Revenge

by Andrew Frediani

  By now he was weak, and no longer had the strength to keep his eyes open. The sect was disintegrating, he managed to think in the instant before he passed out.

  And the fault could only be his. He absolutely must do something to unite them once more.

  XV

  Pure white clouds, driven by the wind, scurried across the otherwise clear sky over the straits between Italy and Sicily. This would be the setting of the first real battle in a civil war which promised to be bloody and merciless. The coastline – the toe of the peninsular’s boot – loomed dark and inaccessible, and the rough seas broke into foaming waves, dancing in anticipation of the great and devastating spectacle to come.

  Between Scilla and Charybdis. Yes, he was luring them right where he wanted them, into the straits from which he would ensure there was no escape, pressing them until they were smashed upon the headland of the peninsular’s coast. Or targeted by Octavian’s men, stationed with scorpios and catapults on the ramparts of the ancient fort overlooking the sea.

  Seated on the curule chair of the turret platform in the bow of the quadrireme, Rufus contentedly watched Sextus Pompey’s fleet of triremes and liburnas enter the Strait in pursuit of the bait he had sent. He raised his arm and the men on the bridge began fanning the fire burning in the stern, sending up a column of smoke – the signal to close the pincer. He did not have to wait long before the quadriremes appeared from behind the promontory of Scilla. Their massive shapes rose up like hills in the background behind the small boats of Pompey, who continued to advance into the Straits. Right towards him. Horns sounded, and the vessels next to the flagship began to spread out slowly, extending the front until the far wing girded the stretch of sea towards Charybdis, along the side of Pompey’s fleet. Rufus rubbed his hands. Soon the enemy would find themselves with the mainland on the left, him in front of them and other ships to the right and the rear. He pictured the image of a quadrilateral fort, exactly like the camps built in stone along the borders. Impassable walls, much higher than the sides of the small enemy ships, would surround Pompey’s fleet, blocking them in that sector of the sea, at his and Octavian’s mercy.

  What an idiot Pompey was! He was nothing like his father. Or rather, he resembled that great man in the declining phase of his career, when he had lost against Caesar at Pharsalus despite outnumbering him. And to think that Sextus had become the bogeyman of the seas, feared even by Brutus and Cassius. With his piracy he had managed to alter the trade routes in the Mediterranean – and even to block some of them altogether, threatening to starve Rome. But at the end of the day he was just a bandit, not a strategist or a tactician. He was only able to attack defenceless merchant convoys, and before an enemy military formation in a real battle he betrayed all his limitations.

  He imagined the expression on Octavian’s face as he stood on the ramparts of the fortress overlooking the straits above him as he watched the perfect formation of Rufus’s ships and expressed his satisfaction to the other officers at having chosen him instead of Agrippa. But above all he imagined his rival’s face when he learned of his victory and the tactics he had used to achieve it. From that day on it would be Agrippa who was envious of him – and perhaps Octavian would decide, once and for all, to make him head of the sect’s military operations.

  Some of Pompey’s ships seemed to falter, but then resumed their course, rallied by the trumpets on the flagship, which was heading straight towards Rufus and the quadriremes he had deployed there to block their passage. From where he was, he could hear the sound of drums, which dictated an increasingly urgent rhythm to the oarsmen of the enemy vessels. Before the thrust of the advancing triremes the sea opened up and actually trembled, like the ground under the hooves of a cavalry charge. That was a more familiar image though – this was the first time he had seen a fleet attack, and it was an impressive sight. He was almost sorry that he was fighting defensively, and pictured himself leading a naval attack, the sea opening up at his passage. He imagined himself leading a legion to charge, shouting to the soldiers to follow him and breaking through the enemy lines.

  He liked the idea of victory by sea and by land. He saw himself in the victor’s chariot, his face painted with vermilion, a laurel wreath held over his head by a slave, and wearing a gown studded with stars, passing between rejoicing crowds praising his name.

