“They are coming,” said Clio as she looked out of her home toward the harbor below.
“Who?” her husband Theodes asked.
“More ships. The same as those that landed over the last few days, but more now.”
The harbor in Siracusae was now becoming crowded with these three-masted ships. The Ostrogoths had been driven from the city – and the entire country – easily by the Byzantine forces the previous season, and now the Siracusans were host to another invading force.
These new ships posed no direct threat to the native people, since Siracusae had maintained its identification with the Eastern Roman Empire – called Byzantine by the leaders of the new invasion – throughout the period of Ostrogothic rule. But the new style of warship did draw their attention.
Ostrogoth warships had a horizontal
