Raising Steam

by Peter Rhodan

  “Flunkies is it?” Coel said trying to sound offended but smiling all the same, but watching him surreptitiously once the attention was off him Morghanna saw his face harden and such a black look come into his eyes as he glanced at Arturo that Morghanna began to think that Coel’s friendly attitude was maybe put on.

  “Yes, but very good ones.” Arturo continued smiling. “We probably would have moved south already but for this Scotti invasion. I cannot afford to take the army south with bands of Scotti all roaming around at will. Hopefully your brother will sort them out soon.”

  Morghanna nodded. She had considered asking for the Romans to drive the Scotti out of the Selgovae lands but refrained out of fear of the price they would demand plus the she imagined her brother would be shamed by her having the Romans do what he could not. She had sent word north through the Votandi lands about their coming south to avoid the Scotti but had not heard anything back from Cunedd yet. “You intend to take over the whole of the Roman territory then?” She asked.

  Arturo nodded. “My intention is to restore the Republic. One step at a time. I have already sent a couple of letters to Combrosius, so far without reply but once we are free to march then he will have some hard decisions to make.”

  “And is his force larger than yours?”

  Coel nodded. “Overall yes. We have more regulars now, once our new recruits are fully trained and by all accounts he has been hiring Saxoni and Frisi mercenaries to bolster his forces. Apparently these are real foederati, operating separately, rather than being in integrated into his regulars.”

  Arturo nodded. “It seems he is having trouble attracting recruits for his regulars, something about not being able to pay in coin like we can.” He smiled and the others smiled back at him.

  “And does he have a lot of these Saxoni?” She asked.

  Coel shook his head. “At last report not much above a thousand although that number is going up. By all accounts there is a steady flow of boats coming across the Mare Britannium bringing more warriors every week.”

  “You don’t appear very worried.” She observed scanning the unconcerned faces in the room.

  Brennus answered for the others. “My countrymen fight well and are more solid than your people in a battle, but they are mercenaries and undisciplined. We will shoot them up and then take advantage of their indiscipline to cut them up in detail. They will not enjoy facing the Republican army if it comes to a fight.”

  “You sound very confident.” She shivered as she felt the doom of her people sitting in this room.

  Brennus shrugged, apparently not noticing her shudder. “My people are not like yours. They will fight in a compact shield wall which will only advance slowly, not charge wildly like your warriors. Well at least not till they are almost at javelin range of their foe. The shield wall will reduce the casualties our bows will inflict but their slow advance will give us a lot more time to shoot at them. Besides which, they have not seen anything like our artillery. Roman ballista arrows are just not the same as the ball throwers we have now. They will knock gaps in their lines and disrupt their front which will slow their advance even more and they are simply going to be shot to bits before they even get close.”

  Coel smiled. “The regulars are more of a threat. They will be well armed and armoured and will probably charge hard. They are the opponents we have to trick into defeat like we did with your people. If we can manage to run them off, then the Saxon mercenaries become easy meat.”

  Morghanna looked at the two men then back to Arturo. They were all quite confident in the ability to defeat whatever force Combrosius put on the battlefield. And it wasn’t just the warrior bravado she was so used to amongst her own people. These men had been studying and preparing to defeat the forces of Combrosius for a good while already and they had not even begun to march on him yet.

  This conversation more than anything else she had experienced the last few days brought home to her just how different this Arturo was and the effect he was having on those around him. There was a seriousness, a cold calculation, that was alien to own people’s attitude to war, and she suspected to other Romans as well. There was an honour to him, his treatment of her people showed that, indeed if anything there was nobility to him that many nobly born seemed to lack. Certainly, both her late husband and his brother had been far less like a noble than this man in front of her. It was a disturbing thought in some ways.

  Suddenly realising she was daydreaming she hastily looked around the table, but no one seemed to notice her start except Udo who raised an eyebrow but said nothing. The three men opposite her were continuing their discussion without noticing her abstraction.

  “The key will be defeating their cavalry.” Arturo was saying. “If we can get that off the field then the rest becomes a training exercise.”

  Brennus laughed. “I don’t know I’d go that far but certainly clearing their cavalry out will make things much easier. I’m still getting used to the idea that our cavalry can fight as infantry I will admit. But I can see them causing all sorts of problems if they get around someone’s flank and start shooting them up from the rear.”

  Arturo nodded. “Hopefully Combrosius will see the light and throw his lot in with us without it coming to blows. That would be the best scenario.” Morghanna decided he genuinely wished for this result. Interesting.

  Coel nodded. “Agreed, but unlikely. I know him. He is proud and jealous of his dignity. Not as full of his own superiority as Maximus was but carelessly arrogant in that Roman way. You know what I mean Brennus?”

