Chapter 7

Devnum

Lucilla paced the length of her private chambers, wearing a deep line in the carpet. She loved the ability to hear Ky’s voice from so far away, but on days like this, it was a curse as much as a gift. She’d known about the loss in Eastern Germania for hours and couldn’t say anything or even let on that she’d heard such devastating news.

Worse, she knew that Ky had been seriously wounded and had to swallow down the fear and anger that news caused. Sophus had sworn to her that Ky was alright and would fully recover, but that did not keep her from spending the day dwelling on it. Which just made her more and more furious each time someone brought her a very valid request, going about their lives not knowing how bleak the world was at that moment. Or at least her world.

So she paced and fumed and snapped at everyone who came into her presence. It wasn’t fair to them, but she wasn’t feeling fair.

Especially after hearing that the enemy was now armed with the same rifles they used. Sophus said that the rifles they were using looked remarkably similar to the model the Britannians had been using during the war with Carthage. They had made some very minor changes, mostly with the aiming mount, which they noticed was missing from the version the easterners had wielded that morning. Sophus hypothesized that they had, in fact, received weapons lost to Carthage during the war and had managed to reverse engineer them.

Apparently, their cannons had some notable differences, but Sophus had been less sure if that was because they had not gotten an intact cannon, if they had some way of coming up with an alternate, ahistorical design, or if they’d just been forced to work within their existing production chain and alter their previous lower quality smoothbore cannon to match the cannon Ky had introduced.

She wasn’t sure what Sophus had meant by ahistorical, or much else of what he’d said, but she got the gist of it. The enemy had weapons that rivaled those used by the Britannians, and that was bad. At least this first clash indicated that they did not have the inexhaustible supply of men that Carthage had on its side. The enemy force they faced was larger, but Ky had also gone out with only one legion. If he had brought two, the odds would have shifted in the Britannians’ favor and suggested they might not have overwhelming numbers like Ky had feared.

Or perhaps that was just Lucilla’s wishful thinking.

Even if the manpower difference wasn’t as great as that of the war with Carthage, the parity in firepower meant their losses would be significantly higher, so the challenges of this war would be the same as the last.

How to get enough men to wage it.

A knock at her door interrupted her pacing.

“Come.”

A messenger with the stripes of the signal service came into her office holding a slip of paper out to her. She snatched it from him and waved him away as she read the first few lines to ensure it was the message she’d been waiting on.

“Gaius!” she shouted before the door closed behind the messenger, crumpling the message in her fist.

Her assistant came dashing in, looking around the room, probably concerned by the tone of her voice. As assistants went, he was tall, fit, and not bookish at all, but then he’d been placed in the position by Faenius, head of the Praetorian Guard, as an extension of her personal protection. Luckily, he was also a fair assistant.

“Faenius and Ramirus. I want them in my office in the next five minutes. Not a second later,” she said, making sure he did not mistake her tone.

He did not, his eyes widened slightly as he spun on his heels and hurried out of the office. She resumed her pacing as he left, thinking through what she wanted.

Not that she needed to. She’d run the possibilities through her head again and again, all day. Not that she was confident in her decision. It came with risks. Serious risks.

The two men hurried in, Ramirus looking a little red in the face and puffing hard. Lucilla relented slightly at seeing her old friend. He’d always seemed old, even when she was a child, but the last five years of building alliances and dealing with recovering the remnants of the Carthaginian empire had taken a toll on him.

But this was important.

She handed the message to Ramirus, who glanced at it only briefly before handing it over to Faenius. Lucilla eyed him for a moment. If she didn’t know better, she would suspect he knew the contents of the message before he walked into her office.

Faenius’s reaction was closer to what she was expecting.

“This is very bad. Nearly four hundred dead or missing, and another seven hundred wounded. That’s a fifth of the entire legion, gone in a single engagement. Not to mention the Consul.”

“Is there any word on his condition?” Ramirus asked.

“You’ve seen the same message I have,” she said, trying to keep her face neutral and not show what she was really feeling. “But I believe he will recover. He’s resilient.”

