Julius turned and looked into the mouth of the Canopic channel. He nodded. ‘While I hate to agree with the man, he has a point.’
‘Yes, but it’s under his helmet,’ snorted Euphranor. The man’s too cautious, for sure. We outnumber them two vessels to one. We need to engage, and while the day remains light.’
Julius winced. ‘True, Admiral, but his caution might be warranted. Once we’re in the river, neither side will be able to field more than three ships at a time. We lose our advantage of numbers. Nero knows that. No admiral worth his salt would throw his fleet into that situation with such an uncertain chance of success.’
‘Nero got his experience fighting Cilicians. They’re a different breed to these Aegyptians. He thinks he can draw the Aegyptians out into open waters by simply sitting there and looking Roman. He thinks they will run out of patience and attack him.’
Julius shrugged. ‘Such a thing seems unlikely, I’ll admit, but these Aegyptians have made the odd reckless blunder before, so perhaps he is right. Launching at them in tight confines is not a favourable option, regardless.’
Euphranor harrumphed. ‘So we sit and wait in the hope that they will get bored and come out, which is unlikely. They sit and wait because they know they are in the best position and our supplies cannot reach us through them. No one moves. And then soon night will come and we will be forced to put to shore and abandon this. They can resupply from the riverbanks and sleep aboard. We must seek a safe harbour. This is like two stone lions watching one another. They’re impressive and pretty and both quite dangerous, but the chances of either of them leaping and ending it are rather small.’
Julius Meleager chuckled. ‘Without someone impulsive, the status quo is unlikely to change.’
‘So we need them to be impulsive. What do you think will goad them into that?’ Euphranor called, a slow grin spreading across his face.
Julius smiled knowingly. ‘I know what you’re suggesting, Admiral, and it’s reckless. Dangerous.’
‘Right up your channel then, eh Julius?’ the man grinned. ‘But impulsiveness breeds its like. Recklessness can be infectious.’
The Chimaera’s captain sighed. It was feasible. Everything they had seen of the enemy, both at the engagement by the sandbank anchorage and the battle off Pharos Island, had suggested that the Aegyptians were at best moderately disciplined, and that they tended to be reactive by nature. That could be used against them. It was a balancing act. Their commander’s level of control against their native impulsiveness. If that balance could be tipped…
Certainly something had to be done. The Roman fleet could not sit off the coast facing the river indefinitely, and committing to fighting in the channel would be foolish. And all the time they were wasting here, the grain ships upriver remained in danger from other enemy attacks.
But it was still a dangerous gambit.
He nodded at the admiral. ‘Just the two of us?’
‘There’s no space for more than three ships at best, and with only two there’s more room to manoeuvre. We need to goad them. We need to keep poking them with a stick until they get angry enough to lash out, and the moment they look like giving chase, we need to turn fast and run for the fleet. With luck we’ll drag them all with us.’
‘Alright. Let’s do it.’
Euphranor laughed, saluted, and raced back to his place at the rear. In moments a jaunty tune warbled out across the deck of the Ajax and the oars began to dip in time, pulling the ship forwards. With a gesture to the keleustes, Julius Meleager strode back to his own position, shouting instructions to the helmsman. The keleustes began to march back and forth along the deck between the banks of oar benches, shouting encouragement as his piper started to pick up the melody from the Ajax, keeping perfect time. In moments, Chimaera too was knifing through the water, racing for the entrance to the river in the wake of the Ajax.
A small thrill of nerves ran through him at the cacophony of sounds that followed, though that shiver was swiftly overcome by the exhilaration of impending battle. Back across the fleet, horns honking the command to come to a stop and to maintain formation blared out with increasing volume and urgency as the Roman fleet tried to rein in the two errant Rhodians.
‘Let’s hope they’re ready when the time comes, sir,’ the helmsman said, eyeing the Roman fleet rapidly dwindling behind as they raced for the river.
