Imperial Vengence, page 18
‘Gods, they’ve moved fast,’ Dexippus muttered, his lips stretched thin and tight. Every head aboard the galley was craning eastwards now, the oarsmen leaning back in their benches and gazing over their shoulders as they pulled.
‘Steady there!’ Dexippus roared. He stepped up onto the stern platform, shading his eyes against the reflected sunlight. ‘Excellency,’ he said, ‘you should see this.’
Castus ducked beneath the steering oars and climbed up onto the platform beside the navarch. For a moment he stared, squinting, pushing out his jaw. Then his breath caught. Across the distant sea horizon, between the narrowing cliffs, stretched a black line. As he stared he saw the line taking shape, more hulls appearing above the horizon, stark in the sunlight. A mass of ships, moving fast with the wind and current behind them.
‘Best jump down, excellency,’ Dexippus said with a taut grimace. ‘Things are about to get busy.’
Castus moved forward to his position ahead of the steersman, and as he did so the trumpets carried the signal between the ships. ‘Battle formation!’ Dexippus cried. The lookout shinned down from his perch, and the deck crew unstepped the mast and swung it down to the deck. All across the squadron masts were dropping, the troops assembling along the gangways as the oarsmen worked to form the galleys into line abreast, prows facing the open straits. The waves chopped at the low hulls as the ships moved out into the strong current once more.
By now, everyone aboard could see the advancing enemy fleet. They could see the other squadron across the straits as well, the Artemisia and her flock crawling steadily up the channel along the northern shore, against wind and current. Castus looked at the forty light galleys around him, and they appeared a feeble force to throw in the way of that onrushing armada. Like the little wooden boats his son made, he thought, and launched on the placid waters of the garden pool.
No doubt other men aboard felt the same, but none spoke of it. The enemy ships were in plain view now, most of the leading ones big triremes with their oars thrashing in unison and their heavy bronze rams throwing up a foaming bow wave. They were formed in a mile-wide crescent, but already the larger and faster ships were rushing forward, breaking formation in eagerness to attack the two squadrons facing them. Castus always felt nervous before a battle, but never before had he felt the lurch of stark terror. On land, his feet on the solid earth, he at least felt secure. Here on the open sea there was nowhere to hide, no chance of retreat. Any man who fell overboard would be lost in the churning current. Planting his feet firmly on the deck, Castus fought against the fear. But he felt as if all the blood in his body had drained to his legs, and a cold greasy nausea writhed in his gut.
Hippocampus took a position in the second line. As the command ship of the squadron, with Castus’s own purple banner flying from her stern, she was supposed to keep out of the direct fighting, but Castus knew that, with the tactics they had chosen, the coming battle would soon involve every vessel. He remembered the promise he had made to Marcellina, a promise he would once again have to break.
‘Now there’s a sight no man alive has ever seen, I’d say.’ Dexippus had climbed forward of the steersman to join Castus once more. If he was nervous, he was hiding it well. ‘They’re coming on at some speed! They’ve got some big cataphract galleys in their first line too. Five times our weight of timber – should be some fight…’
He grinned, and Castus managed to grimace back at him. Then the navarch leaned across the rail and scooped a handful of seawater from a passing wave, dashing it into his face. Castus did the same – the water was surprisingly cold.
‘Fresh from the Euxine,’ Dexippus said. ‘Clears the head, heh?’
Castus nodded. The shock of the cold water, the clean taste of the salt on his lips, had sharpened his senses a little at least. He was glad that the troops massed along the gangway had their backs to him; he would not have liked to look into their faces now. Up in the bow, Modestus was hauling a scale cuirass over his head.
‘Armour,’ Castus said to his orderly. Eumolpius nodded, and helped Castus strap the bronze muscled cuirass over his linen arming vest. The weight would make it impossible to swim, should he fall overboard, but he did not rate his chances in the water anyway.
‘Sol Invictus,’ he whispered, kissing his fingers and raising them towards the sun. ‘Your light between us and darkness…’ Other words crowded his mind, prayers and pleas. But there was nothing more he could ask. Eumolpius passed him his helmet and he put it on, tying the straps beneath his chin.
