Read Online Golden Age (The Shifting Tides Book 1) by James Maxwell - Free Book Online Page B

guessed that the power of the wind was intended to augment the oarsmen. The timber it was constructed from appeared to be pine.
    ‘Have you ever seen such a thing?’ Dion murmured.
    ‘My guess is she is not from our part of the world. One of the Salesian lands, I’d say. Look at the one directing them.’
    They were now sailing close enough to make out individual faces and Dion saw a man with a barrel chest and curled black beard calling out orders to the workers. The commander’s yellow robe was unmistakably foreign, not the dress of Galea at all.
    ‘She must have been damaged in the tremor,’ Dion said. ‘They are repairing her. By Silex, look at her ram!’
    The ship’s prow jutted out from above a painted eye, and Dion guessed there would be another eye on the other side. The prow curved inwards and followed the bow, where she would carve the waves, before curving again below what would be the waterline and spearing forward in a ten-foot-long bronze ram.
    He thought about the damage such a weapon would inflict on another vessel. Suddenly he understood the full import of what he was seeing.
    A foreign warship had come to Phalesia. And despite Phalesia’s sizable navy, this ship outclassed the Phalesian vessels in every way. The thought filled him with dread.
    ‘Take us closer still.’
    The black-bearded commander was now staring at their small boat and glaring at its two occupants, his arms folded in front of his chest. Undeterred, Dion continued his assessment of the warship, feeling dwarfed by the monstrous rudder, which was as tall as the sailing boat’s mast.
    It had three decks, two for the rowers, open at the sides with scores of holes for the oars, and an upper deck giving a roof to those below.
    Dion realized the simplicity of the design and wondered that it was only now that someone had thought of such a thing. He murmured to himself more than to Cob, ‘A bigger ship is slower in the water, harder to move . . . makes it more difficult to increase to ramming speed. But more oarsmen create more power. So to keep the ship’s length and beam the same we add another row of oarsmen, so that one is on top of the other.’
    ‘It’s a clever design.’ When Dion glanced back at Cob he saw his friend was nodding as he spoke, but the wrinkles on his forehead showed concern.
    ‘I count thirty ports for oars,’ Dion said.
    ‘Your eyes are better than mine. So two rows of fifteen oars each.’
    ‘No,’ Dion said. Cob’s eyebrows went up. ‘Thirty ports to a row. Sixty rowers to a side. That makes a hundred and twenty rowers in total.’
    Cob whistled. ‘Silex help us.’
    ‘I think we’ve learned all we can here. But we need to find out more when we get to the city.’
    Working together, Cob and Dion turned the sailing boat back away from the warship, following the shore as they headed for a place closer to the embankment steps. As he searched for a clear patch of shore where they wouldn’t be in the way of the fishermen mending nets on the beach or the sailors scrubbing the decks of their galleys, Dion heard a voice calling out and glanced up.
    A young woman was running out onto the rocky promontory on the harbor’s left side, below the Temple of Aldus high above. She waved her arms as she ran, gesticulating wildly, but her words were lost on the wind.
    ‘I think she wants us,’ Cob said. ‘She seems quite upset.’
    Frowning, Dion nodded. ‘We had best see what it is.’
    The woman clambered down the rocks until she was close to the water, heedless of the splashes wetting the hem of her fine indigo chiton. She lowered her arms when she saw that the sailboat was coming over.
    She had near-black hair flowing to her waist, her thick locks blowing in the wind. The dark hair contrasted with her pale skin and framed a triangular face, with an upturned nose and a wide mouth. Around her neck was a copper medallion, and as the distance narrowed to several feet Dion recognized the symbol of Aeris,