He looked around for a moment. With one hand he was never going to be able to haul himself back up. But the sword in his other hand had been given to him by the emperor’s father. It was the very blade Darius had borne with him on that day he had been proclaimed emperor and the interregnum had ended. He couldn’t drop that sword!
An ominous sail shape suddenly streaked through the water nearby.
Sharks!
Drawn by the huge cloud of crimson flooding the waters.
Suddenly, the heritage of his blade seemed of considerably less importance. He was about to let go when hands closed on his clutching arm, and two burly sailors hauled him back into the ship. As he landed on deck once more, shaking with nerves, nodding his thanks to his saviours, he turned to take in the scene. The daram was done for. At the rate she was taking on water she would be under the surface in a hundred heartbeats. Precious few of his own men were aboard that ship, which was a good thing, since there was little chance of them getting back to their own vessel.
The daram was rolling off to the far side, the sails mere feet from the water.
‘Lower the ladders. Let any of our lads who can swim back get aboard!’
‘What about the Pelasians, sir?’
‘Sod ’em.’
It was a brutal thing to do and he knew it, but there was no choice. Thanks to the draft of the imperial ship, they were in one of the deeper channels of the plateau, which meant that there was plenty of sea for the daram to sink without trace. The dorsal fins streaking through the water, circling around the scene, signalled the inevitable demise of anyone who couldn’t make it to the imperial ship. In fairness, the poor Pelasian bastards might be better off drowning.
Men were now swimming through the gore-filled water, desperately making for the lowered rope ladders. They were a mix of Pelasian and imperial, their feud forgotten as they all sought the safety of the remaining ship.
Titus felt his heart grow heavy as the first black-clad, soaked Pelasian who started to ascend the ladders was plucked off with a long wooden pole and sent back down into the water with a disbelieving shriek. Behind him a lucky imperial sailor started to climb. The same scene happened time and again, the Pelasians pushed back into the water. Then they started to pull the imperial sailors off the ropes.
And the sharks moved in.
Titus watched the first attack but, sickened, turned away and stepped back from the rail. As the last two imperial sailors were brought aboard, he saw the Pelasian daram disappear beneath the waves, bubbling and groaning, flotsam bobbing up to the surface. Screams echoed up from the water, often cut agonizingly short.
‘That was a hard thing to do, Marshal,’ the imperial captain muttered, shuffling over to stand next to him.
‘That was an act of war, though I’m not sure on whose behalf. Either way, we could leave no witnesses. If one of them made it back to Akkad and told what had happened, that would be it. No diplomatic solution would work. We’d be at war with Pelasia. Sometimes we have to sacrifice a few to save the rest. If you are short of oarsmen, my guards will take their place.’
The captain nodded. ‘Let’s just hope that’s the last we see of Pelasian shipping.’
‘Indeed. Square away everything and get us underway, Captain. Take us to the western provinces. No time for the men to rest yet. I want to be far from this carnage before we take a break.’
As things settled and the men returned to their benches, Titus saw the body of his prefect bob to the surface of the water for a moment before it became the subject of interest for three sharks.
‘I cannot wait to get back onto dry land.’
Chapter XIII
Of Troubles Airborne
‘The corner of the sail’s come loose, you shower of shit!’ bellowed the captain in the face of a wind that stretched and distorted his face. The few men not bent hard at the oars leapt to the rope to deal with the furled sail.
Titus eyed it nervously. He’d never been a bad sailor – didn’t get seasick or anything – but this journey was starting to put him off ships in a somewhat permanent manner. Drownings, crushings between two hulls, shark attacks, and now…
He tore his gaze from the sail and the feverishly-working crew and peered with dismay at the black clouds that were boiling in the sky like ink dropped into a bottle of water, churning and billowing, sending out lashing rain that had yet to touch the ship but was tearing the surface of the sea close enough to view. They had been sailing for five days since the incident at the Pelasian coast, and the marshal had begun to think they were out of danger. Certainly they’d not seen any more black sails, and this far northwest, so close to the Western Ocean, they were unlikely to do so. He’d not counted on spring storms, of course.
‘Are you sure we can outrun it?’ he asked the captain, trying – and failing – to keep a hint of nerves out of his voice.
‘No.’
‘But there’s a good chance?’
‘No.’
‘Is there any chance?’ he prompted nervously, looking back. An hour ago the storm had been little more than a black smudge on the eastern horizon. The captain had watched it carefully, trying to judge the direction and speed of the tempest and had announced after a short time that it was matching their bearings and moving at almost twice their speed. It didn’t take a mathematician to calculate the results of that.
The captain grunted noncommittally.
The marshal’s gaze slid from the churning clouds to the surface of the sea as his stomach lurched sharply to one side and the prow of their ship rose and fell, crashing into the next trough. The storm might not quite be upon them, but it had sent a vanguard of high, powerful waves ahead of it. The captain had shrugged them off with the comment that even a light squall had that effect this close to the Western Ocean.
