Three months remained.
Word had already spread like wildfire across the Rhine frontier and deep into the old Suebi lands: the boy who shattered a legion with thunder from bronze tubes was now fortifying a captured Roman castra into something no one had ever seen. Clans sent riders to confirm the stories. Traders whispered it in Roman border towns. And in Augusta Treverorum, the governor Aelius Marcellinus had finally received the full, horrifying report.
In his marble-lined audience hall, the governor stood before a map of the Rhine provinces, flanked by surviving tribunes, legionary prefects, and two bishops who had come to offer prayers for the "demonic barbarian threat."
The survivor who had staggered in weeks earlier was now a ghost of himself — face scarred, voice cracked — but he spoke clearly.
"Three legions, governor. The emperor has ordered two more: one from Thessalonica under Comes Orientis command, another from Valentinian's old field army near the Danube. They will march north next spring. Gratian is still tied down with the Greuthungi Goths — he cannot spare more. But three legions… that is enough to crush any barbarian uprising."
Aelius Marcellinus stared at the map.
Three legions. Twenty-four thousand men. Siege trains. Engineers. Cavalry wings. Enough to level forests if necessary.
He turned to the bishops.
"Pray for us," he said quietly. "This boy is no ordinary warlord. He fights like a devil with the mind of a Roman general."
One bishop made the sign of the cross.
"Then we must pray harder. And strike harder."
The governor nodded.
"Send word to the Comes. Tell him the Rhine is bleeding. Tell him we need every man they can spare. We will hold until spring… and then we will bury this Seigmer under the weight of Rome."
In Seigmer's Hold, the same three months felt like a heartbeat.
The First Prussian Regiment — six hundred and thirty men — trained daily under torchlight and winter sun. The living-timber bastions were rising, concrete hardening around green posts that already showed tiny buds. Wide roads had been gravelled. The first rows of bungalows stood framed, latrines dug, bathing channels laid. Powder production had reached three hundred kilograms and climbing. Rifled cannon barrels were being bored out by hand, conical shells cast in clay molds.
But Seigmer knew time was the real enemy.
He summoned the artillery officers — the one hundred and sixty men he had selected for their quick minds and steady hands — to the cannon yard at dawn.
They gathered around the newest piece: a one-pounder mobile cannon.
The barrel was bronze, four feet long, one-inch bore, mounted on a light oak carriage with wide wheels and iron strapping. It weighed less than two hundred pounds — four men could move it across rough ground in minutes. The rifling inside was still crude — one full turn every thirty inches — but it spun the projectile enough to double accuracy over smoothbore.
Seigmer ran his hand along the barrel.
"This is the one-pounder. Light. Mobile. Deadly at close range. It will be our dragon in the field."
He turned to the officers.
"Rate of fire: a trained crew can load and fire four to six times in a minute. In short bursts, eight. Canister shot — a bag of iron balls and scrap — will shred infantry or cavalry at fifty to two hundred paces. Solid shot for longer range — up to a thousand paces with good powder. We will mount them on wagons or light carriages. They move with the regiment. They strike where the enemy does not expect."
One of the officers — a young sergeant named Thrain who had crewed the first cannons — asked the question everyone was thinking.
"Against a full legion?"
Seigmer met his eyes.
"One gun can kill or wound forty to sixty men in a minute with canister. Six guns — two hundred and forty to three hundred and sixty. Ten guns — four hundred to six hundred. In the right terrain, with trenches and crossbows supporting, we can break a cohort before they close. We do not need to kill them all. We need to make them run."
He stepped back.
"Today you learn this weapon. You learn the charge weights. You learn the elevation angles. You learn to swab the bore between shots so it does not burst. You learn to keep the powder dry. You learn to aim not at the mass, but at the officers and banners. You are now artillery officers of the First Prussian Regiment. Act like it."
The training began.
The officers worked in crews of four: loader, rammer, aimer, fuse-man. They practiced with blank charges first — powder only — to feel the recoil and timing. Then with solid shot — iron balls cast from Roman scrap — at wooden targets two hundred paces away. Finally with canister — bags of nails and pebbles — at straw dummies at one hundred paces.
The yard echoed with sharp cracks — not the earth-shaking roar of the larger cannons, but a vicious, rapid bark. The one-pounders spat fire every ten to fifteen seconds. Targets shattered. Straw exploded. The officers learned fast: elevation for range, windage for drift, timing for volley fire.
By midday they were cycling at five rounds per minute consistently.
Seigmer watched from the side, arms folded.
He had chosen not to drink alcohol in this life. He had chosen not to let anything dull his edge. And now he watched six hundred and thirty men — and one hundred and sixty artillery officers among them — become something Rome had never faced.
A disciplined army with thunder on wheels.
He looked west again.
Three legions were coming.
But three legions would face not a tribe.
They would face a regiment.
And a regiment that had learned to think like Rome… and strike like something far older and far newer.
The one-pounders barked again.
Seigmer smiled — small, cold, professional.
The future was arriving.
One shot at a time.