The Sands of Saturn (Imperium Book 3), page 2
He’d noticed the other bodies looked to have wider Ériu-style sword or ax wounds, not the spear or thinner sword wounds he’d expect if Carthaginians had been involved. Llassar was familiar with the weapons of the Ériu, partially from his earlier stay among them, but also because their weapons weren’t far removed from the Caledonian-style weapons. At least those weapons the Caledonians had used before their alliance with the Romans.
One of the first things Talogren had done when the new Empire had been formed was to begin equipping his men with weapons made from the new steel the Romans were now producing. Roman weapons had always been of higher quality metal, but their new weapons were made from an even more superior material than before. A gift from Ky, Llassar had been told.
He was just finishing his inspection when a crunching sound behind him caused Llassar to stand and whirl around, his hand going to his blade, only to stop as he saw how vastly outnumbered he was.
Six Ulaid warriors in their thick-woolen, padded, knee-length coats stood before him, sword in hand, along with the small wooden shields the Ulaid liked to carry.
“Come to desecrate your kill,” the leader, identifiable as the only man wearing a tough leather chest piece instead of the padded wool.
“I didn’t kill these people,” Llassar said in the Ériu language.
“A foreigner, on Ulaid land, kneeling over the body of one of our countrymen, and you’d like us to believe you didn’t have anything to do with this?”
Llassar had never fully mastered the Ériu language. Its more guttural sounds, made at the back of the throat, had always been difficult for him to make.
“Look at these bodies. They have been dead for at least a week. Why would I circle back here, on my own, to look at people I killed a week ago?”
“You’re a foreigner. Little of what you people do follows reason. Even if you did not kill these people, you are where you shouldn’t be. Better to leave your corpse as a warning to others to stay away from where they are not wanted.”
“I am here to see your king, Eochaid Sálbuide. He knows me. I have come to offer him help.”
“He has been dead for five years,” the man said, continuing to take steps towards Llassar.
“I haven’t been here for some time. I spent two years at court, serving the king and his son Fergus. He will remember me as well.”
“Fergus is not king either.”
“Who is?”
“Conchobar.”
Llassar remembered Conchobar. He was the son of a lesser noble and friends with Fergus. The two were younger than Llassar by several years, but already men. He remembered Conchobar as being clever, constantly outfoxing the hulking Fergus, who preferred raw power over everything else. It was surprising to hear he, not Fergus, was king, but that might prove useful. Llassar had gotten along with Conchobar much better than he had with Fergus, who he found to be a braggart.
“I know your new king as well. He will know me and will want to hear what I have to say.”
“Sure he would,” the man said, raising his sword.
Llassar considered for a moment pulling his own weapon, but it would have been pointless. He was a good fighter, but he could tell by the way they moved that these were seasoned warriors. Had there been just two or three, he would have stood a chance, but with this many, there was little chance he would survive.
Even if he did, killing the king’s warriors was a bad way to start the conversation.
“Wait,” Llassar said, holding up a hand. “Take me to Emain Macha under guard. Think about this. If the king does want to hear me out, how would he react to learning you killed me. If he doesn’t, you can kill me there just as easily as you could here. If you’re wrong, you could lose your position or even your life for angering the king. If you’re right, you only lose a little time.”
The man paused. Even to some born to the Caledonii, the Ulaid’s method of justice had been harsh. Death tended to be the sentence for most infractions against the king, which always seemed to be a poor way to retain skilled men who made honest mistakes, but now it worked to Llassar’s advantage.
The man stopped, considering. Unless a lot had changed in the last fifteen years, Llassar’s description of what would happen in either case had been more or less accurate. The kings of the Ulaid preferred its minions to ask permission, even if that meant delaying an otherwise preferable set of choices. Those men who did take the initiative often found their necks stretched against the block when it was wrong.
“I guess we can kill you later,” the man said, gesturing at Llassar with his sword. “Bind him.”
Chapter 2
Londinium
“… Then what good are you?” Maharbaal yelled, inches from Caesius’s face.
“You wanted to know what my father and his lackey were up to, and I got you that information. I even told you about their new weapons, not that you did anything with that information. I told you exactly how many men they had under arms and when they left Devnum to meet your forces. My spies told you everything you wanted. It was up to you to put an end to their forces and put me on my rightful throne. It was also you who screwed that up, losing an army five times the size of the Roman forces in an afternoon.”
“I will have you gutted,” Maharbaal fumed, spittle flying from his lips.
“How long do you think you’d last after I’m dead? I know you like to think you’re some all-powerful ruler here on your island, but we both know who you answer to and we both know how little patience your Emperor has for men who can’t do their duties. Now that you’ve all but given this island to this new empire of my father, I’m even more important to your Emperor than you are. I still have sources inside their territory able to pass along intelligence and maybe even designs or samples of these new weapons. All you have is a few thousand men, cowering behind your walls, slowly starving to death.”
