The Sands of Saturn - Chapter 10

Outside Londinium

“Consul,” the guard said, in a loud whisper from outside the slightly opened tent flap.

Ky had told them they didn’t need to do that, but this early in the morning, it was probably hard to not react that way on insistence. Most of the men they would guard would be asleep, and even the calmest of commanders could be difficult to deal with when waking them up from a deep sleep.

Ky’s guards knew he didn’t normally sleep, not in the conventional sense, but they still acted like they were bothering him. He was sitting in the center of the tent, allowing most of his body to shut down into a near sleep-like state while he discussed the problems Lucilla had come across in the design of canons with Sophus. He was putting it off, but he was going to have to make a trip to Devnum soon, if only to quiet the AI and its increasing agitation over not being able to see the problems with their forging itself.

Ky opened his eyes and gave the guard a wave that he could let whoever was outside in as the rest of his body began waking up.

“I’m sorry for waking you, Consul,” Ramirus said, ducking through the flaps.

“I wasn’t asleep,” Ky said, certain that Ramirus knew as much of his sleeping habits as his guards.

“I just received the latest package from my contacts inside the city from Marius, the ship captain, and it has some information I thought you’d want to see.”

“Has he had any more information about the men he’s taken inside the city?”

Ky had been watching the docks as much as he could, accounting for the need to check the walls for unusual movement and occasionally charging the drone, but a camera feed from above didn’t tell him everything he needed to know.

“They’ve started putting men in a second warehouse. He said there hasn’t been any notice from the guards, who’ve had their own problems to worry about. Everything is on track.”

“Okay,” Ky said, not buying how calm Ramirus was about the dangerous position they’d put those men in. “What news did he bring?”

Ky had always been more of a soldier, used to facing his enemies head-on, so maybe he was just less accustomed to these kinds of covert actions, the unknown being more comfortable for him.

“One of my people in the governor’s residence got a look at the last messages he received from their base in Hibernia. It included an update of reinforcement coming from Carthage.”

“Are they going to be here early enough to upset our plans?”

“No. The message was to inform the governor of a delay in the reinforcements and instructing him to take whatever precautions he needed to take in order to hold the walls until they got there.”

“I’m sure he took that well.”

“Probably. He’s temperamental, so it’s not hard to imagine his reaction to being told to do the impossible.”

“That’s good news though,” Ky said.

For Ramirus to show up this early, Ky had been expecting bad news, not a notification that they had more time to take the city than he’d originally planned.

“The delay is good news, but the reason for it isn’t. It seems the emperor has decided we are a problem after all. Instead of shipping in border soldiers from the continent, most of whom were conscripts, based on the numbers of captured soldiers from the last two armies that have asked for amnesty, they’ve pulled several of their veteran phalanxes from Persia and are bringing them west. We’re not going to be facing men who will panic when they get surrounded. These are the men who crushed the Parthians and tracked down most of the Berber tribes deep into the desert. They’re going to be backed up by line troops out of Africa and Sardinia. At least a hundred thousand of them, according to the message my source saw. They’re planning on sailing them right into the city, but from the way it was written, if my source’s description was accurate, they’re prepared for a landed invasion, if it comes to it.”

Ky frowned. Part of what had allowed him to win the last several times was a reliance on the inflexibility of the Carthaginian phalanxes. While that was true of the fighting form as a whole, Ramirus’s intelligence reports had painted a different picture of the units fighting out in Persia. They’d had to adapt their tactics to deal with the eastern horse archers, and they’d done it successfully.

Bomilcar was a good general, but he’d been handed substandard tools to work with. The ambush Ky had set up for them was a difficult situation, but the lines holding the Carthaginian army in had been thin, out of necessity. Where Bomilcar’s soldiers broke once the general and his command group went down, a veteran army would have pushed on. Had they kept at it, there was every chance they would have broken through his lines, which would have led to a very different outcome.

Against a veteran army, it would come down to simple numbers, and even if they added the Ulaid into their ranks and got men transferred back in time, which was doubtful considering what they were probably facing in Ireland, the Britannians would still be mightily outnumbered. It also meant they couldn’t allow Londinium to still be in Carthaginian hands when they arrived. A large, veteran army with a solid base of supply to operate against, would be impossible.

Eventually they’d have to face that kind of army, but Ky was putting that off until he’d managed to get enough firearms into Britannian hands to properly counter the numerical disadvantage.

“Okay,” Ky said. “At least we know what’s coming.”

