Chapter 10

Outside Londinium

“Consul,” the guard said, in a loud whisper from outside the slightly opened tent flap.

Ky had told them they didn’t need to do that, but this early in the morning, it was probably hard for them to conform. Most of the men they would guard would be asleep at this time, and even the calmest of commanders could be difficult to deal with when waking them up from a deep sleep.

Ky’s guards knew he didn’t normally sleep, not in the conventional sense, but they still acted like they were bothering him. He was sitting in the center of the tent, allowing most of his body to shut down into a near sleep-like state while he discussed the problems Lucilla had come across in the design of canons with Sophus. He was putting it off, but he was going to have to make a trip to Devnum soon, if only to quiet the AI and its increasing agitation over not being able to see the problems with the forging itself.

Ky opened his eyes and gave the guard a wave that he could let whoever was outside in, as the rest of his body began waking up.

“I’m sorry for waking you, Consul,” Ramirus said, ducking through the flaps.

“I wasn’t asleep,” Ky said, certain that Ramirus knew as much of his sleeping habits as his guards.

“I just received the latest package from my contacts inside the city from Marius, the ship captain, and it has some information I thought you’d want to see.”

“Has he had any more information about the men he’s taken inside the city?”

Ky had been watching the docks as much as he could, accounting for the need to check the walls for unusual movement and occasionally charging the drone, but a camera feed from above didn’t tell him everything he needed to know.

“They’ve started putting men in a second warehouse. He said they haven’t been noticed by the guards, who’ve had their own problems to worry about. Everything is on track.”

“I see,” Ky said, not buying how calm Ramirus was about the dangerous position they’d put those men in. “What news did he bring?”

Ky had always been more of a soldier, used to facing his enemies head-on, so maybe he was just less accustomed to these kinds of covert actions, the unknown being more comfortable for him.

“One of my people in the governor’s residence got a look at the last messages he received from their base in Hibernia. It included an update of reinforcement coming from Carthage.”

“Are they going to be here early enough to upset our plans?”

“No. The message was to inform the governor of a delay in the reinforcements and instructing him to take whatever precautions he needed to take in order to hold the walls until they got there.”

“I’m sure he took that well.”

“Probably. He’s temperamental, so it’s not hard to imagine his reaction to being told to do the impossible.”

“That’s good news though,” Ky said.

For Ramirus to show up this early, Ky had been expecting bad news, not a notification that they had more time to take the city than he’d originally planned.

“The delay is good news, but the reason for it isn’t. It seems the emperor has decided we are a problem after all. Instead of shipping in border soldiers from the continent, most of whom would be conscripts, based on the numbers of captured soldiers from the last two armies that have asked for amnesty, they’ve pulled several of their veteran phalanxes from Persia and are bringing them west. We’re not going to be facing men who will panic when they get surrounded. These are the men who crushed the Parthians and tracked down most of the Berber tribes that had gone deep into the desert. They’re going to be backed up by line troops out of Africa and Sardinia. At least a hundred thousand of them, according to the message my source saw. They’re planning on sailing them right into the city, but from the way it was written, if my source’s description is accurate, they’re prepared for a land invasion, if it comes to it.”

Ky frowned. Part of what had allowed him to win the last several engagements was a reliance on the inflexibility of the Carthaginian phalanxes. While that was true of the fighting form as a whole, Ramirus’s intelligence reports had painted a different picture of the units fighting out in Persia. They’d had to adapt their tactics to deal with the eastern horse archers, and they’d done it successfully.

Bomilcar was a good general, but he’d been handed substandard tools to work with. The ambush Ky had set up for them had been a difficult situation to overcome, but the lines holding the Carthaginian army in had been thin, out of necessity. Where Bomilcar’s soldiers broke once the general and his command group went down, a veteran army would have pushed on. Had they kept at it, there was every chance they would have broken through his lines, which would have led to a very different outcome.

Against a veteran army, it would come down to simple numbers, and even if they added the Ulaid into their ranks and got men transferred back in time, which was doubtful considering what they were probably facing in Ireland, the Britannians would still be mightily outnumbered. It also meant they couldn’t allow Londinium to still be in Carthaginian hands when they arrived. A large, veteran army with a solid base of supply from which to operate, would be impossible to defeat.

Eventually, they’d have to face that kind of army, but Ky was putting that off until he managed to get enough firearms into Britannian hands to properly counter the numerical disadvantage.

“Alright,” Ky said. “At least we know what’s coming.”

“I heard a rumor that you’ve been working on a design for a new ship. Is there any chance those can be finished and ready by the time the Carthaginian fleet gets here?”

Ky suppressed a frown. He trusted Ramirus completely, but he hadn’t discussed the ships with anyone yet. The only way Ramirus could know what Ky was working on was if one of Ky’s lictore had told him, and that was a problem. Ky had become lax around his guards, although he was pretty sure he hadn’t let them overhear his discussions with Lucilla about Sophus. There were some things even his closest allies weren’t ready to hear about, yet. If he couldn’t trust his guards, he’d have to be more careful about keeping things close to his chest, or at least being away from anyone who might be able to see what he was working on.

“I saw the edge of a scroll the last time we met,” Ramirus said, clearly reading Ky’s face. “I just saw a few words, but it mentioned ship designs. Considering what you’ve got Hortensius working on now, it isn’t a hard leap.”

