Authors: Paul Bannister
Intelligence about the Belgic and Gallic shipyards came back quickly. I had sketch maps, diagrams and precise measurements of the harbours and dry docks, of the lock gates, plus exact locations for the timber storehouses where shaped frames for the ships’ hulls were kept. I had several sources for much of the information, which gave me confidence in what I was learning. The Romans were evidently expecting an attack from the German Sea, and had copied the signal towers, lookouts and huge log booms and artillery stations that we had employed so successfully along the Thames river estuary to trap and destroy their fleet.
Canny
Maximian had also reinforced the land defences around the harbours and shipyards, in case of an uprising by their vassal tribes, the spies informed me. But the glaring weakness was so obvious to me that I suspected it had to be a trap. The Romans seemed to have left the approaches from upriver on the Meuse, and on the Rhine which I knew so well, guarded by mere token customs and tax collector posts.
If
it was not a trap, it seemed we should be able to sail right into the heart of the shipyards where the invasion fleet was being built, so long as we came from inland. It seemed too good to be true.
The
next set of dispatches contained one from the man who had taught me my trade as a sailor. Cenhud the Belg had taken me in as a young refugee fleeing slavery after my British village was sacked by sea raiders. I had been taken to Belgica and trained as a sailor before I joined the Roman army as a teenager. Cenhud, a master mariner, had taught me the ways of the great rivers of Europe, the secrets of sailing them and the skills I needed to become what I eventually did, admiral of the Roman Channel Fleet.
Now,
in response to my urgent missive to him, he had left his home in Forum Hadriani and was seeking a suitable place on the Meuse or Scheldt where I could prepare my small force to attack and destroy the Roman shipyards downriver from that base.
I
called in Grimr, my sea-raider-turned admiral who was kicking his heels in frustration at being kept landlocked while I laid my plans. I gave him some simple instructions: take a few mariners, disguise yourselves as traders, go and find Cenhud, establish an inconspicuous base on whichever river Cenhud chooses, locate the ships we will need, and bring together certain necessary components. I will contact you in a week or two with further instructions. And Grimr my friend, I said, make sure you locate a Roman war galley with a battering ram at the prow. We will have urgent need for one of those…
My
next priority was to talk to Myrddin, which involved a journey into the mountains of Wales, a two-day ride from Chester. Guinevia came with me to see her mentor and Druid overlord, and we found him, happily fire-scorched, outside his square-built stone residence at the head of a pass near the mountain Yr Wyddfa.
His
gardener Pattia was outside and met us. “Since those Syrians and Afris came here, he has not stopped with the explosions and fire drakes,” she whispered to Guinevia. “I’ve never seen him happier, or more charred. Or,” she added darkly, “the sheep more nervous.”
Myrddin’s
housekeeper Jogrovea was less sanguine. “He wants to build a flying chair, but all he does is blow up pieces of furniture,” she confided. “One of these days, he’ll either fly off over the mountain or he’ll blow himself to pieces.”
Myrddin
heard our arrival, waved a greeting and gestured for me to join him in the pasture, where he had set up several frameworks and contraptions. “Can’t quite get the ingredients right for this firedrake stuff,” he said vaguely. “It worked well enough at the Humber, but I suspect the quality of the salt petre is different in this batch.” I nodded politely. His explosions had worked a small wonder for us at that battle, causing panic in the Saxon ranks that had led to our comprehensive victory. I could use that kind of help again.
I
explained my mission and the sorcerer nodded. For once, he seemed to have paid attention to another person’s thoughts, which was to me a great compliment, but he had always treated me better than with his usual abruptness, and since Guinevia and I had produced a son, he had been almost benevolent towards me. He liked Guinevia, and I was dragged along in the slipstream of his affection for her.
“Byzantine
Fire, eh?” he said. “I’ve read about that. Very dangerous stuff. It was a state secret, you know, but some fellow alchemists shared it with other sorcerers and the word got out. In certain circles only, that is,” he said, looking smug. “The Arabs got it, you know, and made matters quite uncomfortable for a number of people.”
“Can
you make it?” I asked impatiently.
“I
expect so,” he said, a little distantly I thought, considering he was speaking to his emperor. He must have caught my stiffening expression, for he added: “I can go and look things up, you know.” It was the best I could get out of him, and Guinevia was approaching, so we went inside to continue matters.
