At the same time, atop the towers on the rafts, men loaded giant missiles into ballistics engines and sent them flying toward the ships. The missiles looked to me like arrows carved from entire tree trunks, and the machines to hurl them were like enormous bows with winches on either side to set the tension. Some of the missiles were set afire before they were shot, and went hurling through the air streaming flames and smoke. The aim of the ballistics engines seemed more accurate than that of the catapults. They caused more damage to the incoming ships, yet still failed to sink any.

Meanwhile, the fighting vessels from the city returned the fire, hurling missiles and stones at the rafts and even attempting to board them, as they might an enemy ship at sea. Caesar's men on the rafts managed to repel these attacks, but in so doing were distracted from their own assaults on the transport ships. Unceasingly, soldiers ran back and forth on the causeway atop the rafts, toting fresh missiles to the ballistics engines and rolling boulders to the catapults. Archers on both sides choked the air with arrows, and the waves grew congested with a flotsam of spent missiles and bodies.

From a distance, all this commotion seemed utterly chaotic, a great stirring together of earth, sea, fire, and smoke. Yet at the same time, it appeared to be an orderly if hectic operation carried out by purposeful men using every ingenious device and method they could conceive and construct for the purpose of mutual destruction. It was thrilling to watch, as a lightning storm is thrilling. The battle proceeded with compelling inevitability. We seemed to be watching a single vast machine of many parts which, once set into motion, no power on heaven or earth could prevent from completing its manifold operations.

As the sun went down and the reek of smoke and steam thickened, the battle became increasingly obscure. It appeared that every one of Pompey's transport ships would win through to the harbor. At the same time, Caesar's rafts had withstood the assault against them and remained in place.

At last, only one transport ship remained outside the harbor entrance. The wind had risen, and the vessel was having difficulty maneuvering. There was a lull in the battle. I sensed the energy of both sides flagging. The operation of the catapults and ballistic machines grew more sporadic. The constant hail of arrows ceased. Perhaps both sides had run low on ammunition, or perhaps the increasing darkness made it difficult to take aim.

Then there occurred one of those incidents which prove the madness of battle, which give the lie to any vision of warfare as an orderly operation. One of Pompey's assault vessels shot an incendiary missile from its catapult. To carry flammable material on board a ship must have been terribly dangerous, and none of the ships had hurled such a fireball before. Why did the captain hurl it then? As a flippant parting gesture? To use up the last of his ammunition before the close of battle? Or was it a calculated, last-ditch attempt to destroy the rafts?

Whatever the intention, the result could not have been what the captain intended. The fireball greatly overshot the rafts. Like a comet it flew over the heads of Caesar's men, descended in a precipitous arc, and crashed onto the deck of the last of Pompey's transport ships waiting to enter the strait.

Why did the ship catch fire so quickly and so completely, when its sisters had not, despite similar fireballs hurled by Caesar's catapults? Perhaps the flaming ball of pitch landed on a cache of something flammable. Perhaps it was the action of the rising wind. Whatever the cause, with stunning rapidity the whole ship was engulfed in flames, from the waterline to the top of the sail. Flaming bodies leaped off the deck. Even on the hillside, we heard the screams of the rowers trapped below the deck. Their cries were drowned out by the triumphant cheering of Caesar's men along the breakwater, who jumped up and down in their excitement.

Then their cheering abruptly ceased. Out of control, buffeted by the wind, the flaming ship suddenly listed toward the nearest stretch of Caesar's rafts, heading for the very tower which had been the intended target of the fireball. The men in the tower poured out like ants from a hill. Moments later, the ship crashed into the line of rafts. The mast shattered from the impact and fell onto the breakwater. The fleeing soldiers were trapped beneath the sail, which descended on them like a fluttering sheet of flame.

Soldiers who had previously carried ammunition along the causeway now relayed buckets of seawater as they desperately tried to douse the fire and keep it from spreading. Pompey's assault ships might have taken advantage of the confusion, but they had already turned away from the enemy and retreated toward the city, escorting the transport vessels safe within the harbor.

Night fell. The battle was over.

XVII

We made camp and dined that night with the man stationed at the overlook. I had thought Antony would be as eager to report to Caesar as I was to find Meto now that we had at last reached Brundisium. But Antony was not a man to be stinted of his supper, even if it consisted of nothing more than a soldier's ration of gruel, or of his wine at the end of three hard days of riding.

We ate on the hillside beneath the open sky, seated on little canvas folding chairs. The wind died. The sea and the harbor grew as still as a black mirror, reflecting the mantle of stars overhead. The flames of the ship wrecked against the breakwater gradually died down. Within its high walls, the compact little city of Brundisium seemed to glow from the bottom up, as if the ground itself were illuminated. One by one, runners lit torches atop the towers and along the parapets, until the whole course of the wall was outlined like a coiled serpent. Outside the landward wall, Caesar's army was dotted with hundreds of twinkling campfires. Beyond the besieging army, farther west, the foothills of the Apennines brooded in darkness, the ridgeline faintly aglow with the last intimations of light from the setting sun.

"Today we saw a battle!" said Antony, who seemed greatly cheered, despite the fact that Pompey's fleet had won through.

"And tomorrow, we'll likely see a siege," noted Vitruvius. Antony had invited him to dine with us to continue explaining the feats of engineering involved in construction of the breakwater. Now Vitruvius fell to cataloguing, for my benefit, the various engines and strategies that might be deployed when Caesar threw his forces against the defenders of Brundisium- scaling ladders, wheeled siege towers, battering rams, sappers who would dig under the foundations to weaken the walls, soldiers who would advance in tortoise formations surrounded by shields and bristling with spears.

I fell to wondering about Davus. Where was he, at that very moment? Did Pompey still keep him among his personal bodyguards? That was my hope, but who knew where he might have ended up, thanks to Pompey's whim or simple expediency. Perhaps Davus was guarding the city walls, striding even now among the tiny figures illuminated by the torches along the parapets, heavily cloaked for the night watch and anxiously counting the hours to dawn. Or perhaps he had taken part in the sea battle that day, manning one of Pompey's assault ships. Davus couldn't swim, Diana had said. Nor could I, for that matter. What terror could be greater than being trapped aboard a ship deliberately sailing toward danger? The sight of wounded men struggling in the waves that day had horrified me more than anything else, more even than the flaming transport ship. Had Davus been among those tiny figures, flailing and screaming amid the flotsam of the battle?

And what of Meto? I saw again the flaming sail descending on the fleeing soldiers. Could my son have been among them? It seemed unlikely. Caesar kept him close at hand. Probably, at that moment, he was encamped with the main part of the army outside the city walls, dining in the commander's private mess, taking careful notes as Caesar discussed with his lieutenants the next day's strategy.