John Roberts - The Princess and the Pirates

Groaning and complaining, the men set to their oars. At first their strokes were so ragged that they might as well have been untrained land-lubbers. Soon, though, they were back into their usual rhythm and began to sweat out the previous night’s wine. I ran the marines through boarding drills and catapult drills until they, too, were sweating in their armor, and I made sure that the men on the other ships were doing the same. By the time the pirate vessels were in sight, I felt that the worst was over. My head was almost clear, my stomach had settled down, and the strength was returning to my limbs.

We were close to shore, near a stretch of beach I had not seen in my previous outings. It was rocky and deserted, except for some ruined old buildings that looked as if they had not been inhabited in centuries. It was an ill-favored place, fit haunt for harpies and Gorgons.

“They’re coming about,” Ion said. Ahead of us, the three lean vessels had dug in their oars, halting their forward motion. Then, with the port and starboard oars working rapidly in opposite directions, they spun on their axes and presented their rams to us.

“Prettily done,” Ariston noted. He had come to stand beside me in the prow of the Nereid.

“That’s right,” agreed Ion. “And I think we had better do the same, Senator.”

“Why? We came here to catch them, and we are still four to their three, however well they row.”

He looked at me with disgust. “And how long do you think that will last. If three of them think they can take on four warships, their friends can’t be far away. They’ve laid a trap for us, Senator.”

“Do you think I am totally dense? Hung over or not, I knew they were luring us out when I heard they’d traipsed past the harbor in something less than full strength. I was sent to bag these brigands, and I intend to do it. If their remaining ships will just come out from behind whichever headland they are lurking, I will give battle right here. Just remember to take some of them alive so that we can find out where their base may be.”

Ariston laughed. “Maybe the Senate sent out the right man after all.”

Ion shook his head. “I still have my doubts.”

As the ships drew nearer, I saw what the island woman had meant when she said the pirate ships had been “the same color as the sea.” The hulls were painted a deep shade of blue-green. With yards lowered and masts unstepped, they would blend with the surrounding water, making them difficult to discern at any distance. My own ships, painted in their traditional naval colors, were visible from far away. Cleopatra’s, with all its gilding, could be seen as far as the horizon on a sunny day and was tolerably visible by moonlight.

“Down with the yards and masts!” Ion bellowed, as if reading my mind. Quickly, the crews of all four vessels lowered the yards, then lifted the masts from their footings and laid them upon the grooved wooden blocks on the decks. It is customary to do this before going into battle because otherwise the ships would be top-heavy and inclined to wallow during fast maneuvers. In place of the mast, they raised a shorter, thicker post with a pulley at its top. This was to be used as a crane for raising and dropping the corvus when we got within boarding distance.

Thinking of this caused me to note an odd discrepancy in the ships fast approaching us. “Why are their masts still up?” I wondered aloud. I could now see this plainly, and that their yards, though lowered, lay athwart the deck railings, a most inconvenient arrangement for combat.

“They must mean to hoist sail and run for it,” Ion speculated, “but there’s little sense to that. In this weak breeze we’d catch them easily. And where are their reinforcements? We ought to have seen them by now.”

“Ariston,” I said, “any suggestions?”

“They can’t mean to fight,” he said. “The odds aren’t right, and they haven’t rigged for it. It must be a trap, but what sort?”

I was beginning to have a terrible feeling about this, but what choice did I have? With my four warships I simply could not run from three scruffy pirate vessels. I’d be the laughingstock of the Forum. I’d be dubbed “Piraticus” in derision, as the elder Antonius had been named Creticus after that lowly regarded island people beat him in battle.

“Captain,” shouted a sailor, “we’re taking on water!”

“What!” Ion and I shouted at once. Then we saw. Water was bubbling up through the stones that ballasted the ship’s hull.

“Impossible!” Ion said, wonder tinging his voice. “I’ve seen to every inch of this hull! There’s no rot, and we’d have felt it if we’d scraped a submerged rock.”

“Senator,” shouted one of the other shipmasters just a few paces to our starboard, “we’re shipping water! We have to beach before we sink!” The skipper just beyond him reported the same problem.

Cleopatra pulled up to our port side, and she came to the rail. “What is wrong?”

I knew that my face was flaming as purple as a triumphators robe. “We’ve been sabotaged! Our hulls have been bored through and we’re sinking! Clearly you are not. We have to get these tubs on shore and repair them before it is too late. You will have to cover us while we retreat.”

“There are three of them and one of me, Senator,” she said. “I am not the one who left his ships abandoned all night! Queen Artemisia had a way out of this sort of situation, remember?”

I remembered all too well. Artemisia of Halicarnassus and her ships had been attached as allies to the fleet of Xerxes. When she saw that the Greeks were going to win the battle of Salamis, she rammed and sank a Persian vessel so that the nearby enemy would think her ships were Greek. As soon as she saw a way clear, she hoisted sail and fled from the battle.

I was not going to argue with a subordinate officer, which was what she had wanted to be. “Keep between us and those ships until we are safely beached. Then you can pull for Paphos. If your rowers are as good as you say they are, you’ll have no trouble outdistancing them.”

Ion began a brisk series of orders, and our rowers got to work. In the bows of the ships, men with long poles probed the bottom, feeling for submerged rocks. All the rest, sailors and marines, bailed frantically with buckets of wood or tarred leather, with cooking pots and with helmets. The pirate ships drew closer, but Cleopatra stayed with us. When the poles touched bottom, Ion turned the ships so that our rams were seaward, and we began backing water, moving sluggishly now as the hulls filled. The men with the poles moved to the sterns by the steering oars and began calling off the depth as we neared shore.

“Rocky bottom, rocky beach,” Ion groused. “I’d never go ashore in this place except the alternative is to sink.”

“Captain,” Ariston said, “they may have their main strength ashore. We’ll be vulnerable as we leave the ships.”

“We’ll have to chance it,” I told him.

The blue ships held off, just out of catapult range, grinning faces lining the rails. I looked for a large, long-haired figure, but there were several such, and I could spot no man I might positively identify as Spurius. Seldom in my life had I felt so frustrated and mortified. It did, however, beat being drowned.

With a teeth-rattling grate, our stern crunched onto the stony bottom. We were within twenty feet of dry land, a bit of luck. The prospect of leaping full-armored into chest-deep water and wading a hundred yards to shore has been known to cool the combative ardor of the bravest soldiers.

“Swing the corvus around,” I ordered, “and drop it onto the beach. No man should have to get his shoes wet. I am going to take half the men ashore and set up security. When I’ve done that, we can unload the ships and haul them ashore for repair.” I ordered the archers and catapult handlers to stay in the bows, just in case the pirates should try to attack us, and lined up the rest of the marines to rush ashore.