The Trumpets of Mars (Imperium #2) - Chapter 24

Lucilla stayed fairly late, the two of them talking, not just about their official duties, but about everything. Ky’s touch with possible death made them both suddenly realize how quickly things could be taken away, making both reluctant to cut their time together short.

Although Ky could have stayed up all night with little ill-effect, Lucilla still had limitations, even with her refreshed medical nanos Sophus had reapplied now that they were both awake. Reluctantly, she returned to her quarters, leaving Ky to work over his thoughts on what had happened since he’d been out. For once, Sophus wasn’t of much help, since other than briefly communicating with Lucilla the day before Ky had woken up, he had no more information than Ky had.

A lot of what she had to say, specifically about developments with the alliance, was hopeful. Although he found it repugnant, he hadn’t been concerned by the news of Romans taking advantage of their new partners, since that had always been factored into his thinking.

The thing that did bother him was news of captured Carthaginian scouts being caught over the border along likely invasion paths. Despite their straightforward approach to warfare, or maybe because of it, Ky doubted the Carthaginians would be sending men over the border months before their newest invasion began. From the records he’d seen, and what little he’d learned from his first brush with them, the Carthaginians operated on fairly rigid timetables. While it was probably a side effect of their using conscripted soldiers, most of whom wouldn’t be allowed to show any initiative even if they’d had the ability, it also meant that he had much less time than he’d originally projected.

He sent one of his men with messages for the various commanders to notify them that he was back among the living and calling a council of war just after first light. It would make some of them scramble, but Ky didn’t have time to wait. Some of what he needed was information on the various projects he’d left in the works, but the accelerated timetable also meant the need to move beyond the more basic training they’d been doing until now. While the Caledonian forces, some of whom had just arrived that week with Lucilla, needed more time to integrate, if the attack was going to come as soon as Ky thought it was, they needed to start preparing for the actual battle.

That meant going over battle plans with the legates, getting their input on changes that needed to be made, and beginning the process of training the various units for their specific pieces of the battle plan.

Ky had decided that, since he needed less sleep, he’d meet the commanders at Velius’s command tent, saving them time and allowing the men to get right to work as soon as they finished deciding their new priorities.

Riding through Devnum and then through the seventh legion’s camp, Ky could feel the eyes of everyone on him. Lucilla had told him that word of his situation, and rumors of his death, had traveled pretty widely, but he hadn’t expected everyone from the boy cleaning horses at the stable to the sentry guards to stare at him like they had trouble believing he was real. Despite her warning, Ky still found it a little unnerving.

Thankfully, the commanders, who were already assembled, were less obvious about their amazement.

“Consul,” Velius said, getting out of the camp chair he’d been sitting in and rushing to greet Ky as soon as he came through the tent flap. “I’d heard word that you were back with us, but I’d been afraid to believe it until just this moment. There aren’t words to express how glad I am to see you up and about again.”

“Being in charge wasn’t all fun and games, I take it,” Ky said, smiling and gripping the other man’s forearm back in greeting. “From what I hear, you’ve been doing a fantastic job, and we are well ahead of where we needed to be, as far as training goes. The Caledonians who’ve chosen to enlist in the legion itself are doing well, the cavalry is coming along and you’ve rotated through several groups of citizen militia, training with the new arcuballista. You should be proud of yourself.”

“I appreciate the compliment, although there is still something nice about having someone I can push the larger problems to. However, I’m mostly glad you’re here, because I think the timetable needs to move up and we haven’t yet heard your entire plan for how we are going to defeat the Carthaginians. I’m also particularly alarmed at Ramirus’s estimates for the size of the army they are building.”

“Which is why I called this meeting, in fact,” Ky said, loud enough for the rest of the men in the tent to hear. Once everyone was settled, Ky continued, saying, “From what I’ve heard, we’ve caught some Carthaginian scouts in the area the Carthaginians are most likely to come through, meaning their attack will likely happen much sooner than we predicted.”

“Correct,” Velius said. “We’ve caught three now, which probably means they sent more. As normal, their masters didn’t tell the scouts much, to prevent intelligence leaks if they were caught, but we do know they were dispatched at different times, spread out over weeks, which means this is more than a probe. The best guess is they want to maintain a constant stream of information about the conditions along their path, especially since, with snow still on the ground, the terrain and available forage could change quickly.”

“Best guess, when do you think they will march?” Ky asked.

Although he’d already discussed the information Lucilla told him with Sophus, Ky wanted to hear the legate’s predictions before offering his own, to get a more untainted opinion. The commanders might not have a sophisticated tactical AI able to process vast amounts of information in their head, but they had something Ky didn’t have, a lifetime of fighting the Carthaginians.

