wave crests, and the ships of the fleet laboured in the heavy swell. Hierax went across to the flagship in a small boat and returned with the news that Crispus was laid low with seasickness and Theophilus was in command.
‘He wants us to hold position overnight until the wind drops, then double the cape with the land breeze before dawn.’
‘You think the wind’ll drop?’ Castus asked him.
Hierax sniffed, plucking at his beard. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘Perhaps not.’
But the wind only strengthened, and by nightfall the ships were struggling to keep their positions and avoid being driven back towards the west. The cape was close now, the huge snowy mountain looming tall in the dusk, and Castus could hear the boom and hiss of the surf around the craggy cliffs. No chance of anchoring in such deep water; the fleet would spend the night at sea, rowing constantly just to keep their position.
Darkness had fallen when the first thunder crashed from the north. Lightning split the sky above the mountain, and the men packed in the ships cried out in dread. One by one the stars were blotted out by cloud. Castus remained on deck, fighting off fatigue, his cloak pulled around him. He was trying not to think about the last time he had been on the night sea in a galley, off the mouth of the Rhine. He tried not to think about the shipwreck, the breaking timbers and the slashing waves, the cries of drowning men.
A volley of screams broke his thoughts. Castus glanced up, the fatigue driven from him, and saw the tip of the bare masthead flickering with blue lightning. All along the deck, men stared in horror, lit in ghastly white. The apparition lasted only a moment, then they were plunged into darkness once more.
‘Sign from the gods!’ Hierax cried, staggering back along the deck past the helmsmen. ‘They mean to punish us for our impiety!’
He pulled a knife from his belt, seizing the tip of his beard and sawing at it with the blade. He cut free a chunk of hair and cast it into the wind. ‘Father Poseidon, have mercy upon us!’ he shouted.
‘Quiet, everyone,’ Castus growled. He strode forward past the helmsmen, who cursed and prayed as they heaved at the big steering oars. Over the noise of the sea, he could hear the whine and groan of the ship’s timbers. Beyond that, the roar of the waves breaking on the rocks. When the clouds shifted, he could make out the cliffs rearing from the sea, mottled with caves.
‘Keep pulling,’ he called to the oarsmen. ‘You can rest each bank at a time, but if we let ourselves drift we could be run ashore.’ He hoped his voice carried confidence; he felt little certainty himself, but in the night’s darkness, the fury of the thunder and the sea’s relentless swell the men needed it. If they had no faith in the gods, at least they should have faith in him.
*
Dawn came up grey and wet, with a dirty sky and a sea that rolled lines of big waves out of the east like the ramparts of an enemy fortress. Castus awoke from a brief troubled sleep, his limbs aching and his clothing damp from the salt air. When he looked to windward his heart plunged: there was the mountain and the rocky cape, still off the weather quarter. But for all the night’s effort, they had been pushed back west and southwards.
‘Rowing master reports his men are almost done in,’ Diogenes said queasily. ‘Half the water’s gone too.’
Clambering to his feet and peeling his damp cloak away from his body, Castus stared to the south. Scattered vessels all the way along the horizon, with no sign of formation. The Artemisia was pitching heavily, every incoming wave lifting the bows and spraying water along the decks. When he looked at the rowing benches Castus saw the strain on every face; even the experienced seamen looked sick, and wore the unmistakable signs of men at the limits of endurance.
‘There he is,’ Hierax said, pointing from the stern. Off to the south-east, the big Virtus Augusta, Crispus’s flagship, had dropped her towing cable and was battling forward against wind and current, her oars threshing the water.
‘Can they make it round the cape, d’you think?’ Castus asked.
‘Like that? No. This headwind isn’t slacking, and they’ll get it worse the further east they go. If their bow’s shoved round parallel with the waves they’ll roll and swamp. Interesting. I’ve never seen a big galley like that go under…’
Castus gave him a pained grimace. Low morning sun was flaring through a gap in the clouds, turning the sea to mottled silver. A signal flag streamed out from the stern of the flagship.
