by James Mace
The pirates who battled them were a frightful sight. Coming from the dregs of every corner of the empire, their appearance showed the brutally hard, and often short, lives they led. Their clothing was mostly tattered rags; even that which they stole from their victims did not stay in a state of reasonable wear for long. Few had any sort of armor, and those who did wore sleeveless mail shirts with so many broken links as to render them completely useless. They were armed with a few swords, but mostly spiked clubs and various tools refashioned as weapons. Most pervasive of all was their stench. Months at sea, combined with poor nutrition and nonexistent hygiene rendered them diseased-ridden beasts rather than men.
The brigand who bashed his clawed hammer against Artorius’ shield was covered in hideous sores; his teeth were mostly absent and what he had were yellow and blackened with decay. His hair was frazzled and unkempt, with a scraggly beard offset by numerous facial scars. His eyes were wild, and he howled in desperate rage, which turned to a cry of pain as the centurion smashed the bottom of his shield against his lower leg, snapping the shin bone. Artorius quickly plunged his gladius into the fallen man’s stomach, leaving him thrashing on the deck, screaming in pain, as the line of legionaries pushed back against their foe.
The cabin door smashed open, a pair of pirates shoved aside the table and chairs braced against it. Diana stood in the center of the room, her maidservant in the corner, cowering in fear. She had her left hand up defensively, her gladius in her right hand hidden behind her back.
“Well, well, what have we here then?” the larger of the two pirates said with a toothless grin, spitting off to the side in emphasis. He was mostly bald, filthy, and stunk of sweat. The stench of the men was so overpowering that Diana mused they had never bathed in the course of their pathetic lives.
“Been a while since we’ve had a soft piece of flesh such as this,” his companion said with a wicked smile of his own.
Diana then revealed her weapon and settled into her fighting stance. The training Artorius had given her those years ago coming back to her.
“Ah, our little princess has got herself a toy,” the second pirate said, walking towards her, nonchalantly. The bald one carried a large spiked awl, the shaft of which he slapped across the palm of his hand repeatedly.
“Come near me and I will end you!” Diana growled, her anger rising. Her mind flashed back to the last time she had been held hostage by scum such as these. The humiliation she had been subjected to still haunted her, and she was determined that either these bastards would die, or she would.
“Now, we promise not to be too rough,” the second pirate said with mock consolation. “Why don’t you give us that before you hurt yourself?”
As he reached for Diana’s weapon, she lunged forward, punching him hard across the face. She was incredibly strong, and the blow staggered the pirate. Before he could react, Diana stabbed him through the stomach. She gave a growl of rage, twisting the weapon back and forth as the brigand screamed. She wrenched her weapon free and showed shoved him aside. The pirate fell to the ground, clutching his ruptured guts and howling in pain. His bald companion was in shock with what he saw.
“Come on and die!” Diana shouted, goading the pirate on as she settled into her fighting stance once more. Her eyes clouded, and she was consumed with blinding hatred. This foul creature—for one could not call him a man—would have violated and tortured her, as Diana was sure he had countless women before. She would make him suffer greatly before sending him to hell.
“You filthy bitch!” he cried, swinging the awl in a high arc.
Diana sidestepped the blow, deflecting it with her gladius. The awl slammed into a short end table and became stuck. As the wretch tried to pull his weapon free, Diana calmly stepped towards him and swung her gladius down, severing his hand with a sickening chop. The filthy man fell to the ground on top of his companion, who still thrashed about, sobbing uncontrollably. In a gruesome spectacle, the severed hand still clutched the awl and was twitching as life left it, with blood pooling on the table.
“Tourniquet his arm,” Diana ordered her servant, pointing to the stump of the pirate’s forearm from which blood gushed freely. He was screeching loudly and kicking his feet. The servant was still terrified of him even in his stricken state.
Finally Diana had to grab her by the stola and throw her towards the man. “Do as I say!”
As her servant took a long strip of cloth and tied off the stump of the pirate’s arm, Diana walked over to the man she’d stabbed in the stomach and glared down at him. His face was flushed and covered in sweat. He was gasping for breath but had quit thrashing and was looking up at Diana both piteously and with abject terror. After a moment’s pause, she stomped him hard in his ruptured guts with contemptuous rage, eliciting even louder screams of pain. She then looked down at the blood-soaked blade of her weapon and gave a grin of satisfaction which only enhanced the malice in her eyes. She then knelt down and let loose a guttural cry, proceeding to smash the pommel of the gladius against the man’s skull. The first two blows knocked him senseless, yet she continued in her assault unabated. Harder and faster she hammered her weapon into his head, smashing out what remained of his rotted teeth, shattering his nose in a spray of blood, and finally caving in the skull with a series of sickening crunches as the bones snapped. Blood sprayed her face, adding to her macabre appearance as she stood and turned to see the other pirate lying against the wall, trembling in shock from having his hand severed, eyes filled with terror. Diana growled and ran her tongue over her teeth, grinning sinisterly.
“I am not your soft piece of flesh,” she snarled.
