7 AD
Dalmatia
Reprieve
Decimus stood in the center of a large group comprised of his surviving cohort commanders. They were all bloody, their armor splattered with mud, each soaked to the bone from half a night’s worth of fierce rain, with several wounded and in need of medical attention. But they all stood surrounding Decimus and listened tentatively to his every word. It was an hour before dawn. Thankfully the rain had stopped. But the hill was a quagmire of deep mud and dead bodies lying everywhere around them. In the darkness, high in the hills, the hundreds of brightly burning campfires of the enemy were all too visible for one and all to see.
“I have sent for help,” he began, speaking softly, eyeing each of the cohort commanders carefully. “Two men familiar with this territory. E
