by John Stack
‘Set course for the Aeolian Islands, Captain,’ Scipio said as he left the aft-deck.
Fulfidias’s mind raced as the last command sank in. The Aeolian Islands. Enemy territory. Only an hour before he had watched with amusement from the main deck of the Aquila as the legionaries of the Fourth made their first disastrous attempts at boarding. Now, as the fleet sailed into possibly hostile waters, Fulfidias wished he had not witnessed the training. Given time, he knew the legionaries would prove to be very capable at fighting in naval battles, but if they encountered the enemy on this voyage the time needed would never materialize. Fulfidias realized that if the fleet did encounter the Carthaginians, their only hope for survival would be to turn and run.
Gaius Duilius strode alone around the four sides of the atrium of his town house, his mind a whirl of thoughts as he tried in vain to find a way to turn the tide of battle once more in his favour. If round one had been his Senate victory, and round two Scipio’s triumphal entrance into Ostia, then this was certainly round three, and once again Scipio was heading for victory. Duilius cursed the system that now held him fast, the very system he had so artfully controlled many times before but which now seemed intractable.
The Senate was unlikely to revoke Scipio’s decision to sail to Lipara and, even if Duilius managed to raise the issue in debate, Scipio would have arrived at the island, liberated its people, set up a garrison and returned home in triumph before the senators of Rome were even ready to vote on the matter.
He had reviewed the idea of sailing with the fleet but, being second-in-command, and out of sight of the Senate where he enjoyed support, Duilius knew that Scipio would humiliate him by giving him command of the rear-guard, or a scouting vessel. Either way, without the certainty of battle on the horizon, Duilius would be unable to push his claim to be in the vanguard of any action. As he walked, Duilius cursed the goddess of fortune for her fickle nature.
‘One hour, Demades,’ Cronus said, his voice agitated by the unwanted confinement within the senator’s house, ‘do you understand? One hour and then you make your excuses. Tell the Roman we will leave at dawn.’
Demades nodded, not trusting his voice. One hour was more than enough. What he had to say to Longus would take minutes only.
‘And remember,’ Cronus added, ‘not a word to anyone, especially this senator. It may seem you are safe when not in my presence, Demades, but it only seems that way. If we do not return to Lipara safely, your family will be slaughtered.’
Demades left the Carthaginian alone in his room without another word and walked out to the atrium. He centred all his attention on keeping a measured stride, fearful that if he looked over his shoulder he would see Cronus watching his every move. As Demades entered the main dining room, he saw Longus, as protocol demanded, already waiting there to receive his guest. Demades forced a smile onto his face and Longus returned the gesture, although his face also showed a look of puzzlement at the councillor’s obvious discomfort. As Demades sat down he looked towards the arched exit back to his quarters, his eyes lingering on the opening, trying to ascertain if Cronus had indeed followed him.
‘I hope you find the guest accommodation to your satisfaction, Demades,’ Longus said lightly.
Demades spun around, his face a mask of fear. ‘I’m in mortal danger, Longus,’ he exclaimed.
Longus was immediately taken aback. ‘That’s ridiculous, Demades,’ he said. ‘Get a hold of yourself, man. You are safely within my house. Apart from your own guard, I have twenty men stationed within the walls. You are untouchable while in my presence.’
Demades had turned to look at the entranceway again as the senator spoke and immediately shot around as Longus finished speaking.
‘It is my guard who imperil me,’ he explained to Longus’s look of disbelief. ‘They’re not mine, they’re Carthaginian!’
Longus was speechless, his mind trying to fully comprehend Demades’s words.
‘But how…?’
‘I was ordered here by the Carthaginian admiral, a man named Gisco, to tell the Senate that Lipara was willing to defect,’ Demades explained, keeping his voice low, fearing Cronus’s appearance.
‘By the gods,’ Longus exclaimed as the realization struck him. ‘Then that means…’
‘Your fleet is sailing into a trap,’ Demades said, his voice broken under the admission.
