The Sands of Saturn - Chapter 8

Outside Londinium

Ky made his morning stop at the tent holding Bomilcar. The general was recovering well. Ky had been checking with the healers every day after seeing the general and given specific instructions on his treatment. His injuries had been serious, but not life-threatening if treated appropriately, and the healers avoided causing an infection. While they were following some of the new standards he’d introduced to the physicians in Devnum, he hadn’t been able to introduce everything, and the healers were having problems believing all of the science he’d tried to explain to them.

Through a combination of alcohol and regularly sterilized bandages, he’d so far managed to avoid any major infections, letting the body more or less repair itself. Without modern medicine, the general would always have a limp, since there was only so much a splint could do to set broken bones, but living through this with a limp was better than not living through it at all.

“Good morning, general,” Ky said, entering the tent. “How are you feeling today?”

“Tired and in pain.”

“Pain simply means you aren’t dead yet,” Ky said, stopping to look the general over, letting Sophus run what diagnostics on the man he could using Ky’s enhanced senses.

While it could tell a lot, such as temperature, pulse, respiration, it was a far cry from a medical checkup. It was, however, better than anything available using contemporary techniques.

“You’re fever is gone. That’s a good sign.”

The general gave Ky a perplexed look as he did every time Ky did something that should have been impossible, like being able to tell the fever the man had been suffering while his body fought to repair itself had abated.

“Why do you continue to visit me every day? You haven’t even asked me any questions. Why bother to treat my wounds?”

Carthaginians tended to let any prisoners they took who couldn’t be used as slaves simply die, often of thirst and starvation, since they didn’t believe in wasting resources on a dead man.

“Because you are our guest. An unwilling one, true, but a guest all the same.”

“How are my men?”

“Doing well. As I promised, none have been sold into slavery or executed for following the orders of their leaders. Most of the non-critically injured have recovered enough to be moved into holding camps with the uninjured soldiers who surrendered, and are being treated fairly, with food, clean water, and tents to protect themselves from the elements. The ones still in the hands of the healers were the most injured, and I’m sad to say many will probably die of their injuries, but we are doing what we can to make them comfortable until that time comes.”

“I find it hard to believe you are treating prisoners as well as you keep saying.”

“When you are better and can walk, I will take you on a ride around the camps, so you can see it for yourself. Some of your men are being used in public works programs, repairing homes and farms damaged in the fighting and helping build up our infrastructure, but this is only temporary. When this conflict ends, we will return any of your people home. At least those who want to go back.”

“Do you really believe you can survive this war? Yes, you had a magnificent victory and you are a clever field commander, but my army was just a small fraction of the forces you’ll be facing. You can’t possibly believe you’ll win.”

“I can and do. Our victory in the field wasn’t a fluke and yours was the second army multiple times our size that we defeated. As time goes on, we will be able to defeat even greater odds. And I think things might not be as easy as your emperor believes it to be. As time goes on, and we continue to defy his attempts to conquer the world, others will see our example, and will rise up against him. Your empire has been built on a foundation of subjugation. It is a house of cards, hollow on the inside. There are more people living as slaves than there are actual citizens of the Carthaginian empire. The day the people understand they outnumber their overlords, is the day the empire crumbles. Do I think we can defeat the entire might of the Carthaginian empire? Maybe. But I don’t think we’ll have to. Once we’ve taken out enough of its supports, the empire will collapse under its own weight.”

“I see,” Bomilcar said, looking away.

Ky left quietly, knowing that was what the general did when he didn’t want to talk anymore. Ky was surprised he hadn’t considered it. Did all of the Carthaginian leaders think their empire was on solid ground, unbeatable and invincible? How could they not see the danger at the heart of their own empire and its inherent weakness? It’s one of the reasons Ky pushed for the ending of slavery in Rome. As the new Britannic Empire grew, it would be a rot that would have grown with it, setting his new people up to have the same vulnerabilities that the Carthaginians had.

***

Devnum

It was late in the day when Lucilla got back from the seventh legion’s camp. She’d spent the past two days working with Velius and the other legates to coordinate transportation and logistics for getting the legions across the channel to Ériu and sending messages to their counterparts on the island for getting the legions landed and ready to fight.

It was clear this was going to take longer than she could have anticipated when pushing the imperial senate to act in haste. Velius seemed to take it in stride which meant this was probably something common when moving large armies that the average person didn’t see. Although she’d been involved in the training of the Caledonians over the winter while they prepared for the Carthaginian invasion, she hadn’t been involved in the actual movement of troops, so she didn’t have the exposure to the logistics involved until now.

Thankfully, Velius and the other legates did have experience with it and seemed to think everything was going well, so she left the operations in their more experienced hands and returned to Devnum to the politics she did understand.

She was almost to her quarters in the rebuilt palace complex when one of her father’s guards, who maintained watch on the entire palace complex and not just her father unlike her and Ky’s guards, came towards her at a jog.

