"In the dust and fog created by the iron horsemen of the barbarians, the power and glory of the Roman Empire were dimmed." - The Cambridge Medieval History on the crushing defeat of the Romans at the Battle of Adrianople in 378.

"You're really calm, and you know to bring the doctor with you when you encounter this."

"Don't talk nonsense, give me a quick go, go to Apilon, quick!" Calabis shouted.

At night, the lightning of Rome lit up the street corners from time to time, and the most dutiful street managers or firefighters hid in their houses, and the rain gradually fell, and Timothy and Carabis rode together on a horse and ran out of the city.

"You have to be grateful to the horse god for the luck it has given you, the city of Rome is not allowed to ride horses on the streets, but I am a Scythian, and there must always be a stable for horses in the backyard." Timosius sprinted forward with his feet between his horses' bellies. There were several Tianzhu guys in the back, carrying medicine boxes, and a clever and agile Tianzhu dog, walking like a fly in the puddle.

"One block ahead, go to the right, that's the shortcut." Calabis reminded in the thunder.

"Are you sure? I remember that at the end of the road, there was no road. ”

"Don't hesitate any longer, or I'll kill you!" Calabis got impatient and pressed his sword against Timosius's back, "I want Porti and Paruma to live well, I hope I'm still in time." Then he felt a pain in his lower back, so he touched it, and it was the doll that Porti had carved for him before he left, "I beg for your protection, family god"

The horses neighed, and rushed through a grove of trees, and in a flash of lightning, Timothy saw what Calabis called a "shortcut", a wall in disrepair and collapsed, flanked by a trench pulled by a plow when Romulus had determined the boundaries of the city hundreds of years ago, or, to put it bluntly, the "sanctuary" of the city of Rome, a forbidden place that no one was allowed to touch in any name, "Damn, Calabis, I never thought that your shortcut would be here, and that we would offend the patron saint of the city." Timosius tugged at the bridle.

"Shut up, you and me, and the curries in the back, their protectors have nothing to do with this city. The past is over, and now is the present! Calabis said firmly, and the Tianzhu men waved their hands behind him, and shouted loudly, "Timothy, hurry up, your horses are blocking our way."

Timothy was a devout theist, and he was still pulling his horse, spinning in the rain, and Calabis, who could not stand it, raised his sword and slammed it at the horse's hips, and the problem was solved, and the horse screamed and crossed the "sanctuary" desperately

Among the people on foot, the Tianzhu guy named Maya at the beginning of the way, after jumping over the trench, received a small box thrown by Calabis from his horse, "Maya, inside are five large shaqs (gold coins popular in Western Asia in ancient times), you walk diagonally from here for six hundred Roman feet, you can see a gladiator's tent, go and hire all the people inside, and go to the innermost villa of Apilon." When that happens, I'll give you five more big shaqs alone. Then Namaya agreed, and spread his bare feet, and with the box in his arms, he ran in the direction indicated by Calabis.

There, indeed, there was a gladiator's tent, and the little pigeon, Paruma, who had skipped school more than once, would come here to watch cheap shows from his adoptive father, and there were a group of out-of-fashion retired gladiators, overwhelmed by the professional gladiator school on the Capua side, and could only cramp pathetically in this corner, with two old dehaired beasts, in a simple circle of wood, to show the poor or the children.

Calabis, who came to catch the skipping school pigeon many times, naturally remembered this place.

But now Calabis can only count on them.

After Maya went, Calabis and Timothy continued to run towards Apilon, and finally he saw the villas of Apilon in a cloud of smoke and dust, and the Apironian men were burning and looting all the wealth they could see there, according to Catiline's prior arrangement, Apilon's plunder was for the "fattening of the gall" of this group, and then they would be driven to the fortress of Pletius outside the city of Rome to seize weapons and baggage, and then echo with the retired veterans of Sula from the Etrunia region north of Rome to seize the heart of the republic.

But this gang of mob bandits still hit a nail in front of an inconspicuous villa.

Because it happened that Milou, Tagus, and Pope, along with most of the veterans, were here today, ready to put the finishing touches on Zuihou, and when Potty came, it was not good, so the hostess took out the meat and wine from the cellar, and came to entertain everyone, so that they could rest for a while. It wasn't until Paluma and Van Lunjuna, playing hide-and-seek on the top floor, spotted a large crowd of men with sticks and iron forks in the distance rushing towards them in the distance, that Milou felt that the situation was serious, and that "maybe today is not a good day to rest."

However, the tower of the villa? That's right. This is Pop's design, and he will fully respect the requirements of his master Calabis in the interior, but on the outside is simply a bad taste of a legion veteran:

The whole villa is surrounded on three sides by dense forests and valleys, and on the side with the door, there is a steep slope below, and the sloping road is divided into a narrow and curved shape by various trees. The walls of the villa are very high, there are no bumps and windows, and they are extremely smooth with volcanic ash (ancient cement), which is very difficult to climb, not to mention the iron fence at the top of the wall. The bronze gate, with a rectangular open space in front of it, was lined up by Milou and his men with the pointed stakes from the villa's warehouse (yes, they stored them in the master's warehouse, which they said would be used for the future Grange project), and was lined up as a front line against foreign attacks, and while the mob bandits were busy robbing the conspicuous and fragile villa, the veterans, twenty men in all, dug a simple trench along the gate with tools!

Hundreds of mobs, the assault of which had been fought off two hours earlier, were completely repulsed, and six veterans, led by Tagus, armed with wicker shields for practice and sharpened improvised wooden spears, stabbed to death two or three mobs who tried to pull out the obstacles, so that they did not dare to move forward, but only to throw stones and torches at a distance.

But the stones were not thrown for long - Pope, Milou and others, on the top floor of the villa, with ready-made (?) wood, built a simple small projectile, condescendingly, put the asphalt-coated ready-made (?) Maybe Calabis will find the answer afterwards, there will be these things in his villa, and the sheep's head stone will be lit on fire, and it will be smashed on the top of the mob's head with a hula hula, which makes the besieging mob feel terrified, the sheep's head stone with fire, whistling and smashing into the surrounding bushes, the sticky asphalt will soon burn with the grass and trees, many mobs with flames on their buttocks and backs, howling and running down, plus the smoke from the flames in the rain, it is enough to suffocate, these people did not hold out for long, They all ran away.

On the top floor of the small villa with a bright fire, the veterans even erected a pennant to show it in the wind and rain, very proud.