Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “Did you expect Ahenobarbus?”

  “No. But I learned of his coming. Cinyras and Serapion both expected him, each trying to keep it secret from the other, so as to be first to greet him. Ahenobarbus took refuge from the storm in that bay yonder. That, too, was supposed to be a secret, but a priest brought me the news. One of Ahenobarbus’s ships went aground. He stayed there to get her off. But he sent a messenger overland to bid them have the tribute money ready.”

  “What made you say he has declared for Brutus?”

  “He is Brutus’s wife’s uncle. He has been condemned by the senate as a conspirator. There was nothing else for him to do but to join Brutus. He will take the tribute money to Brutus, who badly needs it for the army that he is raising to oppose Octavian, or Antony, or both of them — no one seems to know which.”

  “And the corn?”

  “He will deliver that also to Brutus. Armies devour like locusts. But now Anchises will make an end of Ahenobarbus and will get both the corn and the money. Brutus’s army will famish. That means anarchy — legions looking for a leader who can feed them! What will you do? Why not aid Anchises? Lord Captain Tros,” Her eyes grew brilliant with almost Cleopatra’s strength of gaze. Her voice thrilled with the passion to seize, and to have, and to hold, “if you should aid Anchises to destroy Ahenobarbus, he would aid you to seize Salamis! Bargain with him for half the treasure! Pay Serapion’s mutinous troops! They are my troops, but he turned them against me. Crucify Serapion! Behead that old coward Cinyras! Then I will be truly Queen of Cyprus! Let the Romans wage their war on one another! You and I will gather a fleet of pirates and unite with Sextus Pompeius. I hear Sextus is in league with pirates from the coasts of Africa, Spain and Gaul. They say he is brave and a man of his word. He has seized the Balearics. He is raiding Sicily. Help sextus until all the Roman factions succumb from sheer exhaustion! And then Egypt! My Egypt! Berenice’s fate for the usurper!”

  Tros stared. He was not squeamish. Magnanimity was rare. But Berenice, who usurped her father’s throne, had not died, when her father brought his throne back, in a way that a crucified slave might reasonably envy. He was wondering what poison lay within the craving to be a monarch, that could set sisters against each other and make them hate each other worse than they hated their country’s enemies. He misjudged, but so did she. She thought him more than half-persuaded, and he thought her guided more by malice than ambition. Swiftly she disillusioned him:

  “Lord Captain Tros, be King of Egypt! I will be the mother of your son! He shall be greater than the greatest Pharoah Egypt ever knew! Greater than Alexander!”

  What was in him, he wondered, that Ptolemy women saw only his command of force, but not his hugely greater command of restraint? He loathed the very name of Alexander, whom he thought of as a maniac lusting for glory. Did this young girl imagine that her beauty was enough to turn his head? To change self-respect into self-seeking?

  Arsinoe let go the preventer backstay to clutch her sword-hilt. School-girl heroics? A thundering wave that burst on the ship’s beam sent her sprawling down the sloping deck. Conops spluttered with emotion as his master’s right arm caught, encircled her and bore her back to the weather bulwark. She clung but Tros thrust her away, and when she had clutched the rigging again he turned on Conops:

  “Where’s your trumpet? Fetch it! Sound ‘Stand to battle stations!’”

  It was Conops’s privilege to sound that call, on a golden trumpet, fashioned like a conch-shell; it had belonged to Nearchos, Alexander’s admiral; it was kept in a kind of shrine in Conops’s quarters, never to be touched by any other hand than his, nor ever to be used except when Tros committed all hands to an issue with death.

  He could see around the headland now. The sun broke between clouds to reveal the foam-encircled bay. He could see the pirate vessels wallowing almost beam-to-beam in massed assault, down-wind under full sail, against the anchored quinquiremes. The four liburnians, under oars but almost unmanageable against sea and wind, were surrounded; one was already grappled and repelling boarders. The grounded quinquireme was hardly visible through bursting surf that had bullied her on to the sand beyond all hope of recovery. The twang of the Romans’ ballistae and the scream of their missiles could be heard even up-wind through the thunder of the sea.

  Conops returned to the quarter-deck and blew the “Stand to battle stations.”

  “Ease all sheets, Ahiram! Hard a-lee!”

