Again, Bruteddius paused. Ballista leant on the stern rail next to him. The trierarch’s face was very still, but his eyes did not stop moving, probing the impenetrable fog. ‘We could stay here, sit quiet,’ Bruteddius continued. ‘Hope that either the Goths pass us in the fog or give up when they see it. The men are exhausted. They could rest. But, if the Goths came on us, with no way on the boat, we would be a sitting target.’
This time Bruteddius was silent for longer.
‘And our final option? Ballista asked.
‘Our final option is to turn back, try to run silently through them in the fog and the night, get to a safe harbour in Sinope, or even all the way to Trapezus. Best to try and take on water and food somewhere along the coast and then press on to Trapezus. There are troops there.’
‘And that is what we will do?’ said Ballista.
‘That is what we will do,’ said Bruteddius.
Half an hour, and the Armata was facing east again. During this time, the thranites had rested, but now they had to return to their work. The top level consisted of the chosen men, the best oarsmen in the boat. Hard men, nut brown; it was said they could row from dawn to dawn with just a sip or two of water. Now that claim would be put to the test. Their hard, callused hands played out the long, smooth shafts of fir. One rank of blades would make less noise. The thranites would row with more control, more quietly than the zygians or thalamians. It had to be them. They took pride in it. A soft word from the rowing master and they began. Slowly, the Armata got under way.
It was near sunset. Somewhere behind, the sun was going down. Only a faint lightness in the billowing clouds of fog, a strange hint of refracted colour, indicated the west.
The great galley slid forward. No pipes, no songs; the thranites kept time instinctively, watching the backs of the men in front. Catch, pull, twist and lift. A slight swell had got up from aft, gently lifting the stern, running under the keel. Nothing to trouble the thranites. The wings of oars rose and fell with the quietest of splashes. The ram nosed through the water with a restrained, sibilant hiss.
Ballista stood in the stern with Bruteddius. The trierarch, legs splayed, rocked as one with the movement of his boat. His eyes were never still. They flicked from the thranites to the prow, where the bow officer was leaning far forward, watching, listening.
The fog was thick, tangible. Yet every so often, a space cleared, like a glade in a forest. The boat pushed through, back into the gloom.
Bauto brought Ballista a small cup of unmixed wine. The Frisian was meant to be Calgacus’s servant, but he and Wulfstan tended to Ballista and the old Caledonian indiscriminately. They were good boys.
As he sipped the alcohol, Ballista looked down the length of the long, narrow craft. Below the thranites, the other rowers were asleep on their benches, a hundred or so men huddled in strange attitudes. Beyond exhaustion, they lay, limbs overlapping, like animals in a malodorous den.
A seagull swooped from nowhere, its cry harsh and shocking. Bauto jumped. Ballista put a hand on his shoulder, smiled a reassurance he did not feel. The bird was gone.
The Armata slipped wraithlike through the coils of clinging vapour. Ballista’s eyes itched with tiredness. Time had lost all meaning. It was darker. The rhythm of the thranites was hypnotic. They could have been rowing for hours.
The brazen note of a horn rang out. Horrible in its immediacy, it came from somewhere not far off the larboard bow. Everyone froze. Even the thranites faltered. A sharp, urgent whisper from the rowing master amidships, and the rhythm was resumed.
Another horn answered, then another, both off to starboard. Behind Ballista, a man sniffed loudly. He swung round to cuff him to silence. It was Felix. Ballista did nothing.
More horns, seemingly all around. Allfather, they were in the middle of the enemy. Ballista looked at the others on the quarterdeck. Everyone was unnaturally still. Maximus’s eyes were shut; he was listening. Bruteddius glanced back; a tight smile. The boat glided on.
A disembodied voice floated through the fog. Ballista held his breath. The creak and splash of the oars was hideously strident. The voice came again; muffled, a little off to the left.
‘Cease rowing.’ Only the nearest oarsmen could hear Bruteddius. Those further away followed their lead. The boat’s mo- mentum carried her on.
Another voice, much nearer, to the right. It was German; a question, the words indistinct.
