Raptor (134 page)

“Rex Italiae will suffice,” Theodoric said, smiling. “I can hardly decline such a generous offer, Senator, and I welcome your good offices. Go, and with all my wishes for your success. If you keep traveling northward from here, you will come eventually to the Via Flaminia, and that will lead you to Ariminum, where the Navarchus Lentinus of the Hadriatic Fleet is currently engaged in certain projects. My marshal Thorn, here, is acquainted with the roads and with the navarchus. Saio Thorn will accompany you and your men, and will see that Lentinus puts you aboard the first vessel sailing for Constantinople.”

So Theodoric and the army went on without me, and I turned back the way we had come, guiding Festus’s small train. I could not complain of having been given escort duty. It meant no more sleeping outdoors and living on army provender and enduring long days of riding at military pace, because the senator of course traveled as befits a dignitary, and made sure that his servants and I did too. Each day’s journey was planned so that it concluded in a city or town having a well-furnished hospitium of well-laden board and well-kept therma.

At Ariminum, Lentinus most obligingly lent Festus a raven craft and crew, and sent him off toward Constantinople straightway. The raven being the smallest of the speedy dromo vessels, the senator could take with him only two of his attendants, so he paid for quartering the rest of them to await his return. That meant a considerable outlay; he could not possibly go out and back by sea in less than four weeks.

I did not have leisure to wander about Ariminum, because Lentinus urged me to go with him to see what he had done in the way of blockading Ravenna. He and our army workmen had only in recent days finished building their makeshift troop carriers and setting them afloat full of warriors. The navarchus seemed very proud and eager to show off the accomplishment, and of course I was eager to see it. So next day we rode north together from Ariminum along the Via Popilia. (It was true, what I had been told: the Popilian Way was not much of a road, its pavement broken and buckled or entirely missing from long stretches.) In late afternoon we came to the place where our landward siege line encircling Ravenna had its termination at the seaside south of the city. Our sentries there were stationed prudently out of bow-shot of Ravenna’s defenders, but close enough that the city’s harbor works were within our view.

“Actually, Ravenna itself is not visible from here,” Lentinus said, as he and I dismounted among the siege troops. “What you see yonder—the docks and piers and sheds and such—that is the working and mercantile end of the city, the seaport suburb called Classis. The patrician part, Ravenna proper, is two or three miles inland. It and Classis are connected by a causeway across the marshes between, and that is lined with shacks and huts where the working people live, the suburb called Caesarea.”

It was evident that the port must be a busy place in normal times. The broad, commodious harbor, sheltered from storm waves by two low islands offshore, had room for as many as two hundred and fifty big ships to ride at anchor, and the dockside facilities were ample for doing the loading and unloading and provisioning of all that many at once. But now there were only a few vessels to be seen, all securely moored and battened down and crewless, their sails tight-furled, no skiffs going between them and the shore. In normal times, even from our distance, we would easily have been able to see the crowds of porters and carts and wagons bustling about the wharfs and piers, but now the only discernible movement was that of a few apparent idlers. The waterfront buildings were shuttered, no smithy smokes were rising, the drum-wheel cranes were immobile.

I could see just six things still at work—the six ungainly craft that were paddling sluggishly, one behind another, from one headland of the harbor to the other, on this side of the barrier islands. They yawed and rocked in the water, but they managed to stay in line, a distance apart—in two parallel lines, three vessels going one way, three the other. Except for the warriors’ shields hung overlapping along the bulwarks, and the ranks of spearpoints that bristled above, the craft
did
look like nothing more than giant boxes. Each had two banks of oars but no masts, each was slab-sided and square-ended, so that its either end could be prow or stern.

“That way they do not have to turn around as they come and go,” Lentinus explained. “It is much easier for the oarsmen to face the other way on their benches than to turn the whole ponderous box around. And, spaced across the harbor as they are, slow though they are, any two of the boxes—one moving forward, one reversing—can converge on any ship that tries to slip between them. Each box carries four contubernia of your spearmen armed also with swords. Enough to swarm aboard and overwhelm any merchant ship’s crew.”