Though the pirates had been caught unawares at the discovery of this being a Roman warship transporting legionaries, they had since recovered and were attempting to fight back long enough to get to their own ship. Artorius drove the boss of his shield into the stomach of one of the men as Felix stabbed over the top of his own into the throat of a pirate whose eyes rolled into the back of his head, blood gushing from his severed windpipe. Pirates were used to bullying unarmed merchants and were completely unprepared to face heavily armed professional killers. As their weapons were crude at best, they were completely devoid of armor, and their training nonexistent. It was a terrible mismatch. One dirty brigand swung his axe at Artorius, which caught on the top of his shield. With a jerk of overwhelming strength, he tore the man’s weapon from his hand, quickly stabbing him beneath the heart.
Towards the right of the line, Centurion Magnus and his legionaries were making short work of the pirates who dared fight them. There was simply no way for their assailants to breach the shield wall with their pitiful weapons. As they pushed the mob back towards the edge of the ship, the Norseman slammed his shield hard into one man, sending him screaming over the side where he was soon crushed as the swell of the sea sent the two warring ships crashing into each other. The bottom half of his torso was completely severed and floating in the surf, with the upper half of his body plastered to the side of the enemy ship.
As the remnants tried to scramble back across the gangplanks, Stoppello saw it was time for his counterattack. The commander ran to the foredeck, where a loaded ballista sat beneath a tarp. He threw the tarp aside and fired at the horde trying to flee the oncoming legionaries. The stone missile flew in a short arc, decapitating a pirate as he stumbled onto the gangplank, his smashed head bouncing onto the deck with a series of sickening thuds.
“With me!” he shouted as he waved his gladius towards the enemy ship.
Fleet footed sailors stormed across, jumping the short distance to the upper deck. Magnus watched, at first, in apprehension and then with pride, as his older brother slashed his way through the panicked pirate mass. In a display of Nordic strength, he effortlessly tossed one man over the side, threw another to the deck and proceeded to smash him in the face savagely with the bottom edge of his buckler until the skull shattered. Magnus could see blood spurting as the pirate’s arm stuck straight up,
jolting violently. Hansi was not only incredibly strong. He was quick and nimble, almost like a cat attacking its prey. He swung his buckler in a hard slash that carried so much force that it smashed the windpipe of yet another pirate who fell to the ground, clutching his throat in agony as he desperately tried to breathe. The Nordic sailor pitilessly smashed his face with the hobnails of his sandaled feet and left him to suffocate. Within minutes it was over. Dozens of pirates stood with their hands behind their heads, weapons at their feet.
A cheer erupted from the legionaries and sailors. As Artorius shouted in celebration with his men, he suddenly remembered his wife, dropped his shield, and rushed to her cabin. As he got to the door, he saw a pool of blood and fluids forming under the doorway and onto the deck.
“Dear gods, no,” he whispered.
Before he could utter another word, the door was wrenched the rest of the way open and a screaming pirate was shoved through, where he fell face first onto the deck. His right hand was severed and a tourniquet was bound to his forearm. Diana stepped out behind him, her hair disheveled, the front of her tunic, as well as the gladius she still wielded, covered in blood.
“Get up!” she shouted to the whimpering pirate, who struggled to his feet, clutching the stump of his forearm.
“Please, show mercy!” he pleaded, eyes wet with tears, his grimy face flushed and covered in sweat.
All eyes were now on Diana as she grabbed the wretch by the scruff of his neck and dragged him to the edge of the ship.
“I shall show you mercy,” she growled. Her face twisted into a wicked smile, eyes filled with rage. “The same mercy you were going to show me and my servant!”
Artorius had never seen her so full of venom and yet, in a twisted sense, he found it arousing. Diana shoved the whimpering renegade to the railing. The sailors, legionaries, and pirate prisoners were all silent as they watched her with feelings ranging from rapt fascination to horror.
There was a splashing in the surf. Artorius looked over the side and saw blood pooling where a pair of sharks ripped into the corpse of a slain pirate. He then looked up at Diana, and as she met his gaze, his own wicked smile matched hers.
“I think the sharks are still hungry,” Diana hissed into the man’s ear.
He immediately started to wail and tried to break away from her surprisingly strong grasp. She smashed the flat of her gladius against the stump where his hand used to be, causing the pirate to howl in further pain and fall to his knees. She then cut the tourniquet, blood flowed from the wound. She grabbed his forearm and held it over the side as a stream of blood fell into the sea. With a cry of wrath, Diana grabbed the man by the throat and shoved him over the side. He fell screaming all the way down until he splashed into the sea.
Diana did not bother to see if the sharks had taken him. She stood, breathing deeply, her eyes closed as she fought to regain her composure. As she slowly turned her gladius over in her hand, Artorius walked over and placed his hand gently on the side of her face. She let out a quiet sigh and then opened her eyes wide. Tears of relief ran down her cheeks. She grabbed him by the hair on the back of his head with her free hand and roughly pulled him to her, kissing him long and passionately. After several long moments, she released her grip. Her expression had calmed, and a gentle smile crossed her face. The hatred in her eyes was gone, though the prisoners looked as if they were even more terrified of Diana than of the soldiers who had slaughtered their companions.
