Emperor: The Death of Kings E#2 (22 page)

“By the time Julius gets back, I want Primigenia strong,” Brutus said as they reached the gate.

*      *      *

Julius and Gaditicus peered through the bushes on the steep mountainside down at the distant, tiny ship moored below in the calm island bay. Both men were hungry and almost unbearably thirsty, but their waterskin was empty and they had agreed not to begin the trip back until it was dark.

It had taken longer than they expected to climb the gentler slope to the peak, where the ground fell away sharply. Each time the pair thought they had reached the summit, another was revealed, and in the end dawn had stopped them moving just after beginning the descent. By the time they caught their first view of the ship, Julius had been wondering if his pirate informer had been lying to save himself from the sharks. For the whole of the long journey to the island, the man had been chained at the oars of his own ship, and it looked as if he had earned his life with the details of Celsus’s winter mooring.

Julius sketched what they could see in charcoal on parchment to have something to show the others when they were picked up. Gaditicus watched him in silence, his face sour.

“It can’t be done, not with any certainty,” Gaditicus muttered as he took another look through the low foliage. Julius stopped drawing from memory and rose up onto his knees to view the scene once more. Neither man wore armor, both for speed and to prevent the sun flashing off it and giving away their position. Julius settled back down again to finish his sketch, looking at it critically.

“Not by ship,” he said after a while, disappointment etching his features. For two months of fast travel, the crews had drilled day and night, ready for the battle with Celsus. Julius would have bet his last coin on their ability to board and take him quickly with only a few casualties. Now, looking at the little bay that nestled between three mountains, all their planning seemed wasted.

The island had no central land, just three cold and ancient volcanic peaks that sheltered a tiny bay. From their high vantage point, they were able to see that deep-water channels ran between the mountains, so that whichever way Celsus was attacked, he could choose one of the others and disappear out to sea without hurry or danger. With three ships, they could have bottled him up neatly, but with only two it was a straight gamble.

Far below, Julius saw the dark shapes of dolphins swimming around the ship in the bay. It was a beautiful place and Julius thought he would like to return if he ever had the chance. From far away, the mountains looked grim and sharp, gray-green in the rays of the sun, but perched as high as they were, it was a glorious place. The air was so clear he could see details on the other two jagged peaks, which was why he and Gaditicus dared not move. If they could make out the movement of men on the deck of Celsus’s ship, they could be seen in turn and their only chance for revenge would vanish.

“I would have expected him to winter in one of the big cities, far from Rome,” Julius said thoughtfully. The island seemed uninhabited except for the moored ship, and he was surprised the hard-bitten crew of pirates didn’t find it dull after months of preying on merchants.

“No doubt he visits the mainland, but you can see this place would be safer than anywhere for him. That lake in the foothills is probably freshwater, and I’d guess they could find enough birds and fish to have a feast or two. Who could he trust to look after his ship while he’s away, though? All his men would have to do is pull up their anchors and he’d have lost it all.”

Julius looked at Gaditicus with raised eyebrows. “The poor man,” he said, rolling up his map.

Gaditicus grinned and looked up at the sun. “Gods. It’ll be hours before we can get back over the crest, and my throat is full of dust.”

Julius stretched himself out with his arms behind his head.

“Rafts could get us close, with our ships following us in to block his escape. The next moonless night will give us enough time to lash a few together and plan. Now I’m going to get some sleep until it’s dark enough to go back,” he murmured, closing his eyes. Within a few minutes, he was snoring softly, and Gaditicus looked at him in amusement.

The older man was too tense to sleep, so he carried on watching the movements of the men on board the ship in the bay far below. He wondered how many would die if Celsus had the sense to post good lookouts each night, and wished he had the young man’s confidence in the future.