  Sextus Pompey showed no signs of slowing down and seemed to have no intention of withdrawing from the battle, though there was still time: in that confined space, the powerful swell of the sea was hindering the ships on his flank and allowing him to slip off towards Charybdis. Instead, he continued to advance. What was he thinking? That he could break through a line of quadriremes which were taller and larger than his own? Each of Rufus’s vessels was at least twenty paces longer than Pompey’s and his men could target the enemy from up on their decks. Many of the enemy ships possessed neither towers nor scorpios, so in the inevitable clashes, the small liburnas would inevitably get the worst of it, smashed against the quadriremes and the rocks of the nearby promontory, their rams capable of little more than scratching the larger ships’ armour.

  They were unevenly matched. And yet Pompey seemed to be trying to break through. Perhaps he had realised that he was done for and had decided to die fighting, making them pay as high a price for his defeat as he was able to, rather than surrendering. Or perhaps he was simply insane, thought Rufus. So much the better. He would cut him to pieces right before Octavian’s eyes and then all he would have to do would be to round up a few survivors.

  He turned to look at the defensive barrier behind him, and suddenly realised that there was none. Fascinated by the spectacle in front of him, he had not been paying attention to the deployment of his own vessels, and they were not where he wanted them. The rough sea prevented the ships from advancing together and maintaining their position, so the quadriremes were spread out and some had even turned sideways on, exposing themselves to the enemy rams.

  Pompey’s triremes continued to advance at great speed, intensifying the roll of the sea and preventing the men on the decks from standing upright. To the left, Rufus was alone and isolated, while to the right, his ship was almost struck by an enemy vessel. He heard a crash and realised that some of the two ships’ oars had smashed into one another and been broken before the two separated again. Pompey’s ships were now just a stone’s throw from land.

  Apparently, they would have to fight a battle on equal terms.

  *

  “That’s all we need,” said Octavian, as he left the stronghold atop the promontory of Scilla to meet the delegation from the citizens of Reggio. He should have been in the battlements to watch the naval battle and support Rufus, but instead he had to listen to a protest from the civilians of the nearby town. At first, when Ortwin had told him that there were people outside the walls who were determined to talk to him, he had ordered the German to tell them to go to hell. There could not have been a more inopportune moment, what with his ships deployed right there and those of Pompey approaching them. But Ortwin had told him that it was not just a question of a few people outside who had come to beg an audience. Outside the gates, in addition to a small legation, there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of civilians armed with sickles and sticks determined to defend their rights.

  Nothing that the legionaries in the battlements couldn’t handle, of course, but earning himself a reputation as an exterminator of civilians was not how he intended to go down in history, so he felt compelled to hear them out even though he would have much preferred to see the destruction of Sextus Pompey’s ships and participate in the battle – safely and from a distance, as Maecenas always suggested. The front line was for the expendable, not for supreme commanders.

  “Do you not see that there is a battle underway?” he began, as soon as he crossed the threshold of the fort, surrounded and protected by his bodyguards, led by Ortwin and Veleda. The arrows of the archers in the battlements trained upon them, the three delegates had been permitt
ed to come as far as the walls of the fortress but a hundred paces further back stood their fellow citizens.

  “Forgive us, Caesar Octavian, but it is during this battle that we must decide which side to take,” said the chief. A sort of indirect threat, then. “I must inform you that if you confiscate the territories and give them to veterans, Reggio is ready to rebel and provide all possible help to Sextus Pompey and to Sicily.”

  Octavian raised his eyebrows “Do you dare go against the supreme magistracy of the State? This was a decision of the triumvirate, signed by the Senate of Rome,” he said, looking the man in the eyes.

  “It is an unfair decision, if you will allow me to say so,” replied the man. “We live on the Straits, the last strip of Italy, and many people pass through here, to whom we rent plots of land and property. If you take our possessions from us we will become poor, because they are our only livelihood, and this true also of the citizens of Vibo.”

