Not a single eye among the assembled workers was looking at the rising sun.
Their collective gaze was transfixed upon the steel spatha resting in the hands of Decimus, the newly appointed Master Blacksmith.
"Look at the edge," one of the hauling laborers murmured. "I have seen the blades wielded by the Praetorian Guard themselves when the Emperor visited the province, and even their weapons looked like rusted farming scythes compared to this..."
Another laborer, a younger freedman with soot smeared across his brow, stepped forward. "This thing alone can make us all rich beyond our wildest comprehension! Every legionary from Britannia to Syria will trade a year’s wages for a blade that will not shatter against a barbarian axe!"
The men immediately began to murmur in fervent agreement. They turned their gaze toward Lucius, who stood a few paces away with his arms crossed.
"Praise be to the young master!"
The kiln operator cried out, falling to his knees once more in the dirt.
"He possesses the mind of an oracle and the hands of a deity! We must honor this momentous occasion properly.
I say we pool our silver today and purchase a great bull to sacrifice to Vulcan, for the fires of this forge are clearly blessed by his divine breath!"
"Vulcan?" scoffed Valerius, the veteran who had been hired as the estate’s Security Chief, stepping into the light of the furnace. "This is not a plowshare or a horseshoe, you fool. We must sacrifice a black ram to Mars Invictus, the patron of war. He has guided the young master’s mind to forge the ultimate tool of conquest."
Lucius listened to the men bicker over which mythological deity deserved the credit for his 21st-century metallurgical engineering.
He allowed a smirk to touch his lips. He did not care to whom they prayed, so long as their religious fervor translated into loyalty.
The validation of his genius was pleasant, but it was merely a byproduct of his overarching socio-economic strategy.
However, as the men continued to celebrate their guaranteed ascension to unimaginable wealth, a voice cut through the dawn air, chilling the feverish mood.
"We cannot sell this to the legion..."
The men turned to look at Decimus. The Master Blacksmith gripped the hilt of the steel spatha.
Lucius narrowed his eyes. "Explain yourself, Decimus. You hold in your hands a monopoly over the Roman military supply chain. Why would we not sell it to the very men who possess the imperial treasury?"
"Because I value my life, and I value yours," Decimus stated grimly, stepping closer to Lucius and lowering his voice. "You believe that if we walk into the encampment of the Third Legion and hand this blade to the quartermasters, they will shower us with silver and honor our contracts."
Decimus shook his head slowly. "They will do no such thing. The Severan dynasty is bleeding the empire dry to pay the armies. The Legates are utterly ruthless. If you show this weapon to Tribune Gaius, he will see a military asset that the Roman Empire cannot afford to leave in private hands."
The Master Blacksmith gestured toward the lands surrounding the estate. "In this state? Without an army of your own to defend these borders? The legion will seize this land in the name of the Emperor. They will confiscate the blast furnace. They will strip you of your equestrian title, brand us all as imperial slaves, and chain us to these anvils to work all day and night for the glory of Rome, until we die of heat exhaustion."
A profound silence fell over the eastern ridge. The Roman military respected force, and Lucius possessed none.
Lucius remained still. In his previous life as a civil engineer, intellectual property was protected by patents, courts of law, and corporate regulations. He had unconsciously carried that capitalist mindset into an era governed entirely by the law of the sword.
Decimus was correct... The moment he handed this prototype to Quintus’s uncle, he was signing his own death warrant.
Tribune Gaius was a seasoned military veteran who hated bureaucratic corruption; he would absolutely recognize that whoever controlled this forge controlled the destiny of the province.
Gaius would march a cohort of infantry onto Lucius’s estate by nightfall, declaring eminent domain under the guise of military necessity.
He needed a private militia, a heavily armed battalion of his own men capable of making a Roman Legate think twice before attempting a hostile, armed takeover of his property.
But raising an army required time, and more importantly, it required massive amounts of untraceable silver.
The deal with Gaius must be aborted...
He cannot allow the Roman army to learn the true capabilities of this blast furnace until he possesses sufficient military strength to enforce our agreement from a position of power.
"You are right, Decimus," Lucius finally spoke. "We will not send the prototype to the Third Legion. The Roman military will remain ignorant of our advancements for the time being."
The men let out a collective breath of relief, though the disappointment of losing their primary buyer was evident on their soot-stained faces.
"But Dominus," the raw material buyer asked, stepping forward with a confused frown. "If we cannot sell the steel to the legions... what do we do with it? Do we simply bury the blades in the dirt?"
Lucius fell silent.. He needed a buyer who possessed massive amounts of wealth, a desperate need for high-quality weaponry, and most crucially, absolutely zero bureaucratic or military capacity to march an army deep into the heart of Gaul to seize his estate.
Before Lucius could voice his own deductions, it was Valerius, the scarred Security Chief, who provided the chilling answer.
The legionary stepped toward the blast furnace, a wicked smile spreading across his face as he looked at the young patrician.
"If the Romans will steal it..." Valerius suggested quietly, "then we sell it to the Germanic tribes."