Chapter 3 August 405 AD Kush-Invasion (Patreon)

            General Kitako looked at the distant mountains and smiled. He had finally led his army to Kush. His army was only half a million men, half the size of Jinka’s army, but that could work in his favor. If he could take Kush with half the men Jinka took Rome’s gold fields then the peasants would support his bid for Kingsminister once Paulsland’s wars with Rome and Kush were settled. Once Kitako took over the mountains of Kush it would be simplicity in itself to cross the Red Sea and take over their holdings on the desert peninsula. By then the Paulsland navy should be finished destroying the Roman Navy.

            Truth be told Kitako was a long time steward of Paulson family industries. He wasn’t exactly trusted by all the seventy families, but they viewed Jinka as a much bigger threat than Malkia. If she managed to get more shares of their businesses thanks to Kitako, then that was a small price to pay to make sure Jinka did not take all their businesses. The war of words in the seventy families papers and Jinka’s papers were getting out of hand, and both sides clearly felt like they needed to destroy the other. The seventy families wanted to assassinate Jinka as they felt that they would be cutting the head off the snake, but he was too well protected, so all they could do was try to take away popular support from the man…. Then find a way to assassinate him. He rebelled, he had to die.

            As Kitako thought about the traitor Jinka, he turned and looked at his steam weapons. Both Jinka and the seventy families were making them, and Jinka’s factories had been churning out steam weapons for months before the seventy families had completed their first one. If Jinka’s factory had allowed Kitako’s forces to use his weapons they would have attacked Kush months earlier, but Jinka had tens of thousands of soldiers protecting his factories, and every time they completed steam wapons they started their nearly year-long journey to join Jinka on the western side of the continent where the gold fields of Rome were located. Kitako understood why Jinka didn’t want to share his weapons with any force he didn’t command, but he still found it annoying that he had to wait for the seventy families to produce their steam weapons before he could attack Kush.

            That said, the steam weapons were absolutely necessary. Kush was a nation of mountains. It wasn’t possible to invade with foot soldiers, cavalry, trebuchets, and ballista. Kush had all those weapons, and several hundred mountain fortresses, towers, and other defensive structures to crush any conventional army that tried to invade. On the Erythraean Sea, the Kush mainland was seen as an impenetrable fortress, in part because many of their fortresses were seamlessly cut out of the rock of the mountains they guarded. It was thought that this made their fortresses stronger than fortresses made with stacked stone held together by mortar. That may be true for battering rams, trebuchets, and ballistae, but the steam cannon rounds moved so quickly the Paulsland experts thought that they would crack the seamless walls of Kush’s defenses, and Kitako would be the general to get all the credit.

            By no means were all of Kush’s fortresses made seamlessly. The closer to the border you were the fewer seamless fortresses there were, as some of the best farmland Kush had was near their border at the foot of the maintain range that housed most of Kush’s people. That said, Kitako wanted to make a point of how great his steam weapons were, and how great of a general he was for defeating an unbeatable seamless fortress so he led his army to the nearest seamless fortress that was guarding the entrance into a massive valley between two mountains, where forty thousand Kush farmers lived, and worked on their terraced farms.

            The fortress he was leading his men to was known as Uncanny Fortress. Every seamless fortress had a name. They even had one on their northern border named Rome’s Death. Uncanny Fortress was permanently staffed by five hundred men, and could house ten thousand men if necessary, as the fortress was carved right out of the eastward mountain, and the Kush military dug caves deep into the mountain to house their soldiers in a time of war. Kitako couldn’t guess how many men the fortress was holding right now and it didn’t matter. His job was to destroy the fortress and secure the valley.

            When Kitako’s army was five miles from the fortress, they set up camp, with most of the steam weapons set up at the center of the camp. The last twenty were set up at the edges and used to cover the camp at night in case of raids. Each weapon had a thousand soldiers protecting it. During the night there were no raids, albeit the Uncanny Fortress and the nearby communication towers sent hundreds of messages throughout the night.

            Once the morning came Kitako lined up his army and weapons and marched three miles. Once they reached the four mile mark, the Uncanny Fortress began launching winged ballistae bolts at the army. Winged ballistae bolts had amazing range and terrible accuracy but when you are moving half a million men odds are that they are going to hit something. Kitako just hoped they didn’t hit too many of the new steam weapons.

            The winged ballistae bolts mostly missed Kitako’s army, but the Uncanny fortress shot out hundreds of bolts before the Paulsland army was close enough to use their steam cannons, so several hundred soldiers were killed, thousands were injured, and two steam rifles were damaged.

            When the steam cannons were finally in range Kitako had the dubious joy of recognizing one of the great drawbacks of the steam cannon, it took a while for the pressure vessel to build up the pressure needed to fire. When the pressure vessel was filled to maximum capacity with water, which was about half the volume of the vessel, it was too heavy to move. Worse, the steam vessel was not designed to heat up as it moved, so the army had to bring the steam cannons within two miles of the fortress, fill it up with water, seal it shut, and finally heat it up. All this took over two hours. Two hours in which the army had to withstand the winged ballistae.