Longus immediately shot up from his seat.
‘Guards! Guards! To me!’ he yelled.
‘No!’ Demades shouted, fear coursing through him. ‘My guards will hear.’
‘To Hades with you and your guards,’ Longus said as the approaching sound of running feet could be heard beyond the room.
From the guest quarters, Cronus clearly heard the cry of alarm from within the depths of the house. Instinct immediately took over his actions as he drew his sword and ran to the door of the room. He opened the door in time to see two of the house guards rush through the atrium to the dining room beyond, their destination, the source of the call to arms. Demades had betrayed them, there was no other explanation.
As Cronus slipped out of the room he cursed his own stupidity for allowing the councillor out of his sight. He had thought Demades a fool, a coward who was subdued to the point of total obedience; however, he had been wrong. Cronus knew he would pay for his mistake with his life, surrounded as he was on all sides by hostile forces. With a warrior’s cold detachment he accepted his fate, muttering a brief homage to Mot, the god of death in whose presence he would soon be. As he slipped into the atrium, his mind listening to the heated voices in the main dining room, he whispered a second prayer to Tanit, the Punic goddess of fortune. His words to her were not a plea for his own safety, but rather a request to grant him the opportunity to have revenge on the man who had sealed his fate.
‘You and you,’ Longus ordered, ‘guard this man.’
Two of the Roman guards stepped forward and stood on both sides of Demades.
The councillor protested, begging Longus for understanding and mercy, but the senator’s ears were deaf to his words. More guards were arriving by the second, the alarm now spreading to the entire house. Longus ordered men to secure the room while others were dispatched to the guardhouse and guest quarters to apprehend the Carthaginians in their midst. The senator’s final orders put steel and determination into the soldiers’ actions. No quarter was to be given.
Cronus heard the heavy footfalls of running men as at least four passed the doorway behind which he was hidden. He opened the door a crack to see the four men charge open the door to Demades’s room, roaring a battle cry as they did so to steel their nerves. Cronus knew it would take vital seconds before they realized their prey had fled. He shot out of the room and headed straight to the dining area not twenty yards away. The Roman guard stationed at the entrance was looking into the room, his back turned to Cronus, his attention drawn to a conversation in the room. The Carthaginian thanked Tanit for the opportunity he had prayed for.
‘Don’t you understand, Longus?’ Demades pleaded. ‘I had to do it. They would have killed me and my entire family if I had refused.’
‘You are nothing,’ Longus spat, ‘your family are nothing.’
The senator paced the room, waiting for the cries of allclear from the detachments sent to kill the Carthaginians. He turned back to Demades.
‘You will accompany me to the house of Gaius Duilius. There you will tell him everything you know. Everything! If you try to deceive us again I will have you flayed alive.’
Demades ignored the threat, his mind past fearing the danger that surrounded him on all sides. What mattered now was making the Romans understand that he was on their side and that his family were in danger. Somewhere in his tormented mind he was sure the Romans would listen to reason.
As Cronus ran the last few yards towards the Roman guard, his left hand slipped a dagger from a sheath in the small of his back, rotating it until he held it overhand. At full tilt he plunged the knife down into the ba
ck of the Roman’s neck, instantly severing the spinal column, the guard dead before he hit the floor. Cronus ran unchecked into the room beyond, his eyes taking in the details before him.
The room seemed full of Roman guards, his momentary glance insufficient to count them individually. His mind registered them as a group, his fighting instincts receiving the threat and calculating the odds. He had time for one sword thrust, one victim, knowing that by the time he withdrew and recovered he would be overwhelmed. He could take only one man with him beyond the gates of Hades. The choice was simple.
Demades spun around at the shout of warning from the main entranceway. His mind registered the oncoming man, Cronus’s face a mask of rage and insanity, and the detail of Demades’s surroundings seemed to fade as his entire being focused on the sight. His mind cleared, the pervasive fear he had felt dissipated in the certain knowledge that death was a heartbeat away.
