The Wings of Mercury - Chapter 23

Carthage

“And then,” Marcellinus chuckled, “the fool actually believed me when I told him the crate was full of salted fish! Can you imagine?”

Medb gave a throaty laugh, pulling her arm slightly against his so her body brushed his side slightly. He joined her laugh as they made their way slowly up the palace steps.

“And he believed it? You must have nerves of iron to face him and not break. I just... how can they be so gullible. You really are quite something, my friend.”

“You aren’t half bad yourself,” he said, putting a hand on top of the one cupping his bicep. “With your connections and my... let’s call it business acumen, we’ll have this city in the palm of our hands before the year is out.”

“Ohh, I have no doubt. We make quite the pair.”

“Indeed, though I must admit, I find myself wishing our journey here had afforded us more... intimate opportunities to solidify our partnership.”

The look in his eyes made it very clear what he meant, as they dipped once again to her well-sorted cleavage.

Medb squeezed his arm, her laugh low and throaty. “Patience, my dear Marcellinus. Good things come to those who wait.”

They walked past the guards and into the audience chamber itself, which was more or less empty aside from her husband on the much simpler chair that had been brought in to replace the throne used by Eoghan and a few guards attending him.

Medb stopped at the foot of the dais that he sat upon, releasing Marcellinus’s arm.

“Husband,” she said as she curtsied. “I’ve returned.”

Cormac sat rigid, his hazel eyes fixed on the pair, not returning her greeting. Marcellinus looked to her a little worried, but the small smile she gave him seemed to give him a small measure of courage.

“My lord Cormac, it’s an honor. I’m Marcellinus, a humble merchant eager to contribute to your grand vision for Carthage,” he said, giving a low bow.

“I’m sure you are,” Cormac replied, his tone as cold. “Guards, seize him.”

Cormac didn’t break eye contact as men materialized at the merchant’s side. Marcellinus’s face was locked in shock, his mouth opened, all but frozen in place as the guards grabbed his arm on either side, much as Medb had done moments before, but much less gently.

“What? What is the meaning of this?” he sputtered, struggling against their grip. “Medb! Tell him there’s been some mistake!”

Medb looked to Marcellinus one last time, the humor completely gone from her eyes, replaced by the same cold stare her husband had had.

Facing Cormac, she began to slowly ascend the dais, each step purposeful and deliberate. As she reached him, she leaned down, pressing a kiss to his forehead, her fingers gently running through his hair. Cormac looked up at her and for a brief moment, both of their eyes softened as she gazed at him with true warmth before her mask slipped back in place and she straightened, looking down at the stunned merchant.

“This,” Medb said, her voice cold and heartless, “is your arrest.”

“On what grounds?” he sputtered, looking frantically between Medb and Cormac, trying to pull futilely against the guard’s grip. “This is madness!”

“Treason, for starters,” Medb replied.

“What? I would never … Prince Cormac, I don’t know what you’ve been told …”

“Marcellinus, you stand accused of selling proscribed weapons, avoiding imperial taxes, supporting rebel factions, and plotting to use empire resources for your own enrichment,” Cormac said as if the merchant hadn’t even spoken.

The color drained from Marcellinus’s face. “This... that is absurd! You have no proof! Tell him, Medb! You... this can’t be true. We...”

He stopped, seeing the look on Medb’s face as she reached into a pouch sewn into her dress and pulled out several rolled pages, the edges jagged as if they were ripped from a book, and handed them over to her husband.

Cormac looked down at them, his eyes moving left to right as he read everything.

“Two-hundred rifles and fifty barrels of gunpowder to someone named Nebamun. Sounds very Egyptian, which is a country not allowed to buy those weapons, which is probably why you declared it as farm implements. Ohh, this is interesting. A five thousand denarii payment from Zamaris. That name has come up several times recently when dealing with some of the more organized pro-Carthaginian factions in the city. I wonder what he could have possibly been paying you for? Do you have any explanation for these?”

Cormac looked up from the document at the merchant’s face, his mouth moving wordlessly like a fish.

“I thought not,” Cormac said, putting the documents into his own pocket. “These do seem like a fair amount of proof though. Enough to pass judgment.”

“I... you can’t... I’m not...”

“Guilty?” Cormac said, interrupting him. “No. I think you are. All of your possessions and holdings are now forfeit to the empire. Ships will be dispatched with orders to the navy that any vessel bearing your name is now property of the crown. Your officers and factors face arrest warrants, pending proof of their innocence.”

“You should also send word to the capital,” Medb said. “I understand he has quite a few holdings there. I believe his properties, and his family’s properties, should be seized. I’m sure the empress would agree the proceeds of the sale of them would do well in funding the war effort and taking care of the men wounded in battle.”

“Excellent thinking, love,” Cormac said, patting her hand.

“My... my wife,” Marcellinus stammered, finding his voice at last. “What about her?”

