Sword of Apollo (32 page)

“What is going on?” asked Ezekiel, his teeth chattering. “What am I supposed to do with this?” he asked, holding up the unlit torch.

Chusor grabbed it from him and dipped it into the burning pot. The torch flamed to life and he handed it back to Ezekiel. “The instant the tube starts spitting naptha, you hold the torch to the funnel tip. Then you must jump back or else you will be burned to a crisp.”

Ezekiel stared from the burning torch to the tube. “I'm a doctor, not a sheep-stuffing firemonger!”

“There's no such thing as a firemonger,” replied Chusor. “Now grab a pandora.” Ezekiel hesitated and Chusor bellowed, “Pick it up!”

Ezekiel reached for one of the clay pots with a trembling hand, gripping it by the handle.

“Don't drop it!”

“Yes. And what else?”

“After I set a ship on fire, throw the pandoras at the hull. But you must throw them hard so they break. It's quite simple, really. A child could do it.”

“Oh, yes, simple,” sneered Ezekiel.

The Korinthians were almost on them now. He could see the enemy warriors on the battle decks quite clearly—archers and spearmen in full armor. If those warriors managed to board the
Spear
, they would slaughter his men as though they were defenseless children.

“That's it! That's it! Put your backs into it!” he heard Ji calling out.

He shot a look at the helmsman. The old man's muscular arms were trembling, but he held the rudder handles firm. The other ships—the
Argo
, the
Spartan Killer
, and the
Aphrodite
—were still in line behind the
Spear
.

An arrow whistled past Ezekiel's head and he let forth a startled scream.

Chusor turned and peered forward, squinting into the driving wind at the Korinthian triremes. The two lead ships started to converge on the
Spear
. An arrow flew at Chusor—for a split second he saw it frozen before his eyes. He didn't have time to flinch, let alone duck. The tip grazed his cheek and slammed into the balustrade behind him.

“Gods! What are those?” Chusor asked out loud, for he had suddenly noticed something strange about the two lead Korinthian ships. They each had high double rams jutting from either side of their upper prows—long beams capped with bronze that stuck forward like the tusks of a boar. He had heard rumor of this Korinthian innovation: “boar teeth,” they were said to be called. The Korinthians weren't going to meet them head-on, ram to ram. Instead they were bent on destroying the
Spear
's outrigger deck—killing the stool rowers and thus disabling the boat's best oarsmen, then moving on to the next ship in line. The ships would all be sitting ducks after falling victim to that sort of maneuver.

One of the lead Korinthian ships—the one on the left—broke away from the other like a hunting dog anxious to be first upon the prey.

“Abandon the stool decks!” Chusor screamed at Ji. “Get the men to the gangway!”

“Leave your oars!” Ji shouted instantly, pulling men off their seats and shoving them into the gangway. “Now!”

The ship was almost on them—coming at them as fast as a charging horse.

“Pump! Diokles, pump!”

A moment later the Korinthian trireme hit the
Spear
, its upper ram plowing through the timbers of the outrigger deck on the
Spear
's left side like a giant's fist.

The first ten seats of the outrigger deck, now empty of oarsmen, exploded in a shower of splinters.

Agrios turned the
Spear
hard to the right and the Korinthian's ram came clear of the trireme before it could rip apart the entire outrigger. The two vessels were so close together now that the warriors crowding the top of the Korinthian ship could have leapt with ease onto the
Spear
's battle deck, but the Korinthian vessel was moving too fast to make this feat possible—it would have been like jumping safely from one moving war chariot to another. The triremes passed, hull to hull, and in a few seconds the Korinthian's stern was even with the
Spear
's prow. An archer standing near the Korinthian's helmsman, barely ten feet away, aimed his arrow at Chusor's head and pulled back the string—

Suddenly a clear liquid spewed forth from the tube attached to the bolt shooter, and Chusor sprayed the surprised archer, helmsman, and four armored warriors with the poisonous mist. The archer, blinded, sent his arrow flying over Chusor's head. Chusor directed the stream of naptha along the hull, dousing the oarsmen at the back of the boat. As the Korinthian ship cruised past, Chusor directed the stream onto the waves, screaming, “Give me fire!”

