I Rule Rome with a God-Tier AI-Chapter 226: The Butcher of Raetia
Gaius Maximus stood in the chambers of the military governor of Augusta Vindelicorum, a room he now occupied. The heavy curtains were drawn, but they could not block out the sounds from the city square below—the rhythmic tramp of his legionaries’ boots, the rumble of heavy wagons, and the rising, angry murmur of a crowd. On the table before him lay the scroll from Lucilla, its elegant script a command for calculated cruelty. Strip the granaries... if the people starve, it will be a lesson...
Each word was a brand on his soul. He had spent his life as a shield of Rome, a protector of its citizens. Now, he was being ordered to become their affliction, to visit a famine upon a peaceful city, to be the brutal hand of a tyrant. Outside the door, he could hear the smug cough of Fabius, Lucilla’s political officer, a vulture waiting to witness the carcass being picked clean. He knew his own centurions were watching him, too, their faith in his command hanging by a thread, their faces etched with confusion and distaste for this dishonorable occupation. He was a man standing on a knife’s edge, caught between the demands of his ruthless commander, the dictates of his own conscience, and the maddeningly subtle, secret orders of his Emperor.
He made his choice. Not with his heart, but with the cold, hard discipline that had been forged into his very bones. He had a mission. He would see it through.
He strode from the room, his face a mask of iron. The gentle, respectful conqueror of the previous week was gone, vanished as if he had never been. In his place was a cold, implacable instrument of military will. He summoned the city’s magistrates to the steps of the great basilica, where his men had already established a command post.
The magistrates, a collection of nervous, grey-haired men, scurried before him, their expressions a mixture of fear and hope. They had been treated with respect so far; perhaps this was a meeting to formalize the new, gentle order. Maximus shattered their hopes with his first words.
"The Proconsul’s generosity has ended," he announced, his voice flat and hard, devoid of any of the warmth he had shown them before. He did not look at them, but over their heads, at the anxious crowd gathering in the forum. "By her decree, all grain currently stored in the city’s granaries is hereby requisitioned for the war effort in the province of Noricum. My men will begin loading the wagons at dawn. Your full and immediate cooperation is expected."
A wave of disbelief and horror washed over the magistrates’ faces. "General, you cannot!" the chief magistrate, a portly man named Celsus, pleaded. "The city’s winter stores... our people will starve! There will be riots!"
"That is a matter for the Proconsul to consider," Maximus replied, his voice like chipping stone. "My duty is not to consider. It is to obey my orders." He turned away from them, a clear and brutal dismissal.
The grim work began at dawn. The great doors of the horrea were thrown open, and cohorts of the Tenth Legion, their faces grim, began the process of hauling out the thousands of heavy sacks of wheat, barley, and rye. The city watched in stunned silence at first, then the silence began to curdle into a low, angry hum. Shopkeepers closed their shutters. Families gathered in the streets, their faces pale with the terror of a coming famine.
By midday, the hum had grown into a roar. A crowd of several thousand citizens had gathered in the forum, blocking the path of the grain wagons. They were not armed, but their sheer numbers and their rising fury were a palpable force.
Fabius, Lucilla’s man, sidled up to Maximus. "This is unacceptable," he hissed. "They are defying the Proconsul’s will. You must disperse them. With force, if necessary."
This was the moment. The pivot upon which Alex’s entire secret strategy turned. Maximus looked at the angry crowd, then at the nervous faces of his own legionaries. He turned to the commander of the Norican cohorts, a brutish, ambitious chieftain named Boiorix who served as Lucilla’s loyal enforcer.
"Centurion Boiorix," Maximus commanded, his voice ringing with authority. "Your men will restore order. Clear the forum. Ensure the wagons can pass. Use whatever means are necessary."
Boiorix grinned, a flash of white teeth in his bearded face. This was an order he understood and relished. He barked commands in his guttural dialect, and his two thousand Norican soldiers advanced on the crowd, their shields held high, their spears leveled not for throwing, but for prodding.
What followed was not a disciplined police action; it was a brutal display of thuggery. The Noricans, who viewed the city-dwelling Romans with a mixture of contempt and jealousy, shoved into the crowd with their shield bosses, striking men and women alike with the wooden shafts of their spears. Cries of pain and anger replaced the shouts of protest. The crowd was being bullied, not dispersed.
Then, Maximus acted. "Legio X!" he roared. "Advance! Form a line!"
His own legionaries, who had been watching the Noricans’ brutality with growing disgust, surged forward. But they did not attack the crowd. On Maximus’s precise command, they formed a perfect, disciplined shield wall between the Noricans and the citizens. They became a human barricade, a wall of Roman steel protecting Roman citizens from the undisciplined aggression of Lucilla’s barbarian auxiliaries. They did not draw their swords. They simply stood, impassive, unmovable, absorbing the forward push of the Noricans and preventing them from reaching the main body of the crowd.
The message, delivered without a single word, was devastatingly clear. Maximus and the Emperor’s legion, the Legio X, were the protectors. Lucilla’s personal troops, the Noricans, were the foreign oppressors. In a single, brilliant tactical move, Maximus had painted a clear villain and a clear hero in the minds of every citizen in Augusta Vindelicorum. He was obeying Lucilla’s order to the letter, but he was twisting it, using it to drive a wedge between the people and their supposed new ruler.
Fabius watched, his jaw slack with confusion, the subtle brilliance of the move entirely lost on him. He only saw the grain wagons still stalled, the crowd still defiant, and the two military forces at a strange, tense impasse. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦
It couldn’t last. A young man in the crowd, his face bloody from a blow from a Norican spear-butt, threw a heavy paving stone. The rock soared in an arc and struck a Norican soldier squarely on the helmet with a sickening clang. The soldier staggered, enraged, his discipline snapping. With a guttural roar, he lunged forward, past the end of the Tenth Legion’s line, and ran his spear through the chest of the nearest civilian—a middle-aged merchant who had been shouting insults.
The man collapsed, a crimson flower blooming on his tunic. The first Roman blood had been spilled by another soldier of Rome.
A collective, horrified gasp went through the crowd, followed by a wave of pure, unrestrained fury. The protest exploded into a full-blown riot. The citizens, armed now with stones, broken pottery, and the rage of the wronged, surged forward.
Maximus watched as the city he was ordered to pacify descended into bloody chaos. He had followed his Emperor’s orders, and they had worked with a terrifying, unpredictable perfection. He was now, in the eyes of Lucilla’s faction, the "Butcher of Raetia," the incompetent commander who had lost control of a simple grain requisition. But in the eyes of the city’s people, he was something else entirely: a reluctant protector, a man of honor forced to preside over a tragedy, the only thing standing between them and the true savagery of their conquerors. He was trapped in the center of the storm, his name about to be cursed and praised for the very same act.
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