Neptune's Fury Page 6

  “Centurion Sisera. We were just admiring the view from the sleeping quarter’s level,” the engineer suggested. “Come, see for yourself.”

  “Sorry to change the mission,” Alerio offered. “But we’re going to compress our vision.”

  “How so?” Mezzasoma demanded.

  “You are going to cut a shallower trench and chop the end of this slope,” Alerio replied. He pointed downward and motioned with his hand as if squaring off the bottom of the hill. “We’ll quarter the workers on the work level. It’s not ideal but it’ll give us what we need.”

  “You have three days,” Mezzasoma reminded Alerio and Pejus. “Our focus is on the channel?”

  “It is,” Alerio assure him.

  The big miner waved his arms and shortly, all of his crewmembers were looking up at their boss. He made a series of hand signals. When he finished, some went back to cutting trees. Others picked up their tool bags and carried their gear to the stakes marking the end of the channel. And a third walked to the Nera River and began hiking along the bank.

  “Where are they going?” Alerio asked.

  “Those are my journeymen,” Mezzasoma answered. “I don’t need them to cut trees, or even do rough cuts. Instead of having them standing around, they’re collecting driftwood from the river bank.”

  “For your campfires tonight?” Alerio guessed.

  “No, Centurion. For the rock,” the master miner responded.

  ***

  In the spring when the Nera ran high, the water deposited broken branches and tree limbs on the river banks. Stripped of bark by the rocks during the voyage from the mountains, the naked wood rested above the water’s surface and baked in the summer sun.

  The journeymen miners collected and piled the dried-out wood on either side of engineer’ channel markers. Inside the markers, teams of master rock miners chiseled straight lines along the boundary. Behind them, teams of apprentices hacked deep, jagged fissures two feet from the straight edges.

  “What are they doing?” Alerio asked when the craftsmen pulled knives and began cutting long, thick wedges from the pieces of driftwood. Then he observed. “The slices are too large to be kindling for campfires.”

  “You are about to witness a secret of rock mining,” Mezzasoma informed him. “The metal ores we mine reside in spaces between the granite. Usually, we removed rock to expose the ore. For the channel, removing the overburden is the purpose of the dig. However, there are two differences.”

  “What are they?” Alerio asked. “And what is the secret.”

  “We have fresh air and the mountain isn’t going to fall on us. Now watch.”

  The journeymen miners took their carved wedges to the fissures, inserted the narrow ends, and proceeded to hammer the dried wood into the rough cuts. With each whack, the wood curled, splintered, and filled the gaps.

  “The wood is too soft to split the rock,” Alerio exclaimed.

  “Is it now?” questioned the master rock miner.

  While the fissures were being jammed full of wood, the apprentices took leather buckets to the river, filled them and returned to the work area.

  “Wet them down,” Mezzasoma instructed. “Slow, let Neptune’s spit sink in.”

  Almost dribbling the water from the buckets, the apprentices poured along the lines of wood. To Alerio’s surprise, the dried wood absorbed the water leaving no overflow on the surface. After two passes the buckets were empty and the rock surface remained dry.

  “Where did the water go?” Alerio inquired.

  “Remember you said the wood was too soft to split the rock?” Mezzasoma commented.

  “It is,” Alerio assured the miner.

  “Pickaxes, show the Legion officer what the soft wood did to the hard rock.”

  Where they had to use steel chisels to cut the fissures, the picks hooked and pulled out pieces of rock.

  “The granite is broken,” Alerio gushed. “How?”

  “The soft wood expanded from the water and the pressure cracked the rock making it easier to dig out,” Mezzasoma explained. “In a wall of rock, we can use fire to heat the granite. Splash on cold water and the face cracks. But here, the flat surface wouldn’t dry enough between fires so, we used wedges.”

  “Can your crew finish the channel in three days?”

  “Not only can we dig out your trench,” Mezzasoma assured him while pointing from the edge of the channel to the toe of the hill. “We’ll cut back the rock slope. I spoke to Cata Pous and he needs a lot more space for the carpenters.”

