The Trumpets of Mars (Imperium #2) - Chapter 20

Although she wanted to ride with Ky’s wagon as she had on the trip back to the Caledonian capital, as leader of this surprisingly large contingent her place was in front of the column. Even though they weren’t headed directly for conflict, Caledonian tradition said the leader always rode at the head of the column, with only scouts and pickets allowed to ride before them. Considering there were almost a thousand Caledonians with her and only a handful of Romans, this was most definitely a Caledonian force and she needed to respect their traditions.

That would remain true even after they reached the fourth legion’s command group since, although the fourth was four times as large even at its currently reduced size, it would take them time to pull in all of its patrols and pull out of its long-held position. Lucilla didn’t want to wait for them, and planned on leaving as soon as she gave its legate commands, which meant it would only be her and her Caledonians continuing south.

As soon as they were underway, she sent one of the men back for Carus, who was riding with the rest of the lictore with Ky’s wagon. She’d considered waiting until they reached the fourth legion for this conversation, since it mostly would focus on the military outlook and she’d always been more concerned with politics, rather than the legions. Ultimately, she decided it wasn’t worth waiting. They wouldn’t arrive at the fourth legion until fairly late in the evening and the legate had been stationed up by the border for quite a while. Ky had stopped to speak with him several times and he was getting updates on the military situation, but she thought it might take more time getting him up to speed than she’d save by having his point of view added to the conversation.

“You sent for me?” Carus asked as he rode up to catch her, which wasn’t difficult considering the horses had to be kept at a pace equal to a thousand marching men.

“Yes. While I pray every night for Ky’s full recovery, it is late and we can’t afford to wait hopefully for him any longer. I know I’m not a military commander, or a soldier of any sort, and that if Ky doesn’t wake the battle will be left up to Velius’s directions, but since I was selected as Ky’s stand-in as Consul while he was unavailable, I want to do my best to fulfill that role. All of which is to say, I’d like you to bring me up to date on what you know about Ky’s plans for the Carthaginian army.”

“I see. You understand that I only handle information collection for the Consul, yes? I have been working with Ramirus setting up assets in the southern Roman areas trying to identify Carthaginian scouts and I have received reports of the interrogations of those scouts we’ve captured, but that is the extent of my work in the military area. Most of the information the Consul has given me instructions to collect focused on either domestic areas or building a network here in the north. What information has been given to me about the military situation I’ve duly passed on to the Consul, who hasn’t discussed them with me. The person you need to have this conversation with is Velius, who has been the most involved in designing our strategy towards the Carthaginian forces.”

“Although I didn’t know the specific areas he had you focusing on, I did know you weren’t directly involved in the military planning. I also know you are both clever and curious, a combination that leads you to be constantly paying attention to everything that happens around you. I also know, as one of Ky’s lictore, you are often present when he has these meetings and are one of the few people allowed in the room. If you haven’t gathered some idea of what he’s planning, then I may have overestimated your abilities.”

“I thinkthat was a compliment; and yes, I have worked out some of it on my own. I just wanted you to know that anything I do have to say, might be in error and is purely my own understanding.”

“Consider me warned. Don’t worry, Carus, I won’t be making any decisions based purely on this information and I do plan on having a similar conversation with Velius, but I have found it is better to go into a conversation already knowing a lot of what I’m about to hear, than going in blind and learning it for the first time.”

“A wise policy. In the simplest terms, my understanding is that the Consul was going to head south to meet the army further from the capitol. You’re aware of his ability to see things at a far distance, yes?”

“Yes.”

“He plans on using this to position the bulk of the army where the Carthaginians can’t see it, and use smaller parts of the army as bait to pull them into the trap. He hopes that, by doing this, he can pull the Carthaginians into a battle where their lines are compressed and ours are extended limiting their manpower advantage.”

“We have thousands of soldiers. Even seeing the Carthaginians so far away, how can we hide that many until the Carthaginians get close enough to close the trap?”

“I believe he planned to use the landscape to obscure the army, but as for where, I don’t know. I do know he had a location where he wanted the battle to take place picked out, based on the most likely path of advance of the Carthaginian armies, but I’m not sure where that is, specifically. I do know that Velius has been paying close attention to where we find the Carthaginian scouts and what information we can get out of them, to see if the Consul’s predictions on the path of advance were accurate.”

“If they come another way, do we have alternate places to fight that meet with his plan of concealing the legions?”

