Seigmer waited until the camp fires had burned low and most warriors had staggered to their tents before approaching the Reik's great pavilion.
Hans sat alone outside, sharpening the edge of his great seax on a whetstone. The rhythmic scrape was the only sound besides the crackle of dying embers. He did not look up when Seigmer approached.
"You come late," Hans rumbled. "Most men would be drunk and boasting by now."
"Most men have not seen what I have seen," Seigmer replied.
He stopped a respectful distance away and waited until the whetstone paused.
"The Roman castra two days' march west is broken," he said quietly. "The new legion has not yet arrived. Their walls are half-repaired, their sentries sleep on their feet, their officers are jumping at shadows. The men are sick with fear. They have lost nearly half their strength without a single open battle. The camp is ripe."
Hans set the seax across his knees.
"And you want to take it."
"I want to give it to you," Seigmer corrected. "A fortress on this side of the Rhine. Stone walls, granaries, a bridgehead the new legion cannot ignore. We take it in one night, before Valerius Maximus can reinforce it. With two hundred men I can do it cleanly. The rest of the tribe can march in at dawn and claim the glory."
Hans studied his son in the dying firelight.
"You ask for two hundred men."
"I ask for your blessing to call for volunteers," Seigmer said. "The young ones are already pressing me. They want to be part of what comes next. Let them prove themselves."
The Reik was silent for a long time.
Then he stood — slow, deliberate, towering.
"Tomorrow at first light," he said. "I will call the warriors. You will speak. If they follow you, they are yours for this strike. If they do not…" He let the sentence hang. "Then we wait for spring like men who still remember how to fight."
Seigmer bowed his head.
"Thank you, Father."
Hans grunted.
"Do not thank me yet, boy. Win the fort. Then we will see who thanks whom."
Dawn came cold and clear.
The tribe gathered in the great clearing. Reik Hans stood on the oak stump, axe resting on his shoulder.
"Warriors of the Suebi!" he bellowed. "The Romans bleed. Their camp lies open like a gutted deer. My son offers to take it for us — tonight. He asks two hundred men to go with him. Who will stand with the Reborn?"
A roar answered — not from the elders, but from the young.
Hundreds stepped forward. Boys who had once followed Seigmer when he was still small enough to chase goats now pushed to the front. Girls cheered from the edges. Even some older warriors — the ones who had fought beside him in the night raids — joined the line.
Seigmer walked forward.
He did not raise his voice.
He simply looked at them.
"Two hundred," he said. "No more. The rest will march behind at first light. This is not a raid for cattle or glory. This is the first step of a new Suebi. The first fortress we will hold in our name. The first stone we lay in the wall that will one day keep Rome out forever."
He let the silence stretch.
Then he added quietly:
"Anyone who steps forward must be ready to die tonight. But if we succeed, your children will never know what it means to bow to an eagle."
The line grew. Two hundred and twelve men stood forward before Seigmer raised a hand.
"Enough. The rest will guard the camp and prepare wagons. We leave at dusk."
He turned to Hans.
"They are ready, Father."
Hans looked at the eager faces — then at his son.
"Then take them," he said. "And bring me a Roman gate."
Dusk fell like a curtain.
Two hundred and twelve Suebi moved through the forest like a dark tide — silent, disciplined, faces blackened, crossbows slung, short swords and axes at hips. Seigmer led at the front with his twelve Tier-1 men. Behind them came the line-breakers — the new volunteers, trained hard for three days in silent movement and crossbow volleys.
They reached the broken castra an hour after full dark.
The Roman fort was a ruin of morale more than stone. Half the palisade still stood, but gaps had not been repaired. Sentries leaned on spears, eyes hollow. Torches burned low. No dogs barked — most had been eaten or run off in the terror month.
Seigmer's scouts had already mapped the weak points using the legatus's intel.
He signaled.
The Tier-1 team vanished into the shadows.
Ten minutes later the first sentries died — throats opened by seaxes, bodies lowered silently to the ground.
The gate guards followed — two quarrels each from twenty paces, no sound louder than a soft thump.
The gate creaked open.
The line-breakers flowed in like water.
Inside the camp the Romans slept in clusters around dying fires. Discipline had eroded; men huddled for warmth and comfort instead of standing proper watches.
Seigmer's force struck in three waves.
First wave: crossbow volleys from the ramparts — silent, precise. Officers' tents targeted first. Centurions and optios dropped before they could shout. Bodies slumped over camp tables, blood pooling on maps.
Second wave: the line-breakers moved tent to tent. Short blades flashed in the dark. Men died in their sleep, or woke just long enough to see black-painted faces and feel steel.
Third wave: Seigmer's Tier-1 men went for the command tent.
They found Prefect Decimus Rufus sitting alone at a table, staring at the note from the hanged tribune. He looked up as the tent flap opened.
Seigmer stepped inside, crossbow leveled.
"Stand," he said in Latin.
Rufus stared at the young face — calm, cold, eyes like winter.
"You," he breathed.
Seigmer nodded once.
"Your camp is ours. Your men are dead or fleeing. Stand and live. Resist and die."
Rufus looked around at the black-painted warriors filling the tent.
He stood slowly, hands open.
The fort fell without a single Suebi death.
By the time the first light touched the eastern ridge, two hundred Suebi warriors stood on the captured ramparts. Roman bodies had been dragged into piles. Captured shields and spears were stacked. The eagle standard — still standing in the center — was lowered and wrapped in a hide.
Seigmer walked the walls with Ingvar at his side.
"We hold it until the Reik arrives," he said. "Then it becomes ours."
Ingvar grinned.
"They will sing of this for a thousand years."
Seigmer looked west — toward the approaching new legion.
"They will do more than sing," he said quietly. "They will build."
Behind them, in the captured granaries, fifty kilograms of black powder waited.
And in the forest, Gundahar and Wulfric watched from a ridge — faces dark with rage and calculation.
The boy had taken a Roman fort in one night.
Their knives would have to move faster.