“We still have a little time, based on Ramirus’s reports. He has a man at the main Londinium port who reported that a few more shiploads of Germanic tribesmen are expected in the next week. We also have reports suggesting they are still gathering supplies, we think to make up for expected supply shortages. My best guess is they will begin moving within the next week to week and a half. They will be slow to get going and won’t travel far each day, because of the number of men they’ll have, so it should take them another two weeks to reach the border.”

Seeing nods from the commanders, confirming their agreement with Velius, Ky said, “That about matches up with my estimate as well. Basic Training is over, then. We have two weeks to get everyone supplied and begin training for their specific portions of the battle plan. From there, we need the various elements in position by the end of the third week. That’s when the hard part begins. We are far enough from home that we can’t just wait behind the walls and sally forth when we see them, and we can’t let them know where most of our forces are, or they might work out our plans ahead of time. Even if we harass their scouts and cavalry with ours, they’re still going to see some of the battlefield before the bulk of the body reaches us, which means cooking fires and men out of their hide position can ruin the entire plan for us. All it takes is for the Carthaginians to realize they’re being led into an ambush and they’ll go around the position we want them in.”

“I’m still not clear on what that position is?” Auspex said.

“I know, and for that I’m sorry. I know I’ve kept most of the battle plan close to my chest, and I promise it isn’t because I don’t trust any of you. I’ve just been concerned about enough of the plan leaking out that the Carthaginians have a chance to find out about it before it’s too late to tell their commanders. To be clear, I don’t distrust any of you, but once we start training the men, word will get out. Put that together with the fact that well-connected Romans have gone over to the Carthaginians after the insurrection and the attacks in Devnum since, and it’s clear there are still ways for the Carthaginians to find out what our men are doing.”

Although Ky didn’t name Caesius directly, all of the legates knew that’s who he was referencing. The interrogations of Decius’s son indicated his father and the men associated with him all had some contacts with the Emperor’s son. There was also evidence that Caesius had passed information to the Carthaginians even before the insurrection, including his sisters’ trip to Glevum, allowing the ambush and her near capture. Considering he was now a guest of the Carthaginians, it seemed likely that any information sent to Caesius would shortly end up in the hands of the Carthaginians themselves. There was also the fact that Ramirus hadn’t found Decius yet, which meant he was still out there somewhere, helping to collect information for Caesius. Thankfully, for Ky at least, everyone in the tent understood the necessity for operational security and didn’t seem to take his keeping them out of the loop to heart.

“That being said,” Ky continued, “the time for keeping things quiet is just about up. While Velius and I have been over my plan and looked at the terrain in question, I’d like to get your input on it. Right now is the time when we can still make adjustments, before we start training the men to execute this, so now is the time to speak up. Clear?”

Beyond training the men in newer ways of warfare, one of the bigger challenges Ky had in preparing the Roman defenses was getting through long-ingrained ways of doing things. Traditional Roman commanders were not unlike autocrats themselves, which could be why, even in the original timeline, legates had a tendency to try to become Emperor in their own right, leading to the occasional coup attempt.

When the assembled men nodded their understanding, Ky began walking them through the details of the plan that, he hoped, would cancel out the Carthaginian’s staggering manpower advantage.

***

Ky was up again early the next morning, this time with a new set of problems and a new destination in mind. If Velius had thought Ky had given him too many areas of responsibility, he should have spoken to Hortensius.

The changes in Rome’s military structure and fighting techniques had been extensive, but nothing compared to the upheaval of Rome’s manufacturers. Nearly every area of industry had been altered, some from multiple directions simultaneously. Beyond just the new techniques and materials Ky had introduced, there had also been the manpower changes as slaves were replaced by wage-earning citizens, the introduction of clerks for better accountability and efficiency, and the entire patent system put in place to help fund the massive increase in production needed to both supply the populace and it’s rapidly growing military.

Hortensius had risen to the challenge presented to him and had done an exceptional job keeping all of the pieces running while following the first stages of Ky’s plan for industrialization. Regardless of how impressive Hortensius had been, Ky had expected some things to begin falling behind, which is why Ky wasn’t surprised to find instances once he began going over reports from the army of clerks they’d installed to track production.

Unfortunately, the area that was falling behind the most was the one the Romans could least afford to let slip. Arcuballista was behind by almost thirty percent of expected production, and looked to still be slowing. A big part of Ky’s plan to destroy the Carthaginian army relied on the citizens being trained on crossbows. While they didn’t need that many to actually train them, since they were being rotated through in groups to keep Rome’s businesses from being drained of manpower all at once, in a few weeks they’d need all of the weapons to use for real. Right now, there were not enough arcuballista to arm half the men he needed for his plan to work, and Ky didn’t see how they could produce enough to make up the difference in time. Which was the point of today’s meeting.

