31th of July, 476 AD

  Titus woke to the brittle clang of a blacksmith’s hammer striking dull iron. The noise ricocheted through Crassus’s camp, stirring men half-buried in tattered bedrolls and threadbare cloaks. He lay on his back for a moment, eyes aching from too little sleep, thoughts drifting to Claudia and the children. They were near enough—still in this same sprawl of tents, but it often felt like a world away. Rising with a low groan, he rolled his stiff shoulders and prepared for yet another day in an army he scarcely believed in.

  As he stepped outside his tent, Tullus caught him by the arm. The man’s expression was grim. “Have you heard?” Tullus whispered, voice kept low for fear of eavesdroppers. “The bishops and priests traveling with us—they’re gone. Left at dawn, said they wanted no part in this war. No one knows why.”

  Titus’s heart sank. The Church’s backing had been one of Crassus’s few claims to legitimacy. If the clergy deserted, what does that say about this cause? Rumors had circulated about uneasy tensions between Crassus and Odoacer and the bishop’s condemnation of recent atrocities, but Titus wasn’t privy to high-level talk. All he knew was that hope flickered even more dimly now.

  “They truly abandoned us?” he asked, half in disbelief.

  “That’s what everyone’s saying. Some older conscripts saw them ride out at dawn—maybe to join the bishop of Ravenna. No blessings, no farewells.” Tullus shook his head. “Our camp feels cursed.”

  A hush followed. Titus glanced around, noting the subdued atmosphere. Men huddled in small clusters, muttering in undertones. No one dared openly declare Crassus’s cause doomed, but the anxiety weighed like an anvil. If even the Church’s holy men thought this war was beyond salvation, how were they—the forcibly conscripted—meant to carry on?

  His stomach growled. He had only a small handful of stale crumbs from last night’s ration. At least the children have something, he reassured himself. But that comfort felt fleeting with talk swirling that Crassus might launch some new offensive soon.

  A trumpeter’s note cut across the morning gloom. An officer’s voice boomed, “All levies to the eastern quarter! Move now!”

  Titus and Tullus exchanged uneasy looks and joined the shambling crowd. The eastern quarter of the camp was a muddy patch near some half-finished stables, where the smell of horse dung and burnt pitch blended into a nauseating stench. Palatini guards ringed the area, frowns etched on their faces as they eyed the levies with open contempt. Their plated armor looked pristine next to the ragtag group’s battered gear.

  The Palatini officer—an optio, or perhaps a low-ranking centurion—wasted no time. “Listen up!” he barked. “We’re preparing for an assault against the walls. Crassus needs ladders, rams, mantlets—any siege equipment we can muster. You worthless lots are to build them. Now.”

  Murmurs broke out, some men shifting anxiously. Titus blinked. Siege equipment? He had no experience in constructing more than a fence back home, let alone something that could breach a city wall. And judging by the uneasy shuffling, neither did most of the others. Still, the demand stood.

  “Gather wood, nails, rope—whatever you can scrounge,” the officer continued. “We’ve got a handful of men who know carpentry. They’ll direct you. Fail to produce results, and I’ll have the Palatini thrash you into shape.”

  Over the next hour, random conscripts were sorted by meager skills. If they’d ever hammered a board or repaired a door, they were pressed into acting as overseers. Titus found himself under a lanky man named Rufus who claimed to have built barns in his youth. Rufus wasn’t exactly brimming with confidence, but he tried to appear competent.

  “All right,” Rufus mumbled, wrinkling his forehead. “We’ll start on basic scaling ladders. We need timbers… about this wide, cut into lengths—eight or nine cubits for a short ladder, maybe more for a tall one.”

  A swirl of confusion followed as the men fanned out in search of lumber. Piles of planks and cut logs lay scattered, some half rotted, others stripped from captured villages or leftover wagon repairs. Titus grabbed a piece of battered timber, helping Tullus lug it over to a clearing. The Palatini guard scowled at them, offering no help, only mocking instructions: “Don’t trip over your own feet,” or, “If that’s your best plank, the siege’ll fail before it begins.”

  Germanic foederati, lurking nearby, observed with mild amusement as they prepared their own gear—sturdy shields, sharpened swords. Some hammered fittings onto crude siege pikes. They didn’t share so much as a single bracket or piece of rope, focusing on their own tasks. Titus could almost sense their scorn: Look at these Roman levies, rummaging for scraps to build a ladder.

  Rufus guided Titus and a few others to chop the timber into rungs, adjusting lengths with a shaky guess at standard measurements. The saws were dull, the men fatigued, progress painfully slow. Another group tried to construct a simple battering ram using a felled tree trunk. But that, too, floundered. They had no iron or metal plating to reinforce the ram’s head. Some suggested bundling it with rope and horsehair to soften the impact, but no one knew if that would work.

