Читать книгу Masters of the Sea Trilogy: Ship of Rome, Captain of Rome, Master of Rome - John Stack - Страница 14

‘And so, my esteemed colleagues of the Senate, I now call for a vote on my revised proposal, I call for a division of the house to settle the matter.’

Scipio sat down and surveyed the crowded chamber with inner disgust. The senators were having mumbled conversations with those around them at this new call to vote. Scipio had estimated that it would take a week for the Senate to decide on a course of action to defeat the Carthaginian blockade. He had been wrong. The debate was now in its tenth day and the seemingly endless rounds of debate and voting, over ridiculously minor points, had frayed his patience to a thread. On the fifth day the Senate had finally decided that a fleet was needed. The following two days had been taken up with a decision on the size of the fleet and two days after that on how the fleet would be financed. Only now were the senators debating the command of the campaign.

The leader of the house banged his gavel on the lectern and called the assembly to order.

‘Following the senior consul’s submission and the aforementioned views of the junior consul, we will now divide the house. All those in favour please move to the eastern wall, those against to the western.’

Scipio remained seated in the front tier, his position in front of the eastern wall a call to all his supporters to rally to his side. Scipio inwardly scoffed at the term ‘supporters’. He had spent the past ten days cajoling and subtly bribing half of them in an effort to gain their backing. Only a tiny minority of them actually voted in line with the conviction that their actions were in Rome’s best interest. Only a tiny minority of them had that courage. The rest of them needed to be led like cattle.

In the centre of the chamber, Gaius Duilius stood abruptly. Scipio watched him like a hawk. Of the three hundred individual votes of the Senate, only two really counted in this debate, Scipio’s and Duilius’s. The direction of the junior consul’s turn would decide the matter, one way or the other. Scipio watched the man’s calm exterior, hating him anew. Duilius had thwarted his proposals at every turn, but always through intermediaries and always with a subtle, clever approach that never really jeopardized any proposal as a whole. In this way important decisions like the one to build the fleet were made, but Duilius had chipped away at Scipio’s propositions, undermining his authority at every turn. Scipio had needed to give ground each time, including this last proposal on leadership, and so he watched with the bile of hatred rising ever further in his throat as he waited for Duilius to react, unsure if he would be able to control his actions should the junior consul vote against him this one last time.

As the tension in the chamber reached breaking point, Gaius Duilius turned.

From the beginning of the debate ten days earlier, Duilius had believed in the fundamentals of Scipio’s approach. The fleet was needed, of that there was no doubt. Given the Carthaginians’ superiority in naval skills, the fleet would need to outnumber any force the Punici could put to sea. Simple logic that needed no debate. The city would need to fund the building of the fleet from the public coffers, and taxes would need to be levied to make up any shortfall. Again this fact was irrefutable. And yet Duilius had challenged Scipio on each occasion.

The exercise had been expensive, but necessary. Duilius needed to show Scipio that he could hold up his ambitions indefinitely in the senatorial quagmire if he did not give ground on the most important proposal, that of leadership of the fleet. The debates had been taxing and the individual votes tedious but now, as the members of the house stood up to vote, Duilius felt real power surround him. He had always known the motivation behind Scipio’s proposals, the thirst for power that drove his actions – as it did Duilius’s; and, as the entire Senate chamber looked to see which way the junior consul would turn, Duilius felt the power of Rome in his hand.

Scipio had amended his proposal on leadership. He had had to. Scipio would indeed go to sea with the fleet and he would be the overall commander, but Duilius would sail too. The junior consul would take the vanguard and would be tactical commander of the fleet, while Scipio would have strategic command, the senior consul’s position in the rear of the fleet giving the illusion of safety that the Senate demanded. Duilius had engineered the debate to highlight this compromise to Scipio and the senior consul had accepted, each man knowing that once the fleet was out of sight of Rome and beyond the Senate’s gaze, the power struggle would start afresh. But now, on this day and at this time, Duilius was ruler of Rome and he savoured the sensation.

