As they stamped their feet against the cold, they waited for the trumpeters to summon them to action. Yet this was a catastrophe for which the legionaries, by marching to the border, had shown themselves fully steeled. They would, in effect, be declaring civil war. Take that road, however, and the soldiers of the 13th Legion would be committing a deadly offence, breaking not only the limits of their province, but also the sternest laws of the Roman people. On the legionaries’ side was the province of Gaul on the far side Italy, and the road that led to Rome. Now, returned from the barbarous wilds of the north, they found themselves poised on a very different frontier. For eight years they had been following the governor of Gaul on campaign after bloody campaign, through snow, through summer heat, to the margins of the world. Bitter the night may have been, but they were well used to extremes. Lined up in full marching order, soldiers from the 13th Legion stood massed in the dark. The sun had long set behind the Apennine mountains. January 10th, the seven-hundred-and-fifth year since the foundation of Rome, the forty-ninth before the birth of Christ.
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