Free Fire in the East by Harry Sidebottom Page B

buggered if he was going to be beaten in front of his own staff, bested by this cocky Hibernian bastard. His fear from the previous night mixed with the pain in his arm to form a hot jet of rage. He could feel himself losing self-control. He launched into a series of savage cuts, at Maximus’s head, legs - any body part he thought he might hit. Again and again his blade nearly got through but Maximus either blocked the blow or twisted away. Finally, the opening was there. Ballista launched a vicious backhand cut at Maximus’s head. The Hibernian’s face was completely open. Ballista’s spatha could not miss. The rowing master’s pipes, shrill over the noise of laboured breathing and heavy footfalls, cut into Ballista’s consciousness. At the last second he pulled the blow.
    ‘Harbour. Seleuceia in Pieria. Off the starboard bow,’ came the bow officer’s call.
    Ballista and Maximus stepped apart and put their swords down. Ballista physically jumped when the men cheered. It took him a moment to realize that they were cheering not the appearance of the Concordia’s final destination but his and Maximus’s sword work. He raised a hand in acknowledgement and walked over to his bodyguard.
    ‘Thank you.’
    ‘Sure, it was a pleasure trying to stay alive,’ replied Maximus. ‘You would have slaughtered a horde of worse-trained men.’
    ‘And in my anger I left myself open again and again to a killing blow from a good swordsman if he wanted me dead. Thank you.’
    ‘Oh, I knew you were not really trying to kill me. I would cost a lot to replace.’
    ‘That was my main thought.’

    It had been a bad mistake remaining in armour. As each member of his staff appeared on deck in clean clothes, looking scrubbed and cool, Ballista inwardly cursed himself for a fool for not thinking to ask the acting trierarch how long it would be before the Concordia docked at Seleuceia. He called for some watered wine. Tired and hot from his swordplay, he was sweating profusely under the Syrian sun.
    Now, there was this added delay. A big fat-bellied merchantman had made a complete mess of wearing round in the fresh westerly breeze. Somehow she had fallen foul of an imperial warship. Their bowsprits thoroughly entangled, they blocked the mouth of the canal which led to the main harbour.
    Standing on the prow, Ballista checked the position of the Con cordia: To the south off the starboard beam rose the green hump of Mount Cassios. To the south-east off the starboard quarter lay the flat, lush-looking plain of the Orontes river. Directly ahead was Seleuceia, in the foothills of Mount Pieria, which rose in a long reach to port before falling away in a series of switchbacks.
    The warship, a little Liburnian galley, freed herself from the roundship, spun round and, with an interesting variety of obscene gestures from the deck, skimmed off north-west towards the Bay of Issos. Possibly chastened, the merchantman plied its sweeps to push its way into the wind until it had enough sea room to make its intended course up or down coast.
    Seleuceia, the main port of Syria, had two harbours. One was a wretched thing. Little more than a semicircle open to the prevailing winds, it was widely considered unsafe, fit only for the local long-shore fishermen. The other was an altogether grander affair, a huge manmade polygonal basin protected from the westerly winds by a long dog-legged canal.
    Ballista was mindful of his imperial mandata to look to the safety of Seleuceia, if still unsure how he would carry this out when several hundred miles away in Arete. He studied the approaches to the city. As the canal was only wide enough for two warships abreast, it would be quite easy to rig up a chain or a boom to close it. There was no sign of any such thing.
    The harbour was little more encouraging. It was large, and there were several merchant vessels moored, yet the whole had an air of neglect. A jetty had collapsed, and there was a large amount of floating