Celsus gazed at him in stupefied fascination. His mouth hung loosely as he tried to understand what had happened, but the effort was beyond him.

Without warning, Julius punched him hard in the belly. Celsus could feel the acid leap in his stomach and choked for a second as his throat filled with bitterness. He sagged in the arms of his captors and Julius stood back. Celsus lunged at him suddenly, breaking the relaxed grip of the men behind. He crashed into Julius and they both went down, the lamp spilling its oil over the deck. In the confusion, the Romans moved to put out the fire with the instinctive fear of those who sailed wooden ships. Celsus landed a blow on the struggling figure beneath him and then leapt for the side of his ship, desperate to get away.

The giant figure of Ciro blocked him and he never saw the blade he ran onto. In agony, he looked up at the face of his killer and saw nothing there, only blankness. Then he was gone, sliding off the sword onto the deck.

Julius sat up, panting. He could hear the crack of timbers nearby as his men forced their way into barricaded cabins. It was nearly over and he smiled, wincing as his lips bled from some blow he’d taken in the struggle.

Cabera walked toward him over the wooden deck. He looked a little thinner, if that was possible, and the wide smile had at least one more tooth missing from the one Julius remembered. Still, it was the same face.

“I told them over and over you would come, but they didn’t believe me,” Cabera said cheerfully.

Julius stood and embraced him, overwhelmed by relief at seeing the old man safe. There were no words that needed to be said.

“Let’s go and see how much of our ransoms Celsus managed to spend,” he said at last. “Lamps! Lamps over here! Bring them down to the hold.”

Cabera and the others followed him quickly down a flight of steps so steep as to be almost a ladder. Every jostling man there was as interested as he was in what they might find. The guards had been drunk and easily taken in the first attack, but the barred door was still closed, as Julius had ordered. He paused with his hand on it, breathless with anticipation. The hold could be empty, he knew. On the other hand, it could be full.

The door gave easily to axes and as Julius was followed in, the oil lamps lit the hollow space below the oar decks just above them. The angry muttering of the rowers sounded as ghostly echoes in the confined space. Their reward for allegiance to Celsus would be slavery, the only trained crew in Rome’s service.