Constantine's northern campaign was a phantom. He marched his legions out of Arelate with great ceremony, heading up the Rhône valley, but he never intended to go as far as the Rhine. He made camp near Lugdunum, a strategic central point, and began a series of grueling but pointless drills, keeping his army sharp, honed, and far from prying eyes. All the while, he waited. He had set the board and baited the trap; now he had only to wait for the serpent to strike.
The first report arrived via a dust-caked rider from one of Valerius's agents near Arelate. The rumor had been planted. A distraught-looking merchant, supposedly just arrived from the north, had spoken in a tavern of a disastrous Frankish ambush and the death of the young Augustus. The story, seeded in fertile ground, was spreading through the city.
Constantine listened, his face impassive, and dismissed the messenger. He continued the day's drills.
The second report arrived two days later. It was not from Valerius's network. It was a lone rider, bearing the secret seal of the Empress Fausta. Her message was brief, stark, and exactly what Constantine had anticipated. Father has taken the bait, it read. He has declared himself Augustus. He has seized the treasury and is using the gold to buy the loyalty of the garrison. He weeps for you in public and plots in private. He believes you are dead and that Gaul is his. He is a fool. Your loyal wife, Fausta.
Constantine burned the message. Fausta had chosen her side, her ambition irrevocably tied to his own. She was a reliable asset. And her father, as she said, was a fool.
He immediately summoned his commanders. When they were assembled in his command tent, he laid out the truth of Maximian's treachery. A low growl of anger rippled through the seasoned officers. They were loyal to the memory of Constantius and to the victorious son who had led them across the Rhine. Maximian's betrayal was an insult to them all. "We march south," Constantine said, his voice cutting through their anger. "Not a standard march. We will move down the Rhône by boat where we can, and by forced march where we must. I want to be at the gates of Arelate before the news of our approach even reaches them."
Constantine unleashed his army in a furious race south. The march was brutal, a punishing test of endurance. Where they could, they seized river barges, letting the swift current of the Rhône do the work, the legionaries packed shoulder-to-shoulder on the decks. Where the river narrowed or grew wild, they disembarked for grueling, dust-choked marches, covering ground at a speed that left local officials gaping in their wake. Constantine was a ubiquitous presence throughout the ordeal; one moment reviewing route maps with his officers, the next riding the length of the column, his one eye seeming to miss nothing, his expression a cold mask of pure determination that demanded more from every man.
They appeared before the walls of Arelate like ghosts from the river mist, far sooner than any rational calculation would have deemed possible. The sentries on the walls stared in stunned disbelief. The standards of the Legio VI Victrix, of the Protectores Domestici, and the fierce banners of Crocus's Alemanni were unmistakable. And at their head, on a black warhorse, sat Constantinus Augustus, very much alive.
Maximian's nascent rebellion collapsed in an instant. The old emperor, who had been in the midst of a grand speech to the city garrison, promising them immense wealth and a return to glory under his command, was caught completely flat-footed. The soldiers he had been trying to bribe took one look at the formidable army outside their gates and the living, breathing Constantine at its head, and their loyalty to the old usurper evaporated. There was no battle, no siege. The gates of Arelate were thrown open from within, its garrison rushing to prove their loyalty to the master who had so suddenly returned from the grave.
Constantine rode into the city amidst cheers, his expression a mask of cold fury. He gave Valerius a single, curt order: "Find him."
It did not take long. Maximian was discovered in the imperial quarters, stripped of his borrowed purple robes, a pathetic, cornered old man whose grand ambitions had crumbled to dust around him. He was brought before Constantine in the city's main hall, his hands bound. The old emperor, the twice-crowned, twice-deposed Augustus, the serpent who had tried to usurp his own son-in-law, now stood as a prisoner. He looked at Constantine, at the one cold eye that regarded him without pity, without triumph, with nothing but a chilling, final judgment.
"Father-in-law," Constantine said, his voice dangerously soft. "It seems your mourning period was brief." The fate of Maximian Herculius, a man who had once ruled the world, now rested entirely in the hands of the young emperor he had so fatally underestimated.