Duilius turned and walked towards the eastern wall, his supporters immediately following to leave a forlorn minority of twenty senators on the other side of the chamber. The men of the Senate cheered at this final decision, this conclusion to their debate, the tension of the previous ten days released in a moment of shared relief. Scipio stood and was surrounded by senators who slapped congratulatory hands on his shoulders and back, as they did for Duilius, the two men seen together as the joint saviours of the Sicilian campaign, an accolade Scipio had planned as his own. The senior consul walked towards Duilius through the press of cheering senators and magnanimously offered his hand in a show of shared responsibility for the battles ahead that would be faced together. Duilius took the hand and the crowd cheered anew. The expressions of both men were expansive, both reflecting the thrill of the moment and atmosphere of the crowd. Both expressions were only skin deep. As their eyes locked only an astute observer would have seen the momentary exchange. For Scipio and Duilius the surface solidarity hid the challenge that had been thrown down and accepted. From here on the glory of Rome would take second place to the power struggle that the Carthaginian blockade had ignited between them. Both men knew that there could be only one ruler of Rome.

‘No, no, no, Gaius,’ Lucius argued, ‘we can’t rely on every helmsman having your skill. Any new ships built will be sailed by, at best, fishermen and traders.’

‘Even so,’ Gaius countered, ‘the ram is still the best way for a raw crew to defeat an experienced one. There’s no way we can teach the legionaries to board properly within a reasonable time!’

Atticus looked on in silence, allowing the argument to draw out the full opinion of both men, their knowledge and experience vital if a solution was to be found. The three men sat in the enclosed main cabin of the Aquila, the trireme resting against her ropes at the dockside of Ostia.

Atticus had remained at the Capito home for three days in total, his own departure coming two days after Hadria’s, the insistent calls from her aunt compelling her to return to her house in the Viminal quarter. The lack of news or orders from the Senate had chafed Atticus’s patience and he had arisen on the third day with an overwhelming urge to see his ship. On arriving at Ostia he had put every waking hour and all his energy into the Aquila. The entire running rigging had now been replaced, as had the mainsail, the replacements drawn from the extensive stores of the military camp that serviced the dozen ships of the Ostia fleet. The rowers had been brought up and housed in the slave compound behind the castrum and the slave decks had been thoroughly cleaned. Even now slaves were diving beneath the galley, removing barnacles and limpets from the hull. Once cleaned, the galley would be a half-knot faster at her top stroke.

The three senior sailors of the Aquila had been discussing possible tactics for over an hour, the captain playing devil’s advocate to the second-in-command and the helmsman. Each time the two men agreed on a point, Atticus would counter their solution, finding a chink in their logic that would set the two men talking again. They had discussed every possible approach and how the Carthaginians might respond to any move. Having seen the Punici in action twice, the three men had little doubt of the calibre and resolve of their foe. Every possible scenario finished with the same conclusion, the same imbalance: experience.

A new Roman fleet would be crewed by inexperienced men, civilian sailors and legionaries used to fighting on land. Inexperienced sailors meant that ramming would be a near-impossible tactic, the manoeuvring skills required taking months to perfect, the combination of angle and speed needing to be precise. This was especially pertinent since the Roman craft were of a lighter design and would be unsure of penetration if the angle was off by more than ten degrees. Over ten degrees it was likely that the ram would simply deflect off the heavier Carthaginian hull. The call for ramming speed also needed to be exact. Too late and the ship would lack the necessary momentum; too soon and the galley slaves would be spent after the first couple of encounters; it was likely that any large-scale confrontation would last for hours.

The ability to manoeuvre alongside for boarding took considerably less skill: the angle less important, the speed only needing to be sufficient to overtake the opponent. The three men had all agreed that traders, and even fishermen, could be taught enough to master the simple manoeuvre within a week at most. The problem of inexperience now shifted to the legionaries. To train them as marines would take several months, the ability to board successfully and in sufficient numbers vital in the first minutes of any attack. Once on board, they would be without their favoured four-foot scutum shields and their years of training as land-based fighting units would count for naught, armed as they would be with a hoplon shield along with their gladius.