“I heard a rumor that you’ve been working on some kind of design for a new ship. Is there any chance those can be finished and ready by the time the Carthaginian fleet gets here?”

Ky suppressed a frown. He trusted Ramirus completely, but he hadn’t discussed the ships with anyone yet. The only way Ramirus could know what Ky was working on was if one of his Lictore had told him, and that was a problem. Ky had become lax around his guards, although he was pretty sure he hadn’t let them overhear his discussions with Lucilla about Sophus yet. There were some things even his best allies weren’t ready to hear about yet. If he couldn’t trust his guards, he’d have to be more careful about keeping things close to his chest, or at least being away from who might be able to see what he was working on.

“I saw the edge of a scroll the last time we met,” Ramirus said, clearly reading Ky’s face. “I just saw a few words, but it mentioned ship designs. Considering what you’ve got Hortensius working on now, it isn’t a hard leap.”

“I see,” Ky said, at least happy to hear his men hadn’t talked behind his back. “No. I won’t have the new plans for Hortensius for another month at least, and we need to find people with the practical skills to work on the project with him. Hortensius is a smart man and he has a lot of experience with all kinds of manufacturing, but building a ship is completely different from running a foundry. We’ll also have to find crews capable of handling the new ships. Neither Romans nor Caledonians have much experience sailing beyond simple fishermen or merchants who make the short hop to the continent. Nearly all of our trade further out is done by foreign ships with crews from somewhere else, so we don’t have a lot of experience to draw on. So no, we won’t be able to meet their fleet with one of our own. One day maybe … but not in this timeline.”

“Then we’re in trouble.”

“Maybe,” Ky said, thinking. “Maybe.”

***

Londinium Docks

Carus made his way through the throng of people trying to buy what food they could before curfew towards the docks. His people were now spread across three warehouses, and it was becoming a problem. A guard had been poking around the third warehouse, looking in through the windows, and had caught his men inside. Luckily Carus had been on hand and made sure no one would ever find that guard again, at least not before the city fell, but this was just the beginning.

Men, mostly guardsmen, were starting to disappear on boats that went out fishing and never returned, probably making their way to Hibernia or the continent. They could see the writing on the wall and hand the money to buy, or the ability to threaten, their way to a secret passage out before the city fell. The governor had decreed that all loyal subjects should stay and help defend the city, but loyalty was in short supply in a city under threat.

A lot of these men had decided that, if they were going to be forced to flee, they were going to take enough with them to set themselves up when they got wherever they were headed. The city guard wasn’t a position that tended to pay well beyond the obvious benefits of having a little bit of power in a society where those at the bottom had none, making it an easy decision to use that power to take what they needed.

Crime in the city, and theft in specific, was at an all-time high, which was why there was a curfew in place. The problem was big enough that Carus, who went out of his way to never talk to anyone, had heard about it.

In general, he didn’t care that much about the problem, since most of the Romans had been pushed out of the city years ago to make room for Carthaginian transplants, but it was becoming a problem for his mission. All of the homes owned by people without connections to someone able to do something to stop it had been ransacked, which left businesses the next target of opportunity.

Warehouses were starting to be emptied by guards whenever they got a chance, which is how the unfortunate guard ended up stumbling into a warehouse of armed soldiers. He’d been looking for something to steal, and got significantly more than he bargained for.

They’d been lucky so far, but their luck wasn’t going to hold out, and it would take just one guard getting away, or a few more disappearing, before they’d be discovered. Which is why he was out looking for Marius. Ky had the men watching as well as they could, but only he and one optio spoke Phoenician, and the optio’s would never pass for a local. There were few enough Romans in town that if forced to speak to a local, they’d instantly draw attention to themselves. Since the men were spread over three warehouses, there was no way Carus could keep watch on all of them even if he tried.

Carus was hoping that Marius would have one or two men who could keep watch and alert them if anyone was snooping. The original plan had been for all of the Romans, including Carus, to stay out of sight and only move about in the dark if they had to, but the curfew messed up that plan. Which is why Carus found himself at the docks in broad daylight trying his hardest to not attract any attention to himself.

Walking with his head down to try and avoid drawing anyone’s attention is how he almost ran into Caesius.

“Watch where you’re going, idiot,” the would-be emperor said, pushing hard against Carus’s shoulder.

Carus looked up in surprise, making direct eye contact with him. Carus had met him multiple times in his position as one of the Consul’s guards, and once before that during a review of the troops. Thankfully, Caesius rarely paid attention to people he thought were beneath him and he seemed to take Carus’s look of surprise as a result of being pushed, and not recognized.

