It was perfect, but for one flaw. Libo’s ships had been put at much risk to get to this point, and were still in a most hazardous position. The victory would not be sealed until they successfully rounded the cape, as the enemy had already done. The rocks were so close that Libo could hear the waves crashing against them.
“Admiral!” Naevius appeared beside him wearing a smile of relief. “Bless Neptune, you’re alive, sir! We thought –”
“I commanded you to take in all sails, captain!” Libo snapped, his head screaming from pain and anger.
“But, sir, the senator ordered – ”
“Get the courses in now, damn you! Are you blind? Do you not see the shoals to starboard?”
“But, you see, sir, the wind has held steady.” Naevius sounded somewhat apologetic. He pointed at the tell-tale streamers up in the rigging. “It hasn’t shifted so much as a point in the last hour. And the enemy fleet is within our grasp, sir.”
Libo suddenly felt off-balance. He put a hand to his temples, uncertain whether his throbbing head had him hallucinating or if the captain truly did not comprehend the danger.
“The transports now lie within reach of our oars,” Libo managed to say once his head cleared again. “There is no need for so much canvas aloft! Why have you not shortened sail?”
“The senator gave orders, sir. He was very explicit. He told me that I was not to – ”
“To hell with the senator!” Libo interrupted, the reason for the captain’s foolhardiness suddenly clear to him. “Is the fleet entrusted to him or to me? You should know better, captain! Where in Hades is the bastard!”
The captain’s eyes flashed to the aft hatch. “Below, with the lady Calpurnia, Admiral.”
It was coming back to Libo now. He could distinctly remember being pushed from the tower. Postumus had tried to murder him. In his feverish desire to get his hands on the treasury, the old bastard had taken command, and had now put the whole fleet at risk.
“Get the sails in.” Libo commanded. “Do it swiftly. And signal the fleet to do the same.”
“Aye, sir!” Naevius saluted promptly and hurried off.
Libo was about to order a file of marines to go below and arrest the senator, when a shrill sound filled the air. It came from below and above, and seemingly everywhere at once, sharp and distinct above the wind and sea. It was a cry like none he had ever heard before, and unlike that of any creature known to man – a bottomless cry of lamentation, of immeasurable vexation, of uncontrollable rage, that penetrated the very soul.
“’Twas the phantom of the lower decks!” he heard a sailor mutter to another beside him. “The spirit of the augury! He’s come back to summon us all to our graves!”
Many of the sailors seemed to take this explanation to heart, and this sparked more murmurs of dread spreading throughout their ranks. Libo was about to strike the man for being a superstitious fool, but paused when the wind suddenly and inexplicably stopped. The sails luffed above their heads and then lost all shape, falling useless like drapes. As the buffeting wind lost its fervor, the cry of the beast remained, solitary and full of anguish, like the far-off song of a whale.
No man on deck spoke. They stared at one another in apprehensive uncertainty. The bestial howl eventually faded into nothingness, but no sooner had it diminished than another far off chorus of alarmed voices filled their ears. The cry came from one of the quinqueremes keeping station off the Argonaut’s larboard beam. Every eye on the flagship’s deck looked to see that the quinquereme’s sails had suddenly filled, whipping around and jerking her masts to starboard. The wind had returned, and this unfortunate ship was the first to feel its full force – only, the wind did not come from the south this time.
This time, it came from the west.
Libo’s heart sank as the ultimate horror of all sea captains materialized before his eyes. The shift in the wind now put his entire fleet on a lee shore. He heard Naevius’s voice behind him cursing, yelling, desperately imploring the mesmerized sailors to take in the Argonaut’s canvas before the gale reached her, but Libo knew that his efforts were too late.