“Has something happened?” she asked, unable to keep the worried sound out of her voice.

It was hard not to have flashbacks to the insurrection, when her father’s guards had barely gotten her into the main section of the palace before the revolting legionaries showed up in force with instructions to kill her, her father, and any officials they could find.

“No, my lady. Your father asked that we relay a message from Hortensius. He came looking for you earlier in the day, and asked that you come see him when you returned from the legions.”

Lucilla gave a sigh. It wasn’t really that late in the day and the sun had another two hours before it finished its journey across the sky, but she’d been going non-stop for days trying to make sure everything was in place for the legion's journey to help the Ulaid, including several long discussions with Ky that lasted well into the night.

While it was helpful to be able to talk to both him and Sophus, she could only do so when she was alone. Sometimes, she could clear a room to get space to hold discussions, but people would notice if this happened too often, so usually that meant when she was back in her quarters at night, with her guard safely on the other side of the door and out of earshot. Ky might have had some special ability to go for days at a time without sleep, but she was merely human and couldn’t keep this pace up for long.

Still, her sleep would have to wait. Ky had entrusted her with the overseeing of the various inventions and she knew how critical they were to the war effort. Hortensius wasn’t one to call for someone just so he could show off his latest success. If he asked for her, especially if he left a message with her father’s guards for her to see him when she returned, then it was a safe bet that whatever he needed was urgent.

Making her way to the machinists' main factory, which also held a small room he used as his main office, her guards in tow. It spoke to the pace of work happening across the Empire that the factory was still going full tilt. She knew Hortensius was running shifts throughout the night but it was something else seeing it still full of laborers, producing an impressive amount of noise.

She was also happy to see some of the projects were civilian in nature, including the new heavier plows made from the stronger steel Ky had already directed, next to the military production. It was a sign of the security the people were starting to feel now that they’d effectively kicked the Carthaginians off the island.

“My lady, I’m glad you came,” Hortensius said, hurrying over from a huddle he’d been in with some of his foremen.

“It sounded urgent, so I thought it best I not keep you waiting.”

“I wouldn’t say it’s urgent, but I wanted to get your take on the new works we set up out of town for manufacturing this … gun powder the consul has described,” Hortensius said, pronouncing the alien words.

She noted that the words weren’t Latin and she had to admit it sounded strange to her ears as well.

“You moved the production out of town?”

“The consul made it clear it was dangerous, but I did a test with our first batch and I think if anything, he undersold how volatile this substance was. I took a small batch out of the factory to test it, since he’d been so insistent that it was dangerous and, it was amazing. I had a very small pile of the substance, although it was just the raw mixture; I hadn’t wet it down and made the cakes that he described later in his instructions. I still had the candle far away from the powder, several hands span in fact, and whoosh, it went up instantly. I never touched the powder. If just the dust in the air from it can go up like that, we can’t possibly have it near our other works or inside the city. It also means we can only work on it in the daylight with the windows of the building open for light. Any flame in the building is too much of a danger to our entire operation.”

“But you were able to make it?”

“Yes, although the consul was also right about how difficult the nitrates, as he called this new mineral, would be to procure. We’ve made an initial survey of the caves he marked out for us, and they are going to be very hard to get into, let alone mine. However, he did point out where we could find another source until the nitrate beds we’ve already started building become ready, and it is going to present a problem.”

“How so?”

“Because the men are hesitant to do it. Have you ever dredged the rotting straw and dirt under the floor of a stable? It’s foul, as bad as anything I’ve seen working in the sewers. We were able to follow the instructions on how to treat the materials we dug up and my test showed it worked, but I’m going to have to pay men more if we’re going dig up every stable in the empire.”

“Are there enough stables? Will you be able to get enough to meet production?”

“No. If we can get the caves mined, then maybe, but only the short-term goals the Consul gave us. He also included where we can find some near the outflow of the sewers, but I’m saving that for absolute last, since I’m not sure I will be able to pay men enough to do that kind of work. I’m still not sure we’ll get the amounts he mentioned we needed to reach after the nitrate beds start producing.”

“The nitrate beds will produce a significantly larger quantity of usable potassium nitrate than they achieved digging up the floor beds of stables. The staggered staging of additional beds should reach the goals, although we included additional production overhead to counter potential shortfalls in the final conversion process.”

“It should be enough,” Lucilla said. “Ky worked out the numbers and is confident if you stick to the schedule he gave you, we’ll be okay.”

As they talked she and her guards followed him through the winding streets of Devnum, out through the city walls towards the river.

“Is it safe to have out here? There are a lot of farms and most of the grain production using the new waterwheel designs are out here.”

“We put in a very large gap between the building and any of the other buildings, but we actually need the river to build the mills to grind the powder. We also need to keep it wetted down as we grind it, to reduce the dust, which means we need a large amount of water available, especially once production ramps up.”

