For this reason, the announcement that the flotilla had reached Brindisi surprised him. He squinted, and seemed to recognise the outline of the coast, identifying the dual port of the city. He knew it quite well because he had done service there when he had been cast out of the sect, collaborating with Maecenas to undermine the cohesion of Mark Antony’s legions camped nearby. He gave orders to turn and head for the right side of the port. Soon he could see the silhouettes of ships halfway between his fleet and the mainland. They could not be the vanguard of those of Mark Antony, whose vessels were spread out near the port, though. Murcus, then, was already there. Probably busy observing the movements of the transport ships in front of him, he had not even realised that other vessels were approaching from behind. Excellent. Now was the moment for them to go hard at it. Agrippa ordered the oarsmen to row at their fastest rhythm, because they no longer had the wind in their favour, and some time passed before Murcus noticed his presence. Now he could overtake him.
The enemy triremes began to spread out. There were thirty of them, perfectly capable of constituting a barrier, had Agrippa had given them time to do so, but his ships were close together and continued to move swiftly, heading for the right side of the enemy line. Murcus had finally realised his intentions and manoeuvred his ships to cover the exposed side. Agrippa was still in the lead, and – his ships in a wedge formation – he continued his mad rush forward while the enemy moved sideways at a slower pace. They risked colliding.
His flagship, at the head, crossed the line along which the enemy fleet proceeded, unhindered. Agrippa turned and watched the movements of the ships. Murcus’s ships approached while his slipped by one after the other. But though the flagship was now safe, he could not be sure that those behind it were – some risked being cut off. He wished he had left at least one turret on board so that he could observe them from above, and finally, impatiently, he pounced on the rigging of the mainmast and began to climb it until he had almost reached the summit. Some might criticise him, thinking it undignified for a commander to climb like a monkey, but he couldn’t just stand there doing nothing.
From up there he saw that Mark Antony’s fleet had begun to move, although with maddening slowness. He observed the progress of his own ships, while observing the advance of Murcus’s. Five of his were still behind the line of the attackers and were now close at hand. The first managed to pass, followed by two triremes almost side by side. One of the prows passed that of Murcus’s nearby ship and went in front of its ram, which, however, made contact with the rear part of the stern. There was a glancing collision, which sent up a high wave, hiding the scene for a moment from Agrippa’s eyes. The ship was knocked off course and brushed against the trireme which flanked it, breaking its oars and forcing it to proceed almost in a zigzag.
The damaged ship managed to continue on its course, but in the meantime Murcus cut off the penultimate ship and battle became inevitable. Travelling at speed, the trireme from Agrippa’s flotilla rammed violently into the enemy ship, smashing through the hull until it reached the main mast. The sails collapsed and covered what remained of the deck, imprisoning the men in a carcass destined to sink quickly beneath the waves. Meanwhile, Murcus’s other ships arrived, forcing the last of Agrippa’s column to stop or meet the same fate.
Their commander felt a stabbing pain in his chest when he saw his men surrendering to the enemy and others jumping into the sea, clinging to flotsam, but above all he felt mounting desperation when he saw figures imprisoned by the ropes, struggling under the sails, trying in vain to avoid sinking with their doomed ship. He had to remind himself that he had a job to do. He climbed down from the mast and checked that the ships which were still intact were moving perpendicular to the coast, creating a wall to favour the safe departure of Mark Antony’s vessels.
It was time to launch the second phase of the operation.
He ordered his thirty archers to line up along the bulwark and nock their arrows. When he saw that they were ready, he checked that there were enough enemy ships within range and gave the order to fire. In an instant, thirty arrows flew simultaneously in a low arc across the short stretch of sea between the two fleets, sowing havoc on the enemy decks. Immediately afterwards, the archers in his other vessels fired, their arrows striking the enemy ships and sending men falling to the ground or into the sea.
Meanwhile, Mark Antony’s convoy was passing. Agrippa had calculated that he would have to hold out for at least an hour.
He ordered them to continue firing. The one thing they had plenty of were arrows. Enemy arrows began to rain down on them, but they were few and far between. Murcus had not based his tactics on archers and had brought few of them along. He could not now attempt to ram him, as he was too close to use his momentum. Nor could he board them. Agrippa’s ships were so agile that he could forget about that.
The second part of the plan was working, and already the mind of the young commander was focused upon the third.
XVI
Rufus gave the helmsman the order to pull to the left but the man didn’t seem to hear him so he climbed down from the tower on the prow – from whence he had been watching the depressing spectacle of the failure of his strategy – and rushed to the stern, where the helmsman was standing. Why wasn’t the idiot moving? What was he waiting for? The quadrireme on their right flank to be pushed against them by the waves and the enemy triremes? He had already seen that happen more than once to his own fleet: the ships smashed into one another, knocking them out of action and leaving them at the mercy of their opponents, who could then ram and board them at their leisure.
He dodged the men he encountered, green-faced ghosts who were feeling their way around the deck, some spewing into the sea and others grasping the rigging. Hardly any of them seemed able to cope with the swell of the ocean, and he too was assailed by a sense of nausea that blurred his vision, but he had no intention of letting them see that: what would they think if they saw their commander was suffering from seasickness?
