Chapter 10

Sicily, 263 BC – Just Off the Coast of Messana

The wind snapped through the rigging like a war drum.

We approached Sicily on a tide of discipline — not chaos. Four hundred ships, their hulls groaning beneath the weight of armour and grain, surged in staggered lines toward the shallows beyond Messana. The morning mist clung low to the sea, grey as the old gods.

Some men muttered prayers.

Others simply sharpened their blades.

I stood on the upper deck of our troopship, gladius sheathed, helm under my arm, and eighty men behind me, silent, waiting.

My centuria had no name. Not yet. But they moved like a blade waiting to be drawn.

"Eyes forward!" I snapped. "You see the island, not the fear."

They straightened.

Every one of them wore standard legionary kit: gladius, pugio, two pila, scutum gripped tight. Lorica hamata for most — mail shirts that jingled with every breath — and hardened leather for the newer recruits.

No ornament. No vanity.

Just purpose.

I'd drilled it into them. Survive, strike, survive again.

They obeyed.

Because I'd bled beside them. Not behind.

The beach came fast. Shields were raised before feet hit sand. Tenth Legion led the vanguard — hardened men who'd taken Samnite hillforts and still chewed olive pits like they were bones.

We were second wave. One of six centuriae attached to the Third Cohort.

Not glory-bound.

Just dependable.

That was all I needed.

We marched under the snap of scarlet vexilla as the landing solidified. Tents rose. Ditches dug. Perimeters enforced. In the distance, Messana's walls watched silently, manned by a mix of Syracusan levies and Carthaginian officers.

They hadn't expected 40,000 Romans.

They'd expected hesitation.

They would learn the truth.

Two Days Later – Foothills Southeast of the Beachhead

We moved at dusk.

Orders were simple: scout the perimeter, support the main cohort's forward outpost.

The land here was broken — olive groves, crumbling stone terraces, a thin path cut between hills that funneled sound like a whisper into a roar.

We were mid-formation when the first slingstone cracked against a helmet.

Then the second took a man's eye.

"Ambush!" came the cry.

And then everything broke.

I didn't shout.

Shouting was for fear.

I raised my arm — the one they watched. My fingers signaled fallback box, two ranks wide, two deep. Shields locked. Scuta overlapped. Pila ready.

The front line absorbed the next volley.

Then came the skirmishers — Syracusan levies, light-armored, spears and curved blades, howling more from nerves than fury.

We let them come.

Let them taste formation.

When the first broke off his charge to feint, I struck.

I lunged between shields, gladius low, and drove it into the meat of his hip. Bone cracked. Blood jetted.

The centuria held.

Then advanced.

We pivoted like a hinge. I took the right flank, drove my blade into another man's ribs, twisted until he screamed. A younger legionary dropped his pila in panic.

"Pick it up or I bury it in your spine," I hissed.

He obeyed.

He lived.

Three minutes later, the hill ran red.

We had lost six.

Killed or dying.

They had lost seventy-four.

The survivors fled.

Later, as I rinsed blood from my hands in a goat-trough, a grizzled veteran from another unit passed by. He stared.

"Your men… they didn't run."

"They won't," I said.

"What unit are you?"

"No name."

"They'll give you one."

Flashback — The Months Before Landing

I trained them at night.

Not with drills. Not with horns or whistles.

We moved through forest and scrub, silent as grave markers. I taught them to kill in silence. To strike behind the ear. Under the jaw. Through the groin.

I showed them how to live dirty.

To sleep in mud. To watch the way crows circled when a man lay dying.

"We are not legates," I told them. "We are blades."

I taught them foreign tactics. Things I remembered from Parthia. From Gaul. From before Gaul.

They never asked how I knew.

They just watched my eyes.

Tenebris – That Night, Campfire

Kesseph sat across from me, tending to a cracked knuckle.

"They believe in you now," he said.

"That's not enough."

"You want worship?"

