Sands of Egypt

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Sands of Egypt Page 16

by S. J. A. Turney


  Caesar’s fleet flooded forwards from the rear, too, coming to threaten the Aegyptian ships that were numerically, and in terms of individual strength, now the weaker. It looked as though the Rhodian’s fierce assault had pushed the enemy back enough to gain the freedom to fight, and now Caesar’s fleet could fully commit and turn the battle their way.

  He turned back to their own flank. The Aegyptians had begun to rally. Barring the one vessel locked in combat with the Ajax, the remaining nine enemy ships were pulling in to surround the four Rhodians. It might have looked bleak, but for the staggered, lurching manner in which several of those vessels moved, having taken damage to oars, rowers, crews and even the hulls themselves. Outnumbered the Rhodians might be; outclassed they were not.

  His attention now fell upon a small flotilla of smaller vessels coming forth in support behind the troubled Aegyptian warships. Something about them seemed strange, and staring beneath his raised hand into the bright sunlight, he suddenly realised what it was. They were lit by several small fires. Concentrating, he tried to pick out the details, nudging Galronus, who he knew had the better eyesight. ‘Look at the skiffs.’

  Galronus did so and straightened suddenly. ‘Fire pots and flame arrows.’

  Fronto nodded. He’d thought so, but it was nice to have it confirmed by someone sharp-eyed. ‘Go tell the trierarch.’

  Galronus did so, even as new orders were being given. The Aegyptian ship wrestling with Euphranor had somehow managed to disengage and was limping away as fast as it could. In response, now threatened on all sides, the four Rhodian ships had begun to pull closer together and to circle like some Cantabrian wheel of cavalry. Fronto wondered what possible bonus this could give them, but realised soon enough as the oar benches were swiftly shuffled so that the weariest rowers were given the port oars which had only small strokes to keep the ship moving, the stronger men on the outside of the circle able to row harder. Moreover, the archers now all moved to the starboard rail and concentrated there, no longer having to divide their attention to both flanks. The artillery pieces both reloaded and turned outwards.

  Fronto chuckled. Circling as they were, they might look like ready targets, but nothing could be further from the truth, and as the Aegyptian ships coming at them slowed, it seemed they now realised it too. There would be no chance to ram the Rhodian ships as they continually circled. This was now down to artillery and tactics, and clearly once more the men of Caesar’s fleet had the edge.

  New orders rang out across both fleets, and the enemy warships slowed, keeping pace with the circling Rhodians but out of missile range. As they did so, the fire boats began to close. Men swung pots of fire on cords with muscular arms, letting go as they spun, sending the pots hurtling towards the circling Rhodians, while others lit arrows and loosed at them.

  Fronto frowned. The one problem with the Aegyptians’ tactic was that it relied upon shock and panic, and the Rhodians showed neither failing, for they were prepared. After all, if the fire ships were in range to loose at the Rhodians, then the same was true in reverse.

  As here and there fire pots or burning arrows thudded into the Rhodian ships, men hurried over with buckets of sea water and doused the flames. The response was appalling. The best archers and the finest artillerists on board the Rhodian ships waited for the word and the moment it was given, they went to work with horrific results.

  Arrows, bolts and rocks burst from the circling ships like a ripple of death from a stone dropped in the water. Almost every shot had been carefully aimed until the signal, and then simultaneously every missile struck out at the fire boats round them, each of which had come to a stop to give them the most stable platform from which to work.

  The same scene played out time and again on the fire boats. A man with a fire pot swinging about him ready to fling, or an archer with a flaming arrow nocked, was suddenly stuck with an arrow shaft or entirely run through with an artillery bolt, or his head smashed like an overripe melon with a hurled boulder. The result in most cases was the same. The fiery missile they had been preparing to send forth instead dropped, flew or tumbled from their dying forms into the boats. Boats that were filled with highly combustible materials.

