by Eric Flint
* * *
Pharnabazus saw the Macedonian kick his horse and shifted his aim. He was shocked when the Macedonian managed to get his shield around in time. He felt the jolt of impact in his bones. His lance shattered even as it threw the Macedonian off his horse. Pharnabazus dropped the remnants of his lance, spun Thunderbolt, and drew his sword.
There was one of his men in a melee with two of the enemy and still trying to hold onto his lance. Pharnabazus shouted, “Drop your lance, Conon!”
He rode for them, not even aware of the Macedonian noble that Thunderbolt trampled in passing. Then he swung his sword and hit one of the enemies while Conon blocked the other’s ax strike with his shield.
“Drop your lance, I say!” Pharnabazus repeated. “Draw your sword, you idiot!”
“How am I supposed to do that when people are whacking at me?” Conon complained. But he did finally drop the lance. At which point, another enemy attacked and Conon was busy with his shield again, even as he tried unsuccessfully to get his sword out of his scabbard.
Pharnabazus looked around. They were winning. The initial attack more than evened the odds and most of the melee had been two or more of Pharnabazus’ men on one enemy. At that point, the enemy had very little chance. Even as he looked around, Antigonus’ force broke and the remnants rode away. When the lancers broke, the archers turned and rode away with them while Pharnabazus’ chariot-based archers rained arrows on them.
Two hours later
The sun was lowering in the afternoon sky and the dead were laid out in rows. Out of a hundred men, Pharnabazus had lost three, with five more wounded in the melee. The enemy had lost twenty-three, eighteen lancers and five horse archers. It was about as one-sided a battle as Pharnabazus had ever seen in a lifetime as a soldier. It was more one-sided than Alexander’s victory over Darius III at Gaugamela, though much smaller, of course.
“We need a fast way of switching weapons after the initial charge, General,” said Conon. “It wasn’t that I didn’t think about dropping the cursed lance. It was just that there was no time to switch weapons and the lance was better than nothing.”
“No, Conon. You’re wrong. Not about needing a quick way to change weapons. I agree about that. But once you were in the fight proper, the lance was worse than nothing. Certainly worse than a few moments of nothing while you switched weapons.”
Other members of the scouting party came forward to discuss what had gone right or wrong with the battle. Much more had gone right than wrong, but half the purpose of this patrol was to discover the effectiveness of the chariots and the new saddles and lances. The chariots especially, because they were the invention of one of Attalus’ cavalrymen in conjunction with Karrel Agot, who had come up with the cotter pins for detaching the chariots, and the wire-spoked wheels. Pharnabazus would have to thank Karrel Agot the next time he saw him.
The bronze strip-twist wire was made by hand by a group of craftsmen in Babylon. Craftsmen who had been making wire for decades. The only thing new was using it in wheels.
CHAPTER 16
Consummation
Babylon, west side
May 15, 319 BCE
Karrel Agot wiped his forehead with both hands and closed his eyes for a moment. There was very little breeze even though all the windows in the third-floor room were open. The oil lamps were barely enough light to work by. He leaned back over the table, positioned the ruler, and used the pressed-charcoal stick to draw a line. The west side of Babylon now had windmills on the roofs of several buildings along the Euphrates River. Those windmills lifted water from the Euphrates up to water tanks atop the buildings and then used the height of those tanks to provide water pressure all over the west side.
Well, not all over the west side. Here and there around the west side, where the people could afford it.
But the process was making the whole hanging gardens thing much easier to manage, and even allowed the occasional flush toilet. Of course, those toilets emptied right back into the Euphrates. Which made the situation no different than it had been before they got here. But Susan had a bee in her bonnet about it.
It wasn’t that Karrel disagreed. He just had way too much to do. It wasn’t fair to call Susan a woolly-headed intellectual, but it was certainly true that she had a great deal less experience with mechanics and hydraulics than he had. She also didn’t know much about fortifications. And the most recent word Karrel had from his sources in East Babylon was that Antigonus was bringing up more forces. The time Karrel spent designing the sewer system that Susan insisted upon was time he couldn’t be spending on improving the fortifications on this side of the river. It was all very well to protect them from disease, but if Antigonus’ troops took the west side, they were going to die anyway.
Babylon, east side
The courier gave Antigonus the message from Atropates, the satrap of Media. It was flowery and full of praise, but offered no armies. His excuse was rebellion in his satrapy, fomented by the knowledge the ship people brought. Antigonus knew the real reason. That reason was Babylon. He was pinned here by that idiot Attalus and unable to attack Eumenes. That made him look weak to the eastern satraps.
Antigonus crushed the letter in his hand. He was angry, but not truly surprised. Nicanor of Parthia was sending an army of two thousand. A pittance, but better than nothing. Asander retreated from his satrapy of Caria with his personal retinue, but no great force. Tlepolemus of Carmania was trying to stay out of it, like Atropates—praise, but no aid. Sibyrtius, satrap of Arachosia, was sending troops, but the distance was great. Stasanor of Sogdiana was sending an army, but again, the distance was great.
Stasanor had read the ship people records of what he had gotten in Triparadisus and was angry with Eumenes that he hadn’t gotten the promotion in this history. That was unfair to Eumenes, who had nothing to do with the decision.