  Octavian did not answer immediately. He thought that confiscating lands in those parts was stupid – you had to keep the inhabitants satisfied if you wanted them to support the regime and allow free passage to Sicily and Africa. But Lepidus had demanded that those two cities be included in the list of places where the veterans were to settle and now Octavian understood why – the other two triumvirs had wanted to make trouble for him because he was responsible for Italy.

  Well, he would not be tricked in this way.

  “I understand your distress, friends. Unfortunately, Lepidus demanded you be included in the list because of certain disagreements he had with some of your fellow citizens in the past. In short, a vendetta, if you follow me…” Obviously, this was a fabrication, but wasn’t that what you did in politics? He could not directly accuse Mark Antony, but he could at least try with Lepidus. The other triumvir would find it difficult to disprove and the inhabitants would be convinced that Lepidus had cheated them, so eventually, to persuade them of the contrary, he would have to exempt them from the confiscations.

  “But that does not solve our problem,” protested the man. “Indeed, it makes it worse.”

  “I think not,” said Octavian. “Since taking up the legacy of Caesar I have also made it my duty to provide for the welfare of the empire’s population, and in particular the Italian population, just as my father did when he defended it from the oppression of the powerful. Let me win this battle, friend, and I guarantee you that I will work on behalf of your cities, which undoubtedly do not deserve to suffer this confiscation.”

  “Do I have your word, Triumvir?” insisted the man.

  A cry rang out from the stands. Ortwin ran to the wall to talk to the soldiers on the battlements, then returned to him. “You must return, sir,” he said.

  Octavian looked at the delegate. “You have my word. Now leave me to my duties. We are fighting a rebel,” he said, before turning away, whilst the other man did nothing more than bow his head as a sign of respect and gratitude.

  The triumvir ran back up to the battlements and looked out at the sea. In his absence, he discovered, it had become a battlefield. When he had left, Rufus was about to encircle Pompey, deploying his ships on the opposite side of the headland and from behind, but now he was witnessing a free-for-all. An all-out battle from which he was excluded. He could not use the artillery without risking hitting his own ships. Rufus had missed his chance of blockading the enemy, and now the fight was on equal terms. Or, even worse, if Agrippa was right, his men were actually at a disadvantage. His crews were less accustomed to the rough sea, and the quadriremes were less manoeuvrable than the triremes, with little space available to move.

  His men shouted encouragement to their fellow soldiers on the decks, but he remained silent as he watched the awful spectacle unfolding before him, the like of which he had never seen before. From up there he could see everything and he realised that his uncertain health would never have allowed him to participate directly in such a battle – a land battle would have been bad enough, but a naval battle would have brought out his maladies as soon as he set foot on deck.

  Rufus’s ships moved so slowly that they seemed to be practically sinking into the water, and they hindered each other, piling up one next to the other. However those of Pompey, seemed almost to ride the waves, as graceful as dancers and as rapid and lethal as darts. His eye was drawn to a quadrireme being rammed by two galleys, who both struck it on the same side towards the stern. He saw the bow of the massive ship rear out of the water whilst the stern disappeared beneath the surface and the mast snapped and collapsed upon the men trying to crawl up the tilted deck, crashing onto the turret and smashing it into a thousand pieces. Panicking crew threw themselves into the sea while others simply lost their balance and fell overboard. Oarsmen stretched their arms through the holes from which the oars would normally have protruded in a desperate attempt to attract attention.

  As soon as Octavian realised that the ship’s fate was sealed, he shifted his gaze to another quadrireme which was under heavy attack. Two triremes and a liburna had surrounded it, but the latter had committed the error of trying to tackle it head on, finding itself with the quadrireme’s ram in its side. The small ship had split in two, and as the crew were in the water or trapped between the wrecked beams, there was no need to board her. Meanwhile, however, both triremes had flanked the bulwarks of the quadrireme and, although ramming had not had the desired effect, their men had climbed up the sides and boarded the ship, launching into a battle which they seemed to be winning.