  Brennus nodded but refrained for answering as his mouth was full. Morghanna was finding the whole dinner party a somewhat surreal experience. These men were happy to discuss almost anything in front of the women whom they seemed to treat as equals, even if the wife of Brennus was clearly still very uncomfortable being seated amongst her betters. Morghanna couldn’t remember the woman’s name from the brief introduction but intended to find out. She had not said much but despite her unease in the lofty company at the table, she was obviously following the conversation.

  The discussion turned to more prosaic matters and Morghanna tried to follow as best she could the references to local events or people she had no prior knowledge of. The whole evening passed quite pleasantly, the restrained eating habits and easy conversation made the night a dinner vastly different than anything she had experienced in the hall of her father or indeed with her brief husband. Still there were many things that puzzled her but which she was hesitant to ask about such as the female bodyguards and what relation they had with this Arturo Sandus. She very much wanted to know if they were concubines or his lovers or whatever. Why she had to know this she was not quite sure, but it was something she needed to resolve.

  The question of the bodyguards was just one question among many from that night as well as other questions that had arisen in the days before. There were the mentions of these rail roads or railways which she thought were the same thing, the trains which seemed to be related some-how and various other things she assumed were new devices or methods that had been introduced by the enigmatic Roman Dux. It was all very puzzling.

  Chapter 17

  Progress on all fronts

  Arturo Sandus looked out over the town of Dervent or Derventio as some still called. He smiled at the view of the town which lay bathed in rare sunshine and the northerly wind meant the smoke of the industries was disappearing southwards along with most of the odours! The small huddle of mostly round houses with thatched rooves that comprised the town when he first arrived was almost totally replaced by new construction of mostly brick buildings. There was even a two storey block of units for workers at the iron works on the far side of town closest to their employment. The population had long since passed a thousand and was growing rapidly. Dervent was still smaller than Lugowalion but was increasing in size much the faster of the two.

  In the far distance he could see the workers building the new water pipeline from the moun
tain lakes. A large concrete cistern had been constructed on the hill to the west of town and the pipeline would bring as much water to that cistern as required to keep it topped up. Unlike other Roman water channels this was not being built as an aqueduct as the introduction of reliable steam engines had made pumps possible and thus rendered the need to bring the water down in a well-engineered and steadily falling channel unnecessary.

  To the west the new sewerage pipeline disappeared towards the coast. Sewers were something the Romans had long been good at but ones like this were new to the north of Britannia where Roman engineering had never really extended much beyond fortifications. Nearly every building in the town was now connected to the sewer, which resulted in the place smelling much better and being far healthier. Horse manure was the main cause of odour these days, something he could live with easily compared to what it had been like. Today he was heading south, first to Wern for the launching of the Romulus, the first warship, then further south to Glannoventa to oversee the planning for his chemical works.

  The passenger trains were still not overflowing although their use was slowly rising. Once the line was open to Lugowalion it would help increase the numbers travelling on the line but the amount of goods being shipped using the railroad was growing at a much faster rate. Scotti traders were appearing at Wern in their small ships regularly now, buying cloth and metal tools. The use of coal for heating was booming and the amount being shipped from the mines was skyrocketing.

  Lewarth’s senior journeyman, Eudeo, was working on a basic harvesting machine from ideas Arturo had given him. It would be horse drawn and fairly rudimentary but would improve harvesting no end once they got the bugs out of it. Like a lot of other technology, Arturo really only had the haziest idea of how such things worked. At least he did have some idea of the concepts though and thus could get the local craftsmen to translate his vague theoretical knowledge into practical machinery, usually. Eventually! Like gunpowder. He was pretty sure he had the formula right in his head but until Captain Largwil turned up with some sulphur which he could use to experiment with it was all just theory. In the meantime, he was accumulating a store of saltpetre for later use much to the puzzlement of those he was paying to collect it.

  The ceramic industry was booming as well. Not just the exploding requirement for bricks the building boom was generating but also pots, plates, mugs and so forth. Some chap had taken the drop forge idea and translated that into force moulding bowls and cups using a steam engine to power the whole operation. And not just one moulding tool. He had a whole bank of these moulding stations powered by his one engine because the force required to mould wet clay was nowhere near as high as moulding metal. The resulting moulded ceramic items were stacked in an open shed for a few days to cure then fired in furnaces using low cost coal to provide the heat.

  The products were cheap and nasty when compared to the best hand-made ceramics, but were also very affordable and were flooding into people’s homes from Lugowalion to Glannoventa and even further afield. The fellow was experimenting with simple glazes now and better quality goods would start appearing from his works any time soon.

  A woman who had pottery experience was also experimenting with glazes and clay quality at Arturo’s request and he was hoping that very shortly she would come up with something similar to the fine quality table ware that was the norm in the future he came from. His changing of the laws to give women the right to own property was gradually changing attitudes and behavioural patterns in the local society as well. The change was being helped but the influx of people to Dervent and to a lesser extent Wern looking for work. Many were younger people who were more malleable to attitude change and already there were several women entrepreneurs he could point at, even if most were still only small time. Briffet’s work with cloth manufacture was the single biggest attitude changer, her social ranking as the daughter of Arcadius gave her actions a moral force that carried some real weight.