  All the while, the Palatini guard strolled through the lines, flinging insults. “Piss-poor carpentry, I’ve seen better from half-trained Gauls.” “You planning to climb a doghouse with that ladder, or a city wall?” Their sneers grated on Titus’s nerves, but the men kept their heads down. They had no power to talk back to these better-armed, better-fed soldiers.

  By midday, Titus’s arms shook with fatigue from sawing and hammering. The sun climbed overhead, scorching away the morning’s chill. Sweat soaked his tunic. He paused to wipe his brow, glancing at the disarray around him: half-built ladders leaning at awkward angles, a few battered wooden frames that might become mantlets if they found enough hides to drape over. The entire operation was a messy joke.

  “Halt the work,” the officer barked eventually, calling for a short break. People dropped tools with sighs of relief, rummaging for scraps of food. Titus found a shady spot near some stacked planks, kneading a cramp in his shoulder. Tullus collapsed beside him, panting.

  “You see any chance that these contraptions will hold together?” Tullus asked, face twisted in doubt.

  Titus’s gaze wandered to a newly finished ladder, half-lopsided, more nails hammered in crooked than straight. “I pray to the gods they never need to,” he murmured. The thought of assaulting some fortified city with these ramshackle pieces turned his blood cold.

  A distant rumble of voices signaled arguments along the lines. Another group bickered over distributing the few decent saws and measuring rods. Tensions ran high, exasperation fueling quarrels. The Palatini officer strolled by, sneering at them to “fix your damn mess,” but offering no real solutions.

  Afternoon wore on. Titus forced himself up, returning to the ladder detail. They tried reinforcing rungs with spare strips of leather, hoping that’d keep them from snapping under a man’s weight. Occasionally, the stench of pitch wafted over from a group tasked with trying to coat a makeshift mantlet. The sticky substance sizzled in a pot, spattering men with hot droplets.

  Germanic foederati marched past in organized columns at one point, hauling their own supplies. They seemed more practiced at forging or modifying gear, ironically leaving the Roman levies to flounder. Titus overheard a snippet of their guttural dialect—he couldn’t understand the words, but the mocking chuckles told him enough: They find us pitiful.

  By dusk, the men’s morale hung heavier than ever. They’d built a couple dozen short ladders, a few frames that might pass as siege mantlets, and begun shaping a single small battering ram. If this was their best, it hardly inspired confidence in Crassus’s campaign. Titus felt bone-weary, arms trembling every time he lifted another plank.

  As darkness closed in, the Palatini guard ordered them to stack the half-finished items in neat piles. No one dared complain aloud, but resentful glares abounded. A full day’s labor, all for some scrappy wood. The men drifted back to their tents, spines bowed under the weight of hopelessness.

  Titus lingered near the battered ladder heap, brow knitted. The Church’s priests are gone, the soldiers are half-starved, now we’re building worthless siege toys. He recalled how men had whispered about Crassus’s waning legitimacy just that morning. None dared speak it loud, but the sense of doom pervaded every corner of camp. How long can we keep playing at this war?

  With a weary sigh, Titus turned away, heading for the meager campsite where Claudia and the children waited. Another day had bled away into sweaty, fruitless toil. Tomorrow promised more orders—maybe to haul these rickety contraptions into the field. He prayed that such a moment might never come. The notion of climbing a wall under arrow fire with one of those flimsy ladders churned his stomach.

  Lepidus woke to a clammy chill seeping through the thin canvas overhead. He blinked blearily, sprawled on a coarse pallet inside a makeshift tent—far removed from the marble columns and plush mattresses he was accustomed to. He groaned, rolling onto his side. All these weeks, not a single decent bed. They’d lost the hope of any comfortable lodging when Orestes’s men destroyed much of Ravenna’s outer district, forcing everyone to huddle in these flimsy tents outside the ruined city blocks.

  Cursing under his breath, Lepidus slowly rose and threw on his cloak. “Damn that Orestes,” he muttered, scowling at the tent’s drooping ceiling. “And that boy emperor of his—so eager to demolish the outskirts if it’d slow us down.” If the Church had not deserted Crassus, perhaps they wouldn’t be forced to endure nights on straw mats, but there was little sense dwelling on that now. The bishop and priests were long gone, condemning them all as sinners or heretics cast an ominous shadow over the entire cause.

  Outside, the camp stirred with a subdued bustle. Men shuffled through the muddy pathways, eyes ringed by fatigue. Some Palatini stood guard, wearing their polished mail with arrogant confidence. Lepidus’s friend Pollio stood nearby, nursing a cup of watered wine. Not exactly a morning drink, but Lepidus understood the impulse.

  “Another miserable dawn,” Lepidus grumbled in greeting, rubbing stiff shoulders.