‘Nero’s not daft. He’s just being a Roman, playing it safe. You know what they’re like. That’s why they need men like us. Men like the admiral over there.’ Laughing, Julius turned and peered off ahead between the rigging and beneath the limp sail. The two Rhodians moved at pace and he could see the Aegyptian fleet sitting silent and still in the waterway. What would they do?
The Ajax had a slight advance on the Chimaera, having burst into motion a little sooner, and she was almost a full ship length ahead. For just a moment Julius considered upping the pace to fall in beside her, but decided against it. Better to maintain pace and not risk confusion with two rhythms going on side by side.
As he had noted, the enemy fleet was drawn up in rows of three ships, all they could realistically fit in the river and still be able to turn. They had been sensible in that the three vessels that made up their first line were clearly their three most powerful warships – a very Roman notion. The republic always fielded their heaviest infantry at the front as a shock force, legionaries advancing in a shield wall, clad in iron, steel and bronze. It often worked, of course, and could do as much at sea too. Their commander probably thought that the Romans would baulk at launching an assault on three massive, powerful ships, and that if they did, they would likely end up as floating wreckage at the hands of those three monsters.
Again, it was a reasonable assumption. The Ajax and the Chimaera were both warships, but nothing close to the massive size of those three. But what they lacked in size, they made up for in deftness. They were fast and manoeuvrable, more so even than the swift Roman liburnians, something the huge Aegyptian ships could not claim to be. And in tight situations that changed the odds entirely. They would be short on space. When you’re trapped in a barrel, it’s better to be a hornet than a hawk.
‘Ready, men,’ he bellowed. ‘Artillery and archers: “man down” to left and right. Helm, target four then sharp turn to starboard. Oarsmen to ship on approach.’
He glanced left to see the Ajax racing on, still the better part of a ship length ahead as his artillerists began to load and prime their weapons. Then, suddenly, the flagship’s musician changed pace, bursting into a high-speed melody. With a roar, their crew obeyed the new command, and Julius watched with just a flicker of nerves as the Ajax began to surge ahead, the oars rising and dipping faster, picking up the pace to a ramming speed.
He prayed to half a dozen gods, most notably Poseidon and Ares, that Euphranor knew what he was doing. It was the admiral’s favourite tactic to start any conflict with a sinking. It struck fear into the enemy to see such a thing, and gave the rest of the allied ships heart. And with the sharp narrow rams the Rhodians bore, it did not necessarily remove them from action as they tried to extricate themselves, as was so often the case with Roman rams. It was dangerous, though. An unlucky strike and they would be lodged and at the mercy of the Aegyptian fleet until they could withdraw.
Julius was in no mood for such risk. He would pull off his own favourite tactic. His only real peril was whether he would have the room to follow up with the strategy they needed to get away afterwards. It would certainly be tight.
Ajax was concentrating on the leftmost enemy vessel alone. Julius would take on the other two. If they could enrage them sufficiently, they might draw them out. Sinking one was a gamble, as it could prevent pursuit from those behind. Julius did not want to sink these two. Just to anger them and make them follow.
That was the moment it all hinged on, of course. If things worked out right and the gods were feeling benevolent, the loss of one Aegyptian ship and the sight of the other two pursuing the
Rhodians could just drag the rest of their fleet out into conflict in the bay.
The two Rhodians closed, and now the front three Aegyptian ships were moving. They might not be intending to sail out to sea, but the enemy commanders knew they had to be at least moving to fight these two Rhodians off. One benefit of the Ajax disappearing further and further ahead was that Julius could watch his admiral’s initial attack before he himself was committed.
Sure enough, he saw Euphranor’s flagship turn a little to the left, just as Julius would have done. As they closed on the single ship ahead, they began to veer to their port side, just a touch. There was a moment of tension, and finally the enemy reacted. The leftmost Aegyptian ship turned, tracking the Ajax, making sure to keep facing it. There was a strange faltering then, as if their captain couldn’t decide what to do; couldn’t read the plan of the Rhodian. After all, if both ships continued to turn thus, they would end up parallel and both crunching bow first into the bank with insufficient room to complete the turn.
