Chapter

Sicily – March Toward Syracuse, Six Days After the Ambush

The camp grew more rigid the closer we drew to Syracuse.

Legates passed orders with colder voices. Tribunes measured tents with waxed string. Scribae circled like flies around a corpse, cataloguing grain stores and casualty lists.

The soldiers felt it. They slept harder. Drank faster.

They knew what was coming.

Siege, or slaughter.

And still, the nights were filled with questions.

Tenebris & Kesseph – Night Watch, Edge of Camp

We sat on the southern ridge, above the rest of the cohort, away from the firelight. The stars above Sicily were indifferent.

"You haven't said a word since midday," Kesseph said.

"Words are for people who believe they'll be heard."

"You command seventy men."

"That doesn't mean they listen."

He grunted.

I passed him a wineskin. He took it without thanks. That was new.

"Now they talk about you here just like they did at the Colosseum," he said.

"What else is there to talk about?"

"They're not all loyal."

I nodded.

"That's how I know they're still human."

Command Tent – Morning Council

The tent smelled of sweat, pine tar, and arrogance.

Legate Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio stood at the head of the table, flanked by two scribes and a map blackened at the edges with grease from too many hands.

"Syracuse sits high. Fortified. Thirty-foot walls. Three gates. Two interior ridges. And Carthaginian silver feeding its stomach."

I stood near the back.

Not seated.

I wasn't offered a seat.

Scipio's eyes cut toward me mid-briefing.

"Centurion Tenebris," he said. "Your men handled themselves well. Brutal, even. A little too brutal."

I said nothing.

"You disobeyed direct orders during the Salso push."

"I manoeuvred to survive."

"You abandoned your assigned flank."

"And killed twice as many as the cohorts that didn't."

A few heads turned. Some approving. Others… not.

The legate tapped the map.

"You'll hold the western slope of the Syracuse approach. No advancement without signal."

"Understood."

As I turned, I heard one of the older centurions mutter behind me.

"Dog doesn't wear a collar. Should be on a leash."

Later That Day – With the Cohort

Gaius, a veteran with three missing fingers and a bone-deep scar on his left calf, approached me at the water barrels.

"Centurion," he said, keeping his voice low. "Some of the men… they think the command's got you leashed."

"They're right."

"And what do we do?"

I looked at him.

"We watch."

"And if the leash tightens?"

"Then we teach them who they're tying it to."

He grinned. Then coughed blood.

"You should eat something, sir."

"I should eat everything," I muttered.

Campfire — The Men's Perspective

Sextus, youngest of the shield wall, sat sharpening his blade. Tullius spit olive pits into the dirt.

"You think he's cursed?" Sextus asked.

"You don't fight like that if you're just trained," Tullius said.

"But he bleeds."

"So do demons, I hear."

They laughed.

But they didn't sleep well.

Tenebris – Alone, Just Before Dawn

I sat by the fire.

Helmet beside me. Gloves off. Fingers flexing.

I remembered a time—a Roman city older than this, with walls thinner and hearts braver.

I remembered holding a friend's hand as he died on the steps of a temple.

I remembered speaking a language that no one alive now knew.

And I remembered a name not mine.

It still hurt.

Syracuse — Early Morning

The grapes were sour again.

Laelia Scaura spat the skin into the dust and stared at the vines her uncle had boasted about for three straight summers. The sun had barely risen, and already the stones beneath her sandals burned like forge-iron.

"He doesn't water them properly," she muttered.

Her cousin, Dama, wiped sweat from her brow with the edge of her scarf and kept picking.

"He says the dryness brings out their strength."

"Like he says about beating his slaves," Laelia snapped.

Dama flinched but didn't answer.

Laelia regretted the words the moment they left her mouth. The slaves weren't far. The overseer was closer. Her uncle's estate wasn't cruel — not openly — but kindness was a thing boasted about, not practiced.

She tugged her veil up, adjusted the amphora basket, and glanced back at the city's silhouette.

Syracuse.

Still whole. Still proud.

But its streets had started whispering differently.

She had lived here for nineteen years.

Born to a family of minor equestrian blood — Scaura, once tied distantly to a senatorial line back in Rome. After her parents died in a harbour fire, she was taken in by her uncle, Marius Scaura, a man who traded in Cypriot copper, Siculian wines, and political favours, depending on which day of the week you asked.

Laelia was educated. Literate. Bilingual. Promised to a merchant's son twice her age — a contract still unsigned because Marius couldn't decide whether war was bad for business or the best thing that could happen to it.

"If Carthage wins," he'd said once, pouring wine, "we keep our ships. If Rome wins, we gain a province. I win either way."

But Laelia had begun to dream of fire.

She had seen the Roman envoys ride into the city.

Not soldiers. Not yet.

Just polished words and glinting eyes. They met with Hiero's ministers. Whispered in the Senate halls. Bought meat pies from vendors while mapping siege ranges with their eyes.

The city had not chosen sides.

But war didn't wait for permission.

That afternoon, Laelia visited the market for fennel and rosemary. She carried a wax tablet in her left hand and a blade in her right — not for defense, but for cutting herbs.

A Greek woman called her filia. A boy tried to sell her boiled snails. A Roman auxiliary, off-duty, winked as she passed.

She ignored them all.

Until she heard the coughing.

She turned into a narrow street and found a child — curled against a cracked cistern, arms like sticks, eyes too old.

"Where are your parents?" she asked.

The child said nothing. Just reached for her hand.

Laelia gave him bread. Water. Then her scarf.

She did not speak again until she was halfway back to the estate.

And when she did, it was to herself.

"Rome or Carthage," she whispered, "they'll still let children die in the street."

That night, she sat on the rooftop with a lyre she barely knew how to play and looked out toward the east — where Rome's banners were said to be gathering.

The stars blinked slowly overhead.

She thought about leaving.

But to where?

A woman with no husband. No dowry. No protection but a name no one in Sicily respected anymore.

She would vanish like the bread she gave the boy.

She would be forgotten.

Unless…

Unless she did something they couldn't ignore.

The next morning, Laelia Scaura took her tablet, wrapped it in linen, and walked to the gatehouse of the city.

"I need to speak to the Roman quartermaster," she said.

The guard laughed.

"You selling figs?"

"No. Information."

"About?"

"Carthaginian supply routes through the southern ridge. Smuggling through my uncle's copper waggons. Not taxed. Not declared."

The guard's laughter stopped.

"How do you know this?"

"Because I read the manifests," she said. "Because I'm not a fool. And because I'm done pretending I live in a city with a future that isn't already burning."

He brought her inside.