  Pollio gave a half shrug, gaze drifting over the chaotic sprawl. “Better than a morning in the city, if half the stories are true. The entire outer ring is destroyed thanks to those cunning devils on the walls.”

  Lepidus spat in the mud. “They talk about saving the empire, but they do it by destroying half their own city. We’re the ones paying the price—sleeping like vagrants.” His voice lowered. “Let’s see what fresh fiasco awaits.”

  They trudged together toward the rising commotion at the camp’s edge, where Crassus’s battered troops were assembling. The chill morning air carried the tang of newly sawed wood and pitch—a sign of siege preparations. A pang of grim realization twisted Lepidus’s gut.

  Ahead, they spotted Comes Lucius Varius—ostensibly the commander of what remained of Crassus’s main Roman force—attempting to organize the men. He looked every bit as haggard as the rest of them, except for the half-empty wine flask he clutched. So the rumors are true, Lepidus thought sourly: the Comes had begun drinking heavily ever since Romulus’s troops outmaneuvered him time and again. His authority eroded further when they openly allied with Odoacer, undercutting any illusions of independent strength.

  Pollio nudged Lepidus, nodding at the spectacle. Varius was attempting to direct the ranks of conscripts pushing rough-built ladders and battered wooden mantlets—ramshackle siege equipment hammered together in desperation. “Look at him,” Pollio whispered, “swaying like a reed in the wind. God help us.”

  Sure enough, Varius lurched a step sideways, nearly dropping his flask as he shouted at a cluster of levy men. “Hold that… that ladder upright, you fools!” His words slurred slightly. “We march on the walls—today! No more dawdling.”

  Crassus stood off to one side, arms folded tight, fury etched on his face. A handful of Palatini flanked him, warily watching the hungover Comes flail about. Lepidus and Pollio approached carefully. Even from a few paces away, Lepidus could hear Crassus muttering under his breath: “That worthless drunkard… disgrace to me.”

  Lepidus exchanged a look with Pollio—both recognized how precarious the situation was. Once upon a time, Varius commanded respect. Now, under the strain of defeats and humiliations at Romulus’s hands, he’d turned to drink and half-baked bravado. Not exactly the figure you wanted leading a siege attempt.

  Suddenly, a pair of riders galloped up behind the lines. One wore Odoacer’s crest, bearing a sealed message. He reined in near Crassus, handing the dispatch. Lepidus couldn’t catch every word of the hushed exchange, but the gist soon spread through the onlookers: Odoacer had summoned Crassus and the senators to join him at the city’s edge. So they intend to assault together, Lepidus realized.

  Crassus stuffed the dispatch into a saddlebag, nodding curtly. “We move,” he announced. He glanced at Lepidus and Pollio, beckoning them over. “Come on. Better to ride with Odoacer than plod alongside this rabble.” His voice quivered with suppressed anger as he glared at Varius, who was cursing a few levy men for bungling a siege ladder. Even to Crassus, Lepidus thought grimly, the sight is embarrassing.

  Within minutes, Lepidus and Pollio mounted borrowed horses, following Crassus in a small entourage. Odoacer awaited them a short distance away, his retinue of Germanic foederati immaculately equipped. He gave only a curt nod to acknowledge Crassus and the senators. No pleasantries.

  “Let us proceed,” Odoacer said in his thickly accented Latin, turning his mount toward the city. Behind them, the conscripted troops—carrying their patchwork siege gear—began trudging forward. Lepidus marveled at the scale of it: hundreds of men, some brandishing ladders, others hoisting a crude battering ram. All of it built in haste, with minimal skill.

  Pollio, cantering alongside Lepidus, muttered in a low voice, “The Church’s departure casts a pall on everything. If we can seize the walls, maybe we can salvage Crassus’s claim. Show the bishops they backed the wrong horse leaving us.”

  Lepidus gave a weary nod. “So we hope,” he said, but uncertainty gnawed at him.

  They rode onward toward the ruined outskirts. The devastation was more severe than Lepidus had imagined: scorched timbers, collapsed roofs, piles of rubble that once formed entire streets. Romulus’s defenders had methodically torched or dismantled every structure outside the main walls—clearing lines of sight, removing cover. The ground was littered with debris, half-burned carts, twisted scraps of metal.

  Troops pushing siege ladders found their progress slowed by the labyrinth of wreckage. Some stumbled over broken masonry or snagged ankles in the collapsed beams. Now and then, a soldier fell into half-hidden pits or traps—grim reminders that Romulus’s men had prepared meticulously for any assault. Lepidus spotted at least two men failing to notice a disguised pit until it claimed them, muffled cries echoing amid the confusion.

