Rome's Executioner (Vespasian)

by Robert Fabbri

  ‘How will that be possible?’

  ‘We’ll see, but I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you about him before, Vespasian.’

  ‘So, any more surprises then, Sabinus?’

  A shout from the forward watch, just next to them, cut short any reply.

  ‘Trierarchus! Dead ahead.’

  Vespasian looked up. A trireme had appeared from behind the headland at the tip of Cythera and was speeding towards the two traders, now no more than a mile away.

  Rhaskos came running forward for a closer look.

  ‘Oh, Bendis help me,’ he wailed. ‘Pirates, and we don’t have the men to fight them off. We are truly cursed.’

  ‘The sun’s low behind us. We must be in its glare on the water – they haven’t seen us yet,’ Vespasian observed. ‘Let’s just leave them alone. They’ll be more than happy with what’s on board those two traders.’

  ‘We could try to sail past,’ Rhaskos replied, ‘but that will only arouse their interest. They’d expect a ship of this size to try and intervene; if we don’t they’ll assume that we’re either undermanned or carrying someone or something too precious to warrant risking. Either way they’ll come after us.’

  ‘What about turning and running?’ Sabinus suggested.

  ‘That will definitely tell them that we’re scared and with so many of the slaves too ill to row they’d catch us in a couple of hours. The only thing to do is to call their bluff. I’ll have Gaidres and his men arm the crew and we’ll sail straight for them as if we’re going to ram them and pray to every god that you can think of that they run.’

  ‘How many bows do you have?’ Sabinus asked, thinking of his only previous encounter with pirates.

  ‘More than we have crew,’ Rhaskos replied as he ran back to give the order to Gaidres to break out the ship’s weaponry.

  Up ahead the trireme had reached the first of the traders. Vespasian watched as grappling hooks flew over the little ship’s stern and it was hauled into a deadly embrace. A stream of men flooded from the pirate galley on to their prey. By now they were close enough to hear the screams of the defenders float across the water as they were cut down within the close confines of their small, nautical world. The second trader sailed on.

  By the time the first trader was taken the quinquereme’s crew and Gaidres with his men had assembled on deck. Each was armed with a bow and – much to Vespasian’s unwarranted surprise, since they were Thracians – a rhomphaia strapped on their backs.

  Rhaskos shouted an order and the stroke-master accelerated the beat to attack speed. From below the sound of whips cracking over the backs of the labouring slaves intensified as they were goaded into the more rapid rhythm.

  The quinquereme surged forward, its huge ram cutting through the swell, churning the water beneath its bow into white foam. It powered towards the pirate trireme, which had now spotted them and was in the process of hurriedly disengaging from its newly acquired prize. The skeleton crew left aboard the trader cast off the grappling hooks and the trireme, with surprising speed, executed a 180-degree turn, bringing it round to face the quinquereme. They were not going to run.

  Gaidres immediately started to organise the crew into small units, each commanded by one of his marines, and positioned them around the ship ready to pump volleys of arrows into the pirate’s crowded deck. A couple of deck-hands were circulating with skins of water. Magnus pushed through the milling crewmen with Sitalces, Artebudz and Drenis in tow.

  ‘Looks like they mean to take us head to head,’ he observed calmly, handing a bow and quiver each to Vespasian and Sabinus; he then adjusted the rhomphaia he had taken from the dead Ziles, which hung down his back, and took his place at the rail.

  Sabinus notched an arrow and smiled grimly, all traces of seasickness having disappeared beneath the rush of adrenalin. ‘A few good volleys should see off this rabble before they get anywhere near us,’ he said with confidence as the quinquereme passed the headland at the northern tip of Cythera.

  The ships were now less than a half-mile apart. Vespasian’s mouth dried as the distance between them lessened with every beat of the stroke-master’s drum. He reached for his sword hilt and pulled on it slightly, checking that the weapon was loose in its scabbard, and then drew an arrow from his quiver. All around him men were going through their various personal rituals before combat; there was a tense silence on deck broken only by the rhythmic drumbeat and irregular whip-cracks from below.

  At two hundred paces the pirates let off an ill-disciplined volley that fell short, bringing a half-hearted cheer from the Thracian crew. Gaidres shouted encouragingly in Thracian and they cheered again, this time with more conviction.

