Emperor: The Blood of Gods (Special Edition) (Emperor Series, Book 5) (36 page)

‘“Saviour of the Republic,”’ he read aloud. ‘Well, why not, Brutus? Why
not
?’

The heel of Italy was lost in the mist and gloom as the fleet of galleys struggled around it in rough, grey seas. Sextus wiped salt water from his eyes as it sprayed over him. He knew better than most how poorly his crews handled a storm. So that they could skip across shallow waters, the galleys had no deep keels, but that great speed brought instability and in rough seas the oars had to be used to prevent the galleys from turning over.

Sextus could see the storm coming in fast on the horizon, a bank of dark cloud with distant threads of rainfall spilling from it. The entire cloud flashed and the sea seemed to respond, the swell surging and showing white foam.

His legion captain was vomiting over the side and Sextus shuddered as he felt flecks of it blown back on the wind, striking his face and neck.

‘By Mars, go downwind, would you?’ he shouted angrily.

The miserable man shuffled to the stern without taking his hands from the rail. Sextus walked up the rolling deck to the prow, staring out over the grey vastness. All around him, he could see dozens of galleys plunging through the waves. They were at their most vulnerable when the oars had to be brought in, the openings sealed with tar-cloth so that the rowing decks didn’t become swamped. Some of his galleys had already given the order and raised a tiny storm sail, while many more laboured on with the oars out and freezing water pouring through the gaps in the wooden walls. The men inside would be baling for their lives, but at least the galleys could be controlled. For the others, only a scrap of cloth, steering oars and rare glimpses of the southern coast guided them around the mainland.

Sextus swallowed nervously, waiting for the crash that would tell him one of them had struck a rock, or perhaps each other. There was always danger, but galleys were safe enough when they could head for shore and beach themselves. It was only when a madman like him ordered them into deep water that they became vulnerable.

A wave rushed over the bow, drenching him and making him shiver. Rain began to pound the flat deck, reducing visibility even further. Sextus peered out to the distant coast, just a dim line in the grey. He needed to reach shelter before the full storm struck, but the way it looked, his crews would have to endure a battering before they were around the point. When he caught glimpses of the other ships, he saw more and more of them had been forced to pull the oars in or sink. Only the huge double steering oars at the stern could guide them then. Through the spray and mist, he could see galleys wandering away over the sea, soldiers climbing the masts to shout sightings to those below. He groaned, knowing he’d be lucky not to lose a few crews. He wished Vedius were there, but his second in command had been the only man he could trust with the other half of his fleet. Vedius would not betray him, he was certain. He had also left instructions with two others for him to be quietly murdered if he did.

Sextus felt an itch at the back of his neck and when he turned, he was not surprised to see Lavinia there, holding on to the main mast. One hand shaded her eyes as she stared into the distance and he thought she looked like a ghost, with her cloak whipping around her in the wind and her features unnaturally pale. He left his place on the prow and walked back to her, staggering slightly on the heaving deck.

‘I can’t be worrying about you as well as the ship,’ he said. ‘What’s wrong with your cabin?’

Lavinia raised her eyes to him.

‘I needed to breathe, that’s all. There’s no air down below and the ship is rolling and jumping about like a mad thing.’

Despite his concern, he smiled at her martyred tone. He reached out with his free hand to push back a lock of her sodden hair where it had fallen over her face.

‘It won’t last much longer, I promise. We’ll be round the point soon and the sea will be calmer after that.’

He glanced again at the storm clouds and she read the worry in his expression, her nervousness increasing.

‘It’s going to get
worse
?’ she said.

He grinned to reassure her. ‘We are the lucky ones, remember? We’ll come through.’

It was an old and bitter joke between them. Their family had suffered far more than its fair share of misfortune. If any luck still clung to the Pompey name, it would surely fall on Sextus and Lavinia. She rolled her eyes at the feeble attempt to cheer her up. Her brother saw her shivering and realised her cloak was wet through with spray.

‘You’ll freeze if you stay up here,’ he said.

‘No more than you will,’ she retorted. ‘At least I am away from the smell of sweat and vomit. It is … unpleasant down below.’

