‘Prepare for impact. Make ready to board!’
His men roared with naked aggression. Gisco let them roar, let them fill their hearts and nerve with anger, a rage that he would throw against the Romans.
‘Prepare to release!’ Septimus ordered, and his twenty hastati hoisted their pila, their heavy javelins, up to shoulder height.
Gaius made one final adjustment to the rudder as the two galleys converged at attack speed. He gripped the worn timber of the tiller firmly in his hands as he held the course true, bracing his legs to cope with the anticipated command. The galleys were now only ten yards apart.
‘Loose!’ Septimus roared.
At almost point-blank range, all twenty hastati shot their pila into the massed ranks of Carthaginians on the foredeck of the Elissar. Each spear was eight feet long, with an iron shank that gave the weapon a fearsome penetrating power. As each spear struck its target, its shank broke off from the handle, rendering the weapon useless. The unexpected volley of javelins wrought tremendous carnage amongst the Carthaginians, breaking up the enemy formation that was poised to board the Aquila.
‘Starboard side, withdraw!’ Atticus roared, before taking off in a run towards the foredeck.
The order carried clearly to the slave deck and the drum master repeated the order to the starboard-side rowers. The slaves immediately stopped their stroke and pulled the oars in hand over hand. Within an instant the oars were withdrawn, with only their two-foot-long blades exposed outside the hull.
Gaius leaned the rudder slightly over to converge the two ships and the cutwater of the Aquila’s prow tore into the extended starboard-side oars of the Elissar. The rowers of the Elissar were thrown from their positions like rag dolls as the fifteen-foot oars they manned were struck with the force of the seventy-ton Roman trireme travelling at eleven knots. Many of the oars splintered, while some held together to strike the slave at the handle end of the oar. In the confined space of the slave deck, with the men chained to their positions, there was nowhere to run to, and by the time the Aquila had run the length of the Elissar, the starboard-side slave deck of the Carthaginian galley was strewn with broken bodies.
‘Grappling hooks!’ Septimus ordered as the Aquila’s foredeck came in line with the enemy’s aft. Immediately three of his men threw the four-pronged hooks across the narrow gap between the galleys. As the hooks found purchase on the Elissar’s deck, the marines clambered to grab hold of the attached ropes and pull with all their might. The gap was closed to less than six feet. Septimus ran forward and jumped on the starboard rail, balancing easily with his gladius in one hand and rounded hoplon shield in the other.
‘Men of the Aquila, to me,’ he shouted, and jumped the gaping void beneath the two galleys, landing solidly on the aft-deck of the Carthaginian ship.
The marines roared as the blood lust of battle overwhelmed them and they followed the centurion without hesitation over the rails of the enemy ship, clamouring to be the first to draw Carthaginian blood. Septimus barged straight at the man nearest him and struck him squarely with his shield, using his momentum to knock the man off his feet, sending him reeling into someone behind. The few Carthaginians remaining on the aft-deck fled before the charge. Behind the marines, Atticus and Lucius jumped onto the deck of the Carthaginian galley, axes in their hands. Their task would take only minutes, time Septimus and his men would have to buy with their blood.
The war cries of the marines spilling over the rail of the Elissar fuelled the frustration within Gisco at the sudden reversal. The air around him was filled with the screams of injured and dying men while beneath his feet the deck still reeled from the impact of the Roman trireme’s run against the starboard-side oars of his galley. The ranks of his men had disintegrated under the hammer blows of the pila volley, and they were in chaos, with neither focus nor formation.
‘Men of the Elissar to me!’ Gisco bellowed as he charged from the foredeck. The veteran soldiers reacted more swiftly than the untested, and so the line of attack was ragged and uncoordinated, but their ferocity bore them on in a headlong rush along the length of the Elissar. They struck the line of Romans at full tilt, their momentum checked within a stride by the near-solid wall of shields.
Gisco sidestepped a thrust from a Roman marine before countering the stroke with a slash to the Roman’s thigh. The man yelled in pain as the sword bit deeply into the flesh, but before the admiral could deliver the killing blow his sword was stayed by another Roman, who followed the parry with a vicious attack. Gisco immediately realized that although each of the Romans fought as one man, they also fought as a team, overlapping their attacks, their coordination sapping the strength of the Carthaginians’ original charge. Gisco renewed the surge of the counterattack, urging his men on through the ferocity of his own charge. The Elissar would not fall easily.
The Carthaginian war cries reached a new high as another lunge was made in an effort to break the Roman line of battle. The sound spurred on Atticus and Lucius and sweat streamed from their bodies as they redoubled their efforts to sever the tiller from the rudder. The weathered toughened timber was as hard as iron, but with each axe blow small chips flew away and already they were halfway through the four-inch-diameter section.
On the main deck, Septimus saw a breach developing and immediately fed his best fighters into the gap. Within the space of two vicious minutes the gap was sealed once more and the tide of Carthaginians checked. The last of the reserves were now engaged. The next breach could not be held. If the Carthaginians broke through, the fight would become chaotic and all chance of a withdrawal would be lost.
The tiller finally parted under the blows of Atticus and Lucius. Now, even if the Carthaginian galley managed to get back under way, the loss of her rudder would render her useless.
‘Septimus!’ Atticus roared. ‘Withdraw!’
Septimus heard the signal. ‘Fighting withdrawal!’ he roared, his men instantly stepping back towards the aft-deck.
The sudden break-off in resistance threw the Carthaginian attack and a gap opened between the lines.
The twenty triarii who had remained on the Aquila now loosed volleys of spears into the flank of the Carthaginian forces, checking their advance, allowing the marines vital seconds to mount the aft-deck rails and recross onto the Aquila. Within moments the bulk of the marines were aboard, with just a small knot remaining, Septimus amongst them. Under an almost constant volley of spears, the Carthaginians reared up in attack again, their centre driven by a demonic commander, rage emanating from his frame as he tried to cut off the remaining marines. The lines of the grappling hooks were severed as Septimus jumped across the opening gap, the last man to do so.
Gisco could only look on in futile rage as the Roman galley re-engaged her oars, hastening her escape. The Carthaginian fleet was still two thousand yards away, too far behind to stop the Romans reaching the mouth of the strait. All around him his men stood at the side rail of the aft-deck, shouting defiance and insults of cowardice at the Romans. Gisco remained silent, his eyes searching the rails of the enemy ship. The two men he sought were on the foredeck, standing side by side, the taller man, the marine centurion, recognizable from the fight. They were the commanders and he instantly saw they were watching him intently. Gisco burned the images of their faces into his mind. As the gap opened to one hundred yards the Roman galley began to come about to resume her course northwards.
‘Aquila,’ Gisco read on the stern of the galley.
Gisco made a silent promise to the gods that one day he would hunt down that ship and have his revenge on all who sailed on her.
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