Chapter 9

Ériunia, Southern Ulaid

Llassar swayed on the back of his horse, watching the ragged army move down the hillside below and into an open plain to face their enemy, resisting the urge to smirk at the sudden change in his situation. A little over a week previous, he’d been in a dank dungeon, trying to ignore rats and water dripping from above, and now he was one of only a handful of men on horseback, riding with the army’s commander and his ‘officers.’

Calling this an army was a stretch, even by Caledonian standards. It was a ragtag force of seasoned warriors, farmers, and anyone else Conchobar’s guard could round up and force into the depleted ranks. The fact that he’d been given a horse as a sign of respect, and to make up for throwing him into a dungeon, was sign enough of how badly they were faring. Horses had, apparently, become a precious military resource after several devastating losses, including their largest horse breeders and grazing lands.

“Now you will see our men in action,” Guaire, an Ulaid general who also happened to be one of Conchobar’s lesser cousins, said.

Llassar doubted it, seeing the contrast between those men and the Carthaginians. Dozens of Carthaginian phalanxes, packed in tight squares, their spears bristling in the sunlight, flanked by a similar ragtag group of warriors as those being fielded by the Ulaid were waiting. The Ulaid might have been able to show something if they were only facing off against the warriors from Connacht or Ivernis, although even that would have been a stretch now that the loss of so many of their actual warriors had forced them to conscript people who’d barely even held a sword before.

Against a trained Carthaginian army equipped with steel-tipped swords, hardened leather armor, and metal breastplates, they stood no chance at all. It wouldn’t have done to actually point that out, however, so Llassar only nodded in acknowledgment.

Llassar could appreciate the simplicity of Guaire’s plan, sending his army headfirst into the opposition. His people had fought more or less the same way since his ancestors’ time and until he watched Ky and his legates use maneuver and position to defeat huge armies with a fraction of their force, he’d never seen anything wrong with that plan.

Unfortunately, the Ulaid couldn’t seem to hold to even this simple plan. As they aligned against the Carthaginians, Llassar had expected them to slowly move forward, reserving their strength until the last moment, and then charging as a single group to increase the impact.

Instead, as soon as they hit the plain, the Ulaid began their charge, every man running full out, the faster ones quickly outpacing the slower ones. Llassar just shook his head. It was foolish. They had a long open expanse of ground to cross and the Ulaid would be exhausted by the time they got there. Their leaders, what few followed the army down onto the plains, didn’t seem to do anything to try and stop them.

The Carthaginians weren’t even moving, although they lowered their spears into position, ready to attack. Even the Carthaginian’s allies held their ground, which Llassar knew would be hard on them, since warriors like that would have their blood up and it wouldn’t take much to get them to countercharge.

The Carthaginian allies finally launched their attacks a few minutes later when the Ulaid got close enough. The Carthaginians continued to hold their ground, probably happy to let their allies waste their men on this battle rather than losing men of their own. To their credit, even exhausted, the men who made it across the field first held their own against the Carthaginian allies, at least for a moment, with as many of them going down as the Ulaid’s own men.

Numbers told the story, however. There were too many of the Carthaginian allies and not enough of the Ulaid, half of who turned to run as things started to turn against them. The assault quickly turned into an all-out rout, with the enemy hot on the Ulaid’s heels. The Carthaginian forces hadn’t even had to move. They just stood there and let their allies mop up the last of the opposing forces.

Everything in Llassar’s being told him to ride down and show these people what a real warrior could do, but he hadn’t gotten this far by being foolish. Guaire and the few other Ulaid still on the hilltop turned and began galloping away, leaving the men to their fate. It was a pathetic display and one he thought Conchobar would be ashamed to hear about, but there wasn’t anything Llassar could do to help that wouldn’t lead to his death. The only way he was going to help was to be there to coordinate between his people and the Ulaid when the Britannic legions arrived.

It was with no small measure of shame that Llassar turned his horse and followed after the fleeing Ulaid leaders.

Outside Londinium

Another large boulder crashed into the wall, about a third of the way up, and remained there, impacted into the wood and brick structure, but not able to push past the earth berm that had been pushed up the other side.

“The men’s aim is getting better,” Ky said as an aside to Ursinus, who stood behind him on a small rise, watching the two trebuchets on this section of the line pull their ballasts back so the men could load another projectile.

“I’d hope so. They’ve been firing away every day for weeks now, not that it’s done us any good. Jupiter knows, we’ve probably made it stronger with all the boulders we’ve left embedded in the walls,” he said, gesturing at the boulder that the machines had just left behind.

“It won’t matter in the long run. The logged rounds won’t affect the men trying to go over the wall.”

“I don’t understand why we don’t fire over the walls. We have the range, and even with all the practice the men are getting, a lot of shots miss the city and end up in the dirt. We’d at least kill a few of their soldiers and maybe actually cause some damage. I know we’re trying to avoid causing collateral damage, but we’re taking a city. We have to accept some collateral damage. When we storm the wall, there’s going to be damage anyway.”

“We have to rule these people once we kick out the Carthaginians, so collateral damage does matter, but that isn’t why I don’t want the men to fire over the wall. We’re never going to cause enough damage with this little artillery to help us get over the wall, so where we fire doesn’t actually matter all that much. Destroying large swaths of the city in exchange for killing a handful of soldiers doesn’t gain us enough to make it worthwhile, especially when you remember our actual goal is to amass men inside the city. If we create a lot of rubble and destruction behind the wall, it will slow our men inside the wall when they begin their assault, which will make it easier for the Carthaginians to bottle them up well short of the wall, which would make them completely ineffective.”

