The sergeants gathered at dusk in the largest storage shed inside Seigmer's Hold — ten men, each commanding a decuria of ten. They stood in a tight semicircle around a large patch of smoothed dirt where Seigmer had drawn lines with a stick.
He spoke without preamble.
"Tomorrow the Romans will come in greater numbers. When they do, we will not meet them shield-to-shield in the open. We will meet them from the earth."
He pointed to the crude diagram he had scratched: two parallel lines with zig-zag connecting trenches and small squares along the front.
"This is a trench system. A ditch deep enough that a man in armor cannot climb out quickly. Parapet high enough to hide a crossbowman. Fire bays every twenty paces so we can pour bolts into them without exposing ourselves. Communication trenches behind so we can move men without being seen. The Romans will charge expecting a wall to break. They will find a grave they cannot escape."
He looked at each sergeant in turn.
"Principles:
Never fight fair. Force them to come to you.
Overlapping fields of fire — every inch of ground in front of the trench must be killable by at least two positions.
Depth. Multiple lines of trenches so if they take the first, they bleed for the second.
Surprise. Powder pots buried in front with trip-wires or slow-matches we control.
Rotation. Fresh men in the firing line, tired men resting in the rear trench.
We will dig this in front of the hold before they arrive. You will teach your decuriae tonight. Tomorrow we dig. The day after, we kill."
The sergeants absorbed every word. None questioned. The cannon victory had burned away the last doubts. These men now looked at Seigmer the way priests look at oracles.
Ingvar spoke for all of them.
"We will dig until our hands bleed, lord."
Seigmer nodded once.
"Good. Dismissed."
As they filed out, he remained alone for a moment, staring at the dirt diagram.
He knew what he was doing.
He was teaching them positional warfare four centuries before its time.
And he knew the cost.
The night assault began two hours after midnight.
Seigmer led the twelve-man Tier-1 team himself.
They moved like liquid shadow — faces and bodies blackened with soot and river mud, soft leather soles, no metal, no talking. The wagon waited in a hidden ravine half a mile from the Roman camp: one heavy ox-cart loaded with four barrels. The largest contained fifty kilograms of refined black powder. The other three were filled with pine tar and oil, sealed with cloth wicks.
The plan was simple and brutal.
Infiltrate the outer pickets.
Drive the wagon straight into the heart of the camp — the open space between the praetorium and the main sleeping lines of two cohorts.
Light the fuse.
Disappear.
They killed the first sentries without a sound — seaxes across throats, bodies lowered gently. The Tier-1 men had become ghosts. No one saw them.
The wagon rolled forward, one man walking beside the oxen to keep them calm, Seigmer and the rest flanking in the darkness.
They reached the center of the camp unchallenged.
The space was perfect — hundreds of legionaries sleeping in tight rows, officers' tents clustered nearby, supply wagons parked close. Torches burned low. A few men moved between fires, but none looked toward the wagon.
Seigmer gave the signal.
The driver lit the long fuse with a shielded coal, jumped down, and melted into the shadows with the rest of the team.
They ran.
Thirty seconds later the night tore itself apart.
The explosion was apocalyptic.
A pillar of white-orange fire punched two hundred feet into the sky, visible for miles. The fifty-kilogram powder charge detonated with a roar that shook the ground like an earthquake. The blast wave flattened tents in a sixty-meter radius, hurling men through the air like leaves. Bodies within twenty meters were vaporized or torn to pieces. The shockwave ruptured lungs and eardrums for another forty meters.
Then the tar and oil barrels ignited.
A roaring sea of liquid flame exploded outward, spraying sticky, burning tar across everything. Tents became infernos in seconds. Men woke screaming as fire clung to their skin, hair, and wool tunics. Human torches ran in every direction, spreading the flames further. The entire central third of the camp became a blazing hell.
Screams rose — thousands of voices at once.
The physical destruction was staggering:
Over four hundred men dead in the first minute (blast + shrapnel + fire).
Another six hundred severely burned or wounded, many dying in the hours that followed.
The praetorium area was completely destroyed. Several senior tribunes and centurions died in their tents.
The crater left behind was twelve meters wide and three meters deep, the ground scorched black and glassy.
But the psychological effect was worse.
Legatus Valerius Maximus staggered out of his half-collapsed tent, face blackened, blood running from his ears. He stared at the inferno that had been the heart of his camp and whispered one word:
"…Demon."
Men who had marched with confidence now wept openly. Some fell to their knees praying. Others simply ran into the night, discarding weapons and armor. The legion that had arrived full of Roman pride was breaking from within.
In the forest, Seigmer's twelve men watched the distant inferno light up the sky.
None of them cheered.
They looked at Seigmer — the fourteen-year-old boy who had just murdered hundreds of men in their sleep with a single wagon — and something shifted in their eyes.
It was no longer respect.
It was worship.
Ingvar dropped to one knee first.
The others followed, one by one, until all twelve knelt in the dirt.
"Lord…" Ingvar's voice cracked with awe. "You are not of this world. You are the storm made flesh. Command us and we will burn the world for you."
Seigmer looked down at them — his most elite, his closest brothers in arms — now kneeling like men before a god.
He felt no triumph.
Only the cold, clear knowledge that the line had been crossed.
He had turned loyal soldiers into something more dangerous.
Believers.
He placed a hand on Ingvar's shoulder and spoke quietly.
"Rise. We are not gods. We are the ones who make gods afraid."
But the men rose with shining eyes, and in that moment Seigmer knew the truth:
The cult had begun.
And it would only grow.