A Hoplite’s shield measured two and a half feet across its face and could launch an unprepared man back and onto his butt. Or locking with neighboring shields, it could smash into an enemy’s shield wall while protecting the Hoplite.
Alerio uncoiled to the left and swung with the edge of the shield. Rather than hammering the pirate, he caught the man with the rim. Three feet of curved, narrow bronze shattered the man’s bones, cut flesh, but did not launch the pirate. The Illyrian dropped to the deck when Alerio retracted the shield.
Taking a wide step to his right, Alerio stabbed with his gladius. The pirate on that side anticipated a slash. He raised his sica to parry. But the gladius snaked under the man’s arm. The blade shattered ribs as it pierced the pirate’s lungs.
With the deck cleared of active foes, Alerio turned his attention to the two emerging from over the side. One ate a mouthful of bronze and the other swallowed a length of sharp Noric steel. One screamed as he fell. The other tumbled silently, unable to voice any sound. Both splashed into the cove with no chance of survival.
Alerio patrolled around the deck of the Aura while monitoring the ramp. It was the next likely approach. He maintained a vigil between glances over the side, searching for more swimmers.
Finally satisfied the waters were calm and empty of combatants, Tribune Sisera faced the ramp, braced behind the shield, and waited for the next wave of attackers. The pirates never came. But that did not mean Captain Bujar had given up on capturing the prize transport.
Act 5
Chapter 16 – Fingertips to a Mile
A loud splash alerted Alerio to the assault. But the sloshing around in the shallow water confused him. What enemy force announced their presence by stomping around before attacking?
When the first man reached the top of the ramp he paused, which saved his life. Not the stopping, Alerio could have easily stabbed the dark shape. It was the puking over the side of the ramp that saved the mariner’s life.
“Sisera?” the second crewman on the ramp whispered. “The Illyrians have taken Captain Tivadar.”
“Hold right there,” Alerio ordered. Many a fort had fallen when the gates were opened for citizens only to allow attackers to follow them inside. Holding a shield at the top of a ramp entailed the same caution. “How many are you?”
“Just us, the five crewmen,” another replied.
“Come aboard slowly so I can identify you,” Alerio instructed.
One got under the sick man’s arm and together they stepped onto the deck.
“Put him on the steering platform and out of my way,” Alerio directed. When the other three staggered off the ramp, Alerio herded them to the side with the shield and warned. “Step away from me.”
“What’s wrong?” one demanded.
“I don’t want a traitor’s blade in my back,” he told the sailor.
“That won’t happen, Sisera,” a crewman assured him. “By birth or marriage, we are all related to Tivadar. And we know once the Illyrians take a fancy to a vessel, the crew becomes dead or slaves.”
“What do we do?” another begged.
“Tell me what happened?” Alerio questioned. Confident that none of the crew represented a threat, he handed the shield to one of the crewmen. Then Alerio drew his gladius and passed it to another sailor before unfastening his armored skirt.
“We were drinking and talking with the drama girls,” the shield bearer related. The other crew members laughed and encouraged him. “They seemed really interested in spending time with us. When Captain Tivadar joined us we all toasted our crossing of the sea. Then a girl suggested that I…”
“But you five are here,” Alerio pointed out, “and your Captain is not.”
Other than bragging about physical deeds, young men enjoyed expounding on how and why women were attracted to them. Given a chance, even in the middle of a crisis, the shield bearer would explain the woman’s reaction to his irresistible charm. Alerio needed a description of the layout of the Melodrámatos Club grounds and where the Captain was being held. He did not require boasting about dancing with a drama girl.
“Where is Tivadar?” Alerio demanded.
“The party was getting fun until it got dark,” the bearer answered. “Suddenly, armed Illyrians surrounded our table. They pulled Tivadar out of a chair and forced him at knife point to a building near the back of the Melodrámatos compound. And they sent us here with a warning and a promise.”
“What’s the promise?” Alerio asked.
“They promised that we could go free,” the bearer told him. “All they want is our ship. Don’t you want to know the warning?”
“No need,” Alerio responded as he slipped the chest armor off and placed it on the steering platform. “I have killed six of them. It’s too late to heed their warning. Now, tell me about the compound.”
***
All Legionaries could swim. In training they took swimmers and made them better while non-swimmers were brought up to Legion standards. Crossing rivers, ponds, or even coves while lightly armed gave the army of the Republic an advantage.
Alerio reached the far end of the beach but remained in the water. After crawling to the shallows, he lay partially submerged. Unnoticed, he studied men standing guard on the beach while others slept. All of them were Illyrian. The crews from the trading ships were sleeping on their vessels.
The rocky shoreline of the cove’s southern arm offered no flat or comfortable areas for sleeping. It was camp far inland or on their boats for anyone wanting to avoid Illyrians.
Music from pipes and drums drifted to him from the club. As Tivadar had described, as long as there were men with coins, the drama girls would perform. While Alerio recalled the conversation, the lure of the entertainment proved too much for two of the guards. They began walking off the beach in the direction of the Melodrámatos Club. As they reached solid ground, a big man ran to them. Between episodes of verbal chastising, he pushed and slapped the fugitives back to the beach.