  Off came the paulins; shields on men’s arms replaced them to protect the twisted gut bow-strings from spray. Conops — Jack-of-all-jobs — chief of staff without the title — one eye as keen as twenty — leaped from the poop to rouse the station captains and to make sure that the fire-gangs had their wet sand well distributed and ready.

  Then — a sure sign that Tros meant to fight to a finish — as the trireme came around and rolled to the following sea under three-reefed courses:

  “Ahiram! Full sail! Double-man the sheets and halyards! Cut the reef-knots!”

  Speed — muscle — discipline. They had to haul to the rhythm of bursting waves that hove the trireme’s stern and spilled wind — roaring the Ionian chantey of how Xerxes flogged the sea for daring to destroy his bridge of ships. The ten Jews, grinning, swaying to the trireme’s roll, lined up ready to protect Tros with their shields from a hail of arrows. Conops returned with six men to protect the helmsmen. Tros’s steward, at the head of five men, charged into the cabin to fit and man the bows of British yew that could shoot, through the narrow openings, straight into the oar-ports of a ship alongside.

  Ahiram returned to the quarter-deck. Then Conops. Arsinoe handed herself along the rail to Tros’s side. He ignored her, beyond noticing that Conops had brought two Nubians, who belonged to the lower oar-bank, to protect her with their shields.

  “Ahiram!”

  “Lord Captain?”

  “There’s one chance for those Romans. We might hit them if we used the catapults. We’ll have to make a Roman’s battle of it. I intend to crash that fleet of pirates. When we hit, let go everything and put the helm hard over. Conops!”

  “Master?”

  “Get forward and have your anchor ready. Stand by to let go when we bring her about.”

  Tros beckoned a messenger, one of five who had taken their appointed battle station on the roof of the steward’s cabin.

  “Uncrank catapults, and have the hand-slings ready. Warn them there’s the lower oar-bank for the crew that wastes one fireball! They may sling at a half-oar’s length, no sooner.”

  Then Arsinoe, astonished: “You will fight against the pirates? You fight Anchises?”

  “Aye.”

  “Anchises—”

  “Would he pay for the corn?”

  “You huckster!”

  Tros laughed. He glanced at the ten Jews. “You shall see how a man keeps bargains. Your first battle?”

  She nodded. “My sister borrowed Herod’s army, and led it against mine, before Caesar came; but I was too young then. I have seen riots, and a skirmish, but this is my first battle.”

  “You are likely also seeing faith kept for the first time.”

  “True,” she answered. “I have never seen that. Are you keeping a promise? Pledge your faith to me, Lord Captain, and I care not whom you battle with — nay, to the ends of the earth I care not!”

  He stared. She laughed. He half-believed her. But her eyes reminded him of Cleopatra.

  “Does a Ptolemy woman know what faith is?”

  “No,” she answered. “But she knows good manners.”

  Tros glanced at her. He liked her. “I will give you a chance,” he said, “to show what you are, rather than what you think you are.”

  Suddenly his voice blared down-wind like a battle trumpet:

  “All archers! All arrow-engines! Fire on pirate vessels as they come in range! Wait for the word from station captains! All fire on the uproll! Ready!”

  More than a hundred polished shields flashed upward. Ther
e was a rower armed with sword and shield, to protect each marksman. The remainder crouched against the bulwarks.

  But first blood fell to Ahenobarbus; a net-full of quartz rocks from his citadel catapult struck the mainsail, brained an archer and scattered, doing no more damage.

  Tros growled. “Boar of a blundering Roman, you shall rue that!”

  CHAPTER VII. “Battle stations! All hands!”

  During these years, it would be safe to say a thousand men — aye, more — have died obedient to me, devoting valor to a cause they did not understand. But do I understand? I doubt it, because understanding grows in endless progress, day after day revealing yesterday’s mistakes.

  Those men were slaves and prisoners of war whom I had freed. I gave them discipline, justice, livelihood and leadership. I gave masterless rogues a master. I compelled them to be proud of me and to oblige me to be proud of them.

  Though they died, and I live; and though I live because they died obedient to me, my thought is, that they died well. They were men incapable of self-respect until I led them, out from grossness that they too well understood, into the service of an ideal.