  CHAPTER
19
  

T
he black water was bitterly cold, soaking into the Romans as they lay completely flat on the rafts and paddled slowly toward the dark hulk of Celsus’s ship. Though they ached for speed, each man held himself steady, moving numb hands through the still water with gentle ripples. Julius’s crew had worked feverishly to lash rafts together, stripping away boards and ropes from the two ships that sheltered on the seacoast outside the bay. When they were done, five platforms moved slowly through the deep channels toward the beach where Celsus was moored, swords bundled together in cloth to balance the weight. They had no armor with them. For all the advantage it would give them, Julius guessed there would be no time to tie it all in place, and instead his men shivered in wet tunics and leggings, hardly protected from the night breeze.

*      *      *

Celsus awoke suddenly in his cabin and listened for whatever sound had wakened him. Had the wind turned? The bay was a perfect shelter, but a storm could send a surge down the channels that might weaken his anchors’ grip on the clay bottom. For a moment, he thought of turning over in his narrow bunk and letting sleep come again. He had drunk too much with the others that evening, and the slippery grease of roasted meat had hardened into wax spatters on his skin. He rubbed idly at a spot, scratching off the residue of the feast with a fingernail. No doubt his officers were sleeping off the drunk, and someone had to patrol the ship each hour. He sighed and reached around him in the dark for his clothes, wrinkling his nose at the smell of stale wine and food that wafted from them.

“Should know better,” he muttered to himself, wincing as a flare of bitter acid made its presence felt up his throat. He wondered if it was worth waking Cabera to make him mix some of the chalky gruel that seemed to help.

There was a sudden scuffling outside his door and the sound of a body striking the deck. Celsus frowned, taking his dagger from the hook out of habit rather than alarm as he opened the door and looked out.

There was a shadow there, featureless and dark against the starlight above.

“Where’s my money?” Julius whispered.

Celsus shouted in shock, barging forward and hammering his arm against the figure as he went. He felt hard fingers grab his hair as he came out onto the deck, and his head was jerked back for a moment before they slipped. He scrambled away, bellowing, wary of the blade he imagined coming for his unprotected back.

The main deck was a confused mass of struggling figures, but no one answered him. Celsus saw that his men were down, too sodden with drink and sleep to put up much of a fight. He skirted the knots of men and raced aft to his armory. They would make a stand there. It wasn’t lost yet.

Something heavy thumped into his neck and he staggered. His feet tangled in a roped figure and he fell with a crash. The silence was eerie. There were no shouts or orders in the dark, just the grunts and breathing of men who fought for their lives without mercy, using anything that came to their hands. Celsus had a glimpse of one of his men struggling with a thick rope around his neck, clawing at it, then he was up and moving again in the blackness, shaking his head to clear it of panic, his heart racing with wasted strength.

The armory was surrounded by strangers, their wet skins catching glimmers of starlight as they turned to him. He couldn’t see their eyes and raised his dagger to stab as they slid toward him.

An arm circled his throat from behind and Celsus slashed at it madly, making it fall away with a moan. He spun wildly, waving the blade before him, then the shadows parted and a spark lit the scene like a stroke of lightning, showing him their gleaming eyes for a moment before the dark returned, worse than before.

Julius struck again to light the oil lamp he had taken from Celsus’s own cabin, and Celsus cried out in horror as he recognized the young Roman.

“Justice for the dead, Celsus,” Julius said as he played the light over the man’s stricken features. “We have almost all your men, though some have barricaded themselves in down below. They’ll keep.”

His eyes glittered in the lamplight and Celsus felt his arms gripped with awful finality as the others moved in on him, yanking the dagger from his fingers. Julius leaned in close until they were almost touching.

“The oarsmen are being chained to their benches. Your crew will hang from crosses, as I promised you. I claim this ship for Rome and for the house of Caesar.”

Celsus gazed at him in stupefied fascination. His mouth hung loosely as he tried to understand what had happened, but the effort was beyond him.

Without warning, Julius punched him hard in the belly. Celsus could feel the acid leap in his stomach and choked for a second as his throat filled with bitterness. He sagged in the arms of his captors and Julius stood back. Celsus lunged at him suddenly, breaking the relaxed grip of the men behind. He crashed into Julius and they both went down, the lamp spilling its oil over the deck. In the confusion, the Romans moved to put out the fire with the instinctive fear of those who sailed wooden ships. Celsus landed a blow on the struggling figure beneath him and then leapt for the side of his ship, desperate to get away.

