The Road To War Page 13
*
These discussions took place amid the embarkation and the rituals associated with it, a process which had taken all yesterday and most of today. Which, as the captain and navigator explained, was much to their advantage: primarily it meant that they were setting off late-afternoon just at the top of a full tide, whose steady fall would hasten their exit, while still leaving sufficient water beneath them to keep them safe from rocks and shoals. Years of experience supported by the notes in their periploi sailing manuals suggested that the crossing would take between sixteen and twenty hours, depending on tides, currents, water, wind and weather. It was all very well leaving Brundisium in gathering darkness, but trying to get into Dyrrhachium in anything less than broad daylight – and ideally on a tide swelling up towards full – would be a dangerous undertaking indeed. For, although the Macedonian port city sat at the top of a wide and welcoming bay, the harbour entrance was narrow – guarded by a breakwater and a lengthy jetty which almost met at their tips like the claws of a gigantic crab. So they proposed to complete most of the crossing in the dark, hopefully guided by the stars, reaching their destination tomorrow morning. If the night was overcast and the stars invisible, they would be able to complete their final approach guided by the landmarks along the Macedonian coast.
Artemidorus was hopeful that the break in the weather would last. The clouds were high, and blowing away to the east. The darkening sea ahead a silvery mirror scored with shadows and white dashes where the moderating waves broke into diminishing puddles of foam. All was set fair for a clear, cold night with crystal skies and stars like pearls.
On that thought, Artemidorus felt the first firm puff of wind against his left cheek. A thunder of stirring sailcloth drowned the muttering of the soldiers further down the deck. He turned to his right, looking upwards, to see the great belly of the sail fill as the lusty song from below was for a moment overcome by the creaking of mast and yards, the squeal and hum of sheets and halyards – and the bellows of the deck-crew fighting to adjust them as the trireme came fully under way. The tow rope tautened and screamed, spraying drops of salt water like Niobe’s tears as she wept for the slaughter of her children. For an instant Galene’s majestic progress slowed. Everyone aboard, it seemed, looked either at the screaming tow-rope or the groaning mast. Then the drag on her eased and she gathered way again. He turned, looking back past the incurving sternpost, just in time to see the huge sail of the oneraria cargo ship behind them fill as well. The tow-rope slackened, and the crewmen ran to pull it in as the sailhandlers tied their line off. A glance to northward showed Aegeon and her cargo-vessel going through the same. Tow-rope slackening as great sails bellied out.
And as it did so, all of Artemidorus’ concerns about the past and worries about the future seemed to slide into the background.
They were fully under way at last.
iii
Cena was cold rations that evening. Galene had facilities to cook hot food, but she was so crowded that the captain decided a fire large enough to serve them all would be too much of a danger. Fire used for anything less important than signalling was forbidden. So the braziers remained unlit while the lanterns and flambeaux which lit vital areas and warned other shipping of Galene’s approach were ignited and swung aloft. They were all in position soon after sunset and the light on the pharos at Brundisium shone out low on the shadowy horizon behind them.
Everyone except the oarsmen gathered as the evening slid rapidly toward full night, sharing tough emer bread baked in Brundisium that morning, olives and cheese, cold chicken and pickled fish. Washing it with water – for the captain and the centurion wisely forbade wine on board. The rowers were fed and watered at their places after they had stowed their oars and settled. Then, everyone aboard turned to their plans for the night voyage – without baths or much in the way of entertainment.
Most of the passengers would be sleeping in the marines’ accommodation below – but a few remained on the deck, protected from the wintery chill by their sagae soldiers’ cloaks. The oarsmen prepared to sleep on their benches, wrapping their arms around each-other for warmth, until their efforts would be required in the morning as they approached the harbour.
The sailors, captain and navigator ate and drank while standing at their posts and did not sleep at all. While the ship was under way, they needed to attend the sail and rigging constantly – check their position and course against the stars, ensuring that their heading was that dictated by the sailing notes. There was a brief discussion as to whether they should send watchkeepers to the bow. But as the captain observed, only someone as mad as they were would be out on a night this early in the season. And no-one he could think of was anywhere near as mad as that.
