The world swam back into focus with a searing jolt of agony. Not the swift, brutal severing of muscle and bone he remembered from **Cannae**, but a dull, throbbing fire that consumed his left leg. His eyelids felt glued shut, encrusted with something gritty and dry. He forced them open, his vision swimming in a haze of pain and dust motes dancing in the harsh Italian sunlight.
He lay sprawled on rough ground, the air thick with the smell of pine needles and something else… something metallic and sickeningly sweet. Blood. His own, he realized, the crimson stain blooming on the coarse fabric of his tunic. He wore the simple leather and bronze of a **hastatus**, a frontline infantryman. Not the polished *lorica segmentata* of a general. *General…* The title echoed in a distant corner of his mind, a phantom limb of memory that felt both profoundly his and utterly alien.
Around him, the aftermath of a skirmish lay scattered like broken toys. Grotesque shapes of fallen men, Roman and Samnite alike, littered the uneven terrain of this forested hillside in **Samnium**. The year, a nagging voice whispered within him, felt wrong, distant. Not the grand scale of Hannibal's invasion. This felt smaller, more localized, a brutal struggle for survival in these rugged mountains.
*Where… when…?* Panic, cold and sharp, clawed at his throat. He tried to push himself up, but a lance of pain shot through his leg, and he gasped, collapsing back onto the blood-soaked earth. He was weak, vulnerable. Not the Titus Valerius who commanded legions. This body was young, maybe barely a man, and broken.
A guttural shout in a harsh, unfamiliar tongue reached his ears. Samnites. They were still here, likely looting the fallen. He had to move. Ignoring the white-hot agony in his leg, he dragged himself behind a cluster of rocks, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
*Gods… this Rome…* The fragmented images flickered in his mind – the disciplined ranks, the eagle standards held high, the very stones of the Forum radiating power. This felt… different. The soldiers he'd seen fallen wore simpler armor, their formations in his fading memory seemed less rigid, almost… chaotic. A wave of disbelief, sharp and unsettling, washed over him.
He risked a peek. A group of rough-looking warriors, their faces hardened by the sun and mountain winds, moved amongst the dead, stripping them of weapons and valuables. Their leather armor and crude bronze looked… provincial. This wasn't the Rome he knew, or perhaps… a Rome he had forgotten. A Rome still fighting for its breath in this wild heart of Italia.
A surge of instinct, honed over countless battles he couldn't consciously recall, surged through him. Survival. He needed to survive. He needed to understand. As the Samnites moved further down the slope, he forced himself to examine his leg. A deep gash, bleeding sluggishly. He tore a strip of cloth from his tunic and bound it tightly, the rough fibers grating against his skin.
As darkness began to creep through the trees, he started to crawl, inch by agonizing inch, away from the carnage. His mind, despite the pain and confusion, began to work. He remembered the feel of a general's command, the weight of responsibility for thousands of lives. Now, he was just Rance, a wounded soldier, utterly alone. A strange sense of relief, sharp and unexpected, pierced through his fear. No legions to command, no empire to uphold, just survival. A tear, hot and unexpected, tracked down his dusty cheek. For the first time in… how long?, he was no one.
Days blurred into a painful rhythm of crawling, hiding, and scavenging for berries and water. He found a small, abandoned shepherd's hut nestled in the hills. Inside, it smelled of sheep and damp earth, but it offered a modicum of shelter. He tended to his leg as best he could, the wound festering slightly despite his efforts.
He encountered others – rough farmers eking out a living from the unforgiving land, their faces etched with hardship. They spoke a Latin that felt both familiar and slightly archaic. He learned of the ongoing conflicts with the Samnites, whispered fears of raids and lost harvests. Their world was small, their concerns immediate: the weather, the crops, the safety of their families. They spoke of Rome, but not with the unquestioning reverence he remembered. Rome was a distant power, sometimes a protector, sometimes a demanding overlord.
One evening, huddled by a small fire he'd managed to coax to life, he watched an old farmer tending his meager flock. The man's hands were gnarled and calloused, his eyes wise and weary.
"The war… it never ends," the farmer grunted, more to himself than to Rance. "We pay the taxes, send our sons… for what? More hills? More blood?"
His words resonated with a strange, deep ache within Titus. He had sent countless men to their deaths for the glory of Rome, for the expansion of its borders. Now, stripped of rank and memory, he saw the human cost, the quiet suffering of those who lived in the shadow of that ambition.
He practiced moving on his injured leg, the pain a constant reminder of his vulnerability. The discipline ingrained over lifetimes began to reassert itself. He observed the terrain, the movements of animals, the signs of danger. He was a soldier, stripped bare, but still a soldier.
One afternoon, while drawing water from a stream, he saw a small group of Roman soldiers marching along a rough track. Their formation was loose, their movements lacked the crisp precision he remembered. They looked tired, their armor dusty and ill-maintained. A wave of something akin to professional disgust washed over him. *This is how the legions march? Without proper spacing? Without scouts properly ahead?* The old general in him chafed at the lack of order, the absence of the iron discipline that had forged Rome's dominance.
He kept his distance, a ghost observing a shadow of the empire he once knew. He was no one here, a nameless, wounded soldier in a struggling republic. Yet, a seed of something new began to sprout within him. A chance to see Rome not from the eagle's-eye view of a general, but from the muddy boots of the men who fought its battles, from the weary hearts of those who paid its price. For the first time, the endless loop felt less like a grand, tragic stage and more like a series of intimate, brutal realities. And in that realization, a flicker of something other than despair ignited within the heart of the eternal general. Perhaps, in being no one, he could finally begin to understand something truly profound about Rome.
---