  The single biggest effect so far was that if the husband died the land or business now went to the wife rather than other male family members. There were still problems in implementing the law, particularly among the older and far more patriarchal males, but the change was slowly gaining ground. Considering the short period of time, it had been in force he was happy with the results so far. After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day, he laughed to himself at that thought. God that was an old saying. Well it was old in his time, not so much in the here and now!

  Another new item was the introduction of bank notes. Now that there were branches of the North Britannia Bank in Wern, Dervent, Maglona and Lugowalion, Arturo had quietly introduced bank notes to help trade. The idea being that instead of businessmen having to cart chests full of coins from one place to another they simply took a note for any large amount of money from the bank branch in say Wern and handed into the bank branch in Lugowalion where that amount would be credited to bearer’s account and they could draw their funds in the form of coins there.

  So far the concept was only finding limited acceptance but even so the use of bank notes was slowly growing and would help overcome the coin shortage the economy was experiencing. Fortunately for the coin shortage problem, the Scotti who had overrun the Novotae and Selgovae lands were trading their captured treasure for more practical items through the port at Wern and even a slowly growing trickle over the northern border. Plus, the mine at Epiacum, whilst mostly lead, also had some silver in it and this was providing a boost to the amount of silver coinage as well.

  Copper was being shipped north in good quantities from the mines to the west of Deva and now tin would be coming north from Dumnonia as well, so making sufficient bronze coins was no longer as problematic especially with the new steam driven coin press. Healthcare was still a problem but Carmelyn was taking to the knowledge Arturo was giving him quite readily. In fact, he planned to use the man to open the first medical school at Alladraef once the first university buildings were ready.

  The print works at Wern was going well and Melwyn and an educated Gallic fellow by the name of Arborix, who had turned up at some point, were working on the first ever dictionary. It would not be a complete work covering every possible word, but they were trying to be as comprehensive as they could manage within a reasonable timeframe and the publication of the dictionary would allow Arturo to get some Terran technical terms into common usage. There was now a weekly newspaper being produced which sounded impressive although it was really just a single sheet, printed both sides and folded over. Still, it was the first regular newspaper ever introduced in the Roman Empire.

  The three men waiting in the unlit room started when a fourth figure sidled in surreptitiously. He wore typical Brython clothing, nondescript tunic and trousers plus a broad brimmed, floppy Gallic style hat which concealed his features. “Good, you are all here.” He said in soft voice. “My master has instructions.” The voice was that of a relatively young man.

  The three men nodded without replying. They had been paid regularly for three months to be ready at any time for this job. The latecomer produced a bag and put it on the small table that held the men’s drinks. “Here is a pound of gold. Sandus leaves today for Wern and then will head for Glannoventa after the launching of a new ship at Wern in a day or two. If you ride south directly you should be in a position to intercept him a day’s march south of Wern.”

  “Aye. It would help if we had one of those new telescope things to spy on him from a distance.” One of the men said.

  “Perhaps, but there is not enough time to procure one now. As far as can be determined he will only be accompanied by his Aide and the three women bodyguards. If he is accompanied by real troops best you pass on the job and we will wait for a better time.” The man said this last with obvious distaste.

  “Ha.” One of the three snorted. “The women at least will be easy. His Aide Oween is another matter. Very handy with a sword is Oween.”

  “Which is why you will be well served to kill them at
night while he is asleep.” The man said dismissively. “Do not come back here afterwards. Go to Voreda and wait. My master will have the two further pounds of gold delivered to you there.”

  “I am surprised he will not be accompanied by any troops.” Another opined.

  The hat wearer waved a hand dismissively. “That is his normal way of travelling. If in any doubt the plan is to be cancelled and we will wait for another opportunity. We do not want him spooked and put on his guard! Now, how many men do you have?”

  “We have another six waiting for us nearby. All experienced and well armed.” The one had spoken the most said.

  “Good. That should be enough if you attack at night.” If any of the three men seemed a little surprised that the man thought nine of them were insufficient to best two men and three women without sneaking up on them at night they did not say anything. “Very well. You have your orders. Wait some time before leaving.” The man ordered and slipped out the door almost silently.

  The Romulus settled in the water to the cheers of the small crowd of people gathered on the shore to watch the launch. They were mostly the workers and their families but there were a smattering of townspeople and of course the small group of dignitaries. Somehow, even without her masts or weapons the Romulus looked far more intimidating than either of the cargo ships built so far.

  Cambelyn had cleared and made ready a second slipway and a third cargo ship had already begun construction on the new slip. It would be a pace wider but not a lot longer than its predecessors. Tomorrow the work would start on a second warship, to the same design as the Romulus. Until the Romulus was rigged and had undergone trials there was no way of determining what changes to the design should be made but rather than wait Arturo had ordered the second ship to be started immediately. Apart from the basic hull they could always make changes to the new ship while on the stocks.