Chapter 24

Devnum

Medb sat in the Empress’s richly appointed office, her feet up on the Empress’s ornately carved desk, and looked out the large window with its views of the city, instead of at the stack of papers on the desk.

Since Lucilla’s departure and her installment as the temporary administrator of the Empire, she has finally had a taste of what it is like to rule again. She was enjoying some of the benefits that come with sitting on the throne, especially the deference she was paid now that she was making decisions again. It’s what she’d been working toward ever since her kingdom fell and she’d been shipped off to this place.

Now that she had it, though, she found the experience gave her mixed feelings. On the plus side, Rome knew how to treat their nobility. She knew her kingdom wasn’t on this level, especially after arriving and seeing her accommodations here, from the art to the amenities, as more or less a prisoner, were actually better than they had been in her own kingdom where she was a queen. They were even better now, as she sat in Lucilla’s place. Everything was of the highest quality, comfortable and luxurious. She doubted she’d ever get her kingdom back, but if she did, it would almost certainly be a step down from this.

If that was all there was, she would have thoroughly enjoyed her time as the Empress’s stand-in. Unfortunately, she also had the Empress’s workload, which was leaps and bounds above anything she’d ever had to deal with as queen in her own right, even at the height of the war. For one, the Romans had more bureaucracy than she’d ever experienced. While it made sense, considering how much more expansive their holdings and interests were, it was also incredibly difficult to keep on top of everything. Even with a large bureaucracy to handle the day-to-day aspects, just keeping abreast of it all took from sunup to sundown.

Paperwork wasn’t a thing in her kingdom, mostly because they’d never heard of paper. All of their writing was either on very expensive parchment or carved wood and dried tablets, none of which were cheap enough or convenient enough for storing anything but the most important information. Several times she’d actually considered that to be a good thing, since the Romans seemed to generate paper by the cartload and she had adjusted to its use extremely well. Every day, stacks of it with reports and information from across the Empire made their way into her office, threatening to drown her.

She could see its usefulness, as she knew more of what was happening not just in Britannia, but across the continent, than she’d known about just her small kingdom. It was also tedious and mind-numbing. If this is what it meant to be the Empress, she wasn’t sure she wanted the position. Better to leave it to someone else and find a way to get the benefits without all the work.

Her thoughts were interrupted when a legionnaire knocked on her door. When she’d first taken over, they’d had a bad habit of following their knock by just opening the door and letting whoever was there in. She’d quickly broken them of that habit.

“Enter,” she commanded, pulling her feet off the desk and sitting upright.

The door opened and the old inventor, Hortensius, shuffled in, looking disheveled as always.

“Hortensius, finally,” she said dryly, setting down the papers she’d very much not been reading.

“My apologies for the delay, My Lady. I was in Caledonia when I received your summons.”

“Well, it’s a good thing we have your trains now to allow you to travel so freely.”

“Uhh, absolutely,” Hortensius said, frowning a little.

“Well, one of the reasons I asked you here was to congratulate you on finishing the line to Londinium. I understand it was quite a lot of work.”

“Thank you, My Lady,” Hortensius said, taking a seat, not noticing Medb’s darkening expression as he did so uninstructed. “While it wasn’t easy, most of that was centered around learning and adjusting our processes. While the line between Factorium and here was beneficial as a first step, there were still many unexpected challenges as we progressed to laying a much longer stretch of track. The men did excellent work, however, and the line between Devnum and Londinium, with a stop in Factorium, is running every day now.”

“I see,” Medb said flatly. “And speaking of significant undertakings, I trust you’ve made progress on the new line to Caledonia?”

“Ah, yes, the Caledonia line. As you might expect, we’ve encountered ... difficulties.”

“Difficulties?”

“Yes. One of the reasons we started with the line to Londinium was that it was possible to lay a line that was more or less flat, with only rolling hills to deal with. The north, however, is a much different prospect. The terrain is much rockier with many rapid changes in elevation. Using gunpowder to help blast tunnels is much faster than just digging by hand, as we would have had to do previously, but it is still a very slow process. Especially using the safety precautions and construction methods for the tunnels the Consul instructed us to use. We also have to grade almost every inch of track, even when running next to hills and mountains and not tunneling through them. It makes every inch of line take a large amount of time to complete.”

“So, how do you propose to deal with these ... difficulties?”

“It’s not one problem, My Lady, but a series of them. Many we anticipated and are already working on options, but it will take time.”