“I don’t know. I would think so considering how much the Consul looks forward to possibilities, but I have not heard alternate plans mentioned. I would warn again that I am often not in the room for these conversations as my duties both as lictore and hub of information for the Consul often lead me to being called away. They very well could have discussed these alternate plans and I just never heard them mentioned.”

“I understand. Do you know if he plans on using the Caledonian forces that chose not to integrate into the legions as part of the bait force?”

“I don’t. I assume you are concerned with how it will look to the Caledonians if all of the men used to lure the Carthaginians in were Caledonian.”

“Yes. I know enough about military strategy to know that for something like that to work, the bait force would have to make it convincing. They would have to fight and suffer losses to make the retreat seem real, otherwise the Carthaginians wouldn’t believe it. The Caledonians will notice if all of the sacrificial lambs were their warriors.”

“A valid question, and one I don’t know the answer to. You can speak with Velius about that, since he would know if the decision’s already been made. Normally, I’d say that is exactly the kind of point that should be brought up with the Consul.”

She nodded but didn’t reply. Since she’d been working with the Caledonians she’d made several observations she wished she could discuss with Ky, but hadn’t been able to. The longer he was unconscious, the more she realized that his absence felt almost like the absence of a limb. She knew what she wanted to do, but she was unable to actually do it without him there.

For the thousandth time since coming north, she wished he were here with her.

Fourth Legion Camps

The legion camps were a bustle of activity as she rode through the perimeter and into the camp itself. She had sent ahead one of her Roman guards as a messenger for the legate of the fourth legion, letting them know she was coming with a very large contingent of Caledonians.

Although they were all allies now, the fourth had been facing off against the northerners for longer than any other legion and it was just human nature that seeing a thousand warriors marching towards them would have sent the camp into disarray, regardless of any documents signed between the two people. She’d also had most of the Caledonians halt a mile from the Roman lines and set up camp, with orders for Llassar to have them ready to move in the morning, when both they and the fourth legion would start the march south to join the rest of the Roman forces.

As she rode through the camp itself, she saw multiple groups of legionnaires either putting on their armor or already armored, hustling towards the perimeter she had just ridden through. This was not part of a move to pack up the camp preparing to march south, however. Those that she saw preparing were not loading supplies or taking down the semi-permanent structures they had put in place over the last year that they’d been in this position.

Vibius, the fourth’s commander, was coming out of his tent to greet her as she rode up and dismounted. She’d never met the man, but he wore the more ornate armor and carried a legate’s helmet under his arm, making it easy to identify the man.

“My lady,” he said with a slight bow. “I am Vibius Sepurcius Ennodius, legate of the fourth legion. I received your messenger several hours ago with news of your arrival, but his warning that you would have a large number of Caledonians with you did not prepare me for the number that is being reported.”

“Then I applaud you on your ability to adjust to the unexpected. I know that the Consul rode through here with five times as many men not so long ago, also headed south towards the capital. I am a little at a loss for why your camp seems to be preparing for an invasion, instead of welcoming allies.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“I mean, your men are forming a line facing the Caledonians that rode with me. I will admit I have never served in the legions, so perhaps I have confused the sight of men donning armor and running sword in hand towards the Caledonians as something it’s not. Perhaps this is how your legion prepares to permanently leave its camps and march towards the Capital as ordered.”

Although she never raised her voice, the sarcasm was palpable and she could see the mixture of anger and frustration on Vibius’s face. Waving towards one of his commanders, he whispered something in the man’s ear, half pointing towards the direction that Lucilla had come from.

As soon as the man ran that direction, “No, you have not misread that, however, they won’t attack and I’ve sent my man to make sure they don’t cause any problems.”

“That’s not good enough legate. Your men must stand down. I don’t want anyone not currently assigned guard duty on that section of the camp perimeter armed. If all of those men have so much free time, they should ready themselves for the march. It’s a long way back to Devnum and this camp has set down enough roots that it will take time to extract yourselves.”

“You have my word, we will be ready to move as soon as you give the word in the morning. You have to understand, my lady, that we have been facing off against the Picts for a long time, and we’ve seen what those barbarians are capable of.”

“Those ‘barbarians’ are the Caledonii, legate, and they are our fellow citizens in the new Empire. The thousand men out there waiting to cross the border have put aside their differences and have agreed to follow me south to join the five-thousand of their men who’ve already joined our forces to fight against Carthaginians, even though their homes are not directly threatened like ours are. From where I sit, only one group has barbaric attitudes, and it’s not the Caledonii.”

