Jack Whyte - The Singing Sword

"It sounds good," said his father. "How well does it work?"

"As well as we can hope for. Our major weakness, at the start, was that we did not have enough good horses. It takes a lot of horseflesh to implement a plan like that. In the beginning we were operating at half strength in every area. We had to. We could not simply neglect some areas in favour of others, since we had no idea where the next spate of landings might occur. But the signal-fires passed the word quickly and our response time was very fast. As the Tightness of our method began to prove itself, Stilicho moved heaven and earth to appropriate more and better horses for us. He used to joke that he was stripping the Empire clean of horseflesh to feed the people of Britain, and there were times when it looked as though it might be true. It seemed that every second Roman galley arriving in Britain was loaded with prime horseflesh."

"Impressive," I said. "How soon after your arrival did you start to put all this in place?"

"A matter of months. As soon as we grew tired of looking foolish every time we arrived on the scene of a raid to find all the damage done and the enemy gone."

"Which was often?"

"Always would be more accurate."

"I see. And since you switched over to these new tactics all of that has changed? Whose idea was it to set up these regional bases?"

He shook his head. "No one's, and everybody's. The idea came out of a staff meeting. I mentioned the possibility of splitting our forces to gain manoeuvrability, and the idea grew from there. By the time that meeting had ended, the rudiments of the plan were in place and the logistics were under consideration. From that point onwards, it was just a matter of time until we had our units positioned and ready to move at the sight of a beacon. Once the troops were distributed, it became a matter of tightening up our procedures, learning from our mistakes and adapting to conditions as they arose."

He stood up, stretching himself. "I can give you an example of what I mean by that, too. One of the first things we learned was that, almost invariably, when there was only one boat involved in a raid, the enemy was gone by the time we arrived, no matter how fast our response was. They hit, cleaned up and got away in a hurry. As soon as a raid involved two or more boats, however, their operations time slowed down very considerably. We really don't know why this should be, but we suspect it was because of their numerical strength. It seemed to give them the confidence to move further inland. Of course, with twice the men, they needed twice as much booty to be equally successful. Anyway, a pattern began to emerge very quickly and it indicated that it simply was not worthwhile dispatching troops against a single-boat raiding party.

"There are people, I know, who think that was a callous decision. But it was the only one we could make, the only one that made any sense. At the height of the raiding activity in the early summer of the first year we were in action, there were four occasions when we were short of men to tackle major raiding parties because troops had already been dispatched to minor raids, and on none of these four occasions did our squadrons make contact with the small raiding parties. They were gone, back out to sea before our people ever came near them. Standing orders were changed to alert troops to one-boat raids but to respond only to raids involving two or more boats."

"Makes sense," I said. "If what you say is true, and I don't doubt a word of it, the people in the farms and villages along the coastline who were being hit by these small raids were beyond help in any case."

"Exactly. But a strange thing has happened in the course of two years. Do you know that there is now an almost uninhabited belt, ten or twelve, sometimes fifteen miles wide, around the entire coastline of southern Britain?"

I shook my head. "No. You mean the people have just moved out?"

"Most of them. Moved inland. A few stayed, too stubborn to move away from their homes and their living — mainly fisher-folk who live right on the coast — but the majority, the farmers and farm workers, just abandoned everything and moved inland to safety."

"How has this affected the raiders and their methods?"

Britannicus was watching his son closely, a tiny frown ticking between his brows.

Picus shook his head decisively. "It's too early to say with any kind of certainty, but we are pretty well convinced that it has had an effect — and a positive one — on the number and the nature of the raids. Single-boat raids are almost non-existent now. It takes a lot of guts for one boatload of thirty-odd men to travel inland for ten or fifteen miles in the hope of finding a village, hitting it and getting out again before our people arrive. It puts a lot of distance between them and their boat."

"But your people don't respond to one-boat raids, you said."

"They would now, knowing that the enemy is going to be on foot for fifteen miles inland and back. But it simply doesn't happen any more."

"So raiding parties are getting bigger?"

"Yes. That's absolutely correct. And fewer, too."

"So how much thought have you given to future developments in this pattern?"

Picus flashed a grin at his stern-faced parent. "We hope it develops to the point where all of them land together and we can smash them once and for all, but that's a dream. If the trend continues, and at this time it is only a suspected trend which time will prove or disprove, but if, as I say, it continues to develop, then we could see numerically stronger parties raiding more systematically next year."

"And how will that affect the deployment of your cavalry?"

"It won't. Not adversely, at any rate. We're already prepared for it. Plans are in place to consolidate our lines of communication. We'll simply strengthen our reserves and be prepared to move in greater strength."

"You obviously think that this is going to happen?" Cay's inflection made this more of a question than a statement.

"No, I hope it's going to happen. I've just dismissed it as a dream, but it is true that the more men they use, the bigger the fleets they assemble, the greater will be our advantage. Just let me get an army of them in one place at one time, and I'll smash them beyond recovery."

"Hmmm." Cay sounded mildly sceptical. "Dream as it may be, have you the strength to do that?"

"Aye. And more, I have the speed and the weight. You know yourself, Father, how wild these people are. They have no concept of concerted discipline. They operate, all of them, as independent units. Each boat's crew is devoted to itself. Land a large number of boats together and you have a fearsome band of savages. But they are a rabble. I can destroy them easily if they do that, and in their pride and ignorance, they can't admit it." He snapped his hand in front of his face as though snatching a fly out of the air, holding his clenched fist high in front of his face. "Just let me have one chance to catch them on land, in strength. I don't need a whole army of them. Just a mob big enough to grapple with at leisure."

His father sucked at his front teeth. "And how do you see our role here in the Colony shaping up, now that I am Legatus Emeritus of the Irregulars of South-west Britain? And, by the way, you still have not delivered my warrant into my hands. Is that a deliberate oversight?"

"Oh! Pardon me, I have it here." He delved again into his scrip and produced a second scroll, this one much bigger than the first. His father took it from him, broke the seal and scanned the contents quickly before passing it across to me. It was a clear, clean and specific document bearing the signature and the personal seal of Stilicho and the imperial seal of Honorius. I read it with appreciation and handed it back.