Ballista’s breathing was shallow, panting. He was gripping the sternpost tight, sweating. Around him, the faces of the others were sheened with moisture. Their heads turned this way and that, peering at things they could not see.
The voice came again from the right, nearer still: a hail, a man’s name.
Even the helmsman was trembling. No one was sleeping on the lower benches now. All the men kept glancing at Bruteddius. The trierarch was rock still. If the hail was aimed at them, it was over. The boat was losing way.
Off the starboard bow, something darker than the mist, more solid. A hundred feet, no more: the upswept stern of a galley – the liburnian . The Armata was nearly dead in the water.
A Gothic voice returned the call; clean over the Armata, from further away to the left.
The horns started up again, the notes eddying through the fog.
Bruteddius padded to the nearest oarsmen. He spoke so low that Ballista and the others by the helmsman did not hear. Drops of water fell from the oars as the thranites glanced over their shoulders at the men behind, readied themselves. Bruteddius, nodding calmly, gestured to the two rowers on either side closest to him. They looked at each other, began the stroke. The others copied.
The splash as the blades bit the surface, the creak of wood, the slosh of water. Surely the Goths must hear. One stroke, a second. No outcry yet. The many thousand wooden joints sighed as the ship gathered way. Still no alarm. Someone was muttering a prayer. Another hushed him.
Yet more horns, their piercing volume a blessing from the gods. The dark, solid shape to the right faded aft. In moments, the fog blanketed the sounds of the horns. Ballista drew an almost sobbing breath. The Armata sailed on into the opaque, dark night.
XIX
‘Ships astern, three of them.’
Ballista surfaced from a dead sleep, trying to understand.
Maximus was shaking his shoulder. ‘Goths, less than half a mile away.’
Ballista could barely move. He had slept in his mail coat on the hard wooden deck. Maximus offered him a hand. He saw Wulfstan and Bauto helping Calgacus to his feet. Hippothous, shaven head glinting, was already up.
A breeze had got up in the west. It was tearing away the last shreds of the fog. The sun had just risen. In its raking light, the enemy was in clear sight. Long, low vessels, a prow at either end – unmistakably, northern longboats.
How had they got there? Last night, after the too close encounter with the liburnian, the Armata had rowed on for another three hours; the first just the thranites pulling, then they had rested while the other two levels took over. They should have been well clear. It might be a trick of the current. Certainly, inshore, yesterday, it had run strongly to the east. There again, the Goths might have separated, scouring the sea for their prey. Ballista scanned the horizon through 360 degrees: no other ships anywhere.
A hoom sound rolled across from the Gothic ships: their warriors giving voice. Silhouetted by the newborn sun, there was no chance the Armata could have escaped detection. The Goths were putting out their oars, gathering way. Two of them hauled round to set towards the Armata. The other veered away towards the west, going to get the rest of the wolfpack.
Bruteddius and his officers were hazing the crew back to their stations. The oarsmen were moving stiffly, like old, tired men. No one ever wants to spend a night at sea in the cramped and damp discomfort of a war galley. ‘Out oars, prepare to row, medium pressure. Row.’ The rowing master’s pipe squealed. The blades broke the surface: not too ragged, given the circumstances.
Horns bl
ared from the northern boats. No longer deadened by the fog, the notes skimmed far out across the sea, summoning their kinsmen to the chase. Yesterday evening, the horns had masked the sound of the Armata’s escape; today they were likely to bring its doom. This had the makings of another long, bad day.
The Armata was built for speed. Under oars, she could leave almost anything afloat far behind in her wake. But not when her rowers were tired, hungry and thirsty; not when they had not stepped off the boat for more than twenty-four hours; not when they had not eaten since the previous evening.
The oarsmen sat on sodden cushions. They wore soaking tunics – they had unmuffled their blades in the night. The salt had chafed their skin, their calluses were raw, bleeding. Below them, their own waste slopped and stank. Despite it all, the banks of oars, if they did not rise and fall quite as one, did nothing too dissimilar.
Under Bruteddius’s order, the rowing master kept them only at medium or even light pressure. It was designed to preserve what little energy they still possessed. However, it did not make the Goths fall away astern. A little over three hundred yards of undulating green water separated the Armata from the longboats.