Cormac’s cool facade slipped for a moment, letting some of his annoyance through. “Now you show concern for your wife? Curious, given your eagerness to bed mine.”

Marcellinus looked from him to Medb and back again, his eyes wide and full of fear. Was he so stupid he thought she hadn’t told Cormac everything? Even now, when all of his secrets were being laid bare, did he still think that was hidden?

“She’ll have to crawl back to her family. Let her try to salvage some dignity after choosing such a poor excuse for a husband.”

“What about me?”

“You,” Cormac sneered. “You are to be executed tomorrow morning. You will finally get to do something noble for your empire, serve as a warning to any who’d dare steal from the empire in these times of war. Take him away.”

Marcellinus looked like a frantic animal as he tried to wrench free of their grasps and make a run for it. The entire attempt was pathetic, his screams fading down the corridor as they dragged him out of the room.

Medb looked down at her husband and smiled, happy to be with him again.

***

Port Vikhavn

“I believe they’ve decided to give up on taking the port,” Valdar said, looking around the room at the gathered men.

It was an eclectic bunch. Ship captains, the majority of which were Scandi or Germanic immigrants, side by side with the Roman port commander and some of his equally Roman officers, next to Chief Ekoko of the Ikondi tribe and a few of his men. Each was dressed according to their customs, making for a motley bunch.

There was a comfort in that, even with the serious tone Valdar had set for the meeting. In the month that they’d been penned up in the estuary, the enemy had tried one more seaborn and three more landborn assaults, all of which had failed devastatingly.

So much so, that their total number of ships had finally gotten close to parity.

That, however, was not without its cost, which this meeting would hopefully deal with.

“The men our friend Chief Ekoko has managed to get on the outer island to keep an eye on their fleet have reported an uptick in activity. The enemy’s been making repairs to their ships, with a lot of focus on repairing damaged masts and sails and replacing rigging. The kinds of things you’d see focused on longer ocean voyages instead of the short assaults they’ve been trying.”

“You think they’re planning on sailing north?” Captain Fabius of the Aeolus asked.

“That’s exactly what I think. They’ve realized they can’t break through our defenses here and have decided to try their luck elsewhere.”

“I thought they wouldn’t bypass us because we’d be able to sail out and come up behind them.”

“That remains true, but watching their pattern lately, sitting on the two lines we would have to take if we were to sally out of the port. We’re protected here, but that protection has become a double-edged sword, locking us in here as much as it’s keeping them out there.”

“Then how do we deal with them?” one of the other captains said. “You just said they’re sitting on the lanes we need to sail out of, and I’m not sure we’d be able to get into appropriate lines before we got to them, meaning any assault would be scattered and weak. We’d be torn apart.”

“It’s worse than that,” the port commander said. “We’re dangerously low on powder. If we do mount an assault on their lines, we’ll have to pull the majority of what we have in the forts and might even have to borrow some from the chief’s stores. If your assault were to fail, I’m not sure we’d have enough powder and shot to repulse another attack.”

“I know it puts us in a tough spot. We can’t sit here and let them sail for our homelands and we can’t sally out of here without putting ourselves at serious risk. What we can’t do is remain inactive, refusing to make a choice. Whatever we do, it must be decisive.”

“I believe the admiral is hinting that he has a plan for your troubles,” the chief said.

Valdar smiled at the man. He might be considered backward by many of the people in the empire, but Valdar would never make that mistake. He was a shrewd man, who both understood how to read people and paid close attention to situations.

It had served him well, allowing him to become chieftain in the first place and then recognize the value of their visitors five years ago, and turn that to his advantage when other tribal leaders had only seen a threat.

“The chief is, of course, correct. I do have a plan to even those odds, but it’s going to be risky. I want you to assemble your carpenters and sailing masters and take all of the extra anchor chain, along with any similar chain we might have in the port, and wrap the hulls in that chain, from the deck to the waterline, finding ways to affix it so it stays put even when pounded by shot and shell.”

“Chains, sir?” Captain Fabius asked. “I don’t follow.”

“During that last assault, I was watching as a shell came in high on the deck and hit the anchor chain, and then glanced off instead of plowing through it into the timber. I think it could work as an impromptu armor plating, like what the consul and shipbuilders were working on for those river ships they were discussing before we sailed out. We have to talk about how far apart those rows are and if just one layer is needed, and as I said, how to get it to stay on, but it should, I think, give us some protection and allow us to fight longer.”

“We’ve got a fair amount of chains stored in the fort’s warehouses,” the port commander said. “And that apprentice of Hortensius – what’s his name, Aulus? – he’s got a small smithy and workshop. We could probably produce more, given some time.”

“Time is not something we have a lot of, but if he starts now, by the time we’ve used up what we have, it would give us just a little more. How many ships could we reinforce?”

