Chapter 18

“How are you feeling?” Lucilla asked, looking down at Hortensius, who stirred at her voice.

“Thankful to be alive,” he said, his voice croaking. “I hear you played some part in keeping me alive while I healed.”

“Only a small part,” she said, knowing he’d understand, since he knew she could communicate with Ky, and he was ultimately the source of the knowledge that helped keep him alive.

“They let me look over this breathing apparatus you had them build. It’s got some interesting components, although I can see a few places you could have made it better. Not needing someone pumping on it day and night, for one.”

“We were limited on time, although I’m sure the physicians wouldn’t mind if you perfected it. I imagine it could be used in the future by people who can’t afford to pay for an army of workers to always be available to keep air flowing.”

“Maybe,” he said, looking thoughtful. “Maybe.”

“Did they give you any indication of when you can go home?”

“They want me out today. Apparently, now that I’m awake, they want this bed for someone else.”

“And when can you come back to work?” she asked, then realized how that sounded. “Not that I want you to rush your recovery, but I’m a poor replacement and I feel like I’m drowning just trying to keep up with a fraction of your workload.”

“Which makes you sane,” he said, letting out a laugh that halfway through turned into a cough. “Your luck isn’t that good, unfortunately. My chest is doing better, although it hurts every time I breathe. They said they had no treatment for it, apparently, the Consul’s last conversation with them included taking away most of their cures. They think it could heal on its own, but they wouldn’t actually promise anything. I thought maybe the Consul could tell me differently, but until he makes it back, I’ll have to live with it. Unfortunately, I might be limping forever. They want me to keep off my leg for a while longer, so that’s going to slow me down, which means I’m going to need your help a while longer. So, no one here could tell me. How much damage did the fire do?”

“Explosion,” Lucilla said, the strange word still feeling awkward in her mouth.

“Clap?” he asked, understanding part of the word she said, which was oddly the first thing she’d said when she’d heard Ky use it the first time.

“It’s the word Ky used to describe what happens when the gunpowder goes off. You probably didn’t hear it, since you were so close, but it kind of did sound like a clap, although one that was done by the Titans. As for the damage, the whole building is gone. The only reason you survived was because you were outside when it happened. It threw you through the air like thrashed straw.”

“Sabotage?”

“No. Probably an errant spark set it off.”

“We’re going to have to make new safety procedures.”

“We already have, although you’re welcome to check my work. Thankfully, we only lost a little product, since everything but the supplies needed for one day’s production was stored off-site. It slowed us down a little bit, but we already have a new factory running, so we’re only a little behind on our goals.”

“See, you hardly need me.”

“Nonsense. The only reason everything is still running is because you trained your men well, and they’ve carried on. We’ve made progress on the cannons, although you’re going to have to remake the molds, and we’ve almost got the new docks built so we can start construction on the ships Ky has described. We’re falling behind on the semaphore stations and we have questions about some of your modifications, but we were able to make good progress on the looking glasses.”

“Again, I don’t see what you need from me.”

“That was all the good stuff, now let me tell you the problems we’ve been having,” she said, pulling up a stool next to the bed and settling in for what was almost certainly going to be a long conversation.

Southern Ériunia

Velius frowned as he watched the legions marching past him. Progress had been much slower than he’d hoped, to the point he was concerned the Carthaginians and their local allies would begin trying to outmaneuver him, instead of holding until he got in range. If he was able to threaten their supply lines or get on their flanks, they’d be forced to move, allowing him to choose the field of battle. If they came directly for him, they would get to pick where the fight happened, and if they were smart, they’d find a spot that negated some of his advantages.

That was partly why he was trying to push his men south as hard as he could, to get into the southern coastal plains, where the trees thinned out, giving his cavalry room to maneuver. The Carthaginians were almost entirely infantry, with very few mounted soldiers. His greater weight in horsemen coupled with how maneuverable they were, allowed his men to hit the Carthaginians on the flanks and from behind, which would force part of their force to turn and address the threat. He didn’t have enough cavalry to actually cut into their forces, but if his men kept hitting and moving away, always targeting different spots along the Carthaginian line, they could cause havoc and confusion that would help negate the Carthaginian manpower advantage.

