Flame of the West (22 page)

  
“Glory and death,” I muttered as I made my reluctant way down to the harbour, “God spare me from either.”

27.

The familiar twinges of sickness descended on me before my transport had even crawled out of the harbour. She was an ugly, slow-moving vessel, and wallowed low in the water, thanks to the weight of supplies and animals packed into her hull. The terrified shrieking of my horses, cooped up in tiny pens below deck, did nothing to improve my condition. 

   “This ship is too full,” I complained to the captain, a hard-faced Greek
with a jagged scar where his nose used to be, “look how low she rides in the water. She may sink of her own accord without any aid from the Goths.”

   “Do your bit to lighten the load, then,
you old bugger,” he snarled, “and go and puke over the side. You look green enough. But you won’t do it on my quarterdeck, you hear? Not if you want to keep the skin on your back.”

  
I struggled down the ladder onto the maindeck and heaved my breakfast over the rail. A group of Cilician sailors stampeded past me, trailing onto the end of a rope and yelling at me to stand aside. I crouched against the side, hand clapped over my mouth, and waited for the boiling chaos in my guts to subside a little.

   When I had recovered sufficiently, I stood on shaking legs and looked out to sea. The other transports were keeping pace with us, strung out in a line from north to south. They were also over-full, and laboured through the water with all the grace and speed of a pack of dying turtles.

   The rest of the fleet were spread out to the north-west, and divided into squadrons, with the smaller dromons acting as escorts to the galleys. John’s flagship was just visible, a lean black shape knifing easily through the sea at the head of the first squadron.

  
By my reckoning, Ancona lay more or less directly to the west. We were heading north-west, towards the region of Sena Gallica, a small port town on the Adriatic coast. Unsurprisingly, John the Sanguinary had not confided his battle-plan to me, but I guessed the Gothic fleet had been sighted there. 

   I remained at my post, rubbing
my aching belly and silently begging God to restore my strength: enough, at least, to give a reasonable account of myself in the fight. Terrified of being dragged under if I fell into the sea, I had discarded my mail shirt, and for protection wore only my old cavalry helmet and an iron-rimmed buckler strapped to my left arm.

   The Greek captain appeared at
my side. “Recovered?” he asked.

   “Not really,” I replied with a grimace, “the sea has always been my bane. Poseidon must have a grudge against me.”

   He gave a mirthless little chuckle. “Got any more questions for me? I noticed you staring at the fleet.”

  
I looked at him warily, but he seemed friendly enough, and not about to have the skin flayed from my back.

   “Well
,” I said, pointing to the north, “shouldn’t our galleys be reducing sail? At this rate we’re going to be left behind.”

   The bulk of our fleet was indeed speeding away, towards the barely visible line of the Italian coast. It was a bright, blustery Autumn day, and the wind was in their favour.

   “Yes,” replied the captain, “won’t we just?”

   The hairs bristled on the back of my neck as the import
of his words sank in. My reply was cut off as the damned ship gave a sudden lurch, almost bowling me off my feet.

   His brawny arm shot out to seize my arm. “Steady,” he said, “
can’t have you falling overboard. We’ll have need of every man soon enough, even a sickly land-crawler like you.”

   “Bait,” he added before I could ask the obvious question, “our admiral is dangling us before the Goths like a prime bit of meat, in the hope they snap us up.”

  
I gaped at him, and at the distant blood-red sail of John’s flagship.

  “Bastard,” I spat. He was deliberately sacrificing the transports, and me into the bargain.

   In hinds
ight, his strategy was sound. John was directing the fleet according to his soldier’s instincts, deliberately exposing his flank to lure the enemy into a fatal charge.

   At the time, with my stomach churning and my blood boiling, I was
in no mood to appreciate his clever tactics. The captain, on the other hand, appeared strangely indifferent.

  
“It was this, or hang,” he said with a crooked grin, “me and my crew are all pirates, and should have gone to the gallows last week. John spared our lives on condition we took service aboard his death-ships.”

   “The other transports are the same,” he added, “all crewed by the scum of the sea.
”

   “If the Goths descend on us, we will all die,” I said.

   “Maybe. They might take us prisoner, or we can try and swim for it. We have a small chance. A better chance, at least, than the gallows offers.”

   I could do nothing but wait, stranded aboard
the lumbering transport with its crew of condemned sea-rats. The remainder of our fleet was almost invisible now, a row of tiny sails bobbing on the far horizon to the north-west.

   My hope was that the Goths would refuse John’s bait. Another hour or so passed. I spent the time offering up multitudes of silent prayers
, but God is endlessly fickle, and chose to ignore me.

   “Enemy sighted!” bawled the look-out from his vantage point at the top of the mainmast, “off the port bow, there!”

   I lurched across to the port side of the maindeck, and joined the crewmen staring out to sea, towards the west.

   “Look there,” growled a villainous-looking Cilician, all scars and stubble and barely suppressed aggression, “
seven orange sails. Galleys, curse them, with a double bank of oars apiece.”

   I looked where he pointed, and saw them clear enough. Seven Gothic warships bearing down on us from the west. The wind was against them, but
thanks to their oars they were still ploughing through the water at a fair speed.

  
I made some swift calculations. The enemy ships were of a roughly equal size to our galleys, and probably carried some two score fighting men apiece, besides the crew and oarsmen.

   Our transports carried no more than twenty crewmen
each. They were a tough-looking set, as pirates tend to be, but hopelessly outnumbered. We couldn’t hope to make much of a fight of it.

  
The captain had no thoughts of surrender. “Don’t just stand there gawping!” he bawled, “fetch your weapons, you misbegotten sons of pigs, and prepare to repel boarders!”

