The earth tasted like rust.
Narcissus was squeezed into a tunnel no wider than his shoulders. The air was hot, thick, and smelled of unwashed men and desperation.
Above him, the world was ending.
THUD. THUD. SCREAM.
The sounds of the battle filtered down through five feet of dirt. Every explosion shook dust into his eyes. Every scream sounded like a ghost trapped in the walls.
Narcissus hated it.
He was a gladiator. He belonged in the sun, on the sand, where he could look his death in the eye. This—crawling like a worm—was beneath him.
"Move," he growled, kicking the boot of the sapper in front of him.
The tunnel was packed with two hundred men. The "Tunnel Rats." A mix of disgraced legionaries, criminals, and the coliseum veterans Narcissus had personally trained. They carried no shields. Only pickaxes, short swords, and ceramic pots filled with Greek fire.
A massive impact rattled the tunnel roof. Dirt showered down.
CRASH.
The timber supports groaned. A root snapped.
"That's the signal," the sapper whispered, voice trembling. "The Turtle is in the trench."
Narcissus didn't whisper. He grinned in the dark. It was a terrifying expression.
"Breach," he ordered.
The sapper swung his pickaxe upward.
He hit the wooden planks shoring up the tunnel ceiling. Crack.
He swung again. Light—angry, orange firelight—spilled into the hole.
Narcissus shoved the sapper aside. He grabbed the edges of the hole and pulled himself up. Muscles coiled like steel cables.
He erupted from the ground.
He wasn't in the trench. He was behind it.
He stood in No Man's Land, twenty yards behind the enemy line.
The scene was chaos.
The Iron Turtle had crashed nose-first into the Roman trench. Its rear end was sticking up in the air like a capsized ship.
Behind it, the enemy infantry support was clustered. Thirty men in black lacquer armor. They were focused forward, cheering as their shock troops poured into the Roman position.
They were looking at the kill. They forgot to check their backs.
Narcissus roared.
It wasn't a word. It was a sound of pure, primal violence.
He swung his axe—a massive, double-headed bronze executioner's tool.
The first enemy soldier didn't even turn around. The axe took him in the spine. Armor crunched. The man folded in half backward.
"Kill them all!" Narcissus shouted.
The ground erupted behind him. Two hundred dirt-covered Romans clawed their way out of the tunnel.
They fell upon the enemy rear guard like a pack of starving dogs.
It wasn't a battle. It was a massacre.
The enemy panic was instant. They were trapped between the burning trench in front and the demons rising from the earth behind.
Narcissus was a whirlwind. He didn't use technique. He used mass. He slammed his shoulder into a spearman, knocking the wind out of him, then crushed the man's helmet with a downward swing.
"The wheels!" Narcissus bellowed, pointing at the crashed Turtle. "Break the legs!"
Three sappers ran toward the iron beast. They carried heavy iron bars. They jammed them into the spokes of the rear wheels.
Inside the Turtle, the oxen screamed. The wheels locked. The wood shattered.
"Grenades!"
A sapper lit the fuse of a clay pot. He rolled it under the belly of the cart.
BOOM.
The explosion blew the floor out of the Turtle. The iron plating buckled. Smoke poured from the seams.
In the Trench.
Marcus was dying.
Or he was about to be.
He was backed against the mud wall. His shield was splintered. His sword arm was heavy as lead.
Three shock troops were pressing him. Their curved blades flashed in the firelight.
Marcus parried. Clang. He ducked. Swish.
He was fast, thanks to the Ghost, but he was tired. The Ghost could provide the instinct, but Marcus's body provided the fuel, and the tank was empty.
One of the attackers lunged. Marcus batted the sword aside, but the man followed with a punch. An iron gauntlet connected with Marcus's jaw.
Stars exploded in his vision. He tasted blood. He stumbled, falling to one knee in the mud.
The enemy soldier raised his sword for the killing blow.
"Die, demon," the soldier hissed.
The Turtle above them shuddered.
A massive CRACK echoed as the floorboards gave way.
The enemy soldier looked up.
A body fell through the hole in the Turtle's floor.
It wasn't a Roman. It was one of the oxen. Dead, burning, and heavy.
It landed on the soldier with a wet crunch.
Marcus scrambled back, wiping mud from his eyes.
Through the hole in the Turtle's belly, a face appeared.
It was upside down. It was covered in dirt. It was smiling.
"Caesar!" Narcissus yelled down. "Stop playing in the mud!"
Marcus laughed. It was a jagged, hysterical sound.
He grabbed his sword and stood up.
The remaining shock troops in the trench looked at the dead ox. They looked at Narcissus screaming from above. They looked at Marcus rising from the filth.
Their morale broke.
"They are surrounded!" Marcus yelled. "Push them! Push!"
The Roman defenders surged forward. It wasn't organized. It was a brawl. They used shield rims, helmets, and teeth.
The enemy broke. They tried to climb out of the trench.
They were pulled back down.
Ten minutes later, it was over.
The trench was quiet, save for the moans of the dying and the crackle of burning wood.
The Iron Turtle was a wreck. It lay dead in the trench, a monument to failed ambition.
Narcissus jumped down from the roof of the machine. He landed heavily, his boots splashing in the red mud. He was covered in gore from head to toe.
He walked over to Marcus.
He didn't bow. He grabbed Marcus's shoulder and shook him.
"You are alive," Narcissus grunted.
"Barely," Marcus wheezed. He spat a tooth into the mud.
He looked at the wreckage. A survivor was crawling out of the Turtle's side hatch. An officer. His black armor was scorched.
Narcissus stepped on the man's back, pinning him to the ground.
The officer was wearing something on his head. A headset. Wires ran from it back into the cart.
"Give me that," Marcus said.
He ripped the headset off the man's ears. He followed the wire. It led to a box bolted to the inside wall of the Turtle.
Marcus climbed into the wreckage. The smell of burnt meat—the oxen—was overpowering.
Galen was already there. The physician was examining the box.
"It's a relay," Galen said, tracing the copper lines. "It boosts the signal."
Pinned to the wall next to the box was a map.
It was a grid chart. A standard Roman military map, but overlaid with strange, angular symbols.
One symbol was pulsing. Not electronically—someone had drawn fresh circles around it in charcoal.
It wasn't a city. It was a point in the open desert, fifty miles east.
"What is it?" Narcissus asked, peering into the gloom.
Marcus ripped the map off the wall. He held it up to the firelight.
The symbol was a stylized tower on wheels.
"It's mobile," Marcus whispered.
The realization clicked into place. The enemy signal was so strong because they weren't broadcasting from a palace in Parthia. They weren't hiding in a fortress.
They were moving.
"A Land Battleship," Marcus said. "A siege tower. Massive. Probably pulled by hundreds of oxen. That's where the voice is coming from."
He looked at Narcissus.
"They brought their castle to us."
Marcus stepped out of the wreckage. He stood on the lip of the trench, looking east into the dark desert.
The fire from the burning Turtle illuminated his face. He looked like a demon himself now. Mud-caked. Blood-stained.
"They thought they could crush us with weight," Marcus said. "They thought we would sit in this hole and die."
He crumpled the map in his fist.
"Galen!" he shouted. "Pack the gear. Leave the heavy cannons. We travel light."
"Where do we go, Caesar?" Galen asked, blinking.
Marcus pointed at the darkness.
"We follow the wire," Marcus said. "Tonight, we go hunting."
He dropped the map into the burning naphtha.
"I'm going to cut the tongue out of that tower."