As soon as Macro began to reload, there was a shout and the men sprinted forward in the interval before the next round was loaded. Macro just had time to lower the elevation and fire one last bolt, which flew over their heads.
‘That’s it.’ He stood back from the bolt thrower. ‘It’s hand-to-hand now.’
The first of the attackers reached the door and pounded on it. To little effect, as the door was secured with a wooden bar and some meal bags had been piled behind it. By the time Macro had climbed down and joined his men, as they snatched up the shields of the renegades they had killed, the first axe blows were thudding into the aged timber. A moment later a long splinter of wood shot back from the inside of the door. More splinters exploded as axes crashed home. Then a long sliver of wood bent down and the dull edge of the axe head protruded, a finger’s width, through the door. When the axe was wrenched free, it left a narrow gap through which Macro could see the men outside in the pale dawn light. More blows smashed through the weakened timber and hands wrenched at the shattered lengths of wood.
‘Don’t worry, lads,’ Macro said evenly. ‘There’s only one way in. All we have to do is keep ’em out until the prefect gets here.’
He glanced round at the men standing poised in the gloom and noted their expressions. Some looked grim but determined, while a handful of others, younger, had an anxious, fearful look in their eyes. It was a centurion’s duty to lead from the front, to inspire his men, and Macro eased himself forward towards the door, sword clenched in his right hand. He drew out his dagger and held it in the other hand. With a splintering crack a length of the door was pulled away, then more pieces, until only a shattered fringe remained. Outside, the renegades closed round. The first man stepped up, then kicked the makeshift barrier of meal sacks over. He carried a spear and he lowered the tip and thrust at Macro with a grunt. The leaf-shaped head stabbed towards his midriff and Macro parried it away as he swung to his left. At once he recovered his balance and lunged at the spearman, forcing him back, out of the door.
‘Form up around the door!’ Macro shouted. ‘Take ’em from the side as they come in.’
As the men hurried into place, the spearman thrust again, hands gripping the shaft tightly and legs braced apart. This time he fully concentrated his attention on the centurion, as if they were paired in a duel. He weighed Macro up with an expert eye, and feinted. Macro flinched for an instant and then he grinned.
‘I don’t fool that easy. Try harder.’
This time the thrust was in earnest and the point shot forward like a ram. Macro slashed down, just above the man’s hand, and the point went down towards the floor. Macro’s dagger hand darted forward and stabbed into the renegade’s forearm. With a gasp, he released the shaft and Macro stamped down on it, forcing the man off balance. He stumbled forward, inside the doorway, as he strove to regain his balance. One of the legionaries stepped up and punched his sword high into the man’s back, driving him to one side. He fell on to his knees and slumped down with a groan as the legionary ripped his blade free.
‘First blood to us, boys!’ Macro cried out, then beckoned to the faces watching him from outside. ‘Come on! Who’s next?’
There was only the briefest hesitation before a burly swordsman swallowed nervously and made to approach the door. Before he could reach it, a voice called out.
‘Stand aside! Let me through!’
Macro felt a cold shiver ripple down his spine as he recognised the voice at once. The men in front of him drew aside, creating a small open space before the door. Into it stepped a tall, powerful man in his early twenties, dark hair falling to his shoulders. He carried a short sword in one hand and a small round shield in the other. His body was protected by a black leather cuirass, decorated with silver whorls. His lips twisted into a cold smile.
‘Centurion Macro. Well, what a surprise. I should have guessed you would try to find me.’
‘And now that I have, I’m going to kill you,’ Macro replied through gritted teeth.
‘Really?’ Ajax stepped closer, his eyes fixed on Macro. ‘Then why not come out here? Let’s settle this, man to man.’
Macro felt a burning compulsion to confront the gladiator. The urge coursed through his veins and threatened to cloud his judgement. He clamped his jaw shut and stared back at the man who had tormented him so cruelly barely three months before.
‘What’s the matter?’ Ajax smirked. ‘Are you not man enough to face me?’
Macro took half a step forward, almost to the threshold of the tower’s entrance, and checked himself.
‘Tell you what, Ajax,’ he spoke in a flat tone. ‘Why don’t you come in here to settle things.’
Ajax chuckled coldly. ‘A stand-off between us, then. A shame, since I would have liked the chance to humiliate you in front of your men.’ Ajax lowered his sword. ‘It seems that we’ll have to do this the hard way.’ He stepped back and turned to his men. ‘Shields to the front!’
