Reborn In 3rd Century Rome with Future Industry

December 21, 220 AD, Fundus Ferratus, Gallia.

The light of dawn crept through the windows of the chambers, but Lucius was awake.

Isolda rested in the furs of their bed, her breathing even. Given the physician’s mandates regarding her pregnancy, a night of sleep was a blessing, and Lucius moved with silence so as not to wake her.

Foregoing his morning review of the ledgers, Lucius walked to the armor stand in the corner of the room.

Today, he was joining the *Custodes* on the fields, and he dressed accordingly.

His armor was a suit of blackened steel *lorica squamata*. The overlapping steel scales were riveted to a leather backing, offering a degree of absorption and flexibility that iron could not achieve.

He strapped steel greaves to his shins and pulled on a pair of gauntlets that allowed for finger mobility.

At his waist, he fastened a sword belt with brass fittings.

Hanging from it was a weapon Decimus had spent weeks perfecting: a cavalry-style *spatha*.

The blade was folded steel, and the hilt was wrapped in braided copper wire.

It was a weapon designed to shear through a shield and the man holding it without losing its edge.

Armored, Lucius slipped out of the bedchambers, leaving his wife to her rest.

He grabbed a ration of flatbread and figs from the kitchens, strode out to the stables, and mounted his warhorse, riding down the hills toward the *Castra Umbra*.

When he arrived at the training fields, Valerius was screaming orders at the infantry.

The *Custodes* had swelled to over a thousand men.

Every soldier wore the identical steel armor of the syndicate.

Three hundred men had been sectioned off into auxiliary units under the guidance of Kallias, the chemist. They carried slings and satchels. They were Lucius’s grenadiers.

On Valerius’s command, the grenadiers stepped out from behind the wall of pikemen, hurled clay pots across the field, and retreated behind the steel wall.

For the drills, the pots were filled with chalk and sand, bursting in white clouds upon impact.

But in a battle, those clay shells would be packed with Kallias’s explosives...

The synergy of a Macedonian-style phalanx combined with the area-denial of chemical explosives was a tactical doctrine that would break the psychology of a traditional Roman legion.

Valerius spotted the Forge Master approaching and snapped to attention, striking his chest with a fist. The army followed suit, the sound of a thousand gauntlets hitting breastplates echoing across the valley.

Lucius rode to the front of the formation, looking out over his men. He returned the salute.

"At ease!" Lucius commanded.

The wall of steel relaxed, thousands of eyes locking onto the patrician who had dragged them out of the slums and forged them into warriors.

"The Emperor is dead!" Lucius announced. "The Legates are sharpening their knives, preparing to tear the provinces apart for a scrap of purple silk! But we will not be victims of their ambition."

Lucius drew his spatha.

"In one month, we march! Our target remains sealed for now, but when the time comes, we will strike out from this valley and shatter the chains of the old world!

I will not lie to you... we will be marching into the jaws of war, and the earth will drink our blood.

But we fight for our prosperity! We fight for our families!"

Lucius raised his sword, bellowing the battle cry he had ingrained into the syndicate’s culture over the past months.

"*Ferrum et Ignis!* Iron and Fire!"

The response was devotion...

A thousand men slammed their pikes against their shields, roaring the words into the sky.

"*Ferrum et Ignis!*"

For the remainder of the morning, Lucius stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Valerius, observing the combat drills.

They watched as the ballista carts deployed on the flanks of the infantry squares, practicing overlapping fields of fire.

Despite the display of military, Valerius possessed a scowl.

The veteran had known about Lucius’s plan to attack Civitas Aurelia for weeks, and the mathematics of urban warfare were eating away at him.

Eventually, he could not hold his tongue...

"We have a thousand men, Dominus," Valerius murmured. "It is a terrifying force on an open field. But Governor Marcellus sits behind thirty feet of stone in Civitas Aurelia. He commands two thousand watchmen and an auxiliary garrison. If we march on the capital, we will be forced into an urban siege. Every street will be a bloodbath. Even with Kallias’s explosive clay, breaching the gates will stretch our numbers dangerously thin. And if the legions catch wind of our assault before we secure the port, we will be trapped against the walls and slaughtered from behind."

Lucius chuckled. He reached out, clapping a hand onto Valerius’s shoulder. "What you say is true... if we were fighting a conventional war. But I am not concerned about the gates of Civitas Aurelia. I have an ace in the hole."

Valerius frowned. "The propaganda? You believe your brother’s paper manifestos will cause enough of a riot to open the gates?"

"People need more than just paper to overthrow a Governor," Lucius noted, his smile widening.

Valerius stared at him. "You are arming them? You are using Hagen’s smugglers to slip weapons into the city slums."

"Five thousand untraceable iron *falxes*," Lucius confirmed. "Hidden in grain carts and false-bottomed wine barrels over the past three weeks. When we march on the city, the plebeians and the gladiators won’t just be reading a manifesto. They will be armed, organized, and furious. The city watch will be consumed by a slaughter. The gates will be opened for us from the inside."

Valerius exhaled a breath, shaken by the ruthlessness of the strategy.

"That is merciless, Dominus... Even for you."

Lucius’s smile faltered for a fraction of a second before he shook his head, looking back out at the drilling troops.

"It was Isolda’s idea." Lucius admitted.

Valerius let out a groan, pinching the bridge of his nose. "By the gods... you two are made for each other."

While the commander preferred to win his battles with steel on an open field, he could not deny the efficiency of Isolda’s sabotage.

With the capital’s underclass rising up to tear the magistrates apart from the inside, the *Custodes* could sweep in, seize the ports, and claim the province with minimal casualties.

Lucius looked out over his army, a sense of destiny swelling in his chest. If the gods of this world existed, they had to be watching him with awe.

Why else would he have been ripped from his timeline and placed here, armed with the knowledge of the future, if not to tear down the Roman Empire and rebuild it in his image?

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