That's nice, but he's going to refrain from celebrating until he can put out all the fires he already had.

What's the status of the preparations?

Behind schedule. A number of his subordinates are of the opinion that this is basically to be expected and his entire schedule was too ambitious to begin with.

It's a good thing he's in charge, then, and not them. The barbarians might not be in a hurry to storm his fortifications, not after what happened last time, but that isn't going to last. He's sitting in the heart of one of their cities with a hostile army; they certainly can't afford to leave him there. Even leaving aside the economic implications of losing what has got to be one of their biggest cities, they're sure to be furious about it, and the imperial performance hasn't been overwhelming enough to turn that into real fear. That means they need everyone deployed on a real defensive line, with their rear cleared enough that if they need to withdraw it can happen in good order without a rout, and to be frank they need it done yesterday. They can redirect some people from the looting to help get it done, painful as it'll be to miss out, and try and get things back on schedule. The dragon corps?

It hasn't spontaneously reconstituted itself, if that's what he means.

But he could maybe get one more deployment out of it, if he really had to, as long as he was willing to accept he wouldn't have a dragon corps afterwards.

He meant more if it looked like they were going to blow up into a political catastrophe for him, but obviously none of the night shift subordinates have the full context there he does, so unless they've started openly talking about how they need to get their cousins to organize a senatus consultum ultimum for him or something they wouldn't be able to tell him much. Which would ordinarily be one of his higher priorities, but there's so much on his plate that he's going to delegate the task of getting updates to one of his more politicaly connected proteges and hope it doesn't blow up in his face. 

And his rivals back home?

As far as anyone can tell him, none of them have made a move. It obviously wasn't possible to keep the fact that he was planning something under wraps, and calling in this many military favors without a clear target has definitely had some of the governors and legates in neighboring provinces nervously mustering their own troops just in case it's time for another civil war, but despite everything they think nobody over there is sufficiently clear on both what's happening and their own interests to act decisively against him. That might change in a day or two as word filters back from their spies in his forces, though. 

By then he'll most likely either be the triumphant conquering hero of the century, untouchable by their efforts, or a humiliated disgrace unable to stop them. Not worth worrying about. Now, to put a personal touch on some of the troop deployments, he's thought of some improvements on the strategy they threw together after the night attack failed. Of course they're to chime in with anything relevant they think he missed, that's a good point he hadn't considered about the watch schedules; the second emergency reassignment might not impact the 11th cohort's combat skills but it will mess with things if the legion has to do an evacuation in their off hours, so he needs to either rework that a bit more or let them off early so they can encamp further from the perimeter- 

About half an hour into this planning, there's an visitor at the hanging back respectfully near the entrance of his command tent. There's some news from the front lines important enough that his men think he'll want to hear, but they're not sure it's worth interrupting the report he's currently getting from the chief engineer on their fallback line fortifications.

If something had happened that was important enough to be worth interrupting, they'd be sure. It won't be much longer though, he's got time after this meeting.

So, what's the news?

They've got some more prisoners. Not ones that were hiding somewhere or anything, though, they just showed up in front of one of the fortifications, unarmed and with a cart full of foreign valuables. They're dressed bizarrely, but differently from most of the prisoners; for one thing, they're pretty sure it's real gold thread, and they've got some high quality jewelry of whatever glass substitute the locals seem to favor for that kind of thing. 

Barbarian aristocrats of some kind, then, or favored servants thereof. Hopefully the men have had the sense not to rough them up too much? 

That raises the question of what they're here for. The most likely guess he's got is some kind of prisoner ransom; he and his men have captured a lot of barbarians over the last day, and it seems plausible that some of them would have people trying to negotiate their release. Almost certainly they'll try and get away with a lowball for it, but given that he doesn't plan to stick around as neighbors for them indefinitely, he's not inherently opposed to getting haggled down a bit in the aim of expediency. (In this case obviously the negotiators will be returned either way, even if they can't come to a deal, unless their behavior in negotiations goes beyond the pale - it's one thing to capture an foreign noble in war, but capturing people who come to pay ransoms is cutting off your nose to spite your face.) Another possibility is the similar ransom of some looted property, perhaps a family heirloom spirited away in the sack. It could even be a plot from someone on the other side to get rid of some enemies of theirs, or as an opening offer of weregild like the northerners practiced. 

Or they could be here to assassinate someone. It wouldn't be the first time one of the empire's enemies engaged in some perfidy to try and scrabble for an advantage against the legions, and there's sometimes a hope that killing a Legate and a few of their top brass will break the back of the invasion. It wouldn't work, not for long, but that would be cold comfort to his corpse if they pulled it off. Not for the first time, he wishes he had the benefit of a local guide, or even a travelogue from some past visitor to the place, to give him a better sense of their national character.