  As the quinquereme’s bow was raised by the swell a second long-range volley found its mark but the shots were spent and most bounced off the hull. Of those that reached the deck only a few retained enough velocity to pierce the planking. One crewman went down with an arrow dangling from his shoulder; it was soon extracted and he took his place again, bleeding lightly, back in the line.

  Gaidres shouted in Thracian and the crew raised their bows and took aim. Vespasian, Sabinus and Magnus followed suit and waited for the order to release. Gaidres lifted his arm in the air and paused, judging the rise and fall of the trireme’s bow.

  At a distance of ninety paces his arm flashed down.

  Over fifty arrows tore towards the pirate ship. The volley hit as its bow slipped down a trough exposing more of its deck and the hundred or so men within, felling almost a dozen of them as they let fly a ragged reply.

  The drumbeat quickened and the quinquereme lurched forward into ramming speed.

  Vespasian quickly reloaded and waited for the order to shoot, confident, as were the rest of the cheering crew, of Gaidres’ ability to judge the moment correctly.

  Gaidres’ arm flashed down again and they released another perfectly timed volley.

  The celebratory cheering as they reloaded was cut short by a cry from the larboard watch. The cheers turned into a collective groan. Vespasian looked over his left shoulder to see another ship emerge from under the lee of the headland, a mile behind them, and head straight towards them.

  They were trapped.

  ‘There’s fuck all that we can do about them at the moment,’ Sabinus shouted, having seen the threat. ‘Let’s deal with these bastards first.’

  The trireme was now less than thirty paces away. Gaidres’ arm came down again but he mistimed it; most of their third volley slammed into the pirate’s hull, causing little damage.

  At a shouted order from Rhaskos the Thracian crew grabbed the side of the ship.

  ‘That was brace for impact,’ Vespasian shouted at Magnus and Sabinus.

  ‘Thanks, sir,’ Magnus shouted back gripping the rail; he had never really got the hang of Thracian.

  Vespasian tensed his body against his arms and spread his feet, one in front of the other as the two ships hurtled towards each other.

  At what seemed to be the very last moment the trireme veered to its left and shipped its starboard oars.

  Vespasian heard Rhaskos scream an order and felt the ship reel to the right in an attempt to prevent the trireme raking its starboard oars. The pirate trierarchus was ready for this and, as the heavier quinquereme’s bow came round, he shipped his larboard oars and, with a sharp push on the steering-oars, brought his smaller, more manoeuvrable ship back into its original course to grate down its opponent’s larboard side, disgorging a close-range volley followed by a boarding party as it went by.

  Whether Rhaskos’ last order included anything about shipping oars, Vespasian could not tell, but, if it had, it came too late. The pirate trireme crashed into the quinquereme’s larboard oars, cracking the thick wooden shafts like twigs, with sudden, explosive reports that belied the ease with which they snapped. The ships shuddered violently with each impact, throwing defenders and attackers alike to the deck. The slaves below shrieked in tormented agony as their oar-handles, to which they wer
e manacled, were punched back, crunching into their faces or throats or shattering their ribcages and hurling them, bodily, off their soiled benches only to be abruptly restrained by their leg-irons, fastened to the deck. As the momentum of the trireme pushed the stumps of their oars ever back those slaves who had the misfortune not to be killed outright suffered the added torture of being stretched between their shackles until the sinews in their wrists could take it no more; hands ripped off under the intense pressure, flying through the air like macabre missiles to land with sickening thuds around the deck, causing the rising hysteria of the unharmed slaves on the opposite side to overflow into outright panic.

  They ceased to row.

  Without the purchase of the starboard oars the quinquereme started to spin, pulling it away from its tormentor which carried on in a straight line, its bow clearing the oars as it came level with the mast and leaving the thirty-man boarding party temporarily stranded. The violent shuddering ended and the deck became stable.

