by Chuck Dixon
“You will be sold as slaves when we reach the next port. He expects to get a high price for you two, as unusual as you are.”
“That is better than being killed, is it not?” Caroline said. They would have a chance to escape and find some way to communicate with her brother so the Rangers could find them. She wasn’t sure how this would be accomplished, but now that they would be spared, she and Dwayne would have the rest of this sea voyage to work that out.
The blood drained from her face at Praxus’ next words.
“What’s going on?” Dwayne asked her. The crew exploded in laughter.
“They’re going to sell us as slaves,” she stammered, eyes locked on Xin’s cruel face.
“Well, for now, that’s our best option in this shitty place, right?” Dwayne said and touched her arm to reassure her.
“But first they’re going to castrate us.”
38
Boys Will Be Boys
THE CREW WAS still howling with laughter at Dwayne’s reaction to this development when the Ranger slammed a fist into Xin’s face.
All ninety-nine pounds of the first mate’s body left the deck and hurtled into the encircling crewmen, sending a half-dozen of them to the boards. One fell down into the oar decks with a cry. Xin’s nose was crushed flat, and blood jetted from his nostrils and mouth. He lay unmoving on the deck as the others closed in with a roar.
Hands gripped Caroline from all around as she tried to move to Dwayne’s side. Praxus was shoved away. Caroline yipped in surprise and then shouted in protest as the sweating men combined their weight to drive her down to the deck surface.
Dwayne moved back toward the mast. He was bigger and stronger than any of the men aboard the Lion, but there were so many more of them. His only chance, and Caroline’s, was to keep all hands off him and make cutting off his balls too expensive an option for them to keep trying. And he had to do it before they got Caroline’s pants off and found out that nature beat them to it.
Ranger training kicked in. The hours and hours spent with aikido and Krav Maga instructors gave him the instincts to overcome this scenario, for now.
He backed up and slammed an elbow hard into the face of guy behind him, who crashed to the boards with a ruined face. Another hand reached for him, and he took hold of it and broke the owner’s arm. The little bastard stumbled back shrieking; a stick of white bone jutting through the torn flesh of his forearm.
The rest of the ship’s company crushed forward to reach Dwayne. He saw the gleam of a sword blade in someone’s fist. More were pulling knives. Dwayne looked around for something, anything, to use as a weapon.
Nothing.
His back slammed into the mast and he ducked. The tip of a long-bladed sword sliced over his head close enough to feel the wind of its passage. It chopped a long splinter from the wood above his head. Dwayne kicked out and drove his foot hard into the swordsman's gut. The blade dropped to the deck. Dwayne grasped for the handle. A spear point jabbed into the boards near his hand and he backed off. The spearman jabbed the long point at his face. Dwayne retreated past the mast going sternward. More crewmen with spears joined the first and Dwayne was facing a hedge of shining blades pushing him farther and farther toward the tiller deck.
A roaring voice rose above the angry chatter of the crew. Ahinadab, the skipper, buffeted crewmen aside and stood waving angrily at Dwayne and bellowing at the crew. The man was drunk, totally hammered, but he was still in charge. They lowered their spear points but kept eyes locked on Dwayne. The captain spat and gestured and stood between the pissed off crew and the insolent Roman who’d been kicking their asses. Xin, recovered from the head strike enough to stand, was spraying blood as he barked defiance. Ahinadab put him back down with a clout to the side of the head.
Dwayne knew he couldn’t rely on mercy here. He understood the gist of this exchange. Ahinadab was no friend. The captain was all commerce. Caroline and Dwayne were worth less at a slave market if they were injured, and nothing if they were dead, but apparently, eunuchs were all the rage right now.
The crew nodded, and the spears were withdrawn with great reluctance. Dwayne saw wooden clubs being handed forward. Some were nasty looking deals with knobbed iron heads on them. He backed away and the crew stalked around the mast toward him, grinning like wolves. He turned his head at the sound of a call from behind him. The beefy helmsman was coming down the ladder off the tiller deck with a length of iron chain dangling from his fist.
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 leapt 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 leapt 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. 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. T
he 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.