Bruteddius, as ever, stood near the helm. The swell had increased. Bruteddius moved as one with the motion of his ship. His eyes shifted endlessly; measuring, calculating. Behind his beard, he was haggard. Ballista wondered if he had slept at all.
The purser was summoned. Bruteddius ordered the last reserves of water to be rationed out; each man aboard to get the same meagre measure.
Next, Bruteddius called the shipwright to his side. ‘When the men have drunk, clear the passengers out of the way as far as you can, and step the masts.’ Like all the crew, the naupegos was under military discipline, yet he appeared just a little uncertain. Bruteddius looked hard at him. ‘A storm is getting up in the west.’ He smiled. ‘Either it will save us, or kill us.’
A salute. We will do what is ordered, and at every command we will be ready.
The full deck crew, aided by a few of the able-bodied passengers pressed into service, unlashed the mainmast from its horizontal position on the deck and heaved the long, heavy trunk of pine into place to lift. They squared off the endless ropes and tackle, then hauled and hauled: slowly, slowly – with more than one heart-stopping shift and sway – the mast was coaxed upright and its heel slid home into its tabernacle.
‘Rig double stays,’ shouted Bruteddius. He turned to Ballista. ‘The mast can take punishment. I selected her myself: a fine, straight tree, from a good, sunny aspect.’ Then louder, to a wider audience: ‘Sway up the yard.’
Against the squeal of pulleys and the hammering of mallets, Felix spoke. ‘I have stores for myself and my familia in the cabin. They should be distributed to the men.’
The old senator’s offer was accepted most gladly. And so it was that, there in the wastes of the Kindly Sea, the crew, the sweepings of the backstreets of Alexandria, Antioch and Smyrna, many of them brought up on slave bread, were fed by hand all the delicacies the imperium and beyond had to offer. Biscuits, soft and melting, a world apart from ship’s biscuit or the buccellatum of the army, smoked eel from Spain, artichoke hearts in honey vinegar from Sicily, stems of silphium from who knew where, apricot halves in grape syrup… one and all vanished into hungry mouths, delighted rough, untutored pallets.
Shared among two hundred, there was only a mouthful or two each, but it helped. Certainly, it raised spirits. There were smiles, even song – a croaking version of an old favourite about an unusually accomplished girl from Corinth: oh, the things she could do with your prick.
‘I do not understand it at all,’ said Felix almost plaintively. ‘Barbarians, especially northern barbarians, are not noted for their persistence. But these Scythians seemingly would follow us across the Styx.’
‘They know what we carry.’ Bruteddius said, then roared, ‘Tighten that fucking brace.’
Ballista and Maximus exchanged a look, one of total understanding, complete with a small, knowing smile. As Ballista looked away, he caught the eye of Hippothous. There was a strange light there. Of course, thought Ballista, you too know all about the bloodfeuds; if the Goths are Borani or Tervingi, the gold and silver, all the diplomatic gifts on board, are just bread, not the relish. What could you do? Wherever you go, old enemies will find you.
‘Sponges, have we got any sponges, Pentekontarchos?’
The purser hastened to assure his captain they had plenty.
‘Get the deckhands to wash down the men on the benches as they row. Start at the top level. The pueri will feel better when they are not quite so covered in shit. And get the pump working; try to get some of that filthy water out of the bilges.’
The sun was getting higher, sparkling in the spray. Through it the unsmiling chase ran on. Like some punishment in Hades, ever labouring, never succeeding, the crew of the Armata drove her through the water, but never could escape their pursuers.
Bruteddius went into close conversation with the shipwright and the local pilot. There was much gesticulating, pointing, shaking and nodding of heads. At the end of it, the naupegos went off and returned with men carrying a second set of steering oars. These, with some considerable difficulty and much voluble swearing, were run out through the rear of the outriggers on both sides of the ship at the level of the topmost rowers. The tillers from these came in at right angles to where a second helmsman now took station in front of the first. This done, the naupegos and his men crawled around fitting hanging weather screens to the outside of the ship that were intended to give some measure of shelter to the thranites, who, although they had a deck over their heads, were otherwise exposed on the sides.
