The Snake Catcher

by Bilinmeyen

  We entered the town at a gallop, and saw how the miles were training before their barracks, others walking on the decks of the ships, carrying gear, oars and such. Massive arsenals stood around the lagoon, their porticos shading the entrance to where supplies for the mightiest naval force in the known world were stored. Adalwulf, covered head to foot in dust, yelled for a miles, a bowlegged man in a loincloth. The man had been carrying ropes, and was bewildered by the dozens of riders in the midst of their normally calm and ordered world. He listened and ran off, Adalwulf at a tow, and the rest of us dismounted and dragged the horses after us. Men were rushing about, and some sailors, most likely from Africa, were coming forth, asking questions. The horses were taken away to be cared for, and we, dropping our helms and shields, sat by the bank of that lagoon, wondering at the ships.

  “Three banks?” Tudrus asked, bewildered. “Some with four banks of oars?”

  “Triremes, quadriremes,” I said, trying to wash my eyes clear of grit and dust. “Nihta was always trying to tell me about the ports, but I never thought I’d see one. But, I’ll never ride a horse again.”

  Rochus laughed. “Wait until you ride on of these. I used one this past month to reach the north. I threw up days after disembarking.”

  “What have you been doing up north?” I asked him.

  He looked thoughtful. “Messages. Negotiator. Warrior when needed. I’ve served Tiberius there. Our world seems to be changing.”

  “Germania? Change?” Wandal snorted. “I doubt it.”

  “They are running low on moral and men,” Tudrus responded. “With time and peace and a wise governor, the land might be pacified.”

  I said nothing, not sure I was happy with the thought.

  “How is Tiberius?” Tudrus asked instead.

  “Brilliant general,” Rochus breathed. “Brilliant. Calm as morning breeze, and able to make most of even the most desperate situation.”

  We sat there, massaging our muscles, exhausted.

  “I cannot walk,” Wandal moaned. “Painful.”

  Then, the horns sounded.

  Classe burst alive. An anthill could be kicked and have less activity. I saw Adalwulf approaching, and he was accompanied by a richly dressed Roman, who was giving orders to what I guessed was a nauarchus, who would command a squadron of ships. That man, a sturdy officer in a sculpted mail and a brilliant helmet, turned to ten rogues, all armed and vicious looking lot, who were the ships’ trierarchs. He gave orders, gesturing with his hands, they nodded, and sprung to action.

  Adalwulf ran for us. “They are expecting a galley named the Lightning this evening, so we have to hurry,” he yelled. “We’ll get on board of the two triremes over there.” He pointed at sleek, tall ships with mast. “We will have a squadron out in a bit.”

  I was frowning at the smaller ships, ones without masts. “Bireme?” I asked him. “They are faster?”

  “They go first,” he agreed. “They try to scout and find the ships. They lost a ship day before yesterday, and suspected pirates, but found nothing. The enemy rarely lurks around for a long time, but lately, they suspect something is out there for some reason, hiding. Could be they are skulking in some cove. Illlyrian Hyllus, a king of some sort, has been out there this season. Iullus has many contacts in Ravenna, and they have hired the bastards for a coup. Iullus wants Augustus and Tiberius both dead, but I bet the pirates want to take them hostage, and not kill them. They’ll be careful.”

  I pointed a finger at a bireme very near. “Let’s get to one of those. They’ll be there first.”

  “One of those,” he said dubiously, “cannot engage the enemy. There might be half a dozen of lembus ships, each have fifty pirates. The triremes—”

  A toothless sailor snorted nearby. “The triremes come when they come. The four biremes will start without them, sir.” He had a look of an Egyptian, and so did his men, who were rushing onboard, wearing chain, the rovers but loincloths. He nodded at the ship. “We could use you. The whoresonss Illyrians of Hyllus are sad bunch of witless marines, but we’d gladly have some more spears to fuck them with.” He grinned happily.

  Adalwulf sighed and nodded. And so, the two turma split into two of the fast ships, where the captains squatted under a tent in the afterdeck, the rovers pulled at oars, and the marines and us squatted on the deck as miserable forgotten vermin. The deck rocked. The ship moved, gliding under the midday Sunna out of Classe, past Ravenna, and headed north along the coast.

