“You know little of Tamaerthon,” Drumold said. “In the best years we hae little enough land, and must take our chances in raids on the Empire. Nae, nae, the gods hate us, to let us be born in such times. I had hoped the legends false.”
“But we have to do something,” Tylara said. “You are Mac Clallan Muir. You have sworn to protect the clansmen.”
“And I have!” Drumold thundered. “Are we not free of the Empire? Have the imperial slavemasters come to our mountains these ten years? Lass, I do what I can, but I am no magician, to grow crops in a stone quarry!”
“We can help,” Gwen said. “We have ways of farming that may increase the yield—”
“Lassie, I tell you there is no land to farm,” Drum-old said moodily. “You hae seen that our best land is now split and cracked—”
“Yes.” She spoke to Rick in English. “Heavy rains when they didn’t expect them. Just showing them contour plowing will do a lot to stop the gullies—”
“In time to help?” Rick asked. “If we’ve got this figured right, they’ll need to work their arses off starting next spring.”
Drumold stared at them suspiciously. “I like it not when you speak so,” he said.
“Ms’ apologies,” Rick said. “Is there no land not plowed, then?”
Tylara laughed. “There’s land enough in the Roman Empire. Fields, left as parks for Caesar. Forests of game for Caesar. Herds for Caesar’s gods. There’s food and land there.”
“A cruel joke,” Drumold said. “There’s food and land, aye. And legions to defend them, and the slavemarket for those who enter the Empire without Caesar’s leave.”
“Do you forget Rick’s star weapons?” Tylara asked. She turned to Rick. “Your friends have taken all of Drantos with their weapons. Can we not do the same with the Empire?”
Dammit, I wish she wouldn’t look at me that way, Rick thought. I am not a god. “I do not think so,” he said. “Besides, there have to be better ways than fighting. Can’t we parley with the current Caesar?”
Drumold and Tylara both laughed. “The only way Caesar wants to see any kin of mine is in chains,” Drumold said. “We have little to sell to him save wool. What we get from Caesar we take with sword and bow.”
If Caesar wouldn’t parley, there might be another way to get his attention. “How strong is this Empire?” Rick asked.
“Bring the maps,” Drumold shouted. He waited while a henchman unrolled parchments. “The Empire is no so large as it was in my grandfather’s day,” he said. “But they hold the fertile lowlands, and the foothills, here and here. They keep a legion of four thousand mercenaries in this fortress.” He indicated a point some twenty miles from where the foothills became steep mountains leading to Tamaerthon. “Within a ten-day they can have two more, and another ten-day an additional three.”
And we’ve got about a hundred rounds for the rifles, Rick thought. “That’s pretty heavy odds,” he said carefully.
“The other star men have taken all of Drantos,” Tylara said. “Can you not do as well?”
“They needed the armies of Sarakos to do it.” And I suspect Sarakos has reason to regret his bargain. He’s not likely to be much more than a puppet for André Parsons. Serves him right.
Lowlands. In about five years, maybe less, that new Roman Empire was going to be under water— all but the high plateau that held Rome itself. And by that time the people of Tamaerthon would be starving. Except Mac Clallan Muir and his family. They wouldn’t starve. According to Yanulf, the clan leaders and their children would—in theory, willingly—offer themselves as a propitiation to the gods. It came with the job of leader. In Drumold’s grandfather’s time, it had happened after three years of bad harvests, which was how Drumold’s grandfather had got the position of high chief of Tamaerthon.
Damnation, there had to be something he could do. And he wasn’t too likely to talk Tylara out of jumping off that cliff into the sea, either. That was one girl who was likely to take her duties seriously.
“You have raided the Empire in the past?”
“Aye,” Drumold said.
“Tell me more of the Empire. How are the legions armed?”
“With lances and swords. How else?”
“Lances and swords—they’re horsemen, then?” Drumold seemed surprised. “Aye. Horses and centaurs. Mostly horses.”