Artemidorus chose to stay awake with the navigators, too excited to contemplate sleeping in any case. The rest of his command were housed in the makeshift cabins below, though by no means all of them used the facility – Gaius Licinius’ senior marines double-bunking to make room.
Quintus ate nothing at cena. Instead he took his modest ration of food and drink then threw it directly over the side as an offering to Poseidon. ‘That’s where it was going in any case,’ he said. ‘This way I just save time and effort.’ Like Artemidorus, he remained on deck, close to the side-rail. But he moved to the stern where the men controlling the vessel stood under a blazing torch and a lantern hanging from the inward curve of the sternpost, except when the captain sent men forward to adjust the rigging or the gubernator walked into the darkness to clear his vision and consult the stars. Puella also came up to stand with Artemidorus. They settled silently side by side and the centurion began to wonder if he was imagining the air of tension that had been lying between them since he had shown that unexpectedly powerful reaction to the beautiful brothel-keeper Suadela’s touch. He reached out to slide an arm around her, but she moved away, glancing meaningfully at the group of men standing under the light at the ship’s stern.
*
Artemidorus nodded, turned and walked purposefully down the deck, past the sleeping bodies there, noting Quintus and Hercules amongst them, and on down to the deserted bow with its incurving stempost from which hung another lantern large enough to throw a puddle of golden light amid the shadows of the deck and the vastness of the darkness beyond.
He arrived at the point of the bow and stood, hands on the rail, simply awed by the enormity of the night. He had forgotten how the low flat line of the horizon on a calm sea out of sight of land could make the sky seem so immense. The numberless stars seemed to crackle as they burned, and a full moon was rising above invisible Macedonia dead ahead. As he watched, entranced, it laid a silvery track across the sea – a phantom path for the trireme to follow as it surged onward, pushed by that steady westerly wind. Out here, the night gathered round him, threatening to overwhelm his senses. The wind blowing at his back was warm and occasionally carried the scent of the oil from the lantern hanging above his head. It sang in the rigging and seemed to enhance the rumble of the waves. His body swayed to the dictates of Galene’s long hull as she rode the waves, pitching slightly, rolling occasionally, creaking and groaning as she did so.
There came a stirring in the shadows and Puella materialised at his side as though she was the very spirit of the night. Her body slid hard against him and his own body reacted forcefully. He took her in his arms, as she crushed his body to hers. Her skin seemed to burn against his even through the clothing they both were wearing. He glanced over her shoulder in search of a comfortable place for them to make love. But, apart from the bare boards of the deck, there were only the coils of rope lying ready to be attached to the anchor, a harbour buoy or the jetty. He felt a surge of frustration as she moved against him, breathless with longing. He knew she preferred to make love lying down, but circumstances and desire dictated that they would probably have to do it standing. Controlled by forces as irresistible as those governing the vessel they were riding.
‘Shall we go below?’ he whisper
ed.
‘No,’ she answered. ‘Here. Now!’
Moving together, they eased away from the puddle of light beneath the lantern into the darkest shadows available, becoming two shapes of utter blackness beneath the gleam of the moon and the stars. Invisible, even to the legionaries lying on the deck midship – had any of them still been awake – they leaned back against the bow-rail, their hands busy with underwear as they both sought to raise their tunics and remove any hindrances to their desire. With the rail across her lower back, Puella arched her body, thrusting her hips forward, to meet his answering movement. The whole of their world shrunk to the feelings that their desire unleashed.
Which was why neither of them saw or heard the approach of the second vessel running without lights or warning of any sort straight across the trireme’s path.
Until, with a thunderous explosion of sound and an earthquake shudder of impact, the two vessels came together, Galene’s ram smashing through the other ship’s side. The blade of her high prow smashing mast, sail and rigging away as the unfortunate craft was ripped open, rolled over and ridden down.
iv
Galene hesitated, her mast groaning and rigging humming with the strain, then thrust onwards through the wreckage, unstoppable under the steady power of the wind in her huge square sail. The couple on the foredeck staggered, almost fell in a tangle of limbs and clothing. Tore themselves apart even as the first legionaries sprang awake, and the captain came rushing forward calling, ‘What was that?’