            As they waited it dawned on Kitako that the steam weapon was a much better defensive weapon than attack weapon, albeit it was still new. That being said he had plenty of cannons and rifles. Eight of the seventy families managed to produce steam cannons in time for this battle, and they sent over seventy-nine cannons. All built more or less to the specifications the Illuminati gave them. Seventeen of the families managed to build steam rifles and they sent over four hundred and eighty-three of the weapons, which Kitako spread out among the army. Currently their strategy was to have one rifleman protected by a hundred soldiers, and the hundred soldiers protecting the riflemen were set up to be in the second formation to face the enemy. This was a very conservative tactic, but Kitako felt that with such a powerful weapon it would be idiotic to be too ambitious.

            When his cannon’s pressure vessels were finally ready, Kitako ordered them to open fire, and over three seconds seventy-nine ktcha’s sounded out. About five seconds later bullet-shaped iron pieces slammed into the Uncanny Fortress, at speeds faster than the speed of sound. Almost instantly the fortress made of seamless rock had craters blown out of it, and massive cracks instantly form all over the surface. Before they could fire a second round one of the towers of the fortress fell into the courtyard inside the fortress.

            Seeing the destruction Kitako ordered his steam cannons to fire again. The cannons turned out to be the perfect predator for seamless fortresses, as half of it collapsed after the second firing.

            The Kush fortress had no choice, they raised a white flag with olive branches to signal their surrender.

…………………………………

Kush Capital

            General Alara, King Piye the Second, and the royal court waited impatiently for each of the messages that came through from the Uncanny Fortress. The messages gave them a massive amount of information about the new weapon, and once the fortress was destroyed, the messages gave the court a lot of information about the mindset of Paulsland. They needed to know if Paulsland was going to kill everyone and burn everything to the ground, or do something else. It turned out they were doing something else. They gathered the people together and forced them to kill their leaders before promising to give them the land that had been theirs for generations.

            King Piye the Second said, “It sounds like they are invading us, and they want to keep most of our people around to be good little workers for their tax revenue.”

            General Alara nodded and said, “Yes. This is the traditional Paulsland invasion tactic. They overwhelm someplace with superior weapons and numbers, then have the people kill their own leader so the dead leader does not become their martyr, then hand out land, then they make one of their own people a leader before finally starting a school and starting the long process to brainwash the populace.”

            King Piye nodded and said, “I am sure that works on people who have no culture and no land, but have they tried their little tactic in a place with culture and fair treatment of civilians?”

            “They have had a lot of success with it in the Roman Great Swamp.”

            “That doesn’t count. You and I both know that the majority of people south of the Great Desert are serfs kept in line by very harsh treatment. Of course they are going to jump at the chance to be free of their oppressors. I don’t think Paulsland would have such favorable outcomes if they tried their invasion tactic north of the Great Desert.”

            General Alara nodded and said, “You may be correct.”

            “I will be gambling that I am correct. If Paulsland went into that valley and began slaughtering everyone then we would have a massive refugee crisis, our infrastructure couldn’t handle it, especially with the failure of one of our best border fortresses. Since they are not killing civilians, only leadership, we can let our people know that it’s relatively safe to stay in their farms, towns, and villages until we beat back Paulsland. This will allow us to destroy bridges between mountains, and roads up mountains, without upsetting the populace too much.”

            “If Paulsland was causing mass slaughter we would have a hard time destroying our road network because people would want them to stay open so their relatives could escape.”

            Most of the men in court nodded, they fully understood how stupid a large group of civilians could be. The King simply said, “Exactly. Now that we have an idea of what to tell our people and keep them calm, I need your opinion on what to do with this new weapon. How will we defeat it?”

            “Simple. We will allow them to come deep into our territory. Their large weapons took two hours to work. Sure it destroyed our fortress, but it’s clearly limited. Yes, we will lose more fortresses and more men if we allow them to come deep into Kush, but we need their weapon, it’s made all of our fortresses outdated, until and unless we can take it and study it.”

            “I don’t particularly like this plan.”

            “What else can we do? They brought a half million soldiers into our mountains with a new dangerous weapon we don’t understand. A weapon that wiped out the army we sent into Paulsland with ease. We have to be patient, let them come deeper in, allow their supply trains to have easy access to their army. With bridges and mountain roads destroyed it will take them months to travel through Kush, and that’s when we will strike. Our armies will destroy their overextended supply train first, and then whittle down their army while they flee. During that time we should be able to capture some of their weapons, and the men who know how to use them. Paulsland will learn what Rome learned long ago, don’t enter the mountains of Kush.”