I remained at my post, rubbing my aching belly and silently begging God to restore my strength: enough, at least, to give a reasonable account of myself in the fight. Terrified of being dragged under if I fell into the sea, I had discarded my mail shirt, and wore only my helmet and an iron-rimmed buckler strapped to my left arm for protection.
The Greek captain suddenly appeared at my side. “Recovered?” he asked, giving me a start.
“Not really,” I replied with a grimace, “the sea has always been my bane. Poseidon must have a grudge against me.”
He gave a mirthless little chuckle. “Got any more questions for me? I noticed you staring at the fleet.”
I looked at him warily, but he seemed friendly enough, and not about to have the skin flayed from my back.
“Well, look,” I said, pointing to the north, “shouldn’t our galleys be reducing sail? At this rate, we’re going to be left behind.”
The bulk of our fleet was indeed speeding away, towards the barely visible line of the Italian coast. It was a bright, blustery Autumn day, and the wind was in their favour.
“Yes,” replied the captain, plucking at his greasy beard, “won’t we just?”
The hairs bristled on the back of my neck as the import of his words sank in. My reply was cut off as the damned ship gave a sudden lurch, almost bowling me off my feet.
His brawny arm shot out to seize my arm. “Steady,” he said, “can’t have you falling overboard. We’ll have need of every man soon enough, even a sickly land-crawler like you.”
“Bait,” he added before I could ask the obvious question, “our admiral is dangling us before the Goths like a prime bit of meat, in the hope they snap us up.”
I gaped at him, and at the distant blood-red sail of John’s flagship.
“Bastard,” I spat. He was deliberately sacrificing the transports, and me into the bargain.
In hindsight, his strategy was sound. John was directing the fleet according to his soldier’s instincts, deliberately exposing his flank to lure the enemy into a fatal charge.
At the time, with my stomach churning and my blood boiling, I was in no mood to appreciate his clever tactics. The captain, on the other hand, appeared strangely indifferent.
“It was this, or hang,” he said with a crooked grin, “me and my crew are all pirates, and should have gone to the gallows last week. John spared our lives on condition we took service aboard his death-ships.”
“The other transports are the same,” he added, “all crewed by the scum of the sea.”
“If the Goths descend on us, we will all die,” I said.
“Maybe. They might take us prisoner, or we can try and swim for it. We have a small chance – a better chance, at least, than the gallows offers.”
I could do nothing but wait, stranded aboard the lumbering transport with its crew of condemned sea-rats. The remainder of our fleet was almost invisible now, a row of tiny sails bobbing on the far horizon to the north-west.
My hope was that the Goths would refuse John’s bait. Another hour or so passed. I spent the time offering up multitudes of silent prayers, but God is endlessly fickle, and chose to ignore me.
“Enemy sighted!” bawled the look-out from his vantage point at the top of the mainmast, “off the port bow, there!”
I lurched across to the port side of the maindeck, and joined the crewmen staring out to sea, towards the west.
“Look there,” growled a villainous-looking Cilician, all scars and stubble and barely suppressed aggression, “seven orange sails. Galleys, curse them, with a double bank of oars apiece.”
I looked where he pointed, and saw them clear enough. Seven Gothic warships bearing down on us from the west. The wind was against them, but they were still ploughing through the water at a fair speed, thanks to their oars.
I made some swift calculations. The enemy ships were of a roughly equal size to our galleys, and probably carried some two score fighting men apiece, besides the crew and oarsmen.
Our transports carried no more than twenty crewmen. They were a tough-looking set, as pirates tend to be, but hopelessly outnumbered. We couldn’t hope to make much of a fight of it.
The captain had no thoughts of surrender. “Don’t just stand there gawping!” he bawled, “fetch your weapons, you worthless sons of pigs, and prepare to repel boarders!”
My heart sank as I watched his men scramble to arm. John hadn’t supplied them with much – why bother wasting decent gear on the condemned? – and most could lay their hands on nothing better than a dagger and light throwing javelin. Five had bows and a sheaf of arrows apiece. There was no armour aboard, and only the captain and his first mate were fortunate enough to have helmets and shields.