Ramirus saw through her and seemed to know what she was really saying, nodding slightly. He’d hinted before that he’d figured out that Ky and Lucilla could speak over distance, but she’d never confirmed it or even addressed it directly.

“The legion is now in retreat, and I am concerned about how far they will be forced to fall back,” Lucilla said. “Even with the other legions en route, we can no longer rely on our technological advantage. Which means we cannot afford to let our forces be outnumbered. The legions need men, and they need them now. It also means we cannot wait for our allies to train their troops.”

Faenius looked to Ramirus, silently asking where this was going. Ramirus shrugged but had a concerned look on his face.

“Which is why,” Lucilla continued. “I’m ordering that we pull half of the praetorians currently in service across the Empire and prepare to send them to the legions on temporary assignment as replacements, until such time as we get enough reinforcements to keep our forces at combat effectiveness, as Ky likes to say.”

“Your Majesty, with the increased unrest in Carthage, and parts of Italia that remain unstable, I am concerned what that will do to the Empire’s safety.”

“I’m aware. Cormac will have to manage with what he has when he arrives. I have faith that he will find a way to make it work. I need you to begin making arrangements now. I want them to begin marching toward the staging point of the other legions preparing to head east within the week to join those forces. I will send notification to Bomilcar that they are on their way.”

“But...”

“This is not open for debate,” she said, stopping the argument before it started.

Faenius frowned, clearly not happy with that answer, but Lucilla wasn’t here to make him happy. She met his frown with a stern expression. He understood that this wasn’t a suggestion or a debate and nodded once.

“I’ll take care of it at once, Your Majesty,” Faenius said, bowing and glancing at Ramirus, the two exchanging looks before he turned and left the office nearly as quickly as he entered it.

Ramirus waited until the door closed behind Faenius before saying, “This decision will come back to haunt us, Your Majesty.”

“I know it’s a gamble,” she said, dropping into a chair and sagging a bit. “But what choice do I have? The legion is in retreat. We need to limit how far the easterners push into Germania and buy time for the new legions to mobilize. And I can’t wait for Ky to recover and request help.”

“Your Majesty,” he said, sitting next to her, concern in his eyes. “You have to ask yourself, are you doing this for the Empire, or for Ky?”

“The Empire. I’m not some lovesick girl, Ramirus. I am, of course, worried about him, but my concern is for the Empire and the alliance. We have to hold them before they get a strong foothold in Germania. It’s going to be our largest source of manpower. If it becomes compromised, we will be left in a bad position.”

“And if unrest spreads in Carthage or Italia while our forces are depleted there?”

“Then we’ll deal with it. I think Italia will not be that much of a problem. Only Sardinia remains an issue, and they are more contained. If it was just Cormac alone, I might be concerned, but Medb is with him. She’s shown she is quite capable, if ... what’s the phrase Ky likes to use? If she’s given runway?”

“Yes, although I still don’t understand that one.”

“Me either, but either way, I’m just going to have to rely on her to make the best decision she can.”

“I hope so,” he said.

It was clear he did not think her plan was the right decision. She could only hope he was wrong and that Medb was up to the task.

Carthage

Medb stepped off the gangplank of the small schooner they had chartered to make passage to Carthage and paused, taking in the city. She had been here several times since its fall on various missions for the Empress, but the city never failed to impress. It was huge, sprawling. Maybe not larger than Devnum was now, with the massive expansion it seemed to constantly be under, but it was impressive, nonetheless.

It had been spared damage in the war, so its classical buildings still stood, untouched and nearly pristine, with the massive palace in the heart of the city looming above everything else.

She felt a hand on the small of her back as Cormac came up behind her, pointing subtly down to the docks, where a praetorian waited for them. She pulled the hood hiding her trademark red curls a little lower and made her way off the ship.

“Welcome to Carthage, my lady. Prince,” Claudius said, greeting them both.

To an outside observer, it might seem odd that a man who was heir to the Ulaid throne and in line for the imperial throne itself wasn’t the first one greeted in this situation, and his wife a distant second in precedence. Those who’d worked in the palace in Devnum would have known the truth.

