‘No means of shooting back at them! No way to protect ourselves against their arrows! We can only hope that the captain there has it right when he says we are almost at the next river.’
Cutting the bend’s apex so close that Marcus could see the sand beneath them through the river’s water, Thracius pointed forward, bellowing an order at his crew.
‘Row! Row for your worthless lives!’
Marcus and Martos looked forward, realising with rising hope that the river before them ran straight for a quarter of a mile before seeming to meet a dead end, the junction with the Khabur. The crew threw themselves at their oars, pulling with all their might at the shafts in one last frantic effort, and the two friends turned back to stare at the oncoming riders, now less than half a mile distant. As they watched, the foremost rider loosed an arrow, the iron head a bright flash of polished metal against the looming storm’s dark grey curtain.
‘Is he mad?’
Martos’s comment died in his throat as the shaft soared improbably high into the air, literally carried on the storm’s arms, then tipped over at the apogee of its flight and flickered down towards them, vanishing into the water a hundred paces back in the vessel’s wake. The two men looked at each other in dismay, Martos shaking his head. The entire group of horsemen loosed their arrows, which were lifted and strewn by the storm’s fury to land in a wide scatter, none any closer to the Night Witch than fifty paces, but the next volley, sent skywards straight after the first, fell closer still. Flicking his gaze back to the junction with the Khabur, Marcus watched as Thracius eased his rudder over to the right, expertly leaning his vessel into a steadily tightening left turn designed to put them into the Khabur’s wide main channel as swiftly as possible. He looked back with a grin, still unaware of the Parthian archers’ threat.
‘The Khabur’s running fast! Once we’re round this bend we’ll be out of range so quickly that-’
A windblown scattering of arrows speared down across the Night Witch’s course, a pair of shafts seeming to spring out of the boat’s deck less than a foot from one hapless rower, and while the master goggled at them, another arced down out of the black sky with the cruel accuracy of the random shot, stabbing deep into the space behind his collarbone with barely more than its fletching still exposed. With an upward roll of his eyes he sagged onto the rudder, forcing it hard over and sending the speeding boat curving round to the left, the taut sail’s driving force throwing it bodily onto the mud beach where the two rivers joined. With a rasping grind of wood against gritty sand the boat ran hard aground, stuck fast in the deep mud where river and land met.
Shorn of their leader the crew dithered momentarily, long enough for another volley of arrows to fall in their random scatter across the beach. Most of them overshot the stranded vessel, but three struck the boat’s wooden planks with dull thumps, further terrifying the sailors. Seeing the rising panic in their faces, and, as the first of them dropped their oars and stood with the clear intention of running for their lives, Martos jumped over the side onto the soft mud below, ploughing through the morass to firmer ground and then striding up the bank before turning to draw his sword, bellowing a warning down at them.
‘Any man who tries to run, dies here!’
The crew turned to face Marcus, who had drawn the eagle-pommelled gladius and was looking down it at them with a furious scowl. He gestured to the stricken master, lolling against the rudder with the ashen face and quick, panting respiration of a man with little time left to live.
‘Who’s his deputy?’
The biggest of them raised a hesitant hand, flinching as another shower of arrows hissed down into the water off the boat’s right-hand side.
‘Get your men ready to row us off this sandbank, and get that sail down, it’s holding us against the beach! Do it!’
Not giving the sailor time to question his orders, he turned to Lugos, who nodded his massive head and strode to the boat’s bow, vaulting over the raised wooden prow and placing his massive hands on the wooden hull, straining his bulging muscles in an attempt to push the boat off the mud. Behind Marcus a deep commanding voice rose above the wind’s bestial howl.
‘He’s not enough on his own!’
Marcus swung to face the Parthian captives, finding Gurgen on his feet and pointing at the recumbent Osroes.
‘My only responsibility is to protect my king’s life, and to stay here is to die here!’
The Parthian hurried up the ship’s length and jumped over the side, ranging his strength alongside that of the massive Briton. Martos sheathed his sword and ran down the bank to join them, the three men heaving at the ship’s hull with the corded muscles in their necks standing proud. A faint shiver ran through the boat’s frame, and Marcus called out to them as he realised what had caused the slight movement.
‘The river’s rising fast! Keep pushing and she’ll float off!’
Lifting the dying master away from the rudder, he laid the stricken sailor to one side, wincing as the pain of the movement contorted Thracius’s face into a silent scream, then crouched into the stern’s slight protection and looked across the river. The huge towering mass of dark cloud loomed almost vertically above them, flickers of lightning illuminating it from within and sending booming crashes of thunder across the empty landscape. Beneath it on the Mygdonius’s far bank, the Parthian horsemen had dismounted, and were loosing arrows as fast as they were able, the shafts blown in every direction by the gusting wind. The Night Witch lurched again, lifted slightly by the river’s inexorable rise, and the three big men at her bow threw their full strength against the deadweight of her massive timbers. Still the sandy mud’s sucking grip held the vessel fast, and Marcus pointed his gladius at the crew with a barked command that had them moving before they had time to think.
‘We need to lighten the boat! Over the side!’
Swarming over the Night Witch’s side, they slid into the water with terrified stares towards the bowmen on the far bank who were still shooting steadily at a target that was, were it not for the wind playing havoc with their archery, too large to miss.
‘Heave!’
Lugos’s voice rose over the wind’s din, and the three men arrayed on the boat’s left side strained their sinews again, Martos bellowing as his feet pumped in the mud that was denying them a clean purchase on the ground beneath them. The deck beneath Marcus’s feet lurched as the Night Witch slid a foot down the beach, and all three of the big men threw themselves at the boat’s side with roars and curses as her hull, lifted fractionally by the rising river, slid slowly back down the muddy slope. With a scrape of gravel that was more felt than heard, the boat eased her bulk gratefully down into the deeper water, drifting out into the fast-flowing water with a slow, uncontrolled pirouette that was turning her bow to point back up the river.
‘Oars!’
The crew pulled themselves over the Night Witch’s side, one man jerking as he heaved himself out of the river, an arrow’s long shaft protruding from his back. He stayed where he was for a moment, balanced between the effort that had lifted him out of the water and the iron’s agonising intrusion deep into his body, then fell back into the racing water and was lost to view. The rest of the crew threw themselves at their oars, knowing what to do without having to be ordered, backing water on the right side while the opposite bank pulled mightily to swing the boat’s prow back round to the south. Marcus sighted down the boat’s length, waiting for the prow to clear the riverbank to the left before bellowing his next command, pointing with gladius down the vessel’s length.
‘Row!’