But as he watched, the foremast in the bow of his new capture began to rise, stayed by four lines running aft. The marines were pulling like sailors – not the time, apparently, for old grudges – and the foremast came up and was belayed as smoothly as if it had been done in a yard.
Neiron was lagging, holding the
Arete
at a walking pace. He was waiting for his king – when Satyrus ranged alongside, his hands white-knuckling on his oars, afraid he’d slip and send his oar loom into
Arete
’s oar loom – Neiron called out across the water.
‘Fight, lord? Or run?’ he called.
Satyrus leaned on his oars again. ‘Give me space!’ he called. ‘I want to get clear of their sterns!’ The enemy was far too close. ‘Run!’ he called.
Neiron waved.
The
Arete
turned to port and Satyrus tried to do the same, getting his vulnerable starboard side clear of the enemy, but the port-side steering oar snapped under his hand – probably victim to the original collision and the boarding action. Then chaos ensued, his marines trying to find a spare oar in a strange ship, and their new oarsmen afraid – afraid of massacre, of defeat. Neiron fell in to port, keeping station just a quarter-stade distant. Both had their foresails up now, and with the wind in them they began to move well, even for heavy ships.
Satyrus spared time for a glance around. He could see trouble to the south – either there were new ships there, or someone had worked out that he was not on their side. But the rear of Demetrios’ fleet was all confusion – the confusion of victory, but no ship challenged them as they began to pull away. Laertes was trying to compensate for the lack of steering oars by trailing the ship’s oars, first one side and then the other, but the result slowed the ship and sent them in a lazy curve back under the sterns of the enemy. No ship responded – no ship seemed to notice them.
No ship except the great tenner, the mighty deceres that had started the battle behind the centre. Satyrus assumed that the ship was Plistias’ command ship, and he had no intention of engaging. Through no choice of his own, he had to pass close under the stern of the leviathan, and just as he began his pass, wincing to be so close to so much danger, the enemy flagship began to back away from the pair of quadremes that she had engaged – grappling both and boarding them simultaneously, so large was his marine contingent compared to theirs – a hundred men massacring perhaps fifteen on each quadreme, leaving them adrift, with blood running in trickles from the deck edges like a child’s attempt to write on parchment where the rowers had been murdered to save time. And the vast weight of the enemy ship backed under control, her oars sweeping like the legs of some ungainly millipede.
Neiron saw the enemy flagship begin to move at the same moment that Satyrus saw it begin to back, and both of them shouted orders at their oar masters. The same orders.
‘Ramming speed! All oars!’ Satyrus shouted, and Neiron gave the same command.
Satyrus felt the surge of power through the soles of his feet, but the huge enemy vessel was already moving and her stern towered over their side, and the enemy crew was now aware of them – shouting at them, assuming they were friendly – and then realising their error.
Satyrus stood tall at the starboard oar, testing his weight against them. ‘I intend to sheer off!’ he shouted at his temporary oar master across the length of the deck.
Laertes nodded and shouted down through the amidships hatch at the rowers. Satyrus shook his head. His hands were clenched on the red-painted steering oars like a
pankration
fighter in the last grappling of the bout, and his brow was covered in sweat. There was blood down his right side and back, and he was cold.
Apollodorus stood by him, covering him with his aspis. The enormous enemy ship had archers, and they were firing down at him.
‘Thanks,’ Satyrus said.
‘Why not turn?’ Apollodorus asked, grasping the rail.
‘Too close,’ Satyrus said. ‘If I turn to port, our stern is no farther from them. If I turn to starboard, I’m running right down their side – look at those war engines!’
The tenner loomed over them like an adult over a child. Her sides rose like cliffs, and she had the same advantage over
Atlantae
that
Arete
had had over the light triremes. Neiron, a quarter-stade astern, had one advantage, however: all of his starboard engines could bear, and none of the enemy’s engines could – yet.
Satyrus caught at the shoulder of Apollodorus’ chiton. ‘Get the forward engine firing,’ he said.
Apollodorus nodded. ‘I’ll have a go,’ he said.
So close.
