The whole procedure was repeated at the third jetty, though with greater ease, since they knew what was coming. After another shouted command in Gaulish, the huge centurion turned to his men.
“Anyone here had experience of fighting as marines?”
There was a long, unbroken silence.
“Me neither, but I’ve seen it done. No shield walls or testudos. As soon as we get near the first enemy ship I want everyone near the rail. On my command you run and jump for the enemy deck. When you get there you come up fighting and don’t wait for orders or formations. Just kill anyone who isn’t one of us. If you miss the jump, you’ll fall between the hulls. I wouldn’t recommend that, so jump carefully. Everyone clear?”
The legionaries roared their understanding and saluted.
Atenos turned to look ahead as they broke clear of the many vessels trying to reach the docks and into the open water, heading toward the fleets, where the conflict was already underway. The Veneti ships outnumbered the Roman fleet by almost two vessels to one, but the Roman crews had adopted a peculiar tactic: they were sailing around the beleaguered Veneti, safe in the knowledge that the lack of strong winds left the enemy slow to manoeuvre. What they were hoping to achieve with this peculiar activity was beyond him until he saw, with a grin, two huge ropes give way on the nearest enemy vessel, allowing the sail to flap loosely over to one side, where it fell to the deck, useless.
Roman sailors and marines were hacking with some kind of pole-arm at anything available and were crippling the enemy ships with surprising speed and efficiency. Rather than boarding them there and then, they were leaving them, helpless and immobile, while they moved onto the next. Once they had the whole Veneti fleet becalmed and unable to move, they could deal with them at their leisure.
Atenos laughed. He had, given the navy’s record so far, presumed that the Roman fleet would be the ones desperately trying to outmanoeuvre the Veneti, but the situation seemed to have reversed this time. Commander Brutus had apparently identified a way to even the odds. Of course, there was still the issue of dealing with the aggravated, howling Veneti warriors on board the impotent vessels once they were stilled. The fight wasn’t over yet.
Shouting another order in Gaulish, he pointed at the near vessel that had now been abandoned by the Roman fleet, the trireme moving on to cripple another ship. The captain shifted the steering oar and Atenos’ heavy vessel swung toward the bestilled enemy.
The Veneti on board glanced at the healthy ship bearing toward them and cheered, yelling encouraging cries that turned only moments later into shouts of outrage and consternation as they realised that the warriors on board the new galley were the iron and crimson figures of Roman legionaries.
Atenos turned to the men beside him.
“What do you say, Porcius? Do we offer them terms?”
The legionary grinned up at his centurion.
“Be rude not to, sir?”
Atenos turned back to the captain, who was watching with deep regret as he steered his ship to deliver his tribe into the hands of their enemy. Stepping to the rail, the centurion bellowed an offer to the men on the helpless ship.
The answer was not immediate, as it took a moment for the Veneti warrior to drop his trousers and turn around. Atenos almost laughed at the audacity of the man, a warrior after his own heart, but that heart hardened and his face soured as he listened to the shouts and jeers and suggestions concerning possible animal stock in his lineage being issued defiantly from among the enemy.
“That would be a ‘no’ to surrender then, sir?”
The huge centurion closed his ears to the increasingly brutal insults and turned to his men.
“No quarter. They’ve been given the option to surrender and declined it, so I don’t want to see you stop just because somebody waves their arms at you.”
There was an affirmative murmur among the men and Atenos turned back to the rail. The two ships were closing rapidly.
“Alright. To the rail. Prepare to board.”
The legionaries moved into position, twenty seven men, along with their officer, each professional and eager for the fight. Atenos nodded with satisfaction. It was men like this that made the Roman army the force that would eventually conquer the world, the sky, and possibly even the Gods themselves.
He watched as the gap narrowed, taking a deep breath. The Veneti warriors howled and bellowed, banging their swords on the rail, encouraging their enemy to make the first move. ‘Well,’ Atenos thought, ‘let’s not disappoint them.’
“Board!”
The two ships had closed to a distance of perhaps three or four feet when the first man jumped and was caught mid-flight by a Veneti spear thrust out in defence. The blow was far from fatal, catching him in the hip, but arrested his momentum and caused the man, screaming, to plummet into the cold water between the two ships. A second man joined him mid-jump as a swung sword blow scythed a jagged wound across his chest.
The rest of the men began to land on the enemy deck and come up fighting just as the ships finally met with a deep, resounding thump that mercifully drowned out the crack of bones and stifled screams of the two men caught between the grinding oak hulls.
Atenos leapt, not waiting for the last of his men to cross first.
Landing heavily, but allowing his knees and ankles to bend and take the strain, the huge centurion came up facing a group of Veneti warriors, his sword gripped in his right hand, the broken shield long-since discarded back on the jetty.
Three men leapt at him, shouting, and Atenos lashed out with his left fist, delivering a punch that would have floored an ox, the force of the blow knocking the left-most man clean from his feet and sending him tumbling into the press of men behind. At the same time, his gladius parried the first lunge from another man, barely sidestepping an attack from the third in time. A legionary appeared to his right, trying to help push the enemy back from his beleaguered centurion, but was felled by a heavy blow from a man Atenos couldn’t even see.
Sidestepping to his left, the centurion slashed out with his gladius, feeling it bite into flesh, though unable to identify whose in the mass of howling Veneti. The other man stabbed out with his spear, his blow restricted due to lack of room, but good enough to connect. Atenos grunted as the point of the spear dug into his chest close to his armpit, and ducked to the side before the man had the opportunity to drive the blow home, wincing instead as the blade came free, tearing out a chunk of flesh, which fell away amid the fragments of ruptured mail from his ruined shirt.
As he ducked down and grasped the fallen enemy’s sword with his free hand, he heard a metallic clunk and realised that the blow had severed two of the leather straps on his harness, allowing the phalera he had won by the Selle River last year to roll away across the boards and disappear over the edge into the waters of the bay.
He growled angrily and stood, the long Celtic blade in his left hand too large to be wielded so by most men. He flexed his muscles, ignoring the pulsing pain in his armpit, and grinned through his crimson, streaked face at the man with the spear.
For a moment the man flinched, and then recovered himself, desperately gripping his spear and waving it defensively at the centurion.
Atenos rolled his shoulders and shouted something in Gaulish before leaping forward into the press of enemies, both swords slashing out as he attacked.
Behind him, legionary Porcius, back to back with a companion, fought off a howling warrior and realised a space had opened up before him. Glancing over at his centurion, he shook his head.