The Sands of Saturn - Chapter 23

Devnum

“Good morning,” Ky said, looking down at Lucilla as her eyes finally opened. “How are you feeling?”

It wasn’t, in fact, morning, but Ky found something humorous about putting it like that.

“Confused,” she said, looking around alarmed. “What happened at the docks? There was a man coming at me. He had a knife and yelled something and stabbed me and then … I don’t remember.”

“That’s because Sophus put you in a coma … uhh, an unwaking sleep, like the one I was in this winter, so he could repair your body. He’s kept you like that for almost two weeks while he fixed you. I rushed back as soon as you were attacked so I could help with your recovery.”

“I was asleep?” she said, starting to sit up and wincing.

“Take it easy. You haven’t used your muscles in a while and you’re going to be sore. You also have some scar tissue still that will take time for Sophus to remove, so it’s going to hurt to move for a bit. He made sure all of the critical points were completely healed, or as healed as possible, before waking you up, but I’m still concerned there might be some more internal bleeding.”

“There won’t be any bleeding, Commander. I am confident I have closed all of the wounds and repaired all damaged veins and muscle groups. The soreness should not last long and there is no danger of additional damage.”

“You two have been arguing over me?” Lucilla asked, smiling weekly at Ky.

“The Commander has been unreasonably cautious on any topic involving your recovery.”

“I just wanted to make sure nothing went wrong when we woke you up.”

“I’m sorry to give you a scare,” Lucilla said.

“You need to be more careful. I know you want to be there for the people, but you have security for a reason. I talked to Modius. He, and the rest of your guards, all said you ignored their warnings, allowing yourself to be surrounded by people you didn’t know.”

“They were mostly women and children. We’re trying to convince their men to join us and man our ships. Treating their families as some kind of leper isn’t going help us achieve our goals.”

“But they are the only people out there. This isn’t a legion camp where we know exactly who’s around you, or even a Caledonian village where insurrectionists or Carthaginian agents would have trouble blending in. There are Romans who still hate us and blame both of us for the changes they hate.”

“I’ve seen you walking through factories and even crowds. Why is it safe for you and not me.”

“An excellent question?” Sophus added.

Ky ignored the AI and said, “That isn’t the same. I have Sophus continually monitoring the crowds and my enhanced reflexes allow me to avoid attacks that you cannot.”

“I have pointed out numerous times that I can only see threats in your point of view, Commander, and yet you continue to put yourself in situations where unknown individuals are directly behind you. Enhanced reflexes cannot protect you from attacks you do not know are coming.”

“Fine, I don’t take the care I should either, although my system also has a full suite of medical nanites, instead of the hacked ones Sophus has managed to create for you. I just worry about you, and don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“I know, and I appreciate it,” Lucilla said, placing her hand on the side of his face and caressing his jaw.

“Just promise me you’ll be more careful.”

“I will try to not get stabbed again,” She said.

“I find that answer vague and unconvincing.”

“Me too, but I think it’s as good as we can get.”

“So I’ve missed two weeks? What’s happened? Is Velius still fighting in Ériunia? Have you looked at the cannon? Did you see the ships? How about the refugee quarter and the merchant quarters that are being built? I want to get those people out of tents as soon as possible.”

“Slow down, slow down. Yes, Velius is still in Ériunia. The last message we received he was expecting to confront the Carthaginian army at any time, so that has probably happened by now. Yes, I’ve seen the cannon and you did an excellent job, and we should be testing the first cannon any day now. The ships are coming along well also.”

“And the refugees?” she prodded when he stopped without answering all of her questions.

“Tensions are on the rise. The people, especially the Caledonians, are blaming the newcomers for your injuries. There have been some incidents.”

“You need to make sure they’re protected. We are still short on labor in every area and if these people start getting attacked, or worse, they might stop coming. Especially the Scandi, who are only here for opportunity and aren’t fleeing anything. Hortensius says every day, how short we are on raw materials, and if they …”

“I know and I’ve already ordered the Praetorians to increase patrols in these areas and had the praecones add a warning into their latest public notices that violence against peaceful visitors of any kind will not be tolerated. Of course, that won’t stop a lot of these people, but after some time, the outrage will decrease.”

“I should get out of this bed and out where people can see me. If they’re angry because I was attacked, seeing that I’m fine should help calm them down.”

“You aren’t going anywhere. Sophus said you were healthy enough to come out of the coma, but you still need a few more days rest, to give your body time to heal the rest of the way. We can keep things under control until then.”

“Fine,” she said grudgingly. “I’ve worked hard to try and get these people to stay and work with us and I know you have more plans in the works that will require more workers. We won’t be able to meet that need if we let this get out of hand.”