‘Keep the shield up on my left,’ Castus said. ‘And guard yourself too. Going to be plenty of iron flying about once we get up close to those bastards.’
From over to his right he could hear the hoarse chant of the Frankish oarsmen. Huor-gah! Huor-gah! He remembered it from the Rhine. The Franks were moving out on the right of the squadron. Bonitus was standing up in the stern of his boat, his blond hair streaming in the breeze, and Castus saw him pump his spear in the air as he let out a battle cry.
The disordered left of the enemy fleet was closing fast, the galleys of Castus’s squadron rowing hard to keep on their flank, forming a smaller crescent of their own. It was hard to tear his eyes from the spectacle of the oncoming ships, but Castus snatched a glance across the straits, and saw Crispus’s squadron still moving up. He breathed a curse: they should be holding their position, or falling back by now, to draw the enemy further westwards. Had Crispus decided to fight it out, ship against ship, in the open water?
No time to consider it. Already the catapults and ballistae on the enemy ships were in action, the bolts and stones raising jets of water just ahead of the squadron. They were testing their range, Castus knew. Soon their missiles would find a mark.
He leaned forward and tapped Felix on the side of his helmet. The optio glanced back at him, his face set hard.
‘Feeling better now?’ Castus yelled.
‘Oh, aye, much better. Nothing like the prospect of a scrap to settle the stomach.’ Felix grinned, wolfish.
‘Good man,’ Castus said quietly. The words were drowned out by Dexippus’s roaring voice from the stern platform.
‘On my command,’ the navarch cried, ‘full pressure to ramming speed! Those big bastards are coming on fast, but they can’t turn as quick as we can. Once we’re among them, we’ll be spearing fish in a net, boys!’
A cheer from the rowing benches, every man taking a firm grip on his oar.
Castus was fighting to breathe, his chest tight inside his cuirass. Now, he thought. Now – close the distance.
The thwack of the forward ballista reverberated through the deck. All along the front line of the squadron the machines were loosing their missiles. Screams came from a galley to the left as one of the enemy catapult stones struck home. Dexippus called out his command.
‘Ready your stroke!’ the rowing master roared. ‘On three and pull, full pressure – one, two, three!’
The galley surged as the oars picked up the rhythm, spray spattering back across the deck. All along the battle line the other ships were gathering pace. Castus felt the hull seem to lift beneath him, the boards of the deck pulsating with the beat of the oars. The breeze was full in his face.
If this was a mistake, he thought, it was a bad one. But it was too late now.
14
Across the glittering water, the two lines of ships closed steadily. To his right, Castus saw Bonitus’s ships moving fast to outflank the enemy.
‘Give the order to evade,’ he shouted. The hornblower sounded the call, and the signalling ships along the line repeated it. At once the advancing Constantinian line broke, the galleys bunching together, still surging forward as they steered in columns for the gaps between the oncoming enemy vessels. The powerful impetus of the enemy attack allowed them little chance to alter course, their charge carrying them on straight through the squadron as the smaller galleys dodged aside. Archers were loosing arrows from every deck, the air flickering with missiles.
‘Aim for the helmsmen!’ Castus shouted. He could see the pivot-mounted ballista in the bow already turning, the mechanism clicking as the crew winched back the slide. Two arrows struck the rail and the deck at his feet, and he flinched. Eumolpius moved around to cover him, raising the shield; another arrow struck it at once.
One of the enemy triremes was coming up fast, passing through the front line with a great wash of foam across her bows. Castus heard the ballista loose a shot; he watched the bolt streak across the sky and narrowly miss the helm of the enemy ship. Then another missile, a catapult stone, came whipping in from the far side and struck the trireme’s steering oars. Shattered wood flew, and the helmsman was down. Noise of cheering across the waves.
Most of the light galleys had darted through the front lines of the enemy attack; they turned in formation, rapid and agile, to bear down on the bigger ships from the rear. Castus saw the enemy triremes trying to slow, to back oars, but his own galleys had the current in their favour now. The battle had shifted from a direct confrontation to a swirl of manoeuvre, evasion and ambush.
