Thunder of the Gods (3 page)

Ravilla shook his head, the wind ruffling his thick black hair.

‘He swears that if he’d not made sure we made a decent sacrifice to Neptune every time we made land safely, we’d all have been at the bottom of the ocean a month ago. Apparently the weather at this end of the Middle Sea hasn’t been this quiet in the winter closed season for all the years he’s served in the navy.’

Scaurus grinned at the grizzled sailor’s back as he stooped to berate one of the flagship’s oarsmen for some small infringement.

‘Has he considered that he might simply be terrifying the waves into submission?’

He looked back over the vessel’s stern at the line of ships following in their wake at precise four-hundred-pace intervals.

‘After all, he seems to have your fleet’s trierarchi drilled to within an inch of their collective lives.’

The procurator shook his head ruefully.

‘I know. I sometimes wonder which one of us is really in command of the fleet.’

His answer was a hollow laugh.

‘Welcome to my world. Have you ever seen your man there and my first spear talking to each other? They’re like two fighting dogs sniffing each other’s backsides and trying to work out which of them would win if it came to blows. And trust me, when Julius decides that my cohorts are to do a thing in a certain way, that’s the way in which that thing will be done, with no ifs or buts. I’m allowed the luxury of determining our strategy, and after that …’

‘You’re in the hands of the professionals?’

‘Exactly.’

Ravilla looked at him in silence for a moment.

‘You said
cohorts
, legatus, rather than
legion
. And while my father told me at great length never to pry into another man’s business when I was a child …’

He left the question hanging in the crisp sea air rather than asking it directly.

‘You’d like to know exactly how it is that a man wearing the same thin stripe as the one on your tunic ends up in command of one of the emperor’s legions.’

Ravilla shrugged.

‘You’ll admit that it is something of a curiosity? Of course I’ve heard the stories of how Marcus Aurelius sometimes gave command of his legions to legion first spears who’d been promoted to the equestrian class during the German War, but I thought that such egalitarianism had been quietly forgotten once Commodus had made peace with the tribes after his father’s death. The status quo has been restored, and to command a legion anywhere other than Egypt, a man must once again be of the senatorial class, if not already actually in possession of his father’s ring and death mask. And suddenly here you are, quite obviously an equestrian like me, and yet blessed with a legion!’

Scaurus smiled tightly.

‘And you’d like to know the secret. How does a man make that impossible leap to fame and fortune without first putting a thick stripe on his tunic?’

‘Of course.’

The legatus shook his head.

‘First you’d have to provide a man close to the throne a service that would show him how valuable you could be to him in the future. Like giving him the opportunity to take the place of the emperor’s most trusted adviser, that kind of thing.’

Ravilla raised his eyebrows.

‘You were part of
that
?’

Scaurus shrugged in his turn.

‘It’s not something I’ll readily admit to having participated in, but let’s say, just for the sake of the discussion, that I was.’

‘Then the man who replaced the Praetorian Prefect must owe you a huge debt.’

‘And you think that’s it? The gift of a legion as the reward for the chance to take ultimate power?’

‘Wasn’t it?’

The legatus shook his head.

‘Who could be more dangerous than a man ruthless enough to engineer the death of the man he seeks to supplant? Why would he leave anyone who was part of the act alive to tell the story?’

Ravilla nodded slowly.

‘I take your point. Unless he wanted more from the men in question?’

‘Indeed. It seems that our particular capabilities were too valuable to be discarded, once we’d served our initial purposes. See my tribune there?’

The procurator frowned at the change in conversational focus, glancing down the ship’s length at the tall, well-muscled figure of a military tribune clad in a shining bronze breast plate and bearing his usual two swords, one an infantry gladius with a magnificent eagle’s head pommel. Alongside him stood an older soldier wearing the scaled armour and cross-crested helmet of a legion centurion; the two officers engaged in the routine inspection of the centurion’s men.

‘Yes. He seems a good enough man, if a little … taciturn. The centurion with him though, now
there’s
a dangerous man.’