“Noted,” Ky said.

She’d always cared about the people her family governed, but ever since her experiences with the Caledonians, who treated her as one of them and not an untouchable noble, she’d remade how she saw herself as some sort of champion of the average person. Even with the projects she was overseeing and the work she did with the Scandi and Germanic immigrants, she had still made time for random stops in less well-off sections of the city, talking to the people and trying to understand what they needed.

It’s why the outrage against those who people saw as her attackers had been so visceral, and not confined to just the Caledonians. He agreed she needed to get back out there and show the colors, as it were, but he was more concerned about her long-term health.

“But, if I wait here in this bed, once I’m up, I want to begin preparing for our wedding.”

“What?” Ky said, surprised by the unexpected statement.

“You heard me just fine. I’ve already made it clear to you that I wanted to get married and I’ve waited while we dealt with one crisis after another, but I’m done waiting. We’re going to be fighting this war for several more years at least, and I’m not willing to wait until we win to marry you.”

Ky didn’t disagree on principle. He loved her, both in the ways people in his home future would have considered and in the more primal ways people here thought of the word, but he didn’t feel the need for some official title to express that love. Marriage as a binding contract wasn’t a thing in his time. People were paired, and that was that. Of course, bondings were a lot less official there than they were here; where it required entire ceremonies, and pledges of fidelity.

“I love you and do want to marry you, but I’m not sure this kind of distraction is what we need right now. We have a lot to do before the end.”

“Which is why the people need a distraction. Now that they aren’t under immediate threat, attention will waiver. Everyone’s for high-minded civic pride and wants glory for the empire when asked directly, but what people really care about is their day-to-day living experience. We are working everyone extremely hard, and that can take its toll, especially since there isn’t going to be a chance for that work to let up until we get more people into the empire to share the workload. They are craving a distraction.”

“But …”

“No. No buts. You may be from some far-off place with technology so powerful it looks like magic from the gods, but I know my people, and I know my heart. They are both demanding the same thing.”

“I guess I have no choice but to agree then.”

“See, you’re already thinking like a husband,” she said, putting her hand on his and smiling.

Southern Ériunia

“Are you sure about this,” Aelius said, lying on the small rise next to Velius and looking at the medium-sized village below.

People were scampering everywhere, looking like ants running across an upturned mound from this distance, preparing defenses as best they could. Between the size of their army and the refugees from the night battle four days previous, the villages had several days warning to begin preparations, which now included a series of long ditches, not dissimilar to the ditches Velius had dug around their camps that helped his legion defend itself during the night attack. Aelius couldn’t help but wonder if they got the idea from the defenses that had mauled them so badly only days ago.

“Yes, I’m sure. The messenger we received a few days ago came directly from Ursinus’s legions and had been present at the battle for Londinium. They had pulled off something similar and it worked well for them, and they faced a similar problem.”

“Those ditches aren’t the walls of Londinium.”

“No, but we also don’t have the same advantages they had there either. Until my legion can get reinforced and retrained, we’re essentially down to two under-strength legions and the street fighting there will play right into the Carthaginian’s strengths. They can hold the alleyways and streets, forcing every attack to be a frontal attack. We can still take the city, they just don’t have the manpower to hold it, but they can make it expensive. Without being able to maneuver around them, our only recourse will be to hammer away at their front trading men. They’re going to be surrounded so they won’t break, because there’s nowhere for them to run, which means we’ll have to fight to their last man. If at all possible, I want to avoid that.”

Although their last battle had been a stunning victory, it had come at a cost. His legion had stood up to close in fighting with a force four times its size for several hours and had come out of the fight mauled. He’d reorganized it as best he could to keep it field-ready, but he was only able to deploy five full cohorts, which was half the number of men he’d come to the island with.

This battle might finally secure Ériunia from the Carthaginians, but it wasn’t going to be the empire’s last clash with them, and they were going to need as many men as possible to carry on that fight. Losing men with experience in a headlong attack was not what Velius considered a winning strategy.

“Won’t they be spotted?”

“Maybe, but they’re going to be Carthaginian ships flying Carthaginian flags, or at least ships of allies to the Carthaginians. Between that and the pressure we’re going to be putting on them, they will hopefully be too distracted until we hit them.”

The situation was similar to the one they had at Londinium. The Carthaginians were again hemmed into a single point behind defenses and completely surrounded, which gave Velius some options. The countryside wasn’t pacified like it had been around Londinium, but he had enough men that he could deal with that.