  I led them. The responsibility is mine. But, be the Lords of Life my witnesses, I led. We were comrades-in-arms. I did not send them leaderless to meet death that I dared not face.

  — From the Log of Lord Captain Tros of Samothrace

  In a tumult of waves and colliding hulls, amid a shriek of missiles, imprecations, shouted orders, trumpet blasts and the thunder of pirates’ sails let go to wallow on the roaring wind, Tros guided his ship to the left of the pirate fleet until he had them all between him and the Romans. Then he swerved, took the wind on his counter and went headlong at them, with every stitch of canvas straining and every arrow-engine, every archer filling the air with a screaming hail of arrows. Passing between two vessels, smashing their oars to splinters, he struck a third one beam on as she tried to come about to face him.

  Cries of crushed and lacerated pirate oarsmen pierced the uproar. The collision threw half of Tros’s crew off their feet. Full sail, groaning spars and thrumming sheets, crowded the bucking trireme onward, over the smaller vessel, rolling her under the waves — careened, smashed, crimson wreckage. Leaden fire-balls, one from either bow, leaped from the four-manned slings and thumped into the reeling ships alongside. Their frantic, flogged rowers, at the unsmashed oars on the outer sides, labored to force their vessels inward against the trireme, in order to grapple and board. The fire-balls burst; the pirates’ holds became infernos of stenching smoke and fire. They fell away, down-wind, crashing into other vessels.

  Tros put the helm hard over. Ahiram’s men let go all sheets and braces. Blocks thundered on the deck. There was a havoc of flogging sails aloft and cordage that whipped through the ranks. It slew men, hurled them overside. It wrenched one arrow-engine from its base. But the masts and spars held. There was even a chance that Ahiram’s crew could save the sails; they volleyed like Great Jove’s thunder as the pitching trireme came around and rolled beam to the wind, crashing into pirates to leeward. Bow-strings twanged. The air shrieked with arrows, thrummed with javelins. Conops, watching for Tros’s signal, let go the anchor. The new flax hawser tightened like a bow-string. It held. The trireme came head to the wind within catapult range of the surf on the lee shore. Conops brought ten archers forward to protect the hawser and then made the huge spare anchor ready.

  After that the quarter-deck was Ahiram’s. It was Tros’s job to fight his trireme. He fought her from the roof of the midship deckhouse, where his voice reached fore and aft and he could see all hands, all arrow-engines and all the moves of the enemy. The pirates’ hail of arrows curved and quarreled in the gale; hurrying ship’s boys wrenched them from the deck, and from the sides of superstructures, to replenish the arrow-baskets. Tros, in mail and gleaming helmet, was a fair mark for the pirates’ bowmen. The Jews’ shields caught showers of arrows, flicking them aside as their bronze tips struck the curving metal surface. Deflected arrows were a greater danger to the men near-by than straight shots.

  There was no chance for the pirates to run, in the teeth of that Levanter. At least a third of them had grappled the three liburnians and were drifting, at death-grips, shoreward amid waves that ground and battered them together as the sea shoaled and waves grew steeper. Such survivors as there might be were awaited on the beach by Roman survivors from the grounded quinquireme that was already breaking up in the surf, and by villagers armed with clubs, and by ferocious dogs. Half Cyprus appeared to be lining the beach, to plunder drowned men’s bodies and snatch salvage from the surf.

  Ten pirate vessels came about magnificently, under oars — a miracle of seamanship. Three had chopped their masts adrift, but the remainder had managed to lower their curving yards and stow sails. Two of them, one from either side, made a drive at Tros’s hawser; they were met by Conops’s marksmen with a withering independent fire, aimed at the rowers, and by screaming volleys from two arrow-engines that swept their helmsmen overside.

  The other wing of the pirate fleet, under their leader Anchises, had worked in under the slaughtering fire of the quinquireme’s ballistae. They had grappled a quinquireme. The Romans were throwing fire into them. Three of the pirate ships burst into flame; their crews swarmed up the Roman’s side to protect the grapnel chains and make good the bite of the spikes in the Roman’s decks — a Roman’s battle. The quinquireme caught fire from the burning pirate vessels.