‘They want us to follow,’ Hierax said. ‘The man’s howling at the moon if he thinks the whole fleet can do that!’
‘Is there a sheltered anchorage anywhere to the west?’
‘There’s Sarte, dominus, over on the central peninsula. About twenty sea miles, west by north-west. Enough beach to land, and fresh water too.’
Castus stood at the rail, tight-lipped and frowning. Theophilus had senior command over the ships, but Castus outranked him when it came to the men of the expeditionary force. And his men were suffering, he knew that.
‘Signal to all ships,’ he said. ‘We’re turning back for Sarte. On my authority.’
Theophilus would notice soon enough that the fleet was heading west. And when he did, Castus thought, he could decide for himself whether to follow.
*
‘You deliberately overruled my explicit order!’ the prefect cried as he stamped up the beach. ‘An offence to both my dignity and to my status, which comes directly from the emperor himself!’
Castus was sitting on a pile of rocks at the edge of the sand with Ursio and Diogenes, eating his midday meal of bread and olive oil. He chewed slowly, swallowed, then waited a while longer as Theophilus stood before him, red-faced and panting.
‘You couldn’t have got round that cape,’ he said. ‘Even if you had, you’d be leaving the transports unprotected. We need to wait until the wind drops.’
‘Oh, indeed?’ Theophilus declared. ‘And what does a mere soldier know of seamanship? Our orders are to take the fleet to join the emperor’s army, as soon as possible. He needs the men and supplies we carry – and by your order we shall be delayed!’
‘The emperor won’t be able to use the supplies if they’re at the bottom of the sea,’ Castus said, grinding the last bits of gritty bread between his back teeth. ‘And he won’t have much use for drowned soldiers either. We can use this time to refill our water.’
‘Oh, the water again!’ Theophilus said, with a bark of laughter. ‘And who was responsible for wasting so much of it back at Thessalonica? Pouring it out on the ground, indeed! One might think, strategos, that you’re deliberately attempting to sabotage this expedition!’
Castus stood up suddenly, taking a step towards the prefect. Theophilus backed away, stumbling in the dry sand, and almost fell.
‘Be careful what you say, fat man,’ Castus told him.
With a last narrowed glance of disdain, Theophilus turned and marched away along the beach. Castus did not bother to watch him go.
Instead he scanned the scene before him. The beachfront was packed, lines of galleys pulled up stern-first at the shoreline, a mass of transports anchored beyond them. The headland to the north sheltered the roadstead from the wind’s full blast, but even so the ships bobbed and swayed at their moorings, masts swinging. Away to the east across the sea, the peak of Mount Athos was trailing a white streamer of blown snow.
Getting to his feet, Castus walked along the beach, passing the legionary camps. He was glad to see military order reasserting itself after the chaos of disembarkation, although the Frankish auxilia were still straggling all over the shore. He made a note to remind Bonitus that his men were under Roman discipline now.
From the sea, the peninsula had appeared deserted, the land above the beach thick with ragged holm oak and scrub. But already people had appeared from the inland villages, bringing cattle and other provisions to sell. The troops would eat hot food that day. Even so, Castus was troubled. He heard the echo of the prefect’s parting threat in his mind. Had he made a mistake turning the fleet back? Would they be trapped here, windbound?
The weather remained the same all that day and through the next, the scout galleys returning to report the headwinds still too strong off the cape to attempt a voyage. ‘We’re at the mercy of Boreas now, strategos,’ Hierax said. Castus took little comfort from that.