As a large wave placidly draws the sea away from the beach only to unleash it again with magnified ferocity, the wind hit now with twice its former strength. It struck with a fury, blasting over the larboard rail, filling the sails and thrashing them to starboard, the masts straining as they felt the new force. The broad side of the hull also acted like a sail, catching the wind and adding to the pull of the groaning masts, slowly tipping the Argonaut’s bowsprit to starboard, steering the ship’s momentum towards the rocky shoals. The same chain of events played out across the entire fleet, in every ship, as each was taken by surprise and pushed in the direction of the coast. The oarsmen, having spent themselves maintaining such high speed in the final leg of the pursuit, had not the strength to fight the elemental forces that now so abruptly commandeered their vessels. As the ships were driven towards their destruction all efforts seemed to be in vain. Some tried employing the oars on only one side in an attempt to turn away from the coast, but every exposure of their broad beams to the face of the wind only succeeded in pressing them faster toward the foaming rocks. Anticipating the order to shorten sail, the captains throughout the fleet kept their eyes on the flagship, waiting dutifully for the signals that were too late in coming. Only a scant few chose not to wait and ordered their top men to hack away the sails, releasing the shredded canvas to whip violently in long streams from the masts. These were the fortunate ships, for some were able to regain control and point their bows back to the open sea. But they were few in number, and consisted mostly of the more agile triremes. The vast majority of the fleet, including all of the capital ships, drove headlong into the shoals as if obeying the summons of the sirens. A cacophony of thunderclaps rumbled above the howling wind as, one by one, the warships ran onto the rocks. The shifting seas lifted the majestic prows high into the air, only to recede beneath them and dash them to pieces on the jagged outcroppings, staving in keels, toppling masts, and snapping great oaken spines like twigs. Men screamed as they were crushed to death by the great disintegrating hulls, or thrown into the raging froth to drown. The same fate was shared by dozens of ships along miles of foaming coastline, where deceres, hexaremes, quinqueremes and several dozen more vessels, each finely crafted and taking months and vast sums of money to construct, were reduced to splinters in a matter of moments.
Amid the carnage, the Argonaut was raised and carried forward with each successive surge of the green water. A spiked rock formation twice her size lay unavoidable in her path. But she drove on flying the colors of her admiral, and of old Rome.
XXXIV
Every man crowded aboard Antony’s transports watched with elation as ship after ship of the Optimates fleet foundered before their eyes. The legionaries cheered lustily when the giant Argonaut drove onto a rock and was left high out of the water by an ebbing wave, teetering there for a few heartbeats before her spine broke against the weight of her three decks, the sickening sound of the fracture resounding across the distance. She broke into two giant tumbling pieces, oars twirling in the air, masts falling with fluttering sails still attached. At the receding of the next wave, nothing remained but a mass of snapped timbers and twisted sheets.
From the stern deck of the Vulcan, Lucius watched the ruin, astounded at how quickly the massive Argonaut, which had seemed so indestructible when he had walked her decks, was reduced to flotsam. He heard an uproar of laughter coming from above and looked to see a cluster of legates and staff officers observing the same devastation from the Vulcan’s tower. Antony was there, looking very regal in a purple cloak and bronze cuirass, a superior smile affixed to his face as though he already wore the dictatorship. The bastard appeared pleased with himself, freely accepting the heaps of compliments bestowed on him by the other officers, as if he alone and not fortune had been responsible for the successful crossing. Lucius did not know what bothered him more, the bastard Antony or the
bootlickers that swarmed on the next up and coming man like blood-sucking mosquitoes, hoping to endear themselves to the powerful man regardless of his virtues. Antony was having such a good time as the center of attention that Lucius was tempted to march over and reveal to those arse-kissers Antony’s true intentions, but he did not. There would be time for that later.
Savor the meat that it be sweeter in the consuming, he told himself.