  In three hours, sick and unstable, we spotted the triremes.

  ***

  The ship was rocking and gliding over the sea. The rowers were pulling in perfect rhythm that resembled art. The men’s backs were glistening with water and sweat, their faces gleaming with joy at moving the lithe thing across the water. The rest of the squadron was far behind, triremes mostly, and four biremes were gliding over the surface, like hounds freed by their masters. The captain walked the deck, his brown eyes flashing at every detail. The marines were swaying as they sat in the deck, and some cast disgusted looks our way, as we bumped into each other and committed acts no true sailor could accept, like praying to be back onshore, and on our horses.

  The man stopped near Adalwulf, who was sitting stoically, cross-legged, holding his spear, staring ahead. His mood was strange, like a beast shackled, ready to be released. “They will be using lembus,” the man said. “If they are out there.”

  “They will be,” Adalwulf said.

  “We will have to ram them. Don’t have a corvus in a ship like this.”

  “Corvus?” I asked, confused. “I’m—”

  Adalwulf turned. “It’s a beaked platform you let slam on an enemy ship’s deck and then use to charge over a rammed ship. Usually, it’s in the prow, but it would make this bitch slow as hell and probably would sink it as well.”

  The captain smiled toothlessly. “So, we’ll do it the old way. We will rip into the bastards, and climb over the wreckage like mad rats. Hope you boys can swim.” He looked at our armor. “Never mind. Just do well, friends. If we find them.”

  And we did.

  “Sails!” yelled a boy from the front. The same scream was echoed from the biremes nearby, the voices whipping like a lightning bolt through every man. We climbed on our knees, holding on with one hand as we looked across the ships prows.

  First, we saw nothing.

  Then, far, far in the distance, we saw two red sails.

  The captain got up, his eyes scanning the sea by the coast. He was silent, his face still as a statue, and I took it to be a bad sign.

  “Hyllus, all right. There are three red ships,” he was murmuring. “And they are attacking the Lightning and the escort.”

  It took us some time to see what was going on. Then, when we got closer, we saw a trireme in trouble. There was another one, but further from the ship we were interested in. Both were being swarmed by five low riding, fleet galleys. Lighting had tried to evade them and gotten too close to the shore.

  “Dodge, you slug licking fool,” the captain shrieked.

  Lighting was trying to cut a path past the fleet pirate ships. It was too slow. Five ships were herding it, and one, a very fleet ship, with a red flag whipping from the stern, was cutting to the larger ship’s side with an uncanny speed. We saw how arrows and spears and javelins were flying back and forth, killing and maiming men, but it didn’t stop the fast lembus from cutting to the left side of the trireme, and crashing amidst the oars of the hard-pulling ship. Its prow was snapping oars, breaking wood, and cheers of pirates echoed as they decimated the mobility of the trireme.

  The trireme shuddered to right, drum could be heard beating madly, and the five Illyrian galleys surrounded the trireme like hounds a wounded deer.

  The captain grunted. “That’s the Sea Cur,” he said and nodded at the red ship. “Hyllus’s own. And that’s the bastard on the deck.”

  Indeed, there was a contingent of red-dressed warriors, tall, wild, and one was silvery armored and wide, w
ith a red, open faced helmet in his head. Men were securing the galleys on the trireme, arrows and spears were flashing down from the deck just above them, but the pirates took losses stoically, and kept preparing to take the ship.

  “I’ll hump it,” the captain said with a relish. “I’ll hump the Cur. They fuckers haven’t seen us yet. Get ready!” the Egyptian captain screamed, and we got ready as we could, crawling to the front of the ship, just after the marines.

  We were abandoning our shields, our cloaks, some were taking off even helmets, contemplating on abandoning the armor as well, terrified of goddess Rān and her nets that collected the drowned. Around us, the biremes were cutting a swath for the battle, and now, some men in the enemy ships saw us coming. Their faces showed terror, and then we could see rovers scrambling to the deck.

  Our captain, a mad man if I ever saw one, screamed and cackled in the wind, his marines echoing him. “Loooook at them shake. Gods will sort out the ones they want, and let the fish have the rest. Piss your fishy toes, boys!”