‘You’ll survive,’ he said, without sympathy. ‘Don’t we always? I told you I’d look after you and here I have a fine fleet at my command.’

As he spoke, the galley gave a great lurch as it missed the peak of a wave and crashed down into the trough. Lavinia yelped and he wrapped his arm around his sister and the mast, holding on to them both.

‘I think I preferred it when you were a pirate,’ she said. ‘At least you brought me jewels then.’

‘Which you sold and invested! I gave you those to enjoy, not to be sensible.’

‘One of us has to be,’ she said. ‘When this is over, I’ll need a dowry. And you’ll need funds for a house if you’re ever to have a family of your own.’

He hugged her tighter then, recalling a thousand conversations in harder times. As children, they had lost everything but their father’s name and a few loyal servants who still honoured Gnaeus Pompey. At the darkest moments, they had talked of the lives they would have one day, with a house and servants and peace: just silence and peace, with no one threatening them or hunting them down.

‘I’m glad to know you are still looking out for me,’ he said. ‘But it would please me more if you’d go down and find a good cloak I can wear – as well as a dry one for you.’

She could not resist such an appeal and it was true that he shivered just as violently as she did.

‘Very well,’ she said. ‘But I’m coming back.’

He guided her to the hatch and held it open long enough for Lavinia to climb down the ladder before closing it. He was still smiling as he walked back to the prow and looked over the grey ocean, taking in everything he had missed.

At least the captains from Syria knew what they were doing, Sextus had to admit, as his ship followed them. The group of ten weatherbeaten galleys held their positions well in regard to each other, a flotilla moving with something like skill. To reach him from Syria they’d crossed open ocean, the wear showing on their galleys and men. Sextus told himself he’d made the right decision letting Cassius’ captains lead the way east around the heel.

Sextus jerked as he heard a great crash somewhere on his left. He squinted out through the pouring rain, but he couldn’t see what had caused it. The southern coast of Italy was faintly visible and he took heart from that. It would not be long before they were round the point and back into more sheltered waters. He only wished he could take the fleet in closer, but even if they could see his flags, the rocks would rip the bottom right out of a galley.

The wind began to howl around the mast and the prow seemed to dive under another enormous wave, so that Sextus had to grip the prow in a lurch or be swept away. He gasped and coughed as freezing seawater entered his lungs. As the green bronze ram came up once more, Sextus felt exhausted, but the storm was still coming and they were only at the edge of it. With a glance behind him, he saw the Roman captain was still there, bent over. The man looked like a corpse, but he still hung on, swearing weakly. Sextus grinned at the sight, reminding himself to mention it if they both survived.

Ahead of him, the Syrian galleys were still forcing their way through. There was no safe place to wait out the storm. All he could do was continue the insane dash around the heel of Italy and turn for Brundisium once more. He told himself over and over that Cassius was right. He had enough ships to blockade the entire country if he used them in two fleets, like the jaws of a pair of blacksmith’s pincers. No one else had a hundred galleys, never mind the two hundred and twelve at his command. He had the forces to squeeze Rome into starvation.

His mood darkened with the storm and he felt a coldness inside to match his half-frozen flesh. His father could have ruled the Republic. Sextus and Lavinia would have grown up with every comfort. All of that had been stolen away from him on an Egyptian dock, his father murdered by foreign slaves just to please Julius Caesar.

For years, Sextus knew he had been no more than a biting fly on the flank of Roman power. Men loyal to his father still sent him reports from the city and he’d seen his chance and risked execution by returning there to make a personal appeal. Vedius had argued against it, telling him never to trust the noble old men of the Senate. The tavern wolf had not understood that Sextus knew those men well. His father had been one of them. Even then, he had been afraid they would look first at his piracy and his youth, but somehow, with the threat of Octavian and his legions, it had worked. Sextus had been given a fleet unmatched in those waters and the moment when the Senate had voted had eased a pain that had been with him ever since his father died.

