"What fool wouldn't have done the same?"

The centurion laughed. At least he was in good humor. "Where do you sail from?"

"Ostia, the port city of Rome."

"Destination?"

"Alexandria. We'd be there now if not for-"

"Just answer the questions! Cargo?"

"Olive oil and wine. In Alexandria we'll be picking up raw linen and-"

"Passengers?"

"Only one party, a fellow and his wife-"

"Is that him, beside you?"

I spoke up. "My name is Gordianus. I'm a Roman citizen."

"Are you now?" The centurion peered at me. "How many in your party?"

"My wife, a bodyguard, two slave boys."

"Are we free to sail on?" said the captain.

"Not yet. All ships without exception are to be boarded and searched, and the names of all passengers passed on to the Great One himself. Nothing for you to be alarmed about; standard procedure. Now turn about, and we'll escort you to the fleet."

I cast a wistful glance at the bleak, receding shore. We had not fallen into the clutches of Caesar, or pirates, or renegade soldiers. It was much worse than that. Only one man in the whole world presumed to call himself Magnus, Great One: Pompey. The Fates had delivered me into the hands of a man who had vowed to see me dead.

CHAPTER II

The "fleet," as the centurion had called it, was a more ragtag assembly than it had appeared to be at a distance. There were a few warships, to be sure, but all seemed to be in varying degrees of disrepair, with thread-bare sails, battered hulls, and mismatched oars. The other ships were transports. The soldiers loaded on their decks had the distracted, ill-disciplined look of conscripted slaves; I had seen enough of those since the outbreak of the war, for both sides in desperate bids for advantage had drafted gladiators, farmhands, and even clerical slaves into their ranks. These soldiers, with their squints and blank expressions and dented armor, were certainly not the crack troops whom Pompey had gathered for his campaign in Greece; those presumably had vanished at Pharsalus, either slain by Caesar's legions or else pardoned and absorbed into Caesar's ranks.