The army was a beast of impossible scale. From his vantage point on horseback at the head of the column, Alex could look back and see it snaking for miles across the Pannonian plains, a river of steel, leather, and humanity. It was a moving city of over thirty thousand souls: three full legions of soldiers, thousands of auxiliary troops, engineers, cartwrights, armorers, servants, and a baggage train of groaning carts and stubborn mules that seemed to stretch to the horizon. The eagle standards of the legions, held high, were points of gold glinting in the pale sun. It was the might of Rome made manifest, and it was his to command.
The awe of the first day quickly curdled into frustration. The beast was powerful, but it was agonizingly slow. The single, massive column moved at the pace of its slowest oxcart. The single road they followed became a churned ribbon of mud, congested and chaotic. At every river crossing, hours were lost as thousands of men and animals funneled through a single ford or a hastily constructed pontoon bridge.
The camps they made each night were even worse. They were sprawling, disorganized affairs where sanitation was an afterthought. The stench of thousands of men and animals, combined with the smoke of countless campfires, was overpowering. Within three days, the first reports began to trickle in to the command tent: dozens of men struck down with fever, vomiting, and dysentery. It was the quiet, inglorious killer of armies, a far greater threat on this long march than any barbarian tribe.
On the fourth evening, Alex sat in his command carriage, a surprisingly comfortable vehicle fitted with a small desk and padded benches. He had the laptop open, its screen a stark blue rectangle against the flickering lamplight. The battery icon was a worrying sight: 20%. He was rationing its use with the miserly desperation of a man counting his last coins.
"Lyra, run the numbers," he said, his voice low. "This is a disaster. We're crawling."
"Analysis complete, Alex," Lyra's voice replied from his earbud. "Your assessment is correct. At our current rate of sixteen miles per day, the journey to Rome will take approximately sixty-three days. This slow pace is creating a logistical bottleneck and a severe health crisis. Based on current infection rates and historical data on camp-borne illnesses, I am projecting a fifteen to twenty percent loss of combat effectiveness due to sickness by the time we reach Italy."
Alex stared into the darkness outside. A twenty percent loss. Thousands of men, veterans of a brutal war, would be lost not to a sword but to contaminated water. "We're not even fighting anyone! What's the solution? We can't just march faster; the supply train can't keep up."
"That is a false premise," Lyra stated. "The problem is not the speed of the supply train; it is the inefficiency of the entire logistical model. Roman marching order is traditionally focused on tactical security—protecting the baggage train in the center of the column. It is not designed for logistical efficiency. By implementing modern organizational principles, we can improve our average speed by over forty percent and, more critically, reduce the incidence of sickness by over ninety percent."
The numbers were staggering. A forty percent increase in speed was revolutionary. A ninety percent reduction in sickness was a miracle.
"Show me," Alex said.
The laptop screen filled with diagrams, flowcharts, and timetables. It was beautiful, a project manager's dream. Armed with Lyra's plan, he summoned General Gaius Maximus to his carriage.
The old general arrived, his face etched with the weariness of the march. He looked at the diagrams on Alex's desk with a deep, ingrained skepticism.
"Caesar," he said, his voice a low rumble. "More of your… meditations?"
"More of my father's, General," Alex corrected smoothly. "I found a series of his tactical scrolls I had not previously studied. They outline radical principles for force movement. I believe he developed them in his final days but never had the chance to implement them. I call it the 'Aurelian Marching Order.'"
He proceeded to lay out the plan, framing each 21st-century concept in a way a Roman general could understand.
"First," Alex said, pointing to a diagram, "we break the column. Instead of one single beast, we become three faster, leaner wolves. Three self-sufficient columns of one legion each, marching two hours apart. We reduce congestion on the roads, at the river fords, at every chokepoint. We move faster because we are smaller."
"We also become weaker, Caesar," Maximus countered immediately. "A single column invites ambush. This is a fundamental tenet of our doctrine."
