Chapter 18

Camp Banwīhraz, Central Germania

Ky walked past the two guards on duty outside of the large tent with the prison camp commander, Sellic, glued to his side as his other lictore joined the legionnaires on guard outside. Sellic had on his guard face, but even without the serious expression, Ky would have known how annoyed the man was.

He, and the other lictore commanders, had lobbied hard against Ky’s plan to leave the army for almost a week as he traveled back from the front by horse and then train to the large prisoner camp. Their concern hadn’t been for Ky leaving the army, of course, which was in Bomilcar’s competent hands, but for Ky being inside a fenced-in area with hundreds of captured, and mostly injured, easterner prisoners.

He understood their concern, but he also knew how important this was.

He actually should have made this trip after the first large battle when they’d been left with the field, and injured prisoners. That had still been a precarious time for the legions, however, and Ky hadn’t been able to leave them. Morale had been low after a month of retreating, and they’d needed to aggressively follow up on their victory to show the men that they were not fighting an unbeatable enemy.

After several more battles, the tempo of operations had slowed down. The enemy had pulled back, most likely to reinforce itself. He’d learned from Britannian sources in Greece that the enemy’s rapid progress in that region had slowed significantly as the size of the forces being seen had shrunk. Instead of thousands of soldiers marching into Greek cities and putting them to the torch, now the attacks involved hundreds. Ky’s only thought was that a lot of those men, who’d been having an easy time of it, had been sent to join the army facing Ky.

Whatever the reason, Ky and Bomilcar had agreed that their men needed a rest. It also allowed the time for another legion to join the army, along with some reinforcements from the training camps to replace the steep casualties the legions had suffered.

In addition, it gave Ky a chance to finally make his way back to where they’d been holding all of the easterner prisoners and conduct his first interviews. They still knew frighteningly little about who the easterners were, aside from the obvious physical characteristics that marked them as being from Asia.

Unlike when fighting western armies, where regions had been in contact for centuries and there was at least some exposure to the various languages, before this new war began, no one in the west had ever met an easterner before. Or at least had serious contact with one of them. All of the trade that had come from that side of the world, before it had suddenly stopped at the end of the Carthaginian war, had been through intermediaries, who themselves had gotten the goods from other intermediaries. Ramirus had searched the Empire and their allies for years and had not been able to come up with anyone who’d had face-to-face contact with their new enemy.

Now that they had contact, in the form of prisoners, every report from the men charged with guarding them only talked about the language barrier and their unusual customs. There had yet to be one interview with any of the captured easterners, which was desperately needed since they still knew almost nothing about the enemy they faced.

Which was why this trip was so necessary, in spite of the small risk of being inside a prison camp with several thousand bored and angry enemy soldiers.

The inside of the tent held almost as many legionnaires as prisoners, which seemed excessive considering the state of these men. All six of the selected prisoners were injured to some degree and each looked excessively thin. Ky knew from reports that most of the men captured had one degree or another of malnutrition, and most had in fact gained weight since being in Britannian custody.

Ky had his suspicions of why this was, but he really needed first-person interviews to find out for sure. And to do that, he needed to get their language. There were those among his people gifted with languages who’d started to try and decipher the easterners’ tongue, but that would take too long.

Ky needed answers, and he needed them soon.

“I am Consul Ky of the Britannian Empire. You are being held as prisoners of war. As soon as this conflict is over, you will be returned to your people. Do you understand me?” Ky said, stopping and standing in front of the men.

He received only blank, uncomprehending stares in return. Ky tried it again, using the language files Sophus had downloaded to speak the oldest form of Chinese, the language of the most populous country in Asia. At least at the point where Sophus’s records cut off, and the one Ky had suspected all along to be the origin of their eastern enemy.

This time there was almost a flicker of something. Not recognition, exactly. Closer to a recognition of possible recognition. Some of the sounds must have been right, but the ordering wrong enough to make it sound like gibberish.

At least it told him he was in the right area.

Ky tried again, using what he would have thought of as universal hand signals to get across the idea that his name was Ky and that they were being held prisoner but would not be harmed.

The men still stared back, although this time Ky was certain they understood at least enough of what he’d said to get the point. This was the other thing the reports had suggested. That basic, non-verbal communication was possible, but that the prisoners were reticent to respond even if they clearly understood.

Which was not uncommon for prisoners.

“Like I said, they just stare,” the camp commander said.

“So how do we get men, who we can’t speak to, to talk, when they don’t want to?” Ky mused sub-vocally, more out of habit than actually asking the AI.

“Intimidation is the most common tactic in these types of interrogations.”

“How, exactly, do you intimidate men you can’t talk to?”

“There are multiple options available. Physical acts, both demonstrative and against the person in question, and nonverbal intimidation, are the most likely paths.”

“So, just torture them and hope they scream enough words in their language for you to begin to decipher it?”

“That would be ineffective. A better choice would be to play on the psychological fears of the subject.”

“Which would require us to be able to communicate with them. Quite the circular logic you have there,” Ky said, more frustrated at the situation than the AI.

“There are some predictive choices that can be made without communicating with the prisoners. We believe these people are from areas around modern-day China, Korea, or one of the Southeast Asian countries, although physical markers are most suggestive of mainland China itself. Using that assumption as a baseline, China had significant writings from this time, some of which survived and made their way into more modern retellings. Some of these include their superstitious beliefs in malevolent forces that they believed affected their lives. Some of these forces exhibited inhuman capabilities that your own physical enhancements are capable of replicating. Soldiers in militaries, such as these, in this time period, were not voluntary but rather conscripted, and conscripts almost inevitably came from the lower, and less educated, sections of society. Should you exhibit these superhuman feats, it is probable that they might make the connection on their own with these malevolent forces and believe you are one. We have seen much the same in both Rome and Germania, where popular belief still exists that you are somehow connected with positive supernatural forces.”