After inspecting the new arrangements, Bruteddius climbed some way up the sternpost and gazed aft. Eventually, he climbed stiffly down, and addressed the senior passengers on the quarterdeck.
‘ Domini, you see the cloud behind us over our starboard quarter. Most likely, it has formed over the high land behind Sinope. If that is right, we drifted further east in the night than we thought. With the Goths where they are, now there is no chance of us making Sinope.’
Those assembled received this in silence.
‘The wind has moved to the north-west. The Argestes, the ‘Cleanser’, as it is known, is strengthening. Maybe it will ‘cleanse’ us of these Goths.’ Bruteddius smiled with no great humour. ‘The Argestes will blow a storm. The second, outer steering oars are there to help in a high sea. When it hits, we will run before it under sail. But we will try to keep it a touch on our larboard quarter. We do not want to be driven on to the coast to the east of Sinope. It is inhospitable, a fifty-mile bight of shifting shoals and banks. The local pilot and the periplous I studied both say the first safe harbour is Naustathmos. But it is in the marshes of the estuary of the Halys. Better we try for Amisus. It is only some fifteen miles further, and has an easy approach. Failing that, a little beyond, there is Ankon on the headland of the Daiantos Plain.’
‘And failing that?’ Ballista asked.
‘Trapezus.’
‘How far?’
‘Better none of us think of that.’ Bruteddius went back to studying his ship and the sea.
The storm did not come in one rush. It built gradually, wave on wave, the wind keening higher in the rigging. The fore and aft lift were increasing. The waves were showing white. The rowers were having trouble catching their strokes. Bruteddius, ignoring the pleading looks of his officers and men, bided his time.
Ballista, one arm holding the sternpost, the other firm around Wulfstan and Bauto, watched the Goths astern. The longboats were only about two hundred yards behind. They were rising and falling on the waves like seagulls. At times, they were completely lost from view in the troughs between the rollers. These were big – all the way from the mouth of the Borysthenes; three, four hundred miles of sea room to gather themselves, to build up into something terrifying.
‘Are we going to die?’ Wulfstan had to shout to be heard.
‘We are not sailing on a mat. Old Bruteddius knows what he is doing.’ Ballista squeezed the boys harder. ‘The goddess Ran will not get us with her drowning net today.’ He did what he could to convey reassurance.
Maximus, timing the roll, slid to his side. ‘The Goths are gaining.’
Ballista flicked his head to get his long hair out of his eyes. ‘There will be no fighting in this. Help me out of this mail shirt.’ He released Wulfstan and Bauto. ‘You boys hold on tight to the rail.’
Soon the waves were breaking and tumbling. The oarsmen were fighting for purchase on the broken sea. The deck was streaming. One of the thalamians was carried up from the depths of the ship. He was twitching, his face a bloody mess. He had missed his stroke; somehow the metal counterweight on his oar had smashed into his face.
‘Deck crew,’ Bruteddius bellowed above the elements, ‘on my command, unfurl the mainsail – only a little canvas, steady on the brails. Rowing master, when she draws, on my second command, oars inboard; zygians and thalamians, all the way, seal the oarports; thranites, leave just the blades outside the weather screen.’
Bruteddius, moving easily across the wildly pitching deck, went to the rear helm. He placed his hands on the tillers, next to those of the helmsman. Braced, feeling the run of his ship, he gazed back over his shoulder towards the prow.
‘Deck crew, now!’
The sail dropped, snapped and bellied out, tight as a drum in an instant. The mast groaned.
‘Enough!’
The deck crew, leaning back, feet slipping, struggling for balance, wrestled the brails secure. There was just a few feet of sail showing. The ship shied like a racehorse.
‘Rowing master, oars inboard!’
The poles rattled home, and the Armata twisted, straightened and forged ahead with a new urgency.
‘Helmsmen, bring the wind a touch to larboard.’
The waves rushed under the high, curving stern of the trireme, tipped her nose down, lifted her. The long, delicate ship rode at a slant up the great face of water. At the top, she hung for a moment among the flying spume, ram high, then wriggled and slid down the far side. Again and again the threat was surmounted, the inhuman power negated.
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