   My heart sank as I watched his men scramble to arm. John hadn’t supplied them with much – why bother wasting decent gear on the condemned? – and most could lay their hands on nothing better than a dagger and light throwing javelin. Five had bows a
nd a sheaf of arrows apiece. There was no armour aboard, and only the captain and his first mate were fortunate enough to have helmets and shields.

  
I saw frantic activity aboard our fellow transports as the men aboard them prepared to die. The dry heaving in my guts was replaced by the familiar swelling of fear, and I badly needed to void my bladder.

   Fear and a desire to piss were preferable to all-consuming sickness, and I felt some of my strength return.
Not much, but enough to strike a blow or two before the end. 

   The steady thump-thump-thump of
drums sounded across the water, pounding out the rhythm for the oarsmen aboard the Gothic ships. They were slaves, many of them Roman soldiers taken prisoner during the recent wars. Now they were forced to bring about the doom of their countrymen.

   My heart thumped in time with the drums. I could seldom recall feeling so nervous before a fight, but I was ill, and old, and had not seen action for over ten years. Nor had I ever fought at sea, trying to keep my footing on the heaving deck of a ship.

   “Javelin-men on the port side,” the captain’s harsh voice barked from above, “archers with me on the foredeck. Move, you steaming piles of dung.”

  
Bare feet drummed across the planking of the deck as his crew rushed to obey. None seemed to care what I did, so I retreated to the mainmast and rested my back against the wood, hoping it would aid my balance.

  
Guttural yells and insults drifted across the water. The galleys were closing in, so near I could see the rows of fierce, bearded faces under spiked helmets lining their decks.

   The leading ship, also the largest, had a kind of raised tower or castle near the stern. A giant banner displaying two crossed red axes against a black field flew from its timber battlements.

   I saw a knot of Gothic officers standing under the banner. One of them, a towering figure in gleaming scale mail and a rich blue cloak, was Indulf, a former mercenary in the Roman army who had defected to the Goths. Totila had made him co-admiral of the fleet.

   For all his talents, Totila was a poor judge of character. Indulf was a thief and a p
irate, as well as a traitor, and his first instinct was to go for easy plunder instead of following orders.

   John the Sanguinary’s ploy had worked. Seeing the bait dangled before his eyes, Indulf had lunged at it like a starving dog, with no thought for the consequences, or the rest of the Roman fleet.

   This was small comfort for us, who stood in his way.  

  
“’Ware arrows!” bellowed the first mate. The Gothic archers packed onto the foredeck of the leading galley were bending their bows, aiming upwards to send their shafts sailing high across the water, down on our heads.

  
I crouched beside the mainmast, raising my pathetic little buckler for all the protection it offered. The thumping of the blasted drums was like thunder in my ears. I was consumed by terror, and struggled to retain control of my straining bladder.

   The crew scattered under the lethal hail of arrows
. One or two were unlucky. Shrieks of pain swept across the deck. My horses, still crammed into the hold below, heard the dreadful cries and responded in kind. The air filled with the noise of dying men and frightened animals, pounding drums, splashing oars, the zip and hiss of arrows, and the triumphant war-songs of the Goths.

   “Shoot!” I heard our captain howl, “give the bastards some of their own gruel!” but resisted the urge to look up: every old soldier knows that is the surest way to receive an arrow in the eye.

   The singing of the Goths rose to a great shout, and the rain of arrows ceased. Their flagship was slowly turning about to present her starboard flank to us, so her archers and javelin throwers could aim downwards and sweep our deck clean before boarding.

   Seen close to, the enemy flagship was huge. Her maindeck loomed over us, packed with cheering warriors, working themselves up into a killing frenzy.

   Four of our men lay scattered about the deck, twitching in their death-throes, bodies feathered with arrows. I observed the flights on the Gothic arrows were dyed red, the kind of irrelevant detail that men often notice in the heat of battle, as a distraction from impending death.

   Another storm of arrows engulfed our ship, along with javelins and throwing darts. More screams. Three more of our men were ushered into death’s embrace, and our captain’s flow of orders were abruptly cut off.

   I saw him clutching at an arrow in his throat, his face suffused with pain and rage. He staggered, trying manfully to pull the arrow free, lost his balance and toppled over the side. He vanished, though I heard a distant splash as his body crashed into the sea. Poseidon had claimed another victim.

  
Deprived of their leader, the crew’s fragile discipline crumbled away. Some flung themselves into the sea after him, hurling away their weapons and leaping over the side. Others ran below to hide, or stood alone or in little groups, resolved to fight to the death.

   Run or hide, stand or swim, death would come for them all. And me. I stood up, shivering
and babbling prayers, and braced myself against the mast.

   Our steersman had been killed, and no-one had replaced him at the tiller. The ship was starting to drift. Then the Goths hurled their grappling irons. The steel claws bit, and held fast, and our little helpless transport was dragged into the deadly embrace of their flagship.

   Waves of Gothic warriors dropped aboard, howling like demons. They looked formidable enough, tall, long-haired men with shields and hatchets, their blue eyes flashing fire, but I had faced them before.

   One of them spotted me and came bounding in for the kill. He was young, with just a downy sc
rap of beard on his chin, and eager to impress his comrades.

  
Too eager, and clumsy. His eyes were wild, and the veins pounded in the side of his neck. I advanced to meet him, planting my feet wide to guard against the pitch and roll of the ship.

   His hatchet flashed through the air, aiming at my head.
Once, I would have easily sidestepped the blow, but now was obliged to get my left arm up and deflect it with my buckler.