“No one’s starving. Food shipments from Hibernia and Iberia continue.”
“And yet your men still hide.”
Maharbaal’s fists tightened and, for a moment, Caesius thought he might have goaded the fool into actually doing it. The moment passed and Maharbaal’s fists unclenched. For as arrogant and out of touch as the governor was, he wasn’t completely brain dead. He’d survived the cutthroat world of the Carthaginian court and managed to get appointed as a governor of one of the empire’s administrative districts. On the fringes of the empire, but their centuries-long battle against his own people made it a not insignificant one.
Caesius knew that Maharbaal knew he was right about how the Emperor would react to his having Caesius killed. They preferred to place someone controllable but native over every population they pacified and having the next man to wear the purple was as big of an agent as they could hope for. They would know Caesius being placed over his people would help keep the region under control, allowing them to redirect resources and manpower to other parts of their domain.
Plus, Maharbaal also had bigger things to worry about than one exiled prince. The city was dangerously low on soldiers and arms, and the shipments from Hibernia were not enough to offset the shortage. Caesius had read part of a message to Maharbaal when the fool hadn’t been paying attention, and knew that a relief mission was being assembled in Africa, but that it would take some months to get enough manpower to retake the lost land.
Maharbaal was already in a precarious position. He’d done well to blame the loss on his general and appeared to have gotten the Emperor to believe him, but it was unlikely the governor could deflect another failure. And the Carthaginians had a well-known solution for dealing with failures that Maharbaal certainly didn’t want to face.
“You,” Maharbaal said, turning away from Caesius to one of his nearby aides. “Put guards on the storehouses and keep all of the food shipments that come in under guard. Confiscate all of the food you can from vendors and sell no food to vendors any longer. Begin distributing rations to people directly from the warehouses. Limit civilians to one-quarter of the standard soldier’s ration. The soldiers themselves can maintain the standard rations. Go.”
“It will take months for the supply convoy to arrive. You’re not going to have enough food to keep soldiers at full rations while still feeding the populace,” Caesius pointed out.
“I realize that. We still have work projects reinforcing the wall and repairing damage from the Roman’s weapons and if we cut them off they won’t have the strength to do the work that’s needed. Once we make a list of essential workers, we’ll cut off everyone not on that list, and keep them at minimal rations to survive.”
“If they do anything to cut your shipments, by even a little bit, or your people slow down for whatever reason, you’re still going to have to cut rations to your soldiers. When my sister and her fool come, and they are going to come, your men are going to be too weak to repel them.”
Maharbaal’s frown deepened. Caesius knew he hated him, but he was also in desperate need of good advice, and he had to know Caesius was right.
“Stop,” Maharbaal yelled out after the retreating form of the aide. When the man returned to them, he said, “No rations to the civilians, unless they can show they are working on or they have been assigned to one of the work projects.”
The aide hesitated for a moment, and then dashed off again.
“Now do your part. You have people out there. Raid the Britannians. Kill their commanders. Do something to show your worth or you can be added to the names of people not being fed,” Maharbaal said, before turning and storming off.
Caesius watched him leave, contemplating. He was in a precarious position. He’d lost most of his informants, who’d been caught by Ramirus and his damn security forces. If he set those he had left on direct missions to counter his father’s soldiers, he would lose most of them, and his remaining usefulness to the Carthaginians. He liked to think they’d keep him around to put into power when they retook the island, but he also knew they only wanted people completely loyal to them. Something no one would believe of him, no matter what he said.
He needed to be seen as helping the situation here, but he also still needed leverage. This city was going to fall, of that he was certain. He needed to be seen doing just enough to deflect claims that he’d stood aside during the defense of the city.
He also needed to start working on a plan to get out before the city actually fell.
♦♦♦
Britannic Camp, Outside Londinium
“ … and four-thousand, three hundred and twelve critically wounded, which includes everyone from non-mobile prisoners to those who will most certainly die in the next several weeks,” Ursinus concluded.
After their defeat of the Carthaginian army Ky had pushed his commanders hard to cut off isolated detachments or fleeing survivors, keen to keep as many soldiers as possible from reaching Londinium and adding to their current manpower. They’d left a legion to guard the huge number of prisoners, but other than instructing Ursinus to treat the prisoners humanely, he hadn’t given much thought to their disposition.
Now that the cleanup of southern Britain was complete and they’d pushed the Carthaginians behind the walls of the city, it was time to deal with the mess they’d left in their wake. Lucilla had begun getting aid and supplies to the Roman population abused for so long by the Carthaginians well in hand, but that left the huge numbers of prisoners they’d taken after the battle.