The commander thought for a moment and said, “It depends on how it’s spaced apart, but seven, maybe eight, at the most.”

Valdar’s expression remained neutral, but inwardly he felt a flicker of disappointment. He knew it wasn’t going to be the whole fleet, but he was hoping for more.

“Then that will have to be what we have.”

“Admiral, even with these chains, our ships won’t be impervious. We’ll still be vulnerable to concentrated fire,” Captain Einar, one of his most experienced captains, said. “With only eight ships, we are not going to be able to defeat enough of their ships to stop them from sailing north or taking the port once we fire off the last of the powder.”

“You’re right, Captain,” Valdar agreed. “The chains will help us survive longer and hopefully get into a decent fighting position, but aren’t meant to make us invincible. They’re a calculated risk, giving us a fighting chance where before we had none.”

He could see his words had not filled the men with confidence, as they all looked to each other, worried that Valdar’s plan would mean disaster for them all.

“Before you all look like I’ve doomed you to an eternity on the ocean floor, I should say the reinforced ships are not our entire strategy. They’re a crucial part, yes, but not the whole. What we’re creating here is a diversion, gentlemen. Well, less of a diversion and more of a wedge to push the enemy where we’re going to need them. Which is also why I asked Chief Ekoko to join us. I know you have already done much to help us, my friend, but I need to ask for your assistance once again.”

“My men stand ready, Admiral. You’re people have done well by mine, and we are not only willing, but joyful to return that in kind.”

“Good, I’m glad. I should tell you this is going to be risky. More than ambushing lost sailors in the jungle.”

“My people are the mighty warriors and unafraid. We will do what needs to be done.”

“Good,” Valdar said. “Very good.”

***

Factorium

Lucilla was tired. The last week had been a whirlwind of trains, carriages, and horses as she made a tour through Caledonia, trying to remind the people there that they were a valued member of the empire, and not just an appendage that absorbed its men for fighting in far-off lands.

This had been a high holiday for their culture going back into far memory, before her own people had even come to the isles, and it was important for her to be seen celebrating those traditions with them. She might be Roman, and not Caledonian, but she was still their monarch, and they needed to know that she respected their way of life, and didn’t demand they simply conform to Roman traditions.

That had been part of the thinking. There also had been some voices of late, a small but very vocal minority, that had complained about the empire taking Caledonia’s sacrifice for granted. They felt that since the Empress was Roman and a member of the Ulaid royal family lived in Devnum and was in line for the reins of power, it put Caledonia, who had no direct connection, behind the other two.

She’d spent much of her time, in between hosting celebrations and attending ceremonies, in talks with Talogren, who was aging rapidly and considering the legacy of his people after he was gone. She wasn’t as close with the Caledonians as she was with the Ulaid or her own people, but she respected Talogren and didn’t want to see Caledonia fall to pieces once he was gone. This would be the first transfer of power inside the empire and a test to see if this new nation of theirs could outlast the generation that had created it.

This would be the first of many trips she would take to the north and her meetings with Talogren had gone well, but the time had created a backlog of other work for her. Between internal politics and massaging the still vulnerable western alliance to get each of her new allies to continue to give even as six months of war had passed with nearly no gain aside from holding the eastern armies to the outskirts of Germania, she had what seemed to be an endless amount of work.

Work that had to wait. She’d found a telegram waiting for her as she returned, requesting her presence in Factorium to assist Hortensius in the metal cartridge program, which he’d finally been able to devote some resources to now that the fuses were past the development stage and into production.

She didn’t begrudge helping her old friend. After all, she was only one of two people with access to Sophus, who was the fount of all of this new technology. She just wished there was a way she could do it from the palace, over telegraph.

She knew, of course, that wasn’t possible, so she once again found herself walking into his factory, the intense heat of the building surprising her as it did every time.

“Your Imperial Majesty,” a young aide greeted her almost as soon as she’d walked through the door, bowing low. “Hortensius is expecting you in Workshop Three.”

Lucilla waved the man to lead on, following him through the maze of people and machinery. She’d never not been lost here. Every time she saw the building, it had expanded again. She vaguely knew he’d taken to numbering the add-on expansions on the main factory, but for the life of her she wouldn’t have been able to find Workshop Three without a guide, which is probably what led to Hortensius having one waiting for her when she arrived.

The machines in this new section were very different than the ones she’d seen before. It was massive with a massive iron top section, held above a steel bed on thick steel guide arms, with a wheel on the side that would force it down onto the metal sheet below, pressing it into shape.

She knew what the machine did, of course, because the design for it had come from her own hand, directed by Sophus, who liked to explain what she was writing, in between her actually writing the work or drawing diagrams.

She found Hortensius next to one of the behemoths, looking at a piece of metal in his hand.