‘Cotta? He’s sudden death with any weapon you could mention, but the tribune?’

Scaurus grinned at Ravilla.

‘Tribune Corvus could take Cotta to pieces, literally, in the span of a dozen heartbeats. His men call him
“Two Knives”
, because he fights in the style of an old-fashioned dimachaerus. He was taught by a champion gladiator of some fame, a big man who, like Corvus there, always fought with two swords. You might have seen the man’s recent and rather spectacular comeback appearance in the Flavian arena?’

‘You don’t mean …’

Ravilla whispered the gladiator’s name in an awed tone, and when Scaurus nodded in reply, his face took on a fresh expression of amazement. The legatus smiled at his colleague’s genuine astonishment.

‘Indeed. And while his pupil may lack the big man’s sheer brute power, he has a speed with the blade that you might call divine, were you to believe that the gods occasionally bestow their gifts on us mere mortals. He wears a quiet enough demeanour for the most part, but when he’s roused …’

The procurator mused for a moment.

‘So the new man behind the throne must have wanted something more from you? Something that involved your tribune?’

‘He did, and in a roundabout sort of way he got exactly what he wanted from us.’

‘And then?’

Scaurus raised his hands and gestured about him.

‘And then … here we are. Apparently we’re too valuable to be quietly murdered and forgotten about, and so instead we find ourselves sent east to deal with a problem on the empire’s frontier instead. And that feeling of envy you were expressing before?’

Ravilla looked at him for a moment.

‘Has somewhat diminished, I’ll wager, and has been replaced by one rather large question.’

The legatus smiled knowingly.

‘Which, I would imagine, is that given the rather dangerous nature of the information I’ve just shared with you, why in the name of Mithras didn’t I just fabricate some rather more anodyne story to tell you?’

‘Exactly.’

‘And you’re right to be concerned.’

He passed the procurator a scroll, the paper still sealed into a tight tube with wax bearing the imperial mark. Ravilla took it from his hand, grimaced at the seal and then snapped it, opening the message and reading swiftly. After a moment he handed it back to the legatus with a single word.

‘Shit.’

‘Indeed.’

Word spread quickly through the port city of Seleucia, as the flagship and the fleet of warships that followed in her wake appeared over the western horizon in swift and efficient succession, each fresh sighting whipping up the collective state of excitement until the entire port was alive with the news that a fleet of twenty-five warships was approaching. The men tasked with the harbour’s defence ran for their bolt throwers, pulling off heavy waxed canvas covers and going through the motions of winding the weapons’ massive bowstrings back ready to fire, while above them in the lower city’s main tower, the port’s procurator stared out at the oncoming vessels. He looked to his chief pilot, the man who did most of the actual work involved in his role, raising an eyebrow in question. The older man, approaching his sixtieth year with no sign of any urge to retire, took another long look at the line of ships advancing towards the walls of the outer port and then turned back to him with an expression that was as much of perplexity as recognition.

‘If I didn’t know better, I could swear that’s the old
Victoria
leading them in. I remember her from the time she escorted the imperial flagship into harbour back at the start of the last war with the Parthians. But what would the Praetorian fleet be doing this far east at this time of year?’

His superior’s eyebrows arched in surprise.

‘The
Praetorian
fleet?’

‘I know, it’s not likely, is it? But I could swear that’s the old
Victoria
…’

The procurator goggled at him for a moment before turning to his secretary.

‘Have a messenger ready to ride to the governor’s office in Antioch at my command!’

The slave inclined his head respectfully.

‘As you order, sir. And the message?’

‘I’ll know that when I see who walks off that leading ship.’

Ravilla’s navarchus had waved away the offer of a pilot with a grim shake of his head, leaving the cutter wallowing in the quadrireme’s wake.

‘No fucking easterner’s going to scrape my flagship down a harbour wall and then tell me he hadn’t realised she answered her rudder so slowly! Trierarchus, get the sail furled!’