The rumbling scraping of wreckage against his ship’s sides continued; joined by shouts, screams, faint and helpless calls for aid that also swept down the ship’s length, then rapidly began to fade astern into silence. Sailors traditionally never learned to swim, thought Artemidorus grimly. To swim was to tempt the gods. To swim was to prolong the agony and put off the inevitable. To risk a death far worse than drowning – between the jaws of a shark, or any other of the monsters that peopled the terrible deep.
Straightening his tunic as he ran, Artemidorus made it to the bow with Puella close behind. The impact set the lantern swinging and the beam of brightness enhanced the light of the moon. The last splinters and tatters whirled away down the trireme’s side. But neither of them noticed this, nor the shouting figures helplessly entangled in the rigging that bound much of the mess of mast and spars together.
Because there was a man directly below them, clinging to the ram itself.
By some little joke of Poseidon, he had managed to scramble onto the metal-bound out-trust which was ten pedes feet in length and three wide. But Galene was not a youthful vessel and, although her long hull had been well-enough maintained, the ram was covered in weed and barnacles, making its surface treacherously slippery. On the other hand, the impact had scraped some areas clear of everything down to the bare metal. So the sailor’s condition remained teasingly in the hands of the Sea God, as the waves through which the trireme was driving hit the helpless survivor like the blows of a pugil armed with spiked boxing gloves.
The captain arrived and noted that there was no obvious damage to his own vessel with one glance. Then turned and ran back through the stirring crowd of legionaries, calling to the helmsmen, ‘All’s well up here but don’t get the steering oar tangled in whatever floats past! Send the sailhandlers to check the mast and rigging. And send a party below to check the bow from the inside just in case,’ all apparently without even registering the existence of the survivor or his perilous position.
Meanwhile, Artemidorus grabbed the nearest coil of rope and began to wind the end round his waist. Seeing what he was planning, Puella said, ‘No. I have much of your strength but only half your weight. I will go down to him and you can pull us both up. There should be men to help by the time I have him safely.’
Artemidorus nodded and looped the rope raound her slim waist, cinching it tight. She clambered nimbly over the rail by the stempost, the light of the swinging lantern revealing for an instant that she had not replaced her underwear. He passed the rope round the small of his back, walked the few steps to the rail she had just climbed over and braced himself against it as her weight came onto the line.
‘Lower me,’ she called. ‘Do it quickly!’
*
The trireme’s prow was by no means a simple piece of marine design. It was adorned with a range of decoration meant to win the help of the goddess of calm waters after whom the ship Galene was named and the creature most closely associated with her. Above the huge main ram, there was a second, smaller ram, the head of a dolphin, cast in the same metal as that covering the main ram itself, which projected for six feet including its beak. Above that there were wreaths cast in metal and others carved in wood as offerings to the goddess, whose divine head was carved on the incurving stempost looking straight ahead – just like the eyes painted on the vessel’s sides immediately behind the prow.
Artemidorus was able to watch Puella as she scrambled down the forecastle using these as a makeshift ladder. Hands on the rails, feet on the uppermost wooden wreath as she paused before stepping onto the metal wreath below then reaching down to feel for the out-thrust of the dolphin’s head. Then she hesitated for a moment as the spray, exploding upwards from the brutal wave-wash, started to soak her, moulding her tunic to her body as though the cloth were a layer of paint.
The lone survivor realised she was there at this point as she was less than ten feet above him. He could hear her over the smash and wash of the waves around him as she called to Artemidorus, ‘More rope!’ Her figure lit by the beams of the low moon. The shadows cast in contrast to the moonlight – hoped Artemidorus as he obeyed her curt instruction – preserving her modesty from the stranger staring in wonder straight up her clinging tunic. Then her weight came fully on the rope as she steadied herself on the dolphin’s head and swung down to come within the stranger’s reach – if he dared to stand erect on the unsteady, slippery, wave-washed little platform.