I saw frantic activity aboard our fellow transports, as the men aboard them prepared to die. The dry heaving in my guts was replaced by the familiar swelling of fear, and I badly needed to void my bladder.
Fear and a desire to piss were preferable to all-consuming sickness, and I felt some of my strength return. Not much, but enough (I hoped) to strike a blow or two before the end.
The steady thump-thump-thump of drums sounded across the water, pounding out the rhythm for the oarsmen aboard the Gothic ships. They would have been slaves, many of them Roman soldiers taken prisoner during the recent wars. Now they were forced to bring about the doom of their countrymen.
My heart thumped in time with the drums. I could seldom recall feeling so nervous before a fight, but I was ill, and old, and had not seen action for over ten years. Nor had I ever fought at sea, trying to keep my footing on the heaving deck of a ship.
“Javelin-men on the port side,” the captain’s harsh voice barked from above, “archers with me on the foredeck. Move, you sea-dung.”
Bare feet drummed across the planking of the deck as his crew rushed to obey. None seemed to care what I did, so I retreated to the mainmast and rested my back against the wood, hoping it would aid my balance.
Guttural yells and insults drifted across the water. The galleys were closing in now, so near I could see the rows of fierce, bearded faces under spiked helmets lining their decks.
The leading ship, also the largest, had a kind of raised tower or castle near the stern. A giant banner displaying two crossed red axes against a black field flew from its timber battlements. I saw a knot of Gothic officers standing under the banner. One of them, a towering figure in gleaming scale mail and a rich blue cloak, was Indulf, a former mercenary in the Roman army who had defected to the Goths. Totila had made him co-admiral of the fleet.
For all his talents, Totila was a poor judge of character. Indulf was a thief and a pirate, as well as a traitor, and his first instinct was to go for easy plunder instead of following orders.
John the Sanguinary’s ploy had worked. Seeing the bait dangled before his eyes, Indulf had lunged at it like a starving dog, with no thought for the consequences, or the rest of the Roman fleet.
This was small comfort for us, who stood in the pirate’s way.
“’Ware arrows!” bellowed the first mate. The Gothic archers packed onto the foredeck of the leading galley were bending their bows, aiming upwards to send their shafts sailing high across the water, down on our heads.
I crouched beside the mainmast, raising my pathetic little buckler for all the protection it offered. The thumping of the blasted drums was like thunder in my ears. I was consumed by terror, and struggled to retain control of my straining bladder.
The crew scattered under the lethal hail of arrows. One or two were unlucky, and shrieks of pain swept across the deck. My horses, still crammed into the hold below, heard the dreadful cries and responded in kind. The air filled with the noise of dying men and frightened animals, pounding drums, splashing oars, the zip and hiss of arrows, and the triumphant war-songs of the Goths.
“Shoot!” I heard our captain howl, “give the bastards some of their own gruel!” but resisted the urge to look up: every old soldier knows that is the surest way to rec
eive an arrow in the eye.
The singing of the Goths rose to a great shout, and a chorus of war-yells. I risked a glance up, and saw the rain of arrows had stopped. Their flagship was slowly turning about to present her starboard flank to us, so her archers and javelin throwers could aim downwards and sweep our deck clean before boarding.
Seen close to, the enemy flagship was huge. Her maindeck loomed over us, packed with cheering warriors, working themselves up into a killing frenzy.
Four of our men lay scattered about the deck, twitching in their death-throes, bodies feathered with arrows. I observed the flights on the Gothic arrows were dyed red, the kind of irrelevant detail that men often notice in the heat of battle, as a distraction from their terror.
Another storm of arrows engulfed our ship, along with javelins and throwing darts. More screams. Three more of our men were ushered into death’s embrace, and our captain’s flow of orders were abruptly cut off.
I saw him clutching at an arrow in his throat, his face suffused with pain and rage. He staggered, trying manfully to pull the arrow free, lost his balance and toppled over the side. He vanished, though I heard a distant splash as his body crashed into the sea. Poseidon had claimed another victim.