  In a circle of appalling destruction around the four Rhodians, the Aegyptian fire boats ate of their own bitter fruit as the majority of them burst into flaming death in an instant, beyond any hope of quelling with a bucket. Some, indeed, burst into such blazing sudden infernos that they more or less exploded where they sat, sending screaming men into the water, their clothes, hair and skin all afire.

  It was carnage on an unexpected scale, and as men hurled themselves from doomed boats into the water, beginning the long swim to the shore of Pharos, those boats as yet untouched swiftly dropped oars back into the water and began to turn and race away from the fight.

  Fronto felt it then: the tipping point of the engagement. He’d experienced it plenty of times on land. There often came a moment in a battle where two sides had struggled, tugging this way and that with huge levels of destruction, when even while both armies were still strong and committed, the scales would tip and the future of a battle would be decided. It might be when a unit breaks unexpectedly, as it had at Pharsalus. Or it might be when one side suddenly experiences a panic moment and their morale fails.

  It was happening now. There was no visible sign as the ten Aegyptian warships moved in to engage the four Rhodians. In theory, the Aegyptians still had the advantage until the rest of the ships emerged from the narrow channel, which would happen any time now, but there was an atmosphere in the air. He could feel it. The Aegyptians knew they had lost, even though they continued to fight. Similarly the Rhodians, despite having used up all their tricks and now having to rely only on valour and strength, knew suddenly that they’d won.

  Salvius cursor grunted angrily.

  ‘They’re going to withdraw.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Fronto. ‘I can feel it too.’

  ‘I never even bloodied my blade,’ the tribune sighed wistfully.

  Fronto turned and peered at the island off their starboard bow, then pointed. ‘I’m confident you’re not out of opportunities yet, Salvius. That fort is in trouble and the moment we drive off the enemy ships, we have to take that island. The whole damn thing, and the Heptastadion too, else the fort will suffer this again and again.’

  Salvius nodded, his gaze playing over the beleaguered island.

  Suddenly a whistle’s shrill burst rang out, and all four Rhodian ships began to turn, emerging from their tight circle. Euphranor had spotted the vessel he had been trying to board earlier, and his ship was racing towards it once more, corvus boarding ramp wavering, men with ropes and grapples rushing to the rail.

  Another Rhodian had picked a small sleek bireme and was mirroring the admiral’s preparations, readying to take it down. The Chimaera and the fourth Rhodian seemed to have different ideas. The captain at the stern bellowed his commands and the Chimaera turned, tracking an enemy vessel and aiming for it, both artillery pieces loading and loosing in a continual barrage. The Aegyptian ship began to turn now as somewhere a signal was blasted for a retreat, but they were too slow by a mile.

  They were almost perfectly side-on as the Chimaera moved up to ramming speed, their tireder oarsmen now better rested. Fronto watched the men on board the enemy ship crying out in fear as they saw the Rhodian with the unpleasantly long and pointed ram racing towards them.

  A quick glance over his shoulder and then off to the left confirmed for Fronto what he had assumed was happening. The bulk of Caesar’s fleet were now closing, having reached the end of the channel and the open water. At the same time the majority of the Aegyptian fleet was now racing east, away from the Romans and back towards the waters of the delta they knew so well.

  The Roman fleet had carried the day, and, barring the threat the remains of the fleet coming up behind represented, and a smaller action from the Pontic ships on the far flank, four Rhodian vessels had achieved it a
lone.

  The Chimaera struck their target amidships, every man on the Rhodian deck clinging tight to the ship as they lurched with the collision. As before, the perfectly-formed ram cut a neat hole in the enemy ship, and rather than battering it before them it simply came to a stop as the oarsmen began to backwater and extricate the prow from the enemy vessel.

  As they pulled back, cheering and jeering, the Aegyptian vessel began to sink, water pouring in through the hole.

  Fronto looked about as they moved away, joining up with the newly arrived ships of the fleet.