‘Gaius, Lucius,’ Atticus interrupted, trying to bring the discussion back to its centre, needing to forge ahead, ‘we’re all agreed that the sailing crews can be taught how to manoeuvre for boarding but not for ramming in the time we have.’

‘Yes,’ both men replied.

‘And we’re also agreed that our legionaries cannot be taught to board and fight using the traditional methods in the time we have.’

‘Yes,’ both men said again, this time Lucius sighing as the discussion circled around the obstacle.

‘Right. We need to concentrate on solving one of the problems only. I think the solution to the sailing problem will be harder to find, so I suggest we concentrate on the boarding issue. We need to find a way of getting our troops onto the enemy decks in sufficient numbers and with their scutum shields. Once there they’ll be unstoppable.’

‘Once there …’ Gaius said, as he put his mind to the task.

The cabin became silent again as all three men applied themselves to the problem. They were still without a solution an hour later when a messenger knocked on the cabin door.

‘Messenger approaching,’ Domitian called from the courtyard. The senior servant turned from the main gate and ran into the atrium of the Capito estate, repeating his call as he ran. Septimus heard the call in the smaller enclosed courtyard at the rear of the compound, where he had been practising his swordplay. He threw the wooden sword to the ground and strode through the house, meeting Domitian halfway.

‘Messenger approaching on horseback,’ the foreman said.

Septimus nodded and brushed past him. As he exited the front door of the house, the mounted praetorian guard entered through the main gate. He spotted Septimus and cantered towards him.

‘I have a message for Centurion Capito and Captain Perennis of the Aquila,’ he announced.

‘I am Centurion Capito. Captain Perennis is at the castrum of Ostia,’ Septimus replied.

The praetorian guard nodded. The other messenger, sent directly to Ostia, would find the captain. The mounted soldier looked Septimus up and down, the man before him wearing a sweat-stained tunic, the black dishevelled hair giving him a wild, untamed look. He didn’t look much like a centurion. Bloody marines, the guard thought.

‘My master, Senior Consul Scipio, orders—’

‘Get off your horse and deliver your message properly,’ Septimus interrupted, his voice hard, having noticed the unconscious look of disdain creep onto the guard’s face before he spoke. The guard hesitated, but only for a heartbeat, the underlying menace of the command triggering his instinct as a soldier. He dismounted.

‘My master—’

‘Properly!’ Septimus interrupted again, his tone like iron. ‘You’re addressing a superior officer, soldier. I’ll give you one last chance to get it right.’

Septimus drew himself to his full height. At six foot four inches he stood half a head above the guard. The praetorian fully believed that he was in mortal danger, even though he was armed and the centurion before him was not.

He adroitly stood to attention and saluted, slamming his bunched fist against his metal breast-plate, his eyes now fixed dead ahead in regulation fashion.

‘Beg to report,’ he began. ‘My master, Senior Consul Scipio, orders you to attend his town house immediately.’

Septimus waited a moment in silence, a part of him still debating whether or not he should strike the guard for insubordination. The praetorian seemed to sense the centurion’s thoughts and instinctively braced himself for the blow.

‘Very well,’ Septimus said suddenly. ‘You’re dismissed,’ he added, realizing that it would be best not to send the guard back to Scipio with a black eye.

The praetorian saluted again and remounted his horse. He wheeled around and galloped off.

‘Domitian!’

‘Yes, Septimus,’ the foreman replied as he stepped out from inside the main door from where he had witnessed the exchange.

‘Order my personal aide to lay out my kit and have one of the stable lads ready a mount.’

Domitian acknowledged the command and was gone. Septimus strode to the main gate and watched the messenger weave his way through the throng of people on the street. He turned and entered the house and within minutes re-emerged in full dress uniform. He mounted the horse held by the stable lad and cantered out through the main gate.

