The pirates who battled them were a frightful sight. Coming from the dregs of every corner of the empire, their appearance showed the brutally hard, and often short, lives they led. Their clothing was mostly tattered rags; even that which they stole from their victims did not stay in a state of reasonable wear for long. Few had any sort of armor, and those who did wore sleeveless mail shirts with so many broken links as to render them completely useless. They were armed with a few swords, but mostly spiked clubs and various tools refashioned as weapons. Most pervasive of all was their stench. Months at sea, combined with poor nutrition and nonexistent hygiene rendered them diseased-ridden beasts rather than men.
The brigand who bashed his clawed hammer against Artorius’ shield was covered in hideous sores; his teeth were mostly absent and what he had were yellow and blackened with decay. His hair was frazzled and unkempt, with a scraggly beard offset by numerous facial scars. His eyes were wild, and he howled in desperate rage, which turned to a cry of pain as the centurion smashed the bottom of his shield against his lower leg, snapping the shin bone. Artorius quickly plunged his gladius into the fallen man’s stomach, leaving him thrashing on the deck, screaming in pain, as the line of legionaries pushed back against their foe.
The cabin door smashed open, a pair of pirates shoved aside the table and chairs braced against it. Diana stood in the center of the room, her maidservant in the corner, cowering in fear. She had her left hand up defensively, her gladius in her right hand hidden behind her back.
“Well, well, what have we here then?” the larger of the two pirates said with a toothless grin, spitting off to the side in emphasis. He was mostly bald, filthy, and stunk of sweat. The stench of the men was so overpowering that Diana mused they had never bathed in the course of their pathetic lives.
“Been a while since we’ve had a soft piece of flesh such as this,” his companion said with a wicked smile of his own.
Diana then revealed her weapon and settled into her fighting stance. The training Artorius had given her those years ago coming back to her.
“Ah, our little princess has got herself a toy,” the second pirate said, walking towards her, nonchalantly. The bald one carried a large spiked awl, the shaft of which he slapped across the palm of his hand repeatedly.
“Come near me and I will end you!” Diana growled, her anger rising. Her mind flashed back to the last time she had been held hostage by scum such as these. The humiliation she had been subjected to still haunted her, and she was determined that either these bastards would die, or she would.
“Now, we promise not to be too rough,” the second pirate said with mock consolation. “Why don’t you give us that before you hurt yourself?”
As he reached for Diana’s weapon, she lunged forward, punching him hard across the face. She was incredibly strong, and the blow staggered the pirate. Before he could react, Diana stabbed him through the stomach. She gave a growl of rage, twisting the weapon back and forth as the brigand screamed. She wrenched her weapon free and showed shoved him aside. The pirate fell to the ground, clutching his ruptured guts and howling in pain. His bald companion was in shock with what he saw.
“Come on and die!” Diana shouted, goading the pirate on as she settled into her fighting stance once more. Her eyes clouded, and she was consumed with blinding hatred. This foul creature-for one could not call him a man-would have violated and tortured her, as Diana was sure he had countless women before. She would make him suffer greatly before sending him to hell.
“You filthy bitch!” he cried, swinging the awl in a high arc.
Diana sidestepped the blow, deflecting it with her gladius. The awl slammed into a short end table and became stuck. As the wretch tried to pull his weapon free, Diana calmly stepped towards him and swung her gladius down, severing his hand with a sickening chop. The filthy man fell to the ground on top of his companion, who still thrashed about, sobbing uncontrollably. In a gruesome spectacle, the severed hand still clutched the awl and was twitching as life left it, with blood pooling on the table.
“Tourniquet his arm,” Diana ordered her servant, pointing to the stump of the pirate’s forearm from which blood gushed freely. He was screeching loudly and kicking his feet. The servant was still terrified of him even in his stricken state.
Finally Diana had to grab her by the stola and throw her towards the man. “Do as I say!”
As her servant took a long strip of cloth and tied off the stump of the pirate’s arm, Diana walked over to the man she’d stabbed in the stomach and glared down at him. His face was flushed and covered in sweat. He was gasping for breath but had quit thrashing and was looking up at Diana both piteously and with abject terror. After a moment’s pause, she stomped him hard in his ruptured guts with contemptuous rage, eliciting even louder screams of pain. She then looked down at the blood-soaked blade of her weapon and gave a grin of satisfaction which only enhanced the malice in her eyes. She then knelt down and let loose a guttural cry, proceeding to smash the pommel of the gladius against the man’s skull. The first two blows knocked him senseless, yet she continued in her assault unabated. Harder and faster she hammered her weapon into his head, smashing out what remained of his rotted teeth, shattering his nose in a spray of blood, and finally caving in the skull with a series of sickening crunches as the bones snapped. Blood sprayed her face, adding to her macabre appearance as she stood and turned to see the other pirate lying against the wall, trembling in shock from having his hand severed, eyes filled with terror. Diana growled and ran her tongue over her teeth, grinning sinisterly.
“I am not your soft piece of flesh,” she snarled.
Though the pirates had been caught unawares at the discovery of this being a Roman warship transporting legionaries, they had since recovered and were attempting to fight back long enough to get to their own ship. Artorius drove the boss of his shield into the stomach of one of the men as Felix stabbed over the top of his own into the throat of a pirate whose eyes rolled into the back of his head, blood gushing from his severed windpipe. Pirates were used to bullying unarmed merchants and were completely unprepared to face heavily armed professional killers. As their weapons were crude at best, they were completely devoid of armor, and their training nonexistent. It was a terrible mismatch. One dirty brigand swung his axe at Artorius, which caught on the top of his shield. With a jerk of overwhelming strength, he tore the man’s weapon from his hand, quickly stabbing him beneath the heart.
Towards the right of the line, Centurion Magnus and his legionaries were making short work of the pirates who dared fight them. There was simply no way for their assailants to breach the shield wall with their pitiful weapons. As they pushed the mob back towards the edge of the ship, the Norseman slammed his shield hard into one man, sending him screaming over the side where he was soon crushed as the swell of the sea sent the two warring ships crashing into each other. The bottom half of his torso was completely severed and floating in the surf, with the upper half of his body plastered to the side of the enemy ship.
As the remnants tried to scramble back across the gangplanks, Stoppello saw it was time for his counterattack. The commander ran to the foredeck, where a loaded ballista sat beneath a tarp. He threw the tarp aside and fired at the horde trying to flee the oncoming legionaries. The stone missile flew in a short arc, decapitating a pirate as he stumbled onto the gangplank, his smashed head bouncing onto the deck with a series of sickening thuds.