Blood Red Tide (Bad Times Book 2)

by Chuck Dixon

  Between the helmsman and Dwayne squatted the smoking brick furnace with the leather-wrapped handles of irons sticking from the oven’s mouth. The irons took on a new significance to Dwayne. They were being heated to cauterize the wounds and stop the bleeding after he and Caroline were roughly neutered.

  Dwayne leaped back and yanked the irons from the coals. He turned with a glowing rod in each fist and swung the hot bludgeons at the men. He parried the iron head of a club, and red embers flew, through the air. The men stumbled back in horror. Fire was every sailor’s greatest fear. A spark in the wrong place, and the tar and hemp and sun-dried timbers all around them would turn the Lion of Ba’al into a floating inferno none would escape.

  The captain shrieked and shook a fist at Dwayne. Behind him, the helmsman stood glowering. Dwayne took a step forward and swung the irons. A dismayed moan rose from the crew as they retreated toward the mast. All eyes were locked on the glowing tips of the rods. He advanced again, and they backed away. One crewman launched himself forward and flailed at Dwayne with a club. The Ranger sidestepped the swing and seared the man along the ribs. The guy screamed and rolled on the deck, holding his scalded flank. Dwayne took that opening and moved toward Ahinadab and the massed mob of men. They gave way, and Dwayne reached the pole of the mast.

  He stretched his arms up and held the smoking tips of the irons inches from the cloth of the whipping sail. The men gasped as one. The captain’s eyes went wide in rage, then terror. A touch to the tar-infused hemp with the hot brand and it would go up like paper. This was only a momentary reprieve. The irons wouldn’t stay hot forever. Dwayne had only seconds to press his advantage.

  “Caroline!” he called out.

  He heard her yelp in response from somewhere behind the dense pack of scowling faces.

  “Tell them to let you go!” he said and waggled the irons for emphasis.

  He heard voices from within the packed mass of men. Caroline spoke hurriedly, followed by Praxus’ voice calling out.

  Dwayne lowered one of the irons to bring the end closer to the surface of the mast and held it there a finger-width from the surface of the snapping cloth. The crew pleaded with him for patience, or so he imagined.

  There was a disturbance in the mob and finally Caroline, still fully clothed, was shoved toward Dwayne. She leaped the form of Xin, lying insensate on the deck, and reached Dwayne. She clutched his t-shirt. She glared past him to the helmsman. Yada stopped his stealthy advance mid-step with a frustrated grimace.

  “You all right?” Dwayne said.

  “They still think I’m a boy,” she said.

  Ahinadab and the crew stood watching the irons as if willing them to cool. Praxus had elbowed his way to the front rank and looked on helplessly.

  “They beg you not to burn them alive!” Praxus called.

  “Then tell them to withdraw,” Caroline replied in Latin.

  “They will not listen to me!”

  “Tell them I am a consul’s son! Tell them he will pay them ransom enough to sink this boat!”

  “Ahinadab has called for slingers!” Praxus called. A crewman slapped him to his knees. Another kicked him, and he curled to a ball on the deck boards as more feet stamped on him. The crew’s rage was rising, and they were warming up on the slave boy.

  Caroline relayed this to Dwayne, who already knew it was bad news.

  “Any ideas?” Dwayne said.

  “I was really hoping you had one, Maximus,” Caroline said.

  “I can feel these pokers starting to cool. One of two options is I set fire to the sails and roast these fuckers.”

  “And us too. The other option?”

  “They cut off my junk and rape you to death.”

  Caroline shivered against them.

  “Your call, babe.”

  “Light them up,” she said.

  The tense silence on board was broken by a frantic call from the stern. The Nubian helm apprentice had released the tiller handle and was pointing at the Lion’s wake and hopping from one foot to another in a frantic dance. He called again and again in a shrill voice fueled by panic.

  The captain bawled orders. The crew tensed and looked from Dwayne to Ahinadab, uncertain of who was truly, in command. Finally, they broke, the standoff forgotten, and scrabbled down through the openings in the deck to the oar benches port and starboard. The captain pushed past Dwayne and followed the helmsman aft at a run.