Deprived of their leader, the crew’s fragile discipline crumbled away. Some flung themselves into the sea after him, hurling away their weapons and leaping over the side. Others ran below to hide, or stood alone or in little groups, resolved to fight to the death.
Run or hide, stand or swim, death would come for them all. And me. I stood up, shivering and babbling prayers, and braced myself against the mast.
Our steersman had been killed, and no-one had replaced him at the tiller. The ship was starting to drift. Then the Goths hurled their grappling irons. The steel claws bit, and held fast, and our little helpless transport was dragged into the deadly embrace of their flagship.
Waves of Gothic warriors dropped aboard, howling like demons. They looked formidable enough, tall, long-haired men with shields and hatchets, their blue eyes flashing fire, but I had faced them before.
One of them spotted me and came bounding in for the kill. He was young, with just a downy scrap of reddish beard on his chin, and eager to impress his comrades.
Too eager, and clumsy. His eyes were wild, and the veins pounded in the side of his neck. I advanced to meet him, planting my feet wide to guard against the pitch and roll of the ship.
His hatchet flashed through the air, aiming at my head. Once, I would have easily sidestepped the blow, but now was obliged to get my left arm up and deflect it with my buckler.
The shock of the impact sent jolts of pain coursing up my arm. I bit back a scream and stepped inside his guard, legionary-style, stabbing my sword at his exposed belly. Sharp steel ripped through the thin covering of his deerhide jerkin, up through his guts and into his heart.
I twisted out the blade, and his innards swiftly followed, a hot gush of wet, glistening, worm-like objects. He gurgled and crumpled into a heap, clutching feebly at the hole in his belly even as the fierce glow in his eyes faded and died.
Three of his comrades rushed at me, howling for vengeance. Even in my prime, I could not have fought so many, and chose the wiser part of valour. I turned and ran, or rather stumbled, tripping over a loose coil of rope and falling flat on my face.
I moaned in fear, rolling onto my side and expecting the steel kiss of a Gothic blade in my flesh. God saw fit to throw a Cilician in the path of my would-be killers, a huge man, naked save for a breech-clout, wielding a cudgel with steel ingots hammered into its head.
He laid into the Goths with gusto, while I crawled towards the hatch leading to the hold. My horses were still shrieking, and a series of bangs and thumps from below told me that a few had broken loose from their pens.
Rather than allow my stock to fall into barbarian hands, I intended to cut all their throats before doing the same to mine.
The strange duality between Elene’s death, and the one I meant for myself, struck me as I reached for the ladder. She had ended her life in water, and so would I. Perhaps our shades would meet in whatever afterlife was reserved for suicides – some dark corner of Hell, probably – and settle our differences at last.
The shrieks of dying men echoed inside my head as I crept down the rungs of the ladder, mingled with oaths and shouts and the crunch of steel. Some of the crew had chosen to die hard and drag a few Goths down to the underworld with them.
I was nearly on the last rung before a great shadow blotted out the light streaming through the hatch above. For a second or two I was in total darkness, and then there was a shattering crash, the ship sagged violently to port, and I was hurled sideways off the ladder.
An ear-splitting animal scream tore through my skull as I landed heavily on the body of a fallen horse. She had broken loose from her pen, or been knocked out of it, and broken two legs as she skidded wildly across the deck. For a moment we were tangled up together, a mutually terrified mess of flailing limbs and bodies, until I managed to roll clear.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I found myself gasping, even though one of her hoofs had come within an inch of gelding me.
Her pain-filled eyes rolled wildly inside her beautiful sleek head, but I had no time for pity. Some gigantic missile had smashed a great hole in the foredeck, passed straight through the hull and the deck below, fatally holing the ship below the waterline.
Greenish seawater was now pouring in through the rent, and the vessel listing badly to port. The ominous creak of timbers placed under impossible strain echoed through the hold. Soon they would begin to snap and shatter, and the ship would split clean in half, spilling her contents into the deep.
