The Sword of Jupiter (Imperium #1) - Chapter 33

“What the hell are you thinking?” Lucilla asked as soon as they began their walk back to the Roman lines.

It had taken them some time to get all of the Romans ready to travel and Ky knew it was going to be a long and very cold night for most of them. It had taken him hours to run the distance between the Roman wall and the Pict camp, but it would take the entire night for the wounded and exhausted Romans to stagger their way back. Ky had considered making camp for the night, but the truce with the Picts was tenuous and Ky knew some of Talogren’s people wouldn’t be on board with this idea. Since one of them might get the bright idea that they could end the truce and put things back the way they were by themselves, Ky thought it best to get the Romans as far away as possible, just to remove the temptation.

“I want to get your people back to safety as soon as possible,” Ky said, purposefully mistaking her meaning. “I know they’re tired, but they can take one night of hardship.”

“That isn’t what I mean, and you know it. How could you offer something like that to these barbarians?”

“Because you need them. You know I was right when I said the Romans needed the manpower. It’s one of the major reasons we decided to end slavery in Roman borders, and even that isn’t enough. The Carthaginians will roll over you like a wave and no matter how brave you are and how many tricks I can pull out, we won’t be able to stop it by ourselves. Besides, they aren’t barbarians. They’re just people trying to do what they can to survive. Look at it from their perspective. They were happily living their lives on this island until the Romans showed up and pushed them out of their homelands. You are to them what the Carthaginians are to you.”

“That’s different!”

“How? You killed many of them and drove them off? How’s that different? You were all ready to turn all of the surviving Carthaginians into slaves, arguing that they were evil and it was a fate they deserved. I’m not saying you are the same as the Carthaginians, but suggesting that the Picts are in the wrong and the Romans are noble and pure is hypocritical. I’m not saying you should just hand back the land you’ve taken and walk into the sea, but I am suggesting it’s time to stop viewing them as animals and nuisances, and start seeing them as people. Just like you.”

Lucilla fell quiet. Ky didn’t blame her. Besides the ordeal she’d suffered, she also had a lifetime of living as a Roman to get over. It was easy to see your nation as the center of the world and everything else as somehow other and lesser. The Romans, who’d once had an empire that spanned what they knew of as the entire world, were doubly cursed. The bigger and more influential a people became, the harder it got to see outside of their own sphere of influence.

Ky was practical. He hadn’t been planning on righting the wrongs of the past or trying to make everything fair to all of the people he came across. His entire goal, once he picked the Romans as the people he’d stay with, now that he was stuck in this time, was to make sure they kept existing as a refuge and bringing their technological level up to the point where he could at least be somewhat secure.

Once he came to the idea of bringing in other peoples into an alliance with the Romans, however, he had to stop thinking of himself as one of the Romans and view the situation from the outside. He’d never been trained as a diplomat, but he’d spent a lot of time recently looking at politics and nation-building, trying to understand enough to chart a sustainable course for the Romans. One of the things he’d learned in this study was the only way to make lasting negotiations with others was to see enough of their side to actually understand them. History was replete with agreements and deals handed down from a powerful nation to a weaker one, and they rarely lasted. This would only work if he saw both sides and understood what both wanted and what they both needed, and could find a middle ground that kept either from walking away.

“Guilt is fine for me, but do you really think you’re going to convince my father or my brother or people like Silo to go along with this plan?”

“Your father? Yes. He knows what kind of danger his people are in and he understands what Rome needs to be able to survive those dangers. He won’t like it, but he’ll see the necessity of the alliance. Over time, I hope he’ll see it as more than that. I hadn’t planned on this, but the more I think about it, the more I can see it as a viable way for Rome to not only survive, but achieve some of the glory your people liked to reminisce on so much. It won’t be the same, but it will be more durable and could last for generations if we do it right. Your brother and Silo are another matter. Your brother can’t see beyond his petty desire for power and Silo can’t see beyond the past, only wanting things to remain as they were. This has made both of them blind to the real dangers Rome faces, meaning neither would do anything to avoid them.”