  “What is happening?” Caroline shouted to Praxus.

  “A sail! He has sighted a sail on the horizon!” Praxus replied anxiously.

  39

  Mixed Spirits

  He was never what you’d call a drinker, but the night before, Morris Tauber had matched Boats and Jimbo beer for beer. The last thing he could recall was giving a thumbs-up when Boats suggested they open a bottle of peppermint schnapps.

  Who would have thought peppermint would taste so bad coming back up? He yanked the flush pull and leaned on the steel sink for support. The Ocean Raj was in motion now, on course for the island of Rhodes. According to the dog-eared Penguin Classics edition of the Codex Profectus Praxus, that would be the next place they could find his sister and her new boyfriend.

  Now there was nothing to do but wait. That was the worst part of this whole endeavor. All Morris could do was fret and fuss and review every detail and answer every question again and again. As sick as he felt right now, he was still glad for the few hours’ respite from worrying.

  Jimbo knocked and entered to find Morris lying back on his bunk with a wet washcloth tented on his face. The physicist did not look much like a scholar in a sweat-stained t-shirt, tighty-whities, and one sock.

  “You still with us or are we going to have a burial at sea?” Jimbo said.

  Morris moaned.

  “It smells like Peppermint Patty took a dump in here.”

  “Ha. Ha,” Morris said from beneath the cloth. “Boats says we’ll be sighting Rhodes this time tomorrow.”

  “How drunk did I get?”

  “You didn’t get drunk, Mo. You got wasted. I stuck to beer, but you and that pirate polished off that minty shit and moved on to Maker’s Mark.”

  “I don’t even know what that is,” Morris groaned.

  “Bourbon. You really liked that shit,” Jimbo said and slapped Morris’ bare foot. “You need to haul your ass up and get something on your stomach to take away that head of yours.”

  “I’ll puke. Again.”

  Jimbo got a San Pellegrino out of the mini-fridge and made Morris sit up and sip it.

  “The headache is from dehydration. Your blood vessels are flat. They need liquids.”

  “You’re a doctor now?” Morris said, retrieving his eyeglasses from the bedcovers and placing them on his nose.

  “No. But I’ve seen more guys drop from dehydration than combat. We’re seventy percent water, you know.”

  “Yeah. I read that on a Snapple cap.”

  “See? A joke. You’re back in business already,” Jimbo said. “Let me give you the sitrep. Me and Boats did an inventory of the stuff we brought back from the island.”

  “What’s missing?” Morris held the cold bottle to his forehead.

  “Some clothes, a combat knife, and Dwayne’s Kimber.”

  “That’s a gun, right?”

  “A really nice gun. Dwayne paid a shit-pile for it.”

  “We’re all going to pay a shit-pile for that gun, James,” Morris groaned. “It’s a chronal catastrophe. An anachronistic Hiroshima.”

  “Dwayne knows that, and Caroline wouldn’t let him forget anyway. I’m sure he threw it in the water or ditched it somewhere on the island. When we find them, he can confirm that.” Jimbo slapped his shoulder and rose to leave.

  “When we find them. Any luck reaching Chaz?”

  “I have messages out at all his contacts and hangouts. He’s gone dark on me. Hammond, too. I think something’s up, but we’ll reach one of them. Don’t worry.”

  “Worry. It’s what I
do,” Morris said with a quavering smile. “Until Caroline’s back, it’s all I’m going to do.”

  40

  The Slow-Motion Race

  Dwayne thought it was all like something from a movie until it wasn’t.

  Men were running everywhere. The two “Roman” captives were ignored. The unconscious Xin remained unmoving. Men ran to their assigned oar stations without direction. They were clambering down to their benches. All took their seats facing sternwards with hands clasping the oars and awaiting command.

  A boy wearing nothing but a water bota on a cord about his shoulders shinnied up the mast using only hands and bare feet until he was perched on the top spar high above the deck.