  “Thank you,” Alerio offered.

  “Don’t thank me,” Mezzasoma suggested. “Thank administrator Nardi Cocceia. He’s paying my team.”

  “I am all too aware of that,” Alerio confessed, under his breath, while he walked away.

  Chapter 10 - Keel Notches

  Three days later, Alerio walked between miner, carpenter, and laborer camps in the thin forest. On the far side, he entered the clearing that stretched from the end of the tree line to the Nera river. Alerio had spent the day and most of the night before in Amelia with the Umbri administrator. During his absence, the boat building channel and yard had changed. Load upon load of rocks had been removed from the trench. Now hard and flat surfaced, the yard benefited from large pieces hammered into smaller stones and spread over the ground. And the building channel had square sides and a rough but near flat bottom.

  In spots around the yard, logs rested on supports and men sawed and chopped boards from the tree trunks. Other crews hauled in more logs and stacked them out of the way until the carpenters were ready for them. With all the hacking and forming of lumber, Alerio expected to see wood in the channel or stacked on the sides. There was none. Instead, a long building with smoke rising from the seams occupied a large area.

  “Master Pous, is the wood coming in satisfactorily?” Alerio inquired as he approached the boat builder.

  “We have the oak beams for the center of the keel, the bow, the ram support section, and the stern,” Cata Pous remarked.

  Looking over the five-foot-deep and fifty-foot-wide trench, Alerio noted a few rock miners chipping away, smoothing out the bottom. “I don’t see any beams in the channel.”

  “They’re in the hot lodge,” Cata explained while indicating the long building. “The wood needs to dry before we can begin joining the pieces.”

  “On my father’s farm, it took months to dry wood before we could use it for building,” Alerio moaned. “I don’t suppose you can build a warship with fresh wood. Then again, the boat will get wet when we float it, won’t it?”

  “Wood dries from the outside inward,” Cata described. “If we carve the nubs and notches in fresh wood, when the sections dry, they’ll shrink and the seams will be sloppy and the joints loose. Think of a broken shield flopping around on your arm. Then imagine the sides and keel of a warship doing the same.”

  “That’s frightening,” Alerio offered. “How long to dry the beams? We don’t have all summer. Hades, we may not have another month.”

  “Is Nardi Cocceia getting worried about his investment?”

  “He took great pains to show me his ledgers and to explain the costs in manpower and materials,” Alerio reported. “I drank his wine and cooed over his generosity. And I dodged every question about when an official would arrive from Rome to pay him back and bestow citizenship on him.”

  “We have fires burning in the lodge all day and all night,” the builder said steering the conversation away from politics. “Another day to be sure the inside is dry and we can begin joining the beams.”

  “Build us a solid warship and prove Stifone is a viable ship building location,” Alerio encouraged the boat builder.

  “That, Centurion Sisera, is the point of all this,” Cata remarked. “Although, the speed you require is worrisome.”

  “Having Nardi Cocceia march an army over the Nera to butcher us because we fail to meet his expectations is more troublesome,” Alerio warned. “I’ll give you
what weeks and protection I can.”

  “How do you plan to do that?” the builder challenged. “You don’t even have a phalanx here.”

  “A Century, master builder, but you are correct,” Alerio advised. “If it goes bad, you and I will be sneaking out of Stifone in the middle of the night.”

  “I’d rather build a ship,” Cata remarked to the Legion officer. “We have a lot of work to do.”

  “And not many weeks to do it in,” Alerio confirmed.

  ***

  On the fourth morning, Alerio dodged the line of rock miners. Their job done, they headed up river to the crossing point. Even with their camps gone, the way through the sleeping areas of the remaining workers required zigzagging. Where the trees ended, the Legion officer stopped to scan the work yard.

