Ten months.
Ten months of eating dirt, breathing frost, and bleeding in the dark for a dying empire.
When Odoacer had first accepted the contract from General Flavius Orestes, it had been late summer. He had marched his allied foederati—the Heruli, Scirii, and Turcilingi tribes—into the northern Alpine passes to act as Rome’s shield against the invading Rugian hordes. They had held the line. They had fought in the freezing mud, burying their dead in unmarked graves, waiting for the wagons of Roman gold and grain they had been promised.
The wagons never came.
Now, it was the bitter spring thaw of 475 AD. The snowmelt in the mountain passes had turned the ancient Roman roads into sucking, freezing swamps. And Odoacer’s army was starving.
Odoacer sat atop his massive destrier, the heavy wolf furs draped over his shoulders soaked through with freezing rain. His scarred hand rested on the pommel of his iron spatha. He looked down the endless, miserable line of his warriors. Men who had held off thousands of invaders were now shivering, their boots wrapped in rotting rags, chewing on rock-hard bucellatum just to keep their jaws moving.
"God's wounds, this mud is cursed," a deep voice rumbled over the howling wind.
Odoacer turned his head. Riding up beside him was Tufa, a massive Scirian chieftain and Odoacer’s most aggressive general. Tufa’s chainmail was rusted from ten months of rain, and his beard was matted with ice.
"The rear guard is stalling, Commander," Tufa spat, wiping freezing sleet from his eyes. "We lost three more mules to the shivering sickness in the night. The men are drinking posca that is more ice than vinegar. If Orestes does not send the grain wagons by nightfall, we will have to start slaughtering the cavalry horses just to survive the week."
"Orestes is not sending the grain, Tufa," Odoacer said, his voice a gravelly rasp that barely carried over the wind.
Tufa gripped his reins, his knuckles turning white. "We bled for his borders. We kept King Feletheus and his Rugian dogs from burning Mediolanum. We held our end of the oath!"
"And the patricians in Ravenna sit in their heated villas, drinking spiced wine, while we freeze," Odoacer replied coldly. He looked toward the south. Toward Italy. "They view us as dogs, Tufa. You do not pay a dog. You throw it scraps and expect it to bite your enemies."
Suddenly, a loud, splintering CRACK echoed from the center of the column. It was followed by the frantic braying of a mule and a chorus of guttural Germanic curses.
Odoacer cursed under his breath, spurring his horse toward the commotion.
One of their heavy supply wagons had sunk deep into a hidden sinkhole. The wooden axle had completely snapped under the strain. Half a dozen Heruli mercenaries were shoulder-deep in the freezing slush, straining and screaming as they tried to push the massive wooden wheel, but it wouldn't budge.
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"Leave it!" Tufa roared, riding up behind Odoacer. "We take the grain, we leave the wood. Commander, there is a Roman farming settlement five miles west! We ride there, we kick in their doors, we take their hearths and their cattle! We are starving!"
Odoacer tightened his grip on his reins. It was the old way. The easy way. Raid the weak and take what they needed by the edge of a bloody sword.
But as he looked at Tufa’s bloodthirsty eyes, Odoacer felt a sudden, crushing weight in his chest. A quiet exhaustion that he had hidden from his men for years.
He didn't want to be a bandit anymore.
"No," Odoacer commanded, his voice booming like thunder across the valley, silencing the curses of the struggling soldiers. "We do not raid the settlement. We are the protectors of this border, not a pack of wild wolves."
Tufa blinked, rainwater dripping from his nose. "Commander... the men are starving! We have the swords! It is our right to take what we need!"
"If we burn a Roman village today, we are thieves. Outlaws. Orestes will use it as an excuse to declare us enemies of the state, and we will never see our gold," Odoacer dismounted, his heavy iron boots sinking deep into the mud. He walked past Tufa, straight toward the broken wagon. "We fix the wheel. We march south. And we take what is owed to us from the men who actually owe it."
The Weight of the Bloodline
When night finally fell, the camp was a sprawling, miserable city of leather tents and smoking fire pits. The damp wood hissed and popped, offering little heat.
Odoacer retreated to his command tent. As he pushed past the heavy canvas flaps, the brutal, freezing reality of the warlord's life vanished, replaced by the warm glow of oil lamps and the smell of sweet herbs.
Sitting on a pile of thick bear pelts was his wife, Sunigilda. She was a fierce, proud woman of royal Gothic blood, her blonde hair braided tight against her scalp. She was grinding dried willow bark in a stone bowl to make medicine for the feverish men.
Beside her, sleeping soundly wrapped in a heavy wool blanket, was their five-year-old son, Thela.
Odoacer’s massive shoulders finally dropped. The ruthless, terrifying warlord stripped off his rusted chainmail, his scarred chest covered in the dirt and grime of a ten-month campaign. He knelt beside his sleeping son, gently brushing a lock of hair from the boy’s forehead with a hand big enough to crush a man's skull.
Sunigilda stopped her grinding. She reached out, her soft hands tracing the fresh, purple bruising along her husband's ribs.
"You are exhausted, my husband," she whispered in their native tongue. "Ten months of marching. The men are grumbling, Odoacer. They whisper that you have grown soft on the Romans. Tufa says we should sack the countryside and take our due."
"Tufa thinks like a mercenary," Odoacer murmured, his eyes never leaving his son's face.
"And what are you, if not a mercenary?" Sunigilda asked gently, though the words carried the bitter sting of truth. "We have no homeland. The Huns scattered our fathers. The Romans use us as a wall of meat to protect their marble cities. What future are we marching toward?"
Odoacer looked up at his wife. His eyes burned with a fierce, protective fire that had nothing to do with gold or grain.
"If I sack the countryside, I remain a barbarian," Odoacer said softly. "The patricians would poison my wine. The assassins would hunt me in the dark. And when I die, they will come for Thela. They will call him a savage and put his head on a Roman pike. I will not leave our son a legacy of ash and stolen cattle."
He stood up, grabbing his heavy iron spatha from the table.
"I don't want a few raided villages, Sunigilda," Odoacer said, his voice hardening into absolute, unyielding resolve. "I want a kingdom. I want land that cannot be taken away. If General Orestes will not pay us the gold he owes us..."
Odoacer looked southward, toward the wealthy, bloated heart of the empire.
"...then we will march to Ravenna, and we will demand one-third of Italy. And if they refuse, I will take the crown from Orestes' puppet Emperor myself.