Chapter 48 June AD 404 Rome-The Great Game (Patreon)

                         Emperor Trajan the Sixth was sitting in his office going over logistics reports. All the servants in and around his office did not dare make a noise as his face was red with fury. Three days ago, the Cubans had made their way up the Sequana River, reached the city of Lutetia in the province of Celtica, and burned it down. In another timeline, the city would have had its name changed this century to Parisius, but now that city is ash. After they burned it down, they escaped down the river, burning and looting every village and town as they went. The Emperor wanted answers.

                         The servants waiting on Trajan nearly had a heart attack when the door was suddenly opened, and Michael, the Bishop of Rome, walked in, with a somber face. The Bishop told the Emperor, “I have news.”

                         “It better be good.”

                         “It isn’t. As you know, the Cubans sent out at least five hundred of their longships to raid our coast on Oceanus Britannicus, and dozens of naval battles commenced. They seemed to do this to cover up their true motives of making their way up various rivers on the coast and causing trouble. For instance, a few longships attempted to make their way up the Rhine, but we still had ships nearby and chased them off. As for the longships that made their way up the Sequana River, they reached it at a time when our navy was away fighting the Cubans. Worse yet, they made it there at night, and unfortunately, at least a handful on each ship were wearing legionnaire armor and uniforms. From what my men can piece together, they were able to sneak or talk their way into the communication tower on the coast, then one by one into each of the communication towers on the Sequana River. Once inside, they waited for the dead men’s replacements, killed them, and then held their posts. Whenever someone spotted their longships as they made their way up the Sequana River, they reported it to the communication towers, which had already been taken over and the Cubans were able to cover up their victories by sending back signals acknowledging that they had received the message.”

                         “If they killed the men manning the tower, why didn’t people go investigate?”

                         “That’s where the battles at sea worked against us. When family members grew concerned and went to the communication towers, the men in legion uniforms told them that their relatives had to stay for a few days in case there were more messages to send due to the aftermath of the battle. All witnesses report that the legionnaires they spoke to had strange accents, but that’s not exactly strange as Greek is rarely a legionnaire’s first language. Anyone who asked too many questions was beaten, arrested, and chained outside the towers as a warning to anyone else to stay away for a few days. To be fair there are very few people in the province of Celtica that would have the authority to question a legionnaire. To make matters worse, they only had to capture eleven communication towers to make this possible. My people think these fake legionnaires were Hibernians, as we have gotten reports that many of the Hibernians have defected to the Cubans due to the promise of wealth.”

                         Trajan was not happy and said, “What are you going to do to fix this?”

                         “The fix on my end is simple: I will just have the local priests ask the communication towers to quote a verse in Latin every few hours. The verse they ask for will be asked in code, so whoever is in the tower will have to know how to use Morse code, read Latin, and the cipher for the verse. But the solution on your end will be much more difficult.”

                         “How so?”

                         “The Universal Church does not have authority over the military. We report on the military, but they do not obey our commands. The communication towers need to be guarded by more than just one or two retired legionnaires, and that order must come from you.”

                         The Emperor went silent for a moment and asked, “Do you know how many communication towers are in the Roman Empire?”

                         “Over twenty-seven thousand.”

                         “If I put ten legionnaires in each one, that is two hundred and seventy thousand men. Men that wont be able to fight the Cubans, Parthian, or Paulsland if they are guarding towers often built in remote hard to reach places.”

                         “That’s going to be a problem. Just today, I learned from a visiting member of the Merchant Guild that the Cubans are known as raiders in their homeland, far across Oceanus. We are going to have to do something about their scattered raids. But good news, he brought the Cuban Bow and is willing to trade us twenty thousand of them.”

                         The Emperor’s sour face disappeared for a moment as he smiled and some of the stress left his face. “That is good news. Those bows are not just devastating for calvary archers, they have also been giving an advantage at medium distances in naval battles. Bring him in.”

                         The Bishop smiled and said, “I thought you would want to meet him after you heard the news, so he is waiting in the hall.” Michael told one of the servants, “Bring in the strangely dressed man.”

                         A moment later, a young man walked in wearing bright blue cotton pants and jacket, a purple shirt, shoes made from fur, and a copper earring with an eagle feather. He turned to the Emperor and said, “It's good to meet you, master of this great empire. I am Uwe, the son of an Elder in the Merchant Guild. Your servant Leo, the priest, suggested that we bring our fast-fire bows so that you may better fight our common foe, the Cubans.”

                         Trajan smiled and asked, “Our common foe?”

                         “Yes, sir. The Merchant Guild has suffered the raids of the Cuban people for centuries now. I hate to say it, but in our part of the world, the Cubans are unmatched sailors, and so we have been unable to fight them. I have come here to offer these twenty thousand bows as a gift to you. We hope that you in return can gift us some ships, sailors, and journeymen builders of your ships.”

                         Trajan looked confused and said, “We are at war with the Cubans, Paulsland, and Parthian, we have no warships to spare.”