He had to grab hold of the ropes several times in order to make it along the full length of the ship, and at every step he heard arrows flying overhead and was sprayed with water, sometimes powerfully enough to throw him to the deck. He was drenched by the time he reached the helmsman, who he discovered in even worse shape than himself: the man had an arrow lodged in his shin, but continued to remain standing in the stern, giving directions to the two men in charge of the steering oars they manoeuvred on the sides.
“Why aren’t you steering left?” he shouted, as soon as he was within earshot. “Can’t you see that we’re about to ram our own ships?”
The helmsman seemed to barely recognize him. “I can’t turn left, sir!” he said. “The current is already pushing us against those two galleys, and I can’t get the ship round enough to get the prow facing them!”
“It doesn’t matter!” Rufus shouted. “We can risk colliding with the triremes but not the quadriremes! Do as I say!”
“But it’ll be our flank that hits them!” protested the helmsman.
“And it’ll expose their flank to us! Come on!” he ordered, in an even more peremptory tone, and the man had no choice but to obey, passing on the order to his two subordinates. For a few moments the ship remained at the mercy of the waves, but then slowly began to veer to the left, though not turning sufficiently to complete the manoeuvre. The helmsman shouted at one of the men on the steering oars, but the man just stood with his head bowed and his shoulders hunched, and when Rufus grabbed his hair and lifted his head, he saw that the man’s face was contorted with nausea. The helmsman pushed him aside and took hold of the great oar which governed the ship’s course. The two galleys, though, were now side by side.
Fortunately, neither of them had its ram facing the other, but impact was clearly unavoidable. Rufus shouted to the helmsman to pull up the steering oars and he didn’t need to be told twice. The collision of the triremes against the quadrireme shook the latter, knocking all on board
to the floor. Rufus slipped on the decking, banging his back and head against the bulwark, and it was only his helmet that saved him from being knocked unconscious. Clutching the wet railings, he attempted to pull himself to his feet, but the lurching of the ship prevented him and he continued to slide back and forth across the width of the deck.
Suddenly, there was a devastating thud that jolted the very beams of the ship. When he finally managed to get a decent grip on the bulwark, he sat up and saw that the side of one of the galleys had been destroyed by the impact, while the other, with which they had collided only laterally, had dropped its boarding ramp and its ram had penetrated them between the bow and the mast. Underneath the boarding bridge was a man who had the misfortune of being pinned directly underneath it when it had been dropped, and he lay there crushed, arms and limbs akimbo and showing no sign of life.
They were about to be boarded.
In an instant, the gangway was filled with armed men, and Rufus feared that enemy soldiers were also arriving from the other trireme. A quick glance showed, though, that it was taking on water from the side which had been smashed open and that the occupants were throwing themselves into the sea. If nothing else, he would face only one ship’s soldiers, and there were less men in a trireme than in a quadrireme. He looked at his own men and saw the poor state they were in: some were not even aware they were under attack, and those that were did not look prepared for combat.
“Men, to me!” he shouted, calling them to get into formation and drawing his sword. However, only a few obeyed his order. He went over to the helmsman. “Come on, gather the soldiers! I’ll try and hold off the enemy as well as I can, but hurry!”
The man nodded and disappeared behind the others who had responded to the call: fifteen of them, counted Rufus, with which to hold off at least twice as many of the enemy.
Cursing himself for not having taken the opportunity to throw the boarders into the sea while they were still precariously balanced on the corvus, he decided to deploy his ranks in two wide rows, blocking the deck across its width to avoid being surrounded. He felt his head throbbing and spinning, and imagined that his subordinates must be feeling much the same. They weren’t used to being at sea, they were legionaries who had been taken from the units under his command. Pompey’s men, on the other hand, seemed confident, to judge from the determined expressions he saw on their faces as they approached.
It was he who exchanged the first blows with the enemy. The man had launched himself against one of Rufus’s troops, but Rufus had cut him off to prevent a defeat in a one-on-one battle that might demoralise his already dazed men. Their blades clanged, and soon Rufus felt again the familiar sensations of close combat, despite the rolling deck underfoot constantly reminding him of where he was, the elation he felt in dealing with an opponent excited him and allowed him to master his nausea: suddenly, the soldier he was fighting became a clear, sharp target, moving slowly, and he had no trouble running him through his neck, savouring the feeling of triumph that he tasted whenever he was sprayed with the blood of an adversary.
Meanwhile the entire line that had formed were engaged in combat. Their opponents had taken advantage of the rough conditions of his men to force a way through their lines, and two of them were lying on the ground, while the others were fighting overwhelming numbers of opponents. Things looked bad. He tackled another soldier, duelling with him until he managed to catch him with his guard down on the left and buried his blade in his ribs. Struggling to free his weapon from the man’s shattered bones, he found himself under attack from another opponent, but managed to dodge the blow by using the body as a shield. The man’s blade struck the corpse, and Rufus hurled it at him to throw him off balance, pulled out his sword and skewered him through the armpit.
