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With him still bed ridden, Helena and I started my rehab exactly the way we had done when she’d recovered from her injuries sustained in 2021. We started with stretches and light calisthenics, then onto walking and jogging, before I was finally able to start running again. Santino took a week to get out of bed, but was soon on his feet and getting stronger as well.

That was two months ago.

During that time, Santino and I pushed ourselves hard, and it wasn’t too long until we were back at our peak physical readiness once again. Not that it mattered much. We didn’t see any signs of the siege lifting any time soon.

Caligula’s initial barrage of artillery had ended quickly after it had started. Its purpose was mainly to let the citizens of Rome know he was out there, but its cover for the rescue operation was still appreciated. As Caligula said before the operation even began, he had no intention of razing Rome to the ground, or destroying more property than he needed to. While the city had burned that night, little real estate was severely damaged, and the fires had quickly died out thanks in large part to the rainy Spring months.

So, the siege would endure, either starving the people of Rome into surrendering, or sallying out in a counter attack.

Rome was many things, but self-sufficient it was not. It had grain supplies that could feed its citizens, but they wouldn’t last forever. By the time Augustus took power seventy years ago, Rome had just finished fighting its third civil war in the past one hundred years, the last between Augustus himself and Marc Antony. The population of the empire, and the city itself, was at an all-time low. Now, however, more than a half century later, and another forty after Augustus enacted his legislation encouraging Romans to marry and have children, Rome was reaching a population level that it would soon find overwhelming.

Twenty five years from now, during Nero’s reign, a fire would engulf the city, last nine days, and reduce entire sections of the city to rubble. Nero would later take advantage of his newly cleared land to build his golden house on top of the destroyed territory. During the fire, however, grain supplies were lost, and the very real revelation that Rome’s citizens might starve occurred to many. While Nero had actually done a good job in rationing out the grain, and not dancing with his fiddle during the fire as Suetonius records, had Rome been ready for such a disaster, they may have been able to feed everyone, despite the loss of supplies during the fire.

As fate would have it, just as during the fire of 64 A.D., one of the few things hit during the initial artillery barrage was the city’s grain supplies. It wasn’t a major blow, but any loss to their reserve of food brought the city that much closer to starvation.

Vincent and I determined that Rome’s grain supplies probably wouldn’t last the eight months Caligula’s experts predicted. They just didn’t have all the facts, let alone hindsight. Even so, we’d be here for a while.

To complete the siege, our legionnaires had spent days digging trenches and ditches three hundred yards or so away from the walls to encircle the entire city. The trench system was meant to contain the inhabitants as well as provide defense if the legion was attacked. Aiding our effort were two natural phenomena.

The first lucky break was the fact that Rome hadn’t expanded to its largest point yet. The Aurelian walls hadn’t been built, and its defensive line was still the city’s original Servian Wall. The second blessing was the Tiber River, which worked as a natural barrier to the West. The legion merely took up residence in the Campus Martius, which also lay outside the walls, but between them and the Tiber. Additional troops were also stationed on the opposite side of the river, effectively shutting down the city in the west.

Unfortunately, as the saying goes, “all roads lead to Rome”, there were many points of entry for us to contain. The via appia, aurelia, cassia, claudia valeria, flaminia, salaria, and other smaller ones were all roads that accumulated in Rome, and each needed to be blocked. Therefore, each road received two centuries of legionnaires and a varied number of auxilia. Each century constructed a camp, much like the larger version they had wintered in on either side of the road. On the road, they placed wooden beams, attached together in a cross bracing. These barriers reminded me of the anti-landing craft barricades the Nazis had placed along the shore of Normandy prior to D-day. The remainder of the legion was spread out along the trench network at set intervals in small camps, no bigger than a couple of tennis courts.

Most of these camps were provided with artillery pieces such as an onager. The word onager literally translated as “ass”, a reference to how it kicked like a donkey when fired. It was basically a catapult, and while it was highly inaccurate, it was still able to throw heavy objects far distances. They scared the hell out of people, but weren’t overly efficient.

Finally, scattered around the trenches were the legion’s cavalry auxilia, who would be handy if the defenders decided to counter attack. Their quick response time would allow them to react to a breakout along the lines anywhere in a matter of minutes.

Caligula’s command camp was the largest of all. It held us, his sacred band, his two loyal Praetorian cohorts, and the Primigenia’s first cohort. It was located between the via cassia and aurelia, on the west bank of the Tiber, near where the Vatican would one day stand.

To help strengthen the defenses, Vincent had assigned us to patrol the trenches in our swim pairs occasionally throughout the day. The trenches, miles long, proved good exercise, as well as a warm up for what was to come.

On the tenth day of the siege, a supply train was intercepted trying to sneak supplies into the city. A ridiculous undertaking considering the blockade, but nonetheless, a caravan of some fifty wagons tried to breach our lines and move into the city. Only two days after I had started limping my way around the camp, I wasn’t able to participate in the take down, but I did watch it from the ramparts.

The blockade runners were pressing their horses to full speed as they traveled down the street. Calmly and efficiently, a few dozen legionnaires posted themselves on the paved road, and planted stakes. Unable to dig them into the dirt, they positioned rocks to act as fulcrums, and planted a foot on the blunt side to keep them angled. The Romans managed to erect a barrier of overlapping sharp sticks, three rows deep, while they hunkered down behind their shields.

Horses were by no means stupid animals, and unlike in the movies where they would ride straight into their impending doom, these horses noticed the obstacles, and quickly veered out of the way. The turn forced them to slow just enough for more legionnaires to board the wagons and eliminate the passengers. The camp had gained additional supplies and horses, and the city of Rome continued to wan.

On the thirtieth day of the siege, Helena and I were on patrol, approaching one of the small picket stations sporadically placed along the trench system. We arrived to good cheer, as every legionnaire loved the sight of us. Well, at least the sight of Helena, but I tried to imagine they liked me too. Besides, it was always humorous to watch them scramble over one another just to seem more important in the eyes of the only woman they’d seen in months and had grown to adore.

Completing nearly half of our trip around the trenches, we took a break in the small outpost. In the center were temporary troop quarters and a small dining area, and along the perimeter of the trench was a small rampart that ran around the perimeter of the camp with another ditch system on the other side for added protection. Helena and I climbed one of the walls, and rested our rifles along the railing.

I’d lost Helena’s P90 after failing to escape the Domus Augusti, and after Caligula came to see me that first day, I had feared that when she woke, she’d forget about our happy reunion and remember that I had lost her gun. Thankfully, Claudius had kept everything he’d confiscated from Santino and me in a room close to the one he was crucifying us in. It had been breached and cleared as well, and Helena and Wang had recovered their lost weapons. The only thing missing was Santino’s knife. He was still lamenting its loss.