The Shards of Heaven (26 page)

Though Antony had for a time paced about the ship, raving about cowardice and dishonor, Octavian's tactic was clear and sensible: he was going to let Antony's men row and row until they were to the point of exhaustion or death before he attacked. The rowers were the heart of the ship, after all. Indeed, on clear days, with their rhythm beating steady and sure, Vorenus had often closed his eyes and imagined himself standing atop the hollow heart of a great giant swimming in the sea. But weakened by disease and hunger, sick from the pitching waves, and forced to row harder and longer than they were meant to, the rowers at the heart of these giants were fading fast. Vorenus could see it in the increasingly erratic lift and stroke of their long oars, and he could feel it in the chaotic shouts that echoed up from belowdecks. Octavian, he was certain, was seeing it, too. They wouldn't have long to wait now.

He looked over to his right, where Pullo was standing tall and unfazed by the weather or the arrow that had managed to pierce his shield far enough to rip into his bracing shoulder. He was kicking his feet to snap the shafts of other arrows that had landed around him, trying to keep his balance as the storm-stirred seas pitched against the massive vessel. Over the past few hours they'd found that the hundreds, if not thousands, of iron points embedded in the deck made for a useful addition in the wet, shifting conditions: their shaftless necks were welcome points of traction and grip when one's feet were inclined to slide out along the wood.

On the other hand, Vorenus had noted more than once, they were also hell on one's knees when fresh volleys came down and the legionnaires hunkered beneath their large rectangular shields.

“They still backing off?” Pullo asked, voice betraying only moderate interest.

Vorenus nodded. Their thinning squadron of archers still alive on deck fitted arrows and launched a fresh salvo up into the gray sky. Red shields flipped up and overlapped into traditional tortoise formation on the deck of one of Octavian's smaller ships nearby, and Vorenus saw a few of the shields cave away as arrows slipped through the gaps and found targets. Never enough, though. It was only a matter of time. He could only hope that Cleopatra would do the right thing when that time came. He'd managed only a few moments to talk with her in private after the generals had met during the night, and she'd seemed none too eager to hear his advice, but perhaps something of what he'd said had sunk in. There was no way of knowing now, and not for the first time he wondered if they should have stayed with Cleopatra instead of Antony. But, then, it was one betrayal to speak against his commander and quite another to act against him. Let Cleopatra do what she would now. He would stand and die where duty called.

“Some hits?” Pullo's eyes weren't what they once were. Another sign that they were both too damn old for the young men's business of battle.

“A few,” he said.

“Good,” Pullo said, looking satisfied. “It's a good day to die.”

“Is it?”

“Good as any other, I suppose,” Pullo said.

“Testudo!”
shouted a legionnaire closer to the bow of their ship. At once trained reflexes kicked in and the men closed ranks, raising their shields and collapsing in on one another, left knees to ground, shields braced against their right arms and shoulders. Vorenus, as he had been more times than he could count in his life, was beside Pullo. And not ten paces away he could see the familiar battle armor of Antony, characteristically fighting alongside his common men. Vorenus turned to say something to Pullo but promptly forgot what it was when the legionnaire in front of them dry-heaved spittle onto the deck.

“I was thinking,” Pullo said calmly, “I rather prefer fighting on land.”

Because of the sounds of storm and waves and beating oars, the high buzzing whistle of the volley came only moments before the arrows fell among them like murderous iron rain. Vorenus' shield bucked back against his tired frame as if struck with repeated blows of a smith's hammer. Fresh shafts slipped through cracks in their shield wall, blindly burying themselves in wood or flesh with a rumble of splinters and screams.

Vorenus opened his eyes, not having realized he'd closed them, and saw a shaft quivering in the wood between his legs. A matching, fractured hole in his shield—just below his arm—showed where it had come through.

“Well, that was close, eh?” Pullo chuckled. “Not that you use your tackle much anyway these days.”

They'd only started to stand and lower their shields, the spent shafts upon them clattering down to land amid the debris and bodies, when another legionnaire near the head of the ship raised his arm to the sky:
“Testu
—
”

Vorenus had time to see an arrow rip out the back of the man's neck, but not time to see him fall. His own shield was up too quick for that.

Again the angry hammering. Again the screams. A man not far to his left took an arrow down the back of his spine and dropped his shield, falling forward with a terrible shriek before that cry, too, was silenced in the wave of arrows.

When it passed they stood or cried, threw up or tended to the wounded as circumstances fit. Vorenus looked across the momentarily chaotic deck for Antony and couldn't see him at first. Then, at last, he saw him looking off through the waves to their right. “Ballistae!” the general was shouting, his arm outstretched in the storm. “Archers!”

Vorenus turned and saw first the bronze ram folding open the frothing water, then the trireme behind it, oars driving hard and fast. Through the rain and the splash of waves, Vorenus saw that the men at the trireme's forward ballistae had mounted iron bolts and lowered their sight to the line of the flagship's deck.

Pullo was staring, too. “Holy—”

Vorenus dove into his old friend's back, slamming him down to the deck just as the ballistae released. He felt the rip of the wind as the iron bolts passed through the space above them, heard the bolts cutting into the men who hadn't reacted as quickly.

Antony was directing their own ballistae to return fire, and the archers were already doing so at will, needing no directions at this point, but they weren't going to stop the vessel now.

“Ram right!” Antony shouted.

The men scuttled across the deck, trying to stay low as the distance between the two ships rapidly shrank and the air above the deck rails grew thick with missiles. Vorenus and Pullo moved, too, until they were huddled against the deck railing opposite the impact point. Pullo was panting, and Vorenus saw that he was holding his hand to a red spot on his stomach.