“Ave my lady!” shouted the legionaries, as Artorius took Diana by the hand and walked towards his assembled men.
Chapter XIII: Lost and Damned
***
“They are long overdue,” Pilate said as he stared over the balcony that looked out over the city and towards the sea. He was vexed at the thought of having lost not only a third of his legionary force to the seas, but also one of his closest friends. The First Italic Cohort had arrived in Judea, minus its commander and two centuries. Pilate was worried about his friend, as well as his men. Cornelius and Praxus had informed him about the terrible storm they had encountered and that the flotilla had been scattered. The ship carrying two of the centuries had arrived, and Justus Longinus had been in Caesarea with the legionaries from the east for almost a month, but if the vessel bearing the centurion pilus prior, along with one hundred and sixty of his men, was lost, it was an ill omen for Pilate.
“We never saw them again after the storm hit us,” Praxus bemoaned, his eyes cast downward. He had been friends with Artorius and Magnus for sixteen years and with Valens for even longer. “Our bearings were so far off that we ended up north in Tyrus instead of Caesarea. Though I must give credit to the ship’s crew, as I was surprised we were not even further off course.”
“You’ve been here three days,” Justus Longinus spoke up. “If their ship sustained any kind of substantial damage, it could take significantly longer for them to arrive. We should not count them as lost just yet.”
“Agreed,” Pilate said, turning to face the men. “Justus, as the senior-ranking centurion, you will assume command of the cohort for the time being.”
“Sir.”
Pilate then dismissed the men. As a servant opened the large double doors to allow the men out, his wife, Claudia, walked in through them. She was clearly vexed and looked as if she had not slept since the first ship had arrived.
“Still no word?” she asked, knowing the answer.
“It is too early to lose hope, my love,” Pilate replied. “Still, if we have not seen them in a week’s time, we should probably expect the worst has happened.”
Claudia joined her husband on the balcony, the clear, sunny day unable to mask the gloom within her spirit. She tried to remain stoic as she took his hand, a single tear ran down her cheek.
“These were not very profitable pirates,” Valens observed as he came up from the lower deck of the captured ship, holding a cloth over his nose and mouth. “The hold is full of rotten food, and we found maybe a chest or two’s worth of plundered valuables. Not much of a catch.”
“The real prize is the ship herself,” Hansi said. “She needs some repairs…”
“And a complete fumigating of the lower decks!” Valens interrupted.
“But she will fetch a handsome price,” the sailing master continued, ignoring his brother-in-law who looked a little pale.
“So how do we salvage her?” Magnus asked. “We’re already without sail and do not have enough oarsmen for both ships.”
“It’s too valuable to scuttle,” Hansi replied. “We’re still about three days from Caesarea, more if we elect to tow this ship in.” He then turned to address Commander Stoppello. “Sir, it will take some time, but we can get this ship to port.”
“I agree,” the captain replied.
“We found manacles and leg irons in their storage hold,” Valens added. “How many of these bastards can still row?”
“About sixty,” Magnus answered. “Not nearly enough to man even a single vessel. Those that were too badly wounded we are throwing over the side.”
“Did you at least finish them first?” Stoppello asked.
“Absolutely not,” Magnus said with a grin, which the captain matched. “It’s more sporting to let the sharks play with them a little.”
As if to emphasize his point, a helpless cry came from one of the badly stricken pirates as a pair of legionaries picked him up by the arms and legs, one of which was missing a foot. Sailors were already busily making the ship ready to sail, leaving the task of handling the prisoners to Artorius’ soldiers. The wounded pirate’s pleas were met by savage laughter from the legionaries as they unceremoniously threw him over the side, where he fell screaming into the surging seas.
“Good man,” Stoppello replied. “We’ll shackle the survivors to the benches on their ship. My crews will work their sails, since they still function. We’ll use it to tow our damaged ship in.”
On the prow of the enemy ship, Alaric stood over the body of a brigand he had s
lain. It had been instinctive and came more effortlessly than he’d envisioned. The man’s tongue protruded grotesquely, nearly severed in half by his rotting teeth as his body twitched in the final throes of death.
“You fought well,” Hansi said approvingly as he looked down at the slain pirate.
“I did what I had to,” Alaric said quietly.
“We still have plenty of work to do,” the sailing master added. “Stow your gladius and buckler, then report back here. I think it is time you started to learn the technical aspects of a ship that involve more than just manning an oar.”
“Yes, sir.” Alaric was still staring at the dead man as Hansi went back to overseeing the preparations between the two ships. He should have been ecstatic that he was being moved to the sails, as it meant a better wage, as well as learning skills that would make him more marketable if he chose to remain a sailor. And yet, the young man from Germania felt numb inside, unaware of his surroundings as he instinctively crossed the large boarding ramp and returned his weapons to their place under his oar bench.
As Alaric returned to the captured pirate vessel, he was joined by more fellow sailors, along with a century of legionaries. Magnus and his men would remain aboard, Artorius and the First Century staying with their own ship.