“Empress,” Hortensius greeted her with a quick bow. “I know you’re very busy, but I’m delighted you could come. We have an issue with the new metal casings that we have not been able to get past and could greatly use your assistance. While I know you defined the process for us, I’d like to show you our progress on the metal cartridges before we discuss the challenges we’re facing, so you can see it all together.”

Lucilla smiled. She knew he was being diplomatic. He was one of her closest advisors and had figured out a long time ago that the information she passed on to him did not come directly from her, and that she often did not fully understand the things she’d explained to him. She almost certainly needed to see it in action, and it warmed her heart that her old friend knew that.

“That sounds like an excellent plan to me.”

Lucilla followed Hortensius to a table next to a furnace with stacks of thin rolled brass sheets cut into discs.

“The process actually started off quite well,” Hortensius began, picking up a small brass cylinder. “We begin with these brass discs, as the consul’s process recommended.”

Lucilla nodded, turning the metal over in her hand.

“The annealing process is crucial,” Hortensius said, taking the metal from her and handing it to a worker at the furnace. “We heat the brass to make it more malleable, then quench it in water to retain that malleability. It does make the metal harder to handle, but it allows the metal to be formed without significant tearing. Or at least, that was what the original plans indicated. Then we use this machine to draw it into shape.”

The metal was put onto a flat stone surface that glowed red with an intense fire behind it. The man then used tongs to carefully pull out another, identical piece that had already been in the furnace and handed it to a man with thick gloves, who took it and placed it over a die that looked like what she imagined the inside of a bullet casing would look like.

He then pulled a long lever that caused the large upper part of the machine, which had the second part of the die, to lower, pushing down on the metal, elongating it and pulling it thin as it went from a flat circle to an elongated metal tube with a circular bottom.

They then took the finished piece and dropped it into a tube of liquid. Hortensius reached in and pulled out one that had already been in there, handing the wet metal to her.

“It’s quite remarkable to see in practice.”

It was so different from the paper cartridges currently used, holding loose powder and ball, that a soldier would tear open and pour into the end of a rifle. Sophus had explained how these would be used as part of a ‘breech-loading’ rifle, and while she understood the basic explanation, it was still hard to get her mind around. It felt like they’d only just gotten used to the firearms in general and how rifles worked. So to see a metal casing which would essentially be discarded each time a rifle fired seemed extravagant in the extreme.

Both Sophus and Ky, however, had been adamant that this type of weaponry would revolutionize how battle would be fought.

Considering what they’d already done, she was not about to doubt them.

“Yes, it is, but it is also not working. It is not every time, but often when drawing the casing, the brass is cracking. If it was large cracks every time, we would of course just write that off as losses during the production process and melt them down again. Unfortunately, often those cracks are very small, and only found when they are filled with powder. Worse, not even then. Firing off some in testing, we found several that ruptured catastrophically, in such a way that could only be explained by a crack too small for our eyes to see. If those moved into soldiers’ hands, it could be catastrophic.”

He reached in his pocket and handed her several shell casings, each of which had visible vertical cracks.

“From the description of the process and errors, the most likely cause of this issue is the metal not holding an even temperature throughout. It is possible that, if there is a spot that is under temperature, it could be below the point of necessary malleability, and crack as it is stretched. A multi-stage drawing process with additional stress-relieving annealing between stages should resolve this issue. Additionally, the use of a lubricant during the pressing would further reduce stress on the metal. Singularly, each will reduce the rate of cracking, and collectively, the likelihood of defects should drop to acceptable rates.”

Lucilla listened to the voice in her ear, trying to not show any indication that she was listening to anything.

“I believe I may have a solution,” she said when Sophus had finished. “Have you considered a multi-stage drawing process?”

Hortensius blinked, surprised. “I... no, Your Majesty, we haven’t. We’ve been following the original plans quite closely.”

“Which is understandable, although I will say that Ky’s original plans are often not tested in the same conditions as we use, so there are sometimes discrepancies,” Lucilla said, sounding more like the voice in her ear than herself.

She had heard that explanation enough times from Sophus, who was often displeased with the quality of Britannian work compared to whatever its standards were.

“You should consider implementing additional stress-relieving annealing between stages of the drawing process,” she continued. “It should prevent the brass from becoming too hard too quickly.”

“That... that could work,” he said, nodding slowly. “It would certainly add time to the process, but if it solves our cracking issue...”

“It would, you could also consider adding lubricant during the pressing stage.”

“That’s … actually very clever, Your Majesty. I can’t believe we didn’t think of that ourselves. I’m certainly glad the Consul included contingency suggestions in his notes to you.”

Hortensias had a mischievous look on his face, but Lucilla just ignored the jab.

“I’m happy I could help,” she said.

It wasn’t critical, but she knew Ky had plans for the weapons that would use these, and wanted to get everything finished in the next year. As with so many of his inventions, this was just the first step.

But the sooner they could get it, the sooner they could get to the next piece.