Not that there was anyone around to witness the interaction. The fishmongers and sailors were the only people on the docks and paid little notice to the lone praetorian speaking with two new arrivals to the city. They had traveled there with none of the ceremony that usually followed Cormac, and Medb was glad for it. She’d found it strange that, as much as she loved the pomp her formal title gave her, she’d come to value the much more real respect she was shown now. It wasn’t just courtiers and nobles kissing up to her any longer. It was men like Claudius showing subtle indications of her standing, not for an audience but because it was what she was due.

She liked that very much. But her getting due deference was not why she was here.

“It was fine, Centurion. But we didn’t come on a pleasure cruise. Your message was alarming, to say the very least.”

“It’s worse than I conveyed in my message, my lady. I’m relieved you’ve come to witness it firsthand.”

He led them away from the docks and into the city proper. As soon as they got off the main road from the docks to the palace and onto some of the side streets that would be more frequented by commoners and not by official processions, what Claudius had been talking about became readily apparent.

A few streets in, they saw the first of several scrawled graffiti with messages like ‘Britannians Go Home!’ and ‘Death to Invaders.’ There were slapdash sections of paint on other walls suggesting there had been more that had since been covered up.

“We’ve been getting a lot of this. Not on the main thoroughfare, which is heavily patrolled, but in the city proper, they keep appearing faster than we can cover them up.”

Medb only nodded, looking over the graffiti. Devnum had its fair amount of similar public artwork, and it was a common thing in most cities she’d seen. The messages were, however, concerning. This is what happened when the population was frustrated and felt they didn’t have an outlet with the people that governed them. It was also a warning sign that the government in power should heed, since it often led to much more direct and bloody expressions of that frustration.

Entering a market area, they came across something different, but equally troubling. Rows of shops in what looked like a well-built-up area were boarded up and closed, with only a few out of several dozen left open. Several had notices on them, torn and fading but still readable, announcing that the shop was closed by order of the governor.

“On what grounds?” Medb asked, pointing to the notice.

“The official reason varies. Harboring criminals, health and safety, lack of a permit, which is something that’s recently being introduced to ‘better control public services.’ In reality, they upset someone with the power to shut them down or didn’t pay off the right person.”

“The praetorians are demanding bribes?” Medb demanded angrily.

“No. My people would never do that, at least not if they wanted to remain in their position. No, the governor has a series of tax collectors that are outside of my chain of command, although we have orders to support them as needed. Which they take advantage of often, using my people as muscle for their little schemes.”

There it is, Medb thought. She’d wondered what motivated Claudius to act. He was loyal to the Empire, but it seemed to her that there was more to it that she hadn’t been able to put her finger on. The governor using his men in ways he disapproved of and leaving him no recourse but to go outside of the ranks to report it, made sense.

The praetorian’s domain was being encroached on, and he was unhappy about it.

“I see,” she said, not letting those thoughts show on her face. “Do you have evidence of these bribes?”

“A very little. I turned some of it over to the governor when it first came to my attention and it was swept under the rug. Suddenly, the tax collectors were much more careful about what they said in front of my men, so evidence is harder to come by now.”

Which suggested, to Medb, that the governor was involved in the graft, to at least some degree. Medb made note of it and continued on. Claudius took them back toward the main thoroughfare. As they neared it, the stink that any large city had was suddenly replaced by a wet acrid smell.

“There was a fire?” Cormac asked, identifying the smell.

Before Claudius could answer, they turned a corner where Medb recognized what had been a small guard shack. The praetorians used them in larger cities for patrols to be based out of without having to return all the way back to the full barracks during a shift. This one, however, was half burned to the ground, blackened and charred.

“When did this happen?” Cormac asked.

“Last night. Someone dropped a flask of oil and then a torch from the rooftop above. By the time the praetorians inside got the fire under control, the person was long gone, and no one knew, or would say they knew, who it was. All of our men made it out, thankfully, but no arrests are likely to be made.”

This was the kind of step up in aggression that Medb was worried about. If they were doing this, it wouldn’t be long until someone outright attacked a praetorian or some other civil servant. Claudius was right to worry. They were on the verge of the city exploding in anger.

“Take us to the palace,” Medb commanded.