He sent half of Vibus’s fourth legion west and half east to find fishing villages where they could commandeer boats for a landing force, and then had every mounted trooper he could muster, to cover the coast, watching for them. That had been two days previously, and a rider had returned a few hours earlier having sighted a dozen small ships sailing towards the village with his men aboard from the east. There hadn’t been any word from the cohorts he’d sent to the west yet, which wasn’t unexpected. He hadn’t been sure how many boats the men would find in either direction, which is why he’d split the forces in the first place, to increase their chances of finding enough to make a landing force.

He had to time the attack just right, however. Not because he was worried the Carthaginians might inflict enough casualties to break out, but because the most disorienting part of a fight was when the enemy initially engaged. Those initial moments were the ones where he’d have the most attention on Aelius’s legion, which should be enough for Vibus’s men to land and attack from the rear.

They’d been lying there for the past thirty minutes, Velius staring through his spyglass at the water to the east, looking for the sails. Finally he saw what the scout had reported. The ships looked to be mostly fishing ships, some oar-driven and others with a single sail. The lead ship had strips of red cloth tied to the front of the boat, which had been the signal the cohorts had been given to let his men know they were on those ships.

“Let’s go,” Velius said, pushing back from the rise and returning to their horses and guards.

The legions were only a ten-minute ride behind, but they had to move fast. The ships would land in thirty minutes, and they needed to be fully engaged at that moment. Thankfully, the legionaries were well-trained and all had been standing ready while he and Aelius watched for the ships. As soon as they came over another small rise and into view of his men, the Centurions had their men on the march.

All of the men already had their assignments and knew where to go, which saved the time of giving out orders. He’d released their Ulaid support to ‘pacify’ the countryside, keeping their unruliness from disrupting the battle plan. Although it would make ruling this area harder, since the people would have even more resentment after the Ulaid fighters savaged their villages and stole what few valuables they had, it was a necessary evil.

Velius hoped they’d distract locals from harassing them during the battle, but mostly he just wanted them out of the way.

The buzz of action he’d seen became a panic as his men marched over the rise and into sight of the village. Their line extended far beyond the village itself and wrapped around until either end touched the coastline, where it stopped just on the other side of the wide trench filled with spikes.

The Carthaginians, who’d braced for the Britannians to try and charge across the trench, looked almost stunned when the men instead stopped cold … until the arcuballista’s came up. The Carthaginians had helpfully packed themselves into tight rows, directly in the Britannians’ path, and the Britannians took advantage of it.

Bolts began to tear into their lines, the distances short enough that they were able to punch through armor and even some of the shields. For a moment, the Carthaginians froze, unsure of what to do. Some started forward and even a brave handful tried to jump their trench, to varying degrees of success, while others began to break and run back. Archers formed in the center of the village began to return fire, but it was sporadic and poorly aimed, since they didn’t have a clear line of sight to the Britannians. The few that had lined up behind the Carthaginian line were unable to fire as their own compatriots began pushing back, trying to flee the Roman fire.

Velius couldn’t see the beach on the other side of the village, but he could hear a commotion coming from inside of the town. A few moments later, a Britannian trumpet blew two long and two short notes, the signal that they had made it ashore.

“Planks,” Velius called out, and men in the back rows pushed past their compatriots to lay down planks of wood pulled from nearby buildings or even off their own wagons, strong enough and wide enough to allow one man to cross at a time.

The men ran forward and dropped the planks to span the trench. Normally, this tactic would be foolish, as his men would be vulnerable as they crossed and could only do so one at a time, which is why Velius had waited for the right moment. With a sudden attack behind them, the Carthaginian line had almost fully broken and chaos reigned, allowing his men to cross almost completely unmolested.

The legionaries formed quickly as they crossed and charged forward, cutting through the few Carthaginians who turned back to try and stop them. Within minutes, the first flags of truce went up, men trying to surrender. Most got cut down by soldiers with their blood up, until finally the centurions were able to get the men under control.

The battle was the shortest Velius had ever experienced. It was over twenty minutes after his men first marched over the rise in front of the village with the loss of only thirty-two men.

With this battle, the Carthaginian power on Ériunia was broken.

Devnum

Hortensius had been better than his word, and had the carriage system built in under a week which, considering they’d never built something like that before, with its elevation mechanism and hitch to attach to a horse halter, which he also designed, and an ammo carriage that could attach in between the two.

Since they met well outside of town away from anyone that might get hurt if there was a catastrophic failure, Hortensius came by carriage, where he’d stay for the entire test, saving him the pain of being moved in and out of it multiple times.

