Chapter 24

Lucilla stayed fairly late, the two of them talking, not just about their official duties, but about everything. Ky’s touch with possible death made them both suddenly realize how quickly things could be taken away, making both reluctant to cut their time together short.

Although Ky could have stayed up all night with little ill-effect, Lucilla still had limitations, even with her refreshed medical nanos Sophus had reapplied now that they were both awake. Reluctantly, she returned to her quarters, leaving Ky to work over his thoughts on what had happened since he’d been out. For once, Sophus wasn’t of much help, since other than briefly communicating with Lucilla the day before Ky had woken up, he had no more information than Ky had.

A lot of what she had to say, specifically about developments with the alliance, was hopeful. Although he found it repugnant, he hadn’t been concerned by the news of Romans taking advantage of their new partners, since that had always been factored into his thinking.

The thing that did bother him was news of captured Carthaginian scouts being caught over the border along likely invasion paths. Despite their straightforward approach to warfare, or maybe because of it, Ky doubted the Carthaginians would be sending men over the border months before their newest invasion began. From the records he’d seen, and what little he’d learned from his first brush with them, the Carthaginians operated on fairly rigid timetables. While it was probably a side effect of their using conscripted soldiers, most of whom wouldn’t be allowed to show any initiative even if they’d had the ability, it also meant that he had much less time than he’d originally projected.

He sent one of his men with messages for the various commanders to notify them that he was back among the living and calling a council of war just after first light. It would make some of them scramble, but Ky didn’t have time to wait. Some of what he needed was information on the various projects he’d left in the works, but the accelerated timetable also meant the need to move beyond the more basic training they’d been doing until now. While the Caledonian forces, some of whom had just arrived that week with Lucilla, needed more time to integrate, if the attack was going to come as soon as Ky thought it was, they needed to start preparing for the actual battle.

That meant going over battle plans with the legates, getting their input on changes that needed to be made, and beginning the process of training the various units for their specific pieces of the battle plan.

Ky had decided that, since he needed less sleep, he’d meet the commanders at Velius’s command tent, saving them time and allowing the men to get right to work as soon as they finished deciding their new priorities.

Riding through Devnum and then through the seventh legion’s camp, Ky could feel the eyes of everyone on him. Lucilla had told him that word of his situation, and rumors of his death, had traveled pretty widely, but he hadn’t expected everyone from the boy cleaning horses at the stable to the sentry guards to stare at him like they had trouble believing he was real. Despite her warning, Ky still found it a little unnerving.

Thankfully, the commanders, who were already assembled, were less obvious about their amazement.

“Consul,” Velius said, getting out of the camp chair he’d been sitting in and rushing to greet Ky as soon as he came through the tent flap. “I’d heard word that you were back with us, but I’d been afraid to believe it until just this moment. There aren’t words to express how glad I am to see you up and about again.”

“Being in charge wasn’t all fun and games, I take it,” Ky said, smiling and gripping the other man’s forearm back in greeting. “From what I hear, you’ve been doing a fantastic job, and we are well ahead of where we needed to be, as far as training goes. The Caledonians who’ve chosen to enlist in the legion itself are doing well, the cavalry is coming along and you’ve rotated through several groups of citizen militia, training with the new arcuballista. You should be proud of yourself.”

“I appreciate the compliment, although there is still something nice about having someone I can push the larger problems to. However, I’m mostly glad you’re here, because I think the timetable needs to move up and we haven’t yet heard your entire plan for how we are going to defeat the Carthaginians. I’m also particularly alarmed at Ramirus’s estimates for the size of the army they are building.”

“Which is why I called this meeting, in fact,” Ky said, loud enough for the rest of the men in the tent to hear. Once everyone was settled, Ky continued, saying, “From what I’ve heard, we’ve caught some Carthaginian scouts in the area the Carthaginians are most likely to come through, meaning their attack will likely happen much sooner than we predicted.”