Ky knew her relationship with her brother wasn’t great, but he imagined even with that it’d be difficult to see all of his actual flaws. She chose the option she had every time her brother came up, which was to ignore the truth and focus on other parts of the conversation.

She spent the next several hours peppering him with questions as they walked, occasionally having to stop to give the Romans a short rest before they continued. He didn’t have many answers for her, since he hadn’t worked out everything himself. He knew he had to have a full plan by the time they got to Rome, but that all depended on Talogren saying yes. Ky thought he might, but the people of this time tended to be stubborn, regardless of personal danger.

After a while Lucilla went silent, focusing on putting one foot in front of the next. She was as exhausted as any of her people from her ordeal over the last few days and only her anger over hearing Ky offer an alliance with the people who’d put her through that ordeal had kept her going since they left the village. After she burned off that initial anger, she fell into the same stumbling stupor that the rest were in.

This gave Ky time to deal with the other thing that had bothered him since they left.

“How did you know the personal combat thing would work?” Ky asked Sophus silently.

“I was able to isolate parts of their language and find corollaries with known ancient Welsh language files. The connection was not initially made, because there seems to be a blending between that language tree and what we know of the early Pict language tree that caused unexpected variations. In addition, the available libraries on both are extremely limited, since neither left much in the archaeological record. What is known was derived primarily by working backward from more complete ancestor languages. The connection wasn’t fully made until their leader mentioned the god Agrona, which was an ancient Welsh deity that had no crossover or corollary with known Pict deities. Using Roman histories, I was able to able to reconstruct the sequence of migrations that lead to the current makeup of the people now known as the Picts.”

“So they’re not the same as the people who would have lived here in our timeline?”

“Correct. In our original timeline, the Romans did not move into the British Isles until much later, and then at a gradual pace. After the fall of Rome, the areas they did control partially reverted back to their pre-colonization makeup, although still carrying through some effects of the Roman occupations. In this timeline, the Roman migration onto the British Isles was much faster and, because the migration was for permanent settlement, had the effect of displacing people that would otherwise not have been displaced. It appears the largest group that was forced north into the Scottish Highlands were the Welsh, who took large portions of their culture and beliefs with them. From this information, I formed the supposition that they might react to similar cultural responses, such as the right to determine disagreements through personal combat.”

“Is there any way this helps us?”

“Perhaps. Without further study, it’s hard to say what the full effect of the merger between the Picts and the Welsh into a new conglomerate society are and which societal norms from the two cultures were adopted and which abandoned.”

“Yeah, I thought you were going to say that.”

By the time they made it back to the Roman lines, half of the survivors of Lucilla’s group were carrying the half that couldn’t walk. Besides injuries from the raid itself and extended abuse over the days that followed, it was well into winter and none of the people had been dressed to endure the march south.

Ky gave directions to the Roman healers on how to treat some of the injuries, especially how to keep the frostbitten fingers and toes from turning gangrenous. Some would still need amputations, but if they followed their instructions, most would make a full recovery. Ky had hated forcing them to move quickly, but had they stopped, many of the injured would never have moved from their temporary camps. It sounded harsh, but Ky thought a few fingers and toes was a fair exchange for their lives.

His lictores had been all over him when he returned, as were the commanders of the fourth legion, all of whom wanted to know what happened. Ky didn’t have time to give them a blow-by-blow of the events, but did warn them that a Pict party might be approaching the Roman lines in the next few days, and that they must be allowed to pass safely. Since he had all of his lictores with him, Ky put them to work overseeing the Roman patrols making sure a twitchy centurion didn’t order the slaughter of messengers that might have brought an end to the Pict threat. In return, he had to agree to keep within his tent and to not venture out anymore, so they could leave a minimal number of men to protect him and use the rest as a form of informal officers corps.

