Thud.
Marcus dropped his imperial breastplate into the mud. The heavy bronze sank with a wet, sucking sound.
Next went the greaves. Then the helmet with its purple plume.
He stood in the flickering light of the bunker, shivering in just a wool tunic and leather breeches. He felt naked. He felt light.
"You look like a thief," Narcissus grunted.
The giant gladiator was doing the same. He was stripping off his heavy shoulder armor, leaving only his leather harness and the massive bronze axe strapped to his back.
"We are thieves," Marcus said. He rubbed soot from a burnt timber over his face, blackened his jaw, his forehead, the hollows of his eyes. "We aren't marching to war, Narcissus. We are breaking into a house."
He turned to the fifty men assembled in the shadows of the communication trench.
The "Tunnel Rats."
They weren't the pride of Rome. They were the dregs. Sappers, criminals, and trench fighters who had survived three days of hell by being faster and meaner than the enemy. They held knives, short swords, and bags of grenades. They had wrapped their boots in strips of wool to muffle their steps.
Marcus walked down the line. The Ghost of Commodus assessed them not as soldiers, but as tools. Sharp. Expendable. Hungry.
He stopped in front of Galen.
The physician held out the device. It was the jury-rigged radio receiver—the glass Coherer tube and the speaker, now duct-taped (with pitch and linen) to a leather chest strap.
"It is fragile, Caesar," Galen warned, his voice loud in the quiet bunker. "If you smash the glass, you are deaf."
"I know," Marcus said.
He strapped the device to his chest. The speaker pressed directly against his sternum. He flipped the switch.
Buzz.
A low vibration hummed against his ribs. It wasn't a sound he heard with his ears; it was a tremor in his bones.
"Marcia," Marcus said.
She stepped forward. She looked at his blackened face, at the lack of armor. She didn't cry. She looked angry.
"You are leaving me to die here," she said flatly.
"I am leaving you to command," Marcus corrected. "When I leave, light the fires. Burn every barrel of oil we have. Scream at the sky. Make them think I am still here, raging at the gods."
Marcia grabbed his tunic. She pulled him down and kissed him. It tasted of ash and fear.
"Kill him," she whispered against his lips. "Kill the voice."
"I will," Marcus said.
He pulled away. He signaled to Narcissus.
"Let's go."
They climbed out of the trench, not into the battlefield, but away from it. Into the open desert. Into the dark.
The desert was freezing.
Without the sun, the Syrian waste was a refrigerator. The wind cut through Marcus's tunic, biting at his exposed skin.
He didn't feel it.
The Ghost of Commodus was running the body now. It regulated his breathing, slowed his heart rate, expanded his pupils until the moonlit dunes looked like a grayscale photograph.
Marcus moved in a crouch. Step. Pause. Listen. Step.
On his chest, the radio buzzed.
Humm-humm-humm.
It was rhythmic. Not static. Music.
The Enemy Player was broadcasting again. But not a speech. It was a piano piece. Slow, melancholic, haunting. Moonlight Sonata.
It was a flex. It was the enemy saying, I have culture. I have electricity. I am bored.
Marcus used the music as a compass.
He stepped left. The vibration in his chest faded. Wrong way.
He stepped right. The piano notes thumped harder against his ribs. Correct.
He raised a fist. Behind him, fifty men froze instantly. They were shadows on the sand, invisible against the dark dunes.
"Contact," Marcus whispered.
Ahead, a hundred yards out, was a small mound of disturbed sand. It looked like an anthill.
A single wire ran from the mound, disappearing under the desert floor.
A "Listening Post."
A sentry sat cross-legged next to it, huddled in a thick cloak. He was staring at a small signal flag, bored, shivering. He wasn't looking at the desert. He was looking at his own hands.
Narcissus crept up beside Marcus. The giant pointed at the sentry, then tapped the handle of his throwing axe.
Marcus shook his head. Too loud. The thud of a body hitting the sand could travel for miles in this silence.
