Rome's Executioner (Vespasian)

by Robert Fabbri

  Seeing that the pirates were being slowly pushed back at the bow Vespasian ran up the deck to where the other trireme had fastened itself, broadside on, with grappling hooks to the Thracian ship. Here the wider front meant that more of the attackers had been able to board and the fighting was less one-sided. Having seen what happens when you let rhomphaia-wielding Thracians get in amongst you the pirates had formed a shield wall. Crouching low behind their shields, ducking beneath the deadly sweeps of the rhomphaiai, they took slow, steady paces forward and were pushing back the crew and marines, who were having difficulty holding their ground. On the flank of the fight closest to him, next to the rail, Vespasian spotted Sabinus and Magnus, both with shields captured in the last fight, standing shoulder to shoulder pushing back at the pirates’ wall; Sabinus mechanically worked his blade whilst Magnus attempted to wield his rhomphaia one-handed. Vespasian rushed to join them, taking care not to slip on the blood that flowed freely on the deck, and pushed in between his brother and the rail; he held his shield firmly in front of him and began jab and thrust.

  As the pirate line steadily advanced more of their mates were able to board behind, broadening it, until all sixty of the remaining crew were aboard, adding extra weight to the scrum and putting increasing pressure on the Thracians whose line was becoming thinner as it extended. A couple of the boarders had had their legs swept from under them and lay screaming on the deck, blood spurting from their freshly carved stumps, but otherwise their line remained intact.

  ‘This is no fucking good,’ Sabinus wheezed as he was forced to take another step back and almost losing his balance as the ship listed suddenly to its bow, ‘we’re sinking. We need to take their ship, not the other way round.’

  ‘We’ll wheel them so their backs are towards the other fight,’ Vespasian grunted as he stabbed again only to connect with a wooden shield. ‘Then the slaves could take them from behind.’

  ‘Or the pirates will just swarm all over the deck.’

  ‘Not if we co-ordinate it and do it very swiftly. Listen out for my shout then quickly give ground.’

  Sabinus nodded; Vespasian disengaged and rushed around the rear of the mêlée. He found Gaidres with Sitalces and Drenis hacking down on the tightly packed shield wall with brutal swipes of their rhomphaiai but doing little to stop its slow advance.

  ‘Gaidres, with me,’ he shouted. ‘Sitalces, keep the left of the line firm when the right falls back.’

  The huge Thracian shouted his acknowledgement and continued to beat ferociously down on the shield in front of him.

  With Gaidres closely following, Vespasian ran, downhill, to the mêlée at the bow. Bodies littered the deck. The ex-slaves’ furious onslaught had driven the pirates back, with heavy losses on both sides, on to their ship. Here they were fighting desperately to prevent their wild, long-haired opponents from boarding them, whilst the trireme’s rowers backed oars in an effort to extricate the ram from the quinquereme’s hull.

  ‘Gaidres, I need at least fifty of our rowers to follow me; can you control them?’

  ‘I’ll try,’ the marine replied, looking nervously at the frenzied horde.

  A high-pitched, teeth-chilling, rasping grate of wood scraping wood cut in above the screams and clash of weapons and the deck listed ominously; the trireme had released itself. With the support of the ram gone the quinquereme’s bow sagged lower into the water.

  ‘Hurry, Gaidres,’ Vespasian urged, ‘we don’t have long.’

  With a grimace Gaidres waded into the baying mob, shouting for order. Those ex-slaves armed with bows had begun a frantic exchange of fire with the crew on the retreating trireme. Men from both sides plunged howling into the churning water clutching at shafts embedded in their dying bodies.

  Gaidres soon managed to get most of the ex-slaves into some sort of order and ready to charge. Checking that they would not be threatened from behind Vespasian looked over to the retreating trireme, now thirty paces away. For a brief instant he made eye contact with a familiar figure standing in the prow: the wounded pirate trierarchus from the sanctuary. His one eye blazed with fury and he hurled a stream of oaths at Vespasian before ducking down under the rail in the face of another volley from the bow-armed ex-slaves.

  Thrusting the shock of the coincidence to one side, Vespasian bellowed at the top of his voice: ‘Sabinus, now!’