The stunned doctor hesitated, then lurched forward and thrust the torch against the tube. Fire exploded from the nozzle, billowing out and singing the beard from Ezekiel's face, and he fell backward. But a stream of fire erupted from the hose all the way down to the sea. The water itself roared to life—the strange fire burning on the top of the waves as though it were enchanted by a god. A trail of fire meandered quickly across the sea and up the side of the Korinthian ship, setting rowers on fire and traveling in a blazing line to ignite the men on the upper deck who had been sprayed. They caught fire like pine-pitch torches. The Korinthian helmsman burst into flames and leapt from his seat, flinging himself into the water.

Chusor watched in awe. It had only taken a few seconds for the fire to race across the water once the naptha had been lit. The Korinthian ship was already spinning out of control. But in the heat of the battle he had forgotten about the other Korinthian ship that was next in line.

A sound of splintered wood exploded in Chusor's ears and the
Spear
shook. He turned to the right. The second Korinthian trireme had run into them with its top ram, driving into the
Spear
's other outrigger deck. The ships were now locked together like two wrestlers. The host of armored Korinthian hoplites, kneeling on the battle deck, made ready to leap across to the
Spear
.

But Chusor turned the flame-spitting tube in their direction, dousing the warriors with liquid fire. The flames roiled over them in a cloud of orange-and-black death. The warriors shrieked as the skin melted from their faces and hands.

“Throw the pandoras!” shouted Chusor.

Ezekiel flung one of the pots and it burst apart on the enemy deck. A red flame roared halfway up the height of the mast, catching the flaxen sail on fire.

The next two Korinthian ships in line, evidently scared off by the sight of the burning ships, veered suddenly away from the
Spear
like spooked horses. But Chusor was able to spray one of them as it passed close by, setting the deck, rigging, sails, and helmsman on fire. Without a man at the rudder the ship went out of control, heading straight for the rocky shore.

Suddenly the fire from the tube went out. The bronze container of naptha had run dry.

“Refill the container!” Chusor shouted below. There were two more amphoras filled with naptha, but they had to be poured into the bronze container.

“I'm working on it!” Diokles shouted back.

The ship attached to the
Spear
burned like a massive floating bonfire, and with every pandora that Ezekiel threw at the deck and hull the flames roared higher.

Chusor glanced down at the ruined stool deck. Ji and four men were already at work hacking off the Korinthian's upper tusk ram where it was lodged in the framework, holding them fast to the burning vessel. The roaring fire on the enemy ship licked at the
Spear
's side planks.

“Hurry, Ji!” Chusor yelled as he sent an arrow flying into the face of a Korinthian warrior who was leaning out of the Korinthian's outrigger deck, plunging his spear at Ji and the others.

The axes of Ji and his men flew, and soon the enemy ram came free and splashed into the sea. The
Spear
's mariners pushed off from Korinthian trireme, using their oars to shove their ship away from the doomed vessel, even as enemy warriors leapt to the
Spear
for safety and were beaten back by the mariners with their bare fists or hewed with axes and pushed over the side. They sank like stones in their armor, burning even as they plunged into the depths from this uncanny fire that an ocean of water would not quench.

 

SIXTEEN

Nikias, Konon, and Melitta stood on the bald hillside above the coast, struck dumb by the awesome spectacle of the sea battle taking place before their eyes in the light of dawn.

They had caught sight of the two lines of ships below, heading for each other from opposite directions on an inevitable path to destruction. Nikias had plainly made out the figures of Chusor and Ezekiel standing on the prow of the trireme, with the three other ships in a staggered line behind. When the first Korinthian vessel slammed into the outrigger deck of the
Spear
, it took a split second for the cracking sound of splintered wood to carry across the water to Nikias's ears, and Melitta fell to her knees and cried out in fear, “Father!”