  As if upon a given signal everyone got to their feet as one, each man knowing that an instant’s delay could spell death. Too close for archery, the two sides hurled themselves at each other. Vespasian leapt forward, drawing his sword as rhomphaiai hissed from their scabbards all around him; he threw himself at the shield of the nearest opponent. With no shield of his own, his left shoulder cracked into the leather-covered, wooden hoplon, knocking its wielder back a pace. A flash of iron through the air as the pirate brought his weapon down in an overarm cut caused Vespasian to parry his sword above his head, meeting his assailant’s wrist. His sword juddered and blood spurted on to his tunic as the pirate retracted his arm with a scream, leaving his hand, still grasping the sword, to clump to the deck. A quick jab to the throat put paid to the howling man; swiftly Vespasian grabbed his shield, squatted, and glanced around. To his right Sabinus and Artebudz were both grappling hand to hand in desperate wrestling matches. To his left Magnus and Sitalces were scything their way, with Gaidres, his marines and the rest of the crew, through the outnumbered and disorganised boarding party, like harvesters in a wheat field. More used to attacking ships in the southern Aegeum, where the defenders fought with swords (if at all), the pirates were buckling under the vicious assault of so many long, slicing blades, wielded two-handed, out of reach of the thrusts and cuts of their shorter weapons. Without the discipline to form a military shield wall, they let the Thracians in amongst them and they paid with their limbs and heads that now littered the blood-soaked deck.

  Advancing steadily to his right, Vespasian thrust the point of his sword down through the eye of Sabinus’ opponent and then squared up to a young, desperate-looking man pointing a shaking sword nervously before him as he took a step back, on to the rail. A head spun through the air between them, spewing gore that flecked the young pirate’s face. Vespasian pounced forward; with a yelp the man threw himself overboard. Vespasian laughed.

  ‘What the fuck are you finding so funny?’ Sabinus growled from behind him.

  Vespasian spun round to see his brother, spattered in blood, looking incredulously at him. All around the pirates, and a few Thracians, lay dead. The fighting was over.

  ‘I just met someone who would rather drown than die with some degree of honour,’ he replied through his mirth. ‘Although why that’s funny I don’t know,’ he added, getting himself under control.

  A screamed order from Rhaskos abruptly ended the conversation. The brothers looked up. A hundred paces away the trireme had unshipped its oars and was turning back to face them, but, more worryingly, the second ship was now just half a mile away and approaching fast. As they watched it they heard the unmistakable sound of the drumbeat changing to ramming speed.

  Vespasian looked over the rail. Below him, over half the oars were missing; those still in place hung limply in the water. It was obvious, even to his nautically untrained eye, that it would be some time before the ship would be able to manoeuvre. They were helpless and would be rammed and then boarded by both triremes and, without the manpower to repel two crews; Vespasian knew that they would perish.

  ‘Sabinus,’ he called, running towards Rhaskos at the stern, ‘take Magnus and get Rhoteces out of his cage.’

  He wove his way up the chaotic deck, through crew throwing copses and limbs overboard whilst others were being marshalled by Gaidres into groups ready to repel boarders at either end of the ship. He found Rhaskos in a heated debate with the slavemaster.

  ‘Rhaskos,’ Vespasian shouted, cutting short the argument, ‘we need more men.’

  Rhaskos looked at him as if he were an idiot. ‘And just where are we going to find them in the middle of the sea?’

  ‘There’re over two hundred below.’

  ‘They’re slaves, we need them to row.’

  ‘But they’re not rowing now and we haven’t got the time to run; we’re going to die, as will they when the ship goes down. This is what your dream was about, you have to free them all and arm them; our cause is now theirs if they want to live.’

  Rhaskos looked towards the triremes; their proximity made the decision easy. ‘You’re right; if they fight for us we may just beat off both attacks. Get Gaidres to bring all the spare weapons to the hatchway.’ He looked at the slave-master, who was standing dumbfounded, evidently worried about the vengeance that over two hundred armed slaves might wreak on him and his mates. Reading the man’s mind, Rhaskos said: ‘We’ll worry about what happens afterwards if there is an afterwards. Get the keys and unlock them all. I’ll come down and speak to them.’

  Vespasian raced off to find Gaidres as a volley from the nearest trireme hailed down upon the deck, reducing the defenders’ numbers by a precious few more.

  ‘Fighting alongside slaves,’ Gaidres said grimly, having been told the plan, ‘that’s novel. Let’s hope they fight with us and not against us.’

