Imperator: Resurrection of an Empire

The march to the capital was a storm given form.

Nearly seventy thousand legionaries, steel-bound and iron-disciplined, advanced across the breadth of Francia like a tide no wall could hold back.

Their standards rose above the roads like crimson suns, each glimmering eagle a promise of the empire's reach.

Behind them trailed a thousand wagons laden with timber, stone, and supplies, along with engineers, siege masters, and smiths who might shape a fortress from bare earth if commanded.

The auxilia followed too — Germanian horse with their fur-lined cloaks, spearmen from Greecia, slingers from the rocky coasts Achae.

They were not legion, but they carried Rome's shadow, and their presence swelled the army's count to a number the Francian capital had never seen arrayed before it.

When the host crested the last ridgeline and the city came into view, a murmur rippled through the ranks.

There it stood: the jewel of Francia, white walls girding it like a crown, towers thrusting skyward in defiance.

The royal banner still fluttered above the citadel, though smoke from burned fields drifted around it like a funeral shroud.

The gates glinted with iron, and from the battlements men could already be seen scurrying — soldiers, priests, peasants handed spears.

The last remnant of the kingdom, bracing for the storm.

Julius reined in his horse upon a low rise, Sabellus and the other tribunes gathering around.

His gaze swept the walls, his jaw set.

"So this is where they make their stand. Good. Better to cut the head clean than chase the tail for years."

Sabellus, ever grim, traced the wall's length with his eyes.

"They are desperate. A cornered beast fights hardest."

"Then we break them quickly," Julius answered. "Not with fire and slaughter, but with weight. The city must see there is no hope."

By noon the work began.

The legions peeled off in ordered cohorts, flowing like rivers to encircle the capital. Earthworks rose with alarming speed — ditches dug, stakes driven, watchtowers hammered together from green wood.

Siege camps sprouted on every side, each flying scarlet banners that the defenders could see from the walls.

The thunder of axes carried across the fields as forests nearby were stripped bare for engines of war.

Timber was hauled in great bundles, lashed to oxen.

Engineers shouted orders, driving men to shape beams into the ribs of catapults and the arms of rams.

By the second day, the ground trembled with the tread of construction.

Palisades encircled the camps, trenches bristled with sharpened stakes, and towers began to rise — skeletal at first, then sheathed in rawhide against fire.

catapults were assembled in ranks like crouching beasts.

The Francians watched from their walls, bells tolling day and night.

Smoke curled from the city forges where smiths worked without pause to mend armor and fashion spearheads.

Women carried stones to the battlements, children filled buckets with sand to smother fires, priests paraded relics along the walls, chanting prayers to Saint Joan.

And above it all, the commoners-turned-soldiers, Joan's last faithful, clutched their weapons with white knuckles.

They had sworn to resist until the bitter end, though their armor was patchwork and their discipline thin.

From the battlements, jeers drifted down.

Crude insults, shouts of defiance, even arrows loosed prematurely, falling short into the mud.

Yet the legions did not answer.

Not a single volley rose from the Roman lines.

Discipline held firm.

The silence was heavier than arrows.

At dusk on the third day, Julius walked the perimeter of the siege himself.

Wherever he passed, soldiers straightened, voices lowered, work quickened.

In one camp, a centurion approached, saluting with fist to chest.

"Emperor, the men ask when we strike. They are eager for vengeance."

Julius studied the looming walls in the fading light.

"Tell them vengeance is not won by haste. First we must make them lose the mental battle as they envision their defeat against us time and again, filled with worry about when we will attack, how brutal we will be, and more than that whether their stores will hold out long enough if we choose to delay for to long."

The centurion bowed low and departed, though his men looked restless.

They had heard of Joan's fanatics, of poisoned wells and murdered sentries.

They wanted blood.

But Julius's word was harder than iron, and none dared defy it.

Inside the city, the king raged in his halls.

Witnesses later swore he struck his own counselors, demanding to know who had betrayed him, who had broken the Concordat first.

His nobles quarreled in whispers, each fearing the other's treachery.

Only the remnants of Joan's host gave the people something like unity.

They patrolled the streets singing hymns, their faces gaunt but their voices fierce.

Mothers clutched their children tighter when they passed, as though the saints' blessing alone could shield them from Roman steel.

But food was already scarce.

The fields beyond the walls lay burned, the roads cut.

Every gate was watched.

The people knew famine's shadow had entered the city alongside them.

On the seventh day, the full might of the encirclement was visible.

Nearly seventy thousand torches burned in the night, a ring of fire around the capital.

The walls glowed with their reflection, as though the city itself were already aflame.

From his command tent, Julius stood watching.

"The time has come, the last of our forces have arrived, tommorow we begin."

Sabellus nodded, though his expression was dour for he knew this would be the most costly of all the battles Romanus had faced up until now.

"Pity not the dead, Saebellus pity the living for it is they will will suffer the most."

~

The defenders did look from atop their high walls and towering buildings.

They saw rams capped with iron heads, wheels greased and ready.

They saw catapults mounted with stone heavy enough to crush a tower's crown.

They saw towers rising higher each day, like giants being birthed from Romanus hands.

Whispers spread in the streets.

Any who spoke even a hint about surrender was slain on the spot, the city would resist to the last man, woman, and child.

The king swore they would never kneel, but the people's eyes betrayed doubt, kneeling assumed they were alive to do so after all.

And still, the drums of the siege beat on.

Not yet assault, not yet slaughter — but the slow tightening of a noose.

The Wolf of Romanus had arrived, and its jaws were closing.

This was only the beginning.

The Francian capital had withstood sieges before.

But never against seventy thousand legionaries.

Never against an emperor who commanded not merely armies, but the patience of empire itself.

The camps grew.

The engines groaned.

The prayers within the walls grew louder, almost frantic.

All knew the final reckoning had come.

And so the first week of the siege closed, with Romanus encamped at the gates and the defenders braced for the storm that must inevitably break, before like a tidal wave crashing upon their stalwart walls.