The weather had turned against them.
Winter had truly set in, blanketing the land in knee-deep snow, while fog clung to the valley floor like a shroud, pooling low between the pine-draped hills that bordered the Iron Corridor.
The mist dulled the light and muffled the world, painting everything in shades of grey and silence.
But inside the fog, the war was far from still.
It had evolved.
And it was Julius who shaped it using tactics he’d first introduced during his Greecian Campaign.
~
Romanus Forward Command – Two Days Later
Sabellus’s boot crunched frost as he entered the operations tent.
A map stretched across the central table had been updated again — fresh pins marked new skirmishes, enemy routes, and Imperial traps.
Julius stood over it, his back straight, his breath fogging the chill air despite the brazier crackling nearby.
"They’ve taken the bait,"
Sabellus said, peeling off his gloves.
"All three fronts?"
Julius didn’t look up.
"Yes,"
Sabellus replied.
"The peasant armies have begun their push on the corridor flanks. Both from the south near Varnel and the north through the Mistral Hills."
"And the Royal Host?"
"Marshal Theoderic continues his march east toward Saint-Valais. Fifteen thousand, all professional. They’ve slowed slightly, heavy carts and poor roads, but... they’re committed."
Julius nodded.
"Excellent."
He placed a gloved hand on a thin line running through the central valley between the two peasant forces and the main Francian advance.
"This corridor is a blade. A wound. Let them bleed trying to stitch it shut."
Sabellus eyed him carefully.
"You truly intend to hold all three lines?"
"No,"
Julius said simply.
"I intend to make them think they’re fighting on three fronts."
He stepped aside and motioned to the black folder laid beside the map — wax-sealed with the mark of the Root.
The cover bore no na, but its contents had already been committed to mory.
Inside were pages of operations detailing the movents of new strike teams — not agents of the Root proper, but trained auxiliaries, cohorts born from the shadows of Romanus, drilled in silence, in sabotage, in sothing dangerously close to assassination.
They were known as the Nymbrati — the Hidden Ones.
Each squad consisted of six to twelve handpicked legionnaires — veterans who had survived countless campaigns and whose loyalty was absolute.
Their mission was not to defend.
But to destabilize.
They were the empires first sabatour units.
~
North of the Corridor – The Mistral Hills
In the dead of night, a force of nearly twenty thousand Francian peasants marched through the narrow pine-choked passes that led to the corridor’s upper flank.
They bore torches, ard with only simple weapons, spears, and sword, but no armor, not proper stuff at least, just cloth or simple light leather.
They were angry, frightened, but driven by desperation, they were peasants not soldiers, but the crown had passed down a levy, which ant they the commoners had to respond lest they be executed for treason against the crown.
And so husbands, sons, brother all, left their families behind and marched as one with what strength they could muster and headed east to et the invaders who ca to take their freedom.
They never saw the enemy.
Just their shadows.
The first cart exploded in a shower of fire and steel, scattering n and oxen alike.
Then ca the rain of short javelins, launched from above the ridgelines.
A dozen n fell before the shouting began.
More torches lit the forest.
More died.
Panicked screams filled the night, but their enemy remained elusive — Nymbrati operatives moved between trees like ghosts, blades in hand, slitting throats and vanishing into brush before the Francians could respond.
Traps littered the narrow road.
Tripwires snapped taut and triggered spiked logs to swing down from trees, crushing n like kindling.
By morning, nearly five hundred were dead.
The Mistral force halted.
In just one night before even facing a single battle they had lost 2.5% of their total force, while the number was quite high, this was shocking to both sides that composed this force.
For the levies, it showed just how vulnerable they were, five hundred gone in one day, just one day, and that wasn’t even fighting the enemy army, if that were to happen thoughts crept into the minds of every man there, that to fight would an total annihilation.
As for the officers, the nobles leading this levy force their forheads were slicked with sweat, they knew morale was a fickle thing, and when it ca to military arts, their teachings had told them that a retreat especially by commoner forces would be possible if the army were to lose anywhere from 5-30% of it’s total number, to have approached that figure already before even having a battle...
Sha, that was all these noble scions leading the army could feel, if the army was to retreat before even fighting, their futures, hell even their very lives would be at stake for failing so catastrophically to fulfill his Majesties orders.
And then once the rumors spread the commoners without command started to back off, the forest was believed to be cursed.
But retreat had already been cut.
Two hills over, another Nymbrati squad collapsed a ridge road, forcing the survivors to scatter into the woods where waiting teams picked them off one by one.
