The scout arrived just before midnight.
A young warrior from the eastern picket line, horse lathered, eyes wide with the kind of fear that only comes from seeing death move faster than you expect.
He found Seigmer on the eastern rampart, standing motionless beside one of the captured scorpio, staring out at the dark forest as though it might speak.
"Lord," the scout gasped, dropping to one knee. "Roman patrol. Eight horsemen. Light cavalry. They reached the ridge at mid-morning, watched the hold for perhaps half an hour, then withdrew. We shadowed them. Ambushed them at the narrow pass between the twin hills. Seven dead. One escaped—wounded, but riding hard west."
Seigmer did not turn.
"Numbers confirmed?"
"Eight. Batavians by their shields. No banners. They saw the walls, the stakes, the scorpio. They saw us manning them."
Seigmer finally looked at the scout.
"Then the new legatus knows we hold the castra. He knows we have turned his own engines against him. And he knows we are not a rabble."
The scout swallowed.
"Lord… they will come in force now."
Seigmer nodded once.
"Yes. They will."
He dismissed the scout with a gesture and walked the length of the rampart alone.
Two hundred and fifty men.
Against a full legion — eight thousand, disciplined, supplied, and led by a commander who did not believe in ghosts.
The fort was strong — ditches deep, stakes thick, scorpio mounted, crossbowmen drilled — but it was not impregnable. Not yet. Not against siege engines, ladders, rams, and relentless Roman discipline.
Gunpowder production had increased. The smiths worked day and night in the hidden sheds. Fifty kilograms had become one hundred twenty, then two hundred. Clay grenades were now stacked in crates, fuses pre-soaked, ready for the next bombardment. But Seigmer knew the truth: grenades and tear-gas pots could terrorize, could bleed, could delay — but they would not hold a legion at bay forever.
The next encounter would be different.
He needed something louder.
Something heavier.
Something that spoke in the language Rome understood best: overwhelming, impersonal violence.
He returned to the praetorium — now his command room — and unrolled a fresh deerskin across the table.
By lamplight he sketched.
A bronze cannon.
Not the massive bombards of later centuries — something smaller, mobile, field-capable. Bore four inches, barrel five feet long. Cast in bronze scavenged from Roman helmets, cauldrons, and fittings, alloyed with local tin. Mounted on a wooden carriage with iron-reinforced wheels so it could be manhandled across rough ground.
He would not fire solid shot yet — the powder was still inconsistent, the casting imperfect. Instead: canister shot. Leather bags packed with iron scraps, nails, broken pottery shards — a shotgun blast at fifty to eighty paces. Devastating against massed infantry. Lethal against cavalry.
And if he could manage it — rifling.
Spiral grooves inside the bore. Not easy with clay molds and early bronze casting, but possible. He had seen it done in books, in videos, in the memories of a life that understood precision machining even if the tools here were crude. A rifled barrel would spin the projectile, extend range, improve accuracy.
It was ambitious.
It was necessary.
He summoned the chief smith — the grizzled Roman auxiliary who had once forged for Britannia.
The man arrived quickly, still smelling of charcoal and sweat.
Seigmer showed him the sketch.
"Bronze," Seigmer said. "This shape. This length. Bore four inches. I want the inside grooved—spiral lines, one full turn every thirty inches. Can you do it?"
The smith studied the drawing for a long minute.
"With clay molds… difficult. But possible. We can cast the tube solid, then bore it out with a reamer and cut the grooves by hand with files and patience. It will take time. And many failures."
"Start with one," Seigmer said. "Make it strong enough to hold the powder charge. Test it with half-load first. If it holds, we scale."
The smith nodded slowly.
"And the shot?"
"Canister. Bags of scrap. Nails. Anything sharp. We will fill them when the tube is ready."
The smith left without another word.
Seigmer rolled the sketch and looked out the tent flap at the night.
After this legion — after Valerius Maximus and his eight thousand — he would consolidate.
No more wooden palisades and earth ramparts forever.
Concrete.
He had the knowledge: lime from limestone kilns, volcanic ash or crushed brick for pozzolana, aggregate from river stones. Mix it wet, pour it into wooden forms, let it harden into walls that laughed at rams and fire. Star forts. Bastions. Curtain walls thick enough to mount cannon. A network of fortresses along the Rhine and deeper into Germania — the backbone of an empire that would not fall in sixty years.
But first, survival.
First, this legion.
He stepped outside.
The camp was quiet — men sleeping in shifts, sentries alert on the walls, the low creak of scorpio windlasses being tested.
Two hundred and fifty men.
One hold.
One new weapon in the forge.
And a month, perhaps two, before the full weight of Legio XIV came crashing against them.
Seigmer looked west.
"You sent your best," he murmured to the dark.
"Now see what happens when the best meets the future."
Somewhere in the smithy, a hammer fell.
The sound carried on the night wind — steady, patient, inevitable.