Marcus stumbled. His face hit the gravel of the Via Aemilia.
He didn't get up immediately. The stones felt cool against his cheek. For a split second, the darkness of unconsciousness was more tempting than the throne of Rome.
"Up," a voice snarled.
Galen grabbed him by the tunic and hauled him to his feet. The physician didn't check for injuries. He jammed a thumb into Marcus's mouth, forcing a glob of bitter, gritty paste onto his tongue.
"Chew," Galen ordered. "Swallow."
Marcus gagged. The taste was vile—raw caffeine, crushed kola nut, and something acidic.
"What is it?" Marcus rasped, his heart suddenly hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
"Stimulant," Galen said, wiping his hands on his tunic. "It will keep you awake. Or it will stop your heart. Either way, you keep walking."
The paste hit Marcus's bloodstream like lightning. His vision sharpened. The blurry gray road snapped into high-definition focus.
He looked down the column.
It wasn't an army anymore. It was a worm of misery stretching for miles.
Thirty-five thousand men were limping south. They had stripped off their tunics in the heat. They had dropped the gold they looted from Valerius's camp because it was too heavy.
They left a trail of abandoned shields, broken sandals, and dying men who simply sat down and refused to get up.
STATUS ALERT.
STAMINA: 14%.
UNIT COHESION: CRITICAL.
DISTANCE TO RAVENNA: 18 MILES.
"Eighteen miles," Marcus muttered, his hands shaking uncontrollably from the stimulant. "We can make it by sunset."
Thwip.
A sound buzzed past his ear. Like an angry hornet.
A soldier ten feet away grunted and fell. An arrow was sticking out of his neck.
"Shields!" Narcissus roared, spinning around.
But there were no shields. They had dropped them to run faster.
Out on the eastern flank, in the tall grass, shadows moved.
Riders. Light cavalry. They weren't wearing armor. They wore flowing silk robes and rode fast, agile ponies.
They didn't charge. They rode in a circle, closer and closer, firing arrows from short composite bows without ever stopping.
"Parthian Horse Archers," Crixus spat. "Scouts. They're herding us."
Another volley hissed into the column. Three men dropped.
"Form square!" a centurion shouted. "Testudo!"
The instinct was to stop. To turtle up. To defend.
"NO!" Marcus screamed, his voice cracking. "Do not stop!"
He ran down the line, shoving men forward.
"If you stop, you die! They want to pin us down! Keep walking!"
"They are slaughtering us!" the centurion yelled back, pointing at a boy bleeding out in the ditch.
"Let them!" Marcus roared. "The Heavy Cataphracts are one hour behind! If the main body catches us, we are all dead! Walk!"
It was the cruelest order he had ever given.
The army marched. They marched while arrows rained down on them. They marched over the bodies of their friends. They marched while the horse archers laughed and took potshots at the stragglers.
It was a death march.
Every mile cost a hundred lives.
The sun began to dip lower. The buzzing of the flies mixed with the buzzing of the arrows.
Then, a new sound.
A deep, rhythmic thrumming in the earth. It vibrated up through the soles of Marcus's boots. It wasn't the light tap of ponies. It was the heavy, thunderous impact of iron-shod hooves.
Thousands of them.
Marcus looked back.
On the northern horizon, a dust cloud rose like a storm front. In the center of the dust, metal glinted.
"They're here," Narcissus said quietly.
The Cataphracts. The tanks of the ancient world. Horses covered in scale armor. Men covered in chainmail. Riders who locked themselves to their saddles so they couldn't be unhorsed.
They weren't scouting. They were charging.
"The Rubicon," Marcus gasped. "The bridge. It's our only chance."
They broke into a run.
The bridge over the Rubicon was narrow—an old stone arch built three hundred years ago. It was a bottleneck.
The exhausted Roman infantry poured across it, a chaotic flood of humanity squeezing through a funnel.
But the dust cloud was faster. The thunder grew louder.
They weren't going to make it. Half the army was still on the north bank.
General Varus stopped.
The traitor general stood at the entrance to the bridge. He looked at the panic. He looked at the approaching storm of iron.
He turned to his standard-bearer.
"Plant the Eagle," Varus ordered.
He drew his sword. It was the same sword Marcus had given back to him in the hill fort.
"Fourth Legion!" Varus bellowed. "With me! Hold the line!"
A thousand men stopped running. They were the ones too tired, too wounded, or too proud to run anymore. They turned to face the thunder.
Varus looked at Marcus, who was standing on the south bank.
"Go, Caesar," Varus shouted over the roar of the approaching hooves. "We are the plug."
Marcus wanted to scream. He wanted to send Narcissus back. But the logic of war was cold.
"Burn the bridge when I give the signal," Marcus told Crixus.
"But Varus is on the other side!" Crixus argued.
"Burn it!"
Marcus watched.
The Parthian Cataphract line hit Varus's shieldless infantry at a full gallop.
It wasn't a fight. It was physics.
Mass times acceleration.
The impact sound was sickening—like a crate of melons being dropped from a tower. Bodies were thrown twenty feet into the air. The front line of Romans simply evaporated into pink mist and twisted metal.
But they didn't break. The pile of bodies created a rampart. Varus climbed onto the corpse of a horse, hacking wildly at a Parthian rider. He pulled the armored man down and stabbed him in the throat slit.
"Now!" Marcus screamed. "Do it now!"
Narcissus ran to the center of the bridge. He carried a clay pot—the last reserve of the Alchemist's green fire fuel.
He smashed it on the keystones.
The green liquid splashed over the stone. Narcissus threw his torch.
Whoosh.
The chemical fire roared to life. It burned so hot it didn't just scorch the stone; it cracked it. The heat ate into the ancient mortar.