  He considered the fate of that ship inevitable too, and ran his eyes over the entire Straits. The naumachia with which Caesar had celebrated his triumph two years previously, and which he had witnessed, had not prepared him for this hellish scenario. The sea was covered with vessels as far as the eye could see, and seething with foam and blood. The decks were teeming with armed men swarming from one ship to the next, from stem to stern, climbing the rigging to escape from the enemy. Projectiles filled the air above the masts and sails, mainly falling into the water and sending up huge splashes but sometimes indiscriminately smashing masts and oars or slicing through ropes, ripping sails, crashing through the planking and drowning the crews.

  Then, suddenly, the first fire began blazing, followed immediately by others, and that accursed stretch of sea became the Styx.

  *

  Octavian was counting on him. Mark Antony was counting on him. All those who wanted to avenge Caesar were counting on him, and he would not let them down. Agrippa, still protected by the rugged coastline of Apulia, watched Staius Murcus’s small fleet stationed just offshore, waiting to intercept the convoy of cargo ships leaving Brindisi with Antony and some of his legions. Antony, in fact, had no warships because Italy’s defence was Octavian’s responsibility. If Murcus managed to prevent the passage of weapons and soldiers to Macedonia, Mark Antony could put the blame for the failure of the campaign on the younger triumvir, and perhaps he would actually be willing to sacrifice some of his troops to damage Octavian’s credibility.

  For this reason, Agrippa could afford no mistakes. He had decided to concede the conduct of the war against Sextus Pompey to Rufus because he was aware that in Apulia an equally important task awaited him. A defeat in the Straits could be remedied, but the loss of the men destined for the Macedonian front could not. For this reason, he had left nothing to chance, splitting his forces and deploying one at sea, to come between Murcus and Mark Antony’s convoy, and the other on land, ready to attack the enemy’s base, weakening him and forcing him to pull back.

  A courier on horseback was arriving. Agrippa already knew what that meant: Mark Antony had taken to the sea. When the soldier gave him the agreed upon signal, Agrippa gave orders to the navarch to raise anchor and start rowing. The orders rang out in the bay and after a few moments his trireme began to move, immediately followed by the others, towards the open water. Presumably, another courier had simultaneously reported the same news to Murcus, so he needed to move fast enough for the enemy no
t to notice his presence, in fact, the young commander had stationed himself at a point farther away from Brindisi.

  This move had been planned in detail. On the beach nearby were piled up all the materials Agrippa had deemed superfluous, in the interests of moving as fast as possible, and, as he had commanded, the captains had unfurled the sails to take advantage of the wind, which was blowing straight out of the bay where the rugged headlands surrounding them protected the ships from the elements. Agrippa had even ordered that the men were to be freed of their heavy armour and were to fight in light armour using small shields and javelins. He had crammed the ships full of archers and experienced sailors and had the wooden turrets removed, refusing even to board the throwing machines. He’d had the boarding bridges removed as well, along with the heavy ram. He had no intention of getting involved in a real battle, but only of escorting Mark Antony’s ships to open sea.

  The risks were high. If Murcus managed to stop him and force him to fight, he would have no chance of winning, for he was counting on the extreme lightness of his small fleet to complete his mission.

  After emerging from the harbour, he proceeded towards the open water. He could not sail along the coast of the mainland without risking being headed off by Murcus, so he had to surprise him by going round, even though that meant making a long horseshoe shaped detour. When he had decided that he had gone far enough, he ordered the captain to head south. The ships finally found favour in the wind and gathered speed. Agrippa had been at sea several times before, even on warships, but had never gone as fast as he was going now. He was almost overcome with the heady feeling of omnipotence – it felt as though he was galloping on horseback. The combined action of the oars breaking against the water and the sails swelling with wind drove the vessel forward at a frenetic pace. The captain informed him that they had reached the impressive speed of almost ten knots, well over the eight and a half a trireme could normally achieve.