New governor of Tarraco!

Valerianus receives me sitting in his throne room. Faustine kneels beside him, a collar linked by an iron chain to the throne, her naked body bearing the marks of whip lashes.

"I need you again, brave general," he immediately says with a grin to me. "I'm the master of Rome, the usurper is dead and I've got his wench" (he roughly strokes the hair of Faustina, who keeps her eyes down). "Their son has fled, it is said he's somewhere out of Rome with a band of outlaws, but I will get this little bastard sooner of later. I now just have to establish my authority on the provinces. That's where I need you. I make you the new governor of Tarraco. You will have to keep it safe from the barbarians... and all my other enemies, of course!"

I almost can't believe my ears: thus I will come back, as the governor and supreme magistrate, to this town where I was some weeks earlier as the commander of a small unit! I have to leave for Tarraco in the next days.