by Talbot Mundy
It was an hour before the labored thumping of the oars died away in the direction of the shore. Another hour before a Northman at the masthead shouted that he saw lights to the southward. Tros himself went to the masthead then. He counted twelve lights, several miles away, scattered in pairs over a considerable breadth of sea. And he studied them for a long time, trying to determine which might be the ships containing Spaniards and which the escort.
The Romans were poor hands at keeping station on the open sea. Likelier than not the ships were all mixed up together, their commanders satisfied to keep within sight of one another, not anticipating an engagement and confident that they would receive ample warning of the presence of an enemy.
No lights showed on the Liafail, but her bulk and her three great spars would show up plainly as soon as dawn should begin to steal along the sky. It lacked an hour of dawn yet and the wind had dropped. Glancing shoreward he could hardly see the beacons. It seemed to him that their crimson flare was being veiled and was spreading on the veil the while it grew dim.
“Fog!” he muttered. He had asked the gods for opportunity! He returned to the poop and sent for Conops, Sigurdsen and Orwic.
“We will let that fog drift down on us,” he said. “If it comes not fast enough we will row toward it. When the Romans can no longer see one another’s lights they will start their war trumpets a-blaring. They will low like full cows at milking time. We will pick them off one by one. Their system is to crowd an enemy between the beaks of two or four ships, or to lay alongside and drop their dolphins into her, and to let fall a gangplank with a spike in it. That pins both ships together and along the plank their boarders come with locked shields.
“Now they can not use that gangplank, because our deck is higher than theirs. But they can break our oars, and they can use the iron dolphin, since it hangs above the yardarm. Above all, we must avoid their beaks.
“Orwic, their commanders will not stand at the stern, as I will. They will fight their ships from the top of the midship citadel where the sail, which they will keep spread whether there is wind or not, masks them from an enemy, and whence they can shout to the helmsman as well as direct the javelin-and arrow-fire. So aim first at the citadels and keep those swept with a cross fire from the arrow-engines.
“Sigurdsen, take you the helm. See to it that the sails are well clewed up but ready to be sheeted down with all speed if a wind should come and blow the fog away. This fog, which the gods have sent, is better than forty men to us.”
But Sigurdsen was a pessimist.
“It will make the Romans close their ranks, and we will have to fight six ships at once,” he grumbled.
“It sets all Northmen free for the fighting, since neither side can use sails!” Tros retorted.
“Aye, and we under-oared, with a half-trained crew! There are nineteen men so weak from vomiting they can’t pull their weight, and if the ship rolls—”
“Clew up the sails!” Tros snapped at him. “Then come aft and take the helm.”
The giant went forward, grumbling to himself, but Tros had come to understand the pessimism of the man; he liked to set all gloom in a dense formation and then wade into it like a disk into the skittles.
“Conops,” he said, “the catapults are useless until fog and darkness lift. You and Glendwyr pick the four best Britons and stand by to serve stinkballs by hand. Let the Britons light the fuses. You and Glendwyr each toss one ball at a time into an enemy’s hold, if they come close enough. But no waste, mind! That stuff costs money. Not more than two balls at a time into one ship.”
For a long while after that they lay in silence, rolling leisurely, watching the advancing lights grow pale against the brightening cloud bank to the southward. The big ship drifted very slowly on the changing tide toward the fog that crept toward them from the shore. The first out-reaching wisps of it surrounded them as dawn touched the southerly clouds with gold and turned the edges of the mist to silver. Now they could see four of the Roman ships distinctly. The masthead man reported two more following. Tros bit his nails. The mist was still only in wisps around him. He feared the sun gleaming on the golden serpent might betray his presence too soon.
The four ships in the lead, less than half a mile apart, were armed biremes. According to the masthead man’s report, the two-ship convoy trailed a long way in the rear. He must get between the warships and the convoy and engage the biremes one by one, avoiding all collision and yet steering close enough for Conops to lob stinkballs into them. Conops and Glendwyr could hardly toss the leaden balls much farther than an oar-length. If he should smash the oars by coming too close, he had plenty of spares ready; but he knew what a panic there would be below decks when the broken oar ends knocked the rowers off the benches. He must avoid that even at the cost of letting more than half the enemy escape him.
