The Via Sacra was a canyon of fire.
The magnificent basilicas that lined the Sacred Way were burning. The marble facades were black with soot. The statues of gods and emperors looked down on the carnage with melting faces.
The heat was blistering. It radiated from the stone, turning the air into a shimmering haze.
Marcus marched at the head of the column.
Behind him, two thousand men stumbled through the smoke. They were a parade of nightmares. Some were naked, their clothes burned away. Others wore pieces of scavenged Praetorian armor. They carried hammers, axes, and broken chains.
They didn't cheer. They didn't sing. They just marched.
The adrenaline was fading. The pain was setting in.
A gladiator next to Marcus—a young Retiarius with a net draped over his shoulder—suddenly dropped.
There was no sound. No arrow whistle. No gunshot crack.
He just collapsed. A small, neat hole appeared in his forehead.
"Sniper!" Marcus screamed. "Cover!"
The army scattered. They dove behind fallen pillars and overturned carts.
"Where is it?" Narcissus roared, scanning the rooftops. His bronze helmet was scorched black.
Another man fell. He clutched his throat, blood spurting between his fingers.
"Silent," Galen whispered, huddled behind a fountain. "Pneumatic rifles. Compressed air. No flash. No bang."
Marcus looked up at the rooftops. Through the smoke, he could see shadows moving on the roof of the Basilica Julia.
Lucilla's marksmen.
They were picking them off like fish in a barrel. The gladiators couldn't fight back. Their improvised grenades couldn't reach the roof.
"We can't move!" a prisoner shouted. "We're dead here!"
Marcus looked at the burning shops lining the street. Apothecaries. Bakeries. Silk merchants.
"We can't see them," Marcus said. "So we make sure they can't see us."
He grabbed a bundle of wet canvas from a looted stall.
"Galen! The fires!" Marcus yelled. "Smother them! Wet straw! Damp cloth! Anything wet!"
"You want to put out the fire?" Galen asked, confused.
"I want smoke!" Marcus shouted. "White smoke! Thick smoke!"
The order rippled down the line.
Men ran into the burning buildings. They threw barrels of water, sacks of wet flour, and damp rugs onto the flames.
HISS.
Steam and white smoke billowed out. It mixed with the black soot, creating a dense, opaque fog. It rolled into the street, swallowing the army.
"Move!" Marcus ordered. "Stay in the cloud!"
They advanced.
It was eerie. They couldn't see five feet in front of them. They moved by touch, hand on the shoulder of the man ahead.
Above them, the invisible snipers fired blindly. Thwip. Thwip.
Bolts sparked off the cobblestones. But they were guessing. The kill rate dropped to zero.
They passed a burning tenement.
"Help!" a voice screamed from inside. A woman's voice. "My baby! We are trapped!"
Marcus stopped.
The Ghost of Commodus tightened his chest. Ignore it, the voice hissed. The mission is the Palace. Civilians are casualties.
Marcus looked at the burning door. He looked at his men. If they stopped, the fog would clear. The snipers would find them.
He gritted his teeth.
"Keep moving," Marcus ordered. His voice broke.
Narcissus looked at him through the grill of his helmet. He didn't say anything. He just nodded. It was a nod of understanding. This is war. War is ugly.
They left the woman screaming in the fire.
They reached the foot of the Palatine Hill. The fog began to thin as the elevation rose.
They emerged from the smoke into the open square before the Arch of Titus.
And then they heard it.
A sound deeper than the fire. A low, rhythmic thrumming.
HUMMM-HUMMM-HUMMM.
It sounded like a giant insect.
"Sky," Narcissus said, pointing up.
Above the Palace, hovering in the updraft of the burning city, was a shape.
It wasn't a sleek silver Zeppelin. It was a monstrosity.
A rigid frame of varnished wood, covered in yellow silk. It looked like a elongated balloon, fragile and clumsy. Steam vented from a gondola hanging beneath it. A rear propeller spun slowly, fighting the wind.
The Airship.
"Gods," a gladiator whispered. "A flying boat."
It drifted over them. It blocked out the moon.
A hatch in the bottom of the gondola opened.
"Scatter!" Marcus screamed.
It didn't drop a bomb.
It dropped darts.
Hundreds of them.
They were "Thunderbolts"—heavy iron flechettes with fins. They fell silently, accelerating with gravity.
THUD-THUD-THUD.
They hit the cobblestones.
Then they detonated.
The explosive charges inside the darts weren't large, but there were hundreds of them. The street erupted.
Shrapnel tore through the ranks. Men screamed as iron splinters shredded their legs.
The shockwave knocked Marcus off his feet. He hit the ground hard, his ears ringing.
He looked up. The Airship was circling for another pass.
They were ants under a magnifying glass.
"The Arch!" Marcus yelled, scrambling up. "Get under the stone!"
The Arch of Titus. A massive marble monument celebrating the destruction of Jerusalem. It was solid stone, twenty feet thick.
"Run!"
It was a sprint for survival.
Another volley of darts rained down.
Galen tripped. He sprawled on the pavement.
A dart landed three feet from his head. The fuse hissed.
"No!" Marcus lunged, but he was too far away.
A gladiator—the one with the net—dove. He threw his body over the dart.
BOOM.
The man's body lifted off the ground. Pink mist sprayed Galen's face.
Galen screamed, scrambling backward on hands and knees, covered in the man's blood.
Narcissus grabbed Galen by the tunic and hauled him under the Arch.
Marcus dove in after them.
They huddled in the shadows of the massive stone gateway.
Outside, the street exploded again. The Airship was pounding the approach, turning the Via Sacra into a cratered wasteland.
"We can't go back," Narcissus gasped. He leaned against the marble, his breath rattling in his chest. "And we can't go forward. The bird sees everything."
Marcus wiped blood from his eyes. He looked up the hill.
The Palace gates were open.
But they weren't unguarded.
Standing in a phalanx across the entrance were the "Sentinels." Fifty of the steam-powered exoskeletons. A wall of bronze and pistons.
And behind them, the Palace glowed with electric light.
"We don't need to go back," Marcus said.
He checked his Fire Lance. The bamboo tube was cracked. He had one shot left before it blew up in his hand.
"The Airship can't hit us if we're inside the Palace," Marcus said.
"To get inside, we have to go through the Iron Men," Narcissus pointed out.
"Yes."
Marcus stood up. He looked at his army.
Half of them were dead. The rest were bleeding, burned, and terrified.
But they were still holding their hammers.
"The only way out is up," Marcus said.
He stepped out from under the Arch. He raised his broken weapon toward the flying monster in the sky.
"Through the meat grinder," Marcus whispered.
"CHARGE!"