  The stench of death grew heavier as they advanced. Bodies still lay where they’d fallen over the past two days of skirmishes—some rotting, others fresh from more recent clashes. Lepidus swallowed bile at the sight of a cluster of civilian corpses, huddled near a charred doorway. Women, children… no wonder the Church turned its back. His stomach clenched with revulsion.

  Crassus rode just ahead, jaw set in a rigid clench. He caught Lepidus’s eye once, shaking his head in silent condemnation. They want to blame me for such horrors, but Romulus is the one who destroyed his own city and forced the suffering on his citizens, the gesture seemed to say. Lepidus couldn’t muster words. The blasted remains of the outer district made it painfully clear how far things had fallen.

  Pollio coughed against the drifting ash. “This is monstrous,” he murmured. “To what end? All that’s left is black ruin.”

  They pressed on, forging a path among the rubble. The soldiers attempted to keep some formation, though it broke often as men detoured around collapsed walls or smoldering piles. Odoacer’s cavalry moved with relative ease, picking routes carefully. The Germanic foot soldiers seemed unruffled, too, stepping over corpses with grim stoicism.

  At one point, the column paused near a large barricade—a barrier of scorched beams, sharpened stakes hammered into the ground. The remains of a barricade or palisade built in haste by Romulus’s defenders. Two or three battered bodies slumped across it, likely casualties from an earlier attempt to cross. Crassus barked at some conscripts to clear a route, cursing the entire fiasco.

  Crassus and Odoacer rode at the head of their combined host, nearing the walls of Ravenna. Behind them stretched a mass of around eight to ten thousand conscripted levies under Crassus – men pressed into service from city slums and rural hamlets, wielding crude spears and battered shields. Alongside them marched ten to twelve thousand of Odoacer’s foederati – far better equipped and disciplined, sporting polished mail and reinforced shields that put the levy’s patchwork gear to shame. In total, nearly twenty thousand men advanced on the city’s east and south sides.

  At last, they came to a halt, a ragged line of humanity, with the levy men toiling under makeshift ladders and battered mantlets. The Palatini among Crassus’s force – a fraction of a fraction – tried to keep some semblance of order. Meanwhile, Odoacer’s foederati formed disciplined ranks, their steeled eyes scanning the walls. But both groups paused, uneasy, as they beheld a silent welcome of stone ramparts and watchful defenders.

  Crassus reined in his horse. Odoacer eyed the parapets, ready to speak. Yet before either man voiced a challenge, a powerful voice carried from atop the battlements:

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  “Crassus—look at you now!”

  All eyes snapped upward. Orestes stood at the wall’s crest, cloak drifting in the morning breeze. At his side, Romulus Augustus—slight and still childlike. A wave of defenders, crossbows raised, formed behind them.

  “What a wretched sight,” Orestes continued, his voice brimming with mocking disdain. “Have you truly stooped so low, Crassus, that you must cling to barbarians for help?” He gestured at Odoacer, then let out a biting laugh. “Your ragged levy against my walls… is that your grand army? I’d call it a travesty, but that might be too kind.”

  Lepidus felt the tension tighten like a coil through Crassus’s escort. Crassus’s grip on the reins whitened his knuckles. A thousand retorts churned behind his eyes, but in that heated moment, fury stole his tongue. Next to him, Odoacer stiffened, bristling at being labeled a mere “barbarian helper.”

  Determined not to let silence linger, Odoacer urged his horse a step forward, voice deep, accented Latin rolling across the field. “Ravenna!” he shouted. “Your time for choice has expired. This city can open its gates and spare itself destruction, or it can defy us and fall. My foederati stand ready—ten thousand strong—beside Crassus’s men. You cannot withstand our combined might.”

  High above, Orestes curled a sneer. “Your ‘might?’ I see eight or ten thousand conscripts who can barely hold a shield and another band of germanic scum. If you’re so certain of their strength, why do they creep in the ruins of what we left behind?” He extended an arm toward the charred outskirts. “Our defenders are not cowed by novices and mercenaries.”

  At the parapet’s left, Bishop Felix stepped forward, lifting a staff adorned with a simple crucifix. His voice, though not as booming as Orestes’s, carried a stern conviction: “Hear me, defenders of God’s city—do not yield to these men who scorn the Church! Crassus has lost the blessing of the holy. Stand fast; the righteous shall not be overcome.” A burst of approval rose from behind the walls—cheers and clattering spears—as defenders voiced their devotion.

  Those cheers rippled across the defenders, while among Crassus’s levy, men exchanged anxious glances. Their morale, already thin, faltered further at the public reminder that the Church had abandoned them. Lepidus ground his teeth in frustration, observing how easily the bishop stoked the defenders’ spirit.

