Chapter 7

I overheard a soldier ask, “Why do we stop every night and sleep ashore? We could go so much faster, if we sailed at night too.”

Another explained, “If we lose sight of land, we might never see it again! Want to be lost on the ocean? Dying of hunger and thirst, until one of Neptune’s monsters claims us?”

Each ship had a crude magnetic compass which pointed vaguely north, but with unpredictable winds, currents, and visibility, sailing more than half a day from land was perilous. Any sane captain went ashore nightly, or at least anchored within sight of land before dark. The few exceptions were trade routes between Londonium and Gaul, Caledonia and Belgica, and across the Mediterranean.

Banditry wasn’t rare along the coasts of Gaul or Hispania, but with a full cohort of over four hundred battle-hardened veterans, we had nothing to fear but the ocean. Gescribate was later called Brest, a four-day sail south of Belgica. Another week got us to the great port of Gades, which a much later king renamed Cadiz. It’s often said that Rome built Gades, and Gades built Roman trade. It’s mostly true, with ships visiting from as far as Narvik, Helsinki, Dakar, even from the Nile, and Odessa on the Black Sea. With a hundred thousand residents, only eight cities in the Empire were larger.

Arriving at dawn instead of noon would have been much better. Screams and other sounds of combat accompanied the odors of death and burning buildings. The salt air of Gades did not smell of trade and brine as it should; but burning hair and the sickly metallic tang of blood. As we sailed into the harbor, the silence was shattered not by the greeting of port officials, but by a scream that sounded like a pig being flayed alive. We had come for a peaceful anchorage, but tied up at the pier and charged into an urban slaughterhouse. The city had been devoured from within, a malignant growth of traitors from the local garrison, a century of deserters from Tingus (Tangier) across the Pillars of Hercules, and opportunistic ruffians who joined them to turn the jewel of Hispania into a charnel house.

My men didn’t hesitate, rapidly forming a testudo, as they’d practiced a thousand times. A volley of arrows rained down on us, a dozen, then several dozen deadly missiles. Other than our big scutum shields, only one hit its mark, pinning a man’s foot to the wooden quay. Unlike the sturdy and somewhat armor piercing gladius shortswords carried by common infantry, cavalrymen like me used longer and narrower spatha swords, which were far more effective on horseback. I drew mine, the steel singing as it left the scabbard, and roared for my men to advance. “IMPETUS!”