For once, Ky didn’t argue, since he had work to do. He’d made his proposal off the cuff and, while he had the beginnings of an idea of how it would work, he hadn’t actually come up with a plan. If the Picts did agree, they’d want to know what his offer was in full and then he’d have to take it to the Romans and get the Emperor to agree. That meant he needed to figure out a working solution, and he knew it had to be something more than just becoming a Roman protectorate or a treaty.

The historical documents that Ky had reviewed showed that it wasn’t far from the end of the Romans in his time. As their ability to field Italians and other Romans as soldiers to protect the borders of the Empire from a series of tribal migrations from the east, the Romans had turned to some of those tribes that had been forced into their territory. Long-standing prejudices kept the Romans from absorbing these people into the Empire, and instead, a series of treaties had been drawn up to allow these tribes seeking sanctuary to move over the Danube and even fight in their legions, but still hold them as non-citizens. Eventually, the inevitable happened and the tribes realized they didn’t have to keep listening to the Romans. They were over the major physical barrier and large parts of the Roman armies were made up of their own people, or people related to them.

It hadn’t been an instantaneous reversal, but over time they began moving further south, taking over parts of Roman territory and making it theirs. Ky and Sophus agreed that the only way to avoid a repeat of this, since Rome was facing similar problems now, was to make these people tied to the fate of Rome itself. They couldn’t join as outsiders.

Except for the occasional interruption from his lictores delivering messages from the 3rd legion commanders or updates on the survivors, Ky worked through the entire day in solitude. Even as he worked, going over different governmental systems and alliance structures that Sophus could pull from his data downloads, Ky couldn’t help but notice Lucilla’s absence. Following their brief conversation after they left the Pict village, she’d fallen silent and had disappeared to recuperate as soon as they arrived back at the Roman camps. For everything he’d been willing to sacrifice to bring her back safely, Ky knew there was a chance it might come down to a decision between her or making the changes that Rome needed to survive. It was the slavery argument all over again, except the people he was preparing to anger were the same ones that had supported him last time.

It was worse for Lucilla, since she’d suffered more personally than the people still in Devnum, for whom the Pict threat was still abstract. Ky had hoped that their personal connection would be enough for her to look past those experiences, but he knew it might not be. What’s worse, he knew that if he had to choose between saving Rome and keeping her affections, he’d have to choose to save Rome, if only because if Rome fell, she would most likely die. And that he couldn’t live with.

He tried to push the thoughts aside, but he was failing. Enough so that Sophus had to remind him several times of the importance of having a plan, even though Sophus didn’t seem as confident that the Picts would come at all.

Ky had just started to refocus for the thirtieth time when a cough at the entry flap to his tent caught his attention.

“Hello,” Lucilla said.

She looked good. Someone must have found her hot water, because the dirt and grime from her ordeal were gone. Ky sat down the stylus he’d been using, marking lightly on the thin scroll so that he’d have something for the Emperor to look at.

“Hello,” he said, awkwardly stopping somewhere between standing and sitting.

“Can I come in?” She asked, pointing at a stool next to the small camp table Ky had been writing at.

“Yes, yes. Sorry. How are you feeling?”

“Much better than my retainers. Those anim… sorry. They went through a lot and I know I’m lucky they didn’t do anything but threaten and yell at me.”

“That’s still a lot to deal with, especially since you must have thought much worse would have happened soon. I know you’re upset with me and it seems like I’m siding with them or rewarding them for what they did to you. I hope you know I’d never do that, but I also have to think about the rest of you and how to make sure Rome survives.”

“I know, and you don’t have to apologize. I actually came to apologize to you.”

“Why, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I don’t know about that. Had I listened to you about not going to see the oracle, I wouldn’t have ended up there at all. And you came and saved me. Again. I keep having to thank you for saving my life.”

Since the ‘thank you,’ ‘you don’t have to,’ looked like it wasn’t ending any time soon, Ky simply said, “You’re welcome.”