After dark, the second night on the beach, Castus was awakened in his tent by the touch of a hand. Even as he tried to make out the shadowy figures in the darkness, he knew what was happening. He realised that he had been expecting it. Eumolpius had woken him; together with Diogenes he led Castus from the tent and up the narrow paths behind the camp. Other figures joined them as they walked, silent men in cloaks, carrying no lights. Castus recognised Hierax among them, and Bonitus; the Frank greeted him with a wordless handclasp. They filed on through the night, climbing the headland to the north of the beach into the thick scrub woodland. Diogenes had said that there was a ruined town here, and Castus made out the pale shapes of broken walls and tumbled columns in the undergrowth. The night air smelled strongly of thyme, and he could hear the noise of the sea on the rocks below the headland.
In a clearing between the bushes the men assembled. A score of them, maybe more, gathered before a rough altar of piled stones. By the wavering light of the altar fire Castus saw the faces of the men around him: most were ship captains, with some of the army tribunes and prefects among them. As the sacrificial animals were led to the altar, Hierax stepped forth and covered his head with a fold of his cloak. The axeman killed each beast, the hot coppery stink of fresh blood filling the night. Then Hierax raised his arms and cried out the prayers in Greek: to Apollo, Lord of Departures, to Zeus and to Poseidon. To the gods and spirits who ruled this land and this sea.
One by one the assembled men stepped around the lake of spilt blood and up to the altar, into the smoke of the fire to pour a libation and eat the sacrificial meat. They touched their brows, touched their lips, and sent their silent prayers to the heavens. As Castus turned from the altar, the flames lit the face of the hooded man behind him; just for a moment he thought he must be mistaken, then he caught the quick forbidding glance, the familiar frown. He said nothing, and moved back into the darkness.
By dawn the next day all could see that the wind had dropped. The surf no longer rushed on the sand, and in the first sun the peak of Mount Athos had lost its streamer of snow. The men boarded their ships quickly and with enthusiasm, the galleys surging off the beach and taking the transport ships under tow as soon as they raised anchor.
Across a placid sea they moved under oars, and before noon they had reached the cape of Athos once more. Well rested and eager, the oarsmen pulled hard, singing on their benches as the galleys powered across the smooth water. Standing on the stern platform, Castus watched the mountain slide past to his left and then fall behind them, the great fleet of ships rounding the cape in formation and turning north towards the Strymonian Gulf. He felt elated, his spirits restored. A faint cool breeze came from the land, refreshing the oarsmen. Another day, maybe two, and they would make their rendezvous with Constantine’s army.
Remembering the night before, Castus tried to tell himself that he had been wrong. It had been a trick played by the flickering light. But he knew what he had seen: Crispus, the son of the Augustus, had made sacrifice with them.
11
‘What I don’t understand,’ said Saturninus as they walked their horses along the sand above the line of beached galleys, ‘is why he had to hide his face. If you saw what you claim, that is…’
‘I saw him,’ Castus said. ‘It was Crispus, right enough.’
Saturninus had not been present for the sacrifice at Sarte, although he had heard about it, and wished he had been. Only now, over two weeks later, had Castus decided to tell him about the Caesar’s presence there.
‘None would have blamed him for attending,’ the guard commander said. ‘And surely none would have carried word of it to the wrong ears.’
Castus was not so sure about that. ‘Maybe he just didn’t want anyone to know. Maybe he wants us to think he’s a Christian like he pretends? Or maybe he is a Christian – I wouldn’t mind them so much if they worshipped our gods, too, like we have to worship theirs!’
There had been a parade the day before, all the legion detachments of the army assembled on the broad plain above the mouth of the Hebrus. Constantine’s new Christian standard had been solemnly carried before the troops, ringed by an honour guard of fifty soldiers in white uniforms, hand-picked for their loyalty and religious devotion. The Guardians of the Labarum, they were called. The troops had thrown up their hands in salute to the standard, crying out the prayer the tribunes had circulated that morning. Castus had recited the words as well, although they had stuck in his throat.
‘Well, it worked anyway,’ Saturninus said. ‘The sacrifice, I mean. The wind dropped, didn’t it?’