Atticus approached the town house of the senior consul slowly, the winding streets keeping his mount down to a trot. He had followed the praetorian messenger from Ostia, relying on the guard to guide him to the city and to the senator’s house within. Atticus was a creature of the wide open expanses of the sea; whereas he could plot any course on the featureless water using the sun and stars, his sense of direction failed him completely in the enclosed streets of Rome. As he turned into the walled courtyard of Scipio’s town house he saw Septimus standing near the entranceway into the atrium beyond.

‘About time,’ Septimus called up. ‘I’ve had to wait here until you arrived.’

Atticus nodded a smile, knowing that the centurion was probably burning with the same curiosity as he was.

‘Any idea why we’ve been called now?’ he asked as he dismounted beside Septimus.

‘No. I only know from the news I heard on the street when I passed through the Forum Magnum that the Senate has approved the building of a fleet and both Scipio and Duilius will command it.’

‘Duilius?’ Atticus asked as both men passed under the entrance into the serenity of the atrium.

‘This year’s junior consul. Owns half of the land straddling the city and stocks most of the markets from his fields.’

Atticus nodded, realizing that he knew very little about the most important citizens of the city and the main players in the Senate.

The praetorian guard commander was waiting for them inside.

‘Come with me,’ he ordered brusquely, although his rank was no higher than the captain or centurion’s.

‘Friendly as ever,’ Septimus murmured.

The commander led them through a series of rooms, some obviously for entertaining guests and dining, and others that seemed to serve no visible purpose other than to display the artwork and statues adorning the space. The house was expansive, the simple courtyard and atrium deceptively small given the depth of the house. They came upon Scipio under the shade of an awning in an inner courtyard. He was sitting alone, apparently deep in thought. He did not look up as the three men entered.

The guard commander peeled off and the men of the Aquila approached alone.

‘Captain Perennis and Centurion Capito reporting as ordered,’ Atticus announced as both men snapped to attention.

‘Ah yes,’ Scipio said, looking up as if noticing them for the first time.

‘The Senate has decided to build a fleet of one hundred and fifty triremes. You are to report to Publius Cornelius Lentulus, the master shipbuilder in Ostia, and assist him in this task, specifically to relate to him your experience of the enemy and their capabilities.’

‘Yes, Consul,’ both men replied.

They waited for a further command but none was forthcoming. Scipio looked back down at his notes, seeming to forget the two officers. A full minute passed.

‘You’re dismissed!’ the senior consul finally said, and Atticus and Septimus turned on their heels and left.

The two men retraced their steps through the house back to the main courtyard where a stable lad held the reins of their horses.

‘By the gods, Septimus …’ Atticus breathed, his face a mask of astonishment. ‘One hundred and fifty galleys. It’s a mammoth task. It’ll take six months at least and then they’ll have to find men to crew them all.’

‘Atticus, Atticus …’ Septimus chided with a smile, amused by his friend’s astonishment. ‘Look around you, man. Look at the city that has been built here. Built by Scipio and others like him in the Senate. If they have decided that one hundred and fifty galleys are to be built, then built they shall be – and not within six months either. They know the threat is more imminent and the ships will be needed sooner. I’ll bet the deadline is half that time and the crews are already being levied as we speak.’

Atticus shook his head, disbelieving. Surely the Senate had set too big a task for Rome to complete.

Septimus looked up at the sun. It was an hour after midday.

‘We still have time to meet this master shipbuilder today,’ he said as he mounted. Atticus nodded and mounted his own horse, wheeling it around to follow Septimus out through the main gate. In his mind’s eye he tried to picture such a massive armada. He could not. His logical mind told him it wasn’t possible in the time they had. In six months the campaign season would be over and Sicily would be strewn with the starved bodies of the Second and Ninth legions. At best they had three months to break the blockade.