“Correct,” Velius said. “We’ve caught three now, which probably means they sent more. As normal, their masters didn’t tell the scouts much, to prevent intelligence leaks if they were caught, but we do know they were dispatched at different times, spread out over weeks, which means this is more than a probe. The best guess is they want to maintain a constant stream of information about the conditions along their path, especially since, with snow still on the ground, the terrain and available forage could change quickly.”

“Best guess, when do you think they will march?” Ky asked.

Although he’d already discussed the information Lucilla told him with Sophus, Ky wanted to hear the legate’s predictions before offering his own, to get a more untainted opinion. The commanders might not have a sophisticated tactical AI able to process vast amounts of information in their head, but they had something Ky didn’t have, a lifetime of fighting the Carthaginians.

“We still have a little time, based on Ramirus’s reports. He has a man at the main Londinium port who reported that a few more shiploads of Germanic tribesmen are expected in the next week. We also have reports suggesting they are still gathering supplies, we think to make up for expected supply shortages. My best guess is they will begin moving within the next week to week and a half. They will be slow to get going and won’t travel far each day, because of the number of men they’ll have, so it should take them another two weeks to reach the border.”

Seeing nods from the commanders, confirming their agreement with Velius, Ky said, “That about matches up with my estimate as well. Basic Training is over, then. We have two weeks to get everyone supplied and begin training for their specific portions of the battle plan. From there, we need the various elements in position by the end of the third week. That’s when the hard part begins. We are far enough from home that we can’t just wait behind the walls and sally forth when we see them, and we can’t let them know where most of our forces are, or they might work out our plans ahead of time. Even if we harass their scouts and cavalry with ours, they’re still going to see some of the battlefield before the bulk of the body reaches us, which means cooking fires and men out of their hide position can ruin the entire plan for us. All it takes is for the Carthaginians to realize they’re being led into an ambush and they’ll go around the position we want them in.”

“I’m still not clear on what that position is?” Auspex said.

“I know, and for that I’m sorry. I know I’ve kept most of the battle plan close to my chest, and I promise it isn’t because I don’t trust any of you. I’ve just been concerned about enough of the plan leaking out that the Carthaginians have a chance to find out about it before it’s too late to tell their commanders. To be clear, I don’t distrust any of you, but once we start training the men, word will get out. Put that together with the fact that well-connected Romans have gone over to the Carthaginians after the insurrection and the attacks in Devnum since, and it’s clear there are still ways for the Carthaginians to find out what our men are doing.”

Although Ky didn’t name Caesius directly, all of the legates knew that’s who he was referencing. The interrogations of Decius’s son indicated his father and the men associated with him all had some contacts with the Emperor’s son. There was also evidence that Caesius had passed information to the Carthaginians even before the insurrection, including his sisters’ trip to Glevum, allowing the ambush and her near capture. Considering he was now a guest of the Carthaginians, it seemed likely that any information sent to Caesius would shortly end up in the hands of the Carthaginians themselves. There was also the fact that Ramirus hadn’t found Decius yet, which meant he was still out there somewhere, helping to collect information for Caesius. Thankfully, for Ky at least, everyone in the tent understood the necessity for operational security and didn’t seem to take his keeping them out of the loop to heart.

“That being said,” Ky continued, “the time for keeping things quiet is just about up. While Velius and I have been over my plan and looked at the terrain in question, I’d like to get your input on it. Right now is the time when we can still make adjustments, before we start training the men to execute this, so now is the time to speak up. Clear?”

Beyond training the men in newer ways of warfare, one of the bigger challenges Ky had in preparing the Roman defenses was getting through long-ingrained ways of doing things. Traditional Roman commanders were not unlike autocrats themselves, which could be why, even in the original timeline, legates had a tendency to try to become Emperor in their own right, leading to the occasional coup attempt.

When the assembled men nodded their understanding, Ky began walking them through the details of the plan that, he hoped, would cancel out the Carthaginian’s staggering manpower advantage.