The moment passed and Caesius walked on, towards one of the larger boats moored at the docks, paying no more attention to the altercation. Carus’s hand drifted to a hidden knife under his tunic, his first thought of getting rid of the traitor once and for all. It hadn’t gone unnoticed that Caesius had no guards with him, making the man vulnerable. The moment passed and Carus pulled his hand back. There might not be any guards with him, but there would be enough witnesses that the killing wouldn’t go unnoticed and would draw undo attention to their operation.

Carus watched the man board the boat with barely a nod to the fidgety-looking captain and disappear below decks before putting the episode behind him and heading back to his original goal.

Marius was at his ship, as expected, doing some kind of repair before his nightly run, and was rightfully surprised to see Carus in daylight.

“Has something happened?” the Captain asked.

“Yes. A guard stumbled across one of the warehouses. We were able to take care of him, but only because I was outside the building when it happened. We probably won’t be that lucky next time. We need to figure something out before it happens again.”

“Ohh,” he said.

It wasn’t the reaction Carus hoped for, but one he expected. The captain knew his job, but this was well outside of his experience. He was doing this for money and a chance to survive when the city fell. It had been a decent plan, but the warehouses had always been the weak point in the plan, and he didn’t seem to have an idea of what to do next.

“We need to get the men down to one warehouse.”

“There’s too many to put in one warehouse,” the man said, unhelpfully.

“Yes, I know that, but it still needs to be done. Think. Is there some way we can get the men out of these spread-out warehouses, hopefully before this whole plan falls apart completely?”

“Well,” the captain said after looking off towards the water, thinking. “They brought in a lot of refugees before the city gates closed for good. Mostly Romans whose families worked with the Carthaginians and didn’t think your people would treat them kindly when they liberated the ground. They’ve been held in the western part of the city, but two days ago the governor started registering them so they can be put to work doing public projects or repairing the walls. Notably, he isn’t housing or feeding them, so if they’re not on a work detail no one pays much attention to them, as long as they show up for work.”

“How does this help us? We need to keep the men together for when the time to assault the walls comes. Having them spread out across the city helping build the defenses will make it impossible to pull off the assault, and it still doesn’t help us with the men still inside the warehouse being discovered.”

“The way they’re tracking who’s been registered to work is by handing out clay marks with the governor’s seal, so these people can pass through the city to their assigned work sights. I have a friend whose working on enrolling refugees for the work details. He can get some of your men these marks without putting them on the official rolls, so they won’t actually be assigned duties, but if they’re wandering around outside, it will give a reason for it. A lot of these people are country people who speak only Latin, so it would give them a reason for not speaking the language if they’re stopped by any guards. It doesn’t keep the guards from trying to look into the warehouses, but it will allow more of your men outside to keep an eye on the place and possibly deal with any guards that might stumble in.”

“It will have to do,” Carus said.

It wasn’t the solution he was looking for, since enough disappearing guards would still be a problem, but it helped. They didn’t have much longer to wait, and it wasn’t like the Marius had some kind of hideout somewhere else, away from the guards, to stash hundreds of men.

Carus just hoped it would be enough.

***

Emain Macha

Llassar had been back from the battle for just over a day, but the remains of the army continued to stagger in. Conchobar had been furious over the loss and had words with his cousin, barely stopping himself from having the man arrested for treason against the kingdom for his waste of the dwindling number of soldiers the Ulaid had left.

Llassar stayed quiet throughout, but he had to wonder why the king was so surprised by the loss, considering their original army had been routed and it had been made up of seasoned warriors and not farmers and conscripts like this latest one. The moment Llassar had seen it, he’d been certain he knew what the outcome would be, although he’d still been obliged to go south with it, since it wouldn’t do to tell a future ally their army was pathetic and not worth following.

What surprised him wasn’t the outcome of the battle, but the fact that the Carthaginians and their local proxies hadn’t followed up on it by marching directly on Emain Macha. The kingdom was already in a precarious state and the former king’s son was still in Connacht under the protection of Queen Medb. From the outlay of forces in the battle, it seemed like she was the leader of the two kingdoms that had allied with the Carthaginians, which meant she should have been able to take their army north and put Fergus on the throne. That would have, more or less, given the Carthaginians the entire island. In the hands of proxies, but that’s how they governed most of their conquered lands, so it would have suited them just fine.

