Ship of Rome

by John Stack

  Gisco stopped as he came to the hatchway. The soldier posted there saluted and stepped back.

  ‘Find two more men,’ Gisco ordered, and the soldier departed.

  As the admiral waited, he replayed the information he had already stored in his head. Over the past two weeks, the eighteen Roman captains who had survived the ambush had been systematically tortured for intelligence regarding the new fleet. Some had been tougher than others, some more informed, but all had eventually revealed some fragment of the overall strategy.

  The Romans were planning to build one hundred and fifty ships, all of the same class as those taken at Lipara. The initial twenty were now either destroyed or in Carthaginian hands, which meant the bulk of the fleet was yet to be deployed. The timing of their deployment was still unknown but could be readily estimated by the speed at which the Romans had built the initial twenty. When Gisco first heard the reported construction time, he had not believed it. He had personally supervised the interrogation of three captains to confirm the report. The first twenty had been built in a little over two weeks and, on the day they sailed, fifty more keels were being laid down. Given that nearly all the reports stated that Rome was constantly increasing the rate of construction, it was reasonable to assume the fleet was near to completion.

  Gisco was also sure that the Romans knew the full details of the trap laid for them at Lipara. His guard commander, Cronus, and the traitor Demades had not returned from Rome. Demades had betrayed him. Before leaving Lipara, Gisco had fulfilled his promise and had put the councillor’s family to the sword, but not before the three women had spent a long night in the company of the garrison soldiers.

  The only remaining piece of the puzzle was the man who would command the Roman fleet. Many of the captains had spoken of a Roman named Gaius Duilius, the junior consul, as being next in line to command. None of the captains knew anything of the man himself, his background or his abilities. Gisco was sure, however, that the man beneath his feet, the senior consul of Rome, would have the personal information he required to get the measure of the man he would soon face in battle.

  The hatchway above Scipio opened suddenly. Rough hands reached down and hauled him up onto the rowing deck of the galley. His legs cramped as he straightened them and he gritted his teeth against the pain. The light was muted below deck but, after the pitch-darkness of the lower hold, Scipio shielded his eyes against its intensity. His hands were instantly pulled down and held behind him.

  Scipio looked up to see the face of the Carthaginian commander, the same man he had met in battle on the aft-deck of the Mars. Scipio was immediately aware of the contrast between them. The Carthaginian stood tall and proud, his gaze fierce and confident. Scipio, by contrast, could only mimic those same qualities. His toga was filthy and clung to his flesh, his posture stooped and pathetic. Scipio tried to draw himself to his full height but his legs cramped again and so he set his own expression into what he believed was hardened defiance as he looked up at his captor.

  The Carthaginian smiled and walked away, the guards forcing Scipio to follow through a series of narrow companionways to the main cabin at the stern of the ship. Once there the Carthaginian commander sat down behind a central desk.

  ‘Remove his toga!’ Gisco ordered, his face expressing his disgust at the filth of the robes.

  Again Scipio was manhandled roughly as his toga was removed, his tunic underneath equally filthy.

  ‘Leave us,’ Gisco commanded the guards.

  The two adversaries were left alone.

  ‘I demand to be treated in accordance with my rank,’ Scipio said, trying to establish a level of arrogance he did not feel.

  ‘Vae victis: “Woe to the vanquished”,’ Gisco spat, evoking the retort of a Gaulish commander, who had used the phrase more than a hundred years earlier after sacking the city of Rome.

  ‘Sit down, Roman.’

  Scipio tried to stand firm.

  ‘Sit down or I will have my men take you back to the hold.’

  Scipio flinched at the threat, the thought of returning to the pitch-dark prison sending a spasm through his intestines. He sat down quickly.

  Gisco noted the reaction, disgusted at the outward show of fear in one who claimed to be the leader of Rome.

  ‘My name is Hannibal Gisco. I am the overall commander of the Carthaginian forces fighting to free Sicily from Roman tyranny.’