That
evening, the sorcerer swept into the chamber where I was writing, waving a handful of scrolls and looking triumphant. He had turned up a formula, he said, for the liquid fire, and had also come across descriptions of its use.
It
was, it seemed, a liquid that the Byzantines sprayed on their enemies, igniting the mix as it left the nozzle of the attackers’ pump. It clung to the surfaces it hit, and was extremely difficult to extinguish.
“The
soldiers who deploy this must be specially trained and equipped,” Myrddin pointed out. “It’s like using a war elephant. It doesn’t know who to attack, so everyone’s at risk, and it can literally backfire on you.” I grunted, and assigned a bright young Transjordanian monk called Ancke to make a copy of Myrddin’s instructions, including the formula and any hints for its use.
I
sent a messenger back to Chester to Grimr’s dependable lieutenant, a Macedonian named Iskandur Declarea. He was to prepare at once to take two galleys across the Narrow Sea. He would link up with his commander at the river base we were secretly establishing in Gaul, on either the Meuse or Rhine. I gave Iskandur specifics about the galleys’ cargoes and readied to return immediately to my stronghold.
The
next dawn, we left Guinevia at the sorcerer’s house with two of her maids, Clarea, the wife of the sea wolf Iskandur, and a slender golden deaf-mute slave called Iantread who had been captured on a raid into Gaul. I was taking no chances on Guinevia being kidnapped again, so I left an escort of troopers to guard the sorcerer’s compound, with instructions to camp at a discreet distance and to avoid incurring his displeasure. Then I was back on my big horse Corvus and headed to Chester to begin implementing my plans.
The
galleys that would go to Gaul would carry containers of rock oil, a medicinal liquid that seeped up from the earth, and baskets of the bitumen that formed when that oil dried. It was a liquid well known even to the ancient Babylonians, who had collected it from the famous Fountains of Pitch on the Euphrates River. They used the tarry substance to waterproof the hulls of ships and to fix handles to the blades of weapons.
The
Romans had used it to set mosaics, as a sort of cement. I had seen the mosaic artist Claria Primanata use it at my now-destroyed Fishbourne palace, and she had mentioned that drier asphalt was sometimes used by both the Romans and the Greeks to bind walls together. I wondered if it might make better fortifications, and filed the thought away for the future.
Other
containers on the galleys, false-labelled as containing wine or olive oil, actually held resin, quicklime and sulphur, and these shared space with several stirrup pumps, amphorae of vinegar, alum and talcum, a quantity of leather protective clothing, two barrels of pumice stones and a number of empty ceramic pots.
The
oily minerals and other substances were to form the basis for a mix that produced the Byzantine Fire, the pumps would spray it, and the leather, soaked in a brew of vinegar, talcum and alum would provide some protection to the troops who handled the flame-throwing equipment.
I
also gave Iskandur instructions for Grimr, who was to construct a number of
ballistae
on site in Gaul. There was insufficient room on the galleys for them to be transported, and any prying eyes that spotted the war weapons could trigger a response we were trying to avoid. To make the
ballistae
more powerful, I sent along a supply of animal sinew, which made extra-strong ropes for the catapults.
The
two supply ships sailed out of the harbour on the Dee looking like honest traders, for the crews wore civilian clothes and concealed their weapons below the gunwales where they could quickly be retrieved if needed, but would arouse no alarm to a casual observer. With caution and some careful night sailing, the galleys could slip into Gaul undetected, but I also provided the captains with a supply of small gold ingots and coin to bribe any tax collectors who might come across the ‘traders.’
They
left, and my anxieties grew. Their cargoes were vital to my plan, and if that plan failed, I might pay with the lives of my men, as well as with my own. “Manannan mac Lir,” I prayed to the sea god, “please calm the waves, smooth their way and bring them safe and successfully to land.”
Fretting was pointless. The dice were cast, I had other concerns. In a remote part of the meadows away from the parade ground, three groups of mixed troopers and sailors had set up a couple of wrecked galleys and were practising with the fire-squirting jets they had set up in the vessels’ bows. I observed from a safe distance, and all seemed to be going well.
The
pumps were two-handed machines, and two burly soldiers encased in soggy leathers pounded the handles with vigour, hurling a jet of spray fully 45 yards. The big, scarred centurion Damonius Mallardis, who had distinguished himself in our losing battle for Londinium, was equally protected in vinegar-soaked leather. He carefully pushed a lighted taper to the touch hole in the barrel of the pump and instantly the thin jet turned into a dragon’s hurled and fiery exhalation.
