Theodoric the Red did not come as a merchant. He came at dawn, his fifty riders appearing like ghosts through the perpetual 6th-century fog. They were a terrifying sight—men draped in boiled leather and stolen mail, their horses snorting frost. In a world of starving peasants, these were the wolves.
Theodoric rode to the front, a massive man with a beard stained by wine and rust. He looked at the walls of Aethelgard—not mud and wood anymore, but dressed stone and Roman concrete.
"The traveler!" Theodoric roared. "Step forth! Give us the grain and the spirits, and I might leave you enough men to plow the fields!"
The gates of Aethelgard did not open. Instead, a single figure appeared on the battlements. Julian looked small against the stone, dressed in a simple dark tunic. He held no sword. In his hand was a long, thin stick of smoldering slow-match.
"Theodoric," Julian's voice was calm, almost bored. "I offered you trade. You chose gravity."
"Gravity?" Theodoric laughed, unsheathing a heavy iron broadsword. "Is that the name of your god, boy?"
Julian didn't answer. He stepped aside, revealing three long, wooden tubes reinforced with thick iron hoops, mounted on heavy timber carriages. The villagers called them "The Hollow Thunders."
"I call it **Chemistry**," Julian whispered.
He touched the smoldering match to the touch-hole of the center tube.
The world split open. A roar louder than any thunder the 6th century had ever heard shattered the morning silence. A gout of orange flame and thick, sulfurous white smoke erupted from the gatehouse. A five-pound stone ball, carved from the very Roman ruins they lived in, shrieked through the air.
It didn't hit a man. It hit a tree behind the cavalry, a massive oak that had stood for two hundred years. The tree disintegrated, wood splinters turning into lethal shrapnel.
The horses didn't wait for orders. They were creatures of nature, and nature had just been violated. They reared, screaming, throwing their riders into the muck. Theodoric's horse bolted, dumping the warlord unceremoniously into the mud.
"Again," Julian commanded.
The second and third tubes roared in sequence. The stone projectiles skipped across the earth, kicking up plumes of dirt and gore. The cavalry, once a disciplined killing machine, was now a panicked mob. Most had never heard a sound louder than a blacksmith's hammer; they truly believed the earth was cracking open to swallow them.
An hour later, Theodoric the Red was brought into the Great Hall. He was no longer a wolf. He was a shivering man covered in filth, his ears bleeding from the concussive blast of the gunpowder.
Julian sat at the long table, a sheet of parchment before him. He was eating a piece of white bread—real, sifted white bread, a luxury that shouldn't exist for another millennium.
"You're a demon," Theodoric wheezed, his eyes darting around the room at the strange, sharp-edged tools and the clear glass windows. "You've stolen the thunder from the sky."
"I didn't steal it," Julian said, not looking up from his writing. "I calculated it. Sulfur, charcoal, saltpeter. It's quite simple once you stop praying and start measuring."
Julian pushed the parchment across the table. It was a contract, written in his new, simplified script.
"What is this?"
"Your new life," Julian said. "You have fifty men who know how to ride and fight. I have a road that needs guarding and a border that needs expanding. You will no longer steal grain. You will receive a salary, paid in Aethelgard coin. You will be vaccinated against the plague. In return, you will become the first regiment of the **Imperial Guard**."
Theodoric looked at the paper, then at the man who did not age. He realized that fighting Julian was like fighting the tide. You could struggle, or you could learn to swim.
"And if I refuse?"
Julian finally looked up. His eyes were cold, reflecting the flicker of the hearth. "Then I will have to find someone else to guard the road. And you will become a footnote in a history book that I haven't written yet."
Theodoric took the quill. He didn't know how to write his name, so he made a jagged 'X'.
Julian nodded, satisfied. He stood up and looked out the window. Beyond the walls of Aethelgard, the fog was finally beginning to lift, revealing a valley that was green, fertile, and—for the first time in history—under the control of a man who knew exactly what the future looked like.
"The 6th century is officially over," Julian murmured to the empty room. "Now, let's see about the 7th."