A half-dozen renegades stepped up. Three stood together and overlapped their shields. The others stepped up to guard the flanks and then Ajax beckoned to some more of his men and they approached the door.
The time for fancy footwork and swordplay was over, Macro realised. This was about to become a contest of brute strength, and Ajax and his men were as powerful and tough as they came.
‘Legionaries, on me!’ Macro called out, grabbing a shield. ‘Quickly, damn it!’
His men scrambled to his side, forming up, shield to shield and swords held level, as they were trained to do for close combat.
‘Ready!’ Macro barked the order and then called the time as he stepped towards the door. ‘One . . . two . . .’
The two sides crunched together just inside the door frame and Macro threw his weight behind his shield as he braced his boots against the grain sacks that had collapsed on the floor. His men pressed in close behind him and Macro could hear the strained breath and grunts of effort all around him as the Romans and the renegades heaved against each other. Those in the front were trapped between the shields and those pushing them from behind. Macro knew that it was a contest between the raw strength of the renegades and the technique of the legions. For a moment both sides pushed with all their strength, and then Macro felt the sacking beneath his right boot begin to give. He tried to adjust his foot, but the sack had split and the loose grain gave little traction. Slowly he was eased back from the door and a gap opened between his shield and that of the man to his left. At once the tip of a sword blade thrust through the gap, mercifully striking nothing but air before it was snatched back.
‘Watch it!’ Macro warned the others. ‘Close up.’
The legionaries heaved forward and pressed the enemy back.
‘Come on!’ Ajax yelled. ‘Push! Sweep them aside, lads. Then kill ’em all.’
Once again the bodies were tightly wedged against each other in the narrow doorway. Macro turned towards one of the men still standing to one side.
‘You! Go for their legs, man! Hack ’em!’
The legionary nodded and edged his way round the side of the struggle, then, taking careful aim, he waited until there was a gap and stabbed the point of his sword home, into a calf. The renegade bellowed in pain and instinctively edged back, creating a gap in the shield wall presented to the Romans. Macro pushed forward, driving between two of his enemies and thrusting his own blade out, at an angle, into the side of the man to his right. It was not a lethal blow, just breaking through the skin and catching in the ribs, but the man fell away with a grunt.
Just as the Romans drove the last of their enemies away from the door, there was a shout from down the track.
‘General! General Ajax!’
Ajax, in the third rank of his men, glanced back and saw the figure running down the track towards the skirmish. ‘Here!’
He pushed his way out and stood, chest heaving from his exertions. ‘What is it?’
‘There are warships coming, sir. Several of them. Making straight for the harbour entrance.’
‘How far away?’
‘A mile, maybe less.’
Ajax turned back, seeking out Macro as he frowned in frustration. ‘Damn it! There’s no time for this,’ he snarled. He stared towards Macro in blind hatred before he recovered his poise. ‘Fall back, boys. Fall back. Return to the ships. Fast as you can! We have to get out of here!’
Ajax’s men scrambled back and Macro felt the pressure lift from his shield and he had to scramble forward a little in order to retain his balance. He crouched, shield up and sword drawn, breathing heavily. His eyes met those of Ajax, some ten feet away. The gladiator thrust his arm out, pointing directly at Macro. ‘It isn’t over yet! As Zeus is my witness, I’ll cut your head from your body with my own sword.’
Then he turned and joined his men as they warily backed away a short distance from the tower and then turned to run down the track. Macro watched him go with a heavy heart. If Cato and his ships managed to reach the mouth of the harbour in time to prevent Ajax’s escape then that reckoning might come soon enough, Macro reflected. He waited until the last of the renegades was a safe distance down the track before he stretched up into a standing position and lowered his shield. Turning towards the sea, he could easily make out the ships from the Alexandrian fleet rowing swiftly towards the shore.
T
he sun had crested the horizon as the
Sobek
approached the point of the headland. The coast was bathed in a warm yellow glow which caught the red sails of the warships, intensifying the colour. The trierarch was leaning over the bow and staring down into the water as he tried to pick out any shoals that might threaten his ship. The sea was calm and the lightest of swells brushed up against the rocks on the shore. Cato had dressed in armour and wore his red cloak and plumed helmet in preparation for the coming battle. He climbed up into the turret on the foredeck and surveyed the coastline. For the last half mile of its length the headland was on lower ground and from the turret Cato could see the tops of the palm trees on the far side of the bay. Earlier he had seen the enemy withdraw from the watchtower and had feared that Macro and his men had been overwhelmed. But then his keen eyes had detected the transverse crest of a helmet atop the tower and he knew that his friend still lived.
