The captured Roman castra — now renamed Seigmer's Hold by the young warriors — glowed under torchlight.
The gates stood open. Roman standards had been torn down and replaced with boar-painted shields lashed to poles. The granaries brimmed with captured grain and salted meat. The praetorium tent flew a fresh black banner embroidered with a simple spiral — the same shape the sparks had made at the Thing.
The tribe arrived at midday.
Reik Hans rode at the head, flanked by Griselda and the elders. Behind them came wagons, packhorses, women carrying children, and hundreds of warriors still singing the songs of the night raid. When they crested the low ridge and saw the fort intact — walls manned by Suebi crossbowmen, no Roman eagle in sight — a roar rose that shook the stones.
Hans dismounted slowly, axe resting on his shoulder.
He walked the length of the gate, eyes taking in every detail: the bloodstains scrubbed from the ramparts, the neat rows of captured Roman gear, the disciplined sentries saluting as he passed.
Seigmer waited at the praetorium steps.
Hans stopped in front of him.
"You took it," he said simply.
"We took it," Seigmer corrected. "For the tribe."
Hans looked past him at the cheering warriors — young faces alight with pride, older ones grudgingly impressed.
Then he clasped Seigmer's forearm in a warrior's grip.
"This is yours by right," he said loudly enough for the nearest men to hear. "But it belongs to all of us. Tonight we feast. Tomorrow we hold it."
The tribe poured inside.
Tables were dragged into the central square. Cattle were slaughtered. Mead casks rolled out. Fires roared in the old Roman hearths. Musicians beat drums and blew bone horns. The air filled with smoke, laughter, and the smell of roasting meat.
Seigmer moved through the celebration like a shadow among flames — greeting warriors, accepting toasts, listening more than speaking. The young men crowded him, begging to hear the story of the raid again. Girls offered him braided cords and black feathers. Even some of the older warriors nodded in respect as he passed.
Gundahar and Wulfric watched from the edge of the square.
They had come with the tribe — silent, stone-faced. No cheers. No raised horns. Just cold eyes tracking Seigmer's every step.
Gundahar spoke low.
"Tonight. While they are drunk and distracted."
Wulfric nodded once.
They slipped away from the firelight.
The attempt came just after midnight.
The celebration had reached its peak. Warriors staggered between tents. Women danced in circles. Hans sat on a captured Roman chair at the head table, laughing with his shield-brothers.
Gundahar and Wulfric moved separately — one through the shadows behind the praetorium, the other circling from the granary side. Both carried short seaxes and small hide shields. Their plan was simple: flank Seigmer while he walked the perimeter (a habit they had observed), close fast, one from front, one from behind. Two blades in the dark. One body on the ground. One accident blamed on a Roman prisoner or a drunken brawl.
They timed it perfectly.
Seigmer was walking the eastern wall — alone, as he often did, checking sentries and thinking.
Gundahar stepped from the shadow of a tent ten feet behind him.
Wulfric emerged from the granary alley ten feet in front.
Both moved at once — silent, practiced, lethal.
They crossed three paces.
Then five.
Then eight.
They never reached ten.
Seigmer did not turn.
He simply raised one hand — casual, almost lazy.
Invisible force snapped outward.
Gundahar's neck twisted with a wet crack — spine severed at the second vertebra. He dropped like a felled tree, seax clattering on stone.
Wulfric's head jerked sideways at the same instant — cervical vertebrae shattered, eyes wide in the moment of realization. His body collapsed forward, knees buckling, face slamming into the dirt.
Both men were dead before they hit the ground.
Seigmer lowered his hand.
He did not look back.
He continued walking the wall, footsteps even, expression unchanged.
Two of his Tier-1 men appeared from the darkness — silent as always. They dragged the bodies into the shadows of the granary, stripped the seaxes, and left them propped against a barrel as if drunk and asleep. By morning the tribe would find two old warriors who had celebrated too hard and fallen badly. No blades. No blood on Seigmer. Just another tragedy of victory.
Seigmer reached the end of the wall and looked out over the dark forest.
The celebration roared behind him — laughter, drums, song.
He whispered to the night:
"You were loyal once."
Then he turned back to the firelight.
The fort was his.
The tribe was his.
And the knives that had come for him were broken.
Tomorrow the new legion would learn what happened when Rome marched against a legend that refused to die.