“He’s a goner, Florus.”
The capsarius shook his head, pushing the captain down hard. “Not yet, sir. If you can hold him, I can get him padded and bound and covered. Men have survived worse. I removed the splinter from his brain, after all.”
This time nothing could stop the vomit as Fronto failed to prevent the image of that quick surgery surfacing. Wiping his mouth, Fronto reached down and grasped the captain’s arms, pushing him back hard to the now vomit coated deck to stop him leaping about and shaking. Florus nodded his thanks and stood, rocking this way and that with the motion of the deck as he began to rummage in his leather bag.
“You really think he can survive? The man’s a heap of shaking blubber.”
“You’d be surprised at the resilience of the human body, legate Fronto. I’ve seen you take a few wounds in my time.”
Fronto couldn’t help but smile at the optimism in the young man. Ever since his first action against the Helvetii three years ago on a hilltop near Bibracte — after which he had transferred into the medical service — the boy had grown confident and capable.
“Get on with it, then. I need to get back to the steering oar soon.”
Florus nodded and tipped acetum onto the wadding in his hand. Staggering across, he dropped to a crouch again and began to gently push the pad into the hole in the man’s skull. Fronto, for all his years of causing such wounds, found that he had to look away, and closed his eyes, gritting his teeth as he strained against the thrashing officer beneath him.
“Look out!” someone called from further down the deck, but Fronto couldn’t see what it was from here and just had to continue gritting his teeth and pray to Neptune and Fortuna that it wasn’t the cliffs and rocks getting too close.
“Oh, shit” yelled Brutus and this time Fronto opened his eyes and looked up, just in time to see a wall of black, glittering water looming over the side of the ship before it crashed down over the rail and across the deck, shaking the entire trireme as though it were a child’s toy in a bath tub. The sound of shearing oars was just about audible in the roar of the water and Fronto felt the captain’s body being torn from him. Desperately, he hooked his elbow round the rail and gripped the wounded officer with all his might.
It felt like hours that the wave pulled at him, for all its brevity, and when it finally released its hold on the trierarch, Fronto was so surprised that he actually fell back and let go for a second.
The flash of white light illuminated the deck for a moment and revealed a scene of chaos and devastation. The rowers were in disorder, trying to even out the remaining oars as the boat bucked back and slapped back down level to the water. Men were hauling each other back to their seats and some were even pulling each other back over the side rail. Shattered pieces of timber and oars were being washed across the ship.
Fronto’s eyes, however, were locked on where Florus had been a few moments earlier. A wad of bloodied padding plastered to an upright of the rail was the only sign that the young medic had ever existed.
“That was too close” yelled Brutus.
Fronto ignored him, painfully aware that the man he’d tried so hard to save had stopped thrashing during the wave and was now dead, as was the man who’d been so positive about healing him.
Almost blinded by the lightning flashes and the pounding rain, inured to the cold and the wet and heedless of the shaking and tipping of the deck, Fronto stood, staggered and slipped across to the side rail, collecting the bloodied wadding and staring out at the boiling, rolling sea.
For the briefest moment he fancied he saw a figure carried off by one of the waves, but it could as easily have been a trick of the light or his own vision. A voice from further down the deck called out “Man overboard!”
He wondered for a moment how the oarsman knew, but then realised they were looking over at one of the other rowers. Torn between the need to try and help and the knowledge that there was little he could do anyway, Fronto watched as the hapless, screaming sailor rose over the crest of a wave and disappeared from both sight and hearing.
Turning, he shuffled across to Brutus and the steering oar once more, grasping the end as he had a few minutes earlier.
“Even the damn Gods have turned their back on this campaign, Decimus.”
“Didn’t think you were that pious, Fronto.”
“I try not to actively defy them.”
“Well rub that bow-legged Goddess of yours, Fronto. Look.”
The legate peered off in the direction of Brutus’ pointing finger. It took him a moment to spot two flickering fires.
“That’ll be the beacons they were going to set up at Gesoriacum. They must have lit them to guide ships in through the storm. We’re nearly there; closer than I thought. A mile at most.”
Fronto gripped the beam tight, his eyes locked on the twin fires that twinkled in the darkness, intermittently vanishing as the waves reared or a particular gusting cloud obscured them. Suddenly another white flash lit the scene and Fronto finally felt relief wash over him at the regular shapes of a harbour and buildings, with the unmistakable outline of a Roman fortification on the hill behind.
Gesoriacum.
They’d made it.
The ‘Demeter’ bounced against the jetty of the Gesoriacum harbour and Fronto silently thanked every God and Goddess that rose to the surface of his mind. He’d almost swallowed his tongue in fright as Brutus steered them through the surprisingly narrow entrance to the river-mouth harbour, but the young man had proved more than equal to the task.
An even more welcome sight as they’d entered was that of another of the fleet’s triremes already in the harbour and scooting lazily towards the dock on their few remaining oars.
There was no sign of life down by the docks, though Fronto could hardly blame anyone for that, given the weather. He glanced across from the rail at the sister ship that was just docking at the far side of the jetty. The ‘Fides’ looked in worse shape than their own ship, but its crew and complement of troops were moving toward the rail gratefully.
Brutus had left the steering now to one of the sailors and strode across to where Fronto stood.
“Best get everyone disembarked and get up to the headquarters to report in.”
Fronto gestured to the beacons blazing on the towers and the new ramparts around the port’s periphery, barely visible in the dark and the rain, except when lit starkly by the lightning.
“Rufus has been busy in our absence. Look at those works. Think he was bored or expecting trouble?”
“Let’s go find out.”
Fronto nodded and called to the centurions of the two centuries on board.
“Get your men formed up on the jetty. Arms and armour only. We’ll come back and unload everything else in the morning when it’s light and hopefully drier.”
The centurions saluted and Fronto looked across to where the men were now disembarking from the Fides opposite. Two more centurions were bellowing at their men who were filing off and into tent-groups.
“Come on.”
As soon as the sailors had run out a plank, Fronto hurried down to the jetty with a profound sense of relief, Brutus hot on his heels. A few steps on the stable jetty were almost enough to allow him to adjust, though he still felt as though he was swaying gently. The two centurions on the wooden jetty were unknown to him, and apparently men of the Seventh, though they saluted him and his fellow legate readily as they approached.
“Have your men in two single lines on the jetty. I’ll form the other two up the same.That way all four centuries can march together back up to the fort.”
“Yes sir. What of the cargo, sir?”
“Leave it till morning.”
“But sir, we’ve got four of the cavalry horses — one of them may have to be put out of its misery, mind — and if we leave any of the loot here, it might be pillaged by the locals.”