Sailing East by Peter Rhodan

Author:Peter Rhodan [Rhodan, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-02-25T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

1172: Corotoc makes a big decision.

Corotoc, son of Owain, King of the Votandi, was at Trimondoun, the base of the regular Votandi army, sitting in his office doing some of the increasing amount of paperwork his drive to Romanise his army was producing. The Votandi regular army wasn’t a large army by any standards, organised on the Republican Roman model with just two full-strength cohorts and one understrength cohort of infantry as well two centuries of cavalry. The infantry were armed with second-hand muskets, a couple of thousand of which he’d charmed out of Arturo Sandus when the Republican army began re-equipping with a better firearm. The cavalry were armed with ex-Republican manuballistas also acquired in a deal with the Republicans. His father had been impressed with his negotiating skills!

In true Republican fashion, his troops garrisoned three forts around the territory of the Votandi with a century each, which was rotated every month. The three garrisons were at Crasdoddin, Abertuedd and Caeramon. Crasdoddin was a small port on the west coast where he was in the process of creating a much bigger port by building a causeway out to an offshore island that had deep water between it and the shore. Currently, a small number of fishing vessels used the natural harbour as a base along with the occasional visit by one of the smaller Republican trading ships that sailed the coast.

Abertuedd was the main western port. Unfortunately, the bar was shallow and the rocky base proved difficult to dig out. A sea wall, north of the entrance was under construction and that had already made it a little easier for ships to enter the port. A proper tidal pool type harbour like the ones the Republicans were building everywhere had been completed six months ago and if the bar could be made deeper, the plan was to build a larger basin for ships to dock in. So far no one had come up with an easy way of deepening the bar.

Caeramon was chosen simply to re-use a Roman fort that had been built there and of which only about half the stones of the Roman construction had been re-used by locals. His rebuilt fort was considerably smaller but could house two centuries comfortably along with a century of cavalry. The garrisons were both for show and for training his troops in useful duties such as patrolling the coasts. On top of that, the deployments did provide an early warning system if the Votandi were attacked with the small garrisons being meant to engage smaller bands of raiders rather than engage in actual military operations if they were properly invaded. Each garrison included a mounted section to scout and provide messengers in case there was an actual invasion.

The real defence of the Votandi lands was the fact that the tribe could field fifteen or even twenty thousand warriors if needed. They were probably the single largest military force left in Britannia, outside of the Romans, and everyone knew it.

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