Right now, he was still crossing through passes between mountainous regions and down into a forested area that limited his visibility and gave very little opportunity for his cavalry to run free. If the fight happened here, it would be a contest of infantry, which would not work in Velius’s favor. Worse, the heavy tree cover would also hamper the advantages the arcuballista they brought, since the range would be too short to concentrate their fire on one section of the line like he did in the last battle.

From what his scouts had reported, the Carthaginian force was huge. Maybe not the size of the one they had fought to win control of Britannia, but still several times greater than Velius’s army. It appeared to be mostly locals, with the Carthaginians making up a small fraction of the fighting force, which would help, since they seemed to be as undisciplined as his allies, but if the Carthaginians did maintain control of them, the numbers were still too far in their favor for Velius to take them in a straight up fight. Or at least not without getting torn to shreds doing it.

No, to win this, he needed every advantage to maneuver. Although he wouldn’t be able to make a specific plan until he knew what kind of ground he was dealing with, he was most likely going to have to split his already outnumbered force and find a way to hit them from multiple directions simultaneously. Without Ky’s ability to signal a separated force, that would be difficult, but it wasn’t unheard of, and his men had been training for just this kind of thing on the days they stopped to allow their supply lines to catch up.

But first, he had to get out of these mountains and forests. His men were moving at a brisk pace and would already be clear of the mountains and halfway through the forests below if they weren’t being slowed by their local allies. Three times, he had to stop when the Ulaid allies decided they needed to sack a nearby village, simply because it was on the land of one of their enemies. In every case, they were small, poor farming villages that couldn’t have had much to take anyway, and yet he’d lost a day at each one trying to get their leaders to get them back in line and on the march. Even on the march, they were slow and lumbering, treating the campaign as some kind of holiday instead of a fight for their very lives.

Having been in one of these fights very recently, he couldn’t understand why they weren’t taking it seriously. Maybe it was because nearly every man sent by Conchobar to fight with them was a conscript and not a soldier, or maybe because most weren’t aware of how badly their kingdom had fared to this point, but either way, what Velius really wanted to do was leave them behind. As fighters, they’d be all but useless, and he’d have to focus more on keeping them out of the way of his legionnaires than on how to properly use them. It was sad that most would die before the campaign was over, but that would be something for the Ulaid to deal with. Velius had been sent to push the Carthaginians off this island and keep them from being able to launch new attacks on Britannia, and that was what he was going to do.

Maybe, if they decided to join the Empire, they’d be able to add men to the corps that could be trained as real soldiers. As men, they weren’t a complete loss. In general, they had bravery and a willingness to fight. What they lacked was discipline and training, things not valued by most of the kingdoms on Ériunia.

His thoughts were interrupted when a rider came charging up the slope towards them.

“A messenger from the scouting parties,” one of Velius’s aides said, recognizing the man.

“Report,” Velius said when the man rode up, looking tired and saddle worn.

“The Carthaginians are on the move. Their army began pulling out two days ago, marching north. They’ve begun pushing our scouts back more aggressively, making it hard to get a good read on them, but we’ve started seeing some additional forces coming from the east, joining the main body.”

“Carthaginian phalanxes?”

“No. Locals, but a good number of them. Well over a thousand they think, although it’s hard to get a good read on the real number. The optio in charge of the eastern scouts didn’t want to send his men deeper into the area they’ve started cordoning off. The locals aren’t friendly and we’ve had to dodge villages and farmers to keep from having our locations fed to the Carthaginians.”

“Sensible. Ride back and inform them to track the Carthaginian forces as best they can, but don’t take unnecessary risks.”

The messenger saluted and turned his horse to ride back out. It was likely the man was already exhausted, but they were all going to be tired by the time this was over, so he’d just have to do the best he could.

“Why keep them back?” Llassar asked, watching the man go. “It’s worth losing some men if it tells us their position.”

“I don’t think they’re going to go north of these mountains. This is the first Carthaginian army I’ve seen that is made up of more local units than phalanxes, which means they are running short on their own men. It’s probably why they pulled all the way back here, instead of trying to intercept us like the previous army did, and why they’ve had their allies all but empty their own territories.”