Titus was riding his horse as fast as he could without killing the beast. He was out on a campaign in the northern savannah dealing with a large collection of nomads who had yet to do what the southern nomads had done and surrender, when he got word that the Himyarites were starting their attack. It took a week and a half for the message to get to him, and now he was trying to make up time, but there were so few horses in Paulsland he didn’t want to ride this one to death. Everything cost him time, and he was needed.

After three weeks of riding, he finally reached the capital, where he took a riverboat downstream to Five Village Island. Titus finally had time to rest and think, but the only thing he could think about was how Paulsland still had a long way to go. Besides the Zambezi River, their quick transportation capability was practically nonexistent. In time, with the canals they were building, these problems would be solved, or in the more immediate future, when they bred enough horses, they would be able to change out horses every ten or so miles so men could get to places quickly when the need arose. But until then, things would move slowly. His veteran troops were still at least two weeks away. Then again, his veteran troops should be some of the last troops getting to Five Village Island.

Once Titus got a good night's sleep, he was able to focus on important things. First of all, the plan was to build a temporary fortress, a castra, along the road heading west from Five Village Island. The castra would hold most of the militia and soldiers. The fortress guarding the bridge to Five village Island would hold three or four thousand militia and a bit more than half the engineers.

If the Himyarites attacked the fortress protecting the north bridge on Five Village Island, then his soldiers from the road could flank them. If the Himyarites tried to go up the road and get into the interior of Paulsland, then they would be stymied by the castra filled with militia and soldiers, then attacked with soldiers from the fortress, and pelted by rocks from trebuchets and bolts from scorpions. Either way, the Himyarite army would have to deal with flanking attacks.

When the boat finally reached Five Village Island, Titus was appalled by the castra they were building northwest of the island. Titus told the boat captain, “Drop me off next to that abomination of a fort.”

“Sir, I am supposed to take you all the way to Five Village Island, its only three quarters of a mile away. King Paul is waiting for you.”

Titus pulled his sword out, held it to the boat captain, and said, “I AM HERE TO FIGHT KING PAUL’S WAR! YOU WILL LET ME OUT, OR I WILL RUN YOU THROUGH AND DROP MYSELF OFF AT THE BANK!”

The boat captain was young, foolish, and angry that he was disrespected, but he had a sword to his throat, so he said, “Yes, sir.” If he had any chance of winning, he would have foolishly fought, but that sword stayed out until the captain brought the boat to shore.

As soon as the boat touched the shore Titus jumped out and walked up the bank of the river to where they were building a fort, and it was chaos. Titus yelled out, “WHO IS IN CHARGE!”

A bunch of people gave him blank looks, then one man said, “I was told by my militias lieutenant to help put up a wall here.”

“Take me to him.”

“Yes, sir.

The young man turned and began walking toward his lieutenant and this infuriated Titus who yelled out, “RUN, YOU IDIOT, WE ARE PREPARING FOR AN INVASION!”

The youth looked back, said, “Yes, sir,” and began running.

Titus followed the youth, in full armor and yelled out, “RUN FASTER! WE HAVE NO TIME TO SPARE!”

Without a word, the youth began running harder, and a minute later, they found his lieutenant, who asked, “What’s wrong? Why are you running?”

Tutus said, “Shut up and listen. This is not how to make a temporary fortification. The Himyarites will easily get through this abomination like it was a prostitute's skirt. I need you to gather every leader who is in charge of fifty or more troops and bring them to King Paul. The last leader to arrive will be flogged. Anyone who makes it there after the next thirty minutes will be flogged. If anyone gets there after forty-five minutes and you will be flogged alongside them. Anyone who takes over an hour to get there will be executed. NOW GO!”

The lieutenant wasn’t sure who Titus was, he was part of Paulsland military before Titus joined, but he could tell a leader when he saw one, and Titus spoke with plenty of confidence, so the lieutenant issued orders to his men to spread the word that all military leaders were to go to King Paul immediately, and anyone who was late would be flogged, anyone who didn’t go would be killed. It wasn’t long before the orders got messed up, and every soldier and militia member was heading to the fort guarding the northbridge of Five Village Island.

Meanwhile, Titus jogged his way over to the fort and found King Paul in a little less than half an hour. Titus interrupted King Paul, "We need to talk.”

Paul saw the look on the old centurion's face and decided to drop everything else and listen to his foremost expert on war, “What's wrong?”

“For starters, the group of men out there that you call an army.”

“What's wrong with them? They have all been trained to fight.”

“They have been trained to fight in groups of hundreds, but how many of them have actually been involved in a battle where there were more than a thousand of them at one time?”

“A lot, actually. For the last few years, man camp has had a couple of thousand youths going through it.”

“I didn’t say man camp. I said battle.”

Paul thought about it for a minute, then said, “Less than two thousand of them.”

“And we have what, twenty thousand soldiers out there?”

“Nineteen out there, and another four in the walls of the fort. But I am told another two thousand nomads are coming.”

