The Blood of Gods A Novel of Rome - By Conn Iggulden Page 0,120
it crunched and clicked. The Roman noble had been at his back for years, but for this night, Vedius was alone in command. It was a heady feeling and he loved it.
‘Half-speed!’ he shouted, then he called for a drink to help him shrug off the last of his sleep. One of the Roman legionaries offered water and Vedius laughed at him.
‘I never touch it. Wine feeds the blood, lad. Fetch me a skin!’
Below his feet, the rowing master heard and the drumbeat grew faster. The rowers who had been asleep on their benches shortly before put their backs into it with expert ease. The galleys headed out to sea in tight formation, lunging faster and faster to be first at the prizes ranging on the deep water. They left the island of Capri behind them, a hundred miles north of Sicily.
Agrippa was squinting into the darkness, seeing and losing again the point of light that had appeared in the distance. The night sky had turned around the Pole Star, but dawn was still hours away and he could not understand who might be lighting fires on the hills of Capri as his fleet sailed past in the dark.
‘I need information, Maecenas!’ he said. He thought his friend shrugged, but in the darkness, he could not be sure.
‘No one knows where the enemy fleet is,’ Maecenas said. ‘We have clients on Sicily and every island along this coast, but they can’t keep us informed with no link back to land. You’re running blind, my friend, though I think you have to assume that fire is not just some herdsman warding off the cold.’
Agrippa didn’t reply, his own frustration rendering him mute. The island of Capri was a great dark mass on his right shoulder as he came south, with just one point of light on the highest peak. He strained his eyes into the distant dark for any sign of galleys coming out to hit them.
‘I didn’t plan for an attack at night,’ he muttered. ‘My crews can’t use the grapnels if they can’t see the enemy.’
‘Sometimes the gods play games,’ Maecenas replied lightly.
He sounded supremely unworried and his confidence helped Agrippa to find calm. He would have replied, but he saw something out on the deep water and leaned right over the rail, turning his head back and forth as he tried to make sense of the blurring shadows.
‘Don’t fall,’ Maecenas said, reaching out to grab his shoulder. ‘I don’t want to find myself in command tonight. You’re the only one who understands how it all works.’
‘By all the hells, I see them!’ Agrippa said. He was certain of it: the vague shapes of long galley hulls.
‘Cornicen! Blow three short!’
It was the signal to form up on the flagship and he had to trust that the galley crews knew it meant to follow him. Agrippa snapped half a dozen new orders. The sea was like glass, but he needed light for everything he had planned to do.
Maecenas watched with studied calm as the sails came down and the great oars were lowered into the water. Agrippa’s galley slowed and wallowed, then picked up speed once more as the oars bit and began the rhythmic movement that would push them much faster through the waves. He felt the increase and despite himself he smiled. Around them, the small fleet did the same, all pretence at subterfuge forgotten as the captains yelled their orders.
The lull had brought the enemy galleys closer, though Maecenas could see the white foam from their strokes better than the ships themselves. His throat seemed to have gone dry and he filled another cup for himself, tossing it back.
‘We’ll run south along the coast until dawn,’ Agrippa said. ‘Gods, where is the sun? I need light.’
In the distance, he could hear drums pounding as the galleys came lunging in, faster and faster. His own crews moved to half-speed and then the captain ordered it higher, notch by notch, as they tried to stay clear.
‘They can’t keep going like that, not for long,’ Maecenas said, though it was half a question.
Agrippa nodded unseen in the dark, hoping it was true. He’d had his crews running miles around the lake for months. They were as lean and fit as hunting dogs, but the labour of heaving on oars was exhausting even for men in the peak of condition. He had no idea if the hardened legion galleys Sextus Pompey commanded could simply run his fleet down and ram them.