"No," I said. "I want obedience. Worship dies when fear does."

He grunted.

Then looked up.

"There's talk," he said. "That we have been given a name, one of the nicknames you had in the colosseum ."

"Hmm?"

"Umbra Cohors."

"Shadow Cohort."

"You hate it?"

I considered.

"No," I said. "It's useful."

General Hanno the Younger – Lilybaeum, Carthaginian Command

The reports had changed.

Two weeks ago, Rome was still organising.

Now?

They had pushed inland. Taken ridgelines. Established footholds.

They hadn't broken any cities.

But they were gripping the throat of the island.

Hanno stood before the war council. He had not slept.

"We strike at sea," he said.

"Too early," objected the port commander.

"Then we bleed on land."

He swept aside the sand-table map.

"We use the war elephants. All six. Line them at the Salso crossing."

"The Senate forbids—"

"The Senate is not here," Hanno growled.

He turned to his aide.

"Have the Iberian mercenaries dig stakes along the valley paths. Make it look like a retreat. Then kill them when they follow."

Sicily, Valley of the Salso – Dusk, 263 BC

The air hung thick with the scent of myrtle and blood.

We were five cohorts deep into Sicilian farmland. Dust coated our greaves, and the hills around us narrowed like jaws. The sun dipped low behind the ridge, turning the wheatfields to rust.

The scouts had returned twice with the same word: clear.

That was the first lie.

I walked ahead of my Umbra Cohors, seventy-four now, boots striking dirt with a silence that made other units uneasy. Our shields were clean. Our blades, cleaner.

We marched beside the Fifth Cohort, flanked by two maniples of raw conscripts. Behind us, a column of four thousand twisted along the valley like a spear without a point.

The centurion of the Fifth, a grizzled Etruscan named Vettio, leaned toward me.

"You smell that?" he asked.

"What?"

"No fires. No dung. No dog barks. Locals fled too clean."

"So we're being watched."

"Like pigs on a spit."

It snapped open just before nightfall.

First — the horns.

Carthaginian. Brass and deep.

Then — the earthquake.

Not real. War elephants, six of them, charging from the left flank, downhill.

Behind them, Iberians. Leather and bronze. Short blades and longer screams.

I didn't shout.

I raised my hand — two fingers — and my men moved.

Testudo.

Shields locked, high and tight. A wall of iron and silence.

The elephants barreled into the front line. Screams. Bones breaking like old wood. The conscripts folded, caught in a tidal crush of noise and tusks.

But Umbra didn't break.

We shifted to the left, moving against the pressure, toward a grove I'd marked three nights ago.

A funnel. An escape. A kill zone.

We slid into the olive grove like ghosts.

"Slingers up," I ordered.

Twelve men. Slings spun like vipers.

"Aim for the eyes."

Stones sang. Elephants shrieked. One veered sideways, crashing into its own line.

Then came the Iberians.

They chased us in.

That was their second mistake.

Sicily – Valley of the Salso, Evening of the Ambush

Lucius Postumius Albinus — Consul of the Roman Republic

The enemy came with horns instead of orders.

That was the first sign that it wasn't a skirmish, but a trap.

I was mounted on a ridge above the advancing line, overseeing the march of our columns through the narrowing Salso pass. Olive groves flanked the dirt track. Gentle farmland. Picturesque. Too quiet.

When the first blast of Carthaginian brass cut across the valley, every bird vanished from the trees.

The second was the stampede.

Elephants.

I saw their shadows break from the ridge to the south, tusks low, tusks armored, legs thundering into the left flank where two maniples of green recruits had just rotated in.

"Sound the cornu!" I barked.

The signal horn rang out.

"Form line. Testudo forward. Cavalry ready intercept!"

But the elephants didn't charge the center.

They hit the side. Our Achilles' heel—disorganised, mid-march, shields lowered for comfort. I watched the first ranks buckle. One elephant hit with such force it scattered men like dice on marble.

