The Wings of Mercury
Copyright© 2025 by Lumpy
Chapter 12
Carthage
Claudius ran as fast as his legs could carry him, which was at least easier now that the guard had gotten rid of the heavy armor, which would have severely weighed him down. What he really wished for, however, was more men.
He just happened to be at the guard post, checking on the rotation, when the messenger arrived with a warning of a disturbance nearby. Claudius had grabbed every man he could there, stripping the guard post to just one man, and every man he came across as he ran through the winding streets, his men drafting behind him.
As they rounded the final corner, they found the market in chaos. A seething mass of bodies surged around two of his men who stood above one of Eoghan’s tax collectors who was slumped on the ground.
“Form around them. Move!”
His men responded well, creating a circle around the fallen bureaucrat, using their bayonet-tipped rifles to keep the crowd back as the incited people yelled curses.
“Run to the main garrison,” Claudius said to one of the two guards who had been standing over the tax collector. “We need reinforcements, now!”
The man darted away, pushing through the crowd, which thankfully didn’t try too hard to stop him, more focused on getting to the tax collector.
“Pick him up,” he said to the other guard. “At the group, step back toward those shops. Keep together.”
With the number of men he had, he needed a thicker line, which meant he had to limit the size of his front. They walked back several steps until his men were able to shift into a semicircle. The tax collector leaned against a guard. He had a serious cut on one leg and his clothing was soaked through with blood. Claudius looked to the entrance of the market, trying to gauge if they could march out, back toward the barracks, but the crowd had continued to grow and was pressing them hard. It was impossible for them to move out of the market at all.
Suddenly, a rock flew out of the crowd, whacking into the shoulder of one of his men. The man stumbled but held his position.
“Citizens!” Claudius yelled, making his voice project. “This riot ends now. Disperse and return to your homes, or we will be forced to take action!”
“What about the actions taken against us every day?” a woman yelled.
“These vultures bleed us dry while our children starve!” a man shouted.
The allegations were all true. Claudius knew that. But he also needed to keep the peace, and crowds like this tended to get out of control very easily, which he hoped to prevent.
“I hear your grievances, and the empress has sent her personal representative, who is even now looking into what is happening to you. Please, be patient and we will give you justice. This will achieve nothing but more pain and loss.”
“Britannian promises are worth less than donkey shit!”
The crowd responded to the statement, surging forward, pushing against his men, who shoved back, keeping their rifles parallel to the ground and using them more as clubs than firearms, as they had been trained to do. Here or there a butt was turned, striking out when someone became too aggressive, thudding into chest or shoulder, but avoiding smashing any skulls.
“You can’t protect that leech forever!” a man with a scraggly beard shouted, spittle flying from his mouth.
More rocks sailed through the air, pelting the guards. One struck Claudius in the chest, eliciting a grunt of pain. He gritted his teeth, maintaining his composure.
Suddenly, a bottle arced over the heads of the crowd. It took Claudius a moment to realize what it was. A bottle of pressed oil with a rag stuffed into the spout, the tip of which was burning.
It sailed past the guards and shattered against a nearby market stall. Flames erupted instantly, as the splashed oil caught on fire.
“Fire!” someone screamed, and panic spread through the crowd like wildfire.
“Put that out,” Claudius yelled.
Two of his men broke from the line, which shrunk as the rest of his men moved to closed the space they had once occupied. Using their waterskins and digging up dirt, they managed to get the flames under control before they spread beyond the burning oil.
Thankfully, no one else followed that person’s example. The pushing and shoving continued, but the firebomb seemed to have shocked even the crowd, which lessened their resolve slightly. There was still no way out of the square, but at least his men didn’t seem to be in danger of being overrun at that moment.
The standstill wouldn’t last, however. Tensions built again as the crowd riled themselves up once more.
“Last warning!” Claudius bellowed. “Disperse now, or we will be forced to take harsher measures!”
Claudius’s warning fell on deaf ears. The crowd’s fervor intensified, their shouts growing more hostile with each passing moment as the number of objects being thrown from the crowd began to increase with stones, rotten fruit, and makeshift projectiles raining down on them.
Several men from the crowd surged forward, attempting to breach the guards’ formation. They grappled with the soldiers, trying to wrest their weapons away.
“Decanus, warning shot!” Claudius ordered.
A sharp crack split the air as one of his men fired skyward. For a heartbeat, the crowd hesitated, but their fury quickly overcame their fear. They were too angry. Beyond reason. The mob pressed harder and Claudius felt his men’s resolve wavering under the relentless assault.
“Sir, we can’t hold much longer,” one of his men said, struggling against the tide of bodies.
Claudius scowled. He’d tried so hard to keep this situation from getting out of hand. And he’d failed. He’d exhausted every option, every plea for reason.
“Weapons front!” Claudius commanded.
Rifles swung around, from butts pushing against people to sharpened bayonets. People tried to push back, away from the sharpened blades, but the people behind them pushed them forward, shoving them into the weapons.
People screamed and blood spilled, and it still wasn’t enough. The crowd continued to push and shout, oblivious to what was happening ahead of them. Claudius cursed silently to himself. He’d hoped he wouldn’t have to resort to worse measures.
“Fire at will! Aim low!”