“My lady …” Vibius said, a worried expression crossing his face.

She however wouldn’t let him, and plowed right over whatever he was going to say.

“I am, however, not someone who expects the impossible. I know you and the Caledonii have been fighting each other for a while and I know it will take time to accept them as the allies they now are. I am not one to hold a man’s beliefs against him, unless they directly threaten the safety of the Empire. You are not, however, a common legionnaire. You are a legate of one of the Emperor’s legions, entrusted with thousands of Britannic lives and the well-being of the Empire. That means that while I can understand you holding personal reservations about your new allies, I cannot abide you losing discipline among your troops or allowing them to threaten or otherwise aggravate internal tensions on the eve of what might be the most important battle in our long history. You need to get your house in order, and you need to do it now. Is that clear, legate?”

“Yes, my lady,” he said, not making eye contact.

“Good. I’m sure you will get this business straightened out as soon as we finish here. As for the move south, I want you in Devnum no later than two weeks from today. Every sign says that the Carthaginians will be marching before the ground thaws, so we must gather all of our forces now.”

“I haven’t received specific orders yet about …”

“You understand that I am the Consul’s hand-picked representative, correct?”

“Yes, but I thought with the Consul incapacitated …”

“Nothing has changed. He will be back up and around soon, and my appointment has not been ended by his being indisposed. If you feel this is incorrect, you can always go above my head and apply for a second opinion from the man I report to, while the Consul is unavailable. My father is a very understanding man and I’m sure will hear your concerns in the spirit they are offered.”

“No, no. There’s no need for that. I will of course follow your instructions.”

“Good. I will be bringing my men through here tomorrow to continue south. I don’t want a repeat of what happened today. Are we clear?”

“Yes, my lady.”

“Good. Move quickly, legate. We need you and your men with the rest of our forces. I am not exaggerating when I say the future existence of our people relies on it.”

Devnum

“Again,” the optio shouted as men in a wide variety of dress struggled with the unfamiliar equipment in their hands.

Velius sat on horseback behind the training civilians and wondered again what Ky could have possibly been thinking. He understood the basic political thinking, conscripting the civilian population to fight off invaders as a last-ditch bid for survival, but seeing these men train, he couldn’t help but doubt the practical value of the move.

While there’d been stories of brave stands of civilians against an organized military from Rome’s past, including tales of both Roman civilians fighting to the last and barbarians resisting Roman legions, those were all far outside of living memory, and he’d always doubted their veracity.

There were more recent accounts from still-living men of Roman cities being overwhelmed by Carthaginian forces as the Empire slowly lost territory, and those stories always involved the civilians crumbling under trained forces and the slaughter of everyone who attempted to resist them.

Untrained civilians just could not compete with real soldiers, either Greek-style phalanxes or the Roman legionnaires, who trained in close unit movement and tactics continually. It’s why even brave and highly skilled warriors who fought as individuals instead of collective units, like their new Caledonian allies, continually lost open field conflicts. Close unit combat required incredible discipline and training that couldn’t be matched by people fighting individually.

He knew that Ky wasn’t planning on putting these people on the field in personal combat, which made this plan somewhat different, but anyone on the field of battle could become overrun and forced to fight in close quarters.

He had to admit he was impressed with the Consul’s arcuballista design and how easy it had been for the civilians to pick up, and how it made up for a lot of problems with the design that the Romans had used before his arrival. While Ky’s version was recognizable as being related to the Roman design in that it looked like a bow turned on its side and laid against a wooden frame that the user would hold, that was where their resemblance ended.

The first difference someone looking at the two weapons would notice is the handle coming down from Ky’s version, which didn’t exist on the original Roman version. In the original design, the rounded butt of the weapon would press against the shoulder while the user gripped the center of the wooden shaft with his off-hand. With their dominant hand, they’d grip a metal hook that extended from the bottom, pulling back on it to release the catch that held the string in place, releasing the bolt at its target.

In Ky’s design, the shoulder butt had been slightly redesigned into a thin, curved rectangle that slightly wrapped along the shape of the shoulder, allowing more of the wood to connect, lessening the impact of the weapon as it recoiled back into the shoulder. While that made it more comfortable, that part of the change was almost inconsequential. The real change was the handle. Instead of a metal hook extended back, there was a piece of carved wood wrapped in leather bindings that fit the hand almost like the hilt of a sword. Extending from the main frame of the weapon was a small piece of metal that Ky had called the trigger.