Longus could only look on in horror as his guards continued to rain blows on the lifeless body of the Carthaginian. He had appeared out of nowhere, crossing the room in seconds, driving his sword to the hilt into Demades. The momentum of the charge had taken the councillor off his feet, carrying them both along until the Carthaginian fell onto his victim. The Carthaginian had made no effort to rise after the fall but had leaned into Demades and whispered something unintelligible. Only then did the Roman guards react, the first blows from their swords killing the Carthaginian instantly, the shock of the attack causing them to continue striking the inert body.
‘Enough!’ Longus shouted, his words bringing an end to the butchery.
‘Senator!’ a voice called, and Longus spun around to its source.
‘The four Carthaginians in the guardroom have been killed, Senator,’ the guard reported.
‘Very well,’ Longus announced, struggling to regain his composure after the incredible savagery he had just witnessed.
He cursed the death of Demades. Not because he believed he deserved to live, but because he had value as a source of information regarding the Carthaginian plans in Lipara.
Longus began to stride from the room, a guard falling in behind him as he went. He dismissed his concern for the loss of Demades. It was true that he might have had some more use, but the reality was that he had delivered the most important piece of information at the outset. The Roman fleet was sailing into a trap.
Scipio stared at the sea opened out before him, the waters sparkling in the late-afternoon sun. He was alone on the foredeck, a position he had made his own on the ship, with orders to the praetoriani guarding the approach to the deck to let none pass without his express permission.
The senior consul held out his wine goblet and immediately a slave rushed forward with an amphora of wine to recharge his drink. He brought the goblet up to his mouth and took in the rich smell of the wine, a vintage from one of his own land-holdings north of Rome. Scipio’s thoughts ran to the days ahead, days that would be filled with glory and personal success. Already he knew his consulship would be marked in history as one that witnessed tremendous adversity, adversity that he had and would overcome with fortitude and bravery. His immortality was already being assured, and Scipio would seize any chance to enhance the living legend being created. He knew that Sicily would give him that chance.
The Carthaginian invasion was a gift from the gods, an opportunity for Scipio to write his name into history. His father before him, Lucius Cornelius Scipio, had gone down in the annals as a great general, victor at the Battle of Volaterrae, conqueror of the Etruscans, a champion of Rome. He had been given the cognomen, Barbatus, conqueror of the Barbarians, and it was against this benchmark that the young consul now set his ambition. His position as senior consul gave him a guiding hand on the direction of his beloved Rome, a hand he fully intended to use to his own ends.
The arrival of a Carthaginian fleet off the northern coast of Sicily had thrown up a barrier to victory, but Scipio was unconcerned. He had faced many challenges in his life and had overcome them all. He was wholly confident that he could overcome the enemy fleet. He would bring order to Sicily and cast out the Carthaginian hordes. History would remember him as the conqueror of the Punici, founder of the Roman province of Sicily. Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Sicilianus, he thought, testing an imagined cognomen. He liked it. Smiling, he raised his glass to make a silent toast to the future, and his destiny.
As he heard the shout, Gaius Duilius looked up from the table in his study, his shallow attention easily broken from the halfhearted attempt to immerse himself in matters other than the departure of the new fleet under Scipio’s command. He listened intently, waiting with his breath held until he heard the call again. It was someone shouting his name. Duilius rose from behind his desk and walked out into the peristyle, the small, colonnaded garden at the back of his town house. From his position he looked down the long axis of the house through the main dining room and the atrium beyond. As his eyes focused on the distant point, he heard the call again, and then watched as a servant opened the main door of the house. Duilius immediately recognized Longus.
The junior senator pushed his way past the servant and entered the atrium, renewing his calls. Duilius frowned at the discourteous interruption. Longus was a useful ally, one that had proved resourceful in the past, but he was also sycophantic, a fawning, immature man who constantly looked to the junior consul for guidance. Duilius recalled that when he was Longus’s age he was already a self-made man and owner of the largest estate in Rome.