She stepped closer, into Ky’s personal space and said, “See that wasn’t hard.”

Ky had just begun to lean down when Carus called from outside his tent, “Consul, riders are nearing the outpost.”

Ky sighed and closed his eyes, laying his forehead against hers for a moment.

“Come,” he said, standing up straight and taking a step back to put some room between himself and Lucilla.

When Carus entered the tent, Ky asked, “Are they the Picts?”

“Yes. The scouts made contact a few minutes ago and Lovinus was with them. He sent a messenger back at a gallop and is riding in with the Picts to make sure there aren’t issues.”

“How many of them?”

“Only five, one of them is Talogren.”

“Really?” Ky said excitedly. “He wouldn’t ride out here with a handful of men unless it was to negotiate.”

“That was my thought.”

“Have Vibius arrange a place for us to meet and make sure it’s well guarded. While this is going on, I do not want any interruptions. When he arrives, have him shown there and offer him refreshments. Make sure he isn’t treated like a prisoner. He can bring an advisor in, but the rest of his men can remain outside. We don’t need too many voices causing chaos. Tell him I will only bring one other with me, to ensure it remains equal.”

“I’ll see to it, Consul.”

“This is good,” Ky said to no one in particular before turning back to Lucilla. “I would like you with me. These aren’t demands like I made before. It will be a negotiation. I believe the plan I have will work and I’ve tried to consider what your people’s response will be, but it will be harder to present to the Senate if there isn’t a Roman voice in the negotiation.”

“They wouldn’t listen to me.”

“When the people hear you were negotiating for all of Rome, they’ll listen. Some of the senators may have their prejudices, but the people love you. While I would want you there, if you don’t think you want to or could handle it, then it’s fine if you don’t go. You’ve heard what I said to him, so I can guess you’ll have some idea of what types of things I am willing to offer them, but this will probably be difficult for you to accept even still. All I can tell you is that I believe it’s important.”

“If you believe it is, then I’ll go.”

“Good,” Ky said, giving her a warm smile. “Good.”

When they entered the tent Talogren had been sent to, the Pict partially rose, only to freeze when he saw Lucilla enter behind Ky.

“You brought the woman again?”

“As I said at your camp, she is the Emperor’s daughter and she can speak with his voice. She is also one of the few people here that can understand your language, although it is more difficult for her to speak it.”

Ky didn’t mention that he’d spent the few minutes before coming to the meeting coaching her on how to listen to the translation and keep up despite the slight delay that happened between when the man spoke and when she would hear the translation in her ear. He’d been doing it for so long now, since none of the languages here was his native tongue, that Ky hardly noticed he was doing it at all anymore, but he imagined it would be a challenge for someone new to the experience.

“Fine, fine. I just wish we would have brought some of our own drinks. This goat piss you Romans drink tastes little better than piss.”

“I can have a goat brought in for you to suckle at if you prefer,” Ky said with a straight face.

Talogren stared at him hard before letting out a bark of laughter. Sophus had suggested that, from his observations at their village and the records he had, that the Picts would often trade insults before bargaining, as a way of putting all of their animosity on the table, so everyone knew where they stood.

“Finally, a Roman without the stick up his ass.”

“I told you, I’m not Roman, just as I’m not a Pict.”

“You might be the right person to decide this after all. I’ve talked to my people. Not all of them think this is the smart thing. They think we’ll lose some of ourselves if we try to become Roman.”

“I am not asking you to become Roman. Within your borders, you can live your lives as you see fit, as long as you abide by the agreements you make, follow the laws that the Imperial Senate, which you will be a part of, lays down, and understand that you are part of the Empire, just as much as the Romans are. Your fate is sealed with theirs.”

“I said not all of my people. I didn’t mean most of them. The majority of us see the benefit in this. We’ve watched the death worshipers bring every tribe that has come into their reach to heel and made them into servants. We do not particularly like the Romans, but we don’t think we will get a better deal from the death worshipers, so we agree.”

