They were trapped.
‘There’s fuck all that we can do about them at the moment,’ Sabinus shouted, having seen the threat. ‘Let’s deal with these bastards first.’
The trireme was now less than thirty paces away. Gaidres’ arm came down again but he mistimed it; most of their third volley slammed into the pirate’s hull, causing little damage.
At a shouted order from Rhaskos the Thracian crew grabbed the side of the ship.
‘That was brace for impact,’ Vespasian shouted at Magnus and Sabinus.
‘Thanks, sir,’ Magnus shouted back gripping the rail; he had never really got the hang of Thracian.
Vespasian tensed his body against his arms and spread his feet, one in front of the other as the two ships hurtled towards each other.
At what seemed to be the very last moment the trireme veered to its left and shipped its starboard oars.
Vespasian heard Rhaskos scream an order and felt the ship reel to the right in an attempt to prevent the trireme raking its starboard oars. The pirate trierarchus was ready for this and, as the heavier quinquereme’s bow came round, he shipped his larboard oars and, with a sharp push on the steering-oars, brought his smaller, more manoeuvrable ship back into its original course to grate down its opponent’s larboard side, disgorging a close-range volley followed by a boarding party as it went by.
Whether Rhaskos’ last order included anything about shipping oars, Vespasian could not tell, but, if it had, it came too late. The pirate trireme crashed into the quinquereme’s larboard oars, cracking the thick wooden shafts like twigs, with sudden, explosive reports that belied the ease with which they snapped. The ships shuddered violently with each impact, throwing defenders and attackers alike to the deck. The slaves below shrieked in tormented agony as their oar-handles, to which they were manacled, were punched back, crunching into their faces or throats or shattering their ribcages and hurling them, bodily, off their soiled benches only to be abruptly restrained by their leg-irons, fastened to the deck. As the momentum of the trireme pushed the stumps of their oars ever back those slaves who had the misfortune not to be killed outright suffered the added torture of being stretched between their shackles until the sinews in their wrists could take it no more; hands ripped off under the intense pressure, flying through the air like macabre missiles to land with sickening thuds around the deck, causing the rising hysteria of the unharmed slaves on the opposite side to overflow into outright panic.
They ceased to row.
Without the purchase of the starboard oars the quinquereme started to spin, pulling it away from its tormentor which carried on in a straight line, its bow clearing the oars as it came level with the mast and leaving the thirty-man boarding party temporarily stranded. The violent shuddering ended and the deck became stable.
As if upon a given signal everyone got to their feet as one, each man knowing that an instant’s delay could spell death. Too close for archery, the two sides hurled themselves at each other. Vespasian leapt forward, drawing his sword as rhomphaiai hissed from their scabbards all around him; he threw himself at the shield of the nearest opponent. With no shield of his own, his left shoulder cracked into the leather-covered, wooden hoplon, knocking its wielder back a pace. A flash of iron through the air as the pirate brought his weapon down in an overarm cut caused Vespasian to parry his sword above his head, meeting his assailant’s wrist. His sword juddered and blood spurted on to his tunic as the pirate retracted his arm with a scream, leaving his hand, still grasping the sword, to clump to the deck. A quick jab to the throat put paid to the howling man; swiftly Vespasian grabbed his shield, squatted, and glanced around. To his right Sabinus and Artebudz were both grappling hand to hand in desperate wrestling matches. To his left Magnus and Sitalces were scything their way, with Gaidres, his marines and the rest of the crew, through the outnumbered and disorganised boarding party, like harvesters in a wheat field. More used to attacking ships in the southern Aegeum, where the defenders fought with swords (if at all), the pirates were buckling under the vicious assault of so many long, slicing blades, wielded two-handed, out of reach of the thrusts and cuts of their shorter weapons. Without the discipline to form a military shield wall, they let the Thracians in amongst them and they paid with their limbs and heads that now littered the blood-soaked deck.
Advancing steadily to his right, Vespasian thrust the point of his sword down through the eye of Sabinus’ opponent and then squared up to a young, desperate-looking man pointing a shaking sword nervously before him as he took a step back, on to the rail. A head spun through the air between them, spewing gore that flecked the young pirate’s face. Vespasian pounced forward; with a yelp the man threw himself overboard. Vespasian laughed.
‘What the fuck are you finding so funny?’ Sabinus growled from behind him.
Vespasian spun round to see his brother, spattered in blood, looking incredulously at him. All around the pirates, and a few Thracians, lay dead. The fighting was over.
‘I just met someone who would rather drown than die with some degree of honour,’ he replied through his mirth. ‘Although why that’s funny I don’t know,’ he added, getting himself under control.
A screamed order from Rhaskos abruptly ended the conversation. The brothers looked up. A hundred paces away the trireme had unshipped its oars and was turning back to face them, but, more worryingly, the second ship was now just half a mile away and approaching fast. As they watched it they heard the unmistakable sound of the drumbeat changing to ramming speed.
Vespasian looked over the rail. Below him, over half the oars were missing; those still in place hung limply in the water. It was obvious, even to his nautically untrained eye, that it would be some time before the ship would be able to manoeuvre. They were helpless and would be rammed and then boarded by both triremes and, without the manpower to repel two crews; Vespasian knew that they would perish.
‘Sabinus,’ he called, running towards Rhaskos at the stern, ‘take Magnus and get Rhoteces out of his cage.’
He wove his way up the chaotic deck, through crew throwing copses and limbs overboard whilst others were being marshalled by Gaidres into groups ready to repel boarders at either end of the ship. He found Rhaskos in a heated debate with the slavemaster.
‘Rhaskos,’ Vespasian shouted, cutting short the argument, ‘we need more men.’
Rhaskos looked at him as if he were an idiot. ‘And just where are we going to find them in the middle of the sea?’
‘There’re over two hundred below.’
‘They’re slaves, we need them to row.’
‘But they’re not rowing now and we haven’t got the time to run; we’re going to die, as will they when the ship goes down. This is what your dream was about, you have to free them all and arm them; our cause is now theirs if they want to live.’
Rhaskos looked towards the triremes; their proximity made the decision easy. ‘You’re right; if they fight for us we may just beat off both attacks. Get Gaidres to bring all the spare weapons to the hatchway.’ He looked at the slave-master, who was standing dumbfounded, evidently worried about the vengeance that over two hundred armed slaves might wreak on him and his mates. Reading the man’s mind, Rhaskos said: ‘We’ll worry about what happens afterwards if there is an afterwards. Get the keys and unlock them all. I’ll come down and speak to them.’
Vespasian raced off to find Gaidres as a volley from the nearest trireme hailed down upon the deck, reducing the defenders’ numbers by a precious few more.
‘Fighting alongside slaves,’ Gaidres said grimly, having been told the plan, ‘that’s novel. Let’s hope they fight with us and not against us.’