  Scipio bit back an instinctive retort, not wanting to antagonize his enemy.

  ‘I have “spoken” with the captains of your fleet,’ Gisco began. ‘It seems their loyalty did not extend beyond saving their own lives. They were very willing to divulge every detail of your new fleet. Its size, complement, class of ship.’

  Scipio tried to maintain an expression of indifference, but the Carthaginian’s words caused a latent anger to rise within him. I have been betrayed by everyone, he thought bitterly.

  ‘There is just one final piece of information I need you to confirm, Roman,’ Gisco added.

  ‘I will not betray my city,’ Scipio answered feebly, trying to make his voice sound bold and confident. Even in his own ears he heard the hollowness of his words.

  Gisco laughed.

  ‘Enough Romans have already done that,’ he said dismissively. ‘I simply want you to tell me about the man who will command the Roman fleet.’

  Scipio sat straighter as his mind pictured the hated face of Duilius.

  ‘If you cooperate I will confine you to a cabin rather than the hold you have just left,’ Gisco added.

  Scipio could not hide his reaction to the bribe and the opportunity to reach beyond his captivity to have his revenge on Duilius. Gisco noticed the change and smiled inwardly. This was going to be easier than he had anticipated.

  ‘Now,’ Gisco said, ‘tell me all you know of Gaius Duilius.’

  The junior consul looked up from the obviously hurried yet comprehensible sketches laid out before him. The two men at the other side of the table looked confident, as if the idea was a proven strategy, rather than a concept based on an idea formed only an hour before.

  ‘This design is feasible?’ Duilius asked the older man.

  ‘Yes, Consul,’ Lentulus replied.

  Duilius looked back down at the drawings once more. On paper the design looked practical, the very solution he had sought over the preceding weeks.

  ‘When can we test it?’ the consul asked.

  ‘We can rig the Aquila with the new system and be ready to test it within forty-eight hours,’ Atticus replied.

  Duilius nodded. He deliberately overcame the infectious conviction of the two men and looked at the idea rationally. To second Lentulus to the Aquila and take him out of the building programme would delay the launch of the final thirty galleys but, if the idea were feasible, it would go a long way towards levelling the odds between them and the Punici. He glanced surreptitiously at Atticus, the captain’s gaze firmly on the drawings on the table. It seemed the outsider had found what everyone had been looking for but none could find.

  ‘Make it so,’ he replied simply.

  The two men stood to leave, the younger man saluting with a clenched fist to his chest. Duilius nodded his dismissal, his expression hiding the eagerness he felt to see the simple line drawings before him turned into reality.

  ‘He is not of noble birth?’ Gisco asked, trying to find a trace of guile in the Roman’s words. He could find none. The man before him clearly hated Gaius Duilius. Of that there was no doubt, although Gisco could not fathom a reason.

  ‘No, he is not,’ Scipio spat. ‘He is low-born, the son of a middle-class farmer.’

  The monarchy in Carthage had been abolished over fifty years before, but Gisco, like all those in positions of power in both the military and government, could trace their lineage to at least one of the ancient monarchs. The idea that a non-noble could rise to a position of power was foreign to him, and he contemptuously considered Rome’s acceptance of such leaders as a further sign of their
fallibility.

  ‘So how did he rise to such a position?’ Gisco asked.

  ‘Money,’ Scipio said disdainfully, as if the very word was vulgar, his mind automatically ignoring the fact that it was the riches of his own ancestors that had ensured their place in the first Senate.

  ‘Has he military experience?’

  ‘He has never known combat and has no military training.’

  Again Gisco found the answers hard to believe and he forced himself to think about the Roman’s words objectively, to suppress the rising confidence he felt at the failings of his enemy.

  ‘But to rise to such a position he must be resourceful?’ Gisco asked, almost to himself.

  ‘Yes, he is resourceful, but only in matters of secrecy and deceit.’

