Flame of the West (23 page)

   The shock of the impact sent jolts of pain coursing up my arm. I bit back a scream and stepped inside his guard, legionary-style, stabbing my sword at his exposed belly. Sharp steel ripped through the thin
covering of his deerhide jerkin, up through his guts and into his heart.

   I twisted out the blade, and his innards swiftly followed, a hot gush of wet, glistening, worm-like objects. He gurgled and crumpled into a heap, clutching feebly at the hole in his belly even as the
fierce glow in his eyes faded and died.

   Three of his comrades rushed at me, howling for vengeance. Even in my prime, I could not have fought so many, and chose the wiser part of valour. I turned and ran, or rather stumbled, tripping over a loose coil of rope and falling flat on my face.

   I moaned in fear, rolling onto my side and expecting the steel kiss of a Gothic blade in my flesh. God saw fit to throw a Cilician in the path of my would-be killers, a huge man, naked save for a breechclout, wielding a cudgel with steel ingots hammered into its head.

   He
laid into the Goths with gusto while I crawled towards the hatch leading to the hold. My horses were still shrieking. A series of bangs and thumps from below told me that a few had broken loose from their pens. Rather than allow my stock to fall into barbarian hands, I intended to cut all their throats before doing the same to mine.

   The strange duality between El
ene’s death, and the one I intended for myself, struck me as I reached for the ladder. She had ended her life in water, and now so would I. Perhaps our shades would meet in whatever afterlife was reserved for suicides – some dark corner of Hell, probably – and settle our differences at last.

  
The shrieks of dying men echoed inside my head as I crept down the rungs of the ladder, mingled with oaths and shouts and the ring of steel. Some of the crew had chosen to die hard and drag a few Goths into the afterlife with them.

  
I was nearly on the last rung before a great shadow blotted out the light streaming through the hatch above. For a second or two I was in total darkness, and then there was a shattering crash, the ship sagged violently to port, and I was hurled sideways off the ladder.

  
An ear-splitting animal scream tore through my skull as I landed heavily on the body of a fallen horse. She had broken loose from her pen, or been knocked out of it, and snapped a leg as she skidded wildly across the deck. For a moment we were tangled up together, a mutually terrified mess of flailing limbs and bodies, until I managed to roll clear.

   “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I found myself gasping, even though one of her hoofs had come within an inch of gelding me.

   Her pain-filled eyes rolled wildly inside her beautiful sleek head, but I had no time for pity. Some gigantic missile had smashed a great hole in the foredeck, passed straight through the hull and the deck below, fatally holing the ship below the waterline.

  
Greenish seawater was now pouring in through the rent. The ominous creak of timbers placed under impossible strain echoed through the hold. Soon they would begin to snap and shatter, and the ship would split clean in half, spilling her contents into the deep.

  
I had to get out before she went down. Whimpering, I clawed my way back up the slanting deck.

   My left arm was still
numb from deflecting the hatchet, and felt like it might twist from the socket. Gasping with effort, black spots dancing before my eyes, I managed to curl my fingers round the side of the ladder.

   The sound of cracking timber
and rushing water filled me with dread. Pain screeched up the length of my arms as I grimly clung on, like a monkey dangling from a branch. The shuddering horse slid away from under me as the deck tipped again.

   Now I was hanging almost vertically, with t
he world dropping away below me. Crates and barrels and struggling horses were pulled downwards into the insatiable maw of the sea.

   Death beckoned. I fancied I could almost see his grinning spectre, crooking a bony finger at me.

   “Not yet, you damned ghoul,” I croaked, “go back to the pit!”

   The spectre faded. Sheer desperation lent me the strength to drag myself up the ladder. Fir
es raged inside my ageing limbs, tendons and sinews stretched to their limits. The pain was unbearable. The alternative was death by drowning, the stuff of my nightmares.

  
Then the light was blotted out again. I fought my way upwards in pitch darkness, wincing as the crumbling ship was rocked by the impact of another shattering crash. Somehow she held together, but was sinking fast, dragged inexorably down by the sheer weight of water flooding her mangled hull.

  
I emerged from one kind of Hell, only to find myself in another. The maindeck rose above me like a timber wall, and then fell away again as the sea hurled the ship to starboard.

   The planking was slick with blood and strewn with corpses and dying me
n. Their bodies rolled about the deck, but otherwise the ship was deserted. The few surviving crewmen had jumped overboard, while the Goths had fled back to their own vessel. There was no easy plunder to be had here, only death.

   I heaved myself up the ladder and flopped onto deck. The bulk of the Gothic flagship still loomed to the
west, and I could see its crew frantically sawing through the ropes of the grappling irons that still bound the two vessels together.

  
Another shadow flew over my head, like a great bird, briefly veiling the sun. This time it missed the transport and smashed into the hull of the Gothic ship, raising a great cloud of shattered timbers and a spray of blood.

   It
was no bird, but a load of rocks packed inside a net. The rocks broke and scattered on impact, shredding a number of luckless Gothic warriors and spreading fear and panic aboard the flagship. She already bore the scars of previous direct hits, including a jagged hole in her stern, just above the waterline.

  
I crawled, flat on my belly, over the main deck towards the starboard rail. There I saw the dark shapes of Roman warships, scudding through the sea like a pack of hunting sharks.

  
The largest of our galleys had catapults and ballistae mounted on their foredecks. Two of these stood a little way off, bombarding Indulf’s ship with everything they had: rocks, flaming darts, baskets of burning coals.

  
In their haste to destroy the enemy flagship, the crews of the Roman war machines were none too accurate, and had accidentally hit the transport while I was climbing down into the hold.