“What about the rest of the league?”

“That is another matter. Some of them will agree. Some of them will not.”

“That will create problems for you, won’t it? They won’t just sit by and let you take part of your lands and merge it with the Romans, will they?”

“No. But we will have new, powerful allies to help us show them the error of their ways.”

“I see,” Ky said, internally grimacing.

He’d hoped that Talogren could deliver all of the Picts, which meant all of the lands that would have been Scotland, to them on his word. Only getting some of the Picts and having to use men and supplies needed for the Carthaginians to instead help pacify the remaining northern lands was not what he wanted.

“I guess we’ll deal with that when we get to it. How many tribes can you speak for, that you’re sure about?”

“Twenty-one of various sizes, all along the border and up along the eastern shore. That’s most of the tribes who’ve had contact with either your friends or the death worshipers.”

That made sense. It was easy to dismiss threats when you didn’t see them regularly. The tribes that had seen, or at least heard from refugees, what the Carthaginians were up to understood what the real danger was to them. They might have just been raiding and hoping things changed on their own, but all they really needed to start working with the Romans against the bigger problem was a legitimate way out of what seemed like a no-win situation.

“We’ll take what we can get for now and work to convince the tribes who haven’t signed on that this is in their best interest. If they don’t and we can’t see a way to keep them from being a problem, you’ll be responsible for ensuring the northern lands are under control. If you’re allied to the Romans, we can’t have any more raids. Especially if Romans are traveling north to trade and buy from your people.”

“I get it. We become the new invaders, telling others to stop, submit or die,” Talogren said unhappily.

“I’m not asking you to conquer them. They’re your brothers after all, or at least cousins. I’m serious when I say we’ll leave you in command of lands. You will be a territory every bit as equal and self-governing as the Romans and their territory.”

“So how will this work?”

“I will go back to Devnum and convince the Emperor to sign onto the agreement. Once that’s done, I’ll come back with more specifics and talk about how you want to set up your government. You’ll send or elect, however you choose to do it, senators to represent you in the imperial senate and determine which laws both you and the Romans will be bound to follow. We’ll work out trade and technology transfers as you see fit.”

“You keep telling me about all the wonderful things the Romans will do for us, but you have yet to say what we have to give in return.”

“First, the raiding would stop. While you will be allowed free travel into Roman lands, and Romans into yours, until everyone begins to trust each other, soldiers will remain on the border, to ensure the peace. Secondly, and more importantly, you will supply men into the Roman legions. For now, they will be kept as an independent unit, because we don’t have time to train them to all fight together, but ultimately, I would want them mixed in with the Romans, fighting together. And we need those men now.”

“You want us to send men south as soon as the agreement is signed?”

“No, I want to take men back south with me when I go and put them into training as soon as the Emperor signs the agreement.”

“What if he doesn’t sign? What happens to our people, trapped in the heart of Roman territory?”

“The Emperor will sign, he doesn’t have any other options. However, I will guarantee the safety of your people.”

“You may have powers, but you’re still one man. I won’t risk my people by sending them south before we have an agreement.”

“You will, or there’s no deal. We need them now. We are only a few short months from the death worshiper’s invasion. We don’t have time to wait for the agreement to be signed before they march south.”

“My father will keep Ky’s promise,” Lucilla said. “Besides, your men will be armed. Are they scared they won’t be able to defend themselves if we don’t come to an agreement? I thought all Picts were mighty warriors worth ten Roman dogs.”

Although they’d been speaking the mixture Pict/Welsh language that had become the norm for this world’s Picts, Talogren understood Latin. For a moment Ky worried that she might have been letting her anger get the best of her, and overstepped, but Talogren broke into a smile again.

“By the gods, she has balls. I should have insisted on keeping her as one of my wives.”

“I would have cut yours off if you had,” Lucilla said, dead serious.