"The columns will never be more than four miles apart," Alex replied, quoting Lyra's simulation data. "Close enough to reinforce each other within the hour. But an enemy would have to be suicidal to attack a full, healthy legion on the march. Which brings me to the second point: health."
He slid another diagram forward. "Sanitation. This is no longer optional. At every nightly camp, engineers will oversee the digging of deep latrine trenches, a hundred paces downstream from the water source, on the opposite side of the camp from the kitchens. All waste, human and animal, is to be buried daily. We will no longer drink from the same water we defecate in. We will frame it as a sacred purification of the camp, a daily ritual to appease Salus, the goddess of health."
Maximus grunted. It was odd, but it had the flavor of Roman piety he could respect.
"Finally," Alex said, "we change our supply strategy. We are moving through friendly, pacified territory. The baggage train is our anchor. We lighten its load." He explained the concept of sending riders ahead—Perennis's men, a perfect use for his network—to pre-purchase supplies from towns and villages along their route and establish small, pre-planned supply caches. "We march to our supplies, instead of dragging them all with us. The men carry less, the mules carry less, we all move faster."
The old general was silent for a long time, his brow furrowed in deep thought. Every instinct, every lesson from four decades of military service, screamed that this was wrong. It was too complex, too radical. It broke with four hundred years of tradition.
"Caesar," he said finally, his voice heavy with doubt. "This is a tremendous gamble. If it fails, we could be stranded deep in Illyria with a divided, starving army."
"Then we will test it," Alex said confidently. "Give me five days, General. Five days to prove the wisdom of my father's final strategy. If our pace does not improve, if the health of the men does not improve, we will return to the old ways. But if it works…"
Maximus looked at the young man before him. The boy he had once dismissed as a liability was speaking with the authority and terrifying logic he was coming to expect. The plan was audacious, but the emperor's confidence was infectious.
"Five days," the general agreed with a reluctant nod. "The gods favor the bold. Let us see if they favor you, Caesar."
The results were not just successful; they were miraculous. On the first day of the new marching order, the lead legion covered twenty-four miles, a pace unheard of for such a large force. The river crossing that should have taken half a day was completed in two hours. The camps were more orderly, cleaner, and quieter.
By the fifth day, the daily sick call, which had once seen dozens of men groaning in the medical tents, reported only three new cases of mild fever across all three legions. The soldiers were fresher, their steps lighter, their morale soaring. They were covering ground like never before, and they felt stronger for it.
Maximus was a convert. His skepticism transformed into something bordering on reverence. He looked at Alex not just as his emperor, but as a military genius, a true heir to the great tacticians of Roman history. His loyalty, already won, was now forged in the steel of undeniable success.
They were making incredible time, weeks ahead of the most optimistic schedule. One evening, as Alex and Maximus were reviewing the maps for the next day's march, a rider was announced. He was caked in dust from head to toe, his horse lathered in sweat. He was one of Perennis's agents, dispatched from Rome over a week ago. He carried a small, coded scroll.
Perennis was summoned, and the three of them decoded the message in the privacy of Alex's carriage, the Prefect's hands moving with a nervous efficiency.
"What is it?" Alex asked.
Perennis looked up from the decoded text, his face pale. "Caesar, your speed has shocked them. The Senate… they had planned for a much later arrival. They did not expect you before the end of summer." He paused, swallowing hard. "In response to your 'great victory' on the Danube and your swift, orderly return, they have voted to grant you a full Triumph upon your arrival in Rome."
Alex frowned. "A Triumph? But I didn't conquer anything. I just negotiated a peace my father had already won."
"Precisely, Caesar," Perennis said, his eyes dark with the understanding of a seasoned politician. "That is why it is not an honor. It is a trap. They want to force you into the role of a vainglorious conqueror. They want to surround you with the manufactured chaos of a public festival, to test you, to separate you from your legions and the safety of the camp. They are setting the stage in Rome. The enemy has just made its first, smiling move."