Instead, they’d gobbled up some villages, and then stopped short. The Ulaid didn’t seem to have a version of Ramirus and his army of informants spread into every corner of the world, so they had no information on what was happening south of the areas their scouts could get to. Llassar didn’t hold that against them, since until joining with the Romans and finding out just how valuable something like that could be, he’d never really heard of that kind of thing. The closest his people had ever come was one of their people having a cousin or acquaintance in a village they were fighting, who’d occasionally get them information if they could. Since joining the Romans, he’d found the information they always seemed to have on their enemies invaluable, and mourned the loss of it now.

If he had to guess, it might have been logistical in nature. From what Ramirus had been able to tell him before he left Britannia, the Carthaginian’s foothold on this island was fairly small, with their main focus still being the pacification of Britannia. The local kingdoms, especially the southern ones, were poor and they’d already been struggling to keep themselves fed the past several years, which is why the better organized Ulaid had been able to stake their claim as the most powerful Kingdom in Ériunia. That meant that the Carthaginians on Britannia, who had all of the lands south of the Romans under direct control rather than being held by a proxy, had been supplying the armies sent to conquer Ériunia. With that support suddenly gone, and worse, their having to help supply Londinium, keeping their army fed might have been a problem.

If he had to guess, they’d probably have to start relying on the people they’d conquered in Germania to feed their men, which meant the food had to travel further. The Carthaginians, like the Romans, were terrible sailors using oared boats that even his people’s fishing boats could often outmaneuver, so longer shipping time could create serious issues in delivering food, which would then have to be marched halfway across the island to get to their army.

That was all a guess, of course, since all he knew was what the Ulaid scouts had been able to report to Conchobar, which was that the Carthaginians only advanced a mile or so, mopping up most of the injured Ulaid from the brief battle, before stopping. They’d ransacked a few villages nearby, but otherwise were waiting in the same spot, not moving.

While that was confusing, it wasn’t what brought Llassar onto the steps of the meeting hall that served as the king’s palace. A rider had come in early that morning, reporting that the Britannic forces had begun landing and the first group of them, mostly cavalry, were riding in shortly behind him. Conchobar had his men put together a hurried welcome, with what guard he had in the city lined up the main road from the gate of the city walls to the great hall, where Conchobar, his wife, major advisors and Llassar stood waiting to greet them. The Roman legate was getting a significantly better welcome than Llassar had, but then Conchobar hadn’t realized the lifeline he’d represented when Llassar had first shown up.

The legate hadn’t taken much time to get there. The last of Conchobar’s advisors had barely shown up in his spot when the city gates opened and Velius, along with several dozen other armored men on horseback, came riding through the front gates. In spite of his bias towards Caledonian warriors, he had to admit the Romans made an impressive sight. Although, to be fair, they weren’t all Roman. One of the men, wearing standard legionary armor, meaning he’d actually joined the legions as opposed to fighting alongside of them, was a warrior Llassar had known for years. There were a couple of others that had the look and bearing of Caledonians, although they too were wearing legionary armor, making it hard to tell. What he didn’t see was any of the Caledonians dressed in their normal attire, which must have meant Ky had only sent Roman legions and none of the Caledonian forces from Britannia.

Part of him wished the Consul had made a different decision, since the Ulaid were fought much more like Caledonian warriors than they did Roman legionaries, but he didn’t know all of the factors that would have gone into making that decision. Other than a brief message informing him that the imperial senate had agreed to send help, he hadn’t been able to ask any more questions or find out what was happening back in Britannia. Having watched Ky and Lucilla, who would have advised him, operate, he trusted them to make the best decision they could.

“Greetings, great king Conchobar,” Velius said when he pulled the reigns to a stop in front of the steps.

It wasn’t quite the normal greetings someone from Ériu would be given, but the king didn’t call it out. It wasn’t that far off either, and Llassar wondered who’d advised Velius on how to address his new hosts. He’d found the legate to be a decent man the few times the two had spoken, but he was a typical warrior and not one given to flowery language or diplomacy.

“I am Amulius Tettius Velius, legate of the Seventh legion and commander of the relief army sent by my emperor, Titus Flavius Germanicus, to assist your warriors in throwing the Carthaginians off your island.”

He was definitely coached, Llassar thought as he translated this to the King.

“Welcome, Amulius Tettius Velius. My men will see to your soldiers. Please come inside, so we can discuss the situation and what your men can do to help.”