  ‘There’s only one way to find out,’ Vespasian said, making for the hatchway down to the oar-deck. A violent shudder ran through the whole ship, knocking him to the deck just short of the hatch. The first trireme had rammed them but fortunately had been unable to build up sufficient momentum for its bronze-headed ram to pierce the hull timbers. The second trireme definitely had and was now only three hundred paces away. Vespasian dropped his shield and scrambled down the ladder on to the oar-deck.

  Rhaskos was addressing the slaves. ‘You have a choice: drown at your oars as the ship goes down or fight with us as free men, to live or die as the gods will. And remember, the pirates will chain you to your oars again if they prevail, but if we beat them off you will still be free, and I will have the Queen confirm that freedom when we return to Thracia. What’s it to be?’

  Vespasian opened the door to the small forward cabin. Inside Magnus was unlocking the priest’s foot-irons whilst Sabinus restrained him.

  ‘Get a move on, boys,’ Vespasian urged.

  ‘What the fuck’s going on?’ Magnus asked, fumbling in his haste with Rhoteces’ chains.

  ‘We’re enlisting a small army,’ Vespasian replied as a large cheer went up from the slaves.

  ‘Unchain them,’ Rhaskos shouted above the din.

  The slave-master and his mates started working up the benches, quickly turning keys for the eager ex-slaves to cast off their shackles.

  ‘I pray to Amphiaraos that he has shown me the right thing to do and I haven’t misread his message,’ Rhaskos said to Vespasian, brushing past him to make his way back on deck with cheering ex-slaves following in his wake.

  ‘What did he mean by that?’ Sabinus asked as he and Magnus hauled the still manacled and muttering Rhoteces through the cabin door.

  Before Vespasian could reply a deafening crack reverberated around the oar-deck; the ship lurched to starboard, throwing everyone into the air. Sharp splinters of wood exploded all around and a bronze-headed ram burst through the hull, accompanied by the roar of gushing water and headed straight for Vespasian. It came to a sudden halt a hand’s breadth from where he lay with another boom
ing thud as the attacking ship’s bow powered into the quinquereme’s hull. Screams of anguish filled the air. The ship rolled again, lifting the ram, which tore at the fissure, cracking through the planking with a series of ear-splitting reports. Water surged in under high pressure. As the ship rolled back the ram came thumping down on to the deck, splitting it open and crashing through, down into the bilge to crush to a pulp a handful of sick slaves unfortunate enough to be in its path. With another creaking roll the ship settled, bringing the ram back up to the oar-deck where it stayed, rocking menacingly, like a wild beast preparing to pounce, just in front of Vespasian’s face.

  ‘Bacchus’ bell end,’ he croaked, staring in wide-eyed horror at the ram’s bronze head; on it was engraved in Greek: ‘Greetings to Poseidon’. A piece of mangled slave plopped back down into the bilge.

  Magnus recovered first. ‘Come on, sir,’ he shouted, pulling Vespasian up out of the churning water. Ex-slaves dashed past, jumping over the unsteady ram and pounding up the ladder away from the terror of the quickly flooding oar-deck. The slavemasters hurriedly unlocked the remaining rowers and joined the rush to escape. Those too maimed to walk were left behind calling pitifully for aid as the water level rose. Fingers appeared through the gratings to the bilge, but they remained locked and the ram blocked any hope of exit through the smashed deck.

  Magnus pushed his way to the foot of the ladder; Sabinus dragged Rhoteces, who was gibbering with fear, behind him. Vespasian followed, his senses gradually returning, and clambered up on to the main deck.

  Vespasian picked up his shield, drew his sword and looked around; it was a fearsome sight. Ahead of him pirates hurled themselves from the bow of the second trireme, still embedded in the quinquereme’s hull, and on to the deck. They crashed into the wild mêlée that was being fed all the time by the arrival of newly armed ex-slaves who, with the pent-up rage of years of servitude freshly released, fought like feral beasts, uncaring of their own safety as they once again experienced the exhilaration of free will. The years spent chained to their oars, incarcerated in that dark dungeon, faded in an instant as they used their powerful limbs to maim and kill, their rotten teeth bared beneath long, matted beards, screaming, almost with joy, like furies.