  Six long beams rested end to end on the lip of the channel. Conversely, the wood drying lodge had been reduced in size. There was an obvious connection. Cata Pous moved between beams, giving directions to carpenters. All the craftsmen had saws, hammers, boring tools, and chisels laid out waiting for the boat builder to finish his detailed instructions.

  “Centurion Sisera. The day has arrived,” Pejus Monilis said while striding over to join Alerio. “Cata is starting the keel sections.”

  The master boat builder shouted and the tradesmen placed angled boards on the beams, made marks, and began cutting. In a short time, one end of each beam sprouted a long nub while the opposite end was hollowed out to fit another nub.

  “Put your beams in the channel,” the builder announced.

  Some laborers jumped into the trench while the rest lined up on the other side of the beams. Lifting the wood, they carried the sections to those waiting in the canal.

  Alerio and Pejus moved to the edge and peered down at the carpenters and the beams. Cata Pous stepped on the forward section that would eventually hold the ram.

  “Join the fore sections,” he ordered.

  The end nub pushed into the hole and a tradesman bored a hole in the side. Once the drill passed through the nub and out the far side of the beam, a dowel was driven into the hole. When done, the extra lengths were cut flush with the beam.

  “We have a good joint,” Cata Pous declared after jumping up and down and savagely kicking where the two beams met. “Slide the next one up and pin it.”

  When eight lengths of thick rafters were joined, there was a seamless oak beam over one hundred and forty-five feet long in the bottom of the trench.

  “That’s your keel and the beam for your ram,” the boat builder announced while walking up a ramp from the canal.

  “It’s flat,” Alerio remarked.

  “The curved beams for the fore and aft will be joined later,” the boat builder explained. “We’ll start the bottom course of the hull first.”

  “Why not complete the keel?”

  “Because once we add the raised sections, we’ll need to install the hypozomata,” Cata replied.

  “The what?” questioned Alerio.

  “A rope looping from the front beam to the rear beam of a warship. It’s wound tightly to hold tension, keeping the keel beams from being pushed out by the weight of the hull boards,” Cata Pous described. “There’s no sense in installing the rope too soon. During construction, we’ll keep it tight and the original hypozomata will stretch and fray.”

  “If the rope is so important, we should have an extra,” Alerio offered.

  “The hypozomata is so critical,” Cata assured the Legion officer. “Every warship carries at least one spare. But the extreme length of the line is difficult to construct. It takes over a month to weave the fibers.”

  Alerio peered around as if looking for something specific. In truth, he wasn’t seeking anything. He was trying to find something that needed his attention. Combat Legionaries trained and worked on projects between campaigns. Infantry officers oversaw the endeavors and dealt with personal issues. Between the ship builder, Cata Pous, the engineer, Pejus Monilis, and Optio Florian, Centurion Sisera had nothing that required his attention.

  “I didn’t see any tar in the area,” Alerio remarked. “Do I need to send out a detachment on a search mission?”

  “We don’t need tar. We have plenty of birch bark,” Cata answered. “We’ll grind it up and burn it near a wall of the trench. Once the residue is scraped off and collected, we’ll have birch-pitch. Reheating it will create our caulking compound.”

  “Add hemp or other fibers to the mixture and you have all the ship sealant you require,” Pejus added. “Sorry, Centurion Sisera, but we have everything under control. You can go take a nap or write a report. Whatever Legion officers do between wars.”

  If Alerio had a Century of eighty Legionaries, he would be busy. With only Optio Florian and Tesserarius Humi, there weren’t enough personnel to occupy his day. He thought about going to inspect Lieutenant Tite Roscini and his seven-man Umbrian security force. But Sergeant Florian was still organizing them. A visit from a Legion officer wouldn’t help the training at this point.

  With nothing to do and feeling useless, Alerio located the pine tree ladder on the hillside and climbed to the high ledge. In the future, if there was a future boatyard, the terrace would house workers. At the moment, it was a good place to watch the process and stay out of the way.

