Chapter 11

Northern Italy / Devnum

Ky sat at the wooden table in his headquarters tent, catching up on what he missed during his trip to the Seventh Legion. Dexippus, one of Bomilcar’s tribunes, whom the general left behind when the rest of his legion continued south, was a competent man and had a good handle on what needed to be done. But with his cohort split into individual centuries and spread across villages throughout the region, there was a lot for one man to do.

Or at least, that was what he was ostensibly doing. In reality, he was waiting for Sophus to notify him that Lucilla was available to talk. Because of time changes and time being based on the sun and not something standardized, when Lucilla finished for the day could be unpredictable, although she usually wasn’t this late. He was about to ask Sophus for more details on what she was doing, something they’d decided neither would do, for privacy’s sake, when the AI finally signaled him that she was available to talk.

“Everything alright?” he said into the comms.

“Yes,” she said, her voice soft and worn. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you worry. I know it’s probably late there.”

As with all things, Lucilla had adapted to the time difference aspect of long-distance instant communication just as she had to the other knowledge he’d shared with her.

“It is, but I had things to do. Being away all day let things build up.”

“How was your trip?” she asked.

“No. You first. You sound tired, and you didn’t answer my question, not really. Is everything alright?”

“Yes, I promise it is. I just had a meeting with the senators, and it didn’t go as well as I had hoped.”

“Is there anything I can...”

“No,” she said, cutting him off. “For one, you have too much to focus on there; for the other, what exactly would you do from that far away?”

“I could listen while you tell me how horrible they all are,” Ky offered.

“I appreciate that,” she said. “However, as grueling as meetings with the senators are, I am not likely to lose my life doing it. Not if Modius has anything to say about it. I’m more concerned with what’s happening there. So I ask again, how did your conversation with Bomilcar go?”

“Not as well as I’d hoped,” Ky admitted with a sigh. “After talking with the general, it’s clear my goal to push through Italy quickly and be in Carthage by the beginning of summer is not going to happen.”

“Is it the unrest?”

“Yes. I had to pull several cohorts from Bomilcar’s legion to shore up our lines of communication and supply. The attacks have been relentless—bridges sabotaged, convoys raided. Aside from the telegraph lines being cut, we’ve already lost two shipments of gunpowder and food. Aelius has started sending centuries with the shipments until they can be handed off to Marcus’s men, but it’s slowing everything down. At the rate it’s going, by the time we finish with Italy, we’re not going to be combat effective anymore.”

He paused and leaned back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling of the tent.

“Assuming we do manage to fix the supply problem, I’m worried that even once we fight through Italy, I may be left with only one full legion to invade Africa. Against a single Carthaginian army, we could prevail. But once we’re on their soil, they’re going to turn their eastern forces in Persia back to the west. They can’t afford to let us take the capital. One legion simply can’t fight attacks from both sides, no matter how advanced our weapons.”

“You think we need another year to build up men, then?” Lucilla asked, her tone even, not betraying what she was thinking.

She’d put on her Empress voice. He loved her and loved how strong she could be, but he didn’t love when she did this. Detaching herself from the conversation to work the problem, observe it from a distance. It was a good skill to have, ensuring decisions were reasoned and not emotional, but he wanted to vent to his wife, not strategize with his Empress.

But so went the life of a couple whose main responsibility was ensuring the survival of their people, Ky thought, making a face at the empty tent wall.

“Yes. Maybe. I think Bomilcar might be right. Even if we manage to push through Italy with the legions we have, we just won’t have the strength to take Carthage itself this year. It could be another year at least before we’re in a position to truly threaten them.”

“No,” Lucilla said firmly. “There has to be another way. We cannot drag this war on any longer than necessary. The people are weary; resources are stretched thin. Even if we take another year, I’m not convinced we’ll suddenly find an influx of new recruits that we haven’t tapped into this year. We must find a solution.”

“I’ve wracked my brain trying to find one, but I just can’t see another viable path forward right now. All we’d really need to hold Italy is enough men so the legions can keep pushing. They don’t even need to be proper legionnaires. But we just don’t have them.”

“That’s exactly the issue I was discussing with the senators today,” Lucilla said.

“How did it go?”

“Not well, I’m afraid. I asked them to provide more recruits, even just warriors who didn’t need or want to go through the training, as you said, but they refused. They feel they’ve given enough and they need men for their industries and internal matters. I think the real issue, though, is that with Carthage off our islands and most of the continent, they don’t feel the immediate threat anymore to show them how important this is. It’s become something that is over there, far away. Something that can be ignored. They’ve allowed themselves to relax.”

“Can’t they see we’re still under threat?” Ky demanded, a little more harshly than he intended. “We may have control of the continent and have pushed them back, but they still have a lot of territory and large manpower reserves they can pull in, especially with their willingness to empty villages to fill their ranks. If we take the pressure off now, they’ll be back. It’s why I didn’t want to put off attacking Africa this year.”

