Another wave crashed over the bow, carrying with it the body of a dead sailor. The corpse slid across the deck until it struck the side rail, but the next wave washed it overboard, the possessive sea claiming the sailor once more. A crack ripped across the base of the mounting pole and the men redoubled their efforts, striking at the point of weakness, the weight of the corvus now working to their advantage as the pole gave way under the strain. It separated without warning and the boarding ramp fell to the deck, the galley heeling over violently under the shift in weight.
‘The guy ropes,’ Atticus shouted, his words unheard in the noise, but every man understood the order and they rushed to sever the lines attached to the mounting pole, each one cut with a single axe blow, the lines whipping away. Baro yelled in pain as a rope struck him on the face, knocking him to the deck, a crewman grabbing hold of him as sea water threatened to wash him over the side.
For a heartbeat the corvus remained defiantly on board but, as the galley rolled, it swept towards the port side and smashed through the side rail before crashing into the sea. The bow of the Orcus soared out of the water, suddenly free of the dead weight, and Atticus yelled at the men around him to hold on as Gaius completed the turn into the wind, bringing the bow around to slice cleanly into the oncoming waves, the cutwater separating each wave from trough to crest.
Atticus led Septimus and Baro back to the aft-deck, the second-in-command covering the side of his face with his opened hand, rain-streaked blood running down his arm. The wind pushed into their backs as they fought the pitch of the deck, their pace changing as the deck fell away or reared up before them.
As they reached the aft-deck, Gaius called Atticus to his side. ‘We can’t make headway,’ he shouted, his voice laced with anger and frustration, and Atticus looked to the four points of his ship, trying to gauge the galley’s progress.
The Orcus was pointed directly into the wind and the waves; the combined forces were driving the galley back towards the shoreline behind. Atticus ran to the side rail to see the oars, watching them intently as the Orcus broke over the crest of a wave. For several seconds the blades of the forward oars were free of the water and the rowers pulled their oars through air, the sudden release of pressure fouling their rhythm, until the galley fell over the crest and accelerated into the trough. The bow crashed below the surface, submerging the lower oar-holes and, as the bow resurfaced, Atticus saw sea water pour from them, knowing it was but a fraction of what the galley had consumed. He ran back to the tiller.
‘Baro,’ he shouted, leaning in, wiping the rain from his face. He outlined his plan, and the second-in-command stumbled away to the aft-rail. Atticus looked to the helm. ‘Gaius, find a reference point on shore. We need to stand fast and ride out the storm in this position.’
The helmsman nodded. Atticus turned to Septimus and signalled to him to follow. They went to the main deck and Atticus ordered two crewmen to remove the aft hatch cover. He jumped down on to the steps the second the cover was away and clambered down, pausing at the bottom. The storm had transformed the rowing deck into a hellish place, the half-light filled with the sounds of wailing and the stench of sea sickness, while the waves hammered against the hull, the timbers groaning with each blow, the deck swooping beneath them with every pitch, the drum beat resounding in the enclosed space.
Drusus had the legionaries arranged along the central walkway that ran the length of the galley, the men crouched against the pitch of the deck, many of them stained with vomit, their faces drained of colour. Atticus ran to the centre of the galley, the sound of muffled screams guiding his feet, and he hauled up the trap door that led to the relief rowers in the lower hold. He looked down and dread struck him like a blow to his stomach. The men there were up to their chests in water, their faces upturned in abject terror; they fought each other to clamber up the ladder on to the walkway.
Septimus had followed Atticus and he called to the legionaries closest to him, the men drawing their swords to control the flood of relief rowers, stemming the threat of panic. Atticus quickly ordered the oars on the lowest level to be shipped and withdrawn, along with all the oars in the fore-section, and he rearranged the men and the relief rowers until there were two on each remaining oar, giving each oar extra strength and control.
Atticus moved to the top of the steps of the open hatchway and signalled Baro to make ready. He took a minute to judge the pace of the oncoming wave before ordering the drum master to make standard speed. The Orcus surged forward with renewed strength and quickly began to make headway, the galley climbing up the slope of the wave. As the Orcus neared the crest, Atticus signalled to Baro to release a drogue, an open water barrel that was lashed to the stern.
The Orcus crested the wave and Atticus called for all stop, the rowers holding their stroke. The drogue slowed the galley’s descent down the reverse slope, her bow biting into the trough but not as deeply as before, and Atticus immediately called for the oars to restart at battle speed, the rowers now fighting both the slope of the next wave and the drogue.
Atticus repeated the pattern a dozen times before he turned to Gaius. The helmsman was looking to a point off the starboard rail but, as he turned and caught Atticus’s eye, he nodded. The Orcus was holding steady, neither advancing nor retreating.
Atticus put his hand up to shield his eyes against the driving wind and rain as he looked to the fore once more. He shouted his next command to the drum master without thinking, the routine already established, and he suddenly became aware of the numbness of his limbs, the bitter cold that had seeped into him as he sat motionless in the open hatchway. He closed his mind to the pain, knowing the storm could last for hours yet, and between commands he looked to the sea around the Orcus.
Atticus could see no more than two miles in any direction, the rain-laden air obscuring all else, but even in that narrow field the scenes of carnage were terrifying to behold. The shoreline had already claimed dozens of ships, the waves breaking over their shattered hulls, relentlessly pounding the galleys against the rocks in unceasing fury while other ships were drawn inexorably closer to their doom, the crews fighting hopelessly against the power of Poseidon, a desperate fight between mortal men and the son of titans.
In the open sea around the Orcus only a handful of galleys were still afloat, all of them sailing into the wind, but as Atticus watched, two more foundered, the corvi on their foredecks dragging their bows beneath the surface, the boarding ramp that had once saved the fleet of Rome now a terrible curse, while all around the sinking galleys the water was strewn with dead and dying men, the wind mercifully hiding their screams from the living.
Atticus looked to the fore once more and the solid wall of blackness that was the heart of the storm. Its strength was unbound, its oblivious butchery far from over, and the numbness Atticus felt in his limbs slowly crept into his heart, shielding him from the agony that was the loss of the Classis Romanus.
CHAPTER FOUR
Gaius Duilius sat motionless as the princeps senatus, the leader of the house, read the prepared statement, the senior senator’s voice faltering with age and the gravity of the words he spoke. The three hundred-strong assembly of senators listened in near silence, with only sporadic exclamations of shock stirring the still air of the Curia Hostilia, the Senate house of Rome.
The galley dispatched by Paullus from Agrigentum over a week ago had arrived in Ostia twelve hours before, bearing the report that the vast majority of senators in the Curia were now only hearing for the first time; a report that outlined the destruction of the expeditionary army in a battle outside Tunis, and Paullus’s resultant decision to sail to Africa. Duilius paid only scant attention to the leader’s words, his attention instead focused on the reactions of others in the chamber. He had been aware of the full contents of the report within two hours of the galley’s arrival, his network of spies and informants as always keeping him fully informed, and so now he was free to scan the faces of his fellow senators, specifically those amongst the ranks of his opponents