  ***

  From where he sat on the hill overlooking the channel and work yard, Alerio peered down at the construction activity. Apprentices carried oak boards from the hot lodge. At stations, carpenters measured and carved furrows into the edges, two at the top, on the bottom, and on the sides. Then the boards were passed down to carpenters in the trench.

  Another team of carpenters held them edge to edge against other oak planks. Between the planks, flat pieces of oak resembling thin barley cakes were tapped into the furrows. Then the boards were lined up and hammered together. The flat pieces of oak interlocked and held the boards in place.

  Holes were bored into the planks, though the flat biscuits and, out the other side. Next, dowels were hammered into the holes locking the two adjacent boards together. As more boards were joined, sections of a wall grew from the center of the keel beam. When the center reached chest high, the carpenters divided to allow separate crews to work the hull from opposite sides.

  Late in the afternoon the wall of joined boards reached the aft and the process stopped. Cata Pous and a carpenter measured, chopped, and chiseled on the end of the keel beam. Once they had a square hole, a curved section of oak beam was carried over and the nub inserted. After boring and pinning, the keel of the trireme rose into the air.

  Ladders were placed and another curved section was lifted up and set in position. Sticks braced against the walls of the canal held the tail section upright. Soon, other sticks were employed to support the growing height of the hull.

  It was beginning to resemble a warship, Alerio thought while gathering his legs under his hips and pushing off the ground.

  Partially to a standing position, Centurion Sisera’s body jerked to the side then jolted to a stop against the ground. Grass smashed into the side of his face and he sucked in the smell just before something struck him in the back driving the air from his lungs. The sense of not being able to catch his breath ended when the something cracked against his skull.

  Act 3

  Chapter 11 - Sisera Militia

  The sun’s rays filtered through the trees to the west. Based on its position, the day passed while Alerio was unconscious. Twisting his neck sent a bolt of pain through one side of Alerio’s head. The headache helped him ignore the agony in his wrists. It didn’t matter that the pain forced his eyes closed. He couldn’t see his wrists. They were bound behind his back. Both hurt and, when hands jerked him to his feet, one shoulder throbbed from the rough treatment.

  “Not so tough now, are you?” a voice announced from behind him.

  Opening his eyes, Alerio turned his face to the speaker.

  “Do I know you?” he inquired.

  “Pannacci
. War leader,” the man bragged while stepping forward. “It was me standing in the administrator’s doorway, stopping you and your Legionaries from reaching Nardi Cocceia.”

  It wasn’t how Alerio remembered the confrontation in the government building. Only he and Optio Florian had been involved and they hadn’t attacked Nardi. Then it occurred to Alerio, the war leader was talking louder than necessary when speaking a hands width from an ear.

  Glancing around, Alerio saw the real audience for Pannacci’s words. Three young warriors holding spears. The tips were aimed at the Legion officer’s chest.

  “Let me guess, you are new to the war leader job,” Alerio informed him.

  “It doesn’t matter how long I have held the position,” Pannacci informed Alerio and the three tribesmen. “You slighted the Umbria people and now you will suffer our revenge.”

  Shuffling back half-a-step as if intimidated by the sharp points, Alerio inquired, “Does the administrator know you’re here?”

  “Nardi Cocceia is a busy man,” Pannacci replied. “I do what I must to avenge the honor of my people.”

  “And what must you do?” Alerio questioned while looking from spear tip to spear tip. “Besides killing a Legion Centurion?”

  Shaking his head as if trying to deny the reality of being a captive, Alerio moved back and away from the spearmen. When all four Umbrians were to his front, he began to twist his wrists.

  “Afterward, I will run my knife blade between your ribs,” Pannacci said while glancing at his warriors as if to confirm the plan. “And then, I’ll throw your dying body off the terrace.”

  Although it hurt, Alerio could feel the leather bindings stretching and loosening. His limited manipulations weren’t enough to unwind the strips from around his wrists. But the pulling and rotating created give and allowed separation between his hands.

  “After what?” Alerio questioned.

  Pannacci whipped out his knife and the three warriors tensed.