I asked, “Have the men yet had the pleasure of attacking some enemy craft?”

“So far, no, and I do not expect they will. Since the patrol commenced, one of the immense corn ships and later a galley-towed string of barges came from the sea, between the islands and into the harbor roads. But when they saw the glint of all that waiting steel, they sheered off and went back to sea. I would say we have effectively put an end to the seaborne supplies.”

I murmured, “I am glad to hear it.”

Lentinus went on, “And I can attest that not so much as a salted flitch has been carried into Ravenna—or out of it, for that matter—along this Via Popilia during the time I have been working with your men here and in Ariminum. If the siege line is equally impermeable all the way around the city, and I believe it is, then the only thing going in and out of Ravenna is the occasional message. Your men have reported seeing the torch lights of the Polybian system, signaling from far across the marshes and being answered from the city walls. Obviously Ozoacer still has some loyal followers reporting from the world outside. But from now on, all that the Ravenna folk have to sustain them is whatever ship’s stores they already had squirreled away in there.”

Pleased, I said, “Odoacer may still squat in there for a long time, but he cannot do it indefinitely.”

“And,” said Lentinus, beaming exuberantly, “I am preparing something else—to make Ozoacer’s squatting
really
uncomfortable. Let us stop the night here with the troops, Saio Thorn. Then, tomorrow, ride with me around the siege line to where the river flows through it, and I will show you something much more entertaining than floating boxes.”

I thought we might have to retrace our ride along the Via Popilia to make our way around Ravenna, but it turned out that our siege soldiers, having little else to do, had paced out and marked a circuitous path of firm ground threading through the bogs and quaking-sands. So the next day we were able to ride almost as quickly and comfortably across country as on the dilapidated highway. The path led us inland, and eventually across the marsh road where I had seen the Polybian signal lights—only we crossed it much closer to Ravenna’s walls, here visible in the distance—and at last we came to the river. Our siege line was interrupted by it, but I could see that the line of soldiers resumed on the northern bank. On this side, a score or more of our men, stripped to the waist because of the damp heat, were sweatily at work on the project Lentinus had brought me to see.

“This is the southernmost arm of the Padus River,” he said. “Notice how, just to the east of us here, it forks into two branches to flow around Ravenna’s walls on its way to the sea. That was not entirely nature’s doing; the fossa is man-made, to provide water for the city. The river water, as you can see and smell, is not of the cleanest, coming through these swamps as it does. But it is Ravenna’s only supply, because the city’s one aqueduct has been derelict for ages. So—the waters flow around the walls, and close against them, and through low arches in them here and there, thence into canals that wind all inside the city. So—I am arranging to have those waters carry into Ravenna some small surprises as well.”

I said admiringly, “For a neutral observer, Navarchus, you seem thoroughly to have entered into the spirit of conquest. Those things the men are building, are they boats? They look rather small and flimsy to carry soldiers.”

“Boats, yes, but they are going in unmanned, so they need not be very sturdy. And they are purposely small, so they can slide easily under the walls’ low arches.”

“Then why do they each have a mast and sail? Will that not impede their going through arches?”

“They will go in,” he said, with a happy grin, “upside down.”

“Eh?” I could only stare in puzzlement at him and at the objects under discussion. Lentinus’s new-built harbor craft were only giant boxes; these river craft were only shallow, oblong, wooden tubs, not much longer and wider than I was. Now I saw that, on the two or three nearing completion, the workers were fitting the masts to them, and fitting the masts into what ought to be the tubs’ rounded undersides. And the masts were only crude, stumpy things, supporting very small, square canvas sails.

“The boat rides on the water’s surface, like any boat,” Lentinus explained, “but with the sail below water. That way the current propels it swiftly along, and the boat does not just drift, at risk of getting caught in the bankside reeds—or of getting caught crosswise in an arch or a narrow canal. Meanwhile, the shallow concavity of the upper side carries the cargo.”

“How very clever,” I murmured sincerely.

“It is not my own invention. The ancient Greeks, when they were still warlike, called this the khelé, the crab-claw. If an enemy fleet anchored in one of their harbors, they would stealthily send these downstream to infiltrate that fleet and, so to speak, claw at the enemy ships from underneath, in the manner of crabs.”