A breath of warm air brought the fog rolling down in clouds at last, and presently Tros heard the war horns blaring on the Roman ships. The fog moved fast; if it should be one of those narrow, longshore streaks that hug the coast of Britain most days of the year, it might vanish too soon.
“Starboard a little, starboard!” he directed, leaning overside to listen for the horn blare. “Hold her so.”
Then he took his stand where the drum and cymbal men below the poop could see the wand he held in his right hand. But he made no signal to them until the blare of the nearest horn came from astern and a Roman, aware of something looming, hailed him through the fog.
Then action, swift and resolute! He signaled to the cymbals and a crash of brass shook all the oarsmen into life. The water boiled alongside and the ship swung with a lurch as Sigurdsen leaned all his weight against the steering oar, his left foot on the rail and his muscles cracking.
“Stand by all! Ready on the starboard bow there, Conops! Fire when you see them, Orwic!”
He had one bireme by the stern, at any rate. No danger from the dolphin, almost none to the oars if Sigurdsen kept his head. He signaled the cymbals, quickening the oar beat. The men at the masthead yelled incomprehensibly. There was a terror-stricken, flatted chorus from the Roman trumpets and the bireme loomed up like a ghost.
“Zeus!!”
Sigurdsen threw his weight against the helm, or a bank of oars would have gone to splinters. The air twanged as if the devils of the underworld were plucking death’s harps, whistled as if death were on the wing — four midship arrow-engines — and then Orwic’s voice:
“Reload! Lud’s blood, what are you waiting for?”
Yells from the bireme, two thuds as the leaden balls struck woodwork, Conops crying, “Two hits!” and the ghost was gone. Fog, but a glare in the fog and the shouts of men who struggled to extinguish flame but choked in the stench and were forced back by the prodigious heat! Fog, and the blare of horns ahead. Shouts and a thrashing of water where another bireme came about to find out what the matter might be.
“Stop oars!”
The drums and cymbals crashed in sudden unison that checked the oars in mid-swing. Tros let the great ship carry way and for a minute listened to the Roman oar-beats, knowing that his silence would confuse the Romans and that his own man at the masthead, being higher, would see sooner than the Romans could. Astern now, there was a crimson splurge like sunset in the fog, where a bireme burned.
“Right on us! Straight ahead!” The masthead man lapsed into Norse again.
“Beak! Their beak’s right into us!” yelled Conops from the bow.
But the Roman helmsman saw the serpent’s tongue in air above the bireme’s bow and changed course in a panic. The ships struck shoulder on and, in the crash that threw the oarsmen off the benches, none heard the leaden balls thud down the bireme’s forward hatch and roll among the rowers. Conops’ voice cried:
“Two hits! Back away, master! Back away!”
The arrow-engines twanged, and the Romans came back with a hail of javelins. There was a great splash, for they let the dolphin go and it missed by the width of the roll o
f both ships as they reeled back from the impact.
Javelins again — twang, twang, and shriek of the twelve-arrow flights; a din below decks as the rowers of both ships rioted. The Romans had the better discipline, but there was searching fire in their hold, whereas Tros’s men were only bewildered. Crash of Tros’s drums and cymbals signaling for backed oars; the choking, acrid reek of greenish-yellow smoke, emerging from the bireme’s hatch; response from the oars at last. As the Northmen plied their bows from anywhere on deck and Orwic’s arrow-engines, cranking, twanging, screaming, swept the bireme’s citadel, the reflection of a crimson glare lit on the serpent’s golden tongue. Its agate eyes shone. It appeared to laugh as, curtsying to the swell and the staccato jerk of backed oars, it retired into the fog.
Tros laughed. Two biremes reckoned with! Two crimson splurges in the fog, and only two more ships to find and fight before those Spaniards were his!
