Rome's Executioner (24 page)

The air became still.

As it stood, with more than 250 men on the Thracian deck, many of them bow-armed, they could not be taken by a boarding party but equally they would not have enough provisions to get to Ostia. It was obvious to Vespasian that they had to attempt to take the pirate, either to capture the ship outright or to, at least, take off its victuals before it sank. They needed to move forward, yet they were still stationary, their oars limp in the water.

He ran back to the stern where Rhaskos had taken up his position. ‘Why aren’t we moving, Rhaskos?’

‘We’re in trouble again, my friend, may the gods preserve us,’ the trierarchus replied, raising his palms to the sky. ‘The pirate slave-masters killed more than a hundred of the rowers at their oars before our men could get to them, so we can’t manoeuvre. And when the pirates realise that they’ll pull back until they’ve got enough sea-room to get up the speed to ram us.’

‘Then we need some of our rowers to take the dead ones’ places – and fast.’

‘Yes, but now they’re free how will they take rowing again, especially shoulder to shoulder with slaves?’

‘We free the slaves; I would have done so anyway as a lot of them will have been taken from Roman ships. Talk to our rowers and send a hundred down to me.’

Calling Gaidres to follow him, Vespasian made his way down on to the oar-deck. It was a scene of carnage. Corpses lay slumped over oars, despatched by vicious thrusts through their backs and chests. The survivors were sitting, hollow-eyed with fear, staring vacantly at four Thracian marines who were unshackling the dead bodies and slithering them out of the oar-ports.

‘Release the slaves first, then get rid of the bodies,’ Vespasian ordered the Thracians. They looked at him, puzzled.

‘You heard him; do it now!’ Gaidres shouted.

The Thracians shrugged and carried out their orders.

‘You will stay in your seats,’ Vespasian shouted so that all of the slaves could hear. ‘We need you to row, but now you will row as free men. If you refuse, we will all die. Are there any Roman citizens here?’

Over twenty men raised their manacled hands.

‘You’re excused rowing, go up on deck and find a weapon each.’

There was a growl of protest from the rest.

‘Silence!’ Vespasian roared. ‘A citizen of Rome does not bend his back to an oar. You, however, do not have the protection of citizenship so you will row. If we survive, we’re going to Ostia where you may leave the ship or, if you prefer, you can return east with it; it’s down to you.’

There was a muttering of assent.

The Thracian stroke-master clambered down the ladder from the main deck followed by the rowers. He looked at Vespasian, who nodded at him to take his place behind the round ox-skin drum.

With a real sense of urgency the oar-deck was cleared of bodies and the replacement rowers took their positions. Vespasian and Gaidres hurried back up on to the deck.

The mournful cries of gulls, attracted by the flotsam and jetsam of the sunken ship, filled the air as they circled overhead and dived on edible morsels that littered the sea.

‘Looks like they’ve had enough, sir,’ Magnus said, pointing to the pirate ship; it had turned and was now a quarter of a mile away, rowing quickly west.

‘Let’s hope so,’ Vespasian replied dubiously. ‘Rhaskos, the oar-deck’s ready. What do you think we should do?’

‘Pray to the gods.’

‘And then what?’ Vespasian exploded, storming up to the old trierarchus, ‘go to sleep and hope for another helpful dream? Be practical, man! Do we try and take the pirate and get his supplies? Or do we make a run for it and worry about what everyone’s going to eat later? You’re the trierarchus, you decide what we humans on this ship should do right now.’

The vehemence of his outburst caused Rhaskos to blink his eyes quickly and then look around. ‘They’re not running,’ he said lucidly, ‘it’s as I said: they’re preparing to ram us because they think that we’re still crippled. We need to sail west anyway so we should go straight at them, then they can choose: fight or run.’ He picked up his speaking-trumpet. ‘Attack speed,’ he shouted down to the stroke-master, who reacted immediately. The steady booming started; slow at first, as the ship got under way, then quickly accelerating as the oarsmen, now free and with a real stake in the survival of the ship, willingly put their backs into the matter at hand.

The pirate ship made a hurried turn as their trierarchus saw that the Thracian ship was no longer disabled but was under full oars and coming straight towards him.

‘He’s mad if he thinks he can retake this ship,’ Magnus said, coming up to Vespasian and Rhaskos, who were watching the distance start to close between the two ships.

‘He’s not mad, he’s angry. He’s lost one of his ships but he’s not lost his judgement; he won’t board us, he’ll try to sink us,’ Vespasian replied, loosening his gladius in its sheath for the second time that day. ‘There’s no way that he can win but it is still possible that we can both lose.’

‘Archers ready,’ Sabinus shouted, running to the bow.

Despite losing a hundred or so rowers to the oar-deck there were still over a hundred men on deck.

The Thracian ship shifted course slightly to the left.

‘What are you doing, Rhaskos?’ Vespasian shouted.

‘What I’m good at,’ Rhaskos replied, his eyes fixed firmly on the oncoming vessel. ‘You just worry about your job and let me concentrate on mine.’

The pirate changed direction to match. At a distance of two hundred paces apart Rhaskos veered back on to the original course; the pirate followed suit. Now they were not quite head on, leaving the pirate with a choice: to go for an oar-rake or come round more to his left and try to ram at a slight angle. With the ships a hundred paces apart he chose to ram.

‘Ramming speed!’ Rhaskos shouted through his trumpet. As the stroke accelerated he veered away from the pirate, to the right, leaving the Thracian ship broadside on to their attackers but now rowing fast enough to pass them.