  Then Anchises, in his long red ship, rowed windward under locked shields, in a hail of javelins and arrows. He cut the quinquireme’s cable. She rolled shoreward, beam-on, bearing down on the burning pirate vessels, her side in flames, her deck a shambles, doomed. Anchises signalled to his squadron to follow him to the assault on the other quinquireme, Ahenobarbus’s flagship, that appeared to be having the best of a hot fight. The pirates scatted to avoid the ill-aimed rocks and clay pots full of iron darts from the quinquireme’s ballistae, and then double-manned the oars to get inside the range and under the trajectory of arrow-engines. Tros spared them a dozen volleys, but he was too hotly engaged to observe what happened to Ahenobarbus.

  To have slipped cable would have meant freedom to manoeuvre under oars, but the pirates gave him no time to man the upper oar-bank, even if he had dared to risk Greek fire being thrown through the opened hatch. The pirates crashed alongside to port and starboard like killer-sharks after a whale. They caught the leaden fire-balls in sail-cloth, cloaks, nets, anything whatever that served to dump them overside. They drove javelins and daggers into the ship’s side to serve as scaling ladders, made a tortoise with shields, threw grapnels aboard, swarmed up by the grapnel-chains, knives in their teeth, protected by master-bowmen on the decks beneath them, gaining the deck in dozens.

  Time and again Tros leaped to the port or starboard deck to hurl himself into a melee. He and his ten Jews, in a flying wedge, struck like a steel-shod avalanche wherever the pirates gained a foothold, until the swaying deck was a shambles, slippery with blood, littered with bodies of dead and dying that rolled and slid to and fro. The pirates, in broken groups, were hewn down or driven overside. A last charge, the full length of the deck from stern to bow, with thirty of Tros’s armed oarsmen hard at the heels of the flying wedge, brought two or three score crowded Greeks and Syrians to bay with their backs to Conops and his archers. Merciless, grim, breath to breath dagger and sword work — and a yell from Ahiram’s men “Ship a-fire” — a frantic clangor of cymbals and roar of the skidding sandcars— “Fire out!” — then the arrow-engines, raking the decks of the pirate vessels as they slipped grapnels and drifted downwind.

  Forward by the capstan, sweating, with a dent in his helmet and blood on his armor, swaying to the plunge of the trireme, Tros grinned at Conops, who was wiping his knife on a rag he had torn from a dead man’s clothing.

  “Master, what we needed then was Northmen!”

  Suddenly he gawked — stared.

  Tros faced about. Ars
inoe, fire-eyed, panting, with her sword gone and blood on her dagger, laughed at him from the midst of the wedge. She was blood-splashed, her helmet awry. She had thrown away her sandals. Beautiful feet she had — legs like Diana’s.

  Tros liked her better. He knew no reason why a girl, who claimed to rule a third of Alexander’s realm, should avoid the ordeal of battle. But he made no comment. There were matters of more importance; he considered those. Ahiram’s crew had wrought their miracle of brawn and discipline and seamanship. They had lowered the spars. They had stowed the sails, in the midst of all that tumult. They were stripping the dead and wounded pirates and pitching them overside.

  Tros’s steward brought wine in a silver jug and reported all well with the cabin archers. Tros drank from the jug, not listening intently to the steward’s boast of having shot nine pirates through the starboard port. He gave the jug next to Conops. Then to the Jews. Last to Arsinoe. She could have the last swallow or leave it. She drank, and then tossed the jug overside:

  “Lest a coward should ever use it!” she remarked. Young stuff. Tros like it. However, Cleopatra very likely would have done the same thing.

  Ahiram shouted from the quarter-deck. He sent a messenger full-pelt for orders; he was gesturing with both arms, like a man rowing; he wanted the upper oar-bank double-manned, to come up on the anchor and gain sea-room to windward. But there was no time.

  “Battle stations! All hands!”

  Conops’s golden trumpet blared its signal. Even the men who were dragging the wounded to the surgeon’s tar-pot hurried back to their posts. The ship’s boys scurried away with the goatskin wine-bags. There were eighty men short at the bulwarks. Tros left eight Jews under Conops’s orders. With the other two he returned to the roof of the midship deckhouse, and Arsinoe followed with one shield-bearer; the other was dead.