But suddenly he swore. The fog was lifting! He could see the shore already and the burning biremes were in such full view that the crew of the nearest began manning the ballista that was farthest from the flame. An arrow two yards long feathered with burning pitch hummed overhead, and a second fell short as the backed oars took him out of range.
There were wounded Northmen on the deck, but he had no time to spare for them. In another minute now the hurrying mist would vanish and reveal him to the other biremes and to the ships that carried Spaniards. He ordered —
“Stop!”
And quicker than the echo of the drums and cymbals he was off the poop and down the after-hatch, where he stood and roared to the rowers, taking care that laughter, triumph should beam from his face:
“Good men!” There were half a dozen of them stunned between the benches. “Two big ships beaten by your steadfastness! When I call for speed, let oars bend! Ye have done well. Now do better!”
In an instant he was on the poop again, his eyes searching the fog’s afterguard that still concealed him from four Roman ships.
“Orwic!” he roared, and Orwic’s boyish face appeared in the deckhouse door. “Man the bow catapults! Leave Glendwyr to the arrow-engines. Conops! Stand by Orwic!”
Presently, to the sound of grinding, great weights rose between the uprights and the magazine crews rolled the leaden balls into the racks provided. Conops began fitting fuses, soaking them with sulphur and oil of turpentine. Tros ordered Sigurdsen to shake down the great mainsail. He could spare no men for more than that, just yet. And as the big sail bellied in the wind the last fog streamers scattered southward, showing all four ships, and him to them.
The apparition of Tros’s great vermilion-sided Liafail, with three masts and her long-tongued serpent flashing in the sun, struck terror in the Romans. They knew nothing of how dangerously he was undermanned. Two biremes, widely separated from each other and at least two miles away from their crowded convoys, ‘bouted helm and ran for it, clapping on all sail to help the oars and striving to get between Tros and the Spaniards.
“Full speed!”
A race began in which Tros was badly handicapped. If he had clapped on more sail, he would have had no men to spare to serve the catapults.
Along two legs of a scalene triangle, its apex the slow convoys, Tros and the biremes raced, Tros with the shorter course, but they with full crews, going nearly two to his one. Around them and about them splashed the stinkballs, as the great weights thumped into the hold, outranging the Roman ballistas easily, but making no hits. Tros ground his teeth at the waste of precious ammunition.
He ordered, “cease fire,” ordered the great forward lateen sail sheeted down, thinning out the catapult crews to the point where they were hardly enough to crank the weights, ordered the oar stroke quickened until there was so much splashing that he had to slow it down again. And in spite of all, the biremes gained on him hand over hand, until at last, while the leader raced on to transship the Spaniards from the slower craft and carry them back to Gaul, the other turned and offered fight.
It was the act of a bold captain. No solitary bireme had the slightest chance against that great ship boiling down on him. The terrific speed had tired the Roman’s rowers, who had hardly strength enough by now to give force to the iron-shod ram. Tros changed the helm and kept away from him to westward.
“Fire both catapults!”
One missed. The other, laid by Orwic, hurled its lead ball straight against the bireme’s citadel, smashing through the woodwork and exploding. Then the Roman captain changed his mind. His ship on fire, he turned in a wide circle and began to race again toward the convoys.
“Try again, Orwic!”
Two more balls whirled on their way, and again one missed, but the second — Conops aimed it — smashed through the bireme’s deck and, though it did not burst, the cloud of suffocating smoke increased. The oars collapsed, like the legs of a dying centipede, as the whole crew, marvelously disciplined, went to work to extinguish fire.
“They are mine!” laughed Tros, his eyes fixed on the convoys. But that other, swifter bireme lay already beam to beam with the nearest of the transports. They had lowered their spiked gangplank and a stream of armed men poured along it to the roof of the bireme’s citadel. Before Tros could prevent, both forward catapults went off with a crash and shudder. Two of the leaden stinkballs hit their mark, one into either ship. Orwic, Conops and the whole deck crew went frantic with delight as both exploded. There was an instant blaze too great for Tros’s explosive to have caused; one ball had burst into the Roman magazine, where they had stored their own pitch and sulphur, and both ships with their crowd of panic-stricken men, were swallowed in a reeking cloud of smoke, shot through with flame.