To add to the unpleasantness of the situation, the only clear part of the sky, out to the west, was filled with the orange dome of the sinking sun. Soon they would be at sea, in a storm, in the dark. A three-way battering of hideousness.
Yet the only land within sight was the Vinceia Peninsula, the elongated arm of the western provinces that both encircled the Nymphaean Sea and began the coast of the Western Ocean and the edge of the empire. And the Vinceia Peninsula was infamous enough with sailors that even a landlubber like Titus knew of its reputation. A 200-mile peninsula that rose from the water on high, craggy cliffs with only jagged coves filled with rocks that rose like teeth from beneath the surface of the sea, waiting to tear open the hulls of unwary ships. Two hundred miles of inaccessible, rocky nightmare. The only boats that made it in or out of those coves were small, flat-bottomed fishing vessels from the local villages, piloted by men who knew every rock and shallow well enough to float over the top of most of them. And even then, those fishing fleets only went out in the calmest of weather. Not on nights when Pluvus, the god of storms, was heaving his breath into the wind and stirring the sea with his thunderbolts.
Burdium Portus was still 200 miles away, and most of that consisted of these unforgiving cliffs.
The ship suddenly lurched to port and swayed, the bow rising sickeningly high, hiding the dome of the setting sun.
‘What do we do?’ Titus asked the captain as stinging salty spray slapped him across the face with the force of an oar, compelling him to brace himself or slide across the deck.
‘Any gods look favourably on you, Marshal, you might want to start praying.’
‘Very helpful.’
The captain had been planning to take the unusual step of staying at sea for three nights in a row until the coast was accessible, further north. Rarely did captains do so, though out here it was something of a necessity, given the lack of available anchorage. The hold contained enough rations and fresh water to see them all through. But that had not taken into account the black boiling clouds closing on them from the east. Titus couldn’t imagine them making it through the night in that.
‘We’re going to have to find safe haven.’
/> Titus stared at the captain. ‘And where, might I ask, will you do that?’
‘On the Vinceia Peninsula.’
Titus shook his head. ‘Even I know that’s not possible. Those rocks are ship-killers. Even the fleets of the imperial navy stay away from them, let alone merchants. We’ll be smashed to pieces long before we get in close.’
‘Not necessarily,’ the captain said, and Titus couldn’t help noticing that the man was not quite meeting his gaze. He narrowed his eyes.
‘Explain.’
‘This is, strictly speaking, a private vessel, Marshal, not a military one. We are part of the imperial courier system – the fastest ships on the sea – but we’re all private vessels, nonetheless. And we take on secondary commissions when business is slack. You know – sometimes we can run wine for a desperate merchant, or act as a ferry for a caravan or the like, just to keep the money flowing when courier business is slow.’
‘You’re a smuggler,’ accused Titus in a hiss.
‘No, Marshal. I am a courier captain with a sideline in mercantile voyages. But I will admit to knowing of a few generally secret anchorages along the peninsula that are used by those with less legal business to take care of.’
Titus’s eyes stayed narrow. ‘You could get us into one of these places?’
‘Yes, but you’ll have to bear in mind that the place might just be filled with lowlifes. Our insignia and passengers might not be welcome.’
‘I’d rather be unpopular than drowned,’ Titus snapped. ‘Where’s the nearest place?’
‘There’s a village called Nessana only a mile or so away. You can just see the lights twinkling.’
Titus squinted into the gloomy sunset.
‘I personally can’t see shit. All right, take us to this Nessana, but if we hit a rock and drown, then I’m going to pursue you through the afterlife with a sharp stick until I can ram it up your smuggling backside.’
The captain gave Titus a grin that he thought looked a little too deranged for his liking, and then began to shout out orders to his crew – orders including, oddly, the taking down of imperial colours.
Titus glanced back along the ship. A dozen crew dashed around the deck, stepping from narrow walkway to narrow walkway, slipping on the treacherous wet timbers, nimbly moving across the oar benches where necessary. The whole guard unit were now on those same benches, alongside the sailors, heaving on oars like pros, their muscles straining as they tried to drive the ship on ahead of the storm.
The captain turned to him with a dangerous cast to his expression. ‘My advice, Marshal, is to strap yourself to something and hold on tight.’
Titus frowned, but at a loss for a reason to argue, he unfastened the second belt from his midriff, relying on his sword belt to keep his tunic in place. Hurriedly, he scurried over to the rail near the captain and pushed the tip of his belt through his sword belt, linking the two like a chain, and then fastened the belt around the rail. He tried not to contemplate the possibility of the rail splintering and both he and the section of timber going over into the churning water together.
‘Brace!’ the captain bellowed out across the deck, and Titus watched the sailors desperately grabbing onto things and holding tight, hunkering down as low as they could. As soon as everyone was as safe as they could manage in so short a time, the captain gritted his teeth and pushed hard against his steering oar. Titus watched with confusion and worry as the great, heavy timber protrusion gradually shifted in the roaring waters.
He frowned.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m steering with the storm.’
Titus mentally calculated their trajectory and his confusion grew. The way the captain had shifted the oar would send the ship further out to sea, away from the land.