As with the military commanders, Ky didn’t bring Hortensius to him, because he didn’t want to delay the man any more than he had to. Instead, Ky arranged to meet him at one of the many warehouses converted into assembly factories, where Hortensius had already planned on being that morning. Ky found him, the factory foreman, and the clerk assigned to keep the factory’s books in a small room that doubled as storage and the foreman’s office.

“Consul,” Hortensius said, hustling towards Ky with his hand outstretched as soon as Ky came through the door. “I thanked the gods when I heard you were back up and moving. My family prayed for your recovery every day since word of your injuries reached us.”

“I appreciate it,” Ky said, still unsure how he felt about people praying for him to gods he didn’t believe in. “I’ve been going over all of the clerks’ reports on the manufacturing sectors, and you’ve done a fabulous job keeping all of this going. I’m particularly pleased with how well the foundries are doing turning out the new steel. That’s going to allow us to move forward on some additional plans I have for us once this army has been dealt with.”

“But?” he asked, crossing his arms and looking at Ky levelly.

“But?” Ky asked, unsure of what he meant.

“Whenever someone starts a conversation telling me what a fabulous job I’ve been doing, I always know it’s an attempt to smooth things over for whatever they say next. So I’m wondering what the ‘but’ is going to be.”

“Fair enough. The ‘but’ is that I have real concerns about arcuballista production, specifically at the assembly stage, where it appears we have a bottleneck.”

“I thought as much. I will take part of the blame on this. I assumed our slowdown would have been in the actual production of the pieces to be assembled. Specifically the metal attachments. Since the basics of how carpenters made the wooden frames hadn’t changed, I knew we could just scale that up with more workers as needed and keep up with production. It was the need for precision metal parts, especially the new release mechanism you called a trigger, which would be our weakest point and so it’s where I’ve been putting additional resources as we’ve been getting them. The amount of rejected parts that needed to be melted down and reforged didn’t increase as dramatically as I assumed, however. While that’s a good thing, since it means production has stayed high, it meant we were putting manpower and even facilities in the wrong place. I’m in the process of switching over some of the lower producing forges into assembly buildings and retraining the workforce, but that will take time.”

“I see. From observing one of the assembly buildings, I think there are a few more places you can accelerate production without adding additional resources.”

“Really? How?”

“One of the reasons the foundries and forges are going faster is switching over to the assembly line system, correct?”

“Yes. I still don’t know how I didn’t think of that, since on the face of it it’s so obvious. Limiting a person’s work to one set of actions, instead of following the whole process through, made it easier for the worker to become proficient, and therefore faster, and quicker to train new staff, aside from the ability to produce more pieces simultaneously. I think that might have been one of the most impactful techniques you’ve taught us.”

“It might be. My people took generations to think of it, and when we did, it revolutionized our industries, so I knew it would have an outsized effect. My question is, why haven’t you expanded the process into other areas?”

“What do you mean?” Hortensius asked, suddenly looking concerned as he realized he might have made a mistake after all.

“I’ve been watching your craftsmen assemble the arcuballista, and they are doing it one at a time, fitting all pieces onto the frame until it’s a finished weapon. In some cases, the worker moves to different stations to access the tools to attach a specific piece. You’re losing a ton of efficiency. Why not have the worker stay in one place, attach his piece, and pass it on to the next person to do their piece. Even break it down further, and split up the drilling of specific holes for a given attachment from attaching the metal piece itself into two tasks, if you have the manpower for it. Each step that can be split across people, especially those that require different skills or different tools, allows the worker to rapidly become specialized in that part, just like they do in the forges.”

Hortensius squeezed the bridge of his nose and said, “Because I didn’t think of it. I saw the effect of your assembly line process in the forges, but in my head, I think I associated that only with the forges and foundries, and with nothing else.”

“Understandable. It’s easy to become hyper-focused or locked into one mode of thinking when presented with new ideas. The real leaps in innovations aren’t developing something new, it’s taking others’ new developments and finding ways to apply it to what you’re doing at the moment.”

“None of which makes me feel like less of a fool. I’ll get to work on this right away, although it won’t instantly increase our production, since we’ll have to do some level of rearranging of the factory floor and retraining the workers, all of which will take time.”