He looked back out at the line of shoals, now littered with the hulks of ships, and began to wonder at the fates of Libo and the fair Calpurnia. Were they among the hundreds of heads that now bobbed in the foam about the rocks? He could not fathom how one might escape such a violent space. Even the few figures that managed to scramble onto the higher shoals were soon picked up and dashed to death by the unpredictable pulses of the sea. The smaller triremes and biremes were struggling to stay off the rocks themselves, but a few were dutifully venturing closer in to pick up survivors. Perhaps Calpurnia and Libo were among those they now pulled from the sea. Perhaps Postumus was as well, though he hoped not. That was one gray head he would like to stave in with an oar, had he the chance.
As Lucius stood there, watching the milling ships in the distance, thinking of the treacherous senator, it suddenly occurred to him that something did not quite add up. Postumus had chosen to ship aboard the Argonaut undoubtedly to make certain that he was the one to keep the secret meeting with Antony. But if the original letter arranging the meeting was sent by Calpurnia, and not by him, then how could Postumus have known about it? True, the senator claimed to have informants in Antony’s camp, but surely these would not have been privy to such intimate details. Antony was a mule’s arse, but he was crafty enough to keep such information confidential. Even Marcellus, Jupiter rest his blackened bones, had not been allowed to carry a written document and had been instructed to commit Antony’s reply to memory. Somehow, the message that Marcellus had imparted to Lucius with his dying breath had made it to Postumus’s ears as well.
Lucius thought hard, trying to recall that night, weeks ago, at Antony’s house in Rome, when he had been the centurion of the watch, when Marjanita had arrived bearing the forged letter. He had conveyed her to Antony’s chambers, and had remained at the door when he announced her arrival, as was the custom, since it was impossible to guess what state of undress or sexual engagement the promiscuous general might be in. Antony had appeared at the door, drunk as usual, and reeking of wine. He had not allowed Lucius to enter, nor had Lucius wanted to. Lucius simply turned the cloaked Marjanita over to Antony, who eyed her with curious amusement as he ushered her into the room, and then Lucius had left and had not seen the woman again that night. But, in the far recesses of his mind, he seemed to remember hearing laughter and voices before the general answered the door. Might not someone else have been in the room with the general prior to Marjanita’s arrival?
Antony was still on the quarterdeck, surrounded by his cortege of officers and advisors. Was it possible that one of those men had been with the general that night? Was it possible one of them had heard Marjanita’s message, and had sent a courier off to Postumus informing the senator of the secret rendezvous, the orange pennant, of everything? If that were true, and one of those smiling, adoring officers was indeed an agent of Postumus, what would he do now that the senator had failed to stop Antony’s legions and the treasury gold from crossing the sea? Would there not be a final contingency plan in place – a catchall solution for stopping Antony, should all other plans fail? If that was the case, then Antony was in great danger, for now would be the time to put such a plan into execution, before the legions got ashore, while they were still a disorganized mass scattered across dozens of vessels. If an assassin’s blade lurked among that tight cluster of cloaked officers, it might very well be inching toward the general at this very moment.
Lucius was not sure he really wanted to save Antony. He was sure the blowhard of a general still had it out for him, and would take the first opportunity to send him on some perilous errand hoping to be rid of him. But, still, a quick death was too good for Antony. Lucius wanted a much more satisfying reprisal. He wanted to see the bastard squirm in his boots, and that kind of gratifying revenge would only happen if Antony lived.
At that moment, Lucius resolved to do whatever he could to save the bastard.
But who was the traitor? He could not simply stroll up to the general and ask him who had been with him in his quarters that night. If it was one of the aides hovering about Antony, Lucius would have no way of knowing. They were all bedecked to some degree in arms and armor. Any one of them might, at any moment, bury his blade in the distracted general’s back before Antony’s bodyguards could react.
A thought then crossed Lucius’s mind, and he cursed himself for not thinking of it sooner. There was no way he could get Antony’s attention without causing a commotion, and there was no way that he could identify the traitor, if such a traitor existed – but he knew of someone who could.
XXXV
"Deck ho!" The lookout atop the mast head called. "Flags on the shore. Three leagues ahead!"
