The line was breaking.
Not the Romanus line.
Theirs had held — always held.
It was the Francians now coming apart by inches, and the deeper into the kill zone they stepped, the more the snow turned red and the more their order dissolved into panic.
And in the worst of it — the eye of the slaughterstorm — stood a single legionnaire.
New armor, blackened from soot, and baked on blood.
No helmet.
Blood streaked across his face, some of it his, most of it not.
He had no name known to the officers.
No storied lineage.
Just a number — IX. Cohortus Secunda. Numerus 38.
One of the thousand men that made up the legion itself but as one of the lowest rank he was only known by his unit.
But by day's end, men would whisper of the soldier they called The Bastard of Flame.
It began when the line nearest the fourth division faltered.