‘Maybe. Or maybe it was coincidence.’ Castus tended to think the gods did not answer requests quite so promptly. Then again, who could know?
They had ridden far down the beach together, all the way to the edge of the marshes at the mouth of the river, and now they were returning to the seaward camp where Crispus’s Gallic force was based. Already the land breeze that whipped up the sand carried the stink of men and horses, latrines and damp leather. There were two more camps further inland, even larger than this one, holding the main field army.
Down on the beach, men were gathered in a circle around a wrestling ground marked out on the sand. Saturninus and Castus drew their horses to a halt and watched the men fight. One of them was Gratianus, the muscular young tribune of the Moesiaci, who had come down to the seaward camp to test his strength against the champions of the Gallic army. Castus was tempted to try a bout himself – he had been a keen wrestler when he first joined the legions, thirty years before – but the prospect of being dumped on the sand by a younger, and subordinate, officer did not appeal.
Raising himself in the saddle, Castus peered over the heads of the wrestling throng, past the ships beached above the surf, and out to sea. The transports rode at anchor in the shallows. Beyond them, on the horizon, were the scout galleys patrolling the approaches to the beach. No sign of enemy ships; only a few local fishing boats. The sky was hot and blue, and the empty sea glared under the sun.
The advance so far had taken Constantine’s army east along the coast of Macedonia and Thrace. Castus had remained with the fleet, moving offshore in stages as they followed the course of the inland march. Every morning they had sailed with the land breeze, unshipping the oars to row against the current before noon, beaching once more when the Etesian winds set in a few hours later. Hard work in the midsummer heat, but a lot pleasanter than marching: from the sea, the twenty-mile column of troops on the Via Egnatia had appeared only as a vast cloud of dust, rising to obscure the distant hills. And all that time there had been no sign of the enemy. Licinius had not brought his army to oppose them, although they were deep inside his territory now.
‘Every time I look out to sea,’ Saturninus said. ‘I expect they’ll appear, there on the horizon.’
‘Me too,’ Castus said. He sucked his teeth, then swung down from the saddle. Stripping off his tunic, he threw it to one of his orderlies.
‘Wrestling?’ Saturninus asked with a grin.
‘No – swimming!’
He pulled off his boots and breeches, shed his loincloth, then ran naked down the beach and plunged into the sea.
*
‘Messenger for you,’ Diogenes said as Castus returned to the little tent enclosure that formed his headquarters. The secretary was sitting at a folding table outside the main tent, and nodded toward a uniformed Protector standing with his horse.
‘What is it?’ Castus asked. Bending forward, he took a skin of fresh water and sluiced his head, washing the salt from his hair and face.
‘Excellency,’ the Protector said, saluting, ‘the most blessed Caesar, Flavius Julius Crispus, requests your presence.’
Castus grunted as he straightened up. The swim had been hard, but he felt refreshed by it. He nodded, then gestured to Eumolpius for a towel. ‘Better unpack my best tunic and belts too,’ he said.
He found Crispus half an hour later, outside his command tent on the far side of the huge military camp. The young Caesar was exercising with a sword, going through the motions of an exaggerated armatura drill under the eye of his trainer. Stripped to the waist, his lean muscles flexing, Crispus stamped the dust and wheeled his blade flashing in the sunlight. Castus could see the angry tension in his stance, the frustration in his every movement.
When he saw Castus waiting, Crispus tossed his sword to one of his orderlies and gestured towards his tent. Inside, the sunlight came through the white linen walls, but it was much cooler. Flies circled in the air.
‘I’ve spoken to my father,’ Crispus announced. He stood with his arms spread while two slaves wiped down his torso with a linen cloth and then dressed him in a clean tunic. ‘He tells me the scouts have located the enemy. Licinius has his main field force camped at Adrianople, seven days from here up the Hebrus. The army will march the day after tomorrow.’
‘Excellent news, majesty!’ Castus said. At last. But he knew there was more to come.