‘Gaius and Ufius?’ the captain gestured at the two nearest sailors sharply before grabbing hold of the steering oar again and holding it steady as it fought to free itself from his grip.
The two men looked up.
‘Get below and move the cargo. I want all available ballast shifting to the starboard side and roping tight.’
The two men nodded and let go as soon as the deck momentarily righted itself, scurrying across and down into the hatch.
The captain, his jaw hard with clenched teeth, his muscles rippling as he barely maintained control of the steering oar, caught Titus’s frown. ‘The landward side of the tempest will be the roughest seas. We’ll use the power of the storm to pick up speed in the safer waters, getting just far enough ahead to make a run for land. Then I’ll turn her sharply across the front of the storm and, using the speed we’ve built up, make a run for Nessana. If I time it just right and the gods are kind, we’ll shoot into the cove just ahead of the worst of the storm.’
‘And if you don’t time it right or the gods are unhappy?’
‘Then we hit the rocks on the way in and tomorrow morning the locals will be hauling bodies from the water. Or maybe we’ll not manage to cut across the storm and the waves will take us as we turn. Or maybe I’ll have judged the ballast wrong and we’ll tip over just in time for the storm to hit us. There are a dozen ways this can go horribly wrong and only one way for it to go right.’
Titus closed his eyes for a moment. ‘And there’s no other chance?’
‘Not leaping to my mind.’
The marshal took a deep breath and unfastened his belt.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Well if we’re betting everything we own on one roll of the dice, I’m going to be the one rolling the damned things. That oar’s fighting you back. You could do with a hand.’ As he rushed over and slid into position opposite the captain, grasping hold of the huge timber arm and pulling it in the same direction as the captain pushed, lending his own prodigious strength to the task, the captain nodded at him. ‘Then you’ll have to react instantly when I tell you to do something. Got it?’
‘Got it.’
Titus looked back over the rail. The storm was almost all around them now, rather than chasing them down. The great black clouds formed a churning wall that blurred with the sea so that it was hard to make a distinction between the two.
The rain hit the ship.
‘The storm will have us any moment,’ the marshal muttered unhappily.
The captain gave him an odd smile. ‘See this wave?’
The ship bucked once more, the prow rising.
‘I am faintly aware of it, yes.’
‘Watch what happens now we’ve changed bearing.’
The ship’s prow rose and rose until Titus lost sight of the sunset ahead and was sure he was staring vertically into the sky. Then, in a sickening, stomach-yanking moment, the vessel crested that huge wave and the ship teetered as though it were held aloft by a god. Then it began to tip forward. Titus’s eyes widened as he stared down what looked like a mountainside made of water.
‘God shit and battered testicles!’ he yelled.
‘That is more than a possibility, yes.’ The captain grinned.
The ship descended. Titus gripped the steering oar tight, more in order to hang onto something than out of desire to direct the vessel. The captain next to him was laughing like a madman again, which did little to instil further confidence in the marshal.
‘Steering to broad off port,’ the man shouted. Titus stared at him. ‘I speak five languages, but sailor isn’t one of them!’
‘Ease up your grip.’
Titus let go of the oar, and the captain straightened the oar to a more gentle turn. ‘Now hold her tight again.’
The ship spun slightly so that she was exactly stern-on to the crest of the wave behind. As the vessel plummeted down the steep, watery incline, she picked up tremendous speed, and Titus felt the gods watching as he held tight, sweating despite the cold, his backside clenched so tight he feared it would be summer before it loosened.
‘Ship oars!’ The captain bellowed and, as the crew pulled in their oars, which were now doing little to affect the
vessel’s speed, he looked across at the hatch. ‘How’s that ballast?’ He shouted so loud that his voice cracked.
‘All good, Cap’n,’ came a hollow call from below.
‘Almost time,’ the captain murmured. Titus looked off to the right. The rocky coastline was now almost twice as distant as it had been before and while the waters they were currently knifing down into at horrifying speed were terrifying enough, the waves between here and the coast were much more worrying. He glanced back and was surprised to see that the storm was now considerably further behind.
The captain grinned at him. ‘We used the storm to get ahead of it. Now comes the dangerous part.’
Titus, against the odds and defying apparent physical possibility, felt his backside clench even further.
‘All right,’ the captain said, ‘we’re almost down. Now we’re going to straighten the oars for dead ahead. Then we’re going to count in bundles of five, and every five we reach, we’re going to move the oar one point to starboard until we’ve come through a right-angle and are off our starboard beam.’
‘I wish you’d talk normally,’ grumbled the marshal.
‘Count five and let me move the oar, then five and oar, five and oar and so on until we’re making straight for the lights of Nessana.’
Titus nodded. He felt cold and frightened. No amount of axe-wielding northerners on a bloody field would worry him, but this was something wholly different. He sent up a fervent prayer to Pluvus of the storms and Galinus of the wild waters that they reach this strange village unharmed.
‘Now,’ the captain shouted. ‘Dead ahead.’
Insurgency (Tales of the Empire Book 4) Page 17