What happened next—the dreamlike chaos of a sea battle watched from afar—played out so fast that it made Nikias's head swim: fire arcing through the air, another ship colliding with the
Spear
that was quickly torched, a third ship set on fire, and burning men leaping to their deaths in the churning waves.

Only a few minutes had gone by, but already three of the mighty Korinthian triremes were fiery wrecks. Two more had collided with each other in their panic to avoid the
Spear
and its terrible flame-throwing weapon, and were now sailing out of control toward the rocky shore, the ram of one ship lodged in the twin rudders of the other like a dog with its nose in another dog's arse.

“Gods! Look!” said Konon, just as the
Argo
and a Korinthian ship met prow to prow.

Crack!

The noise carried up the hillside like the sound of two mountain sheep ramming horns, and the stern of each ship seemed to rise up for an instant from the force of the meeting. Or was that a trick of Nikias's imagination? Mariners from the
Argo
swarmed over the prow and onto the enemy ship but were met by a force of equal numbers.

The
Spear
, despite its partially ruined outrigger decks on both sides, had somehow managed to get itself back under oar power. It headed straight at the two Korinthian triremes that were locked together ram to rudder. When it was within twenty feet the arc of fire roared to life again and Chusor moved the spray back and forth relentlessly, like a cruel and unforgiving god of fire, punishing the Korinthians, turning their ships to burning hulks, burning its mariners alive as though they were twigs cast into the coals of an ore furnace.

“Look!” said Konon, pointing to where the last two Korinthian ships had turned out to sea and were fleeing the battle. “They're running!”

Nikias stared back at the battle. The
Aphrodite
and the
Democracy
had finally caught up with the
Argo
. They came to a drifting stop along either side of the Korinthian trireme that the
Argo
had rammed and its men leapt to the battle deck of the enemy vessel to join their brothers in the slaughter.

“Come down to the water!” said Melitta with excitement. “My father is heading to the cove to pick up our people.”

The
Spear
had disengaged from the battle. Its fire had gone out and it was moving toward the triangular promontory in the distance. The battle was won. Hundreds of the enemy had been burned alive, along with five of their ships. One Korinthian trireme was captured and two others were already far away, fleeing to the west. Chusor's genius had saved them all. But where was Helena?

Nikias pulled himself away from the sight of the burning ships and followed Melitta—she had bolted over the ridgeline in the direction of the cove.

“Come on!” he called to Konon as he ran, for the Athenian had not moved, evidently hypnotized by the sea battle.

“Eh?”

“Let's go!” said Nikias.

They ran for another quarter of a mile, chasing after the long-legged and deerlike Melitta, who outpaced them both. Suddenly she came to a stop on the edge of a cliff.

“No!” she screamed.

Nikias sprinted up to her and stared down at a rocky point jutting into the heaving sea. This jagged headland was shaped like an inverted triangle, or a primitive two-sided axe head wedged into the shore, creating two protected coves on either side. The narrower and deeper inlet on the left was deserted. But the bigger bay on the right had a wide, crescent-shaped beach that was strewn with corpses, and a black Korinthian trireme—alive with activity—sat in the calm, shallow water just offshore. A battle had been fought here—a brief and bloody battle in which one side had been completely overwhelmed and vanquished. The men and women had fled from the stronghold to the Double Axe cove, only to find the enemy already waiting for them. The men were slain, but the women and children were kept alive and now Korinthian warriors were frantically handing up this human chattel to mariners on the outrigger deck, who pulled them roughly aboard, tossing them into the hold like sacks of wheat.

A cry ripped from Nikias's throat as he caught sight of Helena. She was kicking and screaming, pulled aboard by two mariners—one holding her under each arm. They dragged her onto the deck and pummeled her until she stopped moving.

Their prizes stowed, the Korinthian warriors scrambled up the landing ladders. Almost immediately the ship's oars swept back and forth as one, and the trireme cruised away from the shore, moving swiftly toward the promontory that protected the twin coves while Melitta shrieked with outrage at the top of her lungs, “Come back! Come back!”