The giant figure of Ciro blocked him and he never saw the blade he ran onto. In agony, he looked up at the face of his killer and saw nothing there, only blankness. Then he was gone, sliding off the sword onto the deck.

Julius sat up, panting. He could hear the crack of timbers nearby as his men forced their way into barricaded cabins. It was nearly over and he smiled, wincing as his lips bled from some blow he’d taken in the struggle.

Cabera walked toward him over the wooden deck. He looked a little thinner, if that was possible, and the wide smile had at least one more tooth missing from the one Julius remembered. Still, it was the same face.

“I told them over and over you would come, but they didn’t believe me,” Cabera said cheerfully.

Julius stood and embraced him, overwhelmed by relief at seeing the old man safe. There were no words that needed to be said.

“Let’s go and see how much of our ransoms Celsus managed to spend,” he said at last. “Lamps! Lamps over here! Bring them down to the hold.”

Cabera and the others followed him quickly down a flight of steps so steep as to be almost a ladder. Every jostling man there was as interested as he was in what they might find. The guards had been drunk and easily taken in the first attack, but the barred door was still closed, as Julius had ordered. He paused with his hand on it, breathless with anticipation. The hold could be empty, he knew. On the other hand, it could be full.

The door gave easily to axes and as Julius was followed in, the oil lamps lit the hollow space below the oar decks just above them. The angry muttering of the rowers sounded as ghostly echoes in the confined space. Their reward for allegiance to Celsus would be slavery, the only trained crew in Rome’s service.

Julius took a sharp breath. The hold was lined with great shelves of thick oak, running all the way around its walls from the floor to the high ceiling. Each shelf held riches. There were crates of gold coins and small silver bars in stacks, placed carefully so as not to affect the balance of the ship. Julius shook his head in disbelief. What he saw in front of him was enough to buy a small kingdom in some parts of the world. Celsus must have been driven mad with worry over such treasures. Julius doubted he ever left his ship, with so much to lose. The only thing he couldn’t see was the packet of drafts that Marius had given him before his death. He’d always known they would be worthless to Celsus, who could never have drawn the large sums from the city treasury without his background becoming known. Part of Julius had hoped they hadn’t gone down with
Accipiter,
but the money lost was nothing compared to the gold they had won in return.

The men who entered with him were struck dumb at what they saw. Only Cabera and Gaditicus moved farther into the hold, checking and appraising the contents of each shelf. Gaditicus paused suddenly and pulled a crate out with a grunt. It had an eagle burned into the wood, and he broke the lid with his sword hilt with all the enthusiasm of a child.

His fist came out holding bright silver coins, freshly minted. Each was marked with the characters of Rome and the head of Cornelius Sulla.

“We can clear our names returning these,” he said with satisfaction, looking at Julius.

Julius chuckled at the older man’s sense of priorities. “With this ship to replace
Accipiter,
they should welcome us as long-lost sons. We know she’s faster than most of them,” Julius replied. He saw that Cabera was slipping a number of valuable items into the folds of his robe, held from falling by the tight belt that cinched his waist. Julius raised his eyes in amusement.

Gaditicus began to laugh as he let the coins trickle back through his fingers into the crate.

“We can go home,” he said. “Finally, we can go home.”

*      *      *

Julius refused to allow Captain Durus to take the two triremes he’d been promised in exchange for his lost cargo, knowing it would be foolish to strip their defenses until they were safe in a Roman port. While Durus raged at this decision, Gaditicus visited Julius in the cabin that had belonged to Celsus, now scrubbed clean and bare. The younger man paced up and down its length as they talked, unable to relax.

Gaditicus sipped at a cup of wine, savoring Celsus’s choice.