Using the disturbance as cover, Alerio rushed from the water and made it unseen to the corner of a building.
‘‘Obviously, an Illyrian officer,’ he thought.
Then while moving behind the building, he deliberated going to the officer and explaining the danger of distracting the other guards by disciplining one or two in the middle of the night. The idea made him chuckle because there was no way he would help his enemy.
Slipping from building to building, he avoided contact with anyone who might call out a warning. It proved both easier and harder than he imagined. Easier than he assumed because the buildings were erected in a semicircle around the club. Due to the curved layout, the corners of the roofs were only five feet apart. He moved out of sight from customers, club guards, and drama girls cruising in the center of the compound. However, for Alerio to move undetected behind the buildings required him to hide from servants washing clothes, and tending garments drying on clotheslines.
Near the back of the compound, he tucked his shoulder against a building and snuck forward. Settling behind a bush and under a window, he peered between the walls and studied the neighboring building.
***
Even without directions from the crew of the Aura, Alerio knew he had located the building where Tivadar was being held. Three guards lounged at the front door. Confirming the guards were not from the club, a drama girl with a friend walked a wide path around the Illyrian sentries. Having found Tivadar still left Alerio with the problem of getting by the trio and freeing the Captain.
‘At least Tivadar’s cell is nice,’ Alerio considered.
He had seen jails and prison houses made from everything from wooden beams, to dirt, rocks, and bricks. Some ancient and others newly constructed, but none as far as he could remember smelled good. Based on the aroma of the perfume wafting from the window above him, he wondered if Captain Tivadar’s prison smelled as enticing.
An idea of how to get past the guards came to Alerio. He raised up and peered th
rough the window. The room was dark and empty. Drawing his knife, the Legion officer began prying the bars out of the wooden frame.
***
The cloud of perfume extended to the three Illyrian sentries before the drama girl reached the entrance. She was heavy but so were a lot of the drama girls. It didn’t matter that her features were hidden under a silk veil and flowing scarfs. Their eyes were drawn to the swaying of her hips.
“I’m for Tivadar,” she spoke in a voice that was too husky.
Two of the Illyrians pulled back when they realized she was a boy. But one leaned in close.
“What say later,” he suggested, “you and I have a drink together?”
A calloused hand reached from under the flowing cloth and briefly caressed the man’s cheek. Then the drama worker was passed the guards and inside the building.
“I don’t need company,” Tivadar spit out.
His tone reflected the bruising on his face and his attitude.
“That’s good Captain, because I am not here to hold hands and listen to your life’s story,” Alerio informed him while tossing off the drama girl garments.
“Sisera?” Tivadar questioned. “How? Why?”
“I needed the coins,” he teased while going to the window. “Watch the door while I remove a few bars.”
“What good will that do?” Tivadar complained. “The Illyrians have two boat crews between here and my transport.”
“Minus six pirates,” Alerio told him as he pulled the Noric steel knife from its sheath. “Let me worry about the Illyrians. You watch the door.”
***
The last bar was removed and Tivadar and Alerio slid through the window. Tivadar tumbled out and landed on the grass. Alerio’s loin cloth caught, and for a moment he hung on the sill, before falling to the ground.
“Now what?” the Captain demanded as he squatted beside Alerio. “We are out. But we have nowhere to go.”
“You have a direction,” Alerio told him. “Climb on my shoulders and onto the roof.”
“What about you?” Tivadar asked as he lifted his foot.
“I have to let the guards know you escaped,” Alerio informed him.
Before he could question the Legion officer’s sanity, Alerio cupped the foot and hoisted the Captain to his shoulders. From there, Tivadar hung by his fingertips before scrambling onto the tiles of the roof.
Below him, Alerio jogged away.
***
Traveling along the buildings on the opposite side of the complex from where he first came in, Alerio was less worried about being seen. An almost naked man running around the Melodrámatos compound might be a novelty, but it wouldn’t draw undue attention. At the last building, he paused and studied the beach.
While the sleeping pirates snored, the ones on guard duty nodded from boredom. They as well wouldn’t care about a near naked man approaching from the direction of the club. Walking slowly, Alerio reached a campsite on the beach. He picked the location because smoldering branches extended from the embers.
He sat on the sand, extended his hands to the warmth of the campfire, and gazed at the cove. Out on the water, stars in the distant sky back lit the shape of the transport. Although not completely invisible in the night, the Aura blended with the dark water beyond the cove. Trusting fate and his plan, Alerio wrapped his fingers around a branch and pulled it from the fire.
“What?” he shouted. Jumping to his feet and spinning around to face the compound, Alerio waved the glowing brand above his head. Then, bellowing so every Illyrian on the beach could hear, he announced. “The merchant Captain has escaped. Everyone, get up, get up. Search the compound. Our Captain wants him found.”
As he waved the burning branch, the end glowed and left traces of light above Alerio’s head. Around him, the call for a search was picked up and repeated.
‘Even if the crewmen on the Aura missed the fire in the air,’ Alerio thought, ‘the riot on the beach should signal them.”