“We need to make sure people keep their distance, just in case.”

“We’ve put up some signs, but if we start seeing people walking close through the area, I’ll put up more.”

“Okay,” she said as he led her into the mill, which had stopped work as the sun started going down.

It was well laid out and even with the men putting their supplies away and preparing to return to their homes, she could make out how the production flow would work. She had to hand it to Hortensius, he was one of the most organized men she’d ever seen.

She also couldn’t help but miss the smell of bodily expressions coming from one end of the large building where he must have been processing the material they’d dug up from the stables. She’d at first thought the strips of cloth the men in the factory were wearing across their face was meant to somehow protect from the gun powder dust, but once the old urine smell started assaulting her nose, she was almost certain it was to keep them from passing out from the fumes. Her eyes were already starting to water, forcing her to cover he mouth and nose as best she could.

“It’s pungent, I know. The worst parts of it we’re processing on the side of the building under a covering we erected, but that isn’t enough for the later stages, where we have to keep any rain from getting in and diluting the runoff before we can dry and separate the sludge. Once it gets to the sludge stage, we have to bring it inside so we can scrape off the nitrate layer.”

“How do you stand it?”

“After a few hours, you kind of adjust. Not enough to breathe the air without something in front of you, but some. Another reason we need a good amount of water, in fact. The rags the men have over their faces help, but they work even better if they’re wetted down, which means the men soak their face coverings every hour or so to keep them damp.”

“It’s awful.”

“The contamination of fecal matter aggravates the process. The smell should dissipate once the process shifts to using product from the nitrate beds instead of product dug up through the stables.”

Lucilla doubted it would help that much, since the urine smell was the thing she could pick out the most. The acrid stench felt like it was burning the insides of her nose.

“Make sure you don’t store the finished powder here,” she said, gesturing at several barrels in one corner that she assumed held the finished product.

“We move the finished barrels to a warehouse in town. I know that defeats the point of moving the works out here, but we’re building a warehouse even further out, away from anything that could be affected if it should go off, to store it in. We should be able to start moving product there next week.”

“You’re going to move all the gunpowder there?”

“Yes,” he said, hesitant, hearing the tone in her voice that suggested it might not have been a good idea.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but if one of those barrels goes up, it will be enough to set off any other barrels stored in the same place, right?”

“Probably. That’s why we’re moving it so far out.”

“Which is a good precaution, but if we run into a problem and that does happen, our entire gunpowder supply will be gone in an instant. You’re already saying you don’t think we’ll hit the targets as it is, but we’ll definitely have trouble hitting them if we lose all of the gunpowder we have on hand at one time.”

“That’s a good point. I’ll work out where to move everything so we never have that much in one place.”

“While not putting other factories or citizens in danger, in case it goes up. There are a lot of wood buildings in town, enough that fire is a serious danger. Remember the damage caused when rebels burned down the warehouse holding arcuballista?”

“I know. It will be complicated, storing it that far out, especially since I have to put a guard anywhere I store it. If you think the insurrectionists caused damage setting fire to a warehouse, imagine what they could do with a barrel of this.”

“That’s very true. I know this will be challenging, but I have faith you’ll be able to get it done. How soon until we can test fire the cannon?”

Cannon was another word she’d never heard until recently. Ky might be purposefully reshaping Roman technology and society, but he was also inadvertently reshaping their language along with it. Already she and Hortensius were using these words regularly, to the point that it was starting to not even feel strange to say them. Once these items got into wide use, especially military items, the words would quickly become part of everyday use.

“Not for some time, I fear. It’s not that different than a bell, which we’ve made on small scales for animals and ceremonies, but the shape means increasing the size causes significant issues. More importantly, small cracks in a bell doesn’t mean the bell can explode, killing everyone around them when it does. The pressures the Consul describes means any flaw can cause a massive failure. We built the mold, but our first test had so many pits and imperfections we had just melted it back down as worthless.”

“Do you need any assistance?”

“I almost certainly will, but I haven’t finished working out how to implement the notes we already have. I think I know where some of the problems are, and I have some ideas of how to work them out, but knowing how these things go, I will almost certainly not solve everything and will need help getting back in the right direction.”

“I’m available if you need to ask me questions,” she said, giving him a look.

She knew he understood that she meant either to pass messages along to Ky and give him the answer or, if they could find a private place to talk, holding a conversation directly, with her acting as a translator of sorts.

“I will, of course, let you know. If you would, please convey what you’ve seen of our works to the consul and let me know if he has any input on the situation. I know you’ve had a long day and you want to go get some sleep, so I appreciate you taking the time to take a look at the new shop layout, and especially your advice on how to store the powder. I can’t believe the mistake I almost made of putting it all in one building.”

“You have a lot to pay attention to Hortensius, and you are doing an amazing job, especially considering the sheer volume of new ideas you’re being expected to absorb.”

“Thank you, my lady,” he said with a bow.