The Centurion's Empire (34 page)

Valerius, a skilled blacksmith, said that the revolts in Africa and Britain proved that the gods were abandoning Rome to
decay and ruin. With that we all agreed, being good guildsmen. Our ceremonies and secrets had been suspected of being
pagan by the Christian authorities as they closed the temples of the rightful gods and persecuted their followers. Many
of our ceremonies were indeed pagan, and quite rightly so. The gods of Rome and the walls of her masons had kept her
inviolate for eight hundred years. Who were these cultist Christian upstarts to tamper with the very foundations of our
world?

On the morning of the forty-first day after my arrival in Larengi we were roused long before dawn by the sounds of
galloping horses and men shouting. Torches and bonfires flared up as we ran into the street, buckling on our swords and
rubbing the sleep from our eyes. Publius, the officer in charge of our training, led us to the docks. There we saw an
exhausted horse, its

sweat turning to steam as it stood shivering in the cold night air. Its rider was slumped against a wall, a goblet in one
hand. He was being questioned by Epictetus, the captain of one of the warships, and by Decius, who was commander over
us all.

"You are sure that they come?" Decius asked urgently.

"Commander, all I know is that several riders left as I did, and that I was ordered to ride ahead and say 'Nemesis protect
the Gods of Romulus' when I arrived."

"It is quite fantastic," exclaimed Epictetus. "Rome will stand forever. This is some mistake."

"No mistake, sir," gasped the messenger. "I was there. Visigoth freedmen within Rome's walls betrayed the city to
Alaric's men."

"This is the end, then," Commander Decius said quietly, before he turned to address us all. "Soldiers, craftsmen,
scholars of Rome: prepare to sail at once. Officers of the guard, station your men around the boats. Everyone else, stand
by the boats to load and row."

Very soon more riders streamed into the port and made for the beach, where we waited. All were robed and cloaked, but
by the bonfires' glare I could tell that many were women. Most were tall and fair to behold, though their eyes were bright
with fear. There were no children. Close behind them were pursuing horsemen, and as we struggled to launch the boats
the enemy smashed into our thin line of marines.

The fighting was savage and desperate, but the stout marines of Rome held the pursuers back. Arrows poured down on us
as we pushed the boats through the shallows. I fell, struck in the leg.

"Save Quintus, the mason!" shouted the commander. "We need him more than a dozen centurions."
In the ruddy light of the bonfires I saw Valerius wading back for me. He took me up in his great arms and with a heave
threw me bodily into a boat.

"Rome fallen, Romans fighting Romans. What times are these," the blacksmith growled as he climbed in after me.

"But it's Visigoths that pursue us," I replied.

"The horsemen wore Roman armor, and the arrow in your leg is Roman, Quintus. Perhaps Rome would have her gods
fall with her in this night of blood."

At about a quarter mile offshore the warships lay at anchor. Four were dromons, solid and stately, each with two rows of
oars, and armed with spidery catapults. The other was a trireme, the
Tenebrae,
sleek and proud, her weapons under cover.
One and all, the boats made for the
Tenebrae,
and I could hear the rattle of anchor gear being drawn up as I was hoisted
aboard.

"Why flee?" cried a sailor who was staring back at the shore. "If Rome is gone the world's heart is cut out."

"If Rome has had its Trojan horse, then Rome can have its Aeneas, too!" said Valerius, shaking him roughly.
None of us knew this to be our purpose, but all carried hopes that it might be so. At that moment, cold, wet, and in
terrible pain, I resolved to chronicle our voyage.

The guide led the group out of the auditorium to an antehall where two quarter-scale models of oared warships sat on
aquamarine polymer waves within glass cases. She pointed to the ship on the left.

"This vessel is a dromon, a heavy, slow warship of the late Roman Empire. Rather than ramming the enemy ships, it
fought from a distance with catapults and flamethrowers."

"Flamethrowers?" said a tourist with a veteran's pin on his cap. "I didn't know they had gasoline back then."

"They used a mixture of pitch and sulphur called Greek fire," said one of the students. "It had much the same effect as
twentieth-century napalm."

'This other ship is a trireme," said the guide hastily, anxious not to lose control of her tour to the students. "It had three
banks of oars, was very fast, and was designed for ramming. It fell out of general use about a century before the
Deciad

was written.

"Quintus mentions several times that the trireme
Tene-

brae
seemed new, and it is possible that the ship was built especially for this mission. As you will hear, it was armed with
very advanced catapults and was probably the fastest ship on the Mediterranean Sea at that time."
Vitellan smiled at the irony of his own fascination. He was a citizen of the Roman Empire learning about the Empire's
future as ancient history.

Several days after the morning of our flight we drew close to the Straits of Gibraltar. Though hardly able to walk, and
burning with fever, I still had to work with one of the catapult teams. This was because so many of our marines had been
left fighting on the beach to cover our escape.

Very late in the evening our lookout called a warning, and we beheld a great fleet of warships in our path. At once the
commander ordered the sails furled and the masts lowered on all ships. All those not sailing the ship or manning the
catapults were ordered to the rowing benches. Even the Gods of Romulus strode from their quarters and took up positions
at the oars beside the craftsmen, scholars, and surviving marines. Shivering sometimes, burning sometimes, I sat by a
forward catapult. Valerius, too, was on this team, his great strength needed for the winding ratchet.
The drumbeat began and our ships formed up, two dromons ahead of us and one on either side. The oars were soon in
time, and we made straight for the waiting fleet, attempting no evasion. The catapults were drawn and aligned. These
weapons were really half catapult and half ballista, with an iron frame. They shot fused clay pots of Greek fire with
prodigious range and accuracy.