But Euphranor knew what he was doing. Even as the enemy committed to the turn, Ajax was already straightening once more and closing at killing speed. The enemy realised what was happening just too late. They had presented a ready target to the Ajax now, at a three-quarter angle.
In desperation, the enemy captain tried to turn back, at the same time bellowing to his artillery to loose. The Rhodian admiral’s attack was underway, though. As the distance closed inevitably, the artillery on the prow of both Ajax and its target loosed. The enemy bolt slammed into the woodwork of the Ajax, sending a cloud of deadly splinters up, but failing to slow them. With beautiful precision, a heavy stone shot hurtled through the air from the Rhodian ship. Due to the movements of the two vessels it missed its prime target, the ship’s mast, glancing from the heavy timber pole before raking on across the deck, killing two men and ploughing into the steering rudder and the man controlling it. The helmsman reeled, injured and shocked but intact, yet for precious moments he was torn from the rudder grip. The enemy ship slewed further into their turn, making the angle of approach for the ram all the more perfect.
That was when the Ajax hit them.
The enemy ship was moving at a steady, easy pace, but the Ajax struck at ramming speed. The Rhodians’ perfectly knife-like ram cut through the boards of the Aegyptian vessel and the Ajax continued on with powerful momentum, oars withdrawn now, the wedge of its prow continuing to force the hole in the enemy hull wider and wider.
Taking his eyes off his admiral’s attack, Julius concentrated on his own action now. The enemy vessels were running side by side towards the Chimaera. They were too close to one another for comfort, really, due to the narrowness of the river. With a smile, he watched his own prow shift again with the latest in a series of minor course corrections from the helmsman. The Chimaera was aiming directly between those ships, and the enemy didn’t seem to be able to decide what to do about it. They couldn’t turn towards one another for, with the lack of room, they would simply collide. They couldn’t both turn left, or they would beach on the shoreline, and to both turn right would put them in the midst of the Ajax’s own nightmare attack. Clearly they couldn’t diverge, either, for they would then do both. All they could do was come on, parallel and in formation. Aware of what could happen if the Chimaera slipped between them, they continually jogged left or right, trying to force the Rhodian into a new path, but the Chimaera’s helmsman continued to correct and make for the gap.
The enemy finally slowed, seeing what was coming and fully aware that they couldn’t stop it. The Rhodian ship was going to go between them. Knowing what that would do to their oar banks, just as Julius’ rowers shipped their own oars for protection, so did the men of the two enemy warships.
The three vessels met, the narrower, lighter Rhodian sliding between the two larger ships with grace. But it wasn’t the oars Julius had been after. He didn’t want to cripple these ships, after all. One sunken enemy was trouble enough. He needed these two enraged and active enough to follow him, and in doing so to drag the rest of the enemy fleet with them. The Chimaera slid between the ships, and the captain almost laughed at the stunned and confused expressions of the enemy sailors as they passed.
Then the true nature of his attack became clear. As the ships passed, so close they could have shared wine together, the Rhodian artillery loosed, and the archers rose from the rails where they had let go of their oars, to retrieve their bows.
The heavy stone shot arced right, the iron-tipped bolt left, both accompanied by half a dozen arrows. The captains of each vessel were easily identifiable, and so were the oar masters – the keleustoi, or whatever the Aegyptians called them – and they made perfectly visible targets at this range. The captain of the left hand ship was plucked from the deck and carried, screaming, over the rail and into the river by a scorpion bolt the length of a man’s forearm in the centre of his chest. At the same time, their keleustes, who had been stomping up and down between the oar banks yelling at his men, became the repository for three arrows, squawking and tumbling among the benches.
A similar scene played out to the right. The captain there disappeared in a spray of gore as he took a stone ball the size of his head full in the torso. What was left of him slid unpleasantly across the deck to wobble to a halt by the rail, shaking rhythmically even in death. Most arrows missed their keleustus as he waved his rod at the oarsmen, but one shaft thudded into his bicep, making him scream.
That was it. In a heartbeat they were past, having shot between the two ships and emerged beyond, between them and the second line of three ships in the Aegyptian fleet.
