The Forge had never been louder.
Seigmer's fifty pushed themselves harder than ever before. Dawn runs through the valley became ten-mile forced marches with full gear. Crossbow drills stretched into night sessions under torchlight. Men who once complained about push-ups now did two hundred without pause. Literacy lessons continued around campfires — clay tablets filled with troop counts, supply routes, Roman signal codes stolen from the tribune's broken confessions.
They trained like men who knew the next fight would not be won by surprise alone.
Seigmer trained with them, but his mind was elsewhere.
In a secluded clearing deeper in the valley — screened by thick pine and guarded by four of his most trusted sentries — the new weapon took shape.
A traction trebuchet.
Not the massive counterweight engines of later centuries, but a simpler, human-powered machine: a long arm of laminated oak and yew, counterbalanced by ropes pulled by teams of twenty men. The throwing arm was twenty feet long, tipped with a leather sling. The frame stood twelve feet high, anchored with stakes and stones. It had taken three weeks of secret labor — slaves hauling timber, warriors learning to splice ropes under Seigmer's exacting eye.
He had kept it hidden even from most of the fifty. Only Ingvar, Eadric, and a handful of carpenters knew the full purpose.
Now it was ready for proof.
Seigmer sent a runner to the main camp at first light.
Reik Hans arrived with a small party: Griselda, three elders (including the wary Gundahar), and a dozen veteran warriors who had begun to whisper against the "boy who thought like Rome."
They rode into the clearing just as the sun cleared the ridge.
Hans dismounted, eyes narrowing at the strange wooden beast crouched among the trees.
"What is this?" he asked, voice low.
"A gift," Seigmer said simply. "For the tribe."
He gestured.
Twenty of his men took their places along the pull-ropes. Eadric stood at the release lever. A large stone — the size of a man's torso — was loaded into the sling.
Seigmer stepped forward, addressed the Reik and the elders directly.
"The Romans hide behind walls. They build forts on hills. They think stone and timber protect them. This machine throws farther than any bow, any onager they possess. It breaks gates. It shatters roofs. It kills from beyond their sight."
Gundahar snorted. "A child's toy made large. We have catapults the Romans left behind — broken ones. Why waste wood on another?"
Seigmer did not answer with words.
He nodded to Eadric.
"Loose."
The twenty men hauled in unison. The arm snapped forward with terrifying speed. The sling whipped upward, releasing the stone in a high, graceful arc.
The boulder sailed two hundred paces — a low whistle cutting the air — and smashed into a straw-and-timber mock fort Seigmer had built the night before. Wood splintered. Straw exploded. The entire structure collapsed in a cloud of dust and broken beams.
Silence fell over the onlookers.
Hans walked slowly to the wreckage. He kicked a shattered beam, tested the depth of the crater with his boot.
Then he turned.
"How many can you build?"
"Ten by the next moon," Seigmer answered. "Twenty by spring — if we dedicate woodcutters and rope-makers. Each needs twenty men to operate, but they can be trained in days."
Gundahar's face was thunder. "And who commands them? You?"
Seigmer met his eyes without flinching.
"The Reik commands them. I build them."
Hans studied his son for a long moment — the boy who once chased goats, now standing before a machine that could level Roman watchtowers.
Then he laughed — deep, satisfied.
"You will have your wood. Your rope. Your men." He clapped Seigmer on the shoulder, hard enough to stagger most. "Build them fast, boy. Spring is coming, and Rome will not wait."
The elders murmured among themselves. Some nodded in reluctant awe. Gundahar's expression remained stone — but he said nothing more.
As the party turned to leave, Hans lingered a moment.
"You have changed everything," he said quietly. "Do not forget who you changed it for."
Seigmer bowed his head — the smallest gesture of respect.
"I remember, Father."
But inside, the colonel knew the truth:
He had changed it for himself.
And the tribe would thank him later — or be swept aside.
Far to the west, in the fortified camp outside Mogontiacum, the survivors of the shattered cohort knelt before Legatus Flavius Aelius.
The hall was dim, lit only by oil lamps and a single brazier. The air stank of fear-sweat and unwashed wool.
The men who had escaped the forest spoke in halting, broken sentences.
"…thunder from the trees… pots that exploded like lightning…"
"…smoke that burned the eyes, the throat… we could not see, could not breathe…"
"…bolts from nowhere… centurions falling before we heard the twang…"
"…ghosts in the branches… they moved like wind, struck and vanished…"
The legatus listened without expression. His tribunes shifted uneasily.
One survivor — the grizzled optio who had knelt at the end — raised his head.
"It was not men, sir. It was… something else. The forest itself turned against us. And at the head… a boy. A boy with eyes like death. He spoke Latin better than most of us. He said the war had a new name."
Flavius Aelius leaned forward.
"A name?"
The optio swallowed.
"He said… 'a war in my name.'"
A ripple of unease passed through the officers.
The legatus sat back.
"Superstition," he said flatly. "Barbarians with new tricks. Crossbows, perhaps. Some Eastern poison smoke. Nothing more."
But his voice lacked conviction.
He looked at the map spread before him — the Rhine frontier, the Suebi lands marked in charcoal.
"Double the patrols. Burn every village that shelters them. And send word to Augusta Treverorum."
He paused.
"If this 'boy' is real… we find him. We kill him. Before the governor hears rumors of demons in the woods."
Outside, the wind howled off the river.
The survivors stared into the brazier, still seeing smoke and thunder in the flames.
And somewhere in the dark forests east of the Rhine, a machine of wood and rope waited — patient, silent, ready to prove that gods could be built by men.