  Crassus, face contorted in anger, struggled to speak but choked on Orestes’s taunts. At last, Odoacer opened his mouth again, but Orestes promptly raised a hand, cutting him off. “Tell me, Odoacer,” he called, “when did the wolves of the foederati stoop to partnering with incompetent, power hungry fools and drunkard officers?” His gaze drifted to where the hungover Comes Varius lingered behind the lines, half listing in the saddle. “And you, Crassus— was your brilliance always so fragile, that a boy emperor’s cunning could break it?”

  Several of Crassus’s levy shifted uncomfortably, hearing their plight laid bare in scornful detail. Some Palatini bristled, but the rest simply looked on, uncertain. The tension thickened like a drawn bowstring.

  “Orestes!” Odoacer roared, determined to seize the last word. “Enough mockery. We’ve come for your decision. Open the gates. You cannot stave off twenty thousand, you cannot stand against us! Accept our terms or face destruction.”

  Orestes lifted his chin, an almost amused glint in his eyes. “Oho, so you think your ramshackle ladders can scale these stones? That your men’s courage is unshaken by the fatherless corpses scattered behind you?” He swept a hand in a theatrical flourish toward the devastation. “You stand on land my men burned, fortifications my men built. We laid these traps. If you think you’ll take Ravenna by storm, you misjudge the spirit of those loyal to the rightful ruler, Emperor Romulus Augustus.”

  A rough cry of “Amen!” rose from the parapets, and Bishop Felix intoned a brief prayer, calling on divine wrath against any who marched on Ravenna. The defenders’ roars surged again, as if they drew power from each holy word. Lepidus caught glimpses of battered bodies along the rubble-strewn approach—a reminder of how lethal these walls had proven. Some of the conscripts behind them already looked hesitant, eyeing the fortifications with dread.

  Crassus’s cheeks flushed a deep red. His breath came in ragged bursts. Finally, he erupted. “Then you choose death!” he spat, voice echoing across the plain. “If this is your final answer— very well. We shall see how your walls fare against two armies united! Prepare the assault from south and east,” he hissed to his officers. “No more time wasted.”

  Titus had never felt so small.

  He stood among hundreds—no, thousands—of other conscripted levies, all shifting restlessly under the shadow of Ravenna’s towering walls. Many clutched the crude siege ladders they’d been ordered to build, while some huddled around a hastily contrived battering ram. The Palatini officers, a smattering of them, barked at the levies to “keep in line,” but order was tenuous. Odoacer’s foederati waited in proud, disciplined ranks further south.

  Distantly, Titus could see Crassus and Odoacer riding away as their negotiation (if it could be called that) with Orestes on the walls now over. Word trickled back that Orestes had mocked them mercilessly—Crassus was livid, Odoacer furious. The defenders had refused to open the gates, so the assault would begin.

  “Spread out! Advance!” shouted a Palatini officer. “First row—forward!”

  A tremor ran through the levies. Titus felt it ripple from man to man: a surge of dread, a forced bravado. He exchanged a glance with Tullus, his friend in misery. Tullus’s face was ashen, knuckles bone-white on the short spear’s shaft.

  “They really want us to storm the moat?” Tullus whispered, voice trembling.

  Titus’s stomach knotted. The ditch ringing the walls was still intact. Romulus’s men had apparently kept it maintained for just this moment. “Seems so,” Titus croaked, swallowing dryly. “We have no choice.”

  Further down the line, some older veterans shouted half-hearted encouragement: “Remember, we outnumber them!” or “Their walls can’t hold forever!” But that bravado rang hollow. The men weighed the flimsy ladders in their hands and eyed the wide, water-filled moat that lay between them and the massive stone ramparts.

  “Move!” yelled a Palatini guard, shoving a few hesitant conscripts forward. That push finally spurred the front ranks into motion—dozens, then hundreds, stepping off the battered earth and trudging toward the moat. The scattered attempts at chanting or battle cries were quickly drowned by the flap of countless feet on trampled ground.

  Titus found himself near the middle, gripping a rope-bound ladder with Tullus and Rufus. The ladder’s wood creaked under its own weight, its nails hammered in crooked. He prayed it wouldn’t snap when men began climbing.

  “Steady, men!” a Palatini voice roared from behind. “You’re the first wave—go on!”

  It was enough to jolt them all forward. Titus inhaled, forcing his feet to move even as his heart hammered. The walls towered ominously ahead, defenders visible at the parapets. He caught a flash of steel—crossbowmen and archers preparing their bolts. Gooseflesh prickled up his arms.

  A hush lasted but a moment—then the defenders let loose. A ragged volley of crossbow bolts hissed down. One man in the front row shrieked and toppled, a bolt jutting from his shoulder. Another stumbled, taking a shaft in the thigh. Chaos erupted in the column; the levy men cowered beneath their makeshift shields or tried to flatten themselves to the ground, ladders forgotten for seconds.

  “Keep moving!” rang the Palatini’s harsh command. “They can’t kill all of you!”