  The ships prow went up, then down, then up, and we saw the enemy ship close. “Full speed!” yelled someone.

  Wandal was shaking. “This was a horrible idea.”

  “It was,” Tudrus agreed. “Shit terrible idea, Hraban.”

  “Hold on,” Adalwulf sobbed. “We will die now.”

  Up. Down. The Cur was there, its men scaling the side of the Lighting, where fierce combat was taking place. Spears, javelins, even bits of oar were hacking at the pirates. Hyllus was on the prow of his ship, grimacing under his thick beard, holding on.

  The ship hit the Cur. We screamed, heard terrible grinding noise, as the small ram struck the enemy side, its oars and planks twisting and breaking. Someone was screaming in pain; another voice was yelling for the rovers to keep the ship in the enemy side. Somewhere near us, another bireme struck another ship.

  We had all fallen and rolled to the front of the ship. Some had fallen on the rovers, the tent was a heap, and marines were looking up at the enemy deck, their faces malicious. Without any given orders, we knew we would have to get past the wreckage which had been the prow of the ship.

  Dozens of hooks flew to the enemy ship, the sailors skillfully pulling at the groaning wreckage. Curiously, some flew back, as the Illyrians were brazenly thinking about taking the fight to us.

  And there, in the head of the enemy, on his own mangled deck, stood the enemy lord. Round shield before him, an odd, curved hacking sword flashing, he gathered dozens of his men and oarsmen to stop us, casting looks at the ships swarming the other trireme not so far, and his other ships reeling under Roman assault. He’d get no immediate help, but they were many, and he might not need it.

  Adalwulf pulled his spear. Thirty marines were lobbing javelins over the bow of the ship, impaling men. Arrows and sibyna, metallic javelins, were landing amidst our men. Oarsman fell on his face, another hurtled over the board, and three marines screamed as stones and arrows struck them down.

  “Say it, say it!” I screamed at Adalwulf, who turned to look back at me, his face flushed with wild battle rage, and I guess we both heard Woden calling.

  “Rip the shit walking whore sons to pieces!” he screamed and pushed forward. His shield rattled with arrows, one killed a man of the turma next to Wandal, and then we charged. The marines went with us, picking up swords.

  It was a terrible fight in a merciless place.

  We clambered on a precarious wreck of wood. Men slipped to the sea. A wall of spears was stabbing at us, killing men. Men were slipping between the ships, and there was only one true way across, a narrow, dangerous mess of wood, where the bow of the ship was unceremoniously mangled with the deck of the enemy ship, and that was where we went. The marines jumped over lithely. Some were speared, others landed between spears and shields, panting, whipping their swords around desperately.

  The guardsmen were no sailors.

  Three fell in the press, one to the sea, two to spears and arrows, and I heard Agetan shriek in anger as a rock bounced off his chest.

  But, Adalwulf and I, we jumped over the wreckage. He pushed his shield into a thicket of hungry spears. One wounded his thigh, he roared away the pain, and his sword stabbed over the shields, between them, and he pushed on, cursing in Germani, a language perfect for it. I came behind his shield, jabbing in the press. I gouged out an eye with my spear, then lost it, and pulled the sword. I hacked with Nightbright at Illyrian oarsmen, stoically took a punch in the face which opened my lip, and pushed the sword into the man’s throat, then the next ones.

  A spear was tangling in my mail, a hand still trying to push it thorough to my flesh in the press, but Wandal killed the man, Tudrus stabbing the next one down with his spear. Swords stabbed, hacked, and the Illyrians, slipping on their deck, finally gave way. A step. Then another, men falling on both sides. Sextus yelled, and howled, as a lithe Illyrian slashed his blade across the man’s shoulder, but a Roman marine killed the enemy with a pugio, and that was when the enemy oarsmen ran. They gave up the fight around their lord and his best men, and rushed away, diving to the sea, probably hoping to reach the coast.