   The Gothic admiral
had no such artillery, and was powerless to respond. All he could do was cut free of the sinking transport and try to escape before his vessel was smashed to pieces.

  
I had my own difficulties to contend with. Gulping with fear, I peered over the side and spotted some floating barrels and caskets, newly escaped from the hold. There was also a horse or two, forlornly trying to swim to safety. Their heads were just above water, but we were miles from land. Soon their strength would give out, and Poseidon would drag them under to join his feast of the drowned.

   My fingers were numb with cold and fear
as I wrenched at the laces of my helmet. I cast it away, and my sword-belt, and kicked off my boots.

   “I cannot drown,” I muttered, teeth chattering, “please God, do not let me drown.”

   The dying ship gave another unexpected lurch, and almost tipped me overboard as I climbed over the rail.

  
I looked down at the churning waters, closed my eyes, and with a final prayer let myself drop.

***

They fished me out after the battle was over, barely conscious and chilled to the bone. Two hours of floating in the sea, clinging to a wine barrel, does nothing for a man’s constitution.

  
From this uncomfortable vantage point I had been able to witness the destruction of the Gothic fleet. Indulf’s mindless greed proved the death of his cause. While his men plundered our transports and slaughtered the crews, the Roman warships to the north turned about and flew south to intercept him, driving a wedge between his squadron and the remainder of the Gothic fleet, led by a Goth named Gibal.

   Our crews were more experienced than the Goths, and skilfully outmanoeuvred the lumbering enemy vessels, pounding them with artille
ry before closing to board. We also had more fighting men, and thinned out the numbers of Gothic warriors with showers of arrows and javelins. Rams were a thing of the past, so the issue was settled by exchanges of missiles and the murderous heat of close combat.

  
The above is a calm, concise overview of the sea-battle of Sena Gallica, such as might be taught in a schoolroom. At the time, clinging like a rat to my barrel, all I could see were the vast shapes of war galleys, Roman and Gothic, crashing together like sea-monsters.

  
My ears were full of water, but I could hear muffled noises of battle: men fighting and killing, screeching as they suffered mortal wounds and plunged into the sea, the endless thump-thump-thump of drums as the Gothic vessels floundered, oars flailing as they laboured to turn about. Their squadrons drifted and lost cohesion, allowing the faster, better-handled Roman ships to swoop in and pick off the stragglers.

  
The foaming seas were tainted with gore. I saw men drowning, stretching out their hands to me in futile supplication even as they went under. Limbs thrashing, blood spurting from terrible wounds and fouling the water. A few were lucky enough to catch hold of bits of wreckage, and bobbed about like human corks, tossed this way and that by the whim of the churning seas.

  
Our captains were thorough. Every time a Gothic ship was captured, the crew slaughtered or taken prisoner, it was set on fire and turned loose. Abandoned vessels drifted aimlessly about the sea, lit from stem to stern by raging fires.

  
The midday sun was hanging like a copper gong in the sky, partially obscured by leaping flames and clouds of smoke, when one of our dromons picked me up. It was trawling for Roman survivors in the water, and rowed close enough to hear my feeble gasps for help.

   “Not dead yet, eh, grandfather?” remarked one of the grinning
young sailors who threw me a rope and pulled me aboard. I would have collapsed on deck, but they caught me in their arms and gently lowered me onto my rump.

   “
Not dead yet,” I agreed in a hoarse whisper. One of them passed me a bulging gourd of wine. I emptied it, glorying in the warmth spreading through my innards.

   There were two or three others in the same condition
. God, in his infinitely random mercy, had chosen to pluck us from the sea while our comrades drowned. We sat in miserable silence, wrapped up in layers of blankets and gnawing at the hard biscuits handed out by the crew.

   The sailor who called me grandfather stood beside me, gazing at the aftermath of battle. I counted no less than thirty-six burning Gothic ships. A few were sinking, their gutted, charred carcases slowly dipping below the waves. The few survivors were in full flight, racing towards the distant
port of Sena Gallica and safety, pursued by our triumphant fleet.

   “Roma Vict
or,” I heard the sailor whisper. A ragged cheer swept through the dromon, and then I fell asleep.  

28.

Having smashed the Go
thic blockade, our fleet sailed on to relieve Ancona. We found the garrison and the citizens on the verge of starvation. It was a town populated by hollow-cheeked ghosts, reminiscent of the pitiful wretches I had seen wandering the baking wastes of Perugia.

   War
brings nothing but famine and ruin and misery to most, while any fleeting shreds of glory are reserved for wealthy soldier-aristocrats like John the Sanguinary. He, of course, had won his great victory, and led his guards through the streets in a tasteless martial parade, banners flying and trumpets blowing. Those few citizens who had the will and the strength gathered on the pavement to watch him pass. Mute, faded, scarecrow-like figures, greeting his ridiculous procession in baffled silence.

   I went along to witness the farce, and could not help but compare it to the triumph awarded to Belisarius after his conquest of North Africa: the entire populace of Constantinople
chanting his name as the golden-armoured figure marched proudly down the Mese at the head of his seven thousand Veterans; the showers of golden coins and medals he ordered to be distributed from baskets to the mob; the Emperor Justinian and his consort, robed in purple and gold and waiting to receive the victorious general in the Hippodrome.

   By contrast, John was nothing, an ambitious courtier seeking to ape his betters, completely devoid of any self-awareness.
 

  
Nor, thankfully, was he aware of me. I kept to the shadows as he rode past on his high-stepping grey mare, hoping he thought me drowned.

   Whether John had put me aboard one of the condemned transports out of personal spite, or on the orders of Narse
s, I could not be certain. Either one of those cold, calculating minds could have been responsible.