Over to his left, he saw the lead ship of the enemy centre, a green monster of a trireme with a pair of glaring eyes painted on her bows and a gilded crocodile for a figurehead. As he watched, the ship seemed to slew in the water as one side backed oars; the heavy vessel turned, faster than Castus would have thought possible.
One long pull, and the heavy bronze-plated prow of the green trireme slammed obliquely into the one of the advancing triaconters; she struck the lighter ship on the bow quarter, splitting the hull with a rending crash of timber. Barely slowing, the big ship powered on straight through the wreckage, smashing the galley under her ram. Shattered oars threshed from the water, and Castus saw the screaming men swallowed by the waves. A terrible sight: the shock stilled him for a moment, then his anguish turned to rage.
‘The green ship with the crocodile prow,’ he shouted to Dexippus.
‘We’re on it,’ the navarch said. The helmsman was already working his oars, turning the Hippocampus in a broad arc, white foam in her wake, her deck heeling. To the right, two of the Frankish boats had clashed with an enemy trireme, the oarsmen rushing their narrow keel up against the oar banks of the bigger ship. The trireme’s oars rose and thrashed, trying to beat them back; one of the Frankish galleys capsized, spilling men into the water. The other managed to slam her keel spur over the oars, the slim hull rising like a ramp as the oar-shafts shattered beneath it. With a bellowing roar, the Franks hurled grappling hooks, then scrambled forward from their benches to assault the enemy deck.
‘Dominus,’ Dexippus called, and pointed away to the left. Castus gripped the rail, steadying himself against the heel of the deck. The green trireme had turned further, aiming to cut back between the lines of the Constantinian squadron. Already her bows had raked through the oar banks of a triaconter, smashing the shafts like a handful of dry straw. But her speed had dropped as she turned against the current, and now two more galleys, the triaconters Alkedo and Charybdis, were closing on her beam, their bow artillery hurling bolts and stones at the men on her deck.
‘Closer?’ Dexippus asked.
‘Closer.’
The archers on the deck of the trireme were pelting arrows down at the two galleys approaching on their beam as Hippocampus moved up on the far side. Castus watched the enemy deck; not too many marines up there, but he saw the ballistae mounted at bow and stern pivot in their direction.
‘Guard yourselves,’ he said. ‘Eumolpius – shield!’
Eumolpius dipped past him, swinging the shield around to his far side. He staggered slightly as the deck pitched, and before he could straighten up the back of his head exploded.
Castus heard the scream from behind him, but for a few long heartbeats he was stunned. Pinkish blood and brain matter was sprayed across his chest. The orderly’s body had dropped forward against the rail; the catapult stone that had killed him had come in low, skipping off the waves, and missed Castus by a hand’s span. When he glanced back, Castus saw the helmsman standing bolt upright, his face white with shock. Just behind him, Dexippus lay across the platform with his blood and viscera covering the timbers of the stern. The same stone that had killed Eumolpius had struck him in the stomach and almost torn him in half.
Kneeling, Castus lifted the body of his orderly. The back of Eumolpius’s skull was gone, but his face was intact, still wearing an expression of mild surprise. Castus exhaled in a dull grunt. He had seen men die around him since his youth, but this death had been so sudden, so close… Eumolpius had been his orderly for over ten years. Castus had freed him from slavery; he had become part of the family. Grief blanked his mind.
‘Dominus!’ the helmsman was crying. ‘Dominus – your orders?’
With a shudder, Castus shook himself from his crouch. Felix was beside him now, taking Eumolpius’s body from his arms with rough tenderness. But it was the death of the navarch that had thrown the crew into confusion; the Hippocampus was wallowing, oars clashing, and the big green trireme was gathering pace again, turning steadily.
Castus wiped a hand across his face, feeling the wet blood smearing across his cheek. All around him the battle had turned into chaos. No order among the milling vessels, no formation remained. Between the hulls the sea was a choppy swell of foam, fragments of floating wreckage and bodies. Smoke was billowing across the waves: several of the ships upwind were on fire.
