The new legion moved cautiously.
Legio XIV Gemina had crossed the Rhine bridge at Mogontiacum three days earlier, but Legatus Gaius Valerius Maximus did not march blindly. He sent out a screen of light cavalry and auxiliary scouts — fifty men in total, split into small patrols of eight to ten — fanning east across the forested hills like fingers probing for a pulse.
One such patrol — eight Batavian horsemen led by Decurio Lucius Varro — was ordered to reconnoiter the old Roman castra that Prefect Decimus Rufus had lost a month earlier. The report from the survivors had been garbled with fear: walls held by barbarians, thunder from the trees, officers murdered in their sleep. Valerius wanted facts, not nightmares.
They rode light: no banners, no heavy mail, only leather tunics, oval shields, and short spathas. Horses trained to move quietly. They kept to the game trails, avoiding the main road.
They reached the ridge overlooking the castra at mid-morning on the fourth day.
Varro dismounted, crawled to the crest with two of his best men, and looked down.
What he saw made his stomach tighten.
The old fort had been transformed.
The ditches had been deepened and filled with dense rows of sharpened stakes — star-shaped at the corners, overlapping fields of fire. The palisade had been repaired and reinforced with fresh timber. Roman scorpio ballistae stood on the ramparts, crews visible even from this distance. Smoke rose from multiple cook-fires inside the walls. Men moved with purpose — not the chaotic milling of a barbarian war-band, but the steady rhythm of trained soldiers.
And on the eastern wall, a black banner with a white spiral fluttered in the wind.
Varro felt the hairs on his neck rise.
"By Jupiter," he whispered. "They've turned it into a proper stronghold."
One of his men — a young rider named Titus — pointed.
"Look — crossbowmen on the towers. At least twenty. And those are our own engines they're manning."
Varro nodded grimly.
"We ride back. The legatus must know."
They retreated down the slope, mounted, and turned west at a controlled trot.
They had gone less than two miles when the forest answered.
A Suebi patrol — twelve men on foot, led by one of Seigmer's Tier-2 line-breakers — had been shadowing them since dawn.
They waited in ambush at a narrow choke between two low hills — the perfect place for horses to slow.
The Batavians rounded the bend at a trot.
Twelve crossbows rose from the underbrush on both sides.
Thwack-thwack-thwack.
The first volley was surgical.
Three Batavians dropped instantly — quarrels through throats and chests. Two horses screamed and reared, throwing their riders. The patrol leader, Decurio Varro, shouted for a charge — but the second volley came before they could spur.
Two more riders fell. One horse collapsed with a shaft through its neck, pinning its rider beneath it.
Chaos.
The surviving Batavians wheeled to flee — but the Suebi had already closed the rear.
No war-cries. No heroic shouting. Just silent, disciplined movement.
The Suebi closed in a tight arc, shields up, crossbows reloaded.
Varro drew his spatha and tried to rally his men.
"Form on me! Form—"
A single heavy quarrel took him through the gap between helmet and neck. He toppled sideways, eyes wide.
The remaining three Batavians broke.
Two died in the first ten paces — quarrels in the back.
The last — the young Titus — managed to spur his horse clear and gallop west, blood streaming from a shallow cut on his shoulder where a bolt had grazed him.
He rode hard, changing horses at the first relay post, then hard again.
By dusk he stumbled into the legion's vanguard camp, horse lathered and foaming, eyes wild.
He was dragged before Legatus Valerius Maximus in the command tent.
"Speak," Valerius said, voice flat.
Titus dropped to one knee.
"The castra… it's theirs. Walls strengthened. Ditches deep with stakes — star-shaped, overlapping. Scorpio on the ramparts — our own. Men in disciplined ranks. A black banner with a white spiral. They saw us. Ambushed us on the return. Lost seven men. Decurio Varro dead. I alone escaped."
Valerius stared at him for a long moment.
Then he turned to his primus pilus.
"Double the scouts. Triple the night pickets. No patrol smaller than twenty men."
He looked back at Titus.
"And the boy? Did you see him?"
Titus swallowed.
"I saw a figure on the eastern wall — young, tall, black cloak. Watching us. He did not move. He just… watched."
Valerius's jaw tightened.
"Then he knows we are coming."
He looked west toward the Rhine — then east toward the forest that had swallowed half a cohort and now held a Roman fort.
"Tell the tribunes to prepare for siege. We will not charge blind. But we will take that fort back — and the head of the boy who thinks he can hold it."
Outside the tent, the legion's fires burned brighter.
But in the dark beyond the light, the forest waited.
And it no longer feared the eagle.