‘Bring us about, full speed to starboard, watching for the bank. Return to the fleet.’
Grinning from ear to ear, Julius watched his men lower their bows and grab the oars as they were run out. In moments they slewed so sharply to the right that even though Julius was gripping the rail he still almost fell. At a stomach-churning pace the Chimaera arced right, around the rear of the enemy.
Julius watched the riverbank nervously as they came closer and closer, and half expected the oars to touch the mud at any moment, but somehow they managed to stay clear. Fifty heartbeats and they were facing north again, racing past the two ships they had just attacked and making for the open sea. They just had to hope the enemy were sufficiently enraged to follow, that their impulsiveness overrode the strength of their commander.
He was gratified at least to see what effect they had already achieved as they passed the two Aegyptian ships. They had been very careful to kill neither the helmsmen nor the pipers that set the pace. They had not damaged the oars or sails, nor harmed the rowers. They had done nothing to impede the ships’ ability to fight. But they had taken out the two men on each ship with the authority and sense to prevent the ships following. Even now the Aegyptian crews, furious at the damage and the loss of their captains, were launching into a pursuit. Some minor officer or brazen crewman had given an order to advance, and the oars began to dip in time to a frenzied tune.
The enemy’s blood was up.
They had done it. Now if only the rest of the fleet took the bait and followed.
With a sigh of relief and a grin of contentment, knowing that the Chimaera was fast enough to outpace the enemy, Julius allowed himself a moment to locate the Ajax.
His heart climbed into his throat at what he saw.
The Ajax had utterly destroyed her target. The hole she had torn in the side of the enemy ship had been so large that already little could be seen of it other than masts and torn sails jutting from the river’s surface, men swimming for shore, and pieces of ruined timber bobbing around on the water. The Ajax had clearly extricated herself cleanly and swiftly from the sinking wreck.
But Euphranor had not ordered the withdrawal after the attack. Quite the opposite, in fact. Spirits sinking, Julius watched his friend’s ship sailing straight at a large vessel in the second line now, a ship flying numerous colourful banners – likely the enemy’s fla
gship. Julius shook his head. No. The admiral had sunk a warship himself, and had watched Julius harry the other two, but had then taken in at a glance the lack of movement from the rest of their fleet.
Two vessels were following the Chimaera, intent on making her pay. The rest of the Aegyptian fleet had not fallen for the goad. But Euphranor had been determined.
‘Steady,’ Julius bellowed at his crew. ‘Don’t outpace them too much. If we race away they’ll give up. Just stay a little ahead. Tantalising, like a twenty sestertii whore. Draw them on.’
But even as he issued his orders, his eyes were back on the Ajax. He watched as Euphranor’s ship collided with the enemy flagship, holing her. The Rhodian admiral had to know that he was doomed; that it was a suicide attack. Even as the Ajax punched a fatal hole in the hull of the enemy ship, grapples and ropes arced out, hooking into the Rhodian vessel and pulling her close.
The enemy flagship was going down, but she would take the Ajax with her.
Julius squinted. The increasing distance as they raced back for the fleet made it hard to see, but he could make out fighting on board now. Men from both ships were leaping back and forth. A few dived into the water to swim for shore, but more were fighting frantically.
He saw a figure then. It could have been Euphranor. Probably was, in fact. The figure burst through a crowd of tussling sailors and clambered up to a high point, then let forth a loud ululation and lifted a head to display to all present. It was in a helmet with three long green plumes. It had to be a senior man. At least a trierarch, if not an admiral.
The figure held its prize aloft, warbling loudly to attract attention, and remained in position for a dozen heartbeats until the first arrow plunged into him. It was followed by a second and a third before the figure and his important trophy toppled from the timber and into the water.
Heart down in his boots, Julius watched the disaster unfolding. Even as the fighting raged aboard the decks of both vessels, they began to sink. Tied together, they took longer than they would apart, for the Ajax remained undamaged, but finally the weight of the sinking Aegyptian carried its enemy under the surface.
Sands of Egypt Page 26