Year:638 AD
Lombard Kingdom
Mediolanun
Like a flash of lightning, Andreas and the Mezenga brothers go back in time and they see a mob furious against what appears to be the tax collector and his guards.
"Pay your taxes and go back to your corner, Romans!!!" shouts the guard.
"Damn Lombards!!! We want more autonomy or we will rebel against you because of the high taxes!" says one of the civilians.
The Lombard guards draw their swords and the crowd moves away from the tax collector and Lombard soldiers advance against the crowd.
Seeing the situation getting complicated for the Romans, Andreas then takes one of the miniaturized firearms in Vicenzo's bag and uses the quantum gigantifier and turns the weapon back to its real size, he unlocks the gun and orders:
"Mezenga soldiers! Take your miniaturized weapons and return them to full size! Let's repel the Lombards from Milan and then drive them out of Italy!" Andreas orders.
Andreas uses the Fucile Modello 1867 and shoots at a distance of 100 meters, the shot made the population be impressed with the noise and the Lombards retreat with the mysterious noise made by a Lombard soldier fall to the ground lifeless.
The Mezenga brothers use the Vetterli M1870-87 and make the population disperse through the other streets of the square, the Lombards flee along with the tax collector.
After the population and the Lombards had dispersed, Andreas and the Mezenga brothers advanced to where the bodies of the Lombard soldiers were and when they were about to leave the place, the noise of horses came from the from the same direction that the Lombards fled.
Andreas laughs and says:
"They don't know that they are riding towards their own end, if this is the force that resides in Milan, we can already consider it a victory for our objective." says Andreas.
About 15 Lombard heavy horsemen were advancing rapidly at a gallop, until Andreas and the Mezenga brothers fired, 3 heavy horsemen were killed and the Lombard heavy cavalry was stunned.
More shots were fired and the Lombard horses, frightened by the shots, did not move and ended up becoming targets for Andreas and the Mezenga brothers who continued to shoot at them.
The last of the Lombard heavy cavalry managed to escape with his horse, so what happened next was unexpected, the civilians who were in their houses came out and began to approach Andreas and the Mezenga brothers and an old man with a long beard asked:
"Are you the soldiers of Emperor Gelasius IV? The merchants tell me that he has managed to recapture Ravenna and will now march on Pavia with the support of the Eastern Roman co-emperor Constans II, Is that true?" asks the old man.
Andreas was confused when he heard the name of the Western Roman Emperor? It was practically impossible to have a Western Roman Emperor in the 7th century! The Mezenga brothers were also impressed and Vicenzo approaches the old man and replied in late Latin:
"We are descendants of the Western Romans who fled to the Eastern Roman Empire, I am Antonius Lucius Paulus, the younger one is my brother Julius Majorianus Paulus and this one is Andreas Flavius Suetonius, we are engineers from Alexandria, these weapons we use are our inventions and we are here to free you from the oppressive hands of the Lombards." Vicenzo replies.
The old man then introduces himself and says:
"My name is Constantius Julius Favarus, I am a descendant of the legendary general Lucius Favarus, the Hammer of the Persians, who led the battle of Aleppo and killed more than 80 thousand Persians, with this battle Flavius Belisarius entered Ctesiphon and ended the centuries-long Persian-Roman War. I can welcome you into my mansion and show you the situation on the Italian Peninsula with this war." says Constantius.
Continuatum...