The forty-eight hours of waiting were the longest of Gaius Maximus’s life. He moved through the camp at Noreia in a state of controlled agony, inspecting fortifications, drilling his n, and offering curt, professional responses to the constant stream of questions from Lucilla’s eager envoy, Fabius. Outwardly, he was the picture of a commander preparing for a major campaign. Inwardly, his soul was a battlefield, torn between his sworn duty to his Emperor and the impending, unthinkable act of treason he was being forced to commit. He was a man trapped in a waking nightmare, praying for an order that would grant him either a glorious death or an honorable escape.
The imperial courier arrived just after sunset on the second day, his horse lathered and near collapse. Maximus took the coded scroll with a hand that, to his own disgust, trembled slightly. He retreated to the privacy of his tent, the smug, watchful eyes of Fabius following him all the way. He decoded the ssage with frantic haste, his heart pounding a nervous rhythm against his ribs. He expected an order to refuse and fight, to beco a martyr for the Emperor’s cause. He expected an order to attempt an impossible breakout. He even half-expected a ssage of condolence, an order to die honorably.
The order he received was the one thing in the world he had never considered.
Obey her, the decoded ssage began. March on Augusta Vindelicorum. Take the city. Seize the granaries. You are no longer my hidden regent; you are the unwilling point of my arrow. Play the part of the loyal, conquering general.
Maximus stared at the words, his mind refusing to process them. Obey? He was to obey a traitor? He was to lead the legendary Tenth Legion, his legion, in an unprovoked attack on a peaceful Roman city? The thought was a physical violation, a desecration of every value he held sacred. He felt a surge of rage and betrayal directed at Alex. Had the boy Emperor lost his mind? Had he truly decided to sacrifice the honor of his most loyal general and his finest legion?
But then he read on, and the rage gave way to a dawning, baffled confusion. The dispatch continued with a series of secondary instructions, a list of subtle, almost petty, orders that seed to make no sense in the context of a major invasion.
But this is what you will do, Alex’s ssage continued. March, but march slowly. Your legion is ’still recovering from the rescue efforts.’ The roads through the mountains are ’treacherous.’ Find every excuse. I need you to buy ti. Send your best scouts ahead, not to map the terrain for invasion, but to make secret contact with the city’s magistrates. Give them my personal seal. Tell them a storm is coming, but that the Emperor’s sun will shine again. Tell them to offer only token resistance. To surrender the city without bloodshed. Assure them they will be rewarded for their pragmatism.
And the Noricans, the ssage went on, Lucilla’s personal troops. Treat them with a professional, chilling correctness. Share no camaraderie. Let your veteran legionaries see them for what they are: barbarians in Roman armor, loyal to a woman, not to the eagle. Let friction grow. Let resentnt fester. You are not just a general on this march; you are a master of ceremonies, orchestrating a tragedy.
Maximus let the parchnt fall from his fingers. He sank onto his camp stool, his head in his hands. It was a plan of such breathtaking subtlety, such cold-blooded, long-term calculation, that it was almost beyond his comprehension. Alex was not ordering him to be a traitor. He was ordering him to act the part of a traitor, to commit a dishonorable act on a grand stage, all as part of so larger, invisible strategy. He was being asked to sacrifice the thing he valued most—his honor—on a promise that it would serve a greater good he could not yet see.
It was the ultimate test of his loyalty. Not a test of courage, but a test of pure, blind faith in the strategic genius of his young, strange Emperor. With a groan that seed to rise from the depths of his soul, he knew he had no choice. He had sworn an oath.
The next morning, the horns sounded. The Legio X Fretensis, ten thousand strong, ford up in perfect, disciplined cohorts, their eagle standard gleaming in the morning sun. Beside them assembled the two thousand Norican scouts, a wilder, more chaotic energy radiating from their ranks. They were an army of oil and water, forced together for a common, profane purpose.
Lucilla’s envoy, Quintus Fabius, bead with triumph as Maximus gave the order. "Legion, advance!"
The march began. It was a funeral procession for Maximus’s soul. Every step his n took toward Raetia was a step away from the honorable path he had walked his entire life. He was leading them into a cri against the very Empire they were sworn to protect.
He obeyed Alex’s secondary orders with the ticulousness of a true professional. He imdiately cut their pace, citing the need for his n to recover from their grueling rescue work. "A legion at half-strength is a liability," he announced to a frustrated Fabius, who could hardly argue with the hero of Noreia’s concern for his n. The march crawled forward at a snail’s pace.
He dispatched his most trusted centurions, n whose loyalty to him was absolute, on "long-range reconnaissance." Their true mission was to ride ahead, find the leaders of Augusta Vindelicorum, and deliver the Emperor’s secret ssage of impending doom and future liberation.
He implented a strict policy of non-fraternization between his own legionaries and the Norican cohorts. They camped separately. They marched separately. The Tenth, veterans of dozens of campaigns, looked down on the Noricans as ill-disciplined barbarians. The Noricans, proud of their own martial traditions, saw the legionaries as rigid and arrogant. The friction Alex had wanted began to build, a low, constant hum of animosity between the two halves of Lucilla’s invasion force. Maximus was sowing the seeds of discord, and the crop was growing well.
After a week of this agonizingly slow advance, they crested the final ridge of the Alps. Below them, spread out in a fertile valley, lay the city of Augusta Vindelicorum.
It was a picture of perfect Roman peace. The sun glinted off the terracotta roofs and the white marble of the forum. The city walls, built more for prestige than for defense against a real threat, stood quiet. In the surrounding fields, farrs worked their land, their cattle grazing peacefully. There were no watch-fires, no signs of a mobilized defense. It was a city utterly, blissfully unaware that a Roman army had just appeared on its doorstep with hostile intent. It was a lamb waiting for the slaughter.
Fabius turned to Maximus, his eyes gleaming with greedy anticipation. "A beautiful sight, General. Ripe for the taking. The granaries will be ours by nightfall."
Maximus looked down at the city he was about to conquer, at the peaceful hos he was about to occupy, at the Roman citizens he was about to subjugate. The taste of ashes filled his mouth. This was his darkest hour. With a heart as heavy as a block of granite, he raised his arm and gave the signal to advance on the unsuspecting city. The traitor’s march had reached its destination.
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