Tros changed the course to pursue the second convoy. Then he went up forward and took Orwic by the throat.
“Hot-headed horseman!” he swore, forcing him backward against the catapult. “Those last two shots have cost me ten-score men!” He shook him, but he could not take the laugh off Orwic’s face.
“Look! Lud’s teeth, but look!” he exclaimed, and, breaking away from Tros’s grip, watched the two locked ships, one mass of flame, sinking.
Tros took no pleasure in the sight. His eye was on one bireme to the northward that had managed to subdue the fire in her hold and was picking up survivors from another bireme nearer shore. The third, a mile this side of them, was losing its fight with the flames.
“Get aft, Orwic!” Then he ordered both the catapults uncranked, and told off men to care for the nine wounded — arrow and javelin wounds, not good to look at and not easy to treat. A Northman screamed and bit the deck beside him as they pulled out a barbed arrow-head and poured hot tar into the wound.
“Conops!” Tros commanded. “Take one stinkball and stand in the bow. When I lay alongside those Spaniards have the fuse ready, but don’t light it until I give the word. If I do, then drop it into their hold to scare them out.”
Again he went down through the hatch to encourage the rowers. Sigurdsen sent a messenger to say they were almost within arrow range of the ship they were pursuing. Then he went up slowly and stood staring over the stern. The capture of the last ship was a foregone certainty. It hardly interested him. It hardly troubled him to see the Romans burn and drown, for they were trouble hunters with the game reversed on them. But it grieved him to the deep, strong marrow of his being to have lost two hundred and fifty Spaniards.
“Good, spirited, unruly rebels to a man!” he muttered. “I could have given them their chance. The gods gave me mine, and I let Orwic rob me!”
Sigurdsen nudged him.
“Carry on!” Tros ordered. Then, when they were beam to beam with the slow, helpless ship he ordered the oars in through the ports and roared to the ship’s captain to come about and heave to, setting the example. The man — he was a long-haired Gaul — obeyed. More than two hundred blue-eyed Spaniards, armed with swords, spears, shields and javelins, crowded the deck.
“Where is your captain?” Tros asked in the Roman tongue.
The Gaul laughed drily.
“They threw him overboard. He did not please them.”
“How so?”
“They are hungry. There was no food.”
“Sigurdsen! Lower away the boats!”
When both the boats were in the water Tros gave orders to the Spaniards to throw their weapons into them. A few splashed overside, but presently the boats came back with swords, spears, javelins, shields and helmets, loaded to the gunwale. Then he ordered a hundred Spaniards brought from ship to ship, which was as many as he dared to have at one time, until he had subdued them properly. Next, he put a small crew of Northmen aboard the Gaulish ship and passed a towrope.
“There is one Roman bireme still afloat,” said Orwic, pointing. “She runs home.”
“Let her! We will have our hands full with these Spaniards. Let the Romans go and tell their tale to Caesar!”
A great Spaniard swaggered up to him.
“Who are you?” he demanded, not exactly insolently. He was curious and, beyond the ordinary run of mortals, proud.
“I am admiral of Caesar’s fleet!” said Tros. “By right of my appointment I transfer you to my ship. Get forward!”
The Spaniard went to sit and whisper with his friends and watch and wonder.
CHAPTER 66. Men — Men — Men!
In my day I have known eighteen kings, but not one who had enough wisdom to laugh at himself. Caswallon the king came nearest to it. But even he believed his enemies were something other than the goads employed by Destiny to rouse his energy. As a master is, so are his men. I know a people if I know its rulers.
— from The Log of Tros of Samothrace
IT WAS a long pull back to Vectis, with a favoring wind but one third of the time and a heavy, sow-bellied Gaulish freighter in tow. One hundred Spaniards were put to the oars, but they refused work, although they understood oars, were not seasick and, in a blue-eyed opportunist fashion of their own, were not unreasonable.
Tros sent for the man who had first accosted him when captured.