  Adalwulf was hacking into the shields of the armored, fierce Illyrians. There was a thick concentration of better armed men, with round breastplates, and Hyllus, a tall man wearing a bronze helmet with a crest on top, thick and flowing, downed a Guard with a swift stab into the belly. The enemy were backing off, some were trying to scale the Lighting, but twenty of so still held tight. Adalwulf rushed them, but three sica, curved swords, slashed at his shield, and spears pushed him back, taking blood. The enemy chanted under Hyllus, pushed forward, and a spear came at Adalwulf, then at me, one drawing blood from my shoulder. Adalwulf wiggled between two such warriors, but the crested man pulled back an ax, which he threw at the Decurion. The blade flashed, split Adalwulf’s shield and forearm, and the spears pushed him on his back, wounding him in chest and belly. The javelins came at us, and one pierced Sextus in the middle, killing him. A stone struck my helmet so hard my ears rung.

  Woden’s rage kept me going.

  A man surged with a spear to kill me as I stood over Adalwulf. I dropped my shield, grasped the spear, pulled it, Wandal helped me, and the man fell into our swords. Javelins felled men behind the enemy, and Agetan and Bohscyld pushed after me to the gap. I hacked around me. I sawed at a neck, Wandal punctured a skull. A large, dirty Illyrian hit his curved sword into my helmet, but I stabbed his thigh. A short man barreled into me. I felt his breath on my cheek, and he gouged at my helmet, trying to reach for my eyes, but he fell, killed by the twins.

  I turned, and saw Hyllus there, wounded, his shield in splinters, roaring defiance to the last. I cursed, charged him, took a wound to my shoulder as his sica slashed down. I barreled him to the deck. We rolled to the oar pit, and there struggling, I wrestled myself on top of him. I grasped his throat, and he was holding to my wrist, keeping Nightbright away. His sica was gone, but he was struggling to pull a dagger. Tudrus dropped near us, Bohscyld and Agetan as well, and the fight went out of the man.

  He took a huge, ragged breath, and surrendered.

  I nodded, got up, and looked up to the trireme. There, his sword bloodied, stood Tiberius and he looked down at us.

  We had succeeded.

  Now it was up to Augustus to condemn the guilty ones.

  Even his own daughter.

  CHAPTER 23

  It was calm in the shadowy temple of Neptune in Ravenna.

  Augustus was sitting on a stool, staring ahead, his gray hair unkempt, toga dirty. He had come through the attack unscathed, and the ships had made it to Ravenna. We had lost two biremes, and the trireme that had been isolated, but the pirates had lost six ships and failed in their mission. Their king was a prisoner.

  There was a disbelieving look on Augustus’s old face, as if he had let himself believe he had put down the last attempts on his life long ago. He had been wrong. Livia was standing near him, as was Tiberius. The old man had not
spoken much, and when he had, it had been more a growl than anything else.

  Iullus was under house arrest back in Rome. Livia had spoken against him, so had Maximus, the Prefect of the Guard. Augustus didn’t react and shook his head sadly, as Julia was implicated, the plots laid out, Kleitos’s guilt laid on his feet. Then, we waited for his decision. He was fidgeting, as silence reigned in the hall. The few Senators who had been with him on his small trip were looking awkward, as they clearly hoped to be elsewhere.

  Julia stood before her father, silent so far.

  Finally, Augustus raised his head.

  “Do you deny?” the whisper snaked forth, and it was aimed at his daughter. “Do you deny?”

  Julia, as if awakened from a dream, shrugged. Her eyes went to me, full of sorrow. “Deny what, Father? You know I hate and distrust him.”

  Tiberius looked like stricken. His face was white.

  Julia, mercilessly, went on. “He is dangerous to us, Father. To Antonia even. You told me to make my peace with him. I wanted something more.”

  “You do not deny?” Augustus asked, his voice as if from beyond the grave. “And me?”

  She shook her head, her face proud. “I had no idea you would be in danger, Father.”

  “You—”

  “Wanted to be free, Father.”

  He sat there quietly, his face glistening with sweat. Livia stepped forward, and I saw Julia turn her spiteful eyes her way. Livia spoke. “My son. Drusus dead. Tiberius and your father, nearly dead. Antonia, living in virtual exile. Conspiracy with Kleitos, with Iullus, gods know with whom he—”

  Julia roared her words. “No, that is not so.” The scream echoed in the temple, startling birds to the sky. She took many deep breaths and went on. “I have done no such thing. Iullus has not. No.”