“You threw me on a broken one, you son of a bitch.” The big man laughed. “Knew you'd get me one day.”

The trireme hit and the deck lurched. One second they were crouched against the rail, Pullo holding out two bloodied fingers and smiling in the rain, and the next second they were ten feet away, tumbled against friends alive and dead. Wood was still flipping through the air. A new source of screams arose belowdecks.

Antony already had archers up, and they were firing down at the smaller ship even as roped grappling irons flipped over the deck railing and found grip in whatever or whoever they could. Vorenus groaned as he rolled to a crouch, feeling assorted pains across his torso but not wanting to see if anything had broken his skin. Pullo knelt beside him, his gladius already in hand. If the wound in his belly was serious, he wasn't showing it.

Vorenus pulled his sword, too, and focused on the grappling hooks. Any rowers surviving below ought to be trying to get anyone climbing the sides with spear thrusts through the ports, but he doubted many would do so.

It surprised him that the trireme was trying to board them so quickly. He'd expected it to try to sink them with several ramming thrusts before they attempted to storm the deck. Someone, he surmised, must have recognized Antony. They knew this was the flagship, and who could forego the honor of killing the man they believed to be the cause of the war?

“Ram left!” Antony cried out, and this time Vorenus didn't have time to look before the world lurched again as a second ship rammed them on the opposite side, sending the men sprawling up against the deck rails they'd braced against seconds before.

He and Pullo scooted upright, leaning the backs of their heads against the low wood wall of the shaking railing. A grappling hook clanged over the side, landing between them and then pulling back quickly to slam its iron spikes into the railing just between their heads. Vorenus, amid the screams of men and the raging sea, ceased holding his death at arm's length and embraced it. He began to laugh, and Pullo laughed, too.

Antony was gathering up the archers in a squadron at the bow of the boat, even as portions of his guard formed up around him. The ranged volleys from other ships had stopped now that Octavian's men were preparing to board them, but Vorenus was quite certain that their situation had not improved. The ocean waters roiled beneath the three bound ships, crashing their hulls into one another and lifting the bronze rams pierced in the flagship's side up and down with a sound like great millstones smashing.

On the opposite side of the deck, the first of Octavian's men were coming up over the side. Titus Pullo and Lucius Vorenus, side by side and laughing, rushed to meet them.

 

17

O
CTAVIAN
'
S
G
LORY

ACTIUM, 31 BCE

From atop a covered siege tower raised above the deck of the Imperator's flagship, Juba watched the battle unfold with a growing feeling of unease. His stomach was already twisted and knotted from the pitch and roll of the storm-troubled waves, both amplified by his height above the water, but he knew that his sense of dread was more than mere seasickness or even the fear of death. Octavian, he was certain, was going to make him use the Trident of Poseidon again.

This highest level of the tower was scarcely populated. Aside from himself, the only men standing with Octavian were six praetorian guards, the traitorous general Delius, and a signalman with flags, relaying the Imperator's messages to the fleet. A few arrows had slipped around the edges of the metal roof above them and lay broken underfoot. And a long chest, containing the Trident itself, was strapped to the rear wall nearest the ladder. All else on the platform was spray and rain and the echo of shouts from the common men on the decks far below them.

This flagship was one of their few relatively large vessels, and Octavian had arranged for it to be centered in the mass of their northern flank, facing Antony's personal assault. A long line of smaller, faster, and—Octavian had noted this in particular during their planning the previous night—more expendable triremes lay before them, stretched out into the waves and weather and taking the brunt of the attack so far. Just at the edge of his sight to their left, Juba could see another of these larger, hulking ships in the storm: the quinquereme with Agrippa aboard. As he watched, one of its tall ballistae launched a rock big enough to be seen through the thick rain as it hurtled skyward.

If Octavian was bothered by the pitching sea, he didn't show it. He stood, stance wide and arms on the railing, swiveling his gaze to take in the unfolding events of the battle. Not far away a firepot exploded on the deck of one of their triremes, scattering men in silent flames.

“See how that ship's oars grow sloppy,” Octavian said to Juba, ignoring the fire to point to one of Antony's nearby Egyptian-built ships. Its rowers were clearly no longer in rhythm, some moving forward while others pulled back. With many of its legs thus tangled, others completely stilled and hanging limp in the water, the great bug of a thing appeared to be wounded, only limping its way toward them under the heavy onslaught of archers and ballistae.

“It won't be long now,” Juba said, not certain what event he was referring to but hoping against despair that it would be a victory without use of the Trident.

“No,” agreed Octavian, eyes still scanning the horizon. “Not long.”

“The Imperator's plan has been a fine one,” Delius said, his voice steady and cold, betraying no emotion as he watched Octavian surgically destroy the men he'd called friends and comrades.

Octavian just nodded, and Juba watched his adopted brother's lips move in little whispers, as if he were working over a problem in his mind, debating with himself as he calculated the next move in his game. The fire on the trireme started to spread, a nearby bireme steering close to take on evacuees.

“No sign?” the Imperator asked over his shoulder, his gaze elsewhere.

For the better part of the last hour, Octavian had been sending some of the smaller ships forward in feinted attacks. His aim was twofold, he said. First, the little charges forced Antony's rowers to break rhythm as they attempted to maneuver their hulking vessels to counter the threats, and this could only serve to tire the men further. Second, and perhaps more important, each would-be attack gained information about the fleet facing them. And Octavian hoped to acquire one piece of information most of all: “Antony,” he'd told them again and again. “Give me Antony.”