Chapter 13 December 405 AD Kush-Persistence Hunting

            General Alara’s plan succeeded beyond his expectations. After the three Kush armies wiped out the Paulsland baggage train supplying the Paulsland army, it took a week for the army to find out, and then it took them two weeks to make it back to the Kush army.

            While the Kush army waited for the Paulsland army, they were not idle. They were busy destroying all roads, shelters, food, and water sources. Several months ago, when Paulsland started this foolish invasion, General Alara went out of his way to make sure that the Paulsland army had an easy time following the route he wanted them to follow, as the deeper they went into Kush, the easier it would be to cut off their supply lines. The deeper they went into Kush, the more desperate they would be without supplies. They had nice roads to travel on when they went into Kush, roads that were easily strong enough to carry their new steam weapons even when the steam vessel was filled with water, but now, all those roads were pulled up, and their travel back was slow. The most difficult thing about the Kush exit was moving the civilians, and that wasn’t that difficult since most of their people wanted out of the war zone.

            At first, the Paulsland army did not realize what predicament they were in. They thought they just needed to break through a small Kush army, and they would resupply. What they didn’t expect was that the Kush army would stay just outside the range of their steam weapons during the day and harass them at night. It wasn’t a hard feat to accomplish as the steam weapons were very slow to move, especially on the broken ground that used to be a road. In contrast, the Kush army had lots of cavalry and skirmishers. Albeit at night, archers made their way down the mountainside and began firing arrows at their camp, only to retreat before the sun came up.

            The Paulsland army clearly thought their new super weapon would win them the war, but as time passed, they noticed the coal needed to keep the weapons powered was running out. In response, they began sending their soldiers into the mountain forest of Kush to cut down trees and turn them into charcoal. General Alara was very happy with that bad decision as the forest had traps placed throughout, which meant that Paulsland's army began receiving a lot of casualties without giving any in return, but what was worse for the Paulsland army was that they were beginning to run out of food.

            When they were down to just two weeks of rations, the Paulsland army split in two. Two hundred thousand men stayed with the steam weapons, while another three hundred thousand men became a fast-moving army. They hoped that they were fast enough to catch the Kush army and reopen a supply route. They had no way to know that three Kush armies had descended on the supply train, and there were no more supplies for Paulsland inside of Kush. They thought that as soon as they broke through this army, they would have supplies again.

            As the army left the safety of their steam weapons, the Kush army continued retreating. The thing was that because they were fighting in the valleys of Kush, it was easy for the army to receive a message letting them know that the Paulsland army was separating. So, as the Paulsland army separated, the Kush army started their quick march away. They had no intention of fighting a healthy Paulsland army.

            That wasn’t to say that the smaller army with steam weapons was going to get to rest. Kush still had tens of thousands of archers able to harass them every night. It just meant that most of the pressure was off the steam weapon army for now.

            Furthermore, General Alara knew exactly how dangerous those steam weapons were. Not only did they need to destroy the army that had those weapons, but they desperately needed to take those steam weapons and learn how to make their own. With that in mind, General Alara asked the King for two new armies that would flank the Paulsland army in the nearby valleys. Since they actually had roads and infrastructure, they should be able to move much faster than the Paulsland army, and strike when the Paulsland army was starving, but before they started destroying their weapons. This sounded simple, but luck would play a huge part. Depending on the commander of that army, they would either destroy the weapons as soon as it was clear they would be captured, or they would never think of destroying them. Only time would give General Alara the answer.

            That said, that was a problem for a different day. General Alara was busy leading the fast moving Paulsland army on a merry chase. As the Kush army led the Paulsland army to the border, two other armies were at work. The border army continued enlarging their fortifications dug into the ground. The middle army made their way up the mountains, crossed their rope bridges to another mountain and waited for the first army and Paulsland army to pass before making their way back across, and then began following behind the Paulsland army.

            As for the Paulsland army, they grew more and more frustrated as the Kush army refused to stand and fight. The thing was, the Kush army had no reason to stand and fight. Everything between the Paulsland army and the border of Kush was either destroyed or fortified. The only thing left was a wasteland.

            Although the Paulsland army had to harshly ration their food, they continued to pursue the Kush army all the way to the border, where the Paulsland army was surprised to find a dug-in fortress. They had never seen anything like the fortress with a maze of short walls made mostly out of earth. At this point, they had no way to know that it was made specifically to counter the steam weapons. At this point, they didn’t care. They were hungry, and they knew that just past the walls of the fortress was food and relief supplies, so they quickly formed up and marched to the fortress.

            As they marched, they faced a rain of arrows, a hail of boulders from trebuchets, and ballista bolts by the dozens. The army didn’t care; they knew they were getting weaker by the day, so if they were going to win this battle, they had no choice but to take the walls this day or never.

            Once they reached the walls, their camp alarms began to sound; another Kush army had shown up behind them. This had the devastating effect of making the army hesitate. Whoever was leading the army sounded a few orders with trumpets and drums that amounted to those at the front of the formation to continue their attack on the fortress but those in the back to form a new line against this new army. Such a complicated order in the middle of battle caused chaos, and hesitation. Even so, the walls on the fortress were so short that thousands of men made their way into the new fortress only to find that they were constantly getting bottlenecked and killed in the bottlenecks. It didn’t help that as hungry as they were they had trouble lifting their spears, swords, and halberds.