Antigenes, the commander of the Silver Shields, was nominally the satrap of Susiana, but he hadn’t been there since the mess at Triparadisus. Antigonus himself was effectively the satrap of Susiana, but Susiana was not going to provide troops either. Antigonus’ control there was not strong and the satrapy was a drain on his manpower because of the garrisons he had to keep there.
Leonnatus came in. “The windmill is up on the Bactor Tower.”
The Bactor Tower was a three-story building next to the Euphrates and the windmill placed atop the stone building was another five stories tall. It had five long fan blades and would lift a great deal of water up to a water tank. It wasn’t only Attalus who was improving the city of Babylon. By agreement, Antigonus had access to the radio in West Babylon and the Wiki, which to Antigonus seemed like an oracle, if more pragmatic in the information it provided. That access was part of the ship people attempt to seem neutral in the war between him and Eumenes. So, like Attalus, he got information from the ship people on subjects like sanitation and windmills. That information was making Babylon over, even as the city remained divided.
The windmill and water tank on the Bactor Tower performed two functions. One was as a water supply, but the other was as power storage. What the ship people called potential energy. The windmill pumped the water up to the tank, where it stayed till needed. Then a pipe took the water down to a generator that was almost entirely made right here in Babylon. The copper wire was made here, the coils were wound here, and the brushes were made here as well. They weren’t the graphite brushes that the Wiki article talked about, but the earlier brushes that were actual wire brushes made of many short copper wires bound together.
Antigonus was not willing to have his access to the ship people and the Wiki flow through West Babylon. He would have a radio of his own.
“What about the tubes for my radio?” Antigonus asked.
“The Queen reports that they have been dropped off in Alexandria and any delays at this point are Ptolemy’s doing, not the ship people’s,” Leonnatus said with some bitterness.
“What does Ptolemy say?”
“That they are in a warehouse in Alexandria and he will arrange for their transport in exchange for oil.”
Antigonus nodded. “Give him his cursed oil. We have the wells working near the Gulf. At least some.”
Leonnatus was not a great commander, but he had proven quite adept at understanding the ship people devices and techniques. That made keeping him around worthwhile, because the ship people’s way of doing things was changing the world, and doing it much faster than Antigonus would prefer. “What about the powder mill?” Antigonus asked.
The formula and techniques for making what the ship people called black powder was all over the empire by now. And after what Eumenes had done with rockets at the Bosphorus, Antigonus no longer doubted their effect on war.
“I still say we should move it out of the city. One spark and we could lose a city block,” Leonnatus said.
“Then make sure there are no sparks,” Antigonus said. “You know that if we put it outside the city, Attalus will send a raiding party to destroy the works.”
“So put it farther east, in Media or Susiana.”
“Stick to your toys, Leonnatus,” Antigonus said. “Leave strategy to those of us who understand it.”
“Yes, Satrap,” Leonnatus said sullenly.
* * *
For the next two months, Leonnatus played with his toys while news flashed around the world on radio waves. While the Queen of the Sea made two trips to the Mediterranean and another trip to Saint Helena, Madagascar and the east coast of Africa up to Dioscorides, and Eumenes and Eurydice and Philip arranged for a small fleet of sailing ships.
Abdera docks
July 18, 319 BCE
Philip III of Macedon, co-king with his nephew Alexander IV of the United Satrapies and States of the Empire, stood on the deck of the Argos and thought. He paid no attention to the waves slapping gently against the sides of the ship or the smell of the sea.
He had duties. And now he was almost able to perform them. He could stand to be touched, at least some, and he was functional. In a way, it was less of a trauma for Philip than it would have been for a ship person. Victorian morality wasn’t existent at all in this century. It was simply that until the ship people had come, he was unable to be touched without going into hysterics. That was different now, with the use of the squeeze box and the marijuana water pipe that he smoked to decrease the tension. The marijuana made the world vague, and he didn’t like that part. But it held the panic at bay, as well.
He looked down the dock and watched the sailors and soldiers loading the ships. They would be leaving soon, to go to Amphipolis, or perhaps all the way to Therma, only a short distance from Pella. Eurydice was pushing for the Therma option because Eurydice was addicted to risk. She was brave in everything, and sometimes too brave. Convinced that she would win, no matter what the odds. It made people want to follow her. Alexander had had the same thing, and more of it. Eumenes didn’t have that, but in Philip’s judgment, he was the more intelligent planner. And that implied that Amphipolis was the better plan.
But Philip couldn’t see how it was a better plan. Philip was very good with numbers and he remembered what he read. Everything he read. But the interactions of people didn’t make sense to him and he knew that. It seemed to him that going to Amphipolis would put their army between Cassander to the west and Lysimachus to the east. He was sure that Eumenes saw that, but Eumenes wanted to do it that way anyway. And Philip couldn’t understand why.
