Paul was soundly asleep next to Vanda, their two-and three-year-old’s in bed with them, when a banging on the door woke both of them.

Paul immediately rolled out of bed, drew his sword, and yelled out, “What’s the problem?”

The two-and three-year-old’s slept through the commotion, but Paul and Vanda’s infant woke up in its crib and began crying before they could answer Paul. Despite the crying of the infant, the words were clear, “Himyarite has started their invasion.”

Paul paused, turned to his wife, and said, “I have to go.”

“I know.”

Paul immediately began dressing himself, then he kissed his children and finally opened the door out of his wife’s room. Waiting for him were several bodyguards and a dozen soldiers with lanterns. In the light of the lanterns, Paul could see they all looked worried, but he was glad the soldiers recognized they would be needed to carry messages. It's why so many came.

“Tell Badru to meet me at the docks immediately; as soon as I send messages out, I am heading directly to Five Village Island.”

One of the soldiers said, “Yes, Sir, “and left.

“I need one of you to send out a call for the militia. Every militia is being called up, and they need to head to Five Village Island as quickly as possible. Go now; that message cannot wait.”

Another soldier said, “Yes, Sir,” and left.

Paul then told his soldiers, “Take out some charcoal and paper. I need you to send these messages exactly.”

The soldiers began pulling out papers and pieces of charcoal from their bags or from inside pockets. When Paul saw they were ready, he pointed to one and said, “Message for Alexander. You are to take all the forces from the great lake region, including the militia, northeast through the wilderness until you reach the Himyarite colonies on the coast. From there, you are to commit to total warfare. The armies invading our nation are getting supplied through the Himyarite colonies; you have my permission to do anything necessary to stop those supplies from reaching their soldiers, including but not limited to genocide. If every man, woman, and child in the Himyarite colony must die to stop this invasion, then you have my blessing. If you feel those methods are too harsh or not harsh enough, I trust your decision, do what you feel is necessary.”

The soldier stopped writing halfway through, and all the soldiers and guards were giving Paul surprised looks; Paul answered the unasked question, “I know you were trained to show mercy when you invade a village, and that’s fine when we are doing the invading. But right now, we are getting invaded, and the Himyarites are coming here to rob our nation, kill our men, and rape our women. They are going to do anything in their power to win, and so are we. If killing their women and children keeps ours safe, then we will kill everyone in their nation if we must.”

Paul watched as his men visibly gasped what he had just said. They all had experienced going into a village and conquering it. Usually, the only people they killed were the leaders, and sometimes not even that. Even accidentally killing women or children during a conquest was harshly punished. Throughout man camp, they were taught their job was to protect women and children, and so this was a big shift for them. It went against what they were taught.

“I know what you’re thinking. When we conquer a village, we avoid injuring the women and children like they are one of our own, but the reality is that when we capture a village, those women, and children are Paulsland. As soon as we conquer them we have a responsibility for them. War is not like that. War is an ugly thing. I have to put Paulsland’s women and children first. In a few days or weeks at most, the Himyarite army will be at our doorstep, and you will see firsthand why I am making this desperate decision.”

Finally, the young soldier finished writing what Paul said and left, slightly disturbed. Paul hoped Alexander would adapt as necessary, although Paul doubted the boy would slaughter women and children with his training, but at least he let the boy know he had permission to not be careful.

“Send a message to Titus. We need all his soldiers, especially the veterans building a temporary fortification on the road northwest of Five Village Island. If he cannot get there before the Himyarites, tell him to take his soldiers to where the Great Lake river meets the Zambezi river.”

“Send a message to the knights that they are to go to Five Village Island immediately and from there harass the Himyarites and slow them down.”

“Send another message to George, to gather as many nomads as he can and bring them to fight the Himyarites. They may not like leaving their herds, but they need to see the enemies we are protecting them from.”

“Finally, send a message to Dashiell. Every Paulsland trimaran is now part of the navy. Equip them with flamethrowers, scorpions, and flaming arrows. Send them out in squadrons of six, and they are to sink as many Himyarite ships as possible and attack their harbors. One squadron needs to let Washington know what's going on, so he can start his war against the Himyarites, and one squadron needs to stay back until the drydock is finished with their ship. They will act as an escort as it heads to Aksum.”

One by one, as Paul gave his men their messages, they ran to the communications tower to send them out. When the last message was sent, Paul told the remaining soldiers, “Come with me.” Then he began leading them through the castle. As Paul made his way through his castle, he passed guards and soldiers. Each time he passed one, he said, “Come with me.”

After some marching, Paul made his way to a courtyard with only one entrance. In recent days this courtyard had undergone some renovations, as a vault was built here to house all the coins they collected through taxing the merchants on the coast.

The recent renovations included bricking off every entrance but one that required someone to go through another courtyard, which meant a thief had further to go before they could disappear into a crowded street. They also built a stone building three stories high. The first story was a death trap, the second was where the guards stayed, and the third was where they kept the bullion. The bullion was protected by a new Roman invention, a door with several locks that all had different keys.

