discipline that Sabinus expected of regular close-order Roman troops. Finding the route to safety barred, many of the rowers squeezed through the oar-ports to take their chances in the sea. Beyond them, the bireme was backing oars in an attempt to extricate itself from the crippled and visibly listing Parthian vessel; the blades whipped up the already roiling water so that men now floundering found their screams choked and their struggles useless. Many were sucked under while others suffered grim head wounds as the sweeps cracked into their skulls and faces. With the teeth-freezing squeal of grating and tearing wood on wood, the bireme edged back.
Sabinus vaulted the rail and landed on the stricken ship; he drew his sword and strode towards the line of the melee, which had now almost reached the mainmast, past the many dead and wounded left in its wake. The ship lurched, as the bireme managed to pull itself free, and then settled, tilted markedly towards the side with the gaping rend. Sabinus stumbled but righted himself; his stomach heaved again with the rocking of the ship. A slight movement of a dying man just to his left caused Sabinus to pause and press the tip of his sword into the man’s throat, grinding the blade left and right, not wanting to be attacked from behind by an enemy feigning incapacity. He withdrew his weapon, with a gurgle of air bubbling through thick liquid, and went to move on but then stopped abruptly. He peered down at the man’s face in the gloom. It was bearded; but with a full, Greek-style beard, not the more shaped version sported in Parthia. He looked down at the man’s legs: he was wearing eastern trousers and yet they were not partially coveredby a long tunic. He glanced around; all the enemy dead wore trousers but none of them had eastern-style tunics or beards, nor were they armed in the Parthian manner – scale armour, wicker shields, bows and short spears and swords – but, rather, in the Greek style of the northern Euxine – oval thureos shield, javelin and short sword. Sabinus cursed under his breath and then ran back to where the enemy trierarchus lay; he had a beard the colour of copper, natural, not dyed. That settled it: he was definitely not Parthian.
This was not the ship carrying the embassy.
As panic rose in his throat he ran to the rail and looked out; to larboard he could make out that one of the escort ships had been grappled by a bireme, but to starboard he could see nothing. Behind him Thracius’ troops broke the remaining resistance of the ships’ marines.
‘I want prisoners!’ Sabinus shouted as the centurion hacked and slashed his way into the retreating enemy, his men reaping bloody harvest to either side. He sprinted into the rear of the marines and barged his way through, manhandling men out of the way, screaming at them to take prisoners, until he reached Thracius. ‘Prisoners! I must have a couple of prisoners.’
The centurion turned back to him and nodded, his eyes wide with killing-joy and his face and arms smeared in blood; he shouted at the men to either side and they charged forward, following up the defeated foe. Sabinus trailed them, checking the bodies of the fallen to see if there was enough life left in one to be able to furnish him with the information he was now desperate for. He cursed himself for allowing his seasickness to cloud his mind: in his weakened state, he had assumed that the Parthian embassy would just try to sneak past his flotilla and had not considered the possibility of a diversion. Which of the other two ships held the ambassadors?
Then that word suddenly echoed in his head: diversion, diversion. Bile surged in his throat and this time it was not from the ship’s motion: he had been duped; none of these ships contained the Parthians. He ran forward to the bow where Thracius and his men were disarming the last two dozen or so of the enemy; helooked out to the north as the first vestiges of dawn warmed the thick cloud