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.

Julius took a sharp breath. The hold was lined with great shelves of thick oak, running all the way around its walls from the floor to the high ceiling. Each shelf held riches. There were crates of gold coins and small silver bars in stacks, placed carefully so as not to affect the balance of the ship. Julius shook his head in disbelief. What he saw in front of him was enough to buy a small kingdom in some parts of the world. Celsus must have been driven mad with worry over such treasures. Julius doubted he ever left his ship, with so much to lose. The only thing he couldn't see was the packet of drafts that Marius had given him before his death. He'd always known they would be worthless to Celsus, who could never have drawn the large sums from the city treasury without his background becoming known. Part of Julius had hoped they hadn't gone down with Accipiter, but the money lost was nothing compared to the gold they had won in return.

The men who entered with him were struck dumb at what they saw. Only Cabera and Gaditicus moved farther into the hold, checking and appraising the contents of each shelf. Gaditicus paused suddenly and pulled a crate out with a grunt. It had an eagle burned into the wood, and he broke the lid with his sword hilt with all the enthusiasm of a child.

His fist came out holding bright silver coins, freshly minted. Each was marked with the characters of Rome and the head of Cornelius Sulla.

“We can clear our names returning these,” he said with satisfaction, looking at Julius.

Julius chuckled at the older man's sense of priorities. “With this ship to replace Accipiter, they should welcome us as long-lost sons. We know she's faster than most of them,” Julius replied. He saw that Cabera was slipping a number of valuable items into the folds of his robe, held from falling by the tight belt that cinched his waist. Julius raised his eyes in amusement.

Gaditicus began to laugh as he let the coins trickle back through his fingers into the crate.

“We can go home,” he said. “Finally, we can go home.”

Julius refused to allow Captain Durus to take the two triremes he'd been promised in exchange for his lost cargo, knowing it would be foolish to strip their defenses until they were safe in a Roman port. While Durus raged at this decision, Gaditicus visited Julius in the cabin that had belonged to Celsus, now scrubbed clean and bare. The younger man paced up and down its length as they talked, unable to relax.

Gaditicus sipped at a cup of wine, savoring Celsus's choice.

“We could land at the legion port at Thessalonica, Julius, and hand over the legion silver and the ship. When we're cleared, we could sail round the coast, or even march west to Dyrrhachium and take ship for Rome. We're so close now. Durus says he'll swear we had a business arrangement, so any charges for piracy won't run.”

“There's still that soldier Ciro killed on the docks,” Julius said slowly, deep in thought.

Gaditicus shrugged. “Soldiers die and it's not as if he butchered him. The man was just unlucky. They won't be able to make anything stick now. We're free to return.”

“What will you do? You have enough to retire on, I should think.”

“Perhaps. I was thinking of using my share to pay the Senate for the slaves that went down with Accipiter. If I do that, they might even send me back to sea as captain. We've taken two pirate ships, after all, which they can't overlook.”

Julius rose and took the other man's arm. “I owe you a great deal more than that, you know.”

Gaditicus gripped the arm that held him. “There's no debt to me, lad. When we were in that stinking cell… and friends died, my will went with them for a while.”

“You were the captain, though, Gadi. You could have stood on your authority.”

Gaditicus smiled a little ruefully. “A man who needs to do that may find he isn't standing very high after all.”

“You're a good man, you know-and a fine captain,” Julius said, wishing he had better words for his friend. He knew it had taken a rare strength for Gaditicus to swallow his pride, but without that they would never have been able to take back their lives and honor.

“Come on, then,” he said. “If it's what you want, we'll cross to Greece and rejoin civilization.”

Gaditicus smiled with him. “What will you do with your share of the gold?” he asked, a little warily.

Only Suetonius had complained when Julius had claimed half for himself, with the rest to be shared equally. After taking out the Roman silver and the ransoms for the Accipiter officers, the shares they would get were still more money than they would ever have expected to see. Suetonius had not spoken a word to Julius since being given his allotted sum, but his was the only sullen face on the three ships. The rest of them looked on Julius with something like awe.

“I don't know what I'll do, yet,” Julius said, his smile fading. “I can't go back to Rome, you remember?”

“Sulla?” Gaditicus said, recalling the young man who had joined his galley just before the tide at Ostia, his face soot-streaked from the burning city behind him.

Julius nodded grimly. “I can't return while he lives,” he muttered, his mood darkening as quickly as it had lifted.

“You're young to be worrying about that, you know. Some enemies can be beaten, but some you just have to outlive. Safer too.”