“Then why even bother with continuing to fire at the walls day and night?”

“Because if we are just sitting here, not doing anything, they’ll start to wonder what we are doing. They know we want to get into the city, and even their commander, as inexperienced or incompetent as he seems to be, would wonder if we are up to something. We need to keep their attention fixed on us, so they don’t start looking for our real plan. A better commander would know that what we’re doing is pointless and we’d be forced to send in regular assaults on the wall, getting men killed, to keep him focused. I’m hoping we’ll be able to get away with just these trebuchet shots and won’t have to waste men’s lives on a diversion.”

“And you can tell that we’re doing enough?” Ursinus asked.

It wasn’t accusatory or doubtful, but asked in earnest. Ursinus had been one of the first people in this timeline to fight alongside Ky, and he’d had a curiosity ever since to understand some of the things Ky was able to do.

“I can. My little bird allows me to see the men on the other side of the wall. No troops have moved off their side of the wall and there is no troop or guard movement through the city, which there would be if they were hunting for something. They’ve actually been concentrating their forces on the sections of the wall we’ve been hitting with the trebuchets, which suggests they are taking the bait.”

When speaking in Latin, instead of talking to Sophus in his native language, he sometimes had to find exchange words, because the concepts were so foreign. Sometimes, if it was something the Romans would have to interact with regularly, like gunpowder, it was easier to introduce the word into their vocabulary. But the Romans wouldn’t reach the point of independently operated drones in even his extended lifespan, so it wasn’t worth the effort to explain what a drone was. It was easier to find something comparable and just go with it. All Ursinus needed to know was he was able to look down on the city from above, and Ursinus had witnessed him doing that before and got the gist.

“I guess you know what you’re doing,” Ursinus said.

“I hope so,” Ky responded.

Londinium Docks

Carus stepped off the boat and onto the dock and wondered that this crumbling place, with piles of trash and refuse in the street and buildings crumbling from lack of maintenance, was the city his people had been trying to retake his entire life.

A guardsman walked past the end of the dock, and Carus had to avoid turning his head or acting suspiciously. Dressed in rough, and extremely itchy, tunics like that worn by common Carthaginian laborers, they looked just like any of the other people unloading boats or otherwise working on getting what little food they could into the city. Carus couldn’t help but notice the group of guards around a wagon onto which a pretty significant amount of the food was being loaded. If he had to guess, the food, which was enough to feed a dozen families for a week, was all heading to the governor and his cronies. It was typical of what he’d heard about the man, who had little regard for human life, regardless if they were citizens supposedly under his protection or not.

Since there was nothing he could do about it, Carus turned his back on the scene and headed towards the warehouse the shipmaster had indicated as they pulled up to the dock, leading the other nine men with him. Each carried an empty box to look like they had a purpose, since the shipmaster couldn’t afford to give away food, even to help them.

The inside of the building was totally packed with Roman soldiers, all wearing the same tunic he was wearing, their armor being kept in crates along the walls of the warehouse until it was time for the fighting to begin. Ramirus had thought that if guards did stumble into the warehouse, they might be able to bluff their way out, saying the soldiers were refugees or some such, hopefully preserving the plan.

The men were doing a good job of being calm, holding hushed conversations, and generally keeping quiet. So much so that, if Carus hadn’t known the warehouse was full of soldiers ahead of time, he wouldn’t have known at all. Of course, that was easier during the day, when laborers were unloading ships and offloading into the warehouses. It was harder at night, when the city settled down to sleep, but the combination of the sound of water rushing by in the river and the occasional boom from the direction of the city wall when another bolder smashed into it, helped to hide any noise, as long as it didn’t get out of hand.

Carus was doubly impressed since he knew soldiers. They were, by and large, not a particularly subtle or quiet bunch, and some of the men had been crammed in here for weeks, with nothing to do and less and less room to stretch their legs as the warehouse filled up.

Carus was a little concerned by the lack of space. Soldiers crammed into such a small place couldn’t move around much, which meant they wouldn’t be at their best when it came time to get down to the business at hand. He’d turned around to head back out of the warehouse and find Ramirus’s contact, and almost ran into the man who was coming inside.

“This building is getting very full,” Carus said.

“I know, but I wanted to get as many of your people here as we could at first. I have two more warehouses we can use, but both are smaller and further into the city, which means there’s less background noise at night to hide the sounds of the men.”

“That makes sense, but the men need a little room to move around, or they’re going to be useless on the final attack. We need to shift some of these men to the smaller warehouses. If we send a third of the men in here and split them between the two warehouses you have, leaving enough room there for the men to have a little room to move about, will we have enough space for the rest of the men coming behind me?”

“No, but I should be able to get at least one more warehouse that its owner has been trying to sell me. I’ve been putting it off because it’s not as well located to either the city or the docks and because I don’t have the money on hand to buy it.”

“Speaking of money, Ramirus sent this for you,” Carus said, pulling a small bag that had been tied around his arm and under his tunic and handing it over.

The shipmaster opened the drawstring and shook it, letting the gold pieces clink against each other.

“If I spend this on more warehouses for your men, my reward for helping you will be all gone.”

“Talk to Ramirus, he’ll make sure you’re well taken care of.”

The man looked skeptical, but said, “I will.’

“I saw the guardsman out there. Have any of them poked around the warehouse or asked about the men you’ve been bringing in?”

“No. The only thing they seem to care about is getting the governor’s cut of every shipment and taking whatever graft they have from businesses that are still operating. They were always greedy, but the worse things have gotten, the larger their greed has become.”