“Do it one at a time. I think you’ll be surprised by how much each factory increases its production after it switches over. They won’t increase all at once, but they will grow exponentially,” Ky said, and then paused at the look of confusion on Hortensius’s face. “That is, they will be will build faster the more we add. You’ll have to hire new staff to do simple tasks like taking the assembled piece from one station to another, at least for now, but those require little skill beyond the ability to walk and hold light objects. You can pull from applicants who otherwise weren’t suited to work in the factories before now.”

“Since the production of the actual pieces is ahead of assembly, we’ll focus on the arcuballista first.”

“Good. We need those weapons, and we need them soon.”

Ky left Hortensius to his work and spent the rest of the day making visits to the other factory owners who’d picked up contracts to produce weapons for the Empire. Some, like the production of gladius and now the longer bladed weapons preferred by the Caledonians, were going well. Ky had also introduced more assembly-line methods here, although they already had some of the rudimentary ideas of the process in place before Ky ever arrived. With those factories, it had been more of fine-tuning their manufacturing process rather than a complete restructuring like Hortensius had faced.

Once spring came, some of these factories would have to be shifted over to the stronger plows and tools Ky had introduced to help increase farming yields and make up for the removal of slave labor, but they still had a good month before that was an issue. Considering the increased Carthaginian presence at the border, the battle that would decide Britannia’s fate would have happened already and, if they survived, they would have time to worry about industrialization instead of pure survival.

Right now, however, he couldn’t worry about that. Satisfied that everything possible was being done to arm their soldier and citizen auxiliary, Ky’s next task was to get more detailed information on the current situation on the Carthaginian side of the border. While Carus was good at keeping him up to date on the information he needed, he’d tasked the man he was beginning to consider his intelligence officer with keeping an eye on the domestic situation. Carus was still in regular contact with Ramirus and was able to keep him from being blindsided, but for detailed battle planning, he needed to meet with the Empire’s spymaster directly.

Not unsurprisingly, the man was extremely busy, which had made it hard for even Rome’s Consul to get a few hours of the spymasters’ increasingly precious time. That was why Ky was up with the morning sun the next day and at the one corner of the palace set aside as an office for him.

“Consul,” Ramirus said as the guard at the door admitted him. “I know you’ve been trying to meet with me and I’m sorry I kept you waiting. I had to make a trip to the border over the last few days, to meet with my sources more directly. The situation in Londinium has been moving very quickly, and an unfortunately large amount of the information I have been getting has been out of date by the time it reached me.”

“No need to apologize. I understand the scope of the job we gave you and stopping to meet with me instead of getting the information I need from the meeting would be a waste of everyone’s time. How are things on the border?”

“Chaotic. Beyond the scouts we’ve been capturing, refugees in villages between the Carthaginian assembly area and here, especially along the main road north, have been abandoning their homes and fleeing towards us.”

“Why towards us? I get the villages right on the border, since some of those were captured as recently as the fall, but those further in have been under Carthaginian rule for a generation or more. Wouldn’t they run the other direction?”

“The Carthaginians are like locusts, devouring the countryside to support the state. They keep an incredible number of men under arms at any one time to pacify areas they’ve captured, and they do it brutally enough that they have to keep their soldiers in the area to keep the territory pacified. Except in Africa and the areas they consider ‘true Carthage,’ the only value they see in the territory they control is providing upkeep for their massive armies. The only time these refugees would have seen their current masters would be when their tax collectors, who come with a fair amount of armed support, show up to take half their grain harvest. Or when they come to take any boys who’ve reached the age of maturity and aren’t already apprenticed to a trade or essential to farming and enlist them in their armies, regardless if that’s what the young men want to do or not. All of which doesn’t lead to a lot of warm feelings between the villagers and their rulers. They know what little food and possessions they have will be swallowed up by the horde everyone knows is assembling in Londinium. Many of these people have little left to steal, since they were already terrorized by the last army that came through just a few months ago.”

“So they’re running to us? If things were that bad, why did they wait until now to run, especially if staying meant giving up their young men to fight across the world, enslaving more people?”

“Normally, the Carthaginians patrol the border and the lands they control relentlessly. It’s actually what the bulk of their armies are used for and why it’s taking so long to build up a new invasion army.”

“I was wondering about that, since every piece of information I could find on them suggested they had a lot of men under arms.”

“They do, but like I said, most of that is to keep the populace under heel. When it comes to active armies they can use to invade a place, they don’t have that much available. Although a lot of my countrymen don’t want to admit it, preferring to think the reason Rome remains free is because of the power of our legions, the real reason they haven’t crushed us yet is because they had to focus their available military might on pacifying the Germanic tribes. My sources reported last year that the last of the tribes west of the mountains and Asia were finally under their control, which matched up with around the same time they began planning for the final push to finish us off. The fact that we defeated that army, and so badly, meant they had to pull units from across their holdings and transport them to Londinium, which is why we had so long to wait. One of the first places they turned was their border guards and patrols in Britannia. The combination of a skeleton force guarding the border and the coming invasion that would wipe them out completely was enough to push the villagers to take their chances making it to us.”