  Titus gritted his teeth. Couldn’t kill all of them—was that truly all the officers could offer? But he stumbled forward anyway, Tullus and Rufus at his side. Bolts whined overhead, punching into damp earth with dull thuds. Occasionally, a scream told them a shot had struck flesh. The noise stuttered Titus’s heartbeat, but the press of bodies behind made retreat impossible.

  They neared the moat’s edge. The water—dark, still, and deeper than Titus imagined—waited like a hungry barrier. The single stone bridge to the main gate was still there. A crowd of conscripts, brandishing the battered ram, had rushed the span, funneling into a tight knot. The defenders crossbows zeroed in on that bridge immediately. Titus saw men crumple, battered aside by the tide of those behind them, half-falling into the moat or tumbling onto the roadway.

  “Go, go!” Palatini behind them roared. Some in the levy howled with desperation, surging toward the bridge. They lugged the ram—a thick log bound in rope—though it bounced haphazardly, its bearers stumbling over corpses. The first row of men reached the gatehouse door, slamming the log forward in an ungainly strike. The clang echoed, but the gate did not budge. Meanwhile, bolts rained down, lethal from the walls overhead.

  Off to the side, other knots of levy men tried to lash ladders across narrower parts of the moat, hoping to cross. Titus’s group—carrying their ladder—rushed toward a partial causeway. “We… we might cross there,” Tullus gasped, pointing.

  They sloshed into the moat’s edge, cold water rising around their ankles, then knees. Titus hissed at the chill. Another volley swooped overhead, striking unlucky souls. Panic threatened to break their line. Men cursed, some turned about, only to be shoved forward by the press. The stench of mud and algae made Titus gag as he forced his way deeper.

  “Lift the ladder!” Rufus shouted, voice raw with fear. “Don’t let it float away.”

  The four or five men who’d clung to this ladder hoisted it high, the wooden rungs slick with moat water. On the far bank, the wall soared, too tall to climb without bridging the moat fully. Already a handful of other squads tried the same approach—some got pinned by arrow fire, cowering behind half-risen mantlets.

  Another wave of crossbow bolts whistled down. Titus heard a shriek just behind him. Some poor conscript fell face-first into the murky water. Tullus grabbed the man’s shoulder in reflex, but it was too late—blood darkened the moat around them, and the body sank away in a swirl of silt. Titus bit down a cry, pressing forward.

  “Up… up!” someone bellowed. They wrestled the ladder onto the moat’s far lip, precariously bridging the water’s edge to a section of half-crumbled foundation. The top angled against the battered stone. Will it hold? Titus prayed it would.

  A few braver souls scrambled forward, trying to mount the ladder. But it immediately groaned under their weight. Rufus cursed, gesturing for men to hold the base steady, but under the relentless hail of bolts, it was chaos. One step, two… The first man reached halfway, only for a crossbow quarrel to punch into his ribs. He toppled sideways with a wail, plunging into the moat.

  Titus’s vision tunneled from adrenaline. He braced his shoulder against the ladder frame, hollering, “Keep going!” The men behind them paused, uncertain, pressed on all sides by the swirl of fighting. Up on the walls, defenders chanted, led by roars from Romulus’s standard-bearers. More arrow volleys zipped down, ripping screams from the throng.

  Titus lurched forward when Tullus tried to climb, only for the next row to push them from behind. “Move, or we get trampled!” Tullus shouted desperately. But the ladder was jammed with water-logged men wrestling for footholds, each second under barrage sapping their courage.

  Off to Titus’s right, he saw the main gate under assault: the ram hammered at the portal, but defenders dumped rocks and scalding water from murder-holes. The first wave of ram-bearers collapsed in a shrieking tangle. Another group scrambled to grab the handle, determined to keep hammering. The entire bridge, crammed with bodies, was slick with blood. The cruelty of it all stung Titus’s eyes.

  Then the ladder base jerked. Some archer’s shot cut a key man holding it, and the entire contraption rattled. Tullus and another climber slid back, nearly toppling. Titus and Rufus lunged to brace it, gasping as the weight slammed down. Water splashed up around them, drenching their legs.

  “Arrows! Down!” a soldier howled. Instinctively, Titus ducked, a fresh volley slicing into the men around him. He felt a rush of air as a bolt whined overhead, close enough to ruffle his hair. All across the moat’s edge, the levy started to break—some men dropping shields and trying to flee, others pressing forward in a mad attempt to reach the wall.

  “Forward!” The Palatini officer’s shriek came from behind the lines, but it was drowned by the chaos. A few levy squads advanced again, setting more ladders. But each time, they faltered under lethal crossfire. The defenders had vantage, discipline. They fired in waves, reloading crossbows swiftly, each shot plunging terror into the mass below.