‘Sir!’ the lookout cried from his position astride the spar. He pointed across the headland. ‘They’re on the move!’
Cato turned his head to look, and might have missed it had he not been looking for the enemy ship. A faint sliver of shadow against the haze that lingered across the mainland. The mast of a ship. Then he saw another a short distance behind. Ajax was making a run for it. Looking ahead, Cato saw that the headland bowed out to sea and he realised, with a sick feeling, that Ajax might reach the entrance to the bay before the
Sobek
.
‘Increase our speed!’ he called down to the trierarch. Phermon looked up and shook his head.
‘Sir, the crew have been rowing flat out for the best part of an hour. They’re spent.’
‘I don’t give a damn about that. Order them to row faster.’
‘They can’t,’ the trierarch replied firmly. ‘You’ve exhausted them, sir.’
Cato gritted his teeth in anger. The trierarch was right. He had been desperate to reach the harbour as swiftly as he could, and now the crew had no reserve of strength to draw on at the critical moment. By contrast, Ajax’s men were still fresh and as Cato watched the masts of his enemy’s ships, he could see that they were gradually pulling ahead. More galling still, they had the advantage of the inside track as they raced across the bay towards the tip of the headland. He thumped a fist on the rail of the turret in frustration. He took a deep breath and spoke as calmly as he could to the trierarch. ‘Have your men do the best they can. One last effort is all I ask of them.’
‘Yes, sir.’ The trierarch saluted and made his way aft to the main hatch and descended below deck to urge his men on.
Cato turned his attention back to the two masts edging ahead of the
Sobek
on the other side of the headland. They would soon be abreast of the watchtower and then reach the open sea and make their escape. The Roman ships would attempt a pursuit, but barring a miracle Ajax and his men would get away, Cato realised bitterly.
A faint movement attracted his attention and he saw a thin dark smudge in the air above the watchtower. There was a brief eddy of smoke and then it settled into a steady trail, climbing into the clear sky. Cato frowned at this new development, but Macro and his men were safe enough now that the enemy was on the run. They could afford to let the tower burn. But even as he was thinking this, Cato realised that the smoke was too localised. A moment later there was a bright flare and a thin trail of smoke arced out from the top of the tower towards the two ships approaching from inside the bay. Another trail quickly followed the first before Cato realised what was happening.
‘Bolt throwers.’ He smiled to himself. ‘Macro’s using incendiaries. Clever bastard.’
Macro kept up a steady stream of flaming bolts as the enemy vessels approached, and then there was a dark swirl of smoke from over the headland and Cato saw that the ships had changed course, forced to give the headland a wide berth to avoid the weapons shooting at them from the watchtower. One vessel was already alight. Cato gripped the rail of the turret as he continued to watch. Beneath his feet he detected the faintest of lurches as the men at the oars made one last effort. By the time the trierarch had returned to the bows, the point was in sight and Cato knew that the contest was over. Forced aside by Macro, Ajax and his ships could not reach the open sea in time to make a clear escape.
‘We’ll have them, sir.’ The trierarch grinned.
‘So it seems,’ Cato replied as calmly as he could manage. ‘Have the marines stand to.’
The headland dipped down to a small sandy spit at the edge of the turquoise sea and the
Sobek
continued a short distance beyond before the triearch ordered the steersman to turn directly into the bay. From the turret Cato had a clear view of the two vessels making towards him, less than quarter of a mile away. To the right was the ship Ajax had seized when he fled from Crete. The other was the
Thoth
, from which smoke billowed from a fire raging amidships. Several men were drawing buckets from the sea and attempting to dowse the flames that threatened the ship. Even so, the crew stuck to their oars and the ship ploughed on, water surging over the ram and down her sides. Cato strained his eyes to see if he could spot Ajax on either ship. There was too much smoke and too many figures dashing around the deck of the
Thoth
to be certain of picking out a single man and he concentrated his attention on the other ship. A handful of archers stood in the turret on the foredeck and more armed men waited on the main deck. Then, as the distance rapidly closed, Cato saw a figure push his way through to the bows, tall and broad and wearing a decorated black cuirass and a brilliantly polished helmet with a black crest of billowing feathers.