Satyrus jerked the remaining oar as another marine came up the main ladder dragging an oar. Satyrus managed to nudge the bow off to port and then straighten again – port, and back straight – trying to cheat away from the enemy stern and yet maintain all his speed. And the marine – not anyone Satyrus really knew – had a head on his shoulders. Now he was lashing the new steering oar home against the side with quick, professional knots.
But the new oar was just too late.
‘Oars in! Now!’ Satyrus roared, and Laertes repeated it instantly. They were too close – there was no way to avoid the collision, and Satyrus could already see – as if it were a maths lesson – that if the enemy ship hit his stern, the two ships would come to rest broadside to broadside, each pivoting on the collision at the stern, crushing their oars between them.
Grapples were flying, now. The deceres wanted them. One thumped home into the stern rail just an arm’s length from Satyrus’ shoulder, and another into the deck just forward, and then the enemy stern tapped into their stern – the angle was too acute for the enemy ship to damage them, but momentum and the grapples spun them to starboard, so that as the mammoth ship coasted, her rowers desperately trying to get their oars in, the smaller
Atlantae
crashed alongside like a tethered foal against a fence, splintering oars and making a mess of the magnificent enemy ship’s paintwork.
Atlantae
’s oarsmen got their port-side oars in and home before they were rubbing alongside.
A flight of arrows struck all around Satyrus, but by luck or the will of the gods none of them struck him.
Satyrus wanted to curse. He felt a tide of despair, the spiritual kin to the feeling in his back and the cold in his spine, but he shook his head.
We were that close to escape
, he thought. Even as he watched, his newly raised foremast collapsed, splintering, and the sail obscured the whole foredeck. There was a pause.
Surrender?
But there was no surrender in a sea fight. If he’d considered it, the gouts of blood painting the sides of the pair of derelict quadremes just to the east told of what lay in store for him.
Forward, Apollodorus got the one heavy engine on the port side to fire. The whole ship moved when the great bow released, and the bolt went right in through an oar port and appeared to vanish into the hide of a great beast, like a barbed arrow into an elephant.
Just aft, the
Arete
fired all three of her engines together, and the bolts slammed into the deceres. But they had no more effect than a child’s sling does against a mad bull.
Satyrus let go of the oars and slipped his aspis onto his shoulder. He felt perversely annoyed to have to die here, in a lost battle for a monarch who didn’t deserve his sacrifice. Nothing about the situation was remotely heroic – he was only in this position because he’d mistimed his turn as he backed away from the battle, and it was his own hubris in seizing the stricken
Atlantae
that had brought him to his death.
He got his helmet strap in his right hand and pulled it tight. ‘No one’s fault but my own,’ he said. ‘Herakles, stand with me.’
The smell of wet fur was sharp, heady, pungent. The smell heartened him – meant he was still in touch with the other world, the world of the heroes. But it touched him in another way; he’d never smelled the cat so clearly, and he suspected that the veils between his world and the world of the heroes were stretched thin.
I’m going to die
, he thought. It was not a new thought, but it had never been so immediate, and he had a frisson of hesitation as he thought of fifty inconsequential things he would like to have done. He thought, among a hundred other foolish thoughts, of Miriam’s hips under her chiton. It made him smile.
‘Not dead yet,’ he said aloud – so loud that the marine at his elbow grinned back.
‘No, we ain’t, lord.’ The man stood taller for a moment, and then settled his apsis on his shoulder and raised his spear.
‘Here they come,’ he said.
Satyrus wished he could remember the man’s name. He’d got a new oar from below, lashed it in place and then got his aspis between Satyrus and the enemy arrows. None of it was the stuff of the
Iliad
, but it was all done fast, and well – the sort of things that could tip a battle one way or another, as completely as a commander’s decisions.
There were fifty enemy marines in the first rush – fifty professional soldiers. Apollodorus had his twenty all formed up, and Satyrus and his companion –
he’s called Necho
. Satyrus suddenly found the man’s name against a welter of recollections. Together they raced forward, abandoning the helmsman’s station and apparently fleeing. Enemy marines, clambering over the stern, mocked them.
As they came up to Apollodorus amidships, the marine captain was stating his orders – calmly and quietly so as not to be heard by the enemy.
‘Look scared. Hang back. Look unwilling – and when I give the word, charge. Any man who shirks is a dead man.’ He paused. ‘Look like the crap you aren’t!’ he said. He pointed aft, past the enemy. ‘
Arete
is on the way. Show some yourselves.’
