The training fields of Carnuntum, once the site of the boisterous and celebratory Ludi, had become a grim and tense classroom for a revolution. The veteran centurions and senior legates of the northern army were summoned to the main praetorium, their faces etched with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension. They were battle-hardened, practical men, and they expected to be given new marching orders, a new campaign plan. They did not expect a lecture.
They filed into the large, hastily constructed hall, its wooden walls still smelling of fresh-cut pine. At the front stood their Emperor, but he looked less like a commander and more like a Greek philosopher about to challenge the very nature of reality. Beside him were several large, slate chalkboards, a strange and novel sight for most of the officers present. The boards were covered in a dizzying array of diagrams and charts, a new and alien geometry of war drawn in stark white lines.
"Officers of Rome," Alex began, his voice calm but carrying an undeniable weight of authority. "For the past month, we have honed our bodies and our skills. Today, we begin to hone our minds. Everything you know about warfare, everything you have learned from your predecessors, everything that has made the Roman Legion the most formidable fighting force in history… you must now be prepared to set it aside."
A low, uneasy murmur rippled through the assembled officers. They exchanged confused, wary glances.
Alex gestured to the first chalkboard, which showed a detailed diagram of the classic Roman cohort, with its centuries and maniples arranged in the familiar, perfect checkerboard. "This," he said, tapping the board with a wooden pointer, "is a masterpiece. A hammer designed to shatter any enemy foolish enough to meet it on an open field. It is a symbol of order, discipline, and power. It is also now a liability. The enemy has studied it. They know its strengths, its weaknesses, how it moves, how it thinks. To continue to use it would be to march willingly into a perfectly prepared ambush."
With a swift, dramatic motion, he picked up a wet cloth and erased the diagram, leaving a blank, grey slate. The symbolic act was not lost on the officers. It felt like a desecration.
"The age of the great battle line is over, at least for this war," Alex declared. He moved to the next board, which was covered in a series of smaller, more fluid diagrams. "The strength of the horde is its numbers and its central, psychic command. Our strength must now become its opposite: speed, flexibility, and individual initiative. Therefore, the Cohort as a primary tactical unit is obsolete."
This time, the murmur was louder, tinged with disbelief and a rising hostility.
"The new core of our army will be the Vexillatio Fulminis—the Lightning Detachment," he explained, pointing to a new diagram. It showed a group of around three hundred men, but they were not a solid block of heavy infantry. The diagram showed a core of two centuries of legionaries, but attached to them were detachments of archers armed with the new repeating crossbows, a squadron of Batavian auxiliary cavalry, and a team of engineers. "This is a self-contained, combined-arms team. It has the heavy infantry to hold a line, the ranged firepower to suppress an enemy, and the cavalry to scout, screen, and exploit a weakness. It can fight on its own, or in concert with other Vexillationes."
He then moved to his most radical, most heretical point. "Furthermore, command will be decentralized. A Legate will no longer command a line of cohorts like pieces on a game board. He will give his Centurions an objective—'Seize that hill,' 'Disrupt the enemy's supply line,' 'Hold this river crossing'—and the Centurion, the commander on the ground, will have the tactical autonomy to achieve that objective as he sees fit. Initiative, cunning, and speed will now be valued as highly as unwavering discipline."
The resistance, which had been a low murmur, finally found its voice. Servius Galba, a veteran Legate of the Legio VI Victrix, a man with a face like cured leather and a chest full of decorations earned under Marcus Aurelius, stood up. He was hugely respected, a living embodiment of Roman military tradition.
"Caesar, with all due respect," Galba's voice was a low, gravelly rumble of controlled anger, "what you are describing is madness. You are asking us to abandon the very system that conquered the known world. The strength of the Legion lies in its discipline! In its unity! In the unshakeable wall of shields that moves and fights as one man! You want to shatter that wall into a thousand tiny pieces? You want to turn our proud centuries into glorified warbands, running around the forest like… like barbarians?"
