Marcus saw the man who had to be the captain, waving a sword, shouting and trying to make his men resume the fight, but the heart was gone from them. This man wore a fine Greek helmet and a corselet of crocodile hide. Strangely to Roman eyes, he wore heavy facial cosmetics, his lips and cheeks rouged, his eyes outlined with kohl. Enraged, the man came for Marcus, perhaps hoping to break the Romans by killing their leader.
The line had opened so that Marcus fought alone, engaging the enemy captain man to man. The pirate was too wily to obligingly expose himself to the short sword for which he had quickly gained respect. He wielded his curved blade in short, zigzag cuts while protecting himself adroitly with his small, round shield. Marcus advanced against him, forcing him back. The man had no choice but to retreat unless he wanted to go shield to shield. He had only a short space of deck in which to retreat.
When he was almost against the bow rail, the pirate chief lunged forward, diving to the deck and rolling, trying to amputate Marcus's leading foot. It was a clever and effective move, but Marcus merely grounded his shield and the curved blade clattered off its bronze rim. Marcus stabbed downward through the man's neck, his point sinking into the deck beneath. He jerked the blade free and the pirate chief thrashed on the deck for the space of a few heartbeats, his blood fountaining across the planks, then he lay still.
The Romans found themselves to be the only living creatures aboard the ship. They raised a cheer, taunting the pirates who were still floundering in the water, striving frantically to reach the other vessel, which was already backing off, its oars churning the water to foam.
Even as they cheered, the surviving marines aboard Drakon finally got their incendiary missiles prepared and their engines working. With an immense clatter, five of them fired at once and five balls of roaring flame converged on the second pirate vessel. The same wind that had sped Drakon along the coast now spread the fire with incredible swiftness the whole length of the ship. Men screamed and burned and jumped into the water. The destruction was as complete as it was rapid. For the Romans, the vicious hand-to-hand battle had been no more than ordinary legionary's work, but this fire at sea was appalling.
When they reboarded Drakon, the sailors were already erecting the mast while the oars flailed the water. Under Aeson's frantic orders the sail was hoisted in haste.
"Aren't you going to put a crew aboard the ship we captured?" Marcus asked him.
"Ordinarily," said the skipper, "I'd do exactly that, or at least take it in tow. It would fetch a fair price at auction in Alexandria. But, if you'll notice, there's a ship afire just to windward and the flames and sparks are blowing this way. We're getting away from it as fast as possible."
"What about the survivors?" Marcus said, pointing to the men flailing in the water.
"Pirates are worth practically nothing. Only the mines and quarries buy them. We'd get a handful of drachmae for the lot. It's not worth the risk."
"I meant we could use a few for questioning."
"We're getting away from here, Ambassador," Aeson said. "They can be our offering to the sea gods."
"I quite agree, Marcus," Flaccus said. He was watching the burning ship with horror. The heat was intense even at a distance of fifty paces and the sailors were sluicing the ship with buckets of seawater as glowing cinders landed on the deck and sail. "Let's leave our captain to his work."
The Romans were already cleaning the blood from their gear. In the close confines of the deck fight they had all been liberally splashed with it, and blood was notorious for corroding fine steel. They carefully washed every trace from their metal and only then did they bother to clean their bodies and treat their wounds. The sailors and marines regarded them with wonder and Marcus had a feeling there would be no more landlubber jokes from them.
"Who is hurt?" he asked. Flaccus had a bad gash on his sword arm. Others had minor nicks and cuts, and some had trod on the dropped weapons that littered the pirate deck. Their hobnailed caligae protected their soles, but there were some cut ankles. Marcus looked at unwarlike Flaccus disgustedly. "I might have known you'd get hurt."
Flaccus shrugged. "I'm a philosopher by nature, not a soldier." His sword arm was red to the shoulder, but only a little of the blood came from his wound.
Marcus commandeered a bucket of seawater from a sailor and dipped his blade into it, carefully sponging the steel until it was bright again. He sighted along the edges but found no nicks or notches. This was another reason the Romans favored stabs to the belly or throat. They were much easier on the blade than cuts that might land on armor or metal shield rims.
They stripped off their tunics and plunged them into buckets of water to soak the blood out and as they did this, they discussed the action just past.
"What do you suppose that was all about?" said Brutus. "Those thieves weren't attacking a warship for the prospect of loot."
"They were waiting for us," Marcus said. "I would speculate that Hamilcar put them up to it. He acts the generous host but he doesn't want us dealing with Egypt. Not while he's preparing for war."
"I knew we shouldn't have trusted a Carthaginian!" Caesar said.
The older men laughed. "Who was trusting anybody?" Flaccus said.
They entered the great harbor of Alexandria from the west on a glorious morning so windless that the smoke from the great lighthouse towered straight up like an offering ascending to the gods. The lighthouse itself was at the eastern tip of the island of Pharos, but even from the western end it bulked huge, standing a full four hundred feet high, ornate with marble columns in every Greek style. It was built in four stepped-back sections, the terraces green with lush plantings that hung over the railings, bedizened with dazzling flowers.
"A lighthouse makes sense," said Brutus. "But why tart it up with all that decoration?"
"It's a matter of aesthetics, Brutus," Flaccus informed him. "You wouldn't understand."
The western harbor was called the Eunostos, the harbor of "happy return." Within, it proved to be even greater than the harbor at Carthage. As if the lighthouse were not wonder enough, the island was connected with the mainland by a causeway called the Heptastadion, because it was seven stadia in length. The causeway was raised and pierced with arches so that ships could sail beneath it to the smaller Palace Harbor on the eastern side.
Lining the shore they could see broad plazas, gigantic warehouses, statues of gods and kings, ships without number from all parts of the world. Their skipper pointed out some of the wonders of the city. The vast temple that hulked a half-mile inland in the eastern part of the city was the Serapion, temple of Serapis, patron god of Alexandria. The strange, conical hill near the center of the metropolis was the Paneum, an artificial mound planted with the flora of Thessaly and topped with a circular shrine to the goat-footed nature god. Beyond the Heptastadion lay the sprawling palace and museum complexes. The whole city was built of white stone and it shone in the morning light like a philosopher's dream of a city, not a real city where men and women lived out their lives.
They did not moor in the Eunostos but rowed beneath one of the arches pierced through the causeway into the Palace Harbor. Here there were few commercial vessels but many warships, royal galleys and pleasure barges of stunning size and luxuriance. In the harbor was a small island with its own miniature palace, a marvel of perfect proportions.
Marcus noted that, while Alexandria lacked the architectural chaos of Carthage, its predominantly Greek design had an Egyptian overlay. While the buildings were almost exclusively Greek, some were ornamented with Egyptian hieroglyphics and the statues of gods and kings, while Greek in execution, were often arranged in traditional Egyptian poses; stiffly seated or striding, wearing items of Egyptian dress or bearing the attributes of Egyptian gods.