This speech seemed to put heart into the marines, who were, of course, used to Apollodorus and his acerbic commentary. No man who followed him would expect a salutation to the gods or a flowery speech.
The enemy marines came over the stern, and Apollodorus let them get aboard – most of them. He played that he was terrified – that his men were hanging back.
He flicked a look at Satyrus, who nodded. Apollodorus was a marine for a living, and Satyrus was merely a king. The nod permitted Apollodorus to keep the command.
‘Cowards!’ Apollodorus shouted. An arrow from the enemy stern hit his helmet and danced away. ‘Stand your ground, stay with me – NOW!’ he bellowed, all play-acting gone, and he raced down the deck for the mass of enemy marines.
Satyrus would have said that it was impossible to surprise men in open warfare, on an open deck in the midst of a battle – but the enemy marines were plainly shocked when the whole of his marine contingent rushed them as one man. Perhaps they had been counting on negotiation, surrender, massacre—
Satyrus slammed his aspis into his first man, an officer in an ornate blue and gilt Attic helmet with a pair of feather crests, and the man went down hard, flying back into his file partner and he, too, went down, and Satyrus put his butt-spike into the second man’s eye slot, ripped it free and plunged the fighting point, the sharp steel, into the neck of a third man. Then blows rained on his shield like storm-driven waves on a ship’s bow – three, four, five and he was rocked back as one blow almost cost him his balance. He thrust his spear out, stabbing blind, his eyes under his shield rim in a storm of pain, and he felt his needle-sharp point cut – slide – plunge like a knife into roast meat, and then the shaft was snapped by a blow from the right, and he had nothing but a bronze butt-spike and a few feet of ash. He blocked an overarm blow from an axe with his shattered shaft – the axe cut away part of his own crest in a shower of blue and white horsehair – and he threw the butt-spike at an unarmoured giant to his front and made the man flinch back, and then Apollodorus was
into
the man, under his guard, stabbing as quickly as thought, once, twice, and the big enemy marine folded and vanished from Satyrus’ limited line of sight. What felt like an armoured fist struck Satyrus’ helmeted head and he rocked, tottered but did not fall because he was hemmed in so close by other fighters – he stumbled, recovered his balance, blessing long days on the sand of the palaestra. Without conscious thought he got his right hand under his armpit and pulled out his sword, stepped forward and cut overarm at the first man to come under his hand, and hit the man on top of his helmet crest so that he fell, unconscious.
The enemy was roaring, shouting, and marines were
pouring
onto the deck, but Satyrus and Apollodorus has cleared the deck around them, and the first batch of enemy marines were penned into the stern, terrified and yet shouting for aid – for something –
Save the king!
they called to each other and came in again.
Satyrus looked down between his legs and realised that he was straddling the enemy commander, who he had felled with his shield rush in the first seconds of the melee. He only had to look at the man for a second to know him.
‘Demetrios!’ he said.
‘Satyrus the Euxine,’ said the man lying under him. Demetrios the Golden grabbed his ankle and threw him in one practised move, and then Satyrus was on the deck, his left arm encumbered by his shield – a wonderful implement in a sea fight, but an impediment in grappling – and Demetrios reached out for his windpipe but Satyrus drove his sword hilt into the golden man’s faceplate and the silvered bronze buckled under the blow and Demetrios grunted. Blood fountained. Still, Demetrios landed a heavy blow to Satyrus’ throat just as Satyrus got his feet under him and he was rocked back, blackness encroaching on his vision and his breathing ruined, just as the second group of enemy marines charged.
Apollodorus’ men met them like gods with a charge of their own – heavily outnumbered, but desperate and charged with Apollodorus’ quiet courage – and the sight of
Arete
’s foremast looming up close. Demetrios was back-pedalling like a crab on his hands and knees, trying to get to his feet. Satyrus managed to cling to consciousness – Demetrios was leaking blood from under his helmet, but Satyrus had to assume that was just a broken nose.
That’s why they’re dumping every marine they have into my ship
, he thought.
Save the king, indeed
. He got to his feet, as did Demetrios, just a spear length or two apart.