“The army that’s coming is trained to fight as one army. Right now, it looks like it's their twenty or thirty thousand vs. nineteen armies of a thousand. Nineteen armies constantly getting in each other's ways. If I was back in the Roman empire, I would have this army go out and fight, and after they lose, I would line up the survivors, kill one in ten, then train the rest to Roman standards while retreating from the bigger army. But if I was in Rome, I could always call for more soldiers or sacrifice a few cities to the enemy. If the Himyarites get past us, they will burn most of the nation, then conquer everything connected to a road in Paulsland. We have to stop the Himyarite army here, or this nation is over.”

“What do you want to do then?” Paul was irritated that Titus bad-mouthed his army, but Titus was right.

“We need to build a fortress between the Himyarites and the rest of Paulsland.”

“My men are doing that.”

“No, what your men are doing is putting lumber between the Himyarites and the rest of Paulsland. They need a well thought out temporary fortress, a castra.”

“Okay, build a castra.”

“We need to build one large enough for twenty thousand men.”

“Do you know how?”

“The largest I built was for ten thousand men. It won't be hard to make one twice as big. I wish we had a metatore to properly measure it out, but we will figure something out.”

“Well, get started.”

“We need to build this quickly. I told a lieutenant to bring all the leaders of fifty or more men up here so we can organize this job. Honestly, I am surprised none of them have made it here yet. I told them the last one here will get flogged, and everyone that gets here after half an hour will also get flogged.”

“They still have plenty of time.”

“The time started twenty-eight minutes ago. Granted it took me a few minutes to find you.”

That announcement caused Paul to cough, and he decided to protect his men as best he could and offered a small excuse for them, “Well, let's check outside; maybe my guards stopped them.”

When they stepped out, the entire courtyard was filled with as many men as the courtyard could hold. Paul was surprised, Titus was furious, and he yelled, “WHAT ARE YOU IDIOTS DOING HERE! ONLY LEADERS OF FIFTY OR MORE MEN SHOULD BE HERE! EVERYONE ELSE, STAND IN FORMATION WITH YOUR UNIT ON THE NORTH SIDE OF THE FORT!”

Titus turned to King Paul and said, “See, your men have fantastic personal discipline, but they don’t know how to act when there are thousands.”

Paul shook his head; he saw the mob and said, “Yeah, I see that; good thing my plan is to stall the Himyarite army.”

“If we build the castra, that won't be a problem, but will they give us enough time?”

“I don’t know. According to my spirits, we have two weeks. The Himyarite army stalled for a few weeks due to sickness, but they seem to have recovered. They probably have some of our women captives who treated them. It's unfortunate but understandable.”

“A Roman legion is trained to build a castra in a day, but due to your militia’s inexperience, we will get it done in three days if I have to kill militia members to get it done.”

“When you say kill, do you mean that literally or figuratively?”

“I mean execute anyone that’s being lazy.”

“Look, just flog a lazy worker, don’t kill them.”

“But that’s not as effective. I will have to flog dozens of men to get the same results I would get from executing one man.”

“But each life is sacred and special, so no executions without my permission.”

“Now you sound like some of those Christians; besides, I wasn’t going to execute anyone actually important.”

“You heard me.”

“Fine, no executions without your permission.”

About that time, the leaders of the soldiers and militia came in, and Titus saw the lieutenant he gave an order to, and he yelled out, “You’re the idiot who messed up my orders. I told you to bring the leaders here, not the entire army.” Then he used his staff to point at another officer and said, “Take my staff and give him thirty strikes for failing to follow orders.”

Paul had no choice but to back up Titus, so he nodded, and one lieutenant started flogging the other with the centurion’s Vinewood staff. Once that was done, Titus explained what he wanted built and quickly organized the men. If they were too stupid to follow his orders, they would be flogged in front of their men and replaced. Titus made it extremely clear that they were not ready for this enemy, and their only hope was blocking the road into the rest of Paulsland.

One of the Majors asked, “What if the Himyarites go through the tropical forest and bypass us?”

Titus smiled and said, “Then we win. Sure, we will take losses, but we will win. The Paulsland military is trained to fight in the tropical forest. Every man who served as a soldier in the Paulsland military has experience fighting in the tropical forest. The Himyarites are desert dwellers used to fighting in a treeless environment. Most militaries fight in open fields, often farmland of one nation or the other. If they go into the tropical forest, their ranks and strategies will be useless, whereas Paulsland’s military doctrine will pick them apart. Chances are the Himyarite military commander will try to bypass through the tropical forest to the north with two or three thousand men, and when they do, we have to stop them. Normally it would be wise to bait an army to send all their troops through terrain that gives us an advantage, but not in this case because those thousands of troops will be able to wreck havoc across Paulsland. So, whenever they probe the forest, we are going to destroy them. But to get them to learn that lesson, we have to build the castra.”

After an hour of explanations, Titus sent the leaders out to guide their men in castra construction. With the help of nearly twenty thousand men, they built it in only two days. Only fourteen men lost their rank. Once the castra was finished, Titus began training his men in legion numbers. Five thousand apiece. Up to this point, the largest military movement in Paulsland had been fifteen hundred, but things were changing; Paulsland could scrounge nearly five legions. In twenty years, it would be two dozen, but that’s normal with baby booms.