Antony looked, as did everyone else, to see a scarlet pavilion that stood halfway up the white sandy strip ahead. As the Vulcan drew closer, pulling up the bay with the long line of transports astern, he could see that the pavilion was flanked by fluttering banners, also of scarlet, beneath which he could just make out a guard of Roman horsemen, heavily armored and holding lances upright.
"There it is!" Antony could not help but exclaim. "Just as the woman said!”
He was practically salivating, beaming from ear to ear.
“Someone waiting to receive us, my lord?” one of the legates asked curiously. “Who is it?”
"Signal the fleet to land there," Antony ordered, ignoring the man.
The confused expressions all around Antony did not worry him. They were all Roman knights, sworn to serve him. Theirs was not the concerns of politics and who ruled Rome. They only followed orders, or at least that is what he hoped. They had served under him through campaigns across Gaul, and now he felt certain they would follow him, even if he suddenly announced that he was taking command of the entire Optimates army, and combining their legions with Pompey’s to deal a death blow to Caesar. They would change with him. They would have to. For he had the money, and when the hob-nailed boot met the paving stone, money was all that really mattered to this band of mercenaries who loosely called themselves Roman patriots. Stop paying them, let their families starve in their homes, and see how long these so-called patriots would remain in camp.
It was laughable at times, how easily soldiers were manipulated.
As the three dozen craft turned sharply to put the land across their bows, Antony descended to the main deck and called for a mirror to check that his newly polished bronze cuirass still carried its shine, for he wished to look the part when he met his new lord for the first time. An inner peace came over him, such as he had not felt in years. The Raven was a bold man of power – a man like him. He undoubtedly had no problems wielding that power wherever and whenever he saw fit. This contrasted sharply to Caesar whose reluctance to be heavy-handed with his own authority had always annoyed Antony. Antony had never quite understood Caesar’s insistence on making everything legal. Why should one undergo such posturing if one had total control?
As Antony looked in the mirror, tucking and draping his cloak in a dozen different ways, he did not see the razor sharp pugio dagger that approached him steadily, and with purpose.
“General!” a cry came from far up forward. “General, look out! The eunuch!”
Antony swung around to see the stringing blonde hair and maddened face of Orestes, as the eunuch charged forward at him thrusting the glimmering dagger. Antony side-stepped the swipe, escaping a killing thrust aimed at his groin. Orestes was not a warrior, and the desperate lunge had sent him off balance, toppling him to the deck. Within moments, Antony’s bodyguards were there, thrusting their gladii into the p
aunch man’s belly and neck. Orestes screamed a high-pitched, frustrated shriek as jab after jab pierced his fleshy form, painting his pale skin crimson, like a pig being slaughtered. Antony was still dumbstruck and watched with horror as Orestes stared back at him with venomous eyes that bore a deep-seated hatred of which he had not been aware. The startling revelation that his closest advisor and confidant had tried to kill him, left him unnerved and wondering who had put the traitor up to it. The eunuch expired in an expanding pool of blood, and during that brief time, Antony was able to compose himself and put on a confident air.
“Throw this refuse to the fish!” he commanded. “Who was it that called out and alerted me to this treason?”
“We know not, sir,” one of the bodyguards replied as the others heaved the eunuch’s lifeless bulk over the side. “Do you wish us to find the man?”
The deck was crowded with hundreds of legionaries in full kit, preparing to disembark. Most had been too absorbed in the preparations to even witness the attack. Did he really wish to search for the man? Such inquiries would only spread rumors of the assassination attempt throughout the army.
“No,” Antony said. “It is not important. Let the man come forward of his own volition if he wishes any reward.”
Antony looked at the shore where the pavilion sat with the billowing banner.
No, nothing was going to ruin this day. Fortune smiled on him this day. Today he would take the first step on the path to making the world his own. He would use this Raven’s connections and wealth, and become the Alexander of Rome.
Rome: Tempest of the Legion (Sword of the Legion Series) Page 29
