Chapter 122: The Queen’s Men
From the highest watchtower on the northern battlements of the Aurelian Walls, the chaos on the Via Flaminia was a distant, horrifying pantomime. Sabina stood on the stone platform, a small, still figure against the vastness of the sky, a spyglass pressed to her eye. The reports that had been arriving via frantic military couriers were confused, contradictory. All she knew for certain was that the Emperor was out there, caught in the heart of a storm he had created. She watched the distant clouds of dust, the glint of sun on steel, the horrifying sight of Roman legionaries fighting Roman legionaries, and felt a profound sense of powerlessness. Her control, so absolute within the city's walls, ended at the gates. She could manage a treasury, sway a guild, and outmaneuver a senator, but she could not command a battle.
Lucilla, however, felt no such powerlessness. She stood on a nearby section of the wall, not alone, but surrounded by the command staff of her new militia. The sounds of battle, the distant roar of men in combat, was not a source of anxiety for her; it was a call to action. She saw not a crisis, but an opportunity, a stage upon which a new kind of power could be demonstrated. Her 'Sons of the She-Wolf,' as the most ardent of her followers had begun to call themselves, were mustered along the northern perimeter. They were a force of nearly five thousand men, a hodgepodge of grizzled veterans, eager youths, and grim-faced artisans, armed from the city's armories. They were not a professional legion, but they were disciplined, they were motivated, and their loyalty to her was absolute.
While Sabina frantically tried to get clear intelligence from the field, trying to manage the city's internal defenses and prepare for the grim possibility of a siege, Lucilla acted. Her sharp, aristocratic eyes, honed by a lifetime of observing political and military displays, saw what the frantic couriers could not report. She saw the schism in the Plague Legion. She saw the smaller, more fanatical group break off. And she saw their new, terrifying trajectory. They were not fighting to win. They were charging the city.
They were charging her city.
A runner, dispatched by the nervous commander of the city gate, arrived breathless at her position. "Augusta! A force of the mutineers has broken through! They are charging the Flaminian Gate! My men are too few! We need Praetorian reinforcements!"
Lucilla looked towards the palace, towards the place where Sabina, the acting regent, was no doubt deliberating, weighing options, sending for reports. She knew that by the time the Praetorians were mustered and marched from their barracks, it would be too late. The fanatics would be at the walls.
She made a decision. She did not send a request for orders. She did not wait for permission from the Emperor or from his proxy. She turned to her own commander, a grizzled ex-centurion whose loyalty she had bought with a generous pension for his widowed sister.
"Commander," she said, her voice as calm and clear as a winter morning, "sound the alarm. Man the walls. You will deploy the archer companies to the battlements above the Flaminian Gate. The artillery crews will man the ballistae. Tell the men their mothers and children are behind these walls. They will not yield a single stone."
The commander, accustomed to her charitable works but not to her military command, hesitated for a fraction of a second. He looked into her eyes and saw not the soft, compassionate Mater Dolorosa, but the hard, unyielding gaze of her father, Marcus Aurelius. He saw an Empress.