On the north bank, Varus looked back. He saw the fire. He smiled.
A Parthian lance took him in the chest.
Varus fell. The Fourth Legion collapsed.
The Cataphracts surged toward the bridge, trampling the dead. The first horse hit the stone span.
CRACK.
The heat-stressed arch gave way.
With a roar of grinding stone, the center of the bridge collapsed into the river below.
Three Parthian riders tumbled into the water, their heavy armor dragging them straight to the bottom. The green fire hissed and steamed as it hit the current.
The pursuit slammed to a halt on the far bank.
Ten thousand armored horsemen pulled up, staring across the thirty-foot gap of rushing water.
Marcus stood on the south bank, panting. He looked at the ruin of the bridge. He looked at the pile of dead Romans on the other side.
"They can't cross," Crixus said, wiping sweat from his eyes. "We stopped them."
"We delayed them," Marcus corrected. He pointed downstream. "The river is low. They will find a ford in three hours."
He turned away from the carnage.
"Ravenna is five miles away. We run."
They ran.
The sun set. The moon rose.
The army was a broken thing now. Men were hallucinating from exhaustion. Some were walking while asleep.
But ahead, silhouetted against the starry sky, stood the walls of Ravenna.
Red brick. Fifty feet high. The naval capital of the Empire.
"Home," Narcissus whispered. "We made it."
They staggered to the main gate. The heavy iron-bound doors were shut.
"Open!" Marcus shouted, his voice raw. "Open in the name of the Emperor!"
Silence.
Then, a torch flared on the battlements.
A man in a senator's toga leaned over. It was the Governor of Ravenna. He looked nervous. He was surrounded by archers.
"The Emperor is dead," the Governor shouted down. "The Senate has declared it. Valerius Celsus is the Augustus."
Marcus stared up at him. The stimulant was wearing off. The crash was coming.
"I am standing right here," Marcus said. "Open the gate, or I will burn your city to the ground."
"You are a ghost!" the Governor yelled, his voice trembling. "Begone, spirit! We will not let you bring your war inside these walls!"
"Archer!" the Governor commanded. "Draw!"
Marcus felt something snap inside his brain.
It wasn't the Ghost of Commodus this time. It was pure, unadulterated rage.
He had marched 400 miles. He had eaten horse blood. He had crawled through mud. He had sacrificed Varus.
And this bureaucrat was telling him to go away?
"Narcissus," Marcus whispered.
"Caesar?"
"The ram."
They had dragged a fallen ship's mast—scavenged from a roadside shipyard—for the last two miles, intending to use it for firewood.
"Crixus!" Narcissus bellowed. "Bring the timber!"
Fifty gladiators hoisted the massive log.
"They will fire on us!" Crixus warned.
"They are city guards," Marcus snarled. "They have never killed a man in their lives. They won't fire on a Legion."
He walked straight toward the gate. He didn't raise a shield. He didn't run.
"OPEN IT!" Marcus screamed, his voice amplifying in the stone archway.
The archers on the wall hesitated. They looked at the ash-covered demon below. They looked at the terrified Governor.
They lowered their bows.
BOOM.
The ram hit the gate.
BOOM.
The wood splintered.
BOOM.
The lock shattered. The gates groaned and swung inward.
Marcus didn't wait. He walked into the city.
The Governor fled. The city guards dropped their weapons and knelt.
The army poured in behind him. It wasn't a liberation. It was a locust swarm. Starving soldiers broke into bakeries, tearing bread from the ovens. They drank from the public fountains until they vomited.
Marcus didn't stop for food. He didn't stop for rest.
He walked straight through the chaotic streets to the harbor.
"The fleet," he muttered. "Get to the fleet."
He rounded the corner of the warehouse district. The smell of the sea hit him—salt and fish.
He stepped out onto the stone quay of the Classis Ravennas.
He stopped.
The harbor was massive. It had slips for two hundred triremes. It had drydocks, cranes, and warehouses.
But it had one problem.
It was empty.
The slips were bare. The water lapped against empty stone. There were no masts. No sails. No escape.
Marcus fell to his knees.
"Where are they?" he whispered.
Narcissus dragged an old dockmaster out of a shed. The man was weeping.
"Where are the ships?" Narcissus roared, shaking the old man.
"Gone!" the man wailed. "Yesterday! He took them! He took them all!"
"Who?" Marcus asked, looking up.
"Pompey!" the man sobbed. "Sextus Pompey! The Pirate King! He raided the yards! He stole every hull that could float!"
Marcus laughed. It was a broken, jagged sound.
He had ignored Pompey. He had focused on Valerius. He had focused on the Parthians. He had thought the pirates were a nuisance.
And the nuisance had just stolen his lifeboat.
"Caesar," Galen said, his voice cold.
The physician was pointing out to sea.
On the horizon, the moon glinted off white sails. Hundreds of them. A massive fleet approaching the harbor mouth.
"He's coming back," Narcissus said, hope rising in his voice. "Maybe he wants to deal?"
"No," Marcus whispered.
SCANNING...
JARVIS zoomed in on the lead ship.
The sails weren't black pirate sails. They were purple and gold.
The flag flying from the mast wasn't the Roman Eagle. It was a Dragon.
FLAG IDENTIFICATION: PARTHIAN ROYAL NAVY.
Marcus closed his eyes.
The blueprints.
The modern naval designs he had given the Parthian ambassador in Episode 17 to buy their neutrality against Pompey.
They hadn't just studied them. They had built them.
"I built the fleet that is about to kill us," Marcus said.
Behind him, the city alarm bells rang. The Heavy Cataphracts had found the ford. They were at the land gates.
Parthian cavalry in front. Parthian navy behind.
And Marcus Holt was trapped in the middle, holding a broken sword and a bloody ring.