Duilius walked into the main dining room to intercept the young senator. He moved in silence, refusing to raise his voice in an uncivil manner even as Longus destroyed the tranquillity of his house. Longus spotted him from the atrium and made towards him, his face a mask of concern mixed with relief at having found his mentor.
‘Thank the gods you are here, Consul,’ he began.
‘What is it, Longus?’ Duilius cut across irritably.
‘The fleet are sailing into a trap.’
For a second Duilius did not register the words, their meaning seemingly impossible.
‘A trap?’
‘Yes, Consul. The councillor from Lipara, Demades, informed me.’
Again Duilius paused. ‘Where is this councillor now?’
‘Dead. Killed by his own guard. They were Carthaginians.’
Duilius absorbed the information, his mind dismissing impractical questions, searching as always for the crux of the problem. There was a trap. The fleet were unaware. Time was against him. He instantly decided which problem needed to be tackled first. Time.
‘Saddle two of my fastest horses,’ he shouted to an attendant nearby. The man rushed away, the urgency of the order infectious.
‘Longus, you and I will ride to Ostia. With luck there will be a galley there to take us south in pursuit of the fleet. As they are unaware, they will not be rushed. We may yet catch them.’
Duilius walked out into the atrium and looked up into the afternoon sky. Scipio had left Rome hours before. Even allowing for time to prepare the fleet, the head start seemed insurmountable.
Atticus looked out over the now unfamiliar sight of the empty castrum dock at Ostia. It was an hour before sunset and the crew of the Aquila were using the last of the day’s light to make final preparations for the galley’s planned return to Fiumicino at dawn. Atticus’s eyes ranged over their activities without absorbing the detail, his mind firmly fixed on the sudden departure and unknown course of the Classis Romanus.
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of approaching horses and he turned to see two men arrive at speed. They were experienced horsemen, weaving their mounts along the approach paths to the docks, avoiding the stockpiles of military supplies that littered the whole area. Atticus walked from the foredeck to the head of the gangway in anticipation of their arrival. The horsemen stopped directly beside the Aquila and both men dismounted.
‘Sailor,’ the older of the two shouted, ‘where is the captain of this vessel?’
‘I’m the captain,’ Atticus replied, ‘Captain Perennis.’
The older man nodded and strode up the gangway, ignoring the protocol that dictated that all should first ask for permission before boarding. Atticus backed away from the head of the gangway, giving the approaching men room to come onto the main deck. Both wore senatorial robes, although it was obvious that the younger man deferred to the older.
‘Captain Perennis,’ the older man began, ‘when can you be ready to sail?’
‘On whose orders?’ Atticus replied, asserting his authority as captain.
‘On mine, Gaius Duilius, junior consul of the Senate of Rome.’
Atticus immediately noted the unyielding, authoritative voice and bearing.
‘Within thirty minutes, Consul,’ he replied.
‘Very well, Captain, make it so.’
Atticus turned and issued curt orders to his ever-attentive second-in-command. The crew redoubled their efforts to finish preparing the galley, the imminent departure changing nothing except their pace. A runner was sent below to find Septimus.
‘What is our destination, Senator?’ Atticus asked as the activity intensified around him.
Duilius turned and weighed the question, determining how much the captain needed to know at this stage. The young man before him seemed competent, his position as captain of one of Rome’s military vessels a testament to his unseen abilities. He judged him to be in his early thirties, maybe a year or two younger than he was. Duilius had himself risen to the heights of his own world at that age. The man before him had done the same. If achievements mark the man, then the captain could be trusted.
The junior consul nodded towards the aft-deck and led Atticus and Longus to a quiet spot by the starboard rail.
‘I need you to sail with all possible speed in pursuit of the new fleet, Captain,’ Duilius began. ‘We have learned they are sailing into a trap set by the Carthaginians.’