Where the user had to grip the side of the weapon hard, so they could pull back the metal hook, here the handle gave the user leverage, allowing them to rest the weapon easily instead of using force to hold it in place. Not having a long metal hook coming out of the body of the weapon also allowed the off hand to go under the body of the weapon instead of along the side, which made the off hand more of a cradle. Instead of this awkward piece of wood that a user would jam and press firmly into their shoulder, this weapon felt almost natural, to the point where many of the civilians would look at the soldier demonstrating its use and easily copy the way they held the weapon, because it just felt right.

While it was easy to see the advantages in the stability of the weapon as you held and aimed it, someone who’d tried both versions, as Velius had, found the benefits went beyond just keeping the weapon in place. In the original version, one of the reasons pressure had to be applied back into the user's shoulder was to make the body a counterweight to the press upon the metal firing hook. No matter how much pressure the user applied, however, there was always up and down movement from the jerk of the metal piece, which was naturally tight to hold the bow in place. A trained user could adjust for that, knowing how their weapon would move when they fired and aim a little up or down to compensate, but left untrained users firing the bolt above their targets’ head or into the dirt.

Ky had added a series of levers off of a small piece of metal that protruded that allowed a lot less force to move the firing mechanism where a long, single metal lever had been used before. Looking at the design, even Velius, who wasn’t a scholar by any definition, could see how it worked and the benefits the multiple levers added, making him wonder why it had never been tried before.

Ky had explained it probably had occurred to the designers, since they understood the use of applied levers, but that a simpler design would have been chosen instead, because Roman smiths wouldn’t have been able to get the precision needed. Velius still didn’t really understand how standardized and exact units of measurement made smiths craft identical pieces, down to the smallest distance, but it had worked. From what Hortensius had told him, very few of the pieces coming out of the foundries had to be discarded for being imprecise.

There were other changes, like a stronger metal limb across the front, which allowed a tighter pull than the old way, which was a thin wooden board made of young wood that would be firm enough to bend properly. The new steel Ky introduced was significantly stronger than what they’d been using before, which meant it could also be pounded flatter than previously. The thinner metal could bend much further before it got close to breaking, allowing the limb to be shorter than the old Roman one and giving the string a much tighter draw, which put real punch behind the bolt. Previously, a Roman arcuballista could punch into a shield and might push through thinner armor, but could be deflected by chest pieces and stopped by shields. While the range was still shorter than that of a standard bow, the arcuballista would have a lot more punch. At close ranges, they could punch all the way through a wooden Roman shield and several inches through armor and into the target.

The downside of that tighter draw, however, was that the operator couldn’t just put their foot on the limb and pull up on the string by hand. Instead, each weapon had a little metal piece attached to the underside of the weapon when it was stored, that would hook around the bow and work as a level that the user could pull up on the string and lock it in place.

All of these advances combined together to make a much more effective weapon. While the range still might not be enough to make it better than volley fire from standard bows, which could fire further and faster, the new arcuballista had one major advantage that could make it a destabilizing force in current military strategy.

A good archer took years of intense training to be able to maintain accuracy and speed. Even men who came into service already possessing good skills with a bow would take a long time to become proficient in volley fire, which was very different than skills used for hunting and target shooting.

By contrast, the arcuballista could be picked up quickly by anyone, usually needed only a few days of training to be proficient enough to effectively participate in a battle. The shooter might not be able to hit a target or even get close to it, but when firing at a massed phalanx marching towards you, the only thing you needed to know how to do was not shooting into the dirt.

They could, theoretically, turn thousands of average citizens into a ranged auxiliary, freeing up better-trained soldiers for more direct action. Their only limiting factor now was being able to produce enough of the new weapons to arm everyone willing to fight. There were so many bottleneck points, from the assembly using the new methods the Consulhad introduced to the new foundries producing enough of the higher quality steel to the smiths working with the new metal for the first time.

It seemed nearly every step in the weapons development relied on some new process introduced only a few months before, which meant everyone was having to adjust.

Having watched multiple groups of militia going through training with the new weapons, Velius could see how they worked into Ky’s plans and how they could help even out the manpower disadvantage Rome was facing.

If they could get enough of the weapons produced.