“All religions say otherwise,” Didymus observed.
“All religions could be wrong,” Caesarion said, feeling frustrated. Selene gasped a little at his response, but he ignored it. “And besides, what does this have to do with these Shards of Heaven?”
“Because it’s all about God,” Jacob said, his voice small. “Everything leads back to Him.”
It was the response of a man of faith, but Caesarion didn’t dismiss it out of hand. “Please,” he said, “explain this to me.”
“Well, unless I’m wrong,” Didymus said, “creation did have a beginning. God was indeed Aristotle’s prime mover. This God created everything, and I believe He was, in our sense of the word, good.”
“Was?” Selene asked.
“Well, I think that’s the reason evil exists in the world,” Didymus said. “God is dead.”
19
THE HAND OF AN ANGRY GOD
ACTIUM, 31 BCE
Pullo, his long strides quickly closing the distance across the deck, was the first to engage Octavian’s men. Running to catch up, Vorenus watched as his old friend rushed forward into the rail-breaching tide, gladius flashing. The first man Pullo met fell trying to hold his guts in—a task he failed to achieve when his body hit the deck—and the second man had just stepped onto the flagship when Pullo met him with his shoulder lowered, bull-rushing him backward into the railing he’d just crossed. The man’s feet caught on the boards of the deck, and his back arched obscenely before snapping with a loud crack. The upper half of his body fell away, dangling limply over the side, but Pullo was already off of him, spinning sideways, gladius wide and wet in the rain, diving into the next line of boarders.
Then Vorenus was among them, too. He deflected an attacker’s sword into the deck before impaling him on his own blade, and all around him were the sounds of screams and war-crazed shouts. His gladius stuck for a moment in the shaking body of the dying man, and another man, coming up over the side, raised his weapon in glee, prepared to swing for Vorenus’ exposed head.
Vorenus’ blade had passed cleanly through the man’s body, so he did the only thing that came to his mind: he threw himself and the dead man forward, running the bloodied point of the gladius into the would-be assailant and then rolling past them both as the now sticky-wet deck pitched atop another wave. His gladius pulled free with his momentum and he slid into the center mast of the flagship.
Pullo was there, and from the look of his blade he’d just finished off another of Octavian’s men. He looked down at Vorenus with a quick smile of greeting, but he offered no hand before he squared his shoulders to two men facing him and let out a roar. He would kill them both, Vorenus was sure. It was a good day to die.
Vorenus got to his feet and headed back into the fray. Antony’s archers had abandoned their bows in favor of short swords for the close quarters, and they were entirely engaged with the enemy. Bloodied bodies were falling like leaves onto the deck, and Vorenus hoped that the majority of them were from the other side.
Looking around, he could see that the second trireme that had rammed them was bringing men over the side now, too. Beyond it, in the haze of the rain and waves, still more vessels were moving, circling like vultures around a kill.
Vorenus got to his feet and spun to take on the newcomers, adjusting his balance to keep from falling in the pitch and roll of the stormy sea. The tied-off grappling irons were making it worse, he could tell, catching tight to jolt the ships as each wave passed under. More than once in the ensuing bloody seconds and minutes he was knocked to his knees by the tightening ropes and the slick, rain-soaked surface beneath his feet. A few times it seemed that every man was felled by the shifting deck, and the melee paused for a moment while friend and foe alike got back onto their feet. But still they fought on, killing and being killed. Vorenus took a cut across his left forearm blocking a swing meant for his gut. He earned another slash on his right thigh from a man lying along the side railing that he’d thought was dead.
He was preparing to put the latter finally to rest when the sea itself seemed to groan: a low and long yawning that froze his strike and made him stare out into the rain. The waters over the side—he blinked to believe it—were, like a falling tide, receding away to the north, racing in smooth waves toward Octavian’s ships. Even the rain appeared to be slanting back in that direction, as if Neptune himself stood somewhere out in the fog beyond Octavian’s fleet, drawing in his breath. Yet the stormy northern wind was still pushing against them, as if water and air worked against one another.
The other men aboard the flagship, moments earlier committed to each other’s deaths, had ceased fighting, too. Antony, surrounded by loyal men near the prow, had turned to stare. So did they all.
“By the gods,” one of Octavian’s nearby marines gasped.
“What’s—” started another.
Like a sudden exhalation, matched with an echoing boom that reverberated in Vorenus’ chest, the rain came back against them, faster than even the hard wind itself, stinging like a thousand tiny arrows.
And behind the rain came the roar of an angry god.
Some men stood where they were, transfixed. Some walked forward against the gale, trying to see. Vorenus, without thinking, sheathed his gladius and dove away from it all toward the center mast of the flagship. His hands scrabbled to find holds among the coils of rope there, winding lines tight to his forearms and lowering his head as he braced for the impact. He didn’t need to look up to see the wave rushing toward them. He could feel it in his bones: a terrible, awesome power bent on their destruction.
It hit like a thunderbolt from the hand of Jupiter himself, bursting into the three interconnected ships with a world-quaking power Vorenus could not have imagined. As the instant of the impact stretched out, the noise of fierce destruction was everywhere all at once around him—wood ripping, men screeching, limbs snapping—until Vorenus heard nothing at all and had to shut his eyes against the pain as his body flapped against his grip, pulling the rope into the flesh of his forearms as the water roiled over him. His heart pounded in his chest like a trapped beast eager to flee. Everything churned around him—up, down, in, out—and when he screamed he was uncertain if any noise left his throat.
Sound returned with a disturbed rush of wind. His scream popped out into the air, bubbling the seawater clinging to his face. He felt as if he were hanging in suspension for a moment, then his stomach was in his throat as he felt himself falling.
The flagship struck the water with a crash, and Vorenus smashed into the deck a moment later. He felt something snap in his left arm. And then the wave was gone. The rain was falling in natural sheets. The lean and lurch of the deck returned to the mere bucking of the storm. Vorenus rolled to his side, taking a deep breath and coughing out the sting of saltwater, but smiling in momentary gratitude to be alive as air returned to his lungs.
The flagship rumbled beneath him, and over the sound of the roiling waves Vorenus heard the mad rush of water pouring into space.
“The hooks!” Antony’s voice shouted over the storm. “Cut the hooks! Cut it loose!”
Vorenus frantically unwound the rope from around his forearms, trying to ignore the wide welts along the inside of them where the rope had burned into skin not covered by his bracers. He felt confident that his left arm had indeed broken, but by a miracle it had been a clean break and the bones hadn’t shifted. The bracer was helping to hold it in place. For the moment his hand still worked, painful though it was.
He got to his feet as quickly as he could, even as he felt the deck of the flagship begin to lean to port, in the direction of the second ramming trireme. He looked up and saw Antony amid a small knot of surviving men along the opposite, high side of the ship near the railing, gesturing wildly back the other way. “Cut it loose!”