Septimus’s words echoed in his ears as he rode back towards the Forum Magnum and his eyes were drawn up to the magnificent buildings that surrounded the central plaza. They were truly the work of great men; determined men who set themselves a task and followed through regardless of the cost or consequences. Perhaps his friend was right; perhaps the Senate had set Rome the task knowing she could respond in kind. As his mind debated the mission ahead he subconsciously spurred his horse to a greater speed; his innate impatience to get started drove him on and he brushed past Septimus to take the lead. By the time they cleared the Porta Flumentana on the road to Ostia, their horses were galloping at full tilt.

‘Here they come again!’

Marcus Fabius Buteo spun around in the direction of the shouted warning in time to see yet another cavalry charge from the woods to the left of the marching column.

‘Form up!’ the centurion roared, and ran to position himself at the head of the lead transport wagon, the maniple’s signifer running behind him, the standard becoming the pivot point of the formation.

As Marcus ran, a Roman cavalry unit tore through a gap in the supply train, the riders’ heads low in an attempt to gain every ounce of speed from their mounts. The Carthaginian cavalry were over three hundred yards away. At full gallop they would cover the distance in less than twenty seconds. The Roman cavalry had to engage them fast and as far away from the valuable supplies as they could and so they rode like men possessed, the seemingly endless attacks pumping adrenaline through their veins to overcome the fatigue in both horse and rider.

‘Stand the line!’ Marcus shouted as the maniple formed around him. Every soldier heard the command and braced himself forward against the coming onslaught. The command meant no fall-back, no reserve rally point. There would be no further order to manoeuvre and they would fight where they stood, each man knowing the reason. They could not leave the supplies undefended.

The attacks had begun five days ago, before the legions had even crossed the territorial dividing line. The first surprise strike had been the most devastating. Although the maniples guarding the supplies, including the IV of the Ninth commanded by Marcus, reacted instantly to the cavalry charge, they were no match for the swift and manoeuvrable mounted enemy. Without the support of their own cavalry units, who were dispersed along the entire length of the three-mile-long marching column, the infantry soldiers could do little but hold their ground and defend themselves. It was at the point of impact in that first attack that Marcus realized the true target of the enemy. While small detachments peeled off the main cavalry charge to keep the infantry tied down, they made no attempt to push home their attack or penetrate the defensive shield walls of the legionaries. Instead their focus had been the supply wagons. Dozens of fire arrows had been loosed into the heaped wagons while spearmen targeted the tethered oxen. The result had been catastrophic. The Carthaginians had disengaged after only five frenzied minutes, leaving the supply train in chaos. Marcus, like the other centurions, had ordered the men to douse the flames while frantic appeals for support were sent up the line to the legion commanders. That first attack had cost them a tenth of their entire supplies.

The legions had camped that first night on the very spot of the attack, the engineers hastily erecting the protective palisade of a marching legion in enemy territory. The attack had been dissected in detail, the legions’ commanders quizzing the centurions who had witnessed the coordinated ambush. Changes were made. Defences were strengthened. Counter measures were deployed, including cavalry and a fire guard with responsibility for protecting the combustible supplies.

The ambushes had reached their peak on the third day when a combined force of enemy infantry and cavalry attacked at a river ford. The Romans had been quick to respond and the enemy had been severely bruised and routed, their foolhardy infantry suffering the most against the determined legionaries. The Carthaginians had switched back to exclusively mounted attacks after the minor setback and so now, on the fifth day, an hour after midday, Marcus and his men were forced to respond to yet another strike, the fourth that day.

From one hundred and fifty yards away, Marcus heard the crunch of steel, bone, man and horse as the two cavalry forces collided. The collision was vicious, the naked belligerence of both sides turning the fight into brutal combat where no quarter was asked or given. The men of the IV maniple could only watch in silence, their teeth bared in hatred at the enemy out of their reach. All eyes were on the chaotic mêlée.

‘On the flank!’