  At the other end of the ship Sabinus heard his brother’s call and he and Magnus pulled back immediately, taking the Thracians to their left with them. Sitalces held his position in the centre and the line pivoted on him. The pirates surged forward, not sensing the trap as Vespasian and Gaidres charged up the sloping deck with more than a hundred matted-haired, shrieking savages behind them.

  With their blood-lust far from sated they crashed into the pirates’ backs, ripping them open in a deluge of blood and offal with a savagery that shocked Vespasian, even as he killed. The joy of once again feeling alive was magnified for the ex-slaves as they took life after life in a killing spree almost as brutal as their existence had been for the past few years.

  Caught between the torrent of rage behind them and the flashing, two-handed swipes of rhomphaiai to their front the pirates knew that they were doomed and, expecting no quarter, resolved to sell their lives dearly. They fought with an intensity that matched their foes for the last few moments of their lives as their numbers were quickly whittled down and their line thinned.

  Vespasian plunged his sword into another exposed back and twisted his wrist sharply, left then right; the man screamed, throwing his head back which, with a sudden jolt and a flash of iron, toppled from his shoulders. Blood spurted from the gaping neck as the man’s heart pumped on, spraying over Vespasian. The body collapsed and the red rain cleared leaving Vespasian staring at Sitalces, eyes aflame, teeth bared, swinging his rhomphaia back towards him. With an instinctive jerk, Vespasian pulled his shield up in front of his face and the blade slammed into its rim in a cloud of sparks.

  ‘Sitalces, stop!’ he yelled, lowering his shield.

  Sitalces paused and peered at Vespasian, then grinned apologetically. In that instant a blood-covered ex-slave leapt at him with a howl and drove a knife into the huge Thracian’s throat.

  ‘Nooooo!’ Vespasian shouted as Sitalces collapsed with the maddened savage stabbing repeatedly at his throat. Vespasian grabbed the man’s tangled hair and hauled him off. He twisted round, screaming unintelligibly, and thrust his knife towards Vespasian’s thigh; a blade arced down and took his arm off at the elbow and then swiped up to sever his head.

  ‘You filthy little cunt,’ Magnus raged, slashing his rhomphaia back down, unnecessarily ripping open the corpse’s belly.

  All along the line similar scenes were playing out as the ex-slaves came through the last of the pirates and face to face with the Thracians. Warning shouts ripped through the air as the two sides collided. Although heavily outnumbered, with the longer reach of their weapons and better discipline, the Thracians managed to hold their allies off, but not before the slave-master and one of his mates had been set upon and hideously cut up. The perpetrators were summarily despatched by a hiss of rhomphiaia blades, which seemed to bring the rest out of their frenzy and the two groups lowered their weapons and stared at each other with wary distrust, breathing heavily.

  An eerie silence fell over the ship.

  Vespasian glanced behind him; the bow of the ship was now almost completely submerged; the quinquereme was afloat still solely because the pirate ship, now devoid of its fighting crew, was fastened to it by four straining ropes. The second trireme was now speeding towards its sister ship in an attempt to board it and prevent the Thracians from taking it as a prize.

  ‘Transfer to the trireme,’ Vespasian yelled, ‘and prepare to repel boarders.’

  The shout suddenly brought home the precariousness of their situation to the exhausted men and the two groups silently and mutually called a truce and then quickly set about abandoning ship.

  ‘Arch
ers with me,’ Sabinus shouted, leaping over the rail and on to the trireme whose bow was slowly being forced down by the weight of the sinking quinquereme. ‘We’ll hold them off as long as possible.’

  Fifty or so bow-armed crew and ex-slaves followed him.

  ‘We take all our wounded with us, even the ex-slaves,’ Gaidres called out so that all could hear. ‘How’s the big man?’

  Magnus knelt down by Sitalces and checked for signs of life. There were none. ‘He’s dead,’ he said blankly.

  ‘I’ll get his body on to the trireme; the Queen will want him buried with honour. Drenis!’

  ‘Where’s Rhoteces?’ Vespasian asked.

  ‘I left him with Artebudz at the stern,’ Magnus replied, watching Gaidres and Drenis bearing Sitalces away through the remaining crew and ex-slaves who were busily checking the fallen for those still alive.

