Chersonesus Taurica, Regnum Bosphorus, April 179
Tiberius Julius Sauramates son of Rhœmétalcès, king of the Regnum Bosphorus, looked in awe at the fleet coming in port. He could not remember such a display of military might and doubted there had been so many warships in the Euxine Sea and in particular in the Chersonesus since at least the time of the Diadochi, if not the war between Athens and Sparta. And this fleet was coming to his domain, in peace.
The fifty warships accompanied ten transports and a majestuous prestige ship of a gigantic size, three time the height of any other ship in the fleet, the sails on its masts purple in shade and emblazoned with the eagle of the empire. Marcus Aurelius, emperor of Rome, had come to his kingdom.
Sauramates knew the emperor, having met him years before during his stay in Rome, where he’d been educated alongside a number of other sons of foreign dignitaries. But he’d been nothing at the time, one son lost amidst many others, heir to a prosperous but far away land, not as exotic as the Armenians nor feared as some of the Barbarian tribes…
He wondered about what Marcus Aurelius would think of his kingdom. The great northern wall had changed so many things in the regnum… There had been a lot op upheaval, but things were now settled. The grain production was on the rise, with new exports toward the western black sea to bring supplies to the fortresses on the new northern border of the empire and more food for the people.
A number of new granaries had been built in the main ports cities, based on the plan of those in use in the roman legionary bases. A number of houses were rebuilt in cut stone or bricks, showing a certain prosperity, while new and larger temples were being built, another sure indication of wealth.
Most of the new buildings were made of bricks, an innovation in the area brought by the defunct Herodes Atticus which had catched across the kingdom like a plain fire in the middle of summer…
Thanks to increased taxes on grain export Sauramates had been able to pay for the services of four roman engineers who had spent a year each roaming through his land and suggesting improvements. His cities had thus new and more efficient baths, sewer systems to take away soiled water,...
But all this had been made possible initially by a man that the emperor had condemned and exiled, and maybe Marcus Aurelius would be angry at Sauramates and the kingdom for having harbored the man..
The king was also worried because of the situation developing on the sea of grass. More and more information came from north of the wall about the Gothii tribe, violent northmen come down south and becoming more and more threatening for cities such as Olbia, which was outside the big wall. This tribe disrupted the river trade that connected the inner parts of the western sea of grass with the Euxine sea.
Due to that one engineer had designed improvements to Olbia’s defenses : using bricks they had made the walls thicker and, more importantly, higher to the point that in no places a ladder could reach the top. The gates had also been reinforced to prevent treachery in case of siege and make the use of a ram difficult.
Similar improvements had been made to the northern wall, which now had a large covered gallery at the top of it providing good firing positions protected from enemy archers and bad weather while its brick structure prevented any risks of fire ruining it. The gates were well protected, and towers had been built at regular interval to reinforce the defenses.
There were even talks of building a first, slightly lower, wall in front of the main one so as to trap any force able to force the first line in a place from which escape would be difficult. The Romans engineers knew of the capacities of the new bracchiae and planned with them in mind, even if there should be no way a barbarian tribe ever got such weapons. But the example of the traitors who had provided king Decebalus of Dacia with artillery in the time of the divine Trajanus showed them they could not count on a enemy never gaining access to the technology.
Of course some barbarians could try to go around the wall with ships, but it was expected to be even more difficult than for them to gain artillery : ships required very specific knowledge to operate and the Roman and Bosphorean navy, as small as they were in the Euxine sea, would be able to stop them dead in the water. Beside the engineers had also provided the kingdom with the new signal towers, meaning that information about any fleet sighted alongside the coast could very easily be transmitted everywhere in the kingdom and allow the king’s cavalry to throw them back from the beaches.
The kingdom had no strength to extend but would now be able to grow, its heart well protected from any threat and its eastern reaches kept reasonably peaceful...