Chapter 55: A Slaughter In the Snow

Isolda stood in the center of the atrium, her hands curled into fists.

Tears of fury glistened in her eyes as she glared at her brother, Amalric.

Amalric was a specimen of northern brutality. A few years older than Lucius, the cavalry commander stood a head taller than his sister, his frame wrapped in chainmail and wolf pelts.

They shared the same cheekbones and hair but their worldviews had fractured.

To understand Amalric’s relationship with Isolda was to understand the mind of an overprotective predator.

He had spent his life shielding his sister from the politics of the forests.

When King Geberic had ordered this marriage alliance, Amalric had opposed it.

He despised the idea of leaving his blood in the hands of a patrician. He had swallowed his pride and escorted her to Gaul because Lucius provided the steel their tribe needed to survive the Alemanni.

However, over the past months, the Forge Master’s actions had unsettled the barbarian.

Lucius was not a normal Roman... He had published the *Codex Umbrae*, a doctrine that abolished the slave castes and elevated laborers to positions of command.

To a warlord who believed that power was a divine right earned through strength and blood, Lucius’s meritocracy was an insult to the natural order.

Furthermore, Amalric held a disdain for Lucius’s methods of war.

He relied on explosive clay, chemicals, and ballistas that killed from a distance. It was the warfare of a coward.

But all of those grievances paled in comparison to the madness Lucius had decreed the previous night.

Ten thousand legionaries were marching on Fundus Ferratus...

Instead of utilizing his palisades to withstand a siege, Lucius had ordered his force to march out into the open field to meet them head-on.

To Amalric, marching one thousand militiamen and fifty cavalry riders against ten thousand Roman veterans was suicide.

And Amalric refused to let his sister die in a Roman valley for the ego of a madman.

Because King Geberic was hundreds of miles away fighting the Alemanni, Amalric was the ranking Gothic commander in Gaul.

He had made a decision... He was terminating the treaty, breaking the alliance, and dragging Isolda back to the Rhine.

Isolda was pleading with him.

"You cannot do this, Amalric!" she screamed, her face flushed with rage. "You were sent here to command the vanguard, not to dictate the politics of the Confederation! You do not speak for Father!"

Amalric’s face twisted in a snarl.

"I speak for the survival of our blood!" Amalric roared, gesturing toward the courtyard. "Look at him! He is a lunatic playing with mud and fire! He spits on the natural order of the world, he elevates slaves to his council, and now he intends to march fifty of our riders into a meat grinder! Ten thousand legionaries, Isolda! They will form a wall of iron, they will roll over his army in ten minutes, and then they will burn this villa to the ground with you inside it! He is unfit to command, and I will not let him make you a corpse!"

Isolda had never been so furious in her life.

Her brother couldn’t see the future... She knew about the ballista parts and the pike squares.

She had fallen in love with a man whose ambition eclipsed the gods themselves, and now her brother was trying to drag her back to a mead-hall in the mud.

She took a step forward, tilting her head back to scream into Amalric’s face.

"You are not the King!" Isolda shrieked. "And you are not the master of this estate! You have no authority to break a blood vow!"

Amalric was vibrating with rage. He could not fathom what sort of Roman sorcery Lucius had woven to brainwash his sister into becoming a disciple of his industry.

He did not know that Isolda was carrying the Forge Master’s unborn heir... if he had known, he would have thrown her over his shoulder and ridden out of the gates that second.

His mind was made up. He was the commander of the Gothic detachment, and he was pulling them out.

"The vow is broken," Amalric stated. "I have sent my lieutenant to the training fields to inform Valerius. The Gothic cavalry is withdrawing from the vanguard. We are not marching with his militia. Now, go to your chambers and pack your furs. We ride north in one hour, and I do not want you speaking to that merchant again. Do you understand me?"

The disrespect of his command shattered the shreds of Isolda’s restraint.

"May Fenrir chew on your cowardly bones!" Isolda spat. "I wish I had been born the eldest, so I wouldn’t have to suffer a brother with the heart of a sheep!"

Amalric flinched. Before he could formulate a response, Isolda spun on her heel, her robes snapping around her ankles as she stormed out of the atrium.

She could not believe her brother was destroying everything...

The alliance, the trade routes, the strategy... Amalric was tearing it all apart because he was too arrogant to understand the power of the forge.

She pressed a hand to her stomach, her breath coming in gasps.

She prayed to the gods of the forest that Lucius would not accept this betrayal. She hoped that her husband would not resort to a diplomatic negotiation.

She wanted Lucius to march up to her brother, flex the muscle of his empire, and beat some sense into Amalric’s skull...

As for how the Forge Master would react to the news that his cavalry was abandoning him hours before the battle of his life? Only time would tell.

***

December 22, 220 AD, Gallia.

Amalric swung his broadsword in an arc, the blade crunching through the shield and collarbone of a Roman auxiliary.

Blood sprayed across the commander’s pelts as he wrenched the weapon free, his breath coming in gasps.

He was surrounded.

Amalric and his fifty cavalrymen had stormed out of the gates of Fundus Ferratus before the sun rose, intent on abandoning the Forge Master’s war.

He had planned to establish a camp in the northern woods and return for Isolda under the cover of darkness.

But he had underestimated the speed of the Roman Empire. They had barely cleared the valley’s ridges when they rode into Tribune Quintus’s vanguard... a column of three hundred auxiliary cavalry sent ahead to secure the supply roads.

What was supposed to be a withdrawal had devolved into a slaughter in the snow...