  Others tore at lines and tarps to uncover crates woven from wax-covered reeds. The lids were prized from the crates to reveal stacks of swords, axes, and spears stored within to protect them from moisture. There were helmets and few bits of dented armor. The men armed themselves and hauled the empty crates to the aft where they stacked them and dogged them down and out of the way.

  The captain’s tent was struck and stowed away. The old seer shuffled aside to make room. Xin’s body was dragged over the deck and rolled against the strakes behind the prow. Another man took up the dropped ax, the symbol of office for the second in command.

  A rumble shivered the ship its entire length as two banks of oars were turned and run out either side. The oars were turned to lock pegs against the tholes. The blades were fully extended and held suspended above the water. The armed men cleared the center deck to line either gunwale. Dwayne and Caroline were pushed aft, and Praxus limped to follow. The kid had taken a beating.

  A single figure was left standing amidships. He was a rough-looking man with long braids touched with gray and worn free on his head like a mane. A striped loincloth was knotted about his waist. In his hand, he held a wooden staff topped with the brass head of a lion. He tapped the staff once on the deck. The blades of the lower bank of oars dropped into the water in a single motion and began to sweep through the water.

  “Aleph!” the man with the staff called.

  When one pass was completed, the man thumped the deck twice. The top bank of oar blades bit into the water and pulled until they reached the same angle as the lower bank.

  “Bet!” the man called.

  They were soon in steady motion powered by one hundred and twenty men in synchronized motion under the command of the man with the staff who tirelessly called the rhythm with a steadily increasing rapidity until the drag of the oars could be felt through the deck boards. The two long rows of oars moved in perfect tandem, and the prow rose and fell with each unified pull. Spray splashed up the chest of the bronze lion at the head.

  “Aleph! Bet! Aleph! Bet! Aleph! Bet! Aleph! Bet!”

  One. Two. One. Two. One. Two. One. Two.

  The number system shared by the Phoenicians and the Hebrews and adopted by the Greeks.

  Dwayne and Caroline leaned over the port freeboard and looked back along the white wake. Far behind them, a broad sail was momentarily visible against the horizon. The slight chop served to hide it from sight most of the time. The Nubian who called the alarm must have been gifted with extraordinary eyesight to have spotted it.

  Ahinadab was perched high on the stern structure that curved back over the tiller deck. He stood on footholds that were cleverly concealed in the carving and clung with one hand to the heavy truss line that ran the length of the ship. He called down orders to Yada, who adjusted the helm, shoving or pulling the iron-bound blade of the rudder as needed. The young Nubian with the eagle eyes stood by, but assisted only when the course change was radical enough to require his added weight to hold the tiller steady.

  They were running. That was obvious. Whoever was following their course was someone they feared—a bigger fish.

  Crewmen adjusted the sail to take advantage of the following wind. They moved the lines back and forth along the freeboard that ran down either wale. They clewed the lines tight to wooden cleats. The cables went taut, and the sail snapped into rigid life.

  “The other ship? Who is it?” Caroline asked Praxus who joined them at the freeboard.

  “A Carthaginian vessel,” he said glumly.

  “And that is a bad thing?” she asked.

  “They will hang us all.”

  “How the hell can they know it’s Carthaginian?” Dwayne asked.

  “Praxus says it’s the shape of the sail. It’s broader than ours. That means a bigger boat, a trireme or larger. More oars, more oarsmen. The Carthaginians are the only navy in these waters with that kind of vessel,” she said.

  “So, faster,” he said.

  “Not necessarily. My reading tells me that these vessels do ten knots at best. But three banks of oars mean less strain on each rower. They can spell rowers and still keep pace. According to Praxus, they’ll catch up to us eventually unless the skipper thinks of something.”

  “How eventual is this?”

  “Two days. Maybe more depending on the skill of their captain,” Caroline said.

  “You’re shitting me. These guys can keep up this pace for two days?” Dwayne said.

  She spoke to Praxus, then turned back to Dwayne. “We’re all hands to the oars until dark. Then they’ll spell the rowers. One bank on, one bank off until morning. If we haven’t lost the pursuing ship by morning, it’s back to all hands again.”