  Titus coughed, tasting muddy water and sweat. Tullus clung to the ladder, glancing downward with terror. “I… I can’t get up there!” he admitted, voice cracking. Another arrow soared, glancing off a rung.

  “We’ll never scale it with them firing like this,” Rufus panted, eyes darting about for some meager cover. “We need a shield or something!”

  But there was none. The half-baked mantlets were scattered or broken, men having abandoned them in the moat or dropped them under the onslaught. All around, shrieks of pain or anger filled the air. Titus glimpsed a friend from earlier, Crispus, slumped against a soggy beam, blood soaking his tunic.

  In vain defiance, a half-dozen men charged up a ladder, hoping to gain a foothold. But overhead, a flight of bolts took them down in seconds. The savage efficiency of the defenders’ vantage hammered home how ill-prepared they were. Titus shuddered.

  He forced himself to keep pushing. The impetus from behind was unstoppable. More men waded into the moat, cursed the watery footing, shoved forward with ladders. Some tried bridging the moat with planks, only to see them crack under too much weight. Bodies fell into the murky depths, tangling with weeds. The moans of the wounded and dying thickened the air.

  A Palatini guard crashed up behind Titus’s group, face contorted in rage. “Get up those walls or I’ll gut you!” he bellowed, brandishing a sword, as though fear of him might outmatch the defenders’ arrows. Another volley hissed down, forcing him to duck. He spat curses, frustration etched on every line of his face.

  Titus spat muddy water from his lips, finally letting go of the ladder. The effort felt futile—no one could keep it stable with so many falling or retreating. He turned, meeting Tullus’s haunted eyes. “We can’t… we can’t hold this, Tullus,” he gasped. “We’ll die here.”

  Titus’s words had barely left his lips when a fresh flurry of bolts sliced through the air. At first, he thought it was just another volley aimed at the front ranks. But then something changed. In the blur of screaming men and rattling shields, he noticed fewer arrows were striking the levies around him—instead, the deadly arcs curved higher, scything into the rear lines.

  Shining armor made easy targets.

  A sharp cry from behind confirmed it: a Palatini guard toppled face-first into the water, a quarrel sunk deep in his polished breastplate. More bolts thudded in rapid succession, a horrifying precision picking out Palatini after Palatini. Their gleaming mail and crests, once symbols of authority, now marked them for swift death. Titus heard them curse in shock and rage, their well-forged helmets doing little against the plunging shots.

  “Palatini? They’re… hitting the officers?” Tullus gasped, pressing close to Titus.

  Rufus let out a ragged laugh, more desperation than humor. “Those bastards on the walls know exactly who’s been driving us forward,” he spat. “Now they’re hunting them down.”

  Furious shouts erupted from the Palatini ranks as they scrambled for cover. Several tried to rally the levies again— “Keep moving, damn you!”—only to seize up in mid-command as crossbow quarrels found them. Titus watched one officer spin sideways, hands clawing at a bolt lodged near his collarbone, collapsing in muddy water. Soldiers around him recoiled. Another Palatini turned to run, an arrow slamming into the back of his plumed helm. He dropped instantly.

  The effect rippled through the entire assault. Men who had cowered under the lash of their own officers only moments before now saw those same officers falling like wheat under a scythe. The brunt of authority—those swords and curses that had goaded them forward—was being cut down at terrifying speed.

  A roar of panic built in the levy lines. Titus felt it in the press of bodies: they no longer feared the Palatini’s threats. No one stood to enforce discipline, at least not for long. One more volley hammered down, punctuated by shrill, short screams as more Palatini in shining armor toppled into the moat or into the crowd.

  It was too much.

  Someone near Titus let out a cry— “They’re all dead! Run!”—and that single voice triggered a stampede. Tullus seized Titus’s arm, half-yelling, half-pleading, “Come on— we’ll be slaughtered if we stay!”

  A wave of men lunged backward, ignoring the few officers still shouting. Titus’s heart pounded as he staggered in the watery sludge, desperate to free himself from the crush. Glancing around, he saw battered ladders crash into the moat, flung aside by terrified conscripts. The ram at the gate was deserted in a chaotic scramble. Bodies rolled off the drenched causeway, blocking half the path. No one cared. The urge to flee overwhelmed every last notion of order.

  “Stop, you dogs—STOP!” a surviving Palatini roared, brandishing his sword in a last attempt at authority. Before he could do more, a fresh bolt from above transfixed him. He folded silently to the ground. Titus, dazed, watched in horror as men trampled over the fallen, frantic to escape.

  The defenders on the walls seized their advantage, loosing yet another volley, though now their angle was less sure—fleeing men made small, haphazard targets. Despite that, more fell, shrieking or choking on blood, compounding the panic.

