As the waves crashed against their hulls and the ships banked and rolled in the sea's onslaught, Justinian and his retinue despaired. All they had been through, the perils endured and the hardships undertaken had now come to this, to be within but a step of destruction. Had God so abandoned him? Would he not know justice? Justice, against those who had profaned the word of God in their emnity, those who had denied him the rights of his birth, handed down to his grandfather by divine covenant. A covenant that by the rights of heaven and earth belonged to him. That they now found themselves screaming into the eyes of death, that every man might now perish and the will of God be undone, but for the hearts of evil men. Evil men he had sworn to kill.
Lightning crashed. The ship tipped forward, and the sea let its anger known. Waterlogged, now, the ships sunk lower and lower. The men tried but in vain to cast the flow back into the sea, but it would not have it. The waves crashed too high and the ships fell too lo