  Gisco nodded. He felt nothing but disdain for the man sitting opposite him. The Roman was consumed with hate. It was an emotion Gisco understood well, but Scipio was readily betraying his own city in his pursuit of vengeance against a fellow Roman he considered his enemy. In his quest to destroy this man Duilius, Scipio was willing to forfeit a whole fleet of his own countrymen.

  ‘You have been most helpful,’ Gisco remarked.

  Scipio smiled in pathetic gratitude.

  ‘I would ask you, Admiral,’ Scipio said, his voice filled with a new hope, ‘for the opportunity to bathe and put on new clothes before being escorted to my cabin.’

  Gisco smiled.

  ‘Guards!’ the admiral shouted.

  The door was immediately opened and three soldiers stepped into the room.

  ‘Return this filth to the hold,’ Gisco ordered.

  Scipio’s stature seemed to collapse at the command. He began to raise his hands to his face in despair when his arms were grabbed from behind and he was pulled to his feet and dragged from the cabin.

  Gisco watched him leave. If Duilius was junior in rank and ability to this broken man, then the Carthaginians were poised to sweep the sea clear of Rome for ever.

  ‘Release!’

  For a heartbeat the corvus remained motionless as the holding rope went slack. It began to fall, slowly at first, until its own weight caused it to pick up momentum and it slammed down with a shattering crash onto the foredeck of the galley across from the Aquila.

  ‘Good,’ Lentulus said, as if to himself, one of his apprentices automatically nodding his agreement by his side.

  ‘But too slow,’ Atticus added. ‘It’s got to start falling the instant it’s released.’

  ‘I agree,’ Lentulus replied thoughtfully. ‘I will make some modifications.’

  Atticus watched the sailors pull on the rope to raise his invention once more to its position. He had named the new weapon the corvus, for the raven was a harbinger of death and Atticus fully intended to make sure the device lived up to its name.

  The corvus was a combination of a crane and a gangplank, thirty-six feet long and four wide, a massive ramp with its bottom end hinged to a vertical mast installed in the centre of the foredeck. The mast rose forty feet above the deck, allowing for the ramp to be raised to a vertical position and the hinge pivoted through one hundred and eighty degrees, making it possible to deploy the corvus on both the starboard and port sides of the galley. In one fell swoop the ramp could be lowered and legionaries rushed across to board an enemy ship. The ramp was big enough to allow the legionaries to carry their full battle kit, including the four-foot scutum shield, and in sufficient numbers to ensure a standard battle formation line could be deployed on the enemy’s deck within seconds.

  Atticus left the craftsmen and walked over to the side rail where Septimus had been watching the latest test, Atticus having asked him on board for his expertise on legionaries’ tactics.

  ‘You know,’ Atticus smiled, ‘if this works, the marines will be out of a job.’

  He turned to Septimus but the centurion was not laughing; indeed his expression was troubled.

  ‘I came to the Aquila the night before last,’ he said unexpectedly, giving voice to the question that had been on his mind since then. ‘You weren’t on board.’

  ‘No,’ Atticus said, his mind racing to cover his absence from the Aquila and his trip to Rome. ‘I was with Duilius in his quarters and didn’t get back until after midnight.’

  Septimus nodded, his expression giving nothing away, but inside his anger was building. Atticus was lying to him. Septimus had spent the night on the Aquila and he knew that Atticus had never returned. He was about to challenge Atticus on the lie when they were interrupted.

  ‘We’re ready to try again,’ Lentulus said behind them.

  ‘To speed the fall of the ramp, the corvus will no longer rise to the vertical. The angle will put more stress on the mast, but I am confident it will still hold.’

  Atticus nodded at the solution and looked over to the sailors who were once more holding the release rope taut.

  ‘Ready?’

  The sailors nodded.

  ‘Release!’

  This time the corvus fell immediately with no hesitation.