“We could land at the legion port at Thessalonica, Julius, and hand over the legion silver and the ship. When we’re cleared, we could sail round the coast, or even march west to Dyrrhachium and take ship for Rome. We’re so close now. Durus says he’ll swear we had a business arrangement, so any charges for piracy won’t run.”

“There’s still that soldier Ciro killed on the docks,” Julius said slowly, deep in thought.

Gaditicus shrugged. “Soldiers die and it’s not as if he butchered him. The man was just unlucky. They won’t be able to make anything stick now. We’re free to return.”

“What will you do? You have enough to retire on, I should think.”

“Perhaps. I was thinking of using my share to pay the Senate for the slaves that went down with
Accipiter
. If I do that, they might even send me back to sea as captain. We’ve taken two pirate ships, after all, which they can’t overlook.”

Julius rose and took the other man’s arm. “I owe you a great deal more than that, you know.”

Gaditicus gripped the arm that held him. “There’s no debt to me, lad. When we were in that stinking cell . . . and friends died, my will went with them for a while.”

“You were the captain, though, Gadi. You could have stood on your authority.”

Gaditicus smiled a little ruefully. “A man who needs to do that may find he isn’t standing very high after all.”

“You’re a good man, you know—and a fine captain,” Julius said, wishing he had better words for his friend. He knew it had taken a rare strength for Gaditicus to swallow his pride, but without that they would never have been able to take back their lives and honor.

“Come on, then,” he said. “If it’s what you want, we’ll cross to Greece and rejoin civilization.”

Gaditicus smiled with him. “What will you do with your share of the gold?” he asked, a little warily.

Only Suetonius had complained when Julius had claimed half for himself, with the rest to be shared equally. After taking out the Roman silver and the ransoms for the
Accipiter
officers, the shares they would get were still more money than they would ever have expected to see. Suetonius had not spoken a word to Julius since being given his allotted sum, but his was the only sullen face on the three ships. The rest of them looked on Julius with something like awe.

“I don’t know what I’ll do, yet,” Julius said, his smile fading. “I can’t go back to Rome, you remember?”

“Sulla?” Gaditicus said, recalling the young man who had joined his galley just before the tide at Ostia, his face soot-streaked from the burning city behind him.

Julius nodded grimly. “I can’t return while he lives,” he muttered, his mood darkening as quickly as it had lifted.

“You’re young to be worrying about that, you know. Some enemies can be beaten, but some you just have to outlive. Safer too.”

*      *      *

Julius thought about the conversation as they slipped through the deep-water channel that sheltered Thessalonica from the storms of the Aegean Sea. The three ships ran abreast before the gusting wind with their sails cracking and every spare hand on the decks to clean and polish. He had ordered three flags of the Republic made for the masts, and when they rounded the last bay to the port, it would be a sight to lift Roman hearts. He sighed to himself. Rome was everything he knew. Tubruk, Cornelia, and Marcus, when they met again. His mother. For the first time he could remember, he wanted to see her, just to say that he understood her illness and that he was sorry. A life in exile was not to be borne. He shivered slightly as the wind cut at his skin.

Gaditicus came up to the rail by his elbow. “Something’s not right, lad. Where are the trading ships? The galleys? This should be a busy port.”

Julius strained his eyes to see the land they approached. Thin streams of smoke lifted into the air, too many to be cooking fires. As they came close enough to dock, he could see that the only other ships in the port were listing badly, bearing signs of fire. One was little better than a gutted shell. The water was covered in a scum of sodden ashes and broken wood.

The rest of the men came to stand at the rail and watched the unfolding scene of desolation in stricken silence. They could see bodies rotting on shore in the weak sunlight. Small dogs tugged at them, making the splayed limbs twitch and jump in a vulgar parody of life.

The three ships moored and the soldiers disembarked without breaking the unnatural stillness, hands ready on their swords without having to be ordered. Julius went with them, after telling Gaditicus to stay ready for a fast retreat. The Roman captain accepted the order with a nod, quickly assembling a small group to stay with him to handle the rowers.