Part 1
Part 2: The Lion's Den and the Lion's Maw

Though the Roman legionnaires were only skirting the edges of the Great Desert, they knew that they had already entered difficult ground. Every mile they marched away from the coast, the air grew hotter than the Romans grew further from refuge. While the legionnaires were successful in Carthago and Sfax, there they did not have to wonder how far north the desert's legendary sandstorms could reach or contend with Tuareg riders.

Having already looted Agadir Ighrem, often dubbed Wa-Iharan's breadbasket, the legions opted to make a dead march for the capital. However, they could only move as the day began and as it ended; to march in the heat while clad in armor would guarantee death at the hands of their unforgiving environs, and to do so without armor would guarantee death at the hands of even less merciful Berbers. Worse still would be a journey at night by torchlight, for many of the Berber camel-archers were nomads accustomed to hunting more elusive prey in the dark.

Altogether, the trek to Wa-Iharan was a terror-filled affair. Twice each day they marched, and at least twice each day they were harried by skirmishers. Actually, these engagements could barely be characterized as skirmishes. More often, veiled riders would emerge from behind a distant terrain feature, arrows flying immediately toward the ranks of the Roman infantry. Their bows, resembling typical composite recurves to the untrained eye, somehow fired far beyond the reach of Roman gastraphetes. Before the legionnaires could muster a proper response, their assailants vanished into the sands as suddenly as they came. Roman cavalry atop Kharangaar horses gave chase for the first few encounters, only to find the Berbers' camels unarmored; bearing a lighter burden and being more comfortable in their surroundings, the camels handily outpaced even these prized steeds, and those Roman riders who dared to pursue paid dearly for doing so.

With their originally intended path blocked, the Romans had to round the southern shores of the the great lake to reach Wa-Iharan. Previous intelligence from friendlier relations with the Imazighen indicated that Wa-Iharan's water for drinking and agriculture was provided in large part by two bankside reservoirs, one southwest of the capital and one to the northeast. To their grave disappointment, however, the Romans found that the Berbers were not merely sitting on their hands after all: the southwestern reservoir--the one Rome could have used to supply its legions amidst the desert--was sabotaged. During a wartime meeting in Wa-Iharan, the Sultan and his military advisors determined that it would be best to sacrifice one of the city's reservoirs--even if this meant decreasing the number of residents Wa-Iharan could support--in order to prevent the Romans from having access to a convenient source of water. While this decision was incredibly costly for the Berbers, forcing nearly a third of the capital's residents to evacuate to other cities, it also single-handedly denied the Romans the ability to lay siege to the capital in the long term.

If the Roman legions wanted to break the Sultanate and its capital, they would have to assault the city directly, hoping they could achieve their objective before they run out of essential supplies.

Nonetheless, men atop the walls of Wa-Iharan eventually saw the legionnaires' standards. The Romans were discouraged, and they dreaded what might await them in a city that had only ever been assaulted by Berbers, but their numbers were great and their weapons of war were many. More than thirty thousand soldiers steeled themselves to test the strength of what many Romans regarded as the second capital of the world.