Reborn In 3rd Century Rome with Future Industry

A steel bolt tore through the air.

It struck the earth two inches from the hooves of the herald’s horse, burying itself three feet into the dirt and showering the rider in mud.

The horse screamed, bucking. Startled, the herald nearly fell from the saddle. He scrambled to regain the reins, panic widening his eyes.

"You arrogant fools!" the herald shrieked, spurring his mount around. "You will all hang for this!"

He galloped back toward the mercenary lines, leaving his white flag trampled in the mud.

"Let them come," Lucius muttered.

A moment later, a roar erupted from the sea of torches.

The mob of three thousand thugs, gladiators, and mercenaries began their charge up the incline.

Valerius did not wait for them to close the distance. The Security Chief raised his spatha.

"First battery! Loose!"

Along the palisade, twenty ballistas fired. Lucius leaned over the railing.

What he witnessed next was not a retreat... The steel bolts slammed into the front ranks.

Lucius watched as a steel projectile punched through a mercenary’s leather breastplate, ripped through his spine, and impaled the man behind him.

Screams tore through the night, echoing over the thumping of the *Custodes* reloading the war engines.

The front lines crumbled, trampled into the mud by the momentum of their comrades pushing from the rear.

A wave of nausea hit Lucius.

He had spent his previous life designing safety tolerances and load-bearing structures.

He had drafted the blueprints for these ballistas to protect his factory.

Seeing the reality of human bodies being dismantled by his machinery was a shock to his sensibilities...

Driven by the promise of plunder, the surviving mercenaries raised bucklers and scavenged shields over their heads, pushing through the kill-zone.

They reached the base of the palisade. Hooked ropes and ladders were thrown against the walls.

"They are scaling the eastern perimeter!" Titus shouted, drawing his gladius.

Valerius made a gesture to his lieutenants stationed at the bastions.

The *Custodes* did not draw their swords to meet the climbers. Instead, teams of men rushed forward holding long-handled crucibles they had hauled from the factory floor.

Just as the first wave of mercenaries crested the battlements, they were met with the byproducts of the night shift.

The *Custodes* inverted the crucibles, pouring gallons of boiling brine and liquid slag down the ladders.

Lucius stumbled back from the railing, his hands flying to his mouth in horror.

The boiling brine soaked through leather armor, scalding the flesh beneath, while the molten slag stuck to the men. Dozens of climbers shrieked, their hands melting as they tried to peel the burning iron from their faces. They fell backward, crushing the men beneath them in a mass of burning bodies.

The smell of sizzling meat and burning hair wafted up into the watchtower.

Lucius couldn’t hold it back. He collapsed against a support beam, emptying his stomach onto the floorboards, his body rejecting the sensory overload of warfare.

He gagged, wiping his mouth with the back of his trembling hand, his mind struggling to process the brutality of his survival.

Despite the casualties, the mass of the mob meant they were pressing forward. A thousand men were dead or incapacitated, but two thousand more were battering the gates with logs. The palisade was groaning under the pressure.

Lucius forced himself to stand, gripping the railing. He looked at his Security Chief.

"Valerius," Lucius rasped. "Is it time?"

Valerius took one look at the splintering gates and nodded. "Yes, Dominus."

Valerius pulled a ram’s horn from his belt and blew three notes.

Down in the mob, the mercenaries ignored the sound, assuming it was a call for reinforcements that didn’t exist.

They continued to hurl themselves at the walls, fixated on breaching the fortress...

They were so focused on the front gates that they failed to notice the camouflaged doors swinging open in the western tree line, behind their exposed flank.

From the shadows of the woods, fifty Gothic cavalrymen emerged. They were led by Amalric, the brother of Lucius’s bride, and Wulfric, who rode a roan stallion.

The Goths had been staged in the trees before the mob arrived, waiting in the dark.

With a war cry, Amalric lowered his lance.

The Gothic cavalry hit the flank of the mercenary mob like a battering ram. The impact was devastating. The mercenaries, exhausted from trying to climb the walls and looking in the wrong direction, were defenseless.

War-horses trampled men into the mud, while the *falxes* Wulfric and his riders wielded sheared through the ranks with ease.

Trapped between the walls of the estate and a cavalry charge tearing through their rear, the mercenaries broke.

Men dropped their weapons, screaming for mercy, while others scrambled into the fields, slipping in the mud as they tried to flee the slaughter.

From the watchtower, Lucius watched the enemy ranks dissolve. He let out a breath, the tension leaving his muscles.

"The gates hold," Lucius said, wiping the sweat from his forehead. "They are breaking, we won!"

Valerius rested his hands on the railing, his eyes scanning the fleeing masses with suspicion.

"I would not celebrate just yet, Dominus," Valerius warned.

Lucius frowned, following his commander’s gaze. "What do you mean? They are throwing down their swords. The siege is over."

"The siege is over, yes," Valerius agreed, turning to look Lucius in the eye. "But look at the men surrendering to Amalric’s riders. Drunk gladiators. Starving peasants handed iron clubs."

Valerius gestured toward the road. "This assault went according to our projections. But that is what worries me. Where are the Guild Masters? Where is Spurius? Where are the elite, armored guards the magistrates employ to protect the city vaults?"

Lucius felt a spike of unease pierce his relief... He realized what Valerius was implying.

"You think they didn’t come," Lucius murmured.

"I know they didn’t," Valerius said. "If Spurius wanted to take this blast furnace, he would have brought his enforcers. He would have staged scouts on the western ridge to watch for flanking maneuvers. There were no scouts. They marched three thousand thugs to our gates and let us slaughter them."

Lucius felt a flush of embarrassment.

He had been proud of his "Anvil" maneuver, a tactic he had read about in ancient history books in his past life, assuming it was a stroke of martial genius...

"Why would they spend thousands of denarii to hire a mob just to let us butcher them?" Lucius asked.

Valerius looked out over the carnage. "Because a mob of thugs cannot lay claim to a patrician estate under Roman law, Dominus. But a legionary cohort can."

Valerius turned back to Lucius. "Spurius wanted us to deploy our war engines. He wanted us to use the Gothic cavalry. Because tomorrow morning, the magistrates will write a letter to the provincial governor, stating that the House of Cassius is employing barbarian mercenaries to massacre Roman citizens."

The realization hit Lucius.

They had won the battle, but they had walked into a trap...

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