He stared at the green trireme. He could read the Greek letters gilded on the bow quarter now: Krokodilos. One of the two triaconters was keeping up the attack, trying to grapple the bigger ship, but Castus saw that the other had been driven back, her oar benches heaped with dead and injured men. Dark rage boiled inside him, seething through the glaze of grief and shock.
‘Helmsman,’ he shouted. ‘I want that big green fucker!’
The helmsman nodded quickly as Castus pushed his way forward, past Ursio and Felix and onto the central gangway.
‘We’re going up against the trireme!’ he called, in his battlefield voice, his words reaching Modestus at the prow. ‘Those bastards killed your navarch – we’re taking her and we’re slaughtering every last man aboard her! Are you ready?’
‘READY!’ the shout came back at once.
Castus knelt beside the rowing master at the aft starboard bench. ‘I’ll need you to direct the other oarsmen,’ he said, urgency grating in his voice.
‘Can do, strategos,’ the rowing master said through his teeth. Castus could see the ferocity in his eyes – all the men on the benches had the same look.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked.
‘Epigonus, strategos.’
‘Call the strokes, Epigonus: you know the commands better than me. We go in hard and fast against their beam then storm them over the oar banks. I’ll need some of your men to follow my marines. Understood?’
‘No problem. We’ll back oars then rush them. Just give the signal.’
He leaned back and yelled a command over his shoulder, and with a grunt of effort the oarsmen pushed at their oars, sending the galley back in the water and away from the trireme. Castus could see the helmsman holding tight to the steering oars, guiding them.
‘Just one thing, strategos,’ Epigonus called in a gruff shout as he pulled his oar. ‘We need to get those bodies over the side. Custom of the sea.’
Castus nodded, gulping back his dismay. He glanced at Eumolpius’s body, but Ursio was already there; one of the deckhands helped him, and within moments the bodies of the orderly and the navarch were gone.
‘On my command,’ Castus yelled. He could see Modestus at the bow, raising his hand, the artillery crew loading a new bolt onto the ballista slide, all the troops along the gangway with shields raised above them. The oarsmen braced on the benches, oars lifted from the water. All ready.
‘Forward!’
The rowing master cried out the stroke, and the backwards drift of the galley halted suddenly and then reversed. A wave burst across the stern, washing the blood from the aft deck, then the narrow hull began gathering speed as the rhythm of the oarsmen’s chant increased.
They were drawing closer to the Krokodilos once more now. The men on the trireme’s deck had seen them, the archers leaning from the rail to shoot down at the approaching galley. Arrows spat into the water, and thudded into the deck planking. Castus saw one of the oarsmen shot through the shoulder, his oar trailing and clashing against the others until it slipped between the tholes. With effort, he took up the shield that Eumolpius had dropped. An awkward grip with the three fingers of his left hand, but he held it tight and lifted it above him. Arrows banged into the shield boards.
A snap from the deck of the trireme as the big stone-throwing catapult released. Castus heard the missile whoosh in the air near his head and strike the stern behind him. Then Epigonus gave another shout, the oarsmen bent forward and hauled, and the galley leaped forward in the water.
Javelins and slingshot from the enemy deck. The men on the gangway of the Hippocampus were returning the barrage. Felix stood up, whirled his sling and cast: Castus saw one of the catapult crew knocked sideways as the shot hit him. A second stone, tripped too soon from the machine, spun up into the air. The Krokodilos still had all three banks of oars in the water, but as the galley charged for her side Castus could hear the shouts of command from the enclosed rowing deck. The upper bank began to slide inboard, too slowly.
‘Brace yourselves!’ the helmsman cried. The troops on the gangway were scrambling towards the stern, lifting the bows and the keel spur higher in the water. Castus just had time to fling himself down on his hands and knees before the Hippocampus collided with the oar bank of the big trireme. Timbers wailed, shafts shattered; screams of men crushed by their own oar handles or sliced by exploding wood came from inside the hull, and the long keel of the galley rode up over the remaining oars until her spur rammed into the grilles of the rowing deck. No mercy now.
