I Rule Rome with a God-Tier AI-Chapter 162: The First Crossbows

The watchtower stood like a lone, stone tooth on a low hill overlooking the grey, swirling waters of the Danube. From its heights, a man could see for miles into the misty, forested lands of the Quadi on the far bank. For weeks, this had been a quiet post. Now, it was the tip of the spear.

Titus Pullo, Centurion of the Legio V Devota, stood on the tower's windy platform, the new weapon resting in his hands. It was a marvel of wood, steel, and ruthless ingenuity. Heavier than a standard manuballista, yet so perfectly balanced it felt like an extension of his own arm. He worked the steel lever on its side, his muscles bunching. With a smooth, satisfying series of clicks, the mechanism drew back the heavy bowstring, picked up a new bolt from the magazine on top, and settled it into the firing groove. The entire motion took less than three seconds. He sighted down the length of the weapon, aiming at a distant tree stump. It felt like holding captured lightning.

His men, a small detachment of fifty of his best legionaries, were scattered around the base of the tower, practicing with their own repeating crossbows. Their initial awe had given way to a deadly proficiency. They saw these weapons not as mere tools of war, but as divine gifts, personally delivered from the God-Emperor's own forge. Their faith made them tireless. They practiced until their shoulders ached and their hands were calloused, determined to be worthy of the holy instruments they had been given.

A rider arrived from the main camp downriver, carrying a dispatch sealed not with Alex's personal sigil, but with the mark of the Danube legion's command. It was a standard military order, a welcome return to a world Pullo understood. The new acting commander of the frontier, a grizzled old traditionalist named Vitruvius Pollio who had taken over while Maximus was in the east, had given him his first formal task of the new war.

"You will conduct a reconnaissance in force across the river," the order read. "Probe the enemy vanguard. Assess their numbers, their disposition, and their leadership structure. If possible, capture a prisoner for interrogation. Avoid protracted engagement."

Pullo felt a surge of grim satisfaction. He had received his own, secret instructions from Alex, passed through Maximus before the general had departed. They had been simple and clear: The time for the hunt is over. The time for the war has begun. You are a soldier of Rome first. Obey the orders of the Danube command. Be our eyes, and be our fire. But be disciplined.

Pullo understood. His zeal had been given a new, sharper focus. He was still a holy warrior, but he now knew his role was as a disciplined soldier in a larger, mortal army. He gathered his men. They would cross the river that night.

They used small, flat-bottomed boats, paddling across the wide, dark river under the thin light of a new moon. They moved with a stealth and silence that would have been alien to a standard Roman legion, a skill they had learned during their long, grim hunt in the mountains of Noricum. They were no longer just heavy infantry; they were becoming something else.

On the far bank, they melted into the dense forest. The air was cold, damp, and unnervingly quiet. There were no animal sounds, no birdsong. It was as if the entire forest was holding its breath. After an hour of moving through the trees, they found what they were looking for: the tracks of a large scouting party. And they were fresh.

Pullo led his men to a small, rocky outcropping that offered a good defensive position overlooking a narrow game trail. He set his men up in two ranks, a line of kneeling legionaries in the front, and a line of standing ones behind them. Fifty repeating crossbows were aimed down the trail, fifty steel bolts waiting silently in their grooves.

They did not have to wait long. A group of warriors emerged from the trees, moving down the trail with a coordinated, disciplined silence that immediately set every one of Pullo's nerves on edge. This was not a disorganized rabble of barbarians. This was a trained military unit. There were twenty of them, tall, gaunt men with grim faces and dead eyes. They were armed with crude, heavy-headed axes and long, iron-tipped spears, but they wore strange, dark leather armor that seemed to absorb the faint moonlight. And on the breastplate of each warrior was the faint, painted outline of a spiral with a broken triangle at its center.

Pullo recognized the symbol from the reports of the Noricum massacre. This was the enemy.

The enemy patrol stopped, their leader sniffing the air like an animal. He had sensed them. He let out a low, guttural cry, a sound that was not quite human, and the entire squad charged, their axes raised. They moved with a terrifying, silent ferocity, their feet making almost no sound on the damp earth.

Pullo let them get closer, let their overconfidence build. He waited until he could see the vacant, soulless expressions in their eyes. Then, he gave the order he had been dreaming of giving. "Ignis!" he roared. Fire.

The sound that followed was not the single, heavy thump of fifty individual crossbows firing. It was a new sound of warfare, a sharp, rolling thunder, a continuous, deafening clatter as fifty men worked their levers and pulled their triggers as fast as their arms could move. A single Roman legionary could now unleash a storm of bolts that would have previously required five archers or a full-sized ballista.

The effect was not a battle; it was an annihilation. The front rank of the charging warriors was shredded in the first two seconds, their bodies riddled with black-fletched bolts. They fell without a sound. The second rank, seeing their comrades disintegrate before them, did not falter. They charged on, only to be met by the second, third, and fourth volley from the Romans. The air was thick with the hiss of flying steel. The silent warriors were cut down in a merciless, overwhelming hail of bolts before they could get within thirty paces of the Roman position.

The entire engagement lasted less than a minute. The Devota had annihilated the enemy patrol without taking a single scratch. The new technology was not just an advantage; it was an overwhelming, slaughterous victory.

A grim silence descended, broken only by the panting of Pullo's men, their hearts hammering with adrenaline. He led them down from the rocks to inspect the aftermath. The scene was one of utter carnage. He knelt, examining the bodies. They were men from a dozen different tribes, he could tell by their tattoos and hairstyles. Quadi, Marcomanni, Iazyges—all ancient enemies, now fighting and dying together.

One of the warriors was not yet dead. A bolt had pierced his leg, shattering the bone, and another was lodged deep in his shoulder. He lay on his back, gasping, his life bleeding out onto the forest floor. Pullo knelt beside him, his gladius in hand, prepared to grant him a quick death.

The man was delirious with pain, but he did not cry out in his native Germanic or Sarmatian tongue. He babbled, his lips forming strange, clicking, glottal sounds that were like no human language Pullo had ever heard. It was the sound of insects, of rocks grinding together. It was utterly alien.

Then, the man's eyes focused, locking on Pullo. The babbling stopped. A moment of chilling, lucid sanity seemed to return to him. He looked at the Roman centurion, and his lips parted. He spoke a single, final word. A word in perfect, unaccented, classical Latin.

"Silence."

The man's eyes went vacant, and with a final, shuddering gasp, he died.

Pullo stood over the dead warrior, the Latin word echoing in the sudden, profound stillness of the forest. He finally understood, on a visceral, soul-deep level, what the Emperor had tried to explain. This was not a simple barbarian horde driven by hunger or greed. This was something else. This was an army of puppets, of hollowed-out men, their minds overwritten by the cold, alien influence of the Silenti.

He knew his report to Maximus and the Emperor would be a strange one. He would detail the overwhelming, undeniable success of the new weapons. But he would end it with the prisoner's final, terrifying word. The war for Rome's survival had truly begun, and they were not fighting men. They were fighting monsters who wore human faces.