Chapter 6: The Empty Praetorium

The ship docked with a subtle jolt at Salona's main pier. The air that greeted Ulixes felt heavy and damp, a sharp blend of salt, rotting fish, and decaying wet wood. This was not the grand air of Rome nor the dry air of Capua. This was the breath of a forgotten province.

As he stepped down the gangplank, wearing perfectly polished officer's armor with the crimson cloak of a Legatus draped over his shoulder, a group of local officials immediately welcomed him. They bowed with profound respect, their movements coordinated and practiced.

"Welcome to Illyricum, Legatus Acilius," an older man, their leader, said, his smile perfectly plastered on. "Your presence brings honor to our humble province."

Ulixes merely nodded, His eyes, devoid of emotion, scanned them. His [Basic Psychology] knowledge read what they weren't saying. Their respect was stiff. Their smiles didn't reach their wary eyes. They didn't see a savior; they saw a new, powerful overseer, to be carefully placated and managed.

"Show me my residence," Ulixes said, his voice calm, cutting through their prepared pleasantries.

The Praetorium stood at the city's highest point, a sturdy stone building. From the outside, it looked grand, but as Ulixes stepped inside, he felt an emptiness. The atrium was vast and clean, but the furnishings were sparse and old. The walls were bare, lacking the paintings or tapestries that should have adorned a Legatus's residence. Funds for the upkeep of this place had clearly flowed into other pockets.

Amidst the emptiness, two female figures stepped forward from the shadows. They moved silently, every motion filled with purpose and precision. Mira and Kore.

They bowed with genuine respect, not stiff formality. "Everything has been prepared to the best of our ability, Dominus," Mira said, her voice steady.

Ulixes looked at them, and an echo of a brutal past flashed through his mind. The plains after the last battle. The smell of blood and death. Amidst the chaos of captured slaves about to be crucified, he had found the Egyptian. "Take them," he had ordered then. "Mira and Kore. Get them out of here before the other soldiers see them. Erase their records." An investment in loyalty, the only currency he could fully trust.

"Good work," Ulixes said. "I want a full report on the supplies throughout this residence. Every sack of grain, every jug of wine, every copper coin recorded."

As Mira and Kore moved to carry out his order, another man entered the atrium. He was tall and sturdy, his armor worn but well-maintained, and a scar above his eyebrow gave him a harsh gaze. He stopped before Ulixes and executed a sharp, familiar military salute, his fist hitting his chest.

"Legatus," said Centurion Primus Pilus Flamma, his voice hoarse and filled with battle-forged respect. "The remainder of Cohors Prima has set up a temporary camp on the outer perimeter. We await your orders."

Flamma. His right hand. The man who had seen him butcher a thousand rebels in the Sila Forest. His loyalty was a rock in this sea of uncertainty.

"What is the condition of the troops we inherited, Flamma?" Ulixes asked, getting straight to the point.

Flamma's harsh face hardened a little more. "I see soldiers who can march straight to the end of the world, Legatus. They can build a fort in their sleep. Their discipline on paper is perfect." He paused for a moment, his experienced eyes meeting Ulixes's with deep understanding. "But I wouldn't take them into these woods against more than a flock of rabbits."

Ulixes nodded slowly. His diagnosis was the same. He hadn't inherited a lazy army. He had inherited a beautiful but fragile machine, designed for a different kind of war.

"Take me to see them," Ulixes said.

He and Flamma walked to the garrison's main training ground. The sight before him confirmed Flamma's report. Hundreds of soldiers marched with perfect precision. Their spears were raised in unison. Their shields formed a tight wall. They were a Roman legion from within a papyrus scroll. Beautiful. Orderly. And utterly useless here.

Ulixes turned to face Flamma, his eyes on the dense, dark Illyrian forest in the distance. "Tomorrow at dawn, gather their Centurions. I want to see this beautiful machine up close. And I want to see where its cracks are."

Dawn broke over the vast training ground, its pale light illuminating a sea of bronze helmets. Six thousand soldiers stood in tense silence, their formations perfect, their lines straight as if drawn with a ruler. The Centurions of the nine inherited cohorts stood before their troops, their faces rigid, awaiting orders from their unexpected new commander.

Ulixes walked slowly along the front of the ranks, accompanied by Flamma. He didn't stop to inspect armor or reprimand a soldier. He simply walked, his sharp eyes sweeping over all of them, his silence a heavier burden than any commander's shout. He stopped in the middle of the field.

"Flamma," Ulixes said, his voice calm yet clearly audible in the morning air. "Bring Cohors Prima forward."

A faint murmur spread through the ranks. The order was unusual. Flamma saluted sharply and turned, barking a series of commands. From the large legionary formation, one cohort, about six hundred men, stepped forward with distinct precision. These were veterans of the Slave War. Their faces were harder, their eyes more alert, and the way they held their shields showed a familiarity with real violence.

"I want to see the 'Wolf and Hedgehog' maneuver," Ulixes ordered.

Flamma nodded. He shouted commands that sounded foreign to the ears of the inherited soldiers. Instantly, Cohors Prima broke into smaller units. A core unit of thirty men immediately formed a tight circle, their shields overlapping, the tips of their gladii bristling outwards like hedgehog quills. Inside that defensive circle, a group of archers drew their bows.

Then, at a hand signal from an Optio, the circle began to move as one, creeping forward with coordinated small steps. As they moved, the archers inside released volleys of blunt arrows towards straw targets in the distance, their hiss cutting through the air.