  From what he could see three warships of the Aegyptian fleet had been sunk and one run aground on the island’s shore, and two more were almost under the control of Rhodian boarders now. The charred remaining flotsam of fire boats showed how many of those had been destroyed, and the rest of the Aegyptian fleet, many of whom were at least partially damaged themselves, were already moving into the distance, racing east.

  They had won.

  His gaze slid to the island. The figures on the rooftops looked a lot more subdued now, but the fight for the fort was going strong.

  That would have to be the next objective.

  They had been beleaguered defenders long enough. Now they had water. Now they had an extra legion. Now was the time to fight back.

  Pharos Island.

  Chapter Eleven

  Fronto sighed. Why was it clearly his lot, as the most seasick-prone member of Caesar’s entire force, to spend the entire campaign aboard ships? He glanced irritably this way and that at the other vessels of the small fleet.

  Following the battle out to sea, the Caesarian ships had entered the Great Harbour and put in at the jetties below the palace, though five ships had dropped their legionaries at the Pharos fort en route to bolster the numbers there. Fronto had initially been sceptical about Caesar’s next plan, though the sense of it was coming clear.

  The original notion of landing their full force at the fort and fighting out across the island from there had been abandoned, for Queen Cleopatra had pointed out patiently that the enemy could more easily defend one line across the island than they could an attack from all sides. Consequently, the fort’s garrison had continued to hold against the enemy at their own defences and when the attack began they were to push west from their walls. But they were little more than a distraction, as was the fleet. Fronto was the true hammer here.

  Pharos was about to be hit by three forces at once. One was already there and under enemy scrutiny, fighting across the walls of the fort. They would draw the Aegyptians’ attention, certainly. But just to be sure, Caesar was sending part of his fleet back out to sea under Brutus’ command to harry the north coast of the island with artillery and draw further attention that way.

  Then, while the island’s native army was busy trying to hold back the force from the fort and deal with the naval bombardment, the true insurgents would strike. Fronto looked around at the vessels in his force. The attack was being transported in smaller skiffs and merchant ships, not the warships that would draw too much attention. Ten cohorts of legionaries, three units of lightly armed infantry from the palace, and Caesar’s favourite weapon: cavalry. Only three hundred of them, but they were veteran Gallic cavalry. Men who had fought across Gaul and at Alesia. Men who had crossed Greece and held the field at Pharsalus. Men on whom Caesar felt he could rely.

  With Cassius remaining in charge at the palace alongside the queen, Caesar had taken personal command of the fort garrison, making himself highly visible in order to draw the attention of the enemy. With Brutus on the ships, that left the command of the landing force to Fronto, with Galronus in charge of the cavalry. The men buzzed with eagerness. He could feel it across the fleet. Caesar had promised a man’s weight in gold to the first soldier who set foot upon the Heptastadion, having secured the island.

  He tried not to pay attention to the roll of the boat as it approached the open mouth of the Palace Harbour. The entire force moved along the harbour walls, hidden from any watching eyes on the island. This was all about the timing, for there was no doubt that given adequate warning, the Aegyptians could put enough men on Pharos to swamp the Romans, though they would not risk pulling that many from the city force without good reason.

  Fronto looked up at the sun. The attack must have started now, yet the fleet moved slowly still, settling into position in the Palace Harbour. He glanced back, tense, at the theatre rising above the water beside the palace, a natural high viewpoint, and was relieved to see the signal. Three flashes of a reflective lens, repeated to be certain.

  Relief flooded him. The plan was moving forward, then. Stage one had been for the fleet to leave the harbour, which it had done over an hour ago, putting out to sea and then turning and coming against the north of the island, hopefully drawing the bulk of their artillery in response. Then, perhaps half an hour ago, Caesar would have given the order for the fort’s garrison, bolstered with men from the Thirty Seventh, to cross the walls and push west.

  It was a good tactic, and one that the Aegyptians should have assumed a complete plan. A simultaneous push west by land and bombardment of the north coast, dividing the enemy strength. That a third move was yet to be played should hopefully not have occurred to them.