“What are we doing about them?”

“We have groups of praetorians rounding them up, checking for spies and the like as best we can, and finding places for them in our villages or bringing them to Devnum, since they need work and we still have a manpower shortage to fill all of the new manufactures that have started up.”

“That’s convenient for us.”

“Yes, although I am concerned about not catching all of the spies and infiltrators the Carthaginians might be slipping in. Although they generally operate more directly, relying on raw military power and brutal oppression, they have occasionally resorted to more crafty measures like generating internal strife when facing a more challenging opponent.”

“Which we’re trying to be. I’m sure you’re doing all you can to keep an eye on that, although considering there are still men like Decius running around and in contact with Caesius, it’s a safe bet that some will get through regardless.”

“I know, which means we just have to be prepared to try and counter any trouble they may cause, instead of focusing only on keeping them from attempting it in the first place.”

“You said the Carthaginians were bringing in soldiers from across their empire. I know it’s a large force, but I haven’t heard how large. What should we expect?”

“My best estimate is at least a hundred thousand soldiers. The good news is that it is ninety-percent phalanxes, with only limited skirmishers and archers, which will make your plan more effective, but the number imbalance is striking.”

“To say the least. Our combined force is still less than thirty thousand men, and it’s the largest army Rome has fielded since being pushed off the continent. What about cavalry.”

“There is some, but there is an uprising in Petraea among the remnants of the Persian tribes that have required a large mounted response to re-conquer.”

“Good. That is the one area that could hurt us. If we don’t get all of their cavalry and scouts early, their commander might get wind of the trap before we spring it and try to bypass it. If that happens, I’m not sure what we can do next, since there is no chance we will survive a stand-up fight.”

“Faenius has committed the remainder of the men he had training to patrolling and clearing any scouts, or anyone else, from the area of the proposed fight. While it has led to some unavoidable problems, we should be able to keep any Carthaginian scouts from seeing our preparations.”

Ky’s eyes narrowed as he asked, “What do you mean unavoidable problems. This is the first I’m hearing about it.”

“I know, and that’s my fault. I wasn’t purposely trying to deceive you, but I was concerned that … decisions would be made that were counter to the best interests of the Empire. This was one of those moments when I believed forgiveness may be easier than asking for permission.”

“Normally I don’t mind how devious your mind can be, since it works in our favor, but this isn’t one of those moments. What have you done?”

“There was a village very near the battlefield we are preparing. That close to the border, it is possible that the Carthaginians managed to get spies through our lines, and it would be one of the first places they’d go to, since it’s on the only tenable invasion route for such a large army. It was located on the other side of the lake, so it wasn’t directly in the path of the army, but they could see where we would be preparing from across the water.”

“What do you mean was?”

“I mean there was a village, as in it isn’t there anymore. On my order, Faenius relocated all of the villagers either back here to Devnum or to nearby villages and then razed it to the ground to keep anyone from trying to cycle back after his men left.”

“There had to be another way to handle this?” Ky said, frustrated. “There is still a lot of animosity out there after the insurrections. The last thing we need is a new group of people angry with the Emperor because we took their homes.”

“I understand that, but we didn’t have a lot of options. We know we are missing scouts, and people talk, even when they aren’t being purposely disloyal. If too much attention is put onto your preparations, the Carthaginians will notice, no matter how many men we have out looking for their scouts. You’ve said how important it is to make sure we don’t give away the trap before it’s sprung; well this would do it. Were the people in these villages angry? Yes. Is it possible we might drive some of them into the arms of the insurrectionists? Yes. We did what we could to preempt that. We paid each family a thousand sestertii, which is well more than they would have earned in five years of farming and herding. We allowed them to take anything they could and provided men and wagons to help move them. We did everything short of picking up the entire village and relocating it. I’m not sure what other options there were to keep your plans secret and keep from inconveniencing or angering these villagers.”

Ky sighed and said, “You’re right, and I apologize for second-guessing you. You’ve shown excellent judgment the entire time I’ve known you, so I should have assumed you would continue to make the best decisions you can. You’re right, the most important thing we can do right now is to win this battle, because if we don’t nothing else will matter, and that all hinges on the Carthaginians falling into our trap. Now, tell me about the latest round of interrogations.”