Marcus saw the danger immediately as he reacted to the cry. Another enemy cavalry unit of fifty mounted men had broken from the cover of the woods and were bearing directly down on his maniple’s position, bypassing the engaged Roman cavalry, heading straight for the supply train. The order went out for the Roman reserve cavalry to counter this second thrust, but Marcus knew they would not arrive in time, positioned as they were at the very rear of the supply train.

‘Charge weapons,’ the centurion shouted, and the men of his maniple roared a defiant primal scream as they thrust out their pila between their shields, presenting a wall of deadly steel to the approaching horsemen. The oxen behind the men bellowed in terror at the confused scene around them, the sound mixing with the war cries of the fast-approaching Punici. Marcus leaned forward into his shield and braced his left foot behind, steadying himself against the wave of man and beast approaching at the terrifying speed of thirty miles per hour. The ground beneath him trembled with the force of the charge.

‘Hastati!’ he shouted, the enemy now one hundred yards away.

‘Loose!’

The whooshing sound of forty pila released together filled the air above the shield wall as the hastati of the IV put their might behind the throw of their javelins, their craving to bring death to the enemy fuelling their effort. The javelins seemed to hang in the air for a heartbeat before falling into the oncoming charge. Man and horse buckled and fell under the deadly shower but the charge was barely checked and the Carthaginians came on over their fallen comrades with renewed hatred and drive.

‘Steady, boys!’ Marcus shouted, his men taking strength from the calmness of the command.

The cavalry charge turned at the last possible second, sweeping down the line of the shield wall, the deadly points of the bared pila forcing the turn. The Carthaginians hurled both fire arrows and spears into the supplies behind the wall of legionaries, striking blow after deadly blow against the precious supplies. One rider was slow to turn and his mount crashed straight into the braced, interlocked shields at the head of the maniple. The one-thousand-pound horse tore through the wall, catapulting two soldiers into the oxen and wagons behind, killing them instantly. The horse slammed directly against the six-foot-high wagon wheel with a sickening crunch. The Carthaginian rider was thrown and landed deep within the ranks of the legionaries where he was instantly dispatched under the blows of half a dozen blades.

As the last of the riders swept past Marcus, the centurion ordered a second volley of pila, this time into the undefended rear of the charge. Again the missiles had a deadly effect on their targets but again the charge did not waver. As the Carthaginians exhausted all their arrows and spears they peeled off and began their retreat to the woods, the lead rider sounding a horn that signalled to the Carthaginian cavalry engaged with the Romans that it should break off and retreat. Within an instant the field before the defending Romans was clear once again. The attack had lasted no more than four minutes.

Marcus ordered his maniple to regroup while he surveyed the aftermath. The enemy had left maybe a dozen or more of their number dead or dying on the field, while the Roman casualties were perhaps half that number amongst the cavalry, plus the two legionaries who had been crushed by the Carthaginian horse. Smoke was once again rising over four of the twenty laden supply wagons, but the fire guard was working efficiently and the threat was soon extinguished. The centurion counted eight oxen dead in their traces, the equivalent of an entire team for one wagon.

In the five days of attacks, Marcus estimated they had lost nearly twenty-five per cent of their entire supply train. They were ten days out from the castra hiberna at Floresta, which meant they were approximately four days short of the first besieged city of Makella. Four days, Marcus thought; four days before they could set up a more permanent defensive palisade as they worked to lift the siege of Makella. Four more days of attacks on the supplies before they could be properly protected. If things continued as they were, they would arrive at their first destination with half the supplies they had set out with. They would be able to resupply from the city once the siege was lifted, but only in terms of food and some basic equipment. Everything else was lost for good – irreplaceable until the blockade was lifted.

‘Form up!’ he commanded, echoing a similar command up and down the line as the last of the fires was extinguished and the depleted oxen were once again redistributed by their drivers. The IV maniple formed up behind the standard held high by the signifer. It had been singed in an attack two days before and the sight of the battered standard brought pride to Marcus’s chest, a fitting symbol of the fighting men of his command and a defiant reminder of the nine men he had lost over the previous five days.