‘Release!’ Sabinus shouted. Scores of arrows shot away towards the pirate ship, now less than fifty paces away; they peppered its hull and deck bringing down half a dozen more of its crew. After the first volley the Thracians kept up a constant stream of fire, forcing the pirate crew to take shelter behind the rail.

Vespasian could see the huge pirate trierarchus by the steering-oars, impervious to the rain of arrows, screaming at his men to return vollies as he tried to bring his ship back on to an interception course. But it was too late; with the ships just thirty paces apart Rhaskos ordered another turn away to the right and the pirate was now directly behind them, chasing. A smattering of arrows fell on the tightly packed Thracian deck; a few screams from the wounded rose up above the pounding of the stroke-master’s drum and straining grunts of the 180 willing oarsmen below. The archers continued their relentless barrage.

Vespasian pushed his way through to Rhaskos. The old trierarchus was grinning broadly. ‘How about that?’ he shouted. ‘I out-steered him without a single prayer; may the gods forgive me.’

‘Why did you pass him?’ Vespasian asked. ‘I thought that we were going to try and take him.’

‘Because, my young friend, when he came about and headed straight for us I realised that you were wrong. He had lost his reason; he was prepared to lose his ship just to destroy us, out of spite. It was madness and I never like to fight a madman; who knows what they will do next?’

Vespasian looked over Rhaskos’ shoulder to the chasing pirate. ‘What do
we
do next? He’s gaining on us.’

‘We keep running, we can keep at ramming-speed for longer than he can,’ Rhaskos replied with a wink. ‘Gaidres, send the spare rowers down in batches of twelve to relieve the others, two sets of oars at a time starting from the bow.’

Gaidres acknowledged the trierarchus and started to round up the rowers without bows.

Vespasian joined Sabinus, who was now at the stern rail. The pirate was less than twenty paces behind them and gaining slowly as the slaves on its oar-deck were whipped mercilessly to squeeze every last drop of energy from them. The swell made accurate shooting between the ships almost impossible and the pirate trierarchus still stood at the steering-oars, shouting for all he was worth, despite Sabinus’ repeated attempts to shoot him down.

‘That man’s got a charmed life,’ he muttered, notching another arrow and taking careful aim. Again the shot went wide. ‘He’s got balls just standing there, I’ll give him that.’

Gradually the relieving of the blown rowers began to reap benefits as fresh limbs pulled on straining oars. Even the Roman citizens had volunteered for duty, realising that the privileges of citizenship did not extend to the dead. The Thracian ship was beginning to pull away when the first few oars on the pirate fouled as the exhausted slaves collapsed and it started to lose way. The pirate trierarchus pulled his ship off to the south, towards Cythera, and roared his defiance until a volley of arrows sent him ducking under the rail.

‘Cruise speed,’ Rhaskos shouted.

The drumbeat slowed gradually as did the ship.

‘My thanks to Amphiaraos for showing me the way,’ Rhaskos called to the sky. ‘I will sacrifice another ram when we reach Ostia.’

‘If we get there,’ Vespasian said. ‘How are we going to feed all these people?’

‘The gods will provide. I have no doubt of it as they showed us how to escape the pirates.’

‘They didn’t show us how to defeat the pirates,’ Sabinus scoffed. ‘Wasn’t your dream about how to preserve the crew and get rid of the slave fever?’

Rhaskos looked pleased with himself. ‘Yes, but you can’t deny that releasing the slaves did preserve the crew against the pirate attack. As to stopping the sickness spreading through the slaves, I gave orders that only the ones without the fever should be released; the ill ones down in the bilge all drowned on the ship. We are free of the fever now and should be able to complete our voyage.’

Vespasian could see the truth of it: the oracle had indeed shown Rhaskos the answer to his question. He walked to the rail and, whilst enjoying the calming effects of a cool breeze and a warm sun on his skin, contemplated everything he had seen and heard at the sanctuary of Amphiaraos.

‘It seems that the sanctuary was quite a powerful place, Sabinus,’ he said quietly to his brother a short while later as they watched the pirate and the captured trader disappear to the south, past Cythera. ‘What do you make of the prophecy now?’

‘I don’t know,’ his brother replied. ‘But one thing’s for sure, I will never forget it.’

‘Neither will I,’ Vespasian agreed as their ship left the strait of Cythera and entered the Ionian Sea, heading on towards Ostia.

PART IIII

R
OME
, J
ULY
AD 30

A
N INTENSE PROFUSION
of contrary smells assaulted Vespasian’s olfactory senses as the trireme docked against one of the many wooden jetties in the port of Ostia: the ravenous mouth of the city of Rome. The fresh, salt tang of sea air clashed with the muddy reek of the Tiber as it disgorged the filth of the city, just twenty miles upstream, into the Tyrrhenian Sea. The decay of decomposing animal carcasses bobbing between the ships and wharves conflicted with the mouth-watering aromas of grilling pork, chicken and sausages that wafted across from the smoking charcoal braziers of quayside traders, eager to sell fresh meat to stale-bread-weary sailors. Sacks of pungent spices – cinnamon, cloves, saffron – from India and beyond, were offloaded by Syrian trading ships next to vessels from Africa and Lusitania disgorging their cargoes of high-smelling garum sauce, made from the fermented intestines of fish. Unsubtly perfumed whores solicited unwashed seamen; garlic-breathed dockworkers took orders from lavender-scented merchants; sweat-foamed horses and mules pulled cartloads of sweet, dried apricots, figs, dates and raisins. Rotting fish, baking bread, sweating slaves, resinated wine, stale urine, dried herbs, high meat, hemp rope, ships’ bilges and warm wood: the combinations made Vespasian’s head spin as he watched the Thracian crew secure the ship and lower the gangplank to the constant shouted entreaties of Rhaskos.