  “Gods—go, go!” Tullus hissed, yanking Titus’s arm.

  They waded back through the moat’s edge. Once on firmer ground, Titus broke into a stumbling run. Hundreds around him did the same, heedless of tripping or collisions. Some unfortunate souls staggered into half-concealed pits, yowling as stakes or sharpened debris impaled them. Titus willed himself not to look, focusing only on forging a path through the battered earth that once was part of Ravenna’s outer sprawl. He recognized the scorched lumps that might have been huts or stalls, but it was all a blurred nightmare of cinder and half-rotted flesh.

  Ahead, the open plain stretched, leading back to their camp. The survivors of the first wave poured across it—some in small groups, others alone, sprinting until their lungs burned. Titus risked a glance over his shoulder. The walls still loomed, crossbowmen calmly reloading, though their fire slackened. The defenders had no reason to chase a broken enemy. Bodies littered the route: twisted forms, moaning wounded, lifeless Palatini in gleaming mail.

  Titus’s breath rasped in his throat. His legs ached, caked in mud from the moat. Tullus kept pace, each footstep slapping the sodden ground. Around them, faces contorted with shock; eyes rolled wide in terror. Some men sobbed, some cursed. A handful still clutched battered shields or weapons, but many had abandoned everything to flee with lighter burdens.

  Farther back, a group of Palatini—those who’d waited outside arrow range—attempted to form a blocking line. They shouted orders to halt, brandishing swords. But it was useless. The fleeing levies shoved right past or flung themselves sideways. Fear drove them beyond reason. Titus heard the Palatini curse and threaten, then a clamor of confusion as the wave of men simply parted around them. In seconds, that line was lost in the swirl of bodies.

  At last, Titus and Tullus reached the outskirts of the outer city. Panting, Titus stumbled to a halt behind a half-toppled pavilion. Scores of others collapsed likewise, hearts hammering, eyes glazed with exhaustion. The entire assault force—what remained of it—now streamed in from behind, forming a ragged, demoralized mass.

  A suffocating hush followed, punctuated only by ragged coughing, frantic curses, or sobs. Titus leaned his head back, inhaling the rancid smell of stale campfires and sweat. He’d never felt so hollow. We were never going to breach those walls, he realized dully. Not with worthless ladders and no protective cover. The defenders had made a mockery of them.

  Nearby, men sank to the ground, cradling bruised limbs or shallow arrow wounds. One or two wailed for lost friends. Tullus collapsed beside Titus, pressing a hand to a shallow cut on his forearm. “Gods,” he whispered, tears mixing with sweat, “that was… no words for it.”

  More Palatini arrived, some spattered with blood—whether their own or others, it was impossible to tell. Their eyes flicked across the cowering levies with disgust. They had no illusions about re-rallying them now. Titus expected them to begin lashing out in fury, but the officers looked just as shaken. They’d seen their own leaders plucked off the battlefield by crossbow bolts. Even the most arrogant among them must have realized the futility.

  Titus spotted a brief commotion as scattered survivors from the gate-assault were pulled in—men scorched by boiling water or battered by falling stones. Their moans carried thickly in the dusk air. Others simply meandered in a daze, eyes vacant. The entire atmosphere reeked of hopelessness.

  Wordlessly, Tullus slumped forward on his knees, retching into the ash-laden dirt. Titus steadied him with a trembling hand, feeling an echo of that same nausea coil in his gut. The memory of men drowning in the moat, the bolt-laden Palatini, would not soon fade.

  Behind them, an optio tried shouting something about forming new lines, but not a soul moved. The men’s spirits lay in tatters. Titus’s chest heaved, tears burning at the corners of his eyes—tears for Crispus, for every friend he’d glimpsed on that field, and for those left behind as broken shapes among the rubble. Why is this war even fought? he thought, a bitter taste filling his mouth.

  All he could do was cling to the faint hope that Claudia and the children were safe somewhere among these tents, that he might find them soon. If the campaign demanded another assault like this, he wasn’t sure his mind or body would endure it.

  Across the withering ranks, the hush deepened. The battered siege ladders they’d dragged out hours earlier lay abandoned in the distance, worthless scraps on a field of corpses. As the day’s last light slanted across the ruin, Titus closed his eyes, letting exhaustion drag him down. Around him, men sank to the ground, some weeping, some cursing, some merely silent—bonded by the shared horror that they had glimpsed at Ravenna’s moat that day.

  The defenders had not only broken their charge, but shattered what little morale remained. Crassus’s grand cause now felt like a hollow shell, overshadowed by the boy emperor’s cunning defenses and the Church’s righteous condemnation. Titus knew, with aching clarity, that whatever tomorrow held, it would be faced by men whose spirits had already cracked. They were no longer an army—just scattered survivors trying to catch breath in a camp that offered no solace.