“I know, and I told them as much, but they believe their people are tiring of the war, and just want to go back to their lives, and if they force the issue, it will cause unrest in their own lands. They act like we’ve already won. I sent messages to Talogren and Conchobar to plead with them directly, but I have no doubt they’ll be getting similar arguments to the ones I received from their own people.”

“And if they refuse?”

“Then I shall find another way. Recruits or not, I will not let this drag on any longer than necessary. One way or another, I will find you the men you need, my love.”

“I hope you can,” Ky said, his tone bleak. “I really do.”

Factorium

Hortensius leaned over the maps and diagrams arrayed before him, tracing his finger along the snaking line that made up the proposed route of the new railway as he listened to his engineers’ reports on the project.

“We’re behind schedule,” he said. “I know it’s still early, but at this rate, it will be fall before we finally complete the line, which means it will offer no help at all to providing supplies to the legions. We need to move things faster.”

Aemilius, his chief engineer, frowned and said, “Yes, we’ve encountered more changes in elevation than expected. The Consul’s notes you gave us did warn about drastic grade changes slowing the trains, but dealing with it firsthand has proven even more difficult.”

“But the line is so straight,” Hortensius pointed out.

“We were attempting to maintain the most direct route possible to facilitate speed and efficiency,” one of the other engineers said.

“I know the goal was to keep even gradual changes in direction to a minimum, but I’m concerned that what you save in efficiency there, you’re going to more than lose with the momentum lost as it climbs these hills. For instance, this,” Hortensius said, tapping a section of the line with markings for terrain elevation in circles around it. “This is far too extreme. I know it probably didn’t seem so when looking at it with the naked eye, but, unless your surveys produced inaccurate numbers, the engine will have to bleed off a lot of speed to get up this slope. Yes, you’ll pick up some on the downside, but then you have another climb right after it.”

“But...”

“No buts,” Hortensius said. “Like I said, I understand what you’re trying to do, but the goal is to maintain the overall efficiency of the moving train. Otherwise, the boiler has to work harder, you have to stock more coal, which means the train increases in weight and becomes even more inefficient. You need to step away from the immediate issue and keep the line as a whole in mind.”

“I thought, perhaps, we could build a separate set of tracks here,” Aemilius said, pointing at the area of hills he was discussing. “Just to test and see what the real drop-off is. Yes, we can determine some using the formulas the Consul provided to us, but wouldn’t it be better to test it independently and know which route is better?”

“Perhaps, but this is not the last elevation we’ll hit, and I don’t want to have to build test tracks along the entire route. It will be late fall or even winter before we finish this one line if we do that. We need this line complete by summer, to help lessen the time it takes to get supplies to the continent. I won’t accept slowdowns. No. You need to go back and resurvey with the goal that, if the grade must change, do so gradually, no more than, say, one percent incline per one hundred paces. And do not hesitate to curve the tracks if needed. Speed can be regained; a derailed train and lost cargo helps no one.”

“Yes, Hortensius,” Aemilius said, looking unhappy at the prospect.

“There’s another issue, Sir,” said Vires, one of the junior engineers. “For the tracks we’ve already laid, we’ve had locals wandering out onto them. Between livestock on the tracks, which has caused several accidents already, when the supply train comes to bring materials further down the line, and locals tearing up parts of the track to take the metal and wood, we’ve had to replace several sections multiple times.”

Hortensius rubbed his chin, frowning. “That is a problem. Livestock I can understand, but deliberately sabotaging the tracks? Has anyone explained the importance of the tracks, why they should leave them where they are and the benefit the train will bring to communities in their area?”

“We have tried,” Vires said. “Most don’t believe it or really understand what the purpose is. They’ve seen the engines, of course, but to them, they’re just loud, smoky things that scare the game in the area and upset the livestock. The line is going through unclaimed land, for the most part, so they believe it is public property. We’ve also explained that it’s owned by the Empire and they shouldn’t damage it, but they don’t seem to care. They won’t even really admit that they did any of it. All of their answers are hidden in ‘if someone was to’ and ‘it’s possible that,’ instead of just saying they took it. We’ve asked the praetorians to help by patrolling more, but they can’t be everywhere. The locals come right back out as soon as the soldiers leave. We’ve considered just fencing off the track areas, but we wanted to ask you about it first.”

“No. No. No fencing,” Hortensius said. “We need the people to embrace this technology, not see it as something being forced upon them. I think we just need to do a better job convincing them it’s worth keeping.”

“We can go back and try to talk to them again,” Aemilius said. “Try and convince them.”

“No, I’ll go. You need to stay focused on the job at hand. We have a lot of rail to finish. The Empress wants us to start the line to Caledonia before the end of summer and start looking for places where we might be able to build one for the Ulaid. On that note, I know some of you need to get back to the building sites and you’ll want to take the last supply train down, which is leaving soon. Let’s call this a day. I’ll let you know what happens when I talk to the village elders.”

The men collected their maps and gave slight bows before showing themselves out as Hortensius dropped into a chair, smacking hard against its curved backrest. Not one of the Consul’s flashier adaptations, but one Hortensius liked, especially after spending hours working on whatever the latest project was.