He dropped his gaze from the famed temple at the city’s edge, crowning steep cliffs that plunged down into the water. As his eyes traveled to the right, away from the temple and marble columns, he took in the villas of the wealthiest consuls that occupied the hills near the agora, high above the unpleasant smells of the crowded city.
Dion’s vision then came to the agora and the cluster of colonnaded temples on the surrounding high ground, each with peaked roofs and interminable marble steps. The market was as busy as ever, crowded with tiny scurrying locals, a riot of color from the swirling tunics of the men to the even brighter chitons of the women. On the seaward side of the agora was an embankment leading to a sloped wall that plunged to the stony shore.
Within the long curve of the embankment were villas, shops, and houses. Scores of fishing and trading boats were pulled up high on the shore below. The bay finally terminated in yet another set of cliffs, with a lookout tower located a dozen paces above the water’s edge.
But it was the vessels that interested Dion. After taking in the approaching city, glowing rose-colored in the afternoon light, he turned to point them out to Cob.
‘See the new Phalesian galleys? They’re building them bigger to hold more cargo and handle stronger seas.’ He pointed out a group of stout ships, fifty feet long, with a single large mast in the center and a smaller mast up front. ‘I wouldn’t want to face a score of archers firing from the deck.’
When Cob didn’t answer him, Dion glanced back at his friend manning the tiller. He had his eyes fixed on something far from the Phalesian galleys.
‘What are you . . . ?’ Dion trailed off as he followed the older man’s gaze.
He wondered that he hadn’t seen it at first, but it was at the extreme right side of the bay and he had been focused on the left.
‘That ship is not Phalesian,’ Dion murmured.
The Phalesian galleys were stout and strong, but they were small compared with the vessel that occupied its own private stretch of shore. Dion estimated that the length of the warship was at least seventy feet. It was beached far from the other vessels and rolled to expose one side, where swarthy bare-chested men were crowded so close together that Dion couldn’t see what they were doing.
‘Take us closer,’ he instructed.
Both men were silent for a time as their boat approached the foreign ship. Dion revised his estimation of the warship’s length, reckoning it was closer to eighty feet long, with a beam of about ten feet. It was nearly flat-bottomed, designed to be sailed during the day and beached at night, and although the central main mast was tall, he guessed that the power of the wind was intended to augment the oarsmen. The timber it was constructed from appeared to be pine.
‘Have you ever seen such a thing?’ Dion murmured.
‘My guess is she is not from our part of the world. One of the Salesian lands, I’d say. Look at the one directing them.’
They were now sailing close enough to make out individual faces and Dion saw a man with a barrel chest and curled black beard calling out orders to the workers. The commander’s yellow robe was unmistakably foreign, not the dress of Galea at all.
‘She must have been damaged in the tremor,’ Dion said. ‘They are repairing her. By Silex, look at her ram!’
The ship’s prow jutted out from above a painted eye, and Dion guessed there would be another eye on the other side. The prow curved inwards and followed the bow, where she would carve the waves, before curving again below what would be the waterline and spearing forward in a ten-foot-long bronze ram.
He thought about the damage such a weapon would inflict on another vessel. Suddenly he understood the full import of what he was seeing.
A foreign warship had come to Phalesia. And despite Phalesia’s sizable navy, this ship outclassed the Phalesian vessels in every way. The thought filled him with dread.
‘Take us closer still.’
The black-bearded commander was now staring at their small boat and glaring at its two occupants, his arms folded in front of his chest. Undeterred, Dion continued his assessment of the warship, feeling dwarfed by the monstrous rudder, which was as tall as the sailing boat’s mast.
It had three decks, two for the rowers, open at the sides with scores of holes for the oars, and an upper deck giving a roof to those below.
Dion realized the simplicity of the design and wondered that it was only now that someone had thought of such a thing. He murmured to himself more than to Cob, ‘A bigger ship is slower in the water, harder to move . . . makes it more difficult to increase to ramming speed. But more oarsmen create more power. So to keep the ship’s length and beam the same we add another row of oarsmen, so that one is on top of the other.’
‘It’s a clever design.’ When Dion glanced back at Cob he saw his friend was nodding as he spoke, but the wrinkles on his forehead showed concern.
‘I count thirty ports for oars,’ Dion said.
‘Your eyes are better than mine. So two rows of fifteen oars each.’
‘No,’ Dion said. Cob’s eyebrows went up. ‘Thirty ports to a row. Sixty rowers to a side. That makes a hundred and twenty rowers in total.’