I Rule Rome with a God-Tier AI-Chapter 184: The Lone Eagle

Dawn on the Danube was a thing of grey mists and cold, damp air. General Vitruvius Pollio stood on the palisade of the main Roman camp, a steaming cup of watered wine in his hand, watching as the river emerged from the morning gloom. He hated this new kind of war. It was a war of waiting, of reacting, a war fought from behind walls with strange, new contraptions. It lacked the brutal, straightforward honor of a pitched battle. Every day, reports trickled in from the new northern forts—reports of stunning, lopsided victories that felt more like industrial slaughters. They were winning, he knew, but the victory felt hollow, endless.

Suddenly, a sentry on the main watchtower pointed to the sky, his shout a sharp crack in the morning stillness. "Signum! In aere!" A sign in the air.

Pollio’s eyes snapped upwards, following the man’s pointing finger. A single, tiny speck was moving against the low-hanging clouds, flying from the north, from the heart of the enemy’s territory. It flew with a desperate, struggling urgency, battling against the prevailing wind. It was not a wild hawk or a migrating goose. It was a pigeon, a homer, flying with the unmistakable purpose of a creature returning to the only home it knew.

As it drew closer, the handlers from the legion’s small signal corps began to stir, their faces a mixture of excitement and disbelief. It was one of theirs. Specifically, it was one of the birds from the special stock of the scout, Valerius—a man who had vanished into the wilderness weeks ago, a man whom Pollio had privately written off as dead.

The bird, a small creature of dusty brown feathers, was clearly exhausted. It circled the camp once, its wings beating in a ragged, faltering rhythm, as if unsure it had the strength to land. Then, as if sensing the familiar scent of home, it plummeted towards the command tent, landing with a clumsy flutter on the outstretched, leather-gloved arm of the chief handler. The man let out a soft cry of triumph and relief. The bird had made it.

He carefully took the small, lightweight tube, fashioned from a hollowed-out reed, from the bird’s leg. He saw the faint, almost invisible imperial cipher Alex himself had ordered inscribed on it. This was not a standard patrol report. This was a message for the Emperor. Understanding the immense gravity of the small object in his hand, the handler rushed it not to the scribes, but directly to the General.

Pollio took the tube, his heart pounding with a sudden, fierce anticipation. He and his staff gathered around the campaign table, their morning routines forgotten. With fingers that were surprisingly nimble for a man of his size, Pollio carefully worked the wax plug out of the tube and tipped it over. A tiny, tightly rolled scrap of parchment, no bigger than his thumb, fell onto the map.

He unrolled it with the delicacy of a man handling a sacred relic. It was not a formal report. It was a crude, hastily drawn map, sketched with a piece of charcoal on what looked like a fragment of a supply manifest. But the landmarks—a distinctive bend in a tributary river, a trio of hills known to the scouts as the ’Three Sisters’—were clear and unmistakable to a veteran of the frontier like Pollio. And deep within the territory marked as the horde’s, a full week’s march from the Danube, was a single, stark, heavily drawn ’X.’

Below the X, a single word was scrawled in rough, blocky Latin, the handwriting of a man in a desperate hurry.

PRAEFECTUS.

The Commander.

Pollio stared at the map, the implication of the word crashing down on him with the force of a physical blow. This was it. The heart of the beast. The center of the web. The location of the enemy’s unseen general. Valerius had done it. The ghost had found his target.

"By all the gods," one of his tribunes whispered, his voice filled with awe.

Pollio’s mind, the mind of a cautious, traditionalist general, immediately saw the impossibility of the situation. The target was impossibly deep in enemy territory. But the intelligence was priceless, a chance to end this brutal, grinding war with a single, decisive blow. He knew, without question, that this information had to reach the Emperor at once.

"You," he barked at his fastest, most reliable cavalry officer. "Take your best horse. Take a spare. Ride to Vulcania as if the devil himself is on your heels. Do not stop for anything. Place this message in the Emperor’s hands, and his hands only."

The cavalryman saluted, took the precious map, and was gone in a cloud of dust.

Alex received the message in his own command center at Vulcania. He unrolled the small, grimy piece of parchment, his eyes tracing the crude map. He saw the ’X.’ He read the single, powerful word. His first reaction was not one of strategic triumph, but a wave of profound, quiet grief. He thought of Valerius. The quiet, unassuming scout. He pictured the man, alone in the heart of darkness, scribbling this last, desperate message, knowing it was likely his final act. He had sent a good man to his death, and the weight of that sacrifice settled on his shoulders like a leaden cloak.

But grief was a luxury he could not afford. He transitioned, his mind shifting from the man to the mission, his sorrow hardening into a cold, diamond-sharp focus. He summoned Celer. Together, they laid Valerius’s crude sketch over the far more detailed, topographically accurate maps they had at Vulcania. Using Lyra’s precise analytical tools, they pinpointed the exact location: a secluded, heavily forested valley, shielded by a ring of low, impassable hills—a perfect, natural fortress.

Then, Alex turned to his true, secret advisor. He presented Lyra with the new, terrifying data he had gleaned from his encounter with Valerius’s ghost.

"Lyra," he began, his voice low. "New intelligence. The Conductor is not just a commander; it is a factory. It has the ability to actively ’convert’ new recruits, wiping their minds and adding them to the horde. Factor this into our long-term strategic projections. If the Conductor can replace its losses from the local tribal populations, what is the new forecast for the horde’s combat strength over time?"

The AI processed the new variable, its calculations running silently. The conclusion, when it appeared on the screen, was a death sentence for their current strategy.

Recalculating long-term viability of attrition warfare. Based on estimated tribal populations in the greater Danubian and Dacian regions, the horde possesses a potential reinforcement pool of over 200,000 individuals. At its currently observed rate of conversion, the horde will be capable of replacing its combat losses from your defensive operations within three months.

The next sentence was the one that sealed their fate.

Projection: Following this three-month period of equilibrium, the horde will achieve a net increase in its total strength, despite your ongoing attrition efforts. Your current strategy is not sustainable. It is, over the long term, a losing strategy.

Alex stared at the words. The truth was absolute and unforgiving. They were not bleeding the horde dry. They were merely treading water, and the tide was about to rise again, higher and stronger than before. Every day he waited, every thousand warriors Pullo’s men slaughtered at the forts, the enemy was secretly growing stronger, replenishing its ranks from the shadows.

He understood now. Valerius had not just given him a target. He had given him his one, and only, chance to win. He could not wait. He could not grind them down with a war of numbers, because their numbers were, for all intents and purposes, infinite.

He had to launch a direct, surgical strike. He had to kill the Conductor. A decapitation strike. It was the only way.

He stood before the great map of the north, Valerius’s crude ’X’ now a burning, singular target in a vast sea of red. He had his objective. He had his ticking clock. And he knew, with a certainty that was both terrifying and liberating, that the entire fate of the war, and of Rome itself, now rested on a single, desperate, impossible gamble.

He summoned his entire war council—Pullo, Celer, Sabina, and Perennis. They filed into the room, their faces etched with the strain of the ongoing war. He waited for them to assemble, then unrolled Valerius’s map and placed it in the center of the table for all to see.

"Valerius has given us the heart of the beast," he announced, his voice a low, grim pronouncement that silenced all other conversation. "Now, we will plan how to cut it out."