                         Uwe shook his head and said, “Not warships, at least not your trimarans, those would do us little good as most of our trade network is inland, and we need our narrow longships to make it to the various trade posts on our small rivers. We wish instead to learn how to make the large diverse craft we have seen on the Roman Sea in the hopes of copying your mother ship tactics as we begin learning how to sail on Oceanaus. We simply need journeymen able to teach our people how to make those craft, and any sailors you have to spare who can give us some understanding that the Cubans do not have.”

                         “I see; what you offer is not weapons but an alliance…. I can offer you what you wish. In fact, I will offer you more than you ask for. I will give you a dozen of our largest ships, a hundred wooden trimarans with their crew, and a thousand shipbuilding journeymen serfs. That is a small price to pay if it hinders these annoying Cubans. After their unexpected attack up our rivers, I need to readjust my thinking on these Cubans. Could you shed some light on their motives?”

                         Uwe almost, but not quite sarcastically, said, “They are raiders. They raid. The leadership of the Cubans is unstable, and in an effort to create more stability, they send anyone with an ounce of ambition out to raid their neighbors. Part of the reason why they are so unstable is that when they raid, they don’t just take goods and slaves, but they specifically take women. Early on in Cuban history they fought a foe that greatly outnumbered them. To make up the difference in numbers, whenever they attacked the foe, they would kill as many of their men as possible while taking as many women as their boats could hold. It wasn’t long before the average man had dozens of wives and hundreds of children. Few of their children could inherit, so those who wanted a better life had no choice but to raid their neighbor. The Cubans are not an enemy, they are a pestilence.”

                         Michael said, “Ah, that explains some of the messages my priests have sent to me from Hibernia.” When the Emperor and Uwe looked at him confused Michael explained, “The few messages that have managed to make it to me have said that the Cubans are marrying a lot of women. That said, the report of the Cubans being largely unorganized and spread out matches with what my priests have said about the Cubans. Apparently, their only leadership is something called Landowners, and they ride their dreadful buffalo from place to place. None of these men appear to stay in one place very long.”

                         The Emperor turned back to the youth and asked, “If their leadership is unstable, shouldn’t you be able to wait for infighting and defeat them?”

                         “You would think so, but getting one leader to agree to peace does not mean you have peace with anyone but that one leader, and he can change his mind at any time. If you take a town and threaten their families, they will not shed a tear as you cut their wives and children's throats. If you burn their longboats, in a short time they will just join another Cuban boat. If you burn their homes with all their belongings, they do not care as they will get more on the next raid. The only way to deal with the Cubans is to kill them all.”

                         Emperor Trajan looked to the Bishop of Rome and said, “This could not come at a worse time. We need to reinforce our troops in Jerusalem.”

                         “We could always order Legate Washington’s army to leave Paulsland and reinforce them. We don’t want eastern Paulsland at this time anyway.”

                         Uwe asked, “What is the problem?”

                         Michael answered, “It takes time to train legions. We have another four hundred thousand legionnaires ready to head off to battle. We intended to send half of them to Hibernia and the rest to Jerusalem, but it looks like instead, we will be sending them all to Hibernia.”

                         Trajan said, “We can send more if we do not reinforce my son's men in western Paulsland.”

                         “Is that wise? You managed to convince the Kush to attack Paulsland, but we have no way of knowing how well that’s going.”

                         “We have to take risks. With Kush forces in Paulsland, Legate Washington in Eastern Paulsland, and my son Julius in Western Paulsland they should be divided and unable to prepare a full counterattack. After these last few raids by the Cubans, I want them banished from Hibernia before they can fortify their positions.”

                         Uwe asked, “Are you sure you want to do that before you have your men trained with the fast-fire bows?”

                         Emperor Trajan gave the question some thought and said, “I will order ten thousand of the cavalry scouts in Jerusalem to make their way to the coastline of Celtica. We will give them their bows before they leave the shores of Judea, and they can practice until the ships are ready to take them to Hibernia. Give the other ten thousand to the best archers in the navy, and put them in ships near Hibernia and Britannia. I am tired of losing ships because they have better bows than my men.” 

                         Michael asked, “What about Paulsland and Parthian?”

                         “They don’t matter, neither nation can really hurt us. We have the Paulsland army stuck in their nation thousands of miles away, and we have wiped out Parthian’s navy. Cuba is attacking our heartland. We have no choice but to deal with them first. Besides, as soon as our cavalry has experience with this new weapon we will be able to walk all over our enemies.”

                         Uwe smiled at this. Not because he was allied with Rome but because it would not be long before his people traded the fast-fire bow to Paulsland for some of their know-how. In fact, if everything went well, they would be selling weapons to Rome, Paulsland, and Cuba. If everything went really well, the three nations would exhaust themselves fighting each other and collapse. The Merchant Guild preferred working with small nations. They were easier to manipulate, after all.