The vault was filled with gold, silver, copper, and brass, mostly in coins from various nations on the Erythraean sea. Paulsland’s importance was growing with all of its unique spices, fruits, foods, and ,unknown to Paul, morphine-laced rum. Most of the people of Paulsland didn’t understand the value of precious metals yet, so Paul got to hoard the coins until his people adjusted, which turned out to be a boon for the entire nation.

Paul banged on the door of the vault, a soldier opened a small peep hole, and when he saw his King, he said, “King Paul, what can I do for you today?”

“I need you to open the door, find the men with the keys to the vault, and have them open it up. Then I need them to weigh the coins by metal; once that’s done, ship every coin down to Five Village Island. We are going to use those coins to save our nation.”

The guard said, “Yes, sir.”

“We need to do this as quickly as possible, so all these men I brought with me are going to help weigh the coins and package them for shipping.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you for the help.”

“Oh, and if one coin goes missing, then every one of you will be executed.”

Every guard and soldier turned to look at King Paul with astonishment, then they looked at each other. Most of them still hadn’t grasped the importance of coins; even so, they would be watching each other like hawks now. Either way, Paul’s words were a bluff. Paul didn’t have time to deal with this mess. He hoped his words meant little would be lost due to theft. An army was on its way, and he had things to do, so Paul left as his men started going into the vault or finding out where the vault keys were.

Paul made his way to the docks, where his own royal riverboat was waiting for him. Waiting for him was Badru.

Paul smiled when he saw him, looked up at the sky; the stars were still out, the sun was still hours from coming up; then Paul said, “Sorry for waking you so early.”

“Dad, we are getting invaded. It's time to act, not sleep. What do you need me to do?”

“I need you to take every militiaman and soldier from the capital to the road northwest of Five Village Island and begin building defenses there. Build trenches, wooden walls, and the like. Titus will join you, but he is currently on the savannah northwest of the capital. I do not know when he will get our message or how long it will take him to respond. I am going to have most of our men rally at your temporary fortress.”

“Why not have the men at the fortress of Five Village Island build it?”

“Because we can not afford to lose any of the fortresses connected to the island. That would be devastating. If we lose the position northwest of the island, we will lose more villages but little else. The Himyarites will not be able to skip the fort connecting Five Village Island to the mainland; if they did, we would be able to crush any supply train they send after their army. The Himyarite army has no choice but to capture it, but just because they are sieging the fort doesn’t mean they can't separate a part of their army to harass our nation. Your job will be to set up a fort so we can contain the Himyarite army.”

Badru was confused, “Contain? Until we can get enough people to overwhelm their army?”

“I have no intentions of fighting their army unless they look like they are going to take Five Village Island or some other strategic point. At least not right now.”

“What? Why?”

“What good would it do?”

Badru gave the best answer he could, “If we wipe out their army, then we are safe.”

“Why would that make us safe?”

Badru was confused and gave his best answer, but from the way his dad talked, it was the wrong one, “If all their soldiers are dead, then we are safe.”

Paul lifted his finger, waved it, and said, “That’s the thing, the soldiers crossing our border are not all their soldiers. Most of their soldiers are back in Himyarite. If we wipe out all their soldiers here, what is to keep them from sending twice as many soldiers in a year or two? Worse, how many of our men would be killed in wiping out their soldiers? If we fought them now, or anytime soon, even if we won, we would be in a worse spot. No, we need to stall the army they have and strike at the Himyarite homeland.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“I am going to bribe the king of Aksum.”

“What? How? Why?”

“I am going to give him all our gold, silver, copper, brass, our new one hundred and fifty five-foot long ship, several hundred crossbows, and three trebuchets to take the city of Muza. Whether his invasion is successful or not, the king of the Himyarites will forget all about us. What matters, though, is that we stall the army at our doorstep until we can get the king of Aksum begin his conquest of the Himyarites. Once they start their conquest, we will destroy the army at our gates.”

“Until then, you, Titus, and George will command the army at the temporary fort to keep the Himyarite army bottled up here. The spirits will stay to the rear of the Himyarite army and kill their soldiers as they get a chance while wiping out as much of their baggage train as possible. Dashiell and his navy will be harassing their ships and harbors across the Erythraean sea. Alexander is going to take an army through the wilderness north of us and directly attack the Himyarite colony. And Washington is going to make frankincense and myrrh worthless. I am sure I forgot something, but I have a lot of irons in the fire, and it's before sunup.”

Badru was so stunned his mouth was open. Badru thought war was your guys fighting their guys. Whoever had the most men and best equipment won, and although that may be true when you conquer minor villages at the edges of Paulsland, that was obviously not true when you fought a nation stronger than you.

Paul saw his son's surprise and said, “Close your mouth Badru; you don’t want to eat a bug. I have work to do at Five Village Island. I have to go if you have no more questions for me.”

“Dad, how long have you been preparing for war?”

“Since the day a man told me it was his right to rape my daughter, your sister. Ever since then, I determined I would either be stronger than any potential enemy, or I would do anything to beat them if they were stronger than me.”

With those words lingering in the air, Paul got on his royal riverboat and left.