  ‘Better,’ Atticus remarked.

  At that moment a rogue wave struck the Aquila and the gap between the two galleys opened wider. Before Gaius could bring the Aquila back into position, the far end of the corvus slid off the foredeck of the ‘enemy’ galley.

  ‘That’s another problem we have to tackle,’ Lentulus said.

  Atticus watched the corvus being raised again as the Aquila was manoeuvred back into place. In battle the only thing holding the two ships together would be grappling hooks. If the enemy reacted quickly and severed the lines, they could easily manoeuvre their galley away. Any boarding party across the corvus would be stranded while anyone on the ramp itself when the ships parted would fall into the sea. They had to find a way to make the ramp secure, to lock the ships together.

  ‘I think this raven needs to be given claws,’ Atticus said.

  Gisco studied the man opposite him with interest. The Nubian stood tall and erect, his balanced stance betraying the slave’s obvious fighting abilities. His gaze was arrogant, an emotion Gisco had never encountered in a slave before, and it fascinated him.

  The Nubian had been found in the Roman consul’s quarters after the ambush at Lipara. Gisco had immediately noticed the stature and bearing of a trained fighter and had arranged for the Nubian to be spared the fate of galley slave reserved for all those taken alive in the ambush. Now, as the Carthaginian fleet approached Panormus, Gisco had finally found the time to study the potential of Scipio’s personal servant.

  Khalil had outlined his later life and captivity in detail, confirming Gisco’s assumption that he was a gladiator. The thought of using the Nubian as a force against the very people who trained him appealed to the admiral’s sense of fate. Only the question of Khalil’s loyalty remained. Of the hate he felt for the Romans there was no doubt, and Gisco was confident that Khalil would savage any Roman he met in battle. For Gisco to be able to command the Nubian, however, he needed to find an inducement to ensure his loyalty.

  ‘I will need men like you in the battle ahead,’ Gisco said.

  Khalil remained quiet; however, Gisco noticed the flicker of interest in the Nubian’s eyes. The sight convinced him to continue.

  ‘If you fight well against the Romans and obey my every command, I will grant you your freedom when the battle is won.’

  Again Khalil remained impassive, the silence irking Gisco.

  ‘Do you agree?’ he asked, his anger beginning to flare at the unreadable Nubian.

  ‘My freedom is of no concern until I repay a debt of pride. I want the life of Scipio.’

  Gisco smiled at the request, one he would never allow; the consul’s life was far too valuable to be thrown away at the behest of a mere slave.

  ‘Agreed,’ he lied, noting with satisfaction the savage expression of Khalil as he nodded his assent.

  Admiral Gisco stepped off the gangplank of the Melqart onto the busy docks of Panormus. He paused as he looked ove
r at the frenzied activity of the port, the preparations for battle already well advanced. By his orders the fleet blockading the western coast of Sicily had been summoned to Panormus, and so the northern port was now home to over one hundred galleys. Gisco had consulted Hamilcar before his departure for Carthage and both were in agreement. Given the detailed reports of the Roman captains, the new Roman fleet would be in the waters of northern Sicily in less than two weeks.

  At Lipara, Gisco had closely inspected the new Roman galleys. They had been hastily built of untreated, unweathered timbers. The hulls were too new to the water and the timbers had not bonded completely. Given time they would become hard as iron, but now they lacked significant strength beneath the water line, certainly not enough to stop a six-foot bronze ram.

  Hamilcar was due to return in a little over a week with another forty galleys to join the burgeoning Carthaginian fleet in Sicily. Gisco recalled the young man’s hesitation when he had first requested the additional ships. It was only after Gisco explained the simple logic behind his demand that Hamilcar agreed. It was not enough to simply defeat the Romans in battle. The Carthaginian fleet needed to wipe out the entire Roman fleet down to its last ship. To accomplish that objective none must escape; Gisco knew only numerical superiority would guarantee him total victory.