The
target framework of straw bales they had set up caught at once and whooshed into flame, and the pump handlers stopped their heaving, and stepped hastily back. Damonius dropped wet sacking over the pump barrel, but it did not extinguish at once. The Byzantine Fire was so tenacious that it took three applications of sacking before the fabric became just a smouldering heap. “This,” I thought, “is a weapon to terrify the unwary. May the gods help anyone caught in this dragon breath.”
Within
two weeks, word came from Grimr, carried by Iskandur, who had travelled across northern Gaul in disguise and bribed a fishing boat captain to carry him across the Narrow Sea. At one stage he had to hold the captain at blade point to enforce his demands. The news he brought was vital. After an epic journey, the Suehan raider and his crew occupied two old warehouses with a wharf on the Meuse, about 11 miles upriver of the shipyards.
Grimr’s
two galleys had sailed boldly and unchallenged up the mighty Seine, slipped into the Oise and sailed as far as they could before abandoning their galleys, sinking them under stones in a wooded creek.
The
crews had concealed their weapons and dispersed into small groups, one of them disguised as a travelling troupe of jugglers and entertainers, another as evangelizing Christians, which kept most people away, and had travelled different ways. One group with Grimr had bought horses and made their way to Forum Hadriani, where they had located Cenhud the shipmaster, others had scouted the Meuse and Scheldt to locate the warehouse facilities we needed.
Cenhud
was waiting and prepared. He sold the horses, closed his shipyard and brought two of his galleys upriver, transporting Grimr’s men. In short order, all the force had rejoined, and was waiting, unsuspected at the wharves and warehouses that they had rented.
The
journey for our two cargo galleys had been easier. They had slipped into Belgica at dawn, been generous with the two sleepy customs collectors they encountered and had sailed unnoticed to the warehouse rendezvous. There, the whole force was under orders to stay inside in daylight hours at least, and construction was almost finished on the
ballistae
and other catapults.
I
ordered the rest of the raiding party to be ready to sail in 36 hours’ time and prayed that Grimr had located a military galley he could steal. We left Chester and went into the Hibernian Sea and set off on our long journey to Gaul, timing our pass through the narrowest strait of the Narrow Sea after dark to avoid observation from either shore.
At
dawn, we hauled our solitary ship onto an isolated stretch of the great sweep of shingle around Britain’s forefoot, out of sight of the watch towers of the Saxon Shore, rested for the day, and sailed away from my kingdom for Gaul as dusk fell. I was taking no chances on being recognized, so could not boldly sail in as our ‘trading’ galleys had done. Instead, I used my local knowledge from years of patrolling these waters, and was able to bring us quietly ashore west of the mouth of the Meuse on a deserted beach among sand dunes.
We
unloaded, dismasted and sank the galley in a small creek, filling her hull with rocks before we marched inland in three separated groups. Four days later, after a cross-country trek made mostly in the dark, we arrived at our rendezvous with Grimr’s outlying sentries, who took us to his headquarters and his hungry, bored force. He gave me a swift tour of the two warehouses.
Inside
were our four ships, ready on rollers to be launched into the river. Carefully separated from them was an assortment of amphorae, ceramic pots, sacks and bundles. Three
ballistae
were concealed under straw bales and Grimr showed me the wooden pegs and mounting points at the galleys’ bows where the catapults would be fitted. The one galley which would not have a catapult in its teeth had a curious tilting ramp arrangement there instead, and sacks of pumice stone neatly arrayed and ready behind it.
The
Romans, Grimr told me, had a customs post about a mile and a half upriver of the shipyards, and kept a war galley there with the bow-mounted ram I hoped to hear about. About 15 personnel were stationed there, including a
contubium
– tent unit – of eight legionaries and some non-combatant customs inspectors and tax gatherers, a cook and a smith.
With
a lantern lighting the charts, he showed me details of the river, the shipyards, the locks, the barracks and the harbour fortifications. Here, he said, were the finished invasion barges; there, he pointed, were the timber stores, the ropewalks and the sailmakers’ lofts.
He
showed me a list of times and tides, detailed the speeds of the inflow and of the outgoing tide when it was pushed by the backed-up river and provided answers to questions I posed to him that were crucial to my plans. There were gaps in the information, as he had not wanted to jeopardise the secrecy of the mission by having a spy caught. It might, just might, work, I concluded. Either way, I was going to try.