“I see. How much time?”

“I’m afraid I can’t say for certain, My Lady.”

“Well. Figure it out. I also know that you regularly updated the Empress on your progress when she sat on this side of the desk. I want the same kind of cooperation and expect you to keep me apprised of your progress.”

Hortensius opened his mouth to reply as she said, “I appreciate you coming. You are dismissed.”

Picking up a page, Medb returned to reading where she’d left off, ignoring the inventor as he stood looking at her for a moment before turning and leaving as he’d come.

Mediterranean, Off the Coast of North Africa Admiral Valdar stood on the quarterdeck of the Bellona, the Middle Sea stretched out before him, dotted with the sails of his fleet. He always enjoyed watching his fleet at work, the large forms of the caravels dwarfing the smaller nearby galleys.

They had done good work, sinking every Carthaginian fleet they’d come in contact with, which was becoming more and more infrequent as they cleared the Middle Sea of the enemy entirely. While it felt good, having the accomplishment, it had not been an easy transition, as their role had shifted from a combat force to one of patrolling the sea, on the hunt for Carthaginians. It was a very different task, and one for which he felt ill-prepared.

Or rather, ill-equipped. Peacekeeping on even a smaller sea like this required a lot more boats than sailing from one fight to another. He once again wished he had more caravels and schooners. The converted galleys were helpful, and the port of Kalb was now able to refit captured galleys with the new sails, but they couldn’t operate independently, since they had neither the guns nor the men to spare for a galley which wasn’t able to stand up to grouped enemy galleys.

Still, his job had been accomplished, and he had more or less locked down the Middle Sea. While they had not yet blockaded Carthage, mostly for want of ships, they had severed all sea lanes to and from it.

He watched as his ships surrounded a group of vessels sailing for Sicilia, inspecting them for any cargo meant for the Carthaginian forces. They were still allowing basic merchant traffic, transporting food and goods, but any ship carrying military supplies or confirmed to be bound for enemy forces was captured and its crew sent off to a prison camp.

He could see the sailors swarming over the deck, checking the cargo and questioning the crew. It surprised him, with all of the supplies they’d taken, that the Carthaginians would still try to ship supplies this way, but they were becoming more and more desperate, and taking more and more risks.

“Excuse me, Admiral,” one of his officers said, coming up behind him. “We’ve just intercepted a ship carrying materials bound for Sicilia.”

Not the first and certainly not the last one they would intercept.

“Good work. Another loss for the Carthaginians.”

Instead of acknowledging the statement and moving on, the man hesitated, torn between walking away and saying something else.

“A problem?” Valdar asked.

“Yes, Admiral. Aside from the more standard supplies, including gunpowder, we found something ... unusual. Weapons we didn’t expect.

“What do you mean, ‘weapons you didn’t expect?”

“They look like the cannons we’ve been using, sir, only ... less so.”

“Damaged? Did they manage to take some of our cannon in a battle? If they did, it would have been taken on the continent, not Africa. Why ship it to Carthage only to turn around and send it back.”

“No. Sir. I don’t think they’re ours. They’re much larger than ours, and made of bronze.”

“One of the early designs the Consul showed us was bronze, before he introduced the reinforced steel tubes. The bronze ones apparently warped more easily but didn’t shatter during a misfire.”

The man didn’t say anything to that. Why would he? While he trained his men continually on the operation of cannon, they knew little of the actual construction, which wasn’t needed to man the weapons. Valdar only knew about it because the Consul liked to talk, and had explained it once to a group of legates and Valdar.

“Take me to them,” he said. “I want to see these weapons for myself.”

Admiral Valdar took a long boat to the captured Carthaginian vessel. Its crew was gathered to one side of the deck, bound and kneeling, surrounded by a group of armed sailors. For the most part, they looked resigned, probably assuming the Britannians were going to kill them and throw them to the sharks. No doubt their Carthaginian masters had told them that was exactly what happened to those who were captured. While it wasn’t entirely untrue, and almost certainly how the Carthaginians dealt with captured Britannians, it wasn’t how they normally dealt with the Carthaginians.

For the moment, Valdar ignored them, instead following his officer to a collection of crates at a far end of the sailed galley. Most were opened, having been checked by his men, filled with gunpowder, food supplies, and the like. Those didn’t hold Valdar’s attention. What did was the pile of four metal tubes, stacked together two by two on a wooden cradle.