The manufacturer had wanted a true test of the entire platform, so the gun was hauled out to its position pulled by a team of horses, just like it would be in battle, unlimbered and pushed into position by a crew of workers. It was a slow process, but Sophus assured Ky that a practiced team could move artillery pieces in and out of position on a battlefield quickly once they practiced at it. Although the cannon wasn’t as good as the pieces fielded in the nineteenth century, the rest of the system was designed to those specifications, and it had worked well through several major wars, which meant there wasn’t a reason it couldn’t be practical here.

“We built the ammunition carriage as you specified, but it isn’t large enough to hold more than a dozen shots. Are you sure you shouldn’t have a larger carriage, or perhaps a second full-sized cart following along with the cannon?” Hortensius asked as the men positioned the weapon so that the test firing didn’t accidentally hit anything.

“I’m sure. As we scale up to steel cannons that allow for rifling, the cannon will get heavier, and having to add more horses will become a liability on the battlefield. Once we have enough cannons to build batteries of artillery, we’ll have a supply wagon travel with them with additional ammunition and gunpowder, but we should keep that a little way away from the cannon themselves. Every time we fire a piece, there is a chance for a catastrophic failure and if that happens near an ammunition wagon, the results could be disastrous.”

“I didn’t understand a lot of what you said, but I get the point and I guess it makes sense. I just don’t know how fast these can fire once a crew gets trained and experienced using them, so I don’t know how fast they’ll go through the ammunition on hand.”

They’d reached the point of the technology that every other sentence required new words to be introduced so they could discuss possible advancement and tactics with them, which was one of the downsides to skipping over hundreds of years of gradual development with each step. The language that developed around them didn’t have time to follow suit.

“With the kinds of cannon we have now, they will probably max out at two rounds a minute. Anything more than that, and the tubes will begin to heat up to the point where the metal could heat to the point of failure. Once we switch to an all-steel design, the rate of fire could increase to three and maybe even four rounds a minute, but that would be on the absolute outside edge of how fast they can safely fire. Anything faster means they aren’t swabbing the guns out well enough, and a missed ember could set off the next gunpowder charge when it’s rammed in, which no one would be happy about.”

“I, of all people, should have probably thought that through, considering,” Hortensius said, pointing generally at himself. “They’re going to do a test with just the gunpowder charge first, but after that, I’m going to have them fire a test round as well. I know it isn’t needed to check the pressure tolerances, but up until now, everything’s been theoretical beyond seeing the small sample of gunpowder explode. I’d like to see what we’re actually dealing with.”

“Thank makes sense. Let’s see if the gun holds up to firing first though.”

Hortensius nodded and waved a signal to the men at the cannon. After pushing in one of the pre-measured bags of gunpowder, one of the men lit the long fuse stretching out of a small vent in the back of the cannon, and then ran as fast as possible, trying to catch up to the other men sprinting across the open field the cannon sat in. Ky had directed them to cut a very long fuse, that would take over a minute to burn through, but he didn’t begrudge them their caution. They’d all seen the wreckage of the destroyed gunpowder factory, and had a healthy respect for what it could do.

The men halted behind the carriage, stopping to peek out past it. Ky suppressed a smile as time ticked down, his enhanced vision allowing him to follow the progression of the fuse as it burned down. Hortensius, at least, had a basic idea of how long it would take, but he didn’t have an advanced computer in his head giving a countdown timer tied to a calculation of burn rate, fuse length, humidity, and dozens of other factors that determined exactly when the gunpowder would ignite.

Which is why he and everyone else but Ky jumped as the gunpowder exploded, spewing a long tongue of flame out of the muzzle. Hortensius had heard it before, but much more close up, and Ky could see the manufacturer squint his eyes hard, probably as a flashback of his much more personal experience with gunpowder played across his memory.

The horses attached to the carriage, on the other hand, had never heard a sound like that before. In time, they’d be able to train horses to not spook at the sound, but there hadn’t been time for that here. Hortensius had stuffed cloth into and over the horses’ ears, but that had only cut down the sound. The men holding the horses had been shocked and almost lost the horses as they tried to bolt, sending poor Hortensius sliding sideways in the carriage. Ky’s hand streaked out and grabbed the cart, holding it still until the men could get the horses under control.

“My god,” he said, staring at the cannon.

“It is impressive,” Ky said, letting go of the carriage and starting towards the cannon. “Let’s see how the cannon held up.”

Ky could hear the manufacturer’s aides chiding the horses to pull their boss over to the cannon, and tuned them out. They’d make it over eventually, but other than visually inspecting it for obvious cracks, they couldn’t really know how successful the test was, so his inspection was more of a formality than anything.