  At the receipt of the signal from the theatre, the trierarch of this ship began to move, taking Fronto and his cohorts from the Sixth as the vanguard of this attack forward, and carrying them out through the arms of the Palace Harbour and into the open water of the Great Harbour.

  As they emerged between the great stone piers, the mass of small ships and skiffs gathered tight together, they came into view of the island immediately, for the Palace Harbour sat within the southeast corner of the Great Harbour, while the Pharos Island formed the northern shore.

  One mile of calm water lay between the piles between which they emerged and the island’s shore that was their destination. It had been estimated that they could be beaching and disembarking in less than a quarter of an hour. That gave the enemy a quarter of an hour at most to see them coming, decide whether they posed more of a threat than the garrison or the fleet, and reorganise their force to face the landing ships, flooding men from other positions, between the buildings on the island, through narrow, vertiginous streets and to the harbour shore. In Fronto’s opinion, he would have had trouble achieving that even with a Roman force of very competent officers, so the chances of the less professional and unprepared Aegyptians managing it were extremely small.

  Still, he silently urged the flotilla to ever greater speed as he kept his gaze locked on Pharos Island. Sails were out and filled with what wind there was, to add a small boost to the speed, but it was the oars that dipped and circled, dipped and circled at the highest pace they could manage that pulled the ships towards their destination.

  There was no maintained formation. This was about speed. Some of the vessels were naturally faster than others and instead of keeping their place in the fleet, they raced ahead. Landing men as fast as possible was the whole point.

  Fronto was pleased with himself, though, that he had managed to select one of the fastest. His ship was still among the front runners, slicing through the water like a knife. He could see Galronus’ ship some distance off to the left, almost keeping pace, and it gave him a wicked little thrill to note that Salvius Cursor’s ship was slipping behind. He could imagine the tribune calling his trierarch very unkind names, desperate as he was to be involved in the fight.

  Turning once more, he concentrated now on the island ahead.

  They had been spotted. He could see movement on the rooftops facing the harbour. The question now was what would they do about it? That, and how fast would they do it?

  He settled in, fingers gripping the rail, eyes on the island. The ship ploughed on and he fought down the urge to be violently sick. It had become such a common feeling that it came as naturally now as breathing.

  Something was wrong with the shore.

  He noticed it even as
the trierarch shouted him, pointing at the island.

  ‘I see it,’ he called back.

  The ship had been making for a wide thoroughfare on Pharos, a stone-flagged street running up through the heart of the island from a ‘U’ shaped dock on the water side. The problem was that from a distance across the harbour the dock looked fine, a deeply shadowed landing between high buildings. But now, as they approached, it became clear that the dock was not empty. That shadow harboured trouble.

  A warship.

  Fronto felt a moment of rising panic. How in the name of all the gods had the Aegyptians got a ship in there? His consternation was being echoed now across the landing flotilla as men shouted and pointed. Fronto, heart beginning to thump fast, shot his gaze back and forth along the shoreline, which was becoming more clear and distinct with every oar stroke.

  Shit.

  Every major dock along the coast seemed to be filled with an Aegyptian ship.

  Had their attack been anticipated somehow?

  Someone nearby was pointing in a different direction, off to the west, and Fronto’s gaze followed it, heart sinking with realisation. There was a bridge built into the Heptastadion – the huge causeway that connected the city with the island and formed the western edge of the Great Harbour – which the Roman forces had long since discounted as any danger. It was narrow and low. A single ship at a time could pass through it between the Aegyptian-controlled commercial harbour to the west and the Roman-controlled Great Harbour to the east. With the Roman fleet waiting, they had simply discounted the probability that the enemy might send ships through there. It would be suicide, of course. What they had not considered was that the devious bastard now commanding the enemy force might slip one ship at a time through either under cover of darkness, or perhaps even in bold daylight while the Roman fleet had been in the west seeking water.

 

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