  ‘I’ll get him; you go and get our stuff, especially that scroll.’

  Magnus did not react.

  ‘Come on, otherwise we’ll all be joining him.’

  With a start Magnus snapped out of his reverie and dashed off to retrieve their belongings from the small cabin in the stern of the stricken ship.

  Bodies floated all around in the gently swelling sea; the waterline had reached the mast, down which a crewman was climbing, having saved the Thracian royal standard. Vespasian found Artebudz in amongst the chaos, hauling a screaming Rhoteces by his manacles towards the trireme. Arrows started to fly overhead as an archery duel with the second pirate ship flared up.

  The quinquereme pitched suddenly. Gaidres had cut the forward rope to ease the pressure on the trireme, which was so low in the water now that its lower oar-ports were only a hand’s breadth above the surface.

  ‘Hurry, Artebudz,’ Vespasian called, steadying his balance as the ship settled.

  ‘He doesn’t want to go, sir,’ Artebudz said, pulling the struggling priest another couple of paces across the now severely lilting deck.

  ‘Come on, you little shit,’ Vespasian said, grabbing him by the tunic. ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you want to leave your precious cursed ship?’

  ‘My gods will pluck me away only if I remain on a Thracian ship,’ Rhoteces screeched; religious fervour burned in his bloodshot eyes. ‘The other pirate vessel will kill you all but I will be saved if I remain here.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’ Vespasian laughed as they reached the crowded rail. ‘If you weren’t so valuable to me I’d enjoy leaving you here and watching you being disappointed.’

  ‘I told you this ship would never reach Rome.’

  ‘That wasn’t too difficult to predict,’ Vespasian said with a malicious grin, hefting the priest over the rail. ‘Rome’s not a seaport; it was never going there, it was going to Ostia, so bollocks to you and your predictions.’

  He and Artebudz threw the priest on to the trireme where he landed with a loud thump and a yelp. Artebudz followed him over and dragged him away.

  Gaidres cut the sternmost rope and the quinquereme lurched again; bodies started to slither down the deck. ‘For the love of Bendis, hurry,’ he screamed, ‘I can’t hold her much longer.’

  Desperate cries issued from the slaves manacled to the trireme’s oars as they watched the water rise ever closer to the oar-ports.

  Arrows hissed through the air, the archery duel intensifying with the arrival of more and more Thracians and their unlikely allies forcing the pirate ship to lay off.

  The last of the crew were leaping across as Magnus came scrambling up to Vespasian with their bags and they jumped on to the trireme. Rhaskos was the last man over the rail, clutching a strongbox and his speaking-trumpet. Gaidres and Drenis cut the final two ropes. The trireme immediately surged upwards, almost clearing the surface, and then fell back down with a jolt and a loud splash. Every one of the two hundred and more men on deck sprawled on to the deck. The pirates took good advantage of the temporary lack of return fire and many did not get back up again.

  Vespasian pulled himself back on to his feet; the roar of rushing wind caused him to turn. Just behind him the quinquereme’s stern flicked upright, towering almost seventy feet above the waves, cracking the mast in two under the intolerable pressure and catapulting dead bodies through the air to land with a quick succession of splashes, like a handful of shingle cast at the sea. Foul air billowed from the oar-ports as churning water surged up through its belly; it started to slide under. Its timbers creaked and groaned in anguished cries as the once proud ship was sucked down into the depths of Poseidon’s dark kingdom to the accompaniment of cheering from its ex-oarsmen.

  With a final explosion of water, which rocked the trireme, it was gone. The archery battle, which had tailed off as both crews had stopped to watch the awe-inspiring death agonies of the huge ship, resumed again with vigour as Sabinus screamed at his men for a faster rate of volleys. The pirate ship started to back its oars to escape the relentless hail of arrows. After a couple more volleys Sabinus called a halt. The two ships lay a hundred paces apart; too close together for them to be able to build up enough momentum to do much damage to each other’s oars, let alone crack open a hull, and too far apart to threaten each other with archery. They were in a stalemate.

  The air became still.