Marcus pointed at himself.
He moved.
He didn't run. He flowed. The Ghost knew how to move without shifting gravel. Roll the foot heel-to-toe. Keep the weight low.
Thirty yards.
Twenty.
The sentry shifted. He reached for a water skin.
Marcus froze. He became a rock.
The sentry drank, wiped his mouth, and settled back down.
Ten yards.
Marcus drew his knife. It was a blackened iron blade, coated in soot to stop reflections.
Five yards.
The wind gusted, howling through the rocks.
Marcus struck.
He lunged. His left hand clamped over the sentry's mouth. His right hand drove the knife under the ribs, up into the kidney.
It was intimate. Horrifyingly so.
The sentry stiffened. He tried to scream, but Marcus's hand was a vice. He tried to thrash, but the shock of the kidney blow paralyzed him.
Marcus held him as he died. He felt the life shudder out of the man.
He lowered the body gently to the sand.
On his chest, the music didn't skip a beat. The enemy hadn't heard a thing.
Marcus cut the wire leading to the microphone. He signaled the column.
Move up.
Narcissus walked past the body. He didn't look at it. He looked at Marcus with a strange expression. Respect mixed with unease. The Emperor was getting too good at murder.
They walked for two hours.
The "Geiger Counter" on Marcus's chest grew louder. The vibration became a constant, thrumming ache in his sternum.
They reached the edge of the Great Salt Pan—a massive, flat expanse of dried lake bed.
Marcus crested the final dune.
He stopped. His breath hitched in his throat.
"Gods above," Narcissus whispered.
Below them, moving across the white salt like a dark stain, was the source.
It wasn't a tank. It wasn't a wagon.
It was a city on wheels.
The Land Battleship.
It was colossal. A ziggurat of timber and iron, five stories high, built on a platform the size of a gladiatorial arena.
It moved on hundreds of wooden wheels, each one twice the height of a man. The sound of its movement was a low, tectonic grinding that vibrated through the soles of Marcus's boots.
Groan. Creak. Thud.
Torches lined its decks, casting long, flickering shadows.
From the top deck, three massive towers rose into the night sky. Between them stretched a mesh of copper wires—the antenna.
Semaphore lamps flashed from the towers, sending pulses of light into the sky to guide the invisible gliders.
It was magnificent. It was impossible. It was the ultimate fusion of ancient engineering and modern ambition.
"He built a mountain," one of the Tunnel Rats whimpered.
"It's wood," Marcus said. His voice was cold. "Wood burns."
He watched the Behemoth move. It was slow—maybe two miles per hour—but it was relentless. It was heading East, away from the front line.
"We can't catch it from behind," Narcissus said. "If we run on the salt, they will see us against the white ground."
Marcus scanned the terrain. The Ghost calculated angles, speed, and intercepts.
Ahead of the Behemoth, the salt pan narrowed between two jagged rocky outcrops. The "Needle's Eye."
The machine would have to pass through that gap.
"We don't chase it," Marcus said. He pointed to the rocks. "We ambush it."
He turned to his men.
"Sprint," Marcus ordered. "If you vomit, keep running. If you fall, stay down. We have twenty minutes to beat that thing to the gap."
He took off.
His lungs burned. The cold air felt like broken glass in his chest. But the Ghost didn't let him slow down.
Run, the entity screamed. Hunt.
They reached the rocks. They scrambled up the jagged slope, tearing fingernails and skin.
They reached the ledge just as the shadow of the Behemoth fell over them.
The noise was deafening now. The grinding of the wheels sounded like the earth splitting open.
Marcus looked down.
The roof of the lower supply deck passed twenty feet below them. It was covered in heavy canvas.
Marcus looked at Narcissus. The giant was grinning. A savage, blood-hungry grin.
"For the Empire?" Narcissus yelled over the roar.
"For the quiet," Marcus yelled back.
He stepped off the ledge.
He fell into the dark.