            Before night fell the Kush army was attacking the back of the Paulsland army, and soon the Paulsland army had no choice, they had to surrender. Although they surrendered the men in the Paulsland army had great pride, and comforted themselves with the thought that the Kush did not beat them with martial ability, but with hunger. As for the Kush, they didn’t care, a win was a win. Anyone that carelessly invaded their mountains were going to face a whole new type of warfare.

            General Alara immediately put the Paulsland army to work digging more trenches for their new short fortress. A few of the new slaves had rebellious thoughts but the Kush simply tortured the rebels and refused to feed anyone for three days after their rebellion.

            Long before all the Paulsland slaves were made obedient, General Alara had to take a small army of a hundred and fifty thousand men to take out the steam weapon army. This army was moving very slowly and was three weeks behind the first army. At this point, hunger and lack of supplies were already taking their toll, and the army had no choice but to conserve the coal for their steam weapons.

            General Alara communicated with the two armies flanking the steam army ten times a day. He wanted to know everything that was going on. Above everything else, he wanted to know the health of the steam weapons. So far, none had been scuttled by the enemy. General Alara hoped that meant that the enemy was too proud to admit they had lost this battle, or perhaps it's what the Greeks used to say about hope, that it misleads people.

            A week passed as General Alara made his way to the steam army, but word reached him that only one of their steam weapons was being run at this point. Either they had run so low on coal they couldn’t afford to keep the other weapons running, or the other weapons broke, or they were nearly out of ammunition for the weapons. He had no way to know, and with that, he sent word that the two armies were to cross the mountain as soon as it was night and attack with all haste.

            The next morning, he received word that at terrible losses, the two armies managed to capture the steam weapons. The two armies suffered nearly twenty percent losses as each army had to navigate a mountain at night before attacking the Paulsland army. Furthermore, Kush had long committed to harassing the Paulsland army with archers, and so the Kush army attacked the Paulsland camp while the archers were firing blindly into it. Although over twelve thousand Kush soldiers were wounded by arrows, only a couple of dozen were wounded by Paulsland arrows. That said, even starved the Paulsland soldiers were skilled warriors, and they caused tens of thousands of casualties as the night, and the fortifications for their night camp gave them an edge. In most cases, nobody would sacrifice the men of their army like that to attack a starving foe, in fact if they just wanted to win they would negotiate a surrender at this point, but the most important thing about this battle was retreaving the steam weapons, and so the Kush leadership gladly sacrificed lives to obtain the prize.

             Most of the Paulsland army was killed, although some had escaped for now, but they would not remain free for long. General Alara sent word that the steam weapons were to be sent to the capital with all haste for study and reproduction, while the head of the general of the army was to be preserved in alcohol and sent back to Paulsland to let them know that Kush now had steam weapons.

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            The day the steam weapons were captured, the most educated men in Kush were called to study the weapons. Bringing back the weapons to the capital would take time, so the educated men were to go out to the weapons and study them as they traveled. Noah was the nearest mechanicist. He was just forty years old, but despite that he had twenty-five years of experience either working on or building mechanical devices from waterwheel factories, clocks, to water-powered weaving machines, among dozens of other devices.

            When he reached the wagons carrying the machines, the soldiers threatened his life, then gave him four guards to watch him as he examined the steam rifles. The soldiers were in a hurry to get them to the capital so they wouldn’t stop, but they let him on the wagons with the machines to begin studying. It took nearly a day for him to figure out that the steam vessel worked similarly to a gasification chamber. Once he learned how to get them to start, he had the soldiers feed one of them coal and water, as he took another one apart. The soldiers were not too keen on that, but by that time a camera had arrived and they took lots of photos as the mechanicist took one of the machines apart.

            Two days of tinkering and experimenting later, he had a pretty good idea how the machine worked and sent word that they should be able to make their own versions of the steam weapons.

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            Two dozen miles outside of Kush, there were two nervous messengers standing in a basket held by a massive hot air balloon hundreds of feet in the air. Their job was to pass on messages like messengers in a communication tower, until a tower could be built in this area. They were nervous because just a few months ago, a Kush army took back the valley that Paulsland had liberated. Whether this meant they had destroyed General Kitako’s army or not they had no idea. That said, they had sent word, and the Paulsland government had sent word saying to wait for reinforcements, but with the majority of the Paulsland army returning from the Roman war, it would take months.

            As they were waiting, sending messages whenever something came up, they noticed a horseman in Kush armor riding toward them with a white flag and olive branches. They sent a message that Kush was trying to make contact with them, but long before they could hear back, the  messenger reached the rope, tethering their balloon to the ground, and began pulling the balloon to the ground. The messengers could either cut the rope and trust their fate to the wind, or hear what this messenger had to say. After a moment of discussion, they chose to hear what he had to say and began turning a winch in the balloon, connected to the rope, to pull themselves to the ground.

            When they reached the ground, the Kush messenger took out a jar with a head in it and he said, “This is the head of the general Paulsland sent into Kush, we trust that this is proof enough that Kush has taken your steam weapons, and soon we will have our own, and Kush will once again be unassailable. If your people wish to invade Kush, know that your time is limited. If you wish to make peace with Kush, we are open to making peace; all that we ask is that your people stop sending addictive drugs into Kush.”

            One of the Paulsland messengers asked, “What do you want us to do?”

            “Take the head and send the message.”

            The messengers obediently took the head, and the Kush horseman left immediately. The messengers began to unspool their winch, letting their balloon float higher and higher in the air. Once they were in range of the next balloon, they sent the message. Everywhere the message went in Paulsland, chaos erupted.


Authors note- Very Early post of chapter because we are starting our travels today.