New Recruits for the Cause

“I’m sorry but we haven’t the food to feed ourselves,” you are told by the Mayor in charge of the town you and Strabo were currently standing in. With supply issues sorted for the time being, you have decided to finally set about recruiting troops to the cause.

“I’m very sorry to hear that” Strabo grumbled sadly. Italy was in a sorry state of affairs since most of the food had come from outside of the peninsular up until this point.

“Then perhaps you would be willing to give us volunteers” you say as you turn from the man and inspect the town he leads. While it might have once been a very pretty and quaint example of a Roman town, now it was in a state of disrepair.

“Volunteers? We’ve barely any men at all!” the Mayor told you “All called to die for the Empire!” he exclaimed.

“We’ll take anyone” you say to the man who recoils like he’s been struck, “Unmarried women or those who haven’t got children to tend” you add and the Mayor gaped at you

“Women?! To fight?!” he spluttered.

“You said it yourself, you’ve not enough to feed yourselves” you tell the man, trying to be gentle about it.

“I will not let my people die, just so that a few extra handfuls of grain get passed around!” he declared.

“We’re asking for volunteers, not conscripts” you reply “We’ll pay in grain” you add, and suddenly the Mayor cuts himself off. You can tell this is a hard decision for him to make as he turns towards the town and clenches his fists.

“I will ask, if none volunteer, then you will leave” the man told you.

It turns out the Mayor was quite the speaker as he announced to his people that you had come for any who would volunteer. He had drawn the people into the local amphitheater and was now telling everyone how you intend to restore the Empire and cast out the barbarians. Unfortunately, the stadium mostly consisted of those too old, or too young to be of any use. Still, those men present that were still in fighting state gradually began to stand and approach. It didn’t escape you that the Mayor had neglected to mention the fact that this offer was open to women as well, so you stepped forward.

“Any who wish to take up the sword are welcome, so long as they can march” you tell the crowd. Many eyes snapped to you in surprise and some in disgust. “I will not turn away a woman who is keen” you add because many of the women had yet to figure out that you meant them.

Even with that last bit added, of the several hundred people present, you only managed to get a few dozen volunteers. Of those, you saw a girl of sixteen and a woman in her thirties. You had watched that young girl get up, watched as she **** her grandfather to sit down and watched as she marched toward you with her head held high. The woman on the other hand had a look in her eyes and you knew she used to be a mother and a wife. You didn’t need to ask the cause of her sudden loneliness either, the spark of hatred in her gaze was plain to see.

“For many of you, you will not see home again for some time, if at all” you tell your volunteers. “I do not expect you to die, I expect you to serve, but it will be at length” you continue, looking at each of your recruits in the eye. “I will not fight with any who are unwilling and so I ask that if ever you wish to return home, you resign your post officially instead of deserting on the field of battle” you say, many look surprised at this but you press on. “I ask only for volunteers, for the willing, for the keen” you say “In a moment, you will be let go to say goodbye to your families and I shall be bringing in grain to feed the town in your absence” you explain “By the time your people’s bread has been consumed, there will be enough land to call Roman again that new crops will be grown in plenty” you aren’t entirely sure you can manage to do that in less than a couple years, but who knows. The recruits looked even more keen than they did before. “Now go, spend what time with your loved ones you can, we leave tomorrow at dawn” you say and your little party dismisses itself and the recruits disperse.

“And how are you going to carry several years worth of grain from our camp to here?” Strabo asked “and for that matter, I didn’t think we even HAD that much to begin with, what empty lies have you told these people!” he growled. The Mayor too was looking at you with barely concealed hatred. Luckily, this wasn’t some history text or novel where the main character would have to woo his men with fancy words. You, instead of this, waved your hand and brilliant beams of sunlight descended upon the amphitheater coalescing into baskets of grain anywhere you pointed. Strabo and the Mayor openly gapped around them as several years worth of grain magically appeared before their very eyes.

“You were saying something about empty lies Strabo?” you ask your second-in-command.

“You . . . God!” The Mayor stammered as he made to pull out a cross from under his tunic. Strabo too, pulled a cross from under his chainmail shirt.

“I’m afraid Jesus was full of it” you say, the irony of you convincing people that God doesn’t exist even when it was Him who gave you your powers, isn’t lost on you. The two men’s eyes went wide as they heard this.

“While I am unsure of the fate of the rest of the Gods, I am here and Rome has called” you say. Strabo reacted first, yanking the cross from his neck violently before casting it to the ground with a vehomenance you hadn’t expected.

“We turned our backs on the Gods for nothing but a power grab by greedy men!” Strabo snarled. You suspect his long years of war have given him a different perspective on things as the Mayor was still clutching his cross tightly.

“In essence . . . yes” you say “It’s no coincidence that the Pope now resides in what used to be the Imperial Palace in Rome” you add and finally the gears begin turning in the Mayor’s head as he turns towards a building with a cross on the top of it.

“The priest comes every Sunday for donations in food and coin, but none of it go to the poor” the Mayor says calmly. “He says God wills it when we say we starve to give him more” the Mayor added. Unlike Strabo, the Mayor did not violently rip his cross off, he calmly took it off over his head and then nonchalantly tossed it aside as if the very moment it left his hand he had forgotten about it. “Roma Invicta” the Mayor said to you with an intensity in his gaze that belayed his calm tone. The term meant ‘unconquered Rome’ and his saying that meant a whole lot more than just that Rome had yet to be conquered. Indeed, the spirit of Rome never dies, and can never be conquered.