While the death toll had been catastrophic, Ky had managed to stop the battle as larger and larger groups began surrendering, keeping it from turning into an all-out slaughter. That had left him the problem of what to do with the nearly twenty-five thousand prisoners currently under guard, only a little shy of the entire force Ky had taken into the battle. Feeding his army had been a problem. Feeding them and the nearly thirty-thousand prisoners, counting the ones still being held from their previous battle, was going to be nearly impossible.
They had nearly doubled their territory with the capture of the land previously controlled by the Carthaginians, but planting season hadn’t started yet and the Carthaginians had already stripped the land bare to feed their army. It would be months before they started producing enough food in these new regions to help offset the deficiency.
“You know my feelings on this,” Ky said, looking at Ramirus and the four senators standing at one edge of the large table holding maps of the newly conquered region.
“We aren’t recommending labor gangs,” Ramirus said, reiterating the statement he’d made at the beginning of the meeting before asking Ursinus to list the current prisoner counts. “We understand that is forbidden under the anti-slavery laws that our new Imperial senate adopted, and we understand that you are against using prisoners in that way. We however wanted to make the scope of our problem clear before we started addressing our suggestions.”
“Fine. I understand the scope of the problem and I will try to restrain myself until I hear all of your recommendations.”
“The number of prisoners and our current food supplies aren’t the only problems we face. Over the last hundred years, the Carthaginians have conscripted or eliminated many of the villagers who lived and worked in the re-conquered lands. The Carthaginians who later moved in and took over the land all fled with their soldiers behind the walls. While we now have all this land to grow food for our people, much of it is empty with no one to plant the food when the snows melt.”
“Since Senator Opilio is here, I suspect you have recommendations on what to do about that,” Ky said.
Opilio was the leader of what Ky had thought of as the farming block of senators. Theywere a handful of senators who represented mostly the farming interests, although that usually meant the large landowners, not the small yeoman farmers that provided nearly half of the food produced in the empire.
“I do have a suggestion, actually. Since much of that land was taken from our people who fled north when the Carthaginians pushed us back into the middle of the country, I think we should first allow their descendants to claim their re-conquered land. The remaining land we can auction off, allowing new opportunities to citizens willing to pay for it and revenue for the Imperial treasury, which has been sorely taxed of late by all of the new projects being introduced.”
“For people reclaiming land, what if the people currently on that land didn’t run? What if the descendants of former Romans, who didn’t or couldn’t escape north when the Carthaginians invaded, stayed? What if they were moved to new lands to work by the Carthaginians? A hundred years is a long time, and there will have been migrations. Children of those families might have moved to abandoned land and claimed it. We can’t start alienating people we are bringing back into the empire right after freeing them.”
“I’ve discussed this with the Emperor before coming down here, and he had similar concerns. This ‘reclaiming’ would only apply to currently unoccupied land. He made the point that we should make the same policy for land currently occupied by Carthaginians who chose to not flee to Londinium as we reclaimed the land.”
“I agree with him. We can’t very well call ourselves liberators if we are doing the same thing the Carthaginians did when they invaded. By my math, however, that will still not solve our problem. Without the slave labor that the Carthaginians used, we would either have to sell the land in very small parcels, or find the manpower to work that land.”
Ky began to object again, before Ramirus raised his hand and said, “Consul, we are not suggesting we conscript the prisoners to do the work. Or at least, we are not suggesting we conscript them to do the work against their will.”
“That sounds like a very fine line you are preparing to walk.”
“We can’t have men just languishing in prison camps every day. Idle men get into mischief. Especially soldiers,” Velius said. “Better to keep them occupied.”
“But only the ones that volunteer,” Ramirus said. “This won’t be slave labor. We’ll offer more and better rations, which will matter, as we’re going to have to start putting them on shorter rations now, if we don’t want to have a major food crisis before the harvest. I know you said we needed to treat them humanely, and we are, but it’s either ration them, or our own soldiers. There are just too many mouths to feed and insufficient food to do it with. We can also offer other amenities, like cots, beds, things like that.”
“We aren’t giving them those things now?” Ky asked
“We don’t have enough,” Ramirus replied. “We were barely able to cover our first batch of prisoners, and this group exceeds the size of that group several times over. We could give maybe ten percent of the camp those items, but that would create issues for every prisoner, while giving comfort to very few. We’ve also discussed the possibility of early release back to the mainland for those who put in a set amount of work. It means we’ll have to fight many of them again, but I doubt we’ll ever reach the bottom of that pool. That’s only if the goods and food aren’t enough to get men to volunteer.”