His officer had described them well. They were notably larger than his own cannon and the dull golden color of bronze. He could also see why the man had been confused. There were distinct differences. For one, although the cannon was larger, the bore hole was much smaller, with a huge metal shell around it. For another, the barrels weren’t rifled. While the cannons on his ships weren’t rifled either, his were fitted with attachments on the side to allow them to be mounted into a heavy-wheeled gun carriage. This was, for all intents and purposes, a solid tube with a small fuse hole in the top.

Primitive, was the word he’d use to describe it.

“The ship was headed to Sicilia?” Valdar asked.

“That is what he said, but it was before we pulled the sheet covering the cannon off and opened the crates. It’s possible he was lying.”

“I see. Bring him to me,” he ordered.

The officer nodded and hurried away. A few minutes later, he returned with a small, wiry man in tow. The captain was dressed in fine clothes, but his face was pale and his eyes were wide with fear.

“What is this?” Valdar asked, gesturing to the cannon.

The man hesitated for a moment and said, “I don’t know. I was told to allow my ship to be loaded with cargo, which I was then instructed to take to Sicilia. That is what I was doing. I didn’t even know what was in the crates.”

On the face of it, his story was plausible. After all, that was how the Carthaginians treated most of their subjects. But he’d seen a lot of Carthaginian ships over the past few years, and especially since entering the Middle Sea. None of the private merchant ships he’d seen had been upgraded with the new sail design. This one even had two masts, forward and stern, rather than one in the center. That kind of addition would have needed to be made from the keel up, and not something just upgraded later.

If this was a simple merchant, forced against his will to deliver Carthaginian supplies, Valdar would eat his rigging.

“Don’t lie to me,” Valdar growled. “You aren’t some simple merchant, and you know exactly where this came from and how your people got their hands on it.”

The captain swallowed hard. “I don’t know. I swear.”

Valdar’s patience was running thin. “This is your last chance. I will not ask again. Where was this produced? How did it get to you?”

The captain looked around frantically, as if searching for a way out. But there was nowhere to go. He was surrounded by armed sailors.

“I don’t know!” he cried. “I swear!”

Valdar gave the man a hard stare and then nodded once.

“Make sure his ankles, legs, and arms are all secured, and throw him over the side,” he said, before turning to look at the rest of the crew. “Someone find me his second.”

The sailors grabbed the captain and started to drag him away, while others grabbed additional lengths of rope.

“No! Wait!” The captain struggled as they dragged him toward the rail, screaming frantically. “They came by convoy from Egypt, I think.”

Valdar held up a hand, stopping the sailors from tossing the man overboard.

“Not made by your people though, I think. Where did they come from? Are you expecting me to believe someone in Egypt developed them?”

“I only know they arrive by ship sailing up the Red Sea, where a caravan brings them the rest of the way west, since no ship is safe in these waters anymore.”

“And yet you tried?”

“I only did what I was ordered to do. They don’t ask me what I think,” the man pleaded. “Please, I’ve told you everything I know.”

“No captain lets goods onto their ship without trying to find out something about it, even one as cowardly as you. I know you asked around, and I’m betting you heard something. Maybe you just need a little swim to jog your memory,” Valdar said, signaling to the sailors, who put their hands under the captain’s arms and started to lift him again.

“I swear, I don’t know who’s sending them. All I know are the rumors I’ve heard. Something about a great empire, somewhere far to the east, able to make weapons similar to those made by you people.”

“You say this shipment arrived via the Red Sea and Egypt?”

“Now they are. These weapons first showed up last year with the fire powder, which arrived at the coast of Syria and then transferred to one of our ships and was sent west. Since the spring, though, the shipments have changed. They’re now bringing in more, by boat, and we’re the ones taking them by caravan.”

“What else have you heard?”

“Nothing. Only rumors and speculation. We know they’re powerful, but other than that, no one knows much about them. I don’t even know anyone who’s seen one of these foreigners, let alone spoken to them. I swear.”

Valdar stared at the man for a moment. While he was certain the man would have heard rumors, it also seemed likely that the Carthaginians did keep what they knew about these weapons and the people providing them secret, otherwise word would have leaked out sooner. Ramirus had been caught as flat-footed as anyone else when the gunpowder showed up in Carthaginian hands, and the only way to keep that kind of information out of the spymaster’s hands was to make sure that hardly anyone knew what was happening.