How had they got there? Last night, after the too close encounter with the liburnian, the Armata had rowed on for another three hours; the first just the thranites pulling, then they had rested while the other two levels took over. They should have been well clear. It might be a trick of the current. Certainly, inshore, yesterday, it had run strongly to the east. There again, the Goths might have separated, scouring the sea for their prey. Ballista scanned the horizon through 360 degrees: no other ships anywhere.
A hoom sound rolled across from the Gothic ships: their warriors giving voice. Silhouetted by the newborn sun, there was no chance the Armata could have escaped detection. The Goths were putting out their oars, gathering way. Two of them hauled round to set towards the Armata. The other veered away towards the west, going to get the rest of the wolfpack.
Bruteddius and his officers were hazing the crew back to their stations. The oarsmen were moving stiffly, like old, tired men. No one ever wants to spend a night at sea in the cramped and damp discomfort of a war galley. ‘Out oars, prepare to row, medium pressure. Row.’ The rowing master’s pipe squealed. The blades broke the surface: not too ragged, given the circumstances.
Horns blared from the northern boats. No longer deadened by the fog, the notes skimmed far out across the sea, summoning their kinsmen to the chase. Yesterday evening, the horns had masked the sound of the Armata’s escape; today they were likely to bring its doom. This had the makings of another long, bad day.
The Armata was built for speed. Under oars, she could leave almost anything afloat far behind in her wake. But not when her rowers were tired, hungry and thirsty; not when they had not stepped off the boat for more than twenty-four hours; not when they had not eaten since the previous evening.
The oarsmen sat on sodden cushions. They wore soaking tunics – they had unmuffled their blades in the night. The salt had chafed their skin, their calluses were raw, bleeding. Below them, their own waste slopped and stank. Despite it all, the banks of oars, if they did not rise and fall quite as one, did nothing too dissimilar.
Under Bruteddius’s order, the rowing master kept them only at medium or even light pressure. It was designed to preserve what little energy they still possessed. However, it did not make the Goths fall away astern. A little over three hundred yards of undulating green water separated the Armata from the longboats.
Bruteddius, as ever, stood near the helm. The swell had increased. Bruteddius moved as one with the motion of his ship. His eyes shifted endlessly; measuring, calculating. Behind his beard, he was haggard. Ballista wondered if he had slept at all.
The purser was summoned. Bruteddius ordered the last reserves of water to be rationed out; each man aboard to get the same meagre measure.
Next, Bruteddius called the shipwright to his side. ‘When the men have drunk, clear the passengers out of the way as far as you can, and step the masts.’ Like all the crew, the naupegos was under military discipline, yet he appeared just a little uncertain. Bruteddius looked hard at him. ‘A storm is getting up in the west.’ He smiled. ‘Either it will save us, or kill us.’
A salute. We will do what is ordered, and at every command we will be ready.
The full deck crew, aided by a few of the able-bodied passengers pressed into service, unlashed the mainmast from its horizontal position on the deck and heaved the long, heavy trunk of pine into place to lift. They squared off the endless ropes and tackle, then hauled and hauled: slowly, slowly – with more than one heart-stopping shift and sway – the mast was coaxed upright and its heel slid home into its tabernacle.
‘Rig double stays,’ shouted Bruteddius. He turned to Ballista. ‘The mast can take punishment. I selected her myself: a fine, straight tree, from a good, sunny aspect.’ Then louder, to a wider audience: ‘Sway up the yard.’
Against the squeal of pulleys and the hammering of mallets, Felix spoke. ‘I have stores for myself and my familia in the cabin. They should be distributed to the men.’
The old senator’s offer was accepted most gladly. And so it was that, there in the wastes of the Kindly Sea, the crew, the sweepings of the backstreets of Alexandria, Antioch and Smyrna, many of them brought up on slave bread, were fed by hand all the delicacies the imperium and beyond had to offer. Biscuits, soft and melting, a world apart from ship’s biscuit or the buccellatum of the army, smoked eel from Spain, artichoke hearts in honey vinegar from Sicily, stems of silphium from who knew where, apricot halves in grape syrup… one and all vanished into hungry mouths, delighted rough, untutored pallets.
Shared among two hundred, there was only a mouthful or two each, but it helped. Certainly, it raised spirits. There were smiles, even song – a croaking version of an old favourite about an unusually accomplished girl from Corinth: oh, the things she could do with your prick.
‘I do not understand it at all,’ said Felix almost plaintively. ‘Barbarians, especially northern barbarians, are not noted for their persistence. But these Scythians seemingly would follow us across the Styx.’
‘They know what we carry.’ Bruteddius said, then roared, ‘Tighten that fucking brace.’
Ballista and Maximus exchanged a look, one of total understanding, complete with a small, knowing smile. As Ballista looked away, he caught the eye of Hippothous. There was a strange light there. Of course, thought Ballista, you too know all about the bloodfeuds; if the Goths are Borani or Tervingi, the gold and silver, all the diplomatic gifts on board, are just bread, not the relish. What could you do? Wherever you go, old enemies will find you.
‘Sponges, have we got any sponges, Pentekontarchos?’
The purser hastened to assure his captain they had plenty.
‘Get the deckhands to wash down the men on the benches as they row. Start at the top level. The pueri will feel better when they are not quite so covered in shit. And get the pump working; try to get some of that filthy water out of the bilges.’
The sun was getting higher, sparkling in the spray. Through it the unsmiling chase ran on. Like some punishment in Hades, ever labouring, never succeeding, the crew of the Armata drove her through the water, but never could escape their pursuers.
Bruteddius went into close conversation with the shipwright and the local pilot. There was much gesticulating, pointing, shaking and nodding of heads. At the end of it, the naupegos went off and returned with men carrying a second set of steering oars. These, with some considerable difficulty and much voluble swearing, were run out through the rear of the outriggers on both sides of the ship at the level of the topmost rowers. The tillers from these came in at right angles to where a second helmsman now took station in front of the first. This done, the naupegos and his men crawled around fitting hanging weather screens to the outside of the ship that were intended to give some measure of shelter to the thranites, who, although they had a deck over their heads, were otherwise exposed on the sides.
After inspecting the new arrangements, Bruteddius climbed some way up the sternpost and gazed aft. Eventually, he climbed stiffly down, and addressed the senior passengers on the quarterdeck.
‘ Domini, you see the cloud behind us over our starboard quarter. Most likely, it has formed over the high land behind Sinope. If that is right, we drifted further east in the night than we thought. With the Goths where they are, now there is no chance of us making Sinope.’
Those assembled received this in silence.
‘The wind has moved to the north-west. The Argestes, the ‘Cleanser’, as it is known, is strengthening. Maybe it will ‘cleanse’ us of these Goths.’ Bruteddius smiled with no great humour. ‘The Argestes will blow a storm. The second, outer steering oars are there to help in a high sea. When it hits, we will run before it under sail. But we will try to keep it a touch on our larboard quarter. We do not want to be driven on to the coast to the east of Sinope. It is inhospitable, a fifty-mile bight of shifting shoals and banks. The local pilot and the periplous I studied both say the first safe harbour is Naustathmos. But it is in the marshes of the estuary of the Halys. Better we try for Amisus. It is only some fifteen miles further, and has an easy approach. Failing that, a little beyond, there is Ankon on the headland of the Daiantos Plain.’