The guards hesitated for a split second before rifles cracked, sending a wave of acrid smoke over the crowd. That did what the bayonets had not as screams of pain and terror replaced the angry shouts. The crowd’s momentum shattered as those in front fell or scrambled backward. Panic spread like wildfire. The mob that had seemed so unified moments ago dissolved into a chaotic mass of individuals, each scrambling for safety.
Just as they began to run, his reinforcements finally arrived, forming up along the outskirts of the market.
“Let them go,” Claudius yelled. “Form a double line here.”
He didn’t want to box the people in. It might net him the ring leaders of the riot, but it might not. There was a chance this had been a spontaneous event ignited by the tax collector and not some kind of plotting by whoever was inciting the unrest in the city, since Eoghan had been doing as much as possible to inflame tensions as whoever the mystery party was.
Many had already made it out of the market, so the leaders could already be gone. Trying to box the remaining crowd in would just lead to more panic and death. Besides, he still had the real problem to deal with.
“Push forward!” Claudius ordered, seizing the initiative. “Clear the square! Rifle butts only.”
The combined forces of the guards advanced, driving the remaining rioters out of the square. The riot had broken and was over.
As the square emptied, Claudius turned to the tax collector. “Secure him. He’s got questions to answer. Take him to the palace and hold him, only I or Prince Cormac, or his representatives, are allowed to release him. That doesn’t include any of the governor’s men.”
He knew word would reach the governor, who’d want to see one of his lackeys released. Claudius knew taking this kind of forward stand would put him in jeopardy, especially if the prince or his wife were to depart leaving Eoghan still in place. However, Claudius thought that the longer this went on, it became more unlikely that would happen.
And he wasn’t willing to let this one go. Dozens of bodies littered the ground and dozens more were wounded, including minor injuries among his own men. Among some parts of Carthage, this was going to be known as a massacre, and would make tensions even higher. The only solution, he could see, was to have someone to blame. Since he wasn’t planning on volunteering, it meant the real instigator needed to be publicly tried and dealt with.
Or at least, he hoped Medb saw it that way. Because he knew there would be calls for his head as well.
Factorium
Hortensius could never understand how Sorantius stood being inside his workspaces. The heat and noise were, of course, familiar, but the smell was something he’d never adjust to. Acrid, almost burning his nostrils, and thick, the feel of it made his skin crawl.
If he had his choice, he’d stick with the smell of metal and oil that permeated his spaces instead.
He could, however, admire the chemist’s work ethic. The man made Hortensius feel slow, since he never seemed to slow or stop.
“How goes the work?” Hortensius said, coming up behind the chemist, who stood up and turned around, confused.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “Did we have a meeting?”
“Can’t one inventor simply pay a visit to another?”
“Not unless he wants something,” Sorantius replied.
“Fair enough. I did want something, that is, if you have a few minutes to spare.”
“I don’t, but I assume this is important if you walked all the way from your factories to here. You three try that out and see what happens. And by the gods, go slow. Any sign of reaction, dunk it.”
The last part was directed at the three men he’d been talking to, who nodded nervously and hurried off. Hortensius was happy to see the man finally delegating. He’d always had a bad habit of trying to do everything himself, and it really slowed down the work.
He followed Sorantius back to his office and settled into the seat opposite him.
“So what can I do for you?”
“Well, I’m sure you heard about the disaster with the fuses and our exploding cannon.”
“I did. I’m glad no one was hurt.”
Hortensius could see the slightly haunted look in the chemist’s eye. During the war, there’d been an accident with some of his acid production, which had created a toxic gas that had killed over a dozen of his workers. While he hadn’t been at fault, and this kind of experimental work was dangerous, Sorantius had taken it personally, seeing each of the dead men as his fault.
“Yes, the gods were certainly watching over us that day. Since then, we’ve taken the entire platform back to the design stage and have reworked it completely. Instead of a simple system of a primer cap at the front, which had a habit of going off when fired and had to be stabilized in transit, we opted for an inertia block system. Basically, we have a large block that is held in place with a wire, suspended over a primer cap, all in a self-contained, stabilized system, meaning if I dropped the round or even hit it as hard as possible with a hammer on the end, it won’t go off. When fired, the block is forced backward by the speed of the acceleration, snapping the safety wire. When it hits the ground, however, the sudden change in speed slams the block forward, into the primer cap like the hammer of a musket, setting it off. So in effect, firing the round out of a cannon is what activates the fuse system.”
“That’s ... an interesting concept, Hortensius. But I’m not entirely sure how it relates to my work here.”
“I’m getting to that, I promise,” Hortensius said. “My biggest problem with the new system is the ignition of the payload itself. The design puts a whole series of elements between the powder in the body of the shell and the exploding primer cap in the tip, and it is unreliable in setting off the powder, even if the primer goes off nearly every single time. Sometimes they explode, sometimes they don’t. I’ve tried putting a trail of black powder in the small gap, but it shifts in flight and isn’t always close enough to the primer to ignite.”
“That is a problem,” Sorantius said, clearly still waiting to find out how he fit in.
“While working on this, I’ve been reading some of the reports you’ve sent to the empress. Based on how the tests on your stabilized nitrocellulose are going, I think it might be the answer.”
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