The legions would reach Makella, of that there was no doubt, but the cost was high. The enemy knew where to hit them and how. They had attacked suddenly, with a ferocity born from sensing the closeness of the kill, the scent of a weakened and desperate enemy cut off from home. The legions would reach Makella but Marcus suspected they would go no further, the open marching column too easy a target for the focused attacks. At Makella they would make their stand, lifting the siege while being besieged themselves. Not by a visible enemy who offered battle, but by an unseen foe who snapped at their heels and sapped their strength.

‘March,’ Marcus shouted, his subconscious mind picking up the ripple of command as it fed down the line, his thoughts on the dark future ahead of them. His attention was brought back to the moment by the whip crack of the ox drivers. The men around them involuntarily started at the loud crack, their nerves strained to breaking point as they waited for the next cry of attack, knowing that the day was far from over.

‘Come.’

Atticus opened the door and entered the small office in the north wing of the castrum at Ostia. He was followed by Septimus, and the presence of the two men made the enclosed space seem claustrophobic. Publius Cornelius Lentulus, master shipbuilder of the Roman fleet, sat behind the desk poring over a scale model of a trireme made from light balsam timber. Parchments were strewn all around him, covering the desk and the wall-mounted shelves, many lying on the floor where they had fallen from the overloaded spaces. The master shipbuilder was an older man with thinning hair and a greying beard. He glanced up with a mild look of surprise on his face, as if he seldom received visitors in his office.

‘Yes?’

‘Captain Perennis and Centurion Capito of the Aquila,’ Atticus said by way of introduction.

‘Ah yes,’ Lentulus said genially as he stood up to greet the men, ‘my Carthaginian experts.’

Atticus smiled at the description. ‘Experts’ was stretching the description of their knowledge a little too far.

Lentulus led them out of his small office into a larger room down the corridor. This room also seemed to be in chaos, but the disorder was confined to a large table in the centre of the room. The table was surrounded on all sides by chairs, four of which were occupied by Lentulus’s team of junior craftsmen, each one an apprentice of the master. They stood as Lentulus entered but he signalled them to be seated with an impatient wave of his hand, as if the courtesy was not sought.

‘This is Captain Perennis and Centurion Capito of the Aquila,’ he announced. The four apprentices looked at the officers with intense interest. They had never seen a Carthaginian warship, and their natural curiosity for all things nautical fuelled their interest in the men; they would normally have considered them to be mere ballast on the magnificent ships they designed.

Lentulus chaired the conversation but he allowed his apprentices to ask the majority of the questions. Atticus described the ships he had encountered in detail, from their speed and manoeuvrability, to their size and draught. Septimus offered confirmation of the enemy’s deck layout and hatch placement from his memory of the fight aboard the Carthaginian galley, the upper features of the deck giving some indication of the hidden framework beneath. The questions were thorough, and in many cases Atticus did not have the answer the craftsmen sought, his knowledge limited to the sailing capabilities and his thoughts on the design merely subjective. Any unanswered questions sparked fierce debate amongst the competitive apprentices, and on two occasions the debate nearly erupted into blows before Lentulus intervened and brought the discussion back to order.

The interview lasted over two hours, and when Atticus and Septimus finally emerged from the room the sun had slipped below the western horizon. They walked to the Aquila in silence, both drained from the intense conversation. Atticus had not been given the opportunity to ask any questions of his own, particularly about what kind of schedule Lentulus envisioned for the completion of the fleet, although the master shipbuilder and his team didn’t seem to be wasting any time. Design and concepts were one thing, he thought; it was a whole other problem to implement those ideas and actually build a vessel.