Ky was up again early the next morning, this time with a new set of problems and a new destination in mind. If Velius had thought Ky had given him too many areas of responsibility, he should have spoken to Hortensius.

The changes in Rome’s military structure and fighting techniques had been extensive, but nothing compared to the upheaval of Rome’s manufacturers. Nearly every area of industry had been altered, some from multiple directions simultaneously. Beyond just the new techniques and materials Ky had introduced, there had also been the manpower changes as slaves were replaced by wage-earning citizens, the introduction of clerks for better accountability and efficiency, and the entire patent system put in place to help fund the massive increase in production needed to both supply the populace and it’s rapidly growing military.

Hortensius had risen to the challenge presented to him and had done an exceptional job keeping all of the pieces running while following the first stages of Ky’s plan for industrialization. Regardless of how impressive Hortensius had been, Ky had expected some things to begin falling behind, which is why Ky wasn’t surprised to find instances once he began going over reports from the army of clerks they’d installed to track production.

Unfortunately, the area that was falling behind the most was the one the Romans could least afford to let slip. Arcuballista was behind by almost thirty percent of expected production, and looked to still be slowing. A big part of Ky’s plan to destroy the Carthaginian army relied on the citizens being trained on crossbows. While they didn’t need that many to actually train them, since they were being rotated through in groups to keep Rome’s businesses from being drained of manpower all at once, in a few weeks they’d need all of the weapons to use for real. Right now, there were not enough arcuballista to arm half the men he needed for his plan to work, and Ky didn’t see how they could produce enough to make up the difference in time. Which was the point of today’s meeting.

As with the military commanders, Ky didn’t bring Hortensius to him, because he didn’t want to delay the man any more than he had to. Instead, Ky arranged to meet him at one of the many warehouses converted into assembly factories, where Hortensius had already planned on being that morning. Ky found him, the factory foreman, and the clerk assigned to keep the factory’s books in a small room that doubled as storage and the foreman’s office.

“Consul,” Hortensius said, hustling towards Ky with his hand outstretched as soon as Ky came through the door. “I thanked the gods when I heard you were back up and moving. My family prayed for your recovery every day since word of your injuries reached us.”

“I appreciate it,” Ky said, still unsure how he felt about people praying for him to gods he didn’t believe in. “I’ve been going over all of the clerks’ reports on the manufacturing sectors, and you’ve done a fabulous job keeping all of this going. I’m particularly pleased with how well the foundries are doing turning out the new steel. That’s going to allow us to move forward on some additional plans I have for us once this army has been dealt with.”

“But?” he asked, crossing his arms and looking at Ky levelly.

“But?” Ky asked, unsure of what he meant.

“Whenever someone starts a conversation telling me what a fabulous job I’ve been doing, I always know it’s an attempt to smooth things over for whatever they say next. So I’m wondering what the ‘but’ is going to be.”

“Fair enough. The ‘but’ is that I have real concerns about arcuballista production, specifically at the assembly stage, where it appears we have a bottleneck.”

“I thought as much. I will take part of the blame on this. I assumed our slowdown would have been in the actual production of the pieces to be assembled. Specifically the metal attachments. Since the basics of how carpenters made the wooden frames hadn’t changed, I knew we could just scale that up with more workers as needed and keep up with production. It was the need for precision metal parts, especially the new release mechanism you called a trigger, which would be our weakest point and so it’s where I’ve been putting additional resources as we’ve been getting them. The amount of rejected parts that needed to be melted down and reforged didn’t increase as dramatically as I assumed, however. While that’s a good thing, since it means production has stayed high, it meant we were putting manpower and even facilities in the wrong place. I’m in the process of switching over some of the lower producing forges into assembly buildings and retraining the workforce, but that will take time.”

“I see. From observing one of the assembly buildings, I think there are a few more places you can accelerate production without adding additional resources.”