  “What about these guys? Can’t they row too?” Dwayne nodded toward the armed men now standing along the gunwales looking bored.

  “They don’t have the skill sets,” Caroline said. “Rowing takes training. You don’t want amateurs pulling the oars. That guy calling off the count? He gets more of a share of the loot than anybody except the captain.”

  “Do you know what these clowns did to piss off the Carthaginians?” Dwayne asked.

  Caroline relayed the question to Praxus, who only shook his head, lips pressed tight and a mournful look.

  “He’s lying,” Dwayne said.

  “Uh huh,” Caroline said.

  From a terrifying start, the mood on the Lion went from organized panic to brittle tedium within hours. Even a sea chase with the possibility of mass executions at the end of it becomes a drag after a few hours of inactivity. Most of the fighting crew stopped watching the horizon for the pursuing shadow. They remained quiet, muttering among themselves or dozing while the rowing boss paced the center deck, calling out the rhythm in a sing-song voice as regular as a metronome. As the sun passed its zenith, jugs of water and baskets of hard cheese and dried fruit were passed about.

  Dwayne and Caroline sat out of the way in the prow by the seer. Echephron was snoring softly with his robe pulled low on his face.

  “This wasn’t in the kid’s book, was it?” Dwayne said.

  “You read it too. No mention of being chased by anyone,” Caroline said and popped a date in her mouth to suck the sweet flesh off the pit.

  “Maybe he forgot about it. Maybe it turned out all right.”

  “I don’t know. It could be it slipped his mind over time, but I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?” Dwayne said.

  “Because of the attention to detail in Praxus’ writing.” She shrugged. “I don’t think he wrote his first draft when he was an old man. I think he’s writing it now. So, maybe our capture changed things. Maybe he never even lived to finish it.”

  “That’s fucked up. How did our capture make today different?”

  “In the codex, Praxus sure doesn’t mention us. He also wrote that the ship was only anchored at Nisos Anaxos for one day. After they caught us a lot of the crew camped overnight on the beach. We didn’t leave until late the following day.”

  “Almost twenty-four hours behind schedule,” Dwayne said.

  “Enough of a difference for us to cross the path of another vessel the Lion would have missed if they left on time.” Caroline frowned and rose up to spit a pit over the side.

  “And probably one that was o
n the prowl for these assholes.”

  “The treasure. You think that’s it?”

  “I think it’s time Praxus gave up some answers.”

  “Does it make a difference?” Dwayne said.

  “It does to me,” Caroline said, popping another date in her mouth.

  41

  Lion at Bay

  Moonless night dropped on the Aegean, with the comet visible as a frosty smear against the stars. The sail and lines shone silver. The deck was awash in black shadows. The pursuing sail was invisible in the dark somewhere behind them. Its span had grown noticeably larger throughout the afternoon and evening before vanishing in the gloom of dusk.

  The fighting crew dozed. The rowing boss kept up his unerring rhythm in soft grunts. This was running silent 240 B.C. The naked kid on lookout slid down the mast and stuck his head in an open barrel of water to drink his fill.

  Ahinadab lay flat on his back on the deck. Caroline thought at first that the skipper was still drunk. He held his hands up before his face, fingers pointed and arms sweeping slowly across the firmament. He was studying the dome of stars above to determine their new course. She wondered what he might have done if the night was overcast.

  The captain rose to his feet and kicked two crewmen awake. He growled orders to them. They jumped to pull loose lines and haul them away to raise the sail up the mast. The hemp folded as the lower and upper spars drew together. The braided lines squeaked through the wooden tackle.

  The captain joined Yada on the tiller deck and pointed a hand at an angle along the port bow. He touched the helmsman’s shoulder and brought the man’s eyes in line with his pointing arm. Yada nodded and shoved the tiller hard starboard with the help of the skinny Nubian. The timbers of the Lion creaked as the prow swung slowly in line with the new course. They were heading away at a sharp angle. With any luck, they would be over the horizon by dawn and out of sight of the pursuing vessel.