Blood hit the grass in a spray of mist.

And then the Iberians came.

They struck from both flanks — fast, yelling in high, hoarse voices. Spears glinted like teeth. They didn't try to hold the line.

They came to butcher it.

I descended into hell.

The dust rose before I reached the field. I passed corpses, shattered pila, torn vexilla.

"Reform ranks!" I shouted, swinging down from my horse. "Centurions to your men! Push east! Get to the olive groves!"

"Cohort seven is gone!" someone shouted.

"Then replace it with ten!"

It was chaos. But chaos was ours to command, not theirs.

The heart of a legion isn't its general.

It's the discipline drilled into its spine.

I watched as our men began to regrow shape.

Three centuries pivoted. Shields locked. The sound of iron striking iron began to fall into rhythm.

One man called cadence with blood in his mouth.

We held.

And then I saw them.

From the olive grove—shadows moved.

At first I thought them deserters.

Then I saw the shields. The controlled pivot.

The testudo gliding like a serpent through the trees.

And at its head—him.

Not a standard bearer. No crest of rank.

But his presence bent the air around him like heat.

I recognized him from whispers in the camp. From bets placed by my own tribunes.

The gladiator-turned-centurion. The one they called Tenebris.

His cohort was moving around the Iberian force—not toward them. Past them. Toward the ridge.

"What is he doing?" my aide said.

I knew.

He wasn't attacking.

He was cutting the throat of the ambush.

I watched from below as the Umbra Cohors disappeared into the slope.

For three minutes, we heard nothing.

Then the grove lit up with oil and torchlight.

Then screams.

The Iberians turned, confused.

Half of them turned away from us.

That was their mistake.

My cohorts pressed forward. I gave the order:

"Advance. One line. Clear the hill."

"But the elephants—"

"Forget the beasts. Cut the men."

We surged.

And when we reached the olive grove…

It was already done.

Bodies hung on the trees.

Some still twitching.

Others split open as if dissected.

The Umbra Cohors stood at rest. Blades dark. Silent.

Tenebris knelt over a dying Iberian and whispered something I couldn't hear.

When he rose, he looked at me.

Just once.

Not as a subordinate.

But as an equal.

I didn't speak.

But I ordered a messenger to ride to Rhegium.

"Send word to the Senate. Tell them Sicily will be taken. And the man who'll take it doesn't wear a crown."

Iberian Mercenary

They said the Romans had a mad cohort.

One with no banner. No songs.

Just a wolf in black at the front.

I didn't believe it.

Until I followed them into the trees.

At first, I thought we had them.

They were retreating. Splitting. Bleeding.

Then I saw the oil.

Burning in bowls along the trees.

And the shapes that moved where no man should.

My comrade died first. His throat opened like a wineskin.

Then my commander — stabbed through the back with a blade that curved the wrong way.

And then I saw him.

Eyes like a god who hated gods.

"Run," he told me.

I did.

I don't know how long I screamed.

But I never found my sword again.

Tenebris

The ambush fell apart from the inside.

We moved around them — not through.

Every Iberian who chased us found themselves surrounded.

We didn't fight in lines.

We fought in circles.

Blades from above. From below. From behind.

Kesseph moved through them like smoke. His blade hit necks and knees — nothing else.

"Tenebris!" he shouted. "Two more to the south!"

"Leave them. Let them run. Let them talk."

By the time the elephants had fled — blind and bleeding — the Roman line had stabilized.

But the tale that spread afterward wasn't about the legions.

It was about the cohort that disappeared into the trees.

And came out red.

Legionary Gaius Marcius, Age 19

He saved us.

That's what the centurion said.

That the black-coat freak with the twin blades turned the flank.

That he broke the Iberians.

But I saw what he did to that man.

The one who begged. The one who dropped his sword.

He looked him in the eyes.

And killed him anyway.

I think he was smiling.