With relief, he saw the helmsman return with other men who rushed to replenish the now thinned ranks of the defenders, knots of whom were fighting scattered battles about the deck. Momentarily freed from the need to defend himself, Rufus ran between his men and their opponents, shouting at them to get back in line and close ranks, but he saw that almost all of them had sluggish reflexes and moved with difficulty, and they seemed unsteady on their feet. He managed to get only ten behind him, while the others continued to retreat under the relentless blows of Pompey’s men, who were balanced and more energetic.
At this rate, the enemy would take the ship and the battle would be lost. He saw one of his men leap into the sea to escape an opponent’s sword, while another ended up entangled in the rigging, where he was stabbed in the abdomen before he could defend himself. If they had been on dry land, he would have called for a tactical retreat, but there was nowhere to fall back to. Suddenly, the deck was lit by a flash of fire, followed immediately by a thump which testified that a projectile had landed on the nearby trireme. Immediately the combatants on the deck froze, their attention seized by this new light: the ship next to them had caught fire, and the few remaining men on deck were unable to put it out. Rufus heard an order to retreat, followed by an attempt by some of their opponents to fight their way back to the corvus. Some found no opposition and managed to get to the boarding bridge right away while others continued to fight to free themselves.
Rufus shouted to his men to take advantage of their numerical superiority to eliminate those who were still on the deck, but they looked exhausted and just stepped aside to let them pass. He shouted and yelled, then he tackled one of the last to escape, killing him with ease, but it was pointless: his men were struggling just to stay on their feet. He watched their opponents crowd onto the deck of their trireme and throw themselves into putting out the fire, and consoled himself by thinking that at least from them they had no more to fear. He took the opportunity to go to the bow and climb the tower. Once at the top, he realised that his ships were having to defend themselves not only from the enemy, but also from their fellows: the waters were even more crowded than before, and there was no room to manoeuvre. Pompey’s men could carry on boarding them, and had just discovered that his own men were too sick to fight.
He had to get out of there before it was too late. He ordered his navarch to sound the retreat, then glanced up at the fortress on the promontory of Scilla. He knew that Octavian was watching, and cursed having to let him see the spectacle of his retreat.
*
Rufus had given the order to retreat. Which made him the loser.
Which made him – Octavian, the supreme commander – the loser too.
To tell the truth, he would have done the same in Rufus’s place. And perhaps even sooner. In the situation in which he found himself, to continue the confrontation would only lead to a hopeless defeat, whereas if he managed to break free immediately, with the help of some of that positive propaganda of which Maecenas was capable of orchestrating, they could pass it off as a draw. But even as they withdrew, with the deliberation that characterized Rufus’s quadriremes, there was always the risk of it ending in disaster. It was necessary to prevent those clumsy ships, moving like elephants in a forest, from being trapped in the narrow stretch of sea and offering themselves as sacrificial victims to the galleys of Sextus Pompey.
Fires were already visible. Vessels were burning everywhere, men engulfed in flames were throwing themselves into the water screaming, burning flotsam floated on the surface of the sea amongst half-submerged debris, and sparks danced through the air, setting light to the few sails still unfurled. The flames enveloped the triremes and quadriremes, but the latter moved slowly, which exposed them more to the risk of fire from the burning projectiles launched by the catapults on Pompey’s ships.
Rufus wasn’t going to make it. Even though his remaining ships were sailing toward the entrance to the strait, attempting to reach the bay where Octavian’s forces were assembled, the galleys were at his heels and would soon be able to get alongside or ram them. In short, despite his decision, the battle was not over. Unless he intervened from the fortress. Octavian didn’t have many throwing weapons available, but
he intended to use them to the full. “Centurion!” he shouted to the head of the defence. “Load the catapults with boulders and the scorpios with incendiary projectiles.”
The officer gave the order, and the soldiers in the battlements immediately crowded around the machines in small groups while others used tongs to take rags soaked in burning pitch and wrap them round the scorpio darts.
“Fire at the galleys closest to our own, and the ones behind them!” he shouted, and the centurion ordered the machines to be aimed in the direction the triumvir had commanded.
“Keep loading and firing until they are right below. Don’t wait for them to get out of range!” Octavian shouted. If the chase continued, he wouldn’t have another chance to prevent it. He waited with trepidation for the first launch, anxious to see what effect his orders would produce. Immediately afterwards, there were violent bangs followed by trails of light streaming across the sky in front of him. Faster than the rocks, the incendiary darts hissed through the air and fell onto the rear of Pompey’s ships a moment before the rocks rained down just ahead of them, smashing the deck of at least one of the closest triremes. A projectile struck a sail, setting fire to it, and in a moment the flames had enveloped the mast and the stays, sending the ship off course. But it was at the rear of the formation, and caused little damage.
“Move the scorpios! Target further ahead!” cried Octavian, and the men obeyed. There was another launch of rocks, which again almost all fell in the water, sending up high waves. One rock struck a glancing blow to a trireme, smashing the handrail and sending two men to a watery grave. Then it was the scorpios’ turn, the flaming arrows rained down more or less where the boulders had fallen, triggering two more fires. One ship was hit simultaneously by a stone and a dart, and began to take on water whilst fire spread across the deck, forcing the crew to jump overboard.
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