He took the warship out in a wide arc to the west of the port, then straightened her course and guided her towards the opening in the outer harbour’s walls where the two massive moles came within fifty paces of one another, a gap seemingly barely wide enough to admit the vessel. The deck crew had furled the massive sail with their usual practised speed, leaving the oarsmen as the
Victoria
’s only means of propulsion. Scaurus and his officers watched with interest as the walls of the outer harbour loomed on either side of the warship, while the navarchus called out small changes to the men controlling the steering oars and bellowed for the rowers to back water, reducing the big ship’s speed to walking pace. As the gap between the two walls that enfolded the outer harbour enveloped them, he barked out a terse order, his voice raised to carry along the ship’s entire length.

‘Raise oars!’

As one man the rowers pushed the long shafts of their oars forward and downwards, elevating their blades like the furled wings of a swan, and the
Victoria
eased through the gap with no more than twenty paces to either side. The stub end of the wall to their left passed with a gurgle of water racing between stone and ship, while that to their right presented a smooth, unbroken surface that curled around to form the outer harbour’s southern mole.

‘Steering oars, hard left turn! Lower oars! Left-hand side – back water!’

The rowers on the flagship’s left-hand side heaved at their shafts, pulling the
Victoria
round to her left in a graceful turn.

‘Both sides … back water!’

The warship slowed to an imperceptible drift with three swift strokes from the oarsmen, while the navarchus stared about him at the berths available along the northern and southern moles, half of them empty, the others occupied by a variety of vessels. Making a swift decision, he pointed to a vacant section of the northern mole to their left, returning command of the ship to its captain.

‘There! Trierarchus, put us against the wall there!’

The ship cruised slowly up to the mole, sailors on bow and stern throwing ropes to the waiting dock slaves while the rowers pulled their oars inboard to avoid them being trapped between ship and quayside. As the gangplank was dropped into place, Cassius Ravilla walked up its length and stepped onto the mole’s flat stone surface, looking about him with a calculating expression as a group of men hurried out along the wall from the lower city. A middle-aged official who appeared to be their leader bowed deeply, waving an arm at the
Victoria
with an ingratiating smile.

‘Greetings, and welcome to—’

Ravilla raised a hand to silence him, pointing out to the north at the next ship in his squadron, which was bearing down on the harbour’s entrance.

‘My name is Praetorian Fleet Procurator Titus Cassius Ravilla. And do you see that ship? There are another twenty-three just the same in her wake, each one carrying a century of legion infantry. I need twenty-five unloading berths, and I need them now.’

The port official bowed his head again, respectfully acknowledging Ravilla’s seniority as a member of the group of senior equestrians known as the ‘best of men’, those given the empire’s most prestigious commands.

‘You’re carrying soldiers?’

A new voice interjected into their conversation.

‘The Praetorian fleet has been directed to deliver two cohorts of legionaries and myself to Antioch with all possible speed, Procurator. I’m taking command of the Third Gallic, and since I have urgent business with the governor I’ll need my horses unloaded as a matter of priority.’

The official turned to look at Scaurus, who had strolled up the plank behind Ravilla unnoticed, bowing even deeper as the splendour of his uniform sank in.

‘My apologies, Legatus, I didn’t see you there.’ He turned to his assistant. ‘Have the warships berth on the mole, unload their cargo and then pass them on into the inner harbour. We’ve all the facilities you’ll need there, Cassius Ravilla, the port was built for a far larger fleet than we maintain these days. You’ll be able to run your ships ashore and perform any maintenance with the assistance of the port’s carpenters. You do intend docking for the rest of the closed season, I presume?’

Ravilla shot Scaurus a resigned look.

‘It seems that we do.’

Walking up the plank that connected the ship and the mole’s stone surface, laden down by the weight of his weapons, shield and equipment, Sanga spat into the water below, stepping out onto the quay’s flat surface with a smile of satisfaction. His comrade Saratos followed him down the quayside in the long procession of men making their way along the mole under the direction of their officers, looking curiously up at the mountains that loomed over the port.

‘So, is end of voyage.’