Those awake were the first to run for the compound. A break formed between the runners and the ones just getting up. Alerio sprinted off the beach behind the first group.
***
One pirate, having been forced to remain on guard duty all evening, burned with anger. All he wanted was a drink and the company of a drama girl for a short while. But Lieutenant Murat had struck him, threatened him in front of his friends, and forced him back to the beach. Of course, he would join his crew mates in the search. But he would take his own sweet time about it.
The impact of a shoulder in the small of his back plowed him into and through a row of bushes. He began to struggle with his attacker when…
Moments later, Alerio stepped through the hedgerow dressed in the man’s clothing.
“This area is clear,” he told the stragglers. “Try the other side of the compound.”
They ran onward and Alerio jogged behind them. With two hundred oarsmen from the two Illyrian ships awake and prowling the compound, the drama girls came out to investigate.
Soon clusters of pirates gathered around the girls as if they were islands in the ocean. Seeing the commotion in the courtyard, the musicians moved outside and began playing. Not to be denied, the bartenders rolled out kegs and wine barrels and serving girls began rushing around selling drinks.
Alerio had planned to use the confusion of a mass hunt for him and Tivadar to slip away. Around the back of the buildings, he saw no search parties of pirates and heard no signs of a search. What he did hear were cheers and calls of delight at the development of the massive, middle of the night party.
After calling Tivadar down from the roof, they clasped arms in relief. Then the two fast walked from the compound and took a trail heading south. Meanwhile at the front of the compound, three people experienced different emotions.
Captain Bujar roared his anger at Tivadar’s escape while demanding that someone return to the beach and keep an eye on the merchant transport. The target of his rage, Lieutenant Murat, waited for an opening in the barrage of insults to make an escape of his own. And from the bushes near the front, a pirate crawled out of the shrubs, glanced around, and climbed to his feet.
“Finally, I can have a drink,” he said while strolling to a group from his crew.
“Hey, you are naked,” a shipmate pointed out.
He looked down, rubbed the knot on his head, and asked, “Are we drinking or comparing fashion notes?”
“Drinking,” the group shouted.
The noises faded as Alerio and Tivadar moved quickly along the trail.
“Sisera, I appreciate you getting me out of there,” Tivadar stated. He stopped and turned around. “But my ship and crew are back in the cove. I should be with them.”
“I agree. You should be with your ship,” Alerio comforted him. “And we would return to the cove, if your transport was there.”
“If not in the cove,” Tivadar asked. “Where is my Aura?”
Chapter 17 – Satire, Mockery, Poetry
Two thousand six hundred paces from the compound, Alerio took Tivadar by the elbow and guided him off the path. They walked carefully over rocks until the ground smoothed.
“This is the beach south of Vromoneri,” the Captain announced.
“A mile and a half south according to your crew,” Alerio confirmed.
“How did you know where the beach started?” Tivadar inquired. “If we had left the trail earlier, we would be walking the top of a cliff.”
“I counted steps,” Alerio informed him. “Now, less talking, more walking and looking.”
The black waters of the Ionian Sea extended out to where it met the dome of stars on the horizon. But no transport appeared in the transition between the sky and the water.
“I told them to pull the anchors but wait for my signal before pushing off the rocks,” Alerio advised while the two walked along the water’s edge. “The signal was clear. But I didn’t have an opportunity to stick around and see if they rowed out.”
“
They are good boys,” Tivadar offered. “If they could get the Aura out of the cove, they did. If not…”
“If not, we have a sixteen-mile hike ahead of us,” Alerio said steering the conversation away from the morbid reality.
They strolled along in silence with their eyes scanning the black water. Then oar splashed, a curse followed by bickering, and finally, the sound of a keel grinding on sand came to them.
“Captain, your ship has arrived,” Alerio announced.
“If the crew hasn’t put a hole in her hull,” Tivadar complained.
But his tone was light, and the two men picked up their feet and jogged forward to where a great black shape rested in the shallow water.
“The Aura needs twelve feet to rest comfortably,” Tivadar shouted up to the deck. “Twelve. More than two of me tall. Drop the ramp.”
“Tivadar. We couldn’t see the shoreline,” a crewman protested. “We brought her in too fast.”
“Are we stuck?” Alerio asked as he followed the Captain up the ramp.
“I can feel the aft end floating,” Tivadar explained. “But it’ll take all six of you to refloat her. Are you up for getting wet after the night you’ve had?”
“Between pushing a hull and fighting pirates, I’ll take relaunching the Aura,” Alerio assured him. “Besides, these leather trousers and this linen shirt need washing.”
“Everyone over the side,” Tivadar instructed. He stepped on the fore deck and waited. When Alerio and the five crewmen called out their readiness, the Captain shouted. “Push. Push.”
The Aura held for a moment, then the big belly slid free and the crew scrambled up the sides.
“What about the Illyrians?” Alerio asked as he took an oar.
“If they dare row into Methoni’s harbor, they will not receive a cordial greeting,” Tivadar promised him. Then with joy in his voice at being back in control of his ship, he called out. “Starboard side, stroke, stroke. Port side, ship oars.”
Rome's Tribune (Clay Warrior Stories Book 14) Page 15