* * *
Eumenes laid the letter from Paul Howard on his desk. Paul was a ship person living in Trinidad. The letter was a discussion of The Tactics of Mistake, a book by an author named Dickson. The book itself hadn’t made the trip through time, but Mr. Howard was a science fiction fan and a true bibliophile with a phenomenal memory. The basic idea of the book had come to this time in the brain of Paul Howard and a single Wiki article. It was something that Alexander had done almost by instinct, and Eumenes had done sometimes with intent, and sometimes by accident. What you did was give the enemy a tempting target, make it look like you had slipped up, so they would rush in to take advantage. Then, when they left themselves exposed by their attack, you counterattack.
He looked at the map on the wall. It covered the northern Aegean Sea and surrounding territories from the Bosphorus in the east to the edge of the Adriatic Sea in the west. It was from the ship people charts and colored in by hand, and it took up most of the wall. It was backed by cork and had little steel pins with painted wood tops stuck into it, to indicate troop concentrations and the locations of important people. Alexander would have traded his horse for it, Eumenes was almost sure.
The specific mistake he was trying to engineer by his insistence on Amphipolis as their target was to pull Lysimachus out of Thrace so that Seuthes III could retake his state. Tactically, that wouldn’t help them that much. They would still have—as Paul put it—“Cassander to the left of them and Lysimachus to the right.” They would be just as boxed in in Amphipolis as they were in Abdera.
But that wasn’t why he was doing it. They had to be seen as the legitimate government, and they had to be seen as keeping their promises. That meant that having promised Seuthes Thrace, they had to give him Thrace. Get Lysimachus out of Thrace. And Eumenes didn’t have a big enough army to force Lysimachus out of Thrace by main force, not without destroying Thrace in the process.
Partly that was because Eumenes was fighting a war on two fronts, here and around Babylon. But in large part it was a function of what might be considered a third front. The resources that were being poured into industrial development, roads, mines, pumps, steam engines, and so on, would pay massive returns in a few years. But right now they were as much a drain on his resources as fielding another army would be. It was only made worse with the knowledge that the ship people disapproved of slavery. The Event—he wouldn’t call it a miracle though many did—that brought the ship people to this time, gave the ship people and their views a holy aura in the minds of many. The ships themselves, the Queen of the Sea and the Reliance, added to that effect. So far, there had been three slave revolts in the empire. And putting them down pulled armies out of the civil war. On the other hand, the same thing had happened in Macedonia, pulling away part of Cassander’s army.
Another thing that Paul Howard wrote him about was a doctrine called tactical defense and strategic offense. Eumenes got up and went to the map. Using a measured string, he measured out the distances again. It was almost a ritual by now. How many days would it take Cassander’s army to reach Amphipolis? How many to reach Therma?
The door opened and Eurydice came in. “Measuring again? It will take Cassander at least four days and probably six to reach Amphipolis. Therma, he can reach in one if he is lucky, but more probably two.
“I still say two days is enough to fortify Therma well enough to stop Cassander if you insist on waiting for him to attack.” She held up a hand as Eumenes looked at her. “Never mind. You are strategos and Roxane agrees with you on this. Or at least Dag does, and Roxane listens to Dag.”
Eumenes lifted his open hands. “Thanks to Athena. You’re going to stop insisting…”
“Not until we are at sea and the captains open their sealed orders, which will bear Philip’s seal and all our signatures. If we are going to be tricky, we should be as tricky as possible. Cassander can’t move from Pella until he knows where we are going. So, best if he doesn’t know until we get there.”
Flagship Argos, off Amphipolis
July 19, 319 BCE
Eurydice looked at the long shadows that the wall of Amphipolis cast in the evening sun. The sea was shading to a darker blue as well, as the captain of the Argos shifted sail and adjusted his rudder. She looked through the binoculars and saw the garrison of Amphipolis. Forming ranks, but they didn’t know where to go. The standard method would be to beach the ships near the town and disembark. And it was clear as she watched that the garrison had assumed her fleet would do just that.
By now
they realized that wasn’t what was happening. They just didn’t know why.
* * *
“We’ll slaughter them,” Gordias crowed.
Cepheus wasn’t so sure. Neither of them had served with Alexander, but Cepheus liked to read. As a boy he’d read the reports on the war in Persia with obsessive interest and he knew that Alexander trusted Eumenes, and Eumenes was usually successful, even if he was a Thracian wagoneer’s son. The books the ship people brought back suggested that Eumenes was even smarter than the reports from Persia indicated. That didn’t fit with him doing something this stupid. Neither did it fit Cepheus’ concept of Eumenes’ character. The man was a clerk. He’d been a clerk when he served Philip II and when he served Alexander, and he was still a clerk, all his little numbers lining up. Eumenes would never scale the walls, leaving his bodyguard behind. It wasn’t in the man, and neither was storming along a narrow dock against prepared squares of infantry and archers.
“Get to your men, Cepheus. I want those sarissa steady when the arrows fly.”
Cepheus left. It was Gordias’ command.
* * *
Eurydice no longer needed the binoculars. There were solid blocks of sarissa-armed infantry at the end of each of the seven piers. They were small blocks, thirty-two-man squares, four rows deep and eight columns wide. There were similar-sized blocks of archers behind them.
The docks were long, almost three hundred feet from the shore to the ends. Ships were supposed to tie up along their sides. Seven docks gave room for fourteen large ships to dock.