“I see,” Ky said, at least happy to hear his men hadn’t talked behind his back. “No. I won’t have the new plans for Hortensius for another month at least, and we need to find people with the practical skills to work on the project with him. Hortensius is a smart man, and he has a lot of experience with all kinds of manufacturing, but building a ship is completely different from running a foundry. We’ll also have to find crews capable of handling the new ships. Neither Romans nor Caledonians have much experience sailing beyond simple fishermen or merchants who make the short hop to the continent. Nearly all of our trade further out is done by foreign ships with crews from somewhere else, so we don’t have a lot of experience to draw on. So no, we won’t be able to meet their fleet with one of our own. One day maybe ... but not in this timeline.”

“Then we’re in trouble.”

“Maybe,” Ky said, thinking. “Maybe.”

Londinium Docks

Carus made his way towards the docks through the throng of people trying to buy what food they could before curfew. The men were now spread across three warehouses, and it was becoming a problem. A guard had been poking around the third warehouse, looking in through the windows, and had seen his men inside. Luckily Carus had been on hand and made sure no one would ever find that guard again, at least not before the city fell, but this was just the beginning.

Men, mostly guardsmen, were starting to disappear on boats that went out fishing and never returned, probably making their way to Hibernia or the continent. They could see the writing on the wall and had the money to buy, or the ability to threaten their way to, a secret passage out before the city fell. The governor had decreed that all loyal subjects should stay and help defend the city, but loyalty was in short supply in a city under threat.

A lot of these men had decided that, if they were going to be forced to flee, they were going to take enough with them to set themselves up when they got wherever they were headed. The city guard wasn’t a position that tended to pay well beyond the obvious benefits of having a little bit of power in a society where those at the bottom had none, making it an easy decision to use that power to take what they needed.

Crime in the city, and theft specifically, was at an all-time high, which was why there was a curfew in place. The problem was big enough that Carus, who went out of his way to never talk to anyone, had heard about it.

In general, he didn’t care that much about the problem, since most of the Romans had been pushed out of the city years ago to make room for Carthaginian transplants, but it was becoming a problem for his mission. All of the homes owned by people without connections to someone able to do something to stop it had been ransacked, which left businesses the next target of opportunity.

Warehouses were starting to be emptied by guards whenever they got a chance, which is how the unfortunate guard ended up stumbling into a warehouse of armed soldiers. He’d been looking for something to steal and got significantly more than he bargained for.

They’d been lucky so far, but their luck wasn’t going to hold out, and it would take just one guard getting away, or a few more disappearing, before they’d be discovered. Which is why he was out looking for Marius. Ky had the men watching as well as they could, but only he and one optio spoke Phoenician, and the optio would never pass for a local. There were few enough Romans in town that if forced to speak to a local, they’d instantly draw attention to themselves. Since the men were spread over three warehouses, there was no way Carus could keep watch on all of them even if he tried.

Carus was hoping that Marius would have one or two men who could keep watch and alert them if anyone was snooping. The original plan had been for all of the Romans, including Carus, to stay out of sight and only move about in the dark if they had to, but the curfew messed up that plan which is why Carus found himself at the docks in broad daylight trying his hardest to not attract any attention to himself.

Walking with his head down to try and avoid drawing anyone’s attention is how he almost ran into Caesius.

“Watch where you’re going, idiot,” the would-be emperor said, pushing hard against Carus’s shoulder.

Carus looked up in surprise, making direct eye contact with him. Carus had met him multiple times in his position as one of the Consul’s guards, and once before that during a review of the troops. Thankfully, Caesius rarely paid attention to people he thought were beneath him and he seemed to take Carus’s look of surprise as a result of being pushed, and not recognized.

The moment passed and Caesius walked on, towards one of the larger boats moored at the docks, paying no more attention to the altercation. Carus’s hand drifted to a hidden knife under his tunic, his first thought to get rid of the traitor once and for all. It hadn’t gone unnoticed that Caesius had no guards with him, making the man vulnerable. The moment passed and Carus pulled his hand back. There might not be any guards with him, but there would be enough witnesses that the killing wouldn’t go unnoticed and would draw undue attention to their operation.

Carus watched the man board the boat with barely a nod to the fidgety-looking captain and disappear below decks before putting the episode behind him and focusing on his original goal.

Marius was at his ship, as expected, doing some kind of repair before his nightly run, and was rightfully surprised to see Carus in daylight.

“Has something happened?” the captain asked.

“Yes. A guard stumbled across one of the warehouses. We were able to take care of him, but only because I was outside the building when it happened. We probably won’t be that lucky next time. We need to figure something out before it happens again.”

“Ohh,” he said.

It wasn’t the reaction Carus hoped for, but one he expected. The captain knew his job, but this was well outside of his experience. He was doing this for money and a chance to survive when the city fell. It had been a decent plan, but the warehouses had always been the weak point in the plan, and he didn’t seem to have an idea of what to do next.

“We need to get the men consolidated in one warehouse.”

“There’s too many to put in one warehouse,” the man said, unhelpfully.

“Yes, I know that, but it still needs to be done. Think. Is there some way we can get the men out of these various warehouses, hopefully before this whole plan falls apart completely?”

“Well,” the captain said after looking off towards the water, thinking. “They brought in a lot of refugees before the city gates closed for good. Mostly Romans whose families worked with the Carthaginians and didn’t think your people would treat them kindly when they liberated the ground. They’ve been held in the western part of the city, but two days ago the governor started registering them so they can be put to work doing public projects or repairing the walls. Notably, he isn’t housing or feeding them, so if they’re not on a work detail no one pays much attention to them, as long as they show up for work.”

“How does this help us? We need to keep the men together for when the time to assault the walls comes. Having them spread out across the city helping build the defenses will make it impossible to pull off the assault, and it still doesn’t help us with the men still inside the warehouse being discovered.”