When the Francian main force heard the report days later, the northern peasant army had been reduced to less than two thirds of its strength, thousands dead and yet they didn’t yet achieve the objective.
~
South of the Corridor – Varnel Plains
The southern force — fourty thousand strong — fared little better.
Though their land was flatter and their march quicker, they encountered resistance of a different kind.
At first, just shattered watchtowers.
Then poisoned wells.
Then, missing couriers.
By the third day, a unit of their vanguard vanished entirely.
When scouts finally found them, the soldiers were stripped of gear and crucified upside down, a ssage carved into their chests in a language reserved for the Francian elite.
’Tu marches là où dornt les lions’
"You walk where lions sleep."
This threat was unknown to the commoners who only spoke the common tongue, but to the nobles who spoke their own royal language, they beca red faced in anger.
But failing to inform the commoners was their biggest mistake.
That sa night, three separate firebreaks ignited across their camp — flaming oil barrels launched by unseen hands into hay-laden supply carts.
Chaos followed.
And through that chaos, the Nymbrati struck.
Disguised as Francian soldiers, they slipped into the camp mid-panic, poisoning food stores and cutting command tents.
By dawn, morale was broken.
The commoners believed their noble leaders had sold them out, still not knowing what was carved on the fallen bodies the day before, but after the nights events they took it to an it was instructions.
The nobles were the first to flee in the panic of the night, leaving the commoners to fend for themselves.
In the wake of this.
Two thousand now fled going awol and abandoning their duty.
The Varnel force would never reach the corridor.
Not in ti.
And certainly not together.
~
Back in the Heart — Romanus Command Fort
"They’re splintering,"
Sabellus reported, unable to keep the satisfaction from his voice.
"The peasant armies are collapsing before they even see a legionnaire."
Julius permitted a single nod.
"And Theoderic?"
"He’s aware,"
Sabellus said.
"But even with the north and southern spliter forces failing to et us, his own force has pride, they believe they will smash through our lines, before continuing on to mop up the rest."
"Good,"
Julius said.
He stepped toward the map, drawing a red line through the center of the corridor.
"They’ll expect a trap at Saint-Valais. They’ll expect us to et them in the field."
He tapped the far left edge.
"We et them here instead. Let their vanguard reach the hills near Le Pont Noir. Let them feel like they’ve outmaneuvered us. And then..."
"Spring the trap?"
Julius’s voice lowered.
"No. We close the hand."
He turned to Sabellus.
"Move two legions off the corridor discreetly. Use back trails. Pull them wide. Tell the Nymbrati to prepare another wave. This ti, not sabotage."
Sabellus tilted his head.
"Then what?"
Julius t his gaze.
"Deception."
~
Francia — Marshal Theoderic’s Vanguard
The Francian commander adjusted his cloak as the morning mist parted slightly, revealing the low ridges ahead — the heart of Romanus’s wedge.
Smoke rose lazily in the distance — too controlled to be a battle.
More likely a supply caravan or a garrison post.
His scouts had returned weary but intact.
The peasant attacks had failed, but thankfully their re presence had force the legions to stay put.
Which ant Romanus was exposed, the center of their invasion was ripe for the taking, splitting their own forces in two.
Now was the ti to strike.
Still... sothing gnawed at him.
These were not rebels.
Not ordinary conquerors.
The wounds in his march were not from open war.
They were surgical.
asured.
His soldiers whispered of shadows in the trees.
His captains spoke of poisoned rivers, cut throats, strange sigils left behind.
And the deeper they marched, the fewer locals they saw.
Empty towns.
Burnt fields.
Not sacked — abandoned.
Cleansed, almost in the sa way the Prince had done to the border territory.
It was unnatural.
And for the first ti in years, Theoderic began to wonder—
What kind of enemy had they really roused?
~
At the Edge of the Corridor – Romanus Siege Line
The campfires burned low.
Troops moved in silence now.
Not fear — but ritual.
Every man oiled his blade keep it from sticking in its sheathe.
Every helt strap was checked.
Every boot fitted tight.
They were ready.
Not for glory.
Not for chants.
But for sothing quieter.
The crack of shield on shield.
The rhythm of spear-thrusts.
The silence of a dying kingdom, brought about by their own bladefalls.
And Julius stood among them, clad in his campaign armor, hands clasped behind his back, as he watched the dark line of trees where the Royal Host would soon erge.
He had his corridor.
He had his kill zone.
Now... he would have his war.
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