“Not foot-soldiers.” Rick described a classical Roman legionary: square shield, pilum, andgladius hispanica.
“There are no such anywhere I know of,” Drumold said. “Ken ye any in your western lands, priest?”
“No.” Yanulf studied Rick’s face. “What makes you think there might be?”
As near as he could figure it, the Shalnuksis had brought an expeditionary force from Earth in about 200 AD, about the time of Septimius Severus. That had to be when the ancestors of these new Romans arrived. Severus still employed classical foot-marching legionnaires, a bit degenerated from those of Caesar’s time, but still the most effective infantry Earth would see until gunpowder. Evidently the same thing had happened to legions here as happened on Earth: they fell to heavy cavalry and lack of discipline. Now the heavy cavalry ruled everywhere that the terrain was suitable. This Rome was more like the Holy Roman Empire—aha! There would have been another expedition in about 800, the time of Charlemagne. This Rome must be the Holy Roman Empire. But he couldn’t explain all that.
“One of the greatest kingdoms in our history was armed that way,” he said. “Uh—what religion is the Empire?”
“They call themselves Christian,” Yanulf said. “But the Christians of the southern lands say they are not.”
“Yatar does not prosper in Rome, then?”
“No.”
“Have they ice caverns? How did Rome survive the Time?” Rick asked.
Yanulf spread his hands. “They do not welcome visitors. Or rather, their slavemasters welcome them all too well. It is said that there are caverns in Rome, but who attends them I do not know. It is also said that there is a great library with many records of previous Times, but again this is not of my own knowledge.”
Gwen had been listening with a growing look of amazement. “Rick, what are you thinking of?” she demanded.
That earned her a sharp look from Drumold, who wasn’t used to having women speak up that way.
“North is barren,” Rick said. “West is the salt marsh and west of that Parsons and Sarakos. South of us is mostly ocean. If we’re going to get anything to store up for the Time, we’ll have to take it from
Rome.”
“Man, are ye daft?” Drumold asked. “We raid the Empire, true, and done quickly, we often bring back cattle and horses. But we seldom escape punishment from the legions.”
“He is not daft,” Tylara protested. “He can—I have heard him speak of battles before. Of his victories over the Cubans—”
Yeah, I brag a lot when you’re around, Rick thought. “What kind of punishment? What do the legions do?”
“Sometimes nothing,” Drumold said. “But if we annoy them enough, they bring their army into the hills.”
“And you fight them—”
“We try,” Drumold said. “Aye, and we can win battles. But they come on, and we must take to the hills. They burn the villages and the crops and slaughter the flocks. Ofttimes we lose more than ever we gained. The Empire is a giant best left unawakened.”
“But you have won battles against them,” Rick said. “You must have, or they’d have simply occupied Tamaerthon and had done with it.”
“Aye, we’ve beaten them in the passes,” Drumold said. “In the passes, in the hills. But no one has ever beaten the legions on the plains. I think no one remembers the last time anyone tried.”
So far it sounded a lot like the Scottish border country. Scotland remained free, but just barely. But there had been a time after Bannockburn when England feared Scotland. . . The rifles would probably win a single battle. The result wouldn’t be anything more significant than looting a border province, but that could be the difference between life and death for Mac Clallan Muir. And for Tylara.
An organized raid, with a wagon train to carry out grain and a properly organized force to delay the legions while the wagons got into the passes. It was possible.
“How many men could you put into the field against the Empire?” Rick asked. “For the biggest raid ever. Something to sing about for a hundred years.”
Drumold frowned. “Not all the clans would respond to the summons,” he said. “Perhaps three hundred lances. Two thousand archers. Another three thousand lads wi’ swords. Perhaps a thousand more freedmen armed wi’ whatever they can find. No more.”
“And the nearest legion is four thousand strong,” Rick mused.
“Four thousand legionaries,” Drumold protested. “Wi’ mail shirts, and good horses. Man, on level ground they’ll ride us down.”