The soldiers from the other nine cohorts stared with slightly open mouths. They had never seen such tactics. A fortress that could move and attack from range simultaneously. It was a contradiction of everything they had learned about static, solid formations.

Ulixes saw the confusion on the local Centurions' faces. He saw admiration mixed with envy in the eyes of their soldiers. He had shown them the standard he expected. A standard he knew they could not yet reach.

After a moment, Flamma barked another command. Cohors Prima quickly broke their strange formation and returned to perfect straight lines, as if nothing had happened. Silence.

Ulixes turned, his cold gaze now sweeping over the other nine cohorts. "Now it's your turn," he said, his voice calm but cutting through the cold morning air. "Show me what a Roman legion can do."

Ulixes's gaze, flat and piercing, swept over the remaining nine cohorts. Their Centurions stood a little straighter, trying to hide their nervousness after witnessing Cohors Prima's demonstration. Their soldiers stared with a mixture of admiration and fear.

Ulixes didn't ask them to replicate the complex maneuver. He knew they would fail. He wanted to test something more fundamental: their ability to think. He raised his hand and pointed to a small rocky hill at the far end of the training ground.

"Your task is simple," he said, his voice calm yet echoing across the field. "Take that hill. Assume there are fifty javelin-armed brigands defending the summit. You have until the shadow from that pole touches the large stone over there."

He gave no further instructions on how to take it. He only gave a goal. He crossed his arms and waited, observing with Flamma.

An awkward silence fell over the nine cohorts for a moment. The Centurions exchanged glances, then began shouting orders. And they did the only thing they knew how to do. They formed one beautiful, massive formation, a giant block of thousands of soldiers, and began marching straight towards the base of the hill.

Ulixes watched in silence. He saw their once-tight formation begin to break as they reached the uneven ground. Soldiers stumbled over loose rocks, their once-aligned shields now awkwardly clashing. Their straight lines turned into a long, vulnerable snake as they began to ascend the steep slope.

He saw their flanks completely exposed, easy targets for the imaginary ambushers Ulixes now saw so clearly in his mind. He saw how they focused only on the summit, blind to everything around them.

They reached the top, gasping for breath, their formation now completely disordered, soldiers pushing and scrambling for footing. One of the Centurions, his face flushed with pride at having executed the order, turned and shouted towards Ulixes. "The hill is secured, Legatus!"

Ulixes slowly walked up the hill, his steps steady and unhurried. He stopped before the gathered Centurions.

"You attacked straight on, exposing your entire force to the enemy from the start," he said, his voice flat, devoid of emotion. "You sent no scouts to check the sides of the hill. Your flanks were completely open."

He pointed towards a cluster of large rocks beside the slope. "If there were fifty barbarians with javelins behind those rocks," he said, "half of you would be dead before you could properly raise your shields."

The Centurions' faces changed from proud to pale. They had followed orders. But they had failed the real test. They didn't think like soldiers. They only thought like pawns.

Ulixes descended the rocky hill, leaving the Centurions and their soldiers in shamed silence. He said nothing more. The day's lesson had been delivered, not with shouts, but with a naked demonstration of failure. He walked back to his command tent, Flamma following him in silence, their heavy footsteps the only sound between them.

Inside the privacy of the tent, Ulixes stared at a large map of Illyricum spread across the table. The lines depicting dense forests and unforgiving mountains looked like the veins of a sleeping monster.

"They are beautiful swords, Flamma," Ulixes finally said, his voice quiet, without turning from the map. "Sharp, polished, but they will shatter when they hit real rock."

"They will die honorably, Legatus," Flamma replied, his voice hoarse with long-suppressed frustration. "Marching straight to their deaths without a single question. But they will still die."

Ulixes finally turned, looking into the eyes of his veteran soldier. "Honor does not win wars, Flamma. Victory writes the story of honor."

He turned back to the map, his finger tracing the wild borderlines. "We cannot change them from the top. Orders will only create more empty obedience. We must inject our poison from within."

Flamma frowned, not understanding.

"Starting tomorrow," Ulixes said, his voice was now flat, each word carrying a weight that permitted no argument. "I will break Cohors Prima."

Flamma's eyes widened, his mouth slightly agape. "Legatus? That will shatter their morale. They are a brotherhood forged in war."

"Their morale is useless if the entire legion shatters around them," Ulixes countered. "They will no longer be one cohort. They will be teachers. They will be the standard. Every Centuria of theirs will be split into ten. One veteran will be placed in every contubernium (8-man tent unit) of the other nine cohorts."

He looked at Flamma, letting the weight of the radical order sink in. "Every soldier in this legion will eat, sleep, and train alongside a veteran who has been through hell with me. They will learn by example, or they will be removed. We will not build one elite cohort. We will transform this entire legion into the image of Cohors Prima."

Flamma was silent for a long time, processing the audacity and brutality of the plan. He saw the logic. A cold, efficient, and cruel logic. He saw the only way to survive in this cursed land. He straightened his back, the doubt in his eyes vanishing, replaced by absolute loyalty.

"I will carry it out, Legatus."

Ulixes nodded, his mind already moving to the next step. He had decided to perform a painful surgical operation on the body of his own army. He knew there would be resistance, there would be friction, and there would be blood. But from that fire, a new and far deadlier weapon would be forged.