As Puella began to scramble down the last few feet, he pulled himself to his knees and reached up with one hand – the other still gripping the decorated metal of the cutwater. Then, once his hand had closed round her ankle he let go of the cutwater, heaved himself erect and clasped her round the waist, burying his face in the small of her back, immediately above the swell of her buttocks.
Artemidorus staggered as the weight on the line wrapped round him more than doubled, pressing him against the rail as though threatening to cut him in half at the waist. But then Quintus’ hand closed on the rope followed by Hercules’ a heartbeat later. The three men shared the burden and slowly began to pull the stranger and his rescuer up out of danger.
iv
‘My name is User,’ he said, later, when they had all got their breath back.
‘User,’ said the captain – to whom they had taken him.
‘User,’ confirmed the shipwrecked sailor. His voice a deep rumble, as though his massive chest were a hollow cavern.
His name told Artemidorus several things. First, he was most likely to be Egyptian in spite of the way he looked. A supposition supported by the heavily accented Greek and sketchy Latin he had employed to thank Puella, and by the manner in which he was dressed. Secondly, that whoever named him – parents, sponsors, priests – had been disturbingly prescient. User was Egyptian for ‘Strong’. And so he was. He stood almost as tall as Hercules. His shoulders were broad, his chest deep. If his belly was flat and his hips narrow, then the muscles of his torso and thighs gave the lie to any thought that he might be starved or scrawny, as did the muscles of his arms, which ended in huge, powerful hands.
Even his face was muscular. His forehead was furrowed with lively wrinkles that deepened whenever he thought or spoke. His thick black eyebrows overhung his deep-set dark brown eyes, moving with the same muscularity as his forehead. His nose was long and straight but spread into powerful, bullish nostrils. His lips were thick and strongly formed. His chin was square and stubbled with black beard shot through with silver that
matched the close-cropped curls on the great dome of his skull.
He wore a linen skirt that reached his knees beneath a loose fitting linen robe the colour of sand. He wore no jewellery – no necklet, bangles or armbands, cuffs or rings. Also he wore a simple leather belt and no weapons. However, this strange survivor was clearly no mere deck-hand or oarsman. He was almost certainly the captain or the pilot at least. Not, he thought, a centurion like Gaius Licinius, though there was no denying his almost military air of command. So, more likely, a merchant owner sailing with one of his trading vessels looking for business. Or, of course, a pirate out seeking prey. But he must be the owner and commander of an Egyptian vessel of some kind, sailing secretly and without lights this far north for some probably nefarious reason. A man worth watching. His whole presence seemed to pulse with power which became unashamedly sexual when he looked at his beautiful rescuer, who was in turn regarding him with little less than wonder. For, unlike almost everyone she had met in her life so far, User’s skin was even darker than hers.
‘I thank you for saving me,’ User continued. ‘Even though it was you who ran me down, destroyed my ship and killed my crew.’ His gaze rested on Puella for the first part of the statement as he bowed to her and kissed his fingertips – and on the rest of them for the second part as he came erect and looked down at them. Artemidorus noted that there was little sign on that statuesque ebony face of any sorrow for the dead men left bobbing in – or sinking beneath – the trireme’s wake.
*
There was no hope of letting the wind out of the sail, running out the oars, turning the ship around and going to search for survivors. User did not ask it and neither the captain nor his pilot offered to try. So Galene ploughed on along the track left by the rising moon until it faded. And then, guided by the stars, sailed on as everyone aboard returned to what they had been doing before the collision. Except for Artemidorus and Puella; all passion quenched, they sat under the lantern hanging from the stempost with the man they had rescued and talked quietly – as the suspicious spy watched for the slightest sign of duplicity or evasion in the Egyptian’s story. While observing the expression in those dark eyes whenever they rested on Puella. And the beautiful woman simply looked at the man she had saved like a mother watching her first-born child.