Now Cassius had called him and he had answered. His fleet was a weapon to bring the Caesarians to a battle they could not win. Sextus wiped salt from his eyes once more, showing his teeth as the wind bit at him. He had learned from a young age that there was no such thing as justice. It was not justice that his father had been taken from him. It was not justice that a man like Caesar had been given Rome to rule as a king. Sextus had lived with despair and bitterness for years, surviving by being more ruthless and more ready to kill than any of his men. It had been a brutal school and he knew he would never be able to go back to the innocent child he had once been with Lavinia. His smile widened into the gale, showing his canines as his lips pulled back. None of that mattered. Cassius and Brutus had killed the tyrant and at last he had a chance to ravage and burn Octavian’s forces. One day he would restore everything the family of Caesar had taken from him and that was all he cared about, all he needed to know. His father’s shade watched him. The old man’s honour was worth a run through a storm.

Driven by some strange joy he did not understand, Sextus began to sing into the wind, a sailor’s work tune. He sang badly but with great volume and it was loud enough to cause the captain to look up from his misery, staring in disbelief. Others in the crew grinned at the sight and sound of their young leader roaring and stamping his feet at the prow.

He felt the weight of the cloak as Lavinia came back, looking at him as if he had gone mad as she draped it over his wet shoulders.

‘They are saying some sea monster is wailing up here,’ she said. ‘Shall I tell them it’s just your singing?’

He grinned at her, pulling the cloak around him. The storm was tossing the sea into froth and vicious spray that stung his face as the galley crashed on.

‘Hold on to the prow with me,’ he shouted back. ‘The ship needs a little of our luck.’

They stayed there together, arm in arm, until the fleet rounded the point and the storm was left to grumble and flash behind them.

Agrippa scratched at a smear of mud on his forehead as it dried and itched. He could hardly remember when he had managed to snatch more than a few hours’ sleep and he was exhausted. It was done. Two thousand men with shovels and wheeled carts had dug a trench just over a mile long and only the final section waited to be breached. He had more than thirty surveyors working with them, checking the depth with long rods as the men toiled. It had to be twenty-four feet wide to accommodate the narrow galleys, even with the oars pulled right in and stacked on the decks, but the width had not caused as many problems as the depth. Agrippa had spent a day having the surveyors go over their figures again and again, but the shallow galleys had to float free or the entire enterprise would be worthless. He looked at the huge gates that held the lake waters back. They had been a tale in themselves, with expert builders driving wooden beams into the clay with enormous weights suspended above them, lifted and dropped a hundred times by teams of sweating labourers. They’d dug out foundations a short distance from the lake, sinking a trench back to the water. His carpenters had worked day and night and when the first short length breached and filled, the massive gates held, forming a short spur. None of the trench men had enjoyed standing close to them as they dug away from the gates towards the sea. The wood groaned occasionally and water sprayed from tiny holes, dribbling along the trench and making the earth sticky and wet. It had been hard, but as the surveyors had promised him, two thousand men could build almost anything and the thing was done at last.

On the lake, his galleys still flitted and lunged at each other, each new crew building the stamina they needed while they practised boarding. He’d had archery targets set up all along the shore of the lake for them to use and one of the top-heavy corvus ships anchored on the water, which now resembled a porcupine for the number of shafts sticking out of its timbers. He scowled at the sight of it, wondering who had failed to give the order to collect the arrows. Every one was precious, though entire industries had grown up around Neapolis to supply him. He had all his carts sent north as obviously as possible for a hundred miles before cutting west and back south, but even so Agrippa suspected his secrecy was a complete farce. His men had to chase local boys away almost every day as they crept along the shore and stole tools or simply gaped at the darting galleys. A city’s worth of men had descended on Lake Avernus and Agrippa had been forced to hang two of his carpenters for murdering a local during a botched theft. He had guards on the only road east, yet there were constant attempts by Neapolis officials to come out and demand things from him, either justice or compensation for something his people had done. If it hadn’t been for the sight of new galleys growing by the day, he thought he would have despaired, but Octavian’s silver poured out and ships were made and rested. The green wood would warp and twist over the winter, needing constant care and repair, but he had teams for that work as well.