Arthur Invictus by Paul Bannister Read Free Book Online Page A

were ordered to complete that destruction, then join forces with the other landed crews to burn the grain stores and piers. If possible, they should burn down the cookhouse, poison the wells and set fire to the workmen’s barracks. This I wanted to leave for last, as it could bring resistance that could delay us in our other, more important targets.
    A half mile behind us, I could see the first flickers of flame rising, and grunted with satisfaction. No alarm trumpets had yet sounded, few shipyard workers were likely to have been at work at this early hour. We had a few more minutes to implement our destructive plans.
    Ahead, the lock gates appeared out of the thin drizzle. I glanced at Cenhud, who was acting as master of the war galley. “How’s the tide?” I asked.
    He grinned at me, a reassuring sight. “Excellent,” he said. I was relying on the exact confluence of river flow and tide to help me achieve serious destruction. I wanted the lock gates smashed and irreparable. I halted the war galley to allow the last of our vessels, with its curious platform at the bow, to slip past us towards a pier.
    A detail of armed men scrambled ashore and headed for the lock gates. Still no alarm. This was almost too good to be true. We held position for a few tense minutes.
    Cenhud nodded to me, issued a quiet command and as they had rehearsed, a crew hauled up every sail to catch the morning breeze off the land. Celvinius began his hammer taps to dictate the rowers’ rhythm, and steadily increased the pace.
    Soon, remarkably soon, the galley had leaped to the speed of a cantering horse and was coursing under full sail and straining muscles towards the lock gates. The white bone of water at its prow did not cover the deadly war ram, and Cenhud calmly kept the steerboard true and aimed at the exact junction of the heavy lock gates.
    On the stone quay alongside the lock chamber, we could see our comrades, who were hauling the downstream gates open and emptying the lock. Now we had the whole pressure of 600 miles of river building against one side of those gates, and we were speeding towards it with our deadly ram.
    Moments before impact, the rowers shipped oars and braced, the crew detailed to handle chains readied themselves, and with a splintering crash like Thor’s hammer the war galley rammed through the wooden river barrier.
    Most of us fell to the deck, but in seconds the chains were thrown to the waiting assault group and the galley was tethered to the chamber’s bollards long enough for us all to scramble onto the quay, jumping across a torrent of water that was already swamping our ship.
    As the stragglers scrambled to safety, Celvinius waved to the last of our galleys, and the crew tilted the curious platform towards the water and released the flaps on the containers of pumice attached to it. The grey volcanic stone slid down the wooden ramp into the water.
    As it went, men alongside the ramp, men dressed in vinegar-soaked leather with faces shielded, poured a stinking concoction of bitumen, rock oil, resin and sulphur across the pumice, which floated with the current rapidly towards the locks. The crew hurriedly stepped back as Damonius and several assistants began pumping more of the Byzantine Fire mix at the floating rock, and the big centurion, satisfied, touched a lighted taper to one of the pumps’ nozzles.
    Damonius noted later it was a good thing he shaved his head, because the backfire took his eyebrows and would have had his hair, too, even under his leather helmet.
    A giant whoosh of flame went from side to side across the stone-channelled river on the carpet of floating stones and ran with the surging current through the shattered lock gates. It sent our chained war galley up in flames and carried a wide tongue of bright-burning fire downriver and into the anchored ships of Maximian’s fleet.
    The ships themselves were tossed and scattered by the unleashed power of the world’s oldest river, and as they