Torismond looked ghastly.
Aetius said, ‘You really would rather face a whole army of screaming Huns, wouldn’t you?’
The prince nodded, still embracing the mainmast like his first love. ‘Christ, yes.’
The ship lurched sideways. He bowed his head.
‘Head up. Watch the horizon. Slow, deep breaths.’
Torismond struggled to comply.
‘You’ll have to let go of that, too. Sail coming in – look.’
‘Oh, Christ.’
‘Whoever. But I never saw any god come to rescue drowning sailors yet.’
They reefed the mainsail into the standing yard and tightened it. The wind still gusted hard into the reduced sail, the long, lean dromond lightening in the water, raised up, the rowers’ efforts almost superfluous, the ship doing eight, ten knots, a breathtaking speed. Aetius prayed for still more speed. Attila would not be slacking; that barbarian tide sweeping down across the East, to break upon the walls of the New Rome.
The big rudder swung across its breach, the master steadied it, the ship surged forward again, almost planing up the smooth obisidian back of one driven wave before crashing into the next, trying to outrace the approaching storm – hopeless, of course. The timbers creaked, and two rowers below were released for emergency caulking. The horse transporter lagged behind them, almost out of sight. Broader-beamed and heavier, she wallowed through the swell, making slower, steadier progress. The horses would survive.
A lonely black-backed gull passed overhead, heading inland for Italy, shelter from the storm. Aetius grimaced and threw his red woollen cloak about his shoulders. The wind began to whistle in the halyards and clewlines, and a fine rain slanted in from the west.
The ship’s master approached. ‘We could take shelter soon enough at Olbia. Going through the straits of Bonifacium in this wind will be dangerous.’
‘We go on through the straits, and never mind Olbia. We keep going. No shelter till we reach Syracuse.’
Attila would not be seeking shelter from any storms, nor slowing in his advance on Constantinople. Nor could they.
The master gave orders for the sail to be reefed in further, the rowers to row their hardest. The bosun bellowed, ‘Blister your butts and bust your guts if you want to escape a whipping and eat salt-meat tonight!’
Visibility was declining all the time. It was no more than two hundred yards when the lookout in his tiny crow’s-nest swaying from the mainmast said he could see land ahead to port. It was the dark and jagged outline of Corsica. Somewhere through the mist and mizzle to starboard, lay the gentler shape of Sardinia. Between them were the straits of Bonifacium.
The hortator doubled his beat and they rowed through the straits at the double, swift as an arrow cutting through the water. It was the only way to avoid being swept off course and onto the lethal submerged rocks around the islands. Eventually they came through, pulled round to the south-east, and felt the storm blowing up over the islands behind them. It wasn’t getting any better. The master looked once more enquiringly at Aetius, to see if he would allow them to take shelter. But he did not respond. He had given his last word. They would push on, through storm and surge, whatever.
The lookout was called down from the fighting-top: any worse and he’d be thrown clear into the sea and lost. He scrambled gratefully down. The sails were reefed right up into double swags from the yard, the bull’s-hide stormshields were shipped over the oarports, and the slaves down there, already soaked and salted like herrings in brine, rowed like furies before the storm. It was going to be a bad business, this one. The heavy pewter clouds seemed to suck in the sunlight. ‘Mare Nostrum’ indeed, thought Aetius sourly. Everything is against us now: the Huns, the Vandals, the sea…
Even Rufus, a good sailor, looked sea-green, hanging on the taffrail like a rag. From back in the mist there came a muffled crack. The boy stared in that direction, rolling on the balls of his feet with the ship, drool still hanging from his lips. Theodoric and Torismond were collapsed on their pallets below, filling buckets.
‘What is it, lad?’ said Aetius. He could see nothing.
The boy stared a while longer. ‘I thought I saw white horses,’ he said softly. ‘I don’t mean breaking waves, I mean… real white horses, swimming. Drowning.’
Aetius looked grim. Had they lost the horse-transporter? It was possible.
He sent an order to the master to kill the oars. The Cygnus slowed, then wallowed terribly in the heavy sea, groans arising from below. Aetius himself held onto a rail-post. The deck was rolling through ninety degrees, water sluicing back and forth across the boards. He strained to see or hear: nothing. They had to go back. Not for the horses – they could not save the horses even if they found them – but for the men.
They ploughed back a weary league against the sea, but found nothing. No sighting of the broad transporter, not a horse, not a single waving man.
They pulled round and went on. Rufus returned to hanging sickly from the taffrail.
‘Don’t tell the princes,’ Aetius instructed.
He himself returned to his station in the bucking prow, right arm tight round the jibmast. Standing face into the rain, praying to his god, gaunt on the poop deck: sleepless, grimfaced, hatless, windblown, Rome’s last believer.
At last the storm died away and visibility returned. No sign of the horse-transporter.
The princes came shakily up on deck and understood it was lost.
‘We’ll get more horses,’ Aetius promised, ‘fine Cappadocian horses.’
‘I hate the sea,’ murmured Torismond.
‘You might as well hate the Power that made it,’ said Aetius. ‘It is ignoble to hate a thing as great and implacable as nature.’
Torismond looked away.
They anchored at Syracuse, took on fresh water, sluiced out the lower decks, sold a couple of slaves who were as good as done for and bought a couple more. The princes tottered unsteadily down the gangplank for a walk round the harbour. Aetius forbade them to drink, saying they were under his command now. They didn’t look like they wanted a drink anyway.
The master brought him a squat, bearded fellow who was asking for passage east.
Aetius eyed him. ‘What for?’
‘I make for Alexandria, but I need to visit Constantinople first. I have two chests of… materials which I need to bring with me. With them, I will protect you against attacks by pirates.’
Aetius grinned broadly. ‘I have a retinue of fifty Gothic spearmen. I think we can look after ourselves.’
‘You do not know the Vandals.’
‘On the contrary, I know them well.’ He looked him up and down. ‘Name?’
‘Nicias.’
‘Greek?’
‘Cretan.’
‘Even worse. All Cretans are liars, beasts and gluttons, as Saint Paul himself has told us.’
Nicias snorted. ‘We Cretans have been living with that calumny for four centuries now.’
‘You’ll be living with it for centuries to come, too. Is it not the word of God?’
Nicias kept a stubborn silence. This general was too clever by half.
‘Very well. And what is in your magical chests?’
‘Materials – alchemical materials.’
‘God help us.’ Aetius saw the two princes returning.
‘You may take passage with us, but we neither want nor need your protection against pirates. Understood?’
The princes joined them, looking a little improved.
‘You will not get through, I tell you,’ said Nicias. ‘Vandal pirates infest the eastern seas.’