I had to get out before she went down. Whimpering, I clawed my way up the slanting deck, clambering over my dying horse and reaching out for the ladder.
My left arm was still numb from deflecting the Goth’s hatchet, and felt like it might twist from the socket. Gasping with effort, black spots dancing before my eyes, I managed to curl my fingers round the side of the ladder.
The sound of cracking timber and rushing water was deafening. Pain screeched up the length of my arm as I grimly clung on, like a monkey dangling from a branch. The shuddering horse slid away from under me as the deck tipped again, and the fingers of my right hand curled around the lowest rung.
Now I was hanging almost vertically, with the world dropping away below me: crates and barrels and struggling horses and livestock were swept downwards, into the insatiable maw of the boiling sea.
Death beckoned. I fancied I could almost see his grinning spectre, crooking a bony finger at me.
“Not yet, you damned ghoul,” I croaked, “go back to your abyss!”
The spectre faded. Sheer desperation lent me the strength to drag myself up the ladder. Fires raged inside my ageing limbs, tendons and sinews stretched to their limits. The pain was unbearable. The alternative was death by drowning, the stuff of my nightmares.
Then the light was blotted out again. I fought my way upwards in pitch darkness, wincing as the crumbling ship was rocked by the impact of another shattering crash. Somehow she held together, but was sinking fast, dragged inexorably down by the sheer weight of water flooding her mangled hull.
I emerged from one kind of Hell, only to find myself in another. The maindeck rose above me like a timber wall, and then fell away again as the sea hurled the ship to starboard.
The planking was slick with blood and strewn with corpses and dying men. Their bodies rolled about the deck, but otherwise the ship was deserted. The few surviving crewmen had jumped overboard, while the Goths had fled back to their own vessel. There was no easy plunder to be had here, only death.
I heaved myself up the ladder and flopped onto deck. The bulk of the Gothic flagship still loomed to the west, and I could see their crew hurriedly sawing through the ropes of the grappling irons that still bound the two vessels together.
Another shadow flew over my head, like a g
reat bird, briefly veiling the sun. This time it missed the transport and smashed into the hull of the Gothic ship, raising a great cloud of shattered timbers and a spray of blood.
It was no bird, but a load of rocks packed inside a net. The rocks broke and scattered on impact, shredding a number of luckless Gothic warriors and spreading fear and panic aboard the flagship. She already bore the scars of previous direct hits, including a jagged hole in her stern, just above the waterline.
I crawled, flat on my belly, over the main deck towards the starboard rail. There I saw the dark shapes of Roman warships, scudding through the sea like a pack of hunting sharks.
The largest of our galleys had catapults and ballistae mounted on their foredecks. Two of these stood a little way off, bombarding Indulf’s ship with everything they had: rocks, flaming darts, baskets of burning coals. In their haste to destroy the enemy flagship, the crews of the Roman war machines were none too accurate, and had accidentally hit the transport while I was climbing down into the hold.
The Gothic admiral had no such artillery, and was powerless to respond: all he could do was cut free of the sinking transport, and try to escape before his vessel was reduced to a floating pile of rubbish.
I had my own difficulties to contend with. Gulping with fear, I peered over the side and spotted some floating barrels and caskets, newly escaped from the hold. There was also a horse or two, forlornly trying to swim to safety. Their heads were just above water, but we were miles from land. Soon their strength would give out, and Poseidon would drag them under to join his feast of the drowned.
My fingers were numb with cold and fear as I wrenched at the laces of my helmet. I cast it away, and my sword-belt, and kicked off my boots.
“I cannot drown,” I muttered, teeth chattering, “please God, do not let me drown.”
The dying ship gave another unexpected lurch, and almost tipped me overboard as I heaved myself over the rail. I looked down at the churning waters, closed my eyes, and with a final prayer let myself drop.
***
They fished me out after the battle was over, barely conscious and chilled to the bone. Two hours of floating in the sea, clinging to a wine barrel, does nothing for a man’s constitution.
Caesar's Sword: The Complete Campaigns Page 58