He gestured around at his fellow officers, his voice rising with passion. "This is the chaos of the tribes! It is not the order of Rome! You are asking us to unlearn the very essence of what makes us strong!"
Many of the other senior officers nodded in grim agreement. Alex's new doctrine was not just a change in tactics; it was a profound cultural and psychological shock. It was an insult to their identity, a betrayal of the ancestors who had forged their traditions in blood and iron.
Alex had anticipated this. He knew he could not win this battle with words and diagrams alone. He had to show them.
"A fair and honorable objection, Legate Galba," Alex said, his tone respectful. "You believe in the strength of the old ways. So let us put them to the test." He turned to the assembled officers. "Tomorrow at dawn, on the western training field. Legate Galba, you will command two of your finest cohorts, a thousand of your best men. You will be tasked with defending your legion's eagle standard at the center of the field. I will field a single, experimental Vexillatio of three hundred men. Their objective will be to capture your standard. Let the outcome decide the merit of the doctrine."
A gasp went through the room. It was an insultingly lopsided challenge. A thousand of Galba's best against a mere three hundred men. Galba's face flushed with anger at the perceived slight, but his pride would not let him refuse. "I accept, Caesar," he grunted. "And I look forward to teaching your… warband… a lesson in true Roman warfare."
The next morning, the field was ringed with every off-duty soldier in Carnuntum, all eager to see the old lion, Galba, humiliate the Emperor's new pets. Galba's two cohorts were a magnificent sight, a solid, glittering block of red shields and polished steel, a perfect, beautiful killing machine. At the center, their eagle standard gleamed.
Facing them across the field was the experimental Vexillatio, led by the scout Drusus. They looked like a motley collection, a disorganized rabble of heavy infantry, archers, and cavalry.
The horn blew. Galba's cohorts advanced in their classic, unstoppable formation. The Vexillatio did something that made every traditionalist Centurion in the crowd scoff with contempt: they scattered. They refused to meet the charge.
The battle, if it could be called that, was a shocking and deeply frustrating lesson for Galba. The Vexillatio simply refused to fight on his terms. Their small cavalry squadron, acting as scouts, would gallop along the flanks, forcing Galba to constantly adjust his formation to avoid being enveloped. As soon as he did, the Vexillatio's archers, armed with their deadly repeating crossbows, would appear on a wooded ridge and unleash a volley into the now-exposed side of his formation before melting back into the trees.
Drusus's heavy infantry would make brief, sharp attacks on the corners of the Roman line, forcing a section of the cohorts to engage, only to conduct a feigned retreat, drawing the angry, frustrated legionaries out of formation and into a pre-prepared ambush of crossbow fire.
Galba's force was a lumbering giant, a great, powerful bear trying to swat a swarm of infuriating wasps. He could not land a decisive blow. His men, trained for the brutal, decisive clash of battle lines, were becoming exhausted and demoralized, marching back and forth across the field, taking casualties from an enemy they could not properly engage.
While Galba's attention was focused on the harassing attacks from his front and flanks, he did not notice the small team of Drusus's best scouts, who had used the distraction to circle far around the battlefield, crawling on their bellies through a drainage ditch. As Galba's main force was drawn into yet another pointless skirmish, the scouts burst from the ditch into the now-lightly-defended rear, overwhelmed the standard-bearers, and seized the eagle.
A special horn blast signaled the end of the game. Galba's cohorts, still locked in a frustrating dance with the Vexillatio's main body, turned to see their sacred standard being triumphantly carried away by the enemy.
Legate Galba stood on the field, his perfect battle line in disarray, his standard captured, his force theoretically decimated by constant flanking attacks, all at the hands of an enemy force less than a third of his size. He stared at the result in stunned, horrified disbelief. He had not been defeated. He had been… dismantled. Made irrelevant.
Alex had proven his point with brutal clarity. But as he looked at the humiliated, resentful face of the veteran Legate, he knew he had not crushed the resistance. He had just given it a face, a cause, and a deep, burning reason to see his revolution fail.
To be the first to know about future sequels and new projects, google my official author blog: Waystar Novels.