“How many men do you need?”

“As many as you can get together within two days. I know you won’t be able to get all of them, and this is only temporary until this battle has ended. After that, those that do not want to fight can return home. Of course, those that want to remain soldiers can do so, although they will be integrated into the Roman units if they decide to stay.”

“The southern tribes, that is, the ones closest to the border, are our largest tribes. We can spare at most, five thousand men, although I won’t be sure until we talk to them and ask for those who want to go.”

“They will not be allowed to raid or kill Roman citizens or steal from the Romans. If they do, they will face justice. They will be paid, they will be fed, and they will get equal spoils of victory when the death worshipers fall, but that is it.”

“I will send Llassar with you. He will make sure of it. And while I am thinking of him … Llassar!”

The last word was a shout directed at the door of the tent. The large Pict that Ky had met at the Pict village, who had also held a knife to Lucilla’s throat, came through the flap. Ky saw Lucilla’s eyes narrow, probably remembering how roughly he’d gripped her by the throat as Ky and Talogren fought. Ky thought she might protest when a new surprise was pushed in behind Llassar, hands tied in front of them.

“These two were sent by the death worshipers to us some time ago. They made suggestions of sending more men into Roman lands to raid and pillage and made all kinds of offers of wealth and glory if we would attack the Romans when the southern death worshipers attacked.”

This was a surprise, but it did make a lot of sense. He’d wondered why the Picts had suddenly become so much more aggressive. Ever since Ky arrived, they had begun raiding at an increased rate, which was why the Romans had sent three legions north just before the attack on Devnum. It had been a good plan on the Carthaginian’s side. Even though they had overwhelming numbers, removing more than half of the Roman forces had made it all but certain Devnum fell before the first snow.

Or it would have had Ky not shown up.

“Lately, after your defeat of their army, they have become more insistent about larger raids. When some of my people resisted, their tales of glory and riches became threats. We were told that, if we did not do what they said, after the death worshipers destroyed the Romans, they would continue on into our lands, killing our men and making our women service their soldiers. They showed us what being their ally would really be like. Now that I have decided to ally with Rome instead, I thought I could offer them as gifts, for the signing of our agreement.”

This also explained a lot. Ky had wondered why Talogren had given in so easily. While he’d counted himself lucky and taken the victory, there hadn’t been a good reason for him to just accept Ky’s word that the Carthaginians would subjugate the Picts as soon as they were done with the Romans. Sure, they might have heard of what happened on the Continent, but again, hearing something second-hand and experiencing it are very different things.

Carthaginian agents in their midst saying they’d do the same thing, however, would have made it a lot easier to believe Ky, and see the value of a way out. Because once the threats started, Talogren must have known that they’d never stop.

“That is a good gift, and I’m sure it would go a long way to convincing the Emperor that you’re serious about this alliance, and show him the value of working with your people instead of fighting them.”

“If I only have two days to gather men for your journey south, I need to start now. I will have to ride to many of their villages myself, and convince them why this has to happen,” Talogren said, standing up and turning for the door.

Ky appreciated that they didn’t stand on ceremony the way the Romans always did. He liked the Romans, but their love of pomp was inefficient and wasted huge amounts of time.

Talogren was just reaching for the flap covering the door when he stopped and turned.

“We are giving you this one chance, because I believe this could be the best way for my people to survive. Do not take my hopefulness as weakness, however. If the agreement you procure from the Emperor changes the terms we’ve agreed to or if the Romans decide to go back on their word after this alliance is formed, we will fight all of you and hand our fates to the gods.”

“I understand,” Ky said, watching him leave before turning to Lucilla. “Thank you for supporting me.”

“I’m still not convinced, but you made some good points. You know, despite what I said, I’m a lot easier to persuade than my father, and the others will be worse.”

“Let’s worry about one thing at a time. First, we have to get all these Picts to Devnum without burning down the countryside.”