  As it stood, with more than 250 men on the Thracian deck, many of them bow-armed, they could not be taken by a boarding party but equally they would not have enough provisions to get to Ostia. It was obvious to Vespasian that they had to attempt to take the pirate, either to capture the ship outright or to, at least, take off its victuals before it sank. They needed to move forward, yet they were still stationary, their oars limp in the water.

  He ran back to the stern where Rhaskos had taken up his position. ‘Why aren’t we moving, Rhaskos?’

  ‘We’re in trouble again, my friend, may the gods preserve us,’ the trierarchus replied, raising his palms to the sky. ‘The pirate slave-masters killed more than a hundred of the rowers at their oars before our men could get to them, so we can’t manoeuvre. And when the pirates realise that they’ll pull back until they’ve got enough sea-room to get up the speed to ram us.’

  ‘Then we need some of our rowers to take the dead ones’ places – and fast.’

  ‘Yes, but now they’re free how will they take rowing again, especially shoulder to shoulder with slaves?’

  ‘We free the slaves; I would have done so anyway as a lot of them will have been taken from Roman ships. Talk to our rowers and send a hundred down to me.’

  Calling Gaidres to follow him, Vespasian made his way down on to the oar-deck. It was a scene of carnage. Corpses lay slumped over oars, despatched by vicious thrusts through their backs and chests. The survivors were sitting, hollow-eyed with fear, staring vacantly at four Thracian marines who were unshackling the dead bodies and slithering them out of the oar-ports.

  ‘Release the slaves first, then get rid of the bodies,’ Vespasian ordered the Thracians. They looked at him, puzzled.

  ‘You heard him; do it now!’ Gaidres shouted.

  The Thracians shrugged and carried out their orders.

  ‘You will stay in your seats,’ Vespasian shouted so that all of the slaves could hear. ‘We need you to row, but now you will row as free men. If you refuse, we will all die. Are there any Roman citizens here?’

  Over twenty men raised their manacled hands.

  ‘You’re excused rowing, go up on deck and find a weapon each.’

  There was a growl of protest from the rest.

  ‘Silence!’ Vespasian roared. ‘A citizen of Rome does not bend his back to an oar. You, however, do not have the protection of citizenship so you will row. If we survive, we’re going to Ostia where you may leave the ship or, if you prefer, you can return east with it; it’s down to you.’

  There was a muttering of assent.

  The Thracian stroke-master clambered down the ladder from the main deck followed by the rowers. He looked at Vespasian, who nodded at him to take his place be
hind the round ox-skin drum.

  With a real sense of urgency the oar-deck was cleared of bodies and the replacement rowers took their positions. Vespasian and Gaidres hurried back up on to the deck.

  The mournful cries of gulls, attracted by the flotsam and jetsam of the sunken ship, filled the air as they circled overhead and dived on edible morsels that littered the sea.

  ‘Looks like they’ve had enough, sir,’ Magnus said, pointing to the pirate ship; it had turned and was now a quarter of a mile away, rowing quickly west.

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ Vespasian replied dubiously. ‘Rhaskos, the oar-deck’s ready. What do you think we should do?’

  ‘Pray to the gods.’

  ‘And then what?’ Vespasian exploded, storming up to the old trierarchus, ‘go to sleep and hope for another helpful dream? Be practical, man! Do we try and take the pirate and get his supplies? Or do we make a run for it and worry about what everyone’s going to eat later? You’re the trierarchus, you decide what we humans on this ship should do right now.’

  The vehemence of his outburst caused Rhaskos to blink his eyes quickly and then look around. ‘They’re not running,’ he said lucidly, ‘it’s as I said: they’re preparing to ram us because they think that we’re still crippled. We need to sail west anyway so we should go straight at them, then they can choose: fight or run.’ He picked up his speaking-trumpet. ‘Attack speed,’ he shouted down to the stroke-master, who reacted immediately. The steady booming started; slow at first, as the ship got under way, then quickly accelerating as the oarsmen, now free and with a real stake in the survival of the ship, willingly put their backs into the matter at hand.

  The pirate ship made a hurried turn as their trierarchus saw that the Thracian ship was no longer disabled but was under full oars and coming straight towards him.