Euphronius nodded. A moment later, using gestures and a hissing whisper, he was assembling his grenadiers amidships. The grenadiers, Antonina saw, would be invisible to the seamen manning the low-lying dromon until they appeared at the rail itself, tossing their grenades.
Hermogenes came out of the cabin. Seeing the activity amidships, he hurried to her side.
“You’re not going to give them any warning?” he asked. “Call on them to surrender?”
Antonina shook her head.
“I don’t dare. That dromon’s too close. If they have a warning, they might be able to ram us before the grenades do their work. And if they get close enough, the grenades’ll pose a danger to us.”
Thoughtfully, Hermogenes nodded. “Good point.” He stared out at the nearby warship. He could see several officers standing in the bow of the dromon. They were close enough for their expressions to be quite visible.
Frowns. They were worried. Wondering what had happened to their envoys. Beginning to get suspicious.
“Fuck ’em, then,” growled Hermogenes.
Antonina heard a low hiss. Turning, she saw that Euphronius had his grenadiers ready. At least three dozen of them were poised, grenades in hand. Their wives stood immediately behind them, ready to light the fuses. The fuses had been cut very short.
Casually, she gestured with her hand held waist-high, waving the grenadiers forward.
Do it.
The wives lit the fuses. The Syrians charged for the rail, shouting their battle slogan.
“For the Empire! The Empire!”
The officers on the dromon stiffened, hearing the sudden outcry. One of them opened his mouth. To shout an order, presumably. But his jaw simply dropped when he saw the mob of grenadiers appearing at the rail of the taller ship.
He never said a word. Simply watched, agape, while the volley of grenades soared into the air. Then, along with all his fellow officers, crouched down and ducked.
He must have thought the objects coming his way were stones. He never learned the truth. The six grenades which landed in the bow blew him into fragments, along with the bow itself.
Grenade explosions savaged the dromon down its entire length. The warship’s orientation—faced toward Antonina’s flagship, with its ram forward—was the worst possible position in which to avoid a grenade volley. Some of the grenades missed the ship entirely, falling into the water on either side. But in most cases the grenadiers’ aim was true. And if one grenadier threw farther than another, it simply spread the havoc. The dromon stretched almost a hundred feet from bow to stern. Most of the grenadiers were easily capable of throwing a grenade across the hundred feet of water which separated Antonina’s ship from the target. Many of them could reach halfway down the length of the craft, and some could heave their grenades all the way into the dromon’s stern.
The grenades landed almost simultaneously, and exploded within three seconds of each other. Dozens of bodies were hurled overboard. Precious few of the men who remained in the ship survived, and they, primarily in the stern. The middle of the warship, where at least a dozen grenades had landed in the midst of two hundred men, was a mass of blood and shredded pieces of flesh.
The warship’s hull had been breached, badly—outright holes, or simply planks driven apart. The sea poured in, pulling the dromon under the waves. Some of the surviving sailors began diving off the stern. Others, not knowing how to swim, simply watched their death approach, too stunned to even cry out in despair.
Without turning her head, Antonina spoke to Hermogenes.
“Rescue the ones you can,” she commanded. “Put them under guard in the hold.”
Antonina’s eyes searched for the other dromons in the mouth of the harbor. The warships were stirring into motion. Already she could see the oar banks begin to flash. But, after a moment, she realized that only four of the dromons were heading toward her. The other three were moving to intercept the Theodora, bearing down on them from the northwest.
Trying to intercept the Theodora, that is to say. Even to Antonina’s inexperienced eye, it was obvious that the gunship would pass across their bows with at least a hundred yards of searoom.