Velius visibly relaxed when Llassar translated Conchobar’s words and it became clear there wasn’t going to be a lengthy back-and-forth greeting with flowery words that many of the Romans seemed to go for.

Conchobar didn’t waste any time, turning and heading inside, leaving his aides to show Velius and any of the men who’d go with him inside. After giving brief instructions to the man next to him, Velius dismounted and came up the steps, stopping in front of Llassar and clasping arms with him.

“It’s good to see you,” Velius said. “I was happy to hear your mission was such a success.”

“It almost wasn’t and you’re not going to like the situation that prompted them to pull me out of the dungeon they threw men in and agree to let us help. Things here are not going well.”

“It can’t be any worse than our last confrontation with the Carthaginians.”

“The Carthaginian forces are a lot smaller, but you’ll be doing this mostly on your own. The Ulaid army has been almost completely routed. Those soldiers you rode in with makes you the most heavily armed forces between here and the Carthaginians.”

“Well, let’s go in and see what kind of deal we can make,” Velius said, gesturing towards the doorway.

At least the Legate was taking it in stride, although Llassar had done his best to warn them about the poor condition of most of the warriors he’d seen on the island. He’d still expected some help from the Ulaid, especially once they were armed with whatever weapons Velius had managed to bring with him, but the legate was a good commander and understood the pointlessness of complaining about a situation instead of figuring out how to make it work with what he had.

“How many men have you brought with you?” Conchobar asked as soon as they caught up to him, already seated on his throne.

“Three legions, just over twelve thousand men. As long as we can come to an agreement on an alliance between our two people, we are prepared to march south as soon as my men are all ashore.”

“Although Llassar has already told us about your offer, I would like to hear from you just what is it your people require for your help?”

“Only that our soldiers remain under our command, although we will consult with you and your commanders on goals and strategies, and that, once your island is clear of any more threat, you send men to help us in our battle against the Carthaginians when we call.”

“Does this include just on Britannia, or beyond that?”

“We would like for them to be with us when we take the fight to the Carthaginians on the continent and Africa, but my emperor understands you might have reservations about that. He would agree to have your men remain behind, freeing up Britannic soldiers from otherwise protecting our homeland for the battle against the Carthaginians.”

“And for that, you’ll fight with us?”

“Yes, that and the establishment of regular trade. The speed at which we’re expanding our military to fight the Carthaginians requires a lot of supplies, and we’d like the ability to buy those from your people. I know even with that, it seems like too good of a deal, but from our point of view, it is worth it. A Carthaginian base this close to Britannia would make it impossible for us to have a secure enough base to launch an assault against the continent. We’d also leave Insula Manavia as your responsibility, since it currently has a Carthaginian base on it as well. We understand you have good relations with the people there.”

“We trade with them, but they are closer in relation to the Caledonians, and I believed there are some blood relations between them.”

“He’s right,” Llassar added, saying the sentence in both the Ulaid languages and Roman, so both men would understand him. “We have dealt with the people there, mostly trade, for several years.”

“Then we’d ask that you work with the Caledonians to help them recover from the Carthaginian’s rule and establish trade with them,” Velius continued, addressing Conchobar. “Most of the Caledonian warriors will be with us, so we’d still ask that, if you’re men limit their service to only the Britannic isles, you deal with that problem. We will see to it that you’re men are armed with the best weapons and equipment we can produce, to help them in that fight, and I’ve bright a shipment of our available weapons with my forces. We’d welcome any of your men to fight alongside us as we march south, although they would have to be under our command for the time being.”

“How much weapons and equipment will you give us?”

“If we form only a simple alliance to deal with the Carthaginians, then just the shipment I brought with me. This includes almost a thousand swords, shields and our new archaballista, which I believe your people will find useful. If we manage a more extensive agreement, then as much as our factories can supply.”

“This would be becoming another part of your empire, yes? We don’t have any interest in becoming a Roman colony” Conchobar asked.

“You wouldn’t be. You’d be equals, just like the Caledonians. You would have an equal say with all other members and you’d have complete control of your kingdom. Any Caledonian or Romans who came here, would have to follow your laws, just as any of your people would have to follow roman or Caledonian rules if they migrated to Britannia. Talk to Llassar. The Caledonians have prospered since our agreement, and you would too. Beyond military support, you’d have financial and technical support to rebuild after we pacify the island.”

“I don’t know,” the king said, leaving a long pause. Finally, he said, “It doesn’t matter what we agree to if they destroy us.”

“We won’t let that happen,” Velius said.