“Claw at the enemy with what?” I asked. “What will be the cargo of these?”

He showed me, for one of the completed khelaí was just then being loaded. “Wet fire, we seafarers call it—another thing the Greeks invented, before they degenerated into a nation of jellyfish. The cargo is a mixture of sulfur, naphtha, pitch and quicklime. As you may or may not know, Saio Thorn, when quicklime is soaked with water, it becomes angry and hot—hot enough to ignite the other ingredients, and that mixture will burn fiercely even underwater. You have already discerned the flimsiness of the khelaí. Well, I have tried to calculate, making them just watertight enough to stay afloat until they are well inside Ravenna. Then they get waterlogged and the quicklime begins to heat and…” For a middle-aged man, he grinned like a mischievous boy. “…and
euax!
Wet fire!”

“Marvelous!” I exclaimed, and still sincerely. But I thought I ought also to speak a word of caution. “I imagine Theodoric would prefer to take Ravenna more or less intact. I doubt that he would applaud your burning the country’s capital city to ashes and cinders.”

Now he laughed. “Eheu, you and Theozoric need not worry. I am doing this only to bedevil Ozoacer, and to keep his warriors from sleeping soundly at night. Also, I confess, to provide some amusement for myself and some welcome diversion for your poor, bored, sweltering besiegers. After the first few khelaí do their crab-clawing, I doubt that the defenders will let any others get far enough inside the city to cause any real conflagration. But they
will
keep the defenders and the cityfolk awake and nervous and annoyed.”

After dark, on Lentinus’s instructions, several soldiers swam with one of the khelaí to the middle of the river, and there pointed it downstream and let it go. Then another khelé and another went briskly skimming off into the darkness. When the three were gone, we all lounged about the riverside, eyeing the distant pink sky-glow made by Ravenna’s lamps and hearth fires. If any sentries on the city walls noticed the approaching khelaí, they probably took the things to be mere deadfall logs, because the river was thickly scummed with much other floating trash. Anyway, at least one of the crab-claws got through the wall and some way into the city’s canals. We watchers saw the sky-glow abruptly and significantly brighten, and we all jumped up with cheers of “Sái!” and “Euax!” and pounded each other on the back. The wet fire went on burning for a long time, and we gleefully imagined the people yonder milling about in consternation and making ineffectual attempts to douse a blaze that mysteriously refused to be put out with water.

When the sky-glow had diminished to normal, I said to Lentinus, “I thank you for the entertainment. Tomorrow I will leave you and your men to your merry pranks. I will ride south again to report to Theodoric what is happening hereabout. And I shall be loud with praise of your ingenuity.”

“Please!” he said, smiling and raising a hand in protest. “I beg you to respect my neutrality.”

“Very well. I shall praise the
quality
of your neutrality. And, neutral or not, you will be the first to realize it when Ravenna has finally got overnervous of wet fires, or has eaten its larders to the bare shelves, or simply has got weary of sitting under siege, and can hold out no longer. So I trust you will send a messenger galloping south the minute it does surrender.”

But Ravenna did not surrender.

It continued to sit stolidly closed and secretive and uncommunicative. Not even a timid emissary emerged to inquire about the possibility of negotiating favorable terms of surrender. Since there was nothing more we could do, except wait for the attrition of long siege to wear down Odoacer’s obduracy, Theodoric decided to ignore the situation. He devoted the following months to governing his new domain as if its shuttered capital city and its sequestered ex-king did not even exist.

For example, he began apportioning among his followers the good land that they had won for him. Inasmuch as there were clearly no more major battles in prospect, Theodoric dispersed his troops in small forces all about the country. Then, more or less in emulation of Rome’s long-traditional “colonatus” system, he allotted to each soldier of each of those forces a parcel of land in that vicinity (if the man wanted land) on which to build, to farm, to pasture herds, to do what he chose. Of course, many men chose, instead of land, to take an equivalent donative of money, and with it to set up a shop, a smithy, a stable or some other small business in a town or village. Tabernae were very popular enterprises.