So here it is for you, kind of like a bonus DVD extra! :)
Marcus Gerontius Tasso was twenty-six, a soldier, a sailor, and a child of the East. His grandparents were Etrurian, certainly, under Roman rule for centuries, but his father had gone out to the East in hopes of making money, now that all those ancient lands were part of the Empire. And he had found what he sought. Importing fruit was a lucrative business. Dried dates, apricots, peaches and sesame paste were all important produce that shipped from Caesarea in Judea to the rest of the Empire.
Fruit importing was not for Marcus. He was the oldest, and his father’s heir, and so of course he was the impractical one in a practical family. Both of his younger brothers were better merchants. He was the one with wild dreams of glory, of duels with Parthian champions and night marches across the desert. He was the one who was like his mother.
Now he stood on the deck of his ship, standing out from Stabiae, watching the world explode.
The sky was on fire. Mount Vesuvius rained ash and pumice down on them, even so far away, and the morning sky was dark as twilight. Dark clouds rolled down the slopes of the mountain, swallowing greenery and vineyards, houses and livestock and people. Already he could see fires in the towns, Herculaneum swept under. He had been here on leave, two years ago with his parents when they were in Italy. He had stayed in this town, been a guest in these homes.
On the next ship he heard Admiral Plinius giving the orders. They would sail into the gates of the underworld and take off as many survivors as they could.
He gave the orders and the rowers picked up the beat, the ship going forward. Pieces of pumice floated on the surface of the sea like scraps of papyrus. Burning stones rained down. He ordered the ships boys to have buckets of water at the ready when they landed on the deck. He was doing twenty things at once, everywhere on the deck, watching the town coming nearer.
And then, for a moment, everything was still. It seemed to him that the town was gone entirely, not engulfed in fire and lava, but never built, that green lands curved around the bay, three black ships drawn up on white sand beaches. They were little ships, less than half the size of his trireme, fragile looking. People were sleeping on the beach. Except for one man. On the nearest ship a tall man was looking straight back at him, light brown hair held back with a leather thong, bare-chested and strong. His blue eyes met Marcus’ with a jolt.
Fire, and a burning city.
There were swimmers in the water.
“Careful with the lower bank!” Marcus shouted. “You there, get some ropes over. By Jupiter, this isn’t an enemy fleet action! These are our people, the ones we’ve come to rescue! Careful with the oars!”
A young man about his age was treading water, a naked baby held above his head. Marcus threw the rope himself, waited to see if he would get it. It slithered near him in the water, and he bobbed up and down, but at last got it. Marcus towed him to the side, but he couldn’t climb with the child.
“Tie the baby on!” Marcus shouted down over the din. He hauled the baby up the side, then dropped the rope back down, but the man was gone. They were drifting closer to the docks. He hoped the man had gone up some other rope, but he couldn’t wait to see.
“Get the lower bank in!” he yelled. They were going to break their oars against the stone wharf.
There was the strangest sense of unreality to it. The light in the sky, the burning world. The double image of the peaceful beach he had seen. Getting swimmers aboard from a burning city….
It seemed like days later that they put out again, racing against the black clouds that flowed down the mountain, a firestorm, a smothering blanket of ash. It was probably less than an hour.
“Row!” he yelled, “Pull for your lives!”
One of the ships was burning. Burning stones had caught her.
“Row!” Their decks were crowded with people, some of them collapsed on the deck, retching from the fumes. Fifty? A hundred? Out of how many thousand? Out of how many people he had known, how many shopkeepers from streets he had walked, girls from the taverns he had visited?
Out to sea the skies were clear and it was morning, the pall of cloud rising like a column.
It was not until they were well out to sea that he realized he was still holding the baby. Marcus looked at it dumbly.
It was a little girl five or six months old, and other than a long red burn down one arm, she seemed to be all right. Big gray eyes watched him solemnly, clutched against his left shoulder.
Well, Marcus thought, his mother would know what to do with her. He held her and went aft to set a course for Capri.
I'd love to hear what you guys think of it!
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