The following morning Atticus woke as usual just before dawn. He dressed in a light tunic and went on deck. The morning was crisp with a cool breeze that held no cold and a promise of warmer spring weather as the sun rose in the eastern sky. The trading docks beyond the castrum were already busy, the half-light of the pre-dawn sufficient for the ships to manoeuvre to the dockside to begin the process of unloading, the shouted calls of their commanders muted as the sound carried over the harbour. Atticus ordered one of the crew to bring him some food, and he settled down on the aft-deck to eat. Septimus joined him half an hour after sunrise and they set off to Lentulus’s office once more.

They arrived there to find the master shipbuilder packing some of his hurried designs and supply manifests into a shoulder bag. He escorted the two officers to a coastal barge that was preparing to sail, explaining that they were heading to the coastal town of Fiumicino, two miles north of Ostia at the mouth of a small river that gave the town its name. The three men boarded and the barge immediately shoved off, passing the Aquila as she went, the trireme now the only galley tethered to the docks. The news of the Carthaginian fleet in the south had spread throughout Ostia and Rome and the traders had frantically called for extra escorts, the hidden danger beyond the horizon made terrible by wild rumour. The Senate had immediately agreed, fearful of a panic that would drive the traders from Rome’s shores, and so the entire Ostia fleet was now constantly at sea.

The coastal barge cleared the harbour with ease, the sea-lanes relatively quiet in the dawn light. Lentulus quizzed Atticus on some of the finer details of his experience with the Carthaginians, the master shipbuilder having been up for most of the night with his apprentices and having discovered further unknowns in the Carthaginian design. Atticus answered what questions he could. The two men were still deep in conversation when the barge came in sight of Fiumicino.

The coastal town was small and unremarkable, a fishing village that had changed little over the generations, its proximity to the centre of a mighty republic having little effect as the trade routes, on both land and sea, simply passed by on either side, the village a tiny island in the middle of a fast-flowing river of humanity. The beach stretched flat and wide north and south from the village, the sand an unusual black from the high level of ferrous deposits on the shoreline. There were two large trading barges beached on the shore immediately north of the mouth of the small river. Atticus counted four more holding station half a mile offshore.

As the coastal barge drew level with the beached traders, Atticus noted the frenzied activity on board and around the slightly tilted vessels, their broad, almost flat keels resting on the compacted sand. The ships were unloading timber, huge logs of oak and pine, which were being lowered onto waiting wagons to be hauled and pushed above the high-tide mark. The barge beached fifty yards beyond the northernmost trader and all disembarked, jumping down the eight feet into the ankle-deep waves. Atticus noticed immediately that the ground beneath his feet was rock solid and, although he had jumped from a height, he left no footprints in the black sand.

The tide was two hours from full and the aft section of the beached traders was already under three feet of water, the slaves and crew of the ship working frantically to unload the last remaining timbers. At high tide the vessel would float once more, the added buoyancy of an empty hull assisting the re-launch. Once away their place would be taken by the four traders waiting offshore.

The unloaded timbers were being sorted on the beach, the slaves’ activities commanded by two of Lentulus’s apprentices. One was working with the stockpile, separating oak from pine and further separating these in terms of length, girth and approximate age. The other apprentice was meticulously checking each timber, looking for signs of rot or fungal infection, rejecting even vaguely suspicious timbers to leave only the solid. For ones so young they worked with confidence and efficiency, their entire adolescent lives having been dedicated to their craft.

The men of the Aquila followed Lentulus above the beach, cresting a wind-formed dune to view the flatlands beyond. Both Atticus and Septimus stopped at the sight before them. A veritable city of tents had been erected directly behind the drift line of the dunes, the white canvas peaks stretching a mile northwards from the fishing village on their right. Everywhere men moved with purpose between the tents, many carrying the tools of their trade: carpenters, ironmongers, shipwrights and more. How long had it been, Atticus wondered in awe, forty-eight hours? Two days since the Senate formally announced the decision to build the fleet? The city had moved with incredible speed, the logistics seemingly effortless for a society as ordered as that of Rome. For the first time Atticus felt a creeping confidence about the task ahead.