"I have more than men to transport. Come outside with me for a moment."
Puzzled, Arrunteius took his cup and walked outside. The other officers went with them, Norbanus's looking amused, Arrunteius's puzzled. Outside, they studied the legionaries, now encamping on a field off the beach. They were lean, burned dark, and wild-looking. Their arms were perfectly kept, but their tunics were of every color and design, scavenged along their route. Clothing wore out quickly on a long campaign, and the fine tunics Jonathan had given them had long since been reduced to rags. Most oddly, many now wore their swords on belts studded with plaques of gold and silver. Their hands and arms wore rings, bracelets and armlets that winked gold and jewels.
"Well, they seem to have done well in your service," Arrunteius said. "I think we'll have no trouble getting them all aboard."
"Look up there," Norbanus said, nodding toward the pass. Arrunteius followed his gaze and gasped. An endless line of pack animals and wagons still poured over the pass to join a huge compound next to the legionary camp.
"Is that your baggage train? I'm sorry, Titus, but you'll have to leave most of it here. We can't get a tenth of it into our transports along with your men. How much more is there?"
"I'd say about half has come through the pass now." He enjoyed his friend's gape-mouthed expression, then said, "It's not exactly baggage, Decimus. Come have a look."
They walked to the compound where the animals were being unloaded and the wagons parked in long rows. "Pick something at random."
Mystified, Arrunteius walked to a wagon and pointed to a chest. "Open it." Norbanus ordered the wagoneer. With a small prybar the man pried the lid from the chest. Arrunteius and his officers gasped. The box was packed with a miscellaneous heap of gold coins, bars of the same metal, gemstones in the raw or carved and set in jewelry, pearls in endless ropes, chains of every sort of precious metal. Their eyes dazzled.
"Is it all like this?" Arrunteius said when he could get his breath. He looked out over the fast-growing compound, up at the train still coming through the pass.
"Oh, it's not all gold and jewels, by any means, but other things equally valuable and portable: spices, incense, fine weapons, ivory, works of art, wonderful cloth-I've even got a few bolts of silk."
"Silk! I've heard of the stuff, but I've never seen it." Silk was to the Romans no more than a rumor-the magical cloth from somewhere far east that was so valuable that when it reached the West it was unwoven thread by thread and rewoven together with common thread. Even thus adulterated, it sold for many times its weight in gold and was owned mainly by oriental monarchs.
"It's real," Norbanus assured him. "Near Antioch we encountered some bandits who'd waylaid a caravan from far inland. We relieved them of it. It's the pure cloth, too."
He watched their stunned expressions for a while, then said, "Now, Decimus, you really don't expect me to leave all this here on the beach, do you?"
"What are we going to do, Titus?" Arrunteius said in a strangled voice. "My orders from the Senate are to bring you and your legions home at once."
"Some of this goes into the state treasury. The Senate will not thank you for impoverishing Rome at the outset of what must be a very costly war."
"Just some of it?" said one of the naval officers.
"By ancient tradition," Norbanus said, "the general in charge is free to determine the division of the spoils. Some must go to the treasury, of course. The rest he may divide among his officers and men and, of course, keep a substantial share for himself. It's been that way since the beginning of the republic."
Arrunteius shook his head. "That's in wartime, and you haven't been given a war to fight."
"The situation is unique, I'll grant you that," Norbanus said easily. "But let me work things out with the Senate when we get back. I'm sure that I can appeal to their good sense. In the meantime, this is what I propose: My men and I will continue our march along the coast. You will accompany us offshore, carrying our, ah, baggage. We can move much faster with it loaded on ships. It really has been slowing us down. We'll proceed up the coast of Asia. At one of the major cities-Miletus or Smyrna or Ephesus-we can arrange for transport to take the legions across to Greece. We can make a march there, just to let the Greeks know firsthand that Rome is back in earnest, then do the same thing there. It's a short hop across the strait from Greece to Brundisium." He saw the tormented look on the duumvir's face as he considered his duty, then looked at the huge heaps of loot now assembling before his eyes.
"Elections are coming up," Norbanus reminded him. "This year's magistrates will be out of office when we get back, and they'll be thinking about nothing but the commands they'll be taking up. This is Roman history in the making, Decimus, and you," he nodded to the other naval officers, "and your subordinates, can be a part of it. Think of the glory when we return. And you'll have a part when it comes to the shareout, of course."
After a long while Arrunteius turned to his officers. "Start loading all this baggage onto our ships." They jumped to do his bidding.
Titus Norbanus, de facto proconsul and now, it seemed, de facto admiral, smiled.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
"Surely this thing can never float," Zeno said, shouting over the clangor.
"Yet they assure us it can," Izates said. "They quoted all sorts of Archimedean arcana about weights and volumes and displacement and buoyancy. They insisted that the substance itself was immaterial."
"But ships should be made of wood!" Zeno said.
The thing that drew their incredulous attention was a ship such as no one had ever seen or envisioned. The underwater craft had been mind-boggling enough, but this was even more unnatural. It was a ship made entirely of bronze. Its long keel and arching ribs were made of the ruddy metal, and even now long planks of the same material were being affixed to the ribs with rivets. The din was like all the armories in the world working full blast in one place.
They walked around the thing, which seemed to be at least three times as long as a conventional galley. The insane-looking designer of this prodigy had explained that wooden ships were limited in length by the size of trees available to make their keels. There was no practical limit to the size of a ship with a metal keel.
"It can't be rammed, can't be set afire and it won't rot," cried the designer. "No galley can stand against it. Once in motion, it will plow right through a wooden ship without even slowing down!"
Upon its prow, instead of the conventional ram, it had a huge, concave saw-toothed beak. Its lower, forward-thrusting end would be far beneath the water when it was at sea, and the upper end would tower twenty feet above the surface. It was indeed designed to cut enemy galleys clean in two instead of merely punching holes in them.
"Maybe it will float," Zeno conceded, "but will it move or merely wallow there?"
The radical vessel had no provision for oars. Instead, it had a pair of the huge paddle wheels on its sides, also made of bronze. These would be worked by hundreds of slaves scrambling on treadmills and hollow wheels within the hull.
"Well," Izates said, "if it won't move, someone even crazier will find a way to do it. That madman from Corinth, maybe." The Corinthian had an apparatus of tubs and pipes in which he boiled water and experimented with the steam that resulted. He was not discouraged, even though more than once a boiler had exploded, killing a number of slaves each time. He said it just proved that steam was powerful and swore that he would harness that power. What he would do with it was a mystery.
"Does it occur to you," Zeno asked his friend, "that these Archimedeans tend to overdo things?"