Ky circled the cannon, letting Sophus extrapolate the data as he looked over the cannon, examining it faster and more thoroughly than he could by himself. The long smooth surface, interrupted by raised ridges caused by bands added after the main tube of the cannon was completed, added additional reinforcement at points along the cannon’s structure.

“The structure is intact. No stress factors detected with minimal heat dissipation into the metal.”

“Heat will be a bigger problem when we switch to steel, since bronze has less thermal conductivity than steel.”

“Only by a small margin.”

“Sure, but when blasting away as fast as the crew can work the guns, that little bit will matter.”

“How does it look?” Hortensius called out to Ky as the carriage began to pull closer.

“It held up well. No fracturing, no warping at either the base or the muzzle, and no excess out-gassing through the vent. You did a good job.”

“Well, your instruction and Lucilla’s corrections did a good job. I merely assembled it.”

“That’s the important part though. So, you said you wanted to see what it will really do?”

“Yes. It’s why I picked this spot. That building over there was abandoned several years ago. Could we …”

“Put a giant hole in it? Yes, we can,” Ky said.

Letting Sophus work out the range and distance as he pulled the cannon into place with one hand, a job that had taken four men before. Looking down the length of the barrel, he adjusted the crank at the bottom, lowering the elevation until it locked onto Sophus’s projection.

“You make that look so easy. If we had you manning the guns, we could free up a lot of men,” Hortensius said.

“I’d like to think I had more important tasks, but if you think that’s where I belong …”

“Don’t be so literal. I know you have a better sense of humor than that.”

Maybe it was because of Lucilla’s influence or maybe it was just that he’d had time to adjust to the different way people acted here, but he was finding himself being less stiff and more relaxed. True, a lot of his interactions had been with soldiers, which had its own formality that was not that different between his time and this time, but that actually helped him feel more comfortable, accelerating the process of acclimation.

Ky went around the gun and swabbed it thoroughly, clearing out any embers before sliding in a charge of powder and tamping it down. Reaching into the ammo carriage, Ky palmed a cannonball and rolled it into the tube, using the ramrod to press it firmly in place as well.

“I think we’re good. You should move the carriage back a little further this time and keep a better hold on the horses. Train your spyglass on the building. I’ll stay here and operate the cannon, so you don’t have to wait as long.”

“Are you sure it’s safe?” Hortensius asked.

“Yes. The cannonball won’t be that much of a block and shouldn’t cause pressure to build up too much before the cannonball is ejected. If it didn’t blow before, it shouldn’t blow now. Besides, I’m going to be asking men to man this cannon, or ones like it, very soon. If it’s too dangerous for me, it’s too dangerous for them.”

“I guess,” Hortensius said, sounding unconvinced, but following his instructions.

“You should go too,” Ky said to his four Lictore, who remained with him as the carriage pulled away.

“We’ll stay with you, Consul. Like you said, it should be safe,” Sellic said, looking back at him defiantly.

“At least take a few steps back and to the left. When it fires, this whole thing is going to jump backward, and will crush anyone behind it.”

The four men looked at each other and then took several steps out of the way, eyeing the tube warily as Ky cut a length of fuse and stuck it into the vent. Looking around to make sure everyone was clear, Ky lit a wick from a touch attached to a pole they had placed nearby and carried it over to the cannon.

“Fire in the hole,” Ky said with a grin, before touching the wick and stepping back.

The cannon leaped back as flame shot from the muzzle, the cannonball cutting through the air, making a screaming sound that shouldn’t have been heard for hundreds of years.

The men held the horses better this time, and the carriage headed towards the abandoned building. Ky took a moment to look over the cannon again, happy to see it still held up. Eventually, one of these would fail and men would die, but that was an inevitability when gunpowder entered the picture.

Ky and his Lictore left the cannon and made their way over to the building, part of which had now collapsed.

“It went straight through this beam,” Hortensius said. “It’s splintered like a twig. And the one on the other side of the building.”

“You should see what it does to men if you get it to skip across the ground properly. It will tear dozens of men apart in the same way.”

“That’s brutal.”

“True, but so is gutting a man with a sword. War is brutal. The only thing different about this is its brutality is more efficient. Still, as tests go, I’d say this one was pretty effective.”

“I’d say.”

“We’ve seen what we need, your current mold and production work well. Get the production line started. You have directions on where to send the first batch, but the first four need to go to the docks. I’m also going to have some new designs sent over that I need taken care of. These shouldn’t be that far off from things you’re already made, so it shouldn’t be difficult. They’ll also include where I need these designs taken. We also need more cannonballs and as many gunpowder packs as possible.”

“We’ve already begun training new workers to start in the factory. We’ll get what you need delivered in time.”

“I know you will,” Ky said.