I sat ready to light the pots' fuses while Valerius worked at the winding handle. The enemy ships converged on the place
where we would meet, and we cried out in amazement to see so many Roman dromons scattered among the barbarian
vessels. Our dromons began to fling their fire pots, and many warships halted, drenched in smoky flames. We passed
among crippled ships in safety, but many more were speeding to block our path.

Our drummer raised the speed, first to maximum, then to ramming, and the
Tenebrae
easily pulled away from the
escorts. The enemy captains had not known that any ship could move so fast, and were not able to close with us or block
our path. Our catapults thudded at closer and closer range, and soon the stones and Greek fire of the enemy began to
crash down on our own deck. Arrows struck the barricades around us, and we could hear screams from men aboard the
burning ships. Our steersman fell with an arrow through his neck, and Decius stood up and seized the steering oar,
shouting orders all the while.

Then we were in the clear with the open ocean before us, and though the rear catapults still shot at the swiftest of our
pursuers, we were safe. The marines cheered and embraced each other before leaving their stations to put out the fires.
At about twelve stadia from the battle we shipped oars and raised the mast again. It was dark by now, and as Valerius
helped me to my feet I looked back to the horizon where our trapped escorts fought and burned among the enemy ships.

"Such a fierce batde, yet only a glow now," I said.

"A glow where brave Romans die," replied Valerius. "First the marines give their lives for us, now entire ships doom
themselves so that we may flee. We should have stayed to fight."

"They burn that we may escape, my friend. Our mission is worth those lives."

"No mission is worth dishonor," said Valerius grimly. "Better to have no New Rome than to found it in cowardice,
betrayal, and flight."

I told myself that Aeneas might have felt thus when he left Dido to her funeral pyre and sailed away to Italy, but the
words cut deep. Were Roman virtue and honor too high a price to pay to found a new city?

The guide led the group to a map of Africa just beyond the model ships. It reached halfway to the ceiling, and was la-
beled in Latin and English. A heavy red line ran from Italy through the western Mediterranean, then down the west coast
of Africa.

"The islands referred to in the next passage are the Cape Verde Islands," she explained, pointing to their position on
the map with a spotbeam. "The remains of a small Roman garrison have been found there, and the best dating
techniques available suggest that it was razed by fire early in the fifth century a.d. Several dozen graves were also
found."

This was all a curious mixture of the future Rome and the Rome of the distant past, Vitellan noted yet again. There was
also something odd about the guide—she seemed strangely dynamic, larger than life.

"Quintus wrote most of the
Deciad
while the expedition was staying there. The base had been set up by Decius during an
earlier expedition as a place for rest and provisioning. He also had three cornships waiting there. These were much
better suited to the voyage ahead than the trireme, and some naval historians have said that if Columbus or Cook had
been given a Roman cornship to use on their own expeditions, they would have done just as well.

"The next passage deals with part of the voyage to the Cape Verde Islands on the trireme. They were sailing south along
the African coast, and had just entered the tropics."

Delirious, near death, I lay oblivious to all around me as we sailed many hundreds of miles. As the fever broke and I
revived I noticed how warm and humid the air had become. At first I could see only the blurred outlines of the cabin, and
feel the pitch and roll as the. warship crashed clumsily through the waves. Then I heard voices behind me. Commander
Decius was speaking with a woman.

"The fever has broken, Decius," she said with a low, gentle voice. "He will live to build our chambers, perhaps even to
grow old."

"Good, Helica. Very good," he replied in a voice more tender than I had ever heard him use. "One less trouble for us."

"Does the crew still mutter about being near the

edge of the world, or that the sun will drop from the sky and destroy us?"
/

"They do. They are frightened to see it so high overhead."

"Such foolishness, my love, but then they are not like us. Did you reassure them?"

"Yes, many times. They know I have sailed much farther than here already, yet they still talk. Captain Epictetus ignores
them and says that sailors understand only wine, buggery, and the cat, but now the wine runs low, and there are few
marines to beat obedience into them. As for the other, there are thirty beautiful women aboard this ship, and this is the
longest voyage that the crew has ever madg."

"Attack us, the Gods of Romulus?" Helica gasped. "They would not dare. They must know better."
I could hear Decius begin to pace slowly, and the creak of the boards beneath his feet.

"What special powers have we?" he said with a sigh. "Our usual lifespan is several times longer than that of most
mortals, but that means only that we accumulate more learning and experience. These sailors think that we are just rich
nobles, they do not know that our kind guided and governed the Roman Empire for eight hundred years."

"Several lifetimes of training make deadly fighters of we Temporians," replied Helica ominously.

"Indeed, we could kill many in a mutiny, but we need a live crew to sail the ship. In a way it is good that the trireme sails
so badly in these rough seas. The caulking of seams and bailing of leaks takes more time with each day that passes."
The commander ceased his pacing, and there was a long silence. I was wondering if they had left when Helica spoke
again.

"My love, it pleases me very much to sail with you this time. It pleases me beyond telling."

"Helica, Helica. For years I cursed the waves, wind, and creaking timbers that took me from you, and the
thousands of miles between us. Even now I must remind myself not to be lonely as I look out over the water."

"We shall even be together on that greatest of all voyages," she said with a strange eagerness in her voice.

"First we must build the greatest of ships," he said with a laugh. 'Tend Quintus well, now. Without his skills there will
be no ship, and no escape from this savage world and our enemies."

"And no hope of children for us," she added in a very small voice.