Reborn In 3rd Century Rome with Future Industry

Lucius walked across the mud. Ahead of him lay the remains of Tribune Quintus’s vanguard... over two thousand legionaries bleeding in the snow.

But Lucius did not keep his eyes on the enemy dead. He turned his attention to his own lines.

Despite the supremacy of their pike square and chemical explosives, the Roman volley had exacted a toll. Eighteen men lay motionless behind the front lines. Among them was Felix, the gladiator who had smiled an hour ago, a javelin protruding through the collar of his breastplate.

Lucius stopped beside the fallen veteran, staring down at the face.

In his past life, Lucius had been an engineer... If he had remained a subservient patrician, handing over his iron to the Guilds, thousands of men would have starved in the slums of Civitas Aurelia.

By expanding his power, he was protecting his people. Yet, the thirst for that power was changing him.

Every time he wielded the devastation of his factory, the lines between an employer and a tyrant blurred. He was demanding men die to protect a monopoly.

It was a burden, but this valley was not the place for mourning...

The men of the *Custodes* were watching him. They were laborers and freedmen who had butchered the finest infantry on earth. They were terrified, exhilarated, and waiting for their Forge Master to tell them what it all meant.

Lucius stepped up onto the chassis of one of the ballista carts. He looked out over the sea of armor and pikes, his expression hardening.

"Look at the ground beneath your boots!" Lucius projected. "The men who came to put you back in chains are broken. The empire that starved your families and whipped your backs has bled upon our steel! But make no mistake... the Romans who died here today were merely the vanguard."

The *Custodes* gripped their weapons tighter, their eyes locking onto Lucius.

"Eighteen of our brothers fell holding this line," Lucius continued. "They died for the men standing beside them. By my authority as the *Paterfamilias*, I decree the Widow’s Dividend. The family of every man who fell today will receive a permanent cut of the Syndicate’s iron profits for the rest of their lives. No child of a fallen *Custodes* will know hunger!"

"But honoring our dead with silver is not enough," Lucius roared, drawing his spatha and pointing the blade down the valley. "Tribune Quintus is regrouping the rest of his legion beyond this mist. But we do not wait for the hammer to fall! We are going to smash the smith!"

Lucius slashed his sword through the air. "Before we march on Civitas Aurelia, we end the Seventh Legion! We advance down this valley, we crush their rally point, and we mount the Tribune’s eagle on our gates! For the Forge!"

The response was an eruption...

"*Ferrum et Ignis!*"

The army chanted, a thousand men slamming their pikes against their shields.

"*Iron and Fire!*"

Valerius, sitting atop his warhorse, nodded. He blew two blasts on his horn.

"Break down the artillery! Hitch the draft horses!" the commander bellowed, riding down the line. "We advance in column! Move, you bastards, move!"

The syndicate shifted from a static wall into a mobilized strike force with speed.

The ballistas were swiveled and locked into their transport carriages.

Kallias’s grenadiers strapped their satchels of clay pots against their chests, falling in behind the squares of the pikemen.

Within the hour, the *Custodes* were marching.

They moved deeper into the valley, leaving the mud and the slaughtered vanguard behind them.

Lucius rode near the front, flanked by Valerius and Amalric, whose cavalry secured the flanks.

No one in the history of the ancient world had seen a force like this...

Lucius was confident that his combination of artillery, spear formations, and chemical warfare could dismantle whatever defense Tribune Quintus managed to scrape together.

The Roman commander had been humiliated, his tactical assumptions shattered by weapons that defied his understanding of physics.

As they marched, the echoes of detonations continued to roll over the eastern ridges from the direction of Fundus Ferratus.

Lucius knew what those sounds meant. Isolda had lured the three thousand flanking legionaries into the eastern approach, drawing them over the network of mines.

The princess was triggering the collapse of the canyon, burying a third of the Roman army under tons of rock and fire.

The Tribune had split his forces to execute an envelopment, unaware that he was stepping into a meat grinder on two separate fronts.

The winter war for Gaul had ignited, and time was ticking down for the Roman elite. The tactics of the ancient legions were incompatible with the slaughter Lucius had unleashed.

It would be weeks before the scale of the devastation reached the ears of the rival Emperors in Rome, and by then, the empire’s supremacy would be absolute...

But for now, the objective was Tribune Quintus.

The man who had once mocked Lucius’s blueprints was about to learn what happens when you bring an sword to a war.

Lucius spurred his horse forward, the wind whipping his cloak.

The mist was clearing, revealing the tents of the Roman rally point in the distance.

"Load the ballistas!" Lucius ordered.

***

Isolda stood by the window of the chambers, resting her palm against her stomach. Though her child was barely more than a promise hidden in her womb, she possessed a certainty about his future. This child would not be born to tribal politics in the forests of Germania, nor would he be a Roman aristocrat playing at governance. He would possess the blood of warlords and the genius of the Forge Master.

As she gazed out at the pillars of smoke rising from the eastern ridges, the doors of the chamber creaked open. Aulus, the master scribe, hurried into the room.

His robes were rumpled, and his fingers clutched three parchments.

Isolda turned away from the glass, her expression hardening. Since Lucius had marched out to meet Tribune Quintus, Isolda had assumed operational control of Fundus Ferratus.

"Dispatches from the shadow network, Domina," Aulus breathed, bowing as he offered the scrolls. "One from the Dominus at the front, one from the eastern canyon scouts, and the final from our scribe embedded in the Governor’s praetorium."

Isolda took the parchments, breaking the seals with her thumb. She read through the script.

The first dispatch brought a smile to her lips.

Lucius reported that the engagement in the valley had been a success.

The Roman vanguard was broken, and he was advancing his artillery to lay waste to Quintus’s rally camp. The slaughter he described proved that legionary tactics were dead.

The second scroll confirmed the success of her trap.

The three thousand infantrymen Quintus had sent to flank the estate were gone. Isolda had overseen the burial of Kallias’s explosive clay charges along the goat paths of the eastern ridges.

When the Roman cohorts were deep in the gorge, her scouts had triggered the fuses.

The detonations had brought half the mountain down upon the legionaries, crushing them under tons of rock. The estate’s rear was secure.

However, it was the third letter, scrawled by Cassian that wiped the smile from Isolda’s face.

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