Gods and Legions (30 page)

'You're mad!' I exclaimed, not realizing at the time how presciently I spoke. 'Are you willing to lose your very soul for the sake of some primitive sacrifices to keep a few malcontents in the army from deserting? Julian, listen to me – this is madness! I know about Oribasius' leaflets – this whole campaign is madness!'

'Madness?' His eyes widened in astonishment. 'Then you don't believe, do you? All this is a lark! Madness lies with Constantius, in leading the Empire to the brink of ruin in Persia!
That,
my friend, is madness! Don't you see how my hand was forced? To you, is the survival of Rome only... secondary?' At my silence, his mouth broke into a thin, mirthless smile, though the rest of his face took on an impassive cast. '
Semel insanivimus omnis,
' he intoned.

We have all been mad once.

Without a word, I backed my horse away from his, wheeled, and began trotting away. He paused for a moment in astonishment at my abrupt departure, and then cantered up to my side and again placed his horse directly in front of mine, stopping my progress.

'Caesarius!' he said loudly, his voice having regained the commanding tone he used when ordering his men. He had clearly taken offense at my brusque maneuver. For any other man, such rudeness to a superior officer, a Caesar no less, would have been grounds for demotion, or even dismissal from the service. At that moment, I didn't care.

I stared back at him in calm defiance. My horse stood still, even as Julian's danced and shied, eager to be away. Julian looked at me silently, as if debating with himself how best to judge or punish me for my treatment of him, weighing friendship against duty and protocol. Finally, he found his voice.

'The hecatomb will be lit, Caesarius. And I
will
be Emperor.' He then galloped off without further word. The matter was over.

I refused to watch the proceedings that afternoon, the very idea of which was repugnant to me, though I could not block from my ears the sounds of the priests, particularly the repulsive Gallic haruspex Aprunculus, as they chanted their infernal cries to the demons, and the men cheering when the omens were read. I was even told later, to my utter disbelief at the time, that Julian himself had participated in the role of a priest, personally slaughtering an ox. The odor of roasting meat wafting through the camp that afternoon rankled me, and at the same time made my mouth water uncontrollably, which rankled me all the more. I prayed to our Lord that He might make it as of a putrid stench in my nostrils, and I rode off alone into the cold and darkness of the surrounding scrub forests for the remainder of the day, out of ear- and noseshot of the offending ceremony.

IV

From the height of the Soucian pass, to which Julian rode every two or three days to check on his troops' placement and the progress of the fortifications, he had a clear view of the preparations being made in the valley below by the enemy. Constantius himself, of course, was nowhere near the vicinity; according to dispatches we read from several of his couriers our scouts had captured, he was still making his lumbering return home from the East after Sapor, the mighty King of Kings, had given up his impending attack on Roman territories without a struggle. The Persian justified the abandonment of his campaign by claiming unfavorable omens. Though not a drop of blood had been shed, nor an inch of territory gained or lost, Constantius had declared a great victory and was now returning to Constantinople in majestic, triumphal procession. From the comfort of his imperial city he planned to deploy all his unbloodied eastern legions to crush his disappointing upstart from Gaul once and for all.

He was reputed to still be as far away as Antioch when the valley below suddenly came alive before our eyes. Within a matter of days after our seizure of the heights, a large contingent of the Emperor's forces, part of the permanent Thracian legions under the command of Count Marcianus, marched leisurely in ominous procession into the head of the valley and halfway up the side of the pass. They set up camp on the bank of a stream, posted sentries almost within shouting distance of our own advance outposts, and began methodically cutting the surrounding timber for fortifications, to prevent us from surprising and overrunning their troops before further reinforcements could arise. The notion of such a thing happening was laughable, of course – even this initial contingent far outnumbered the troops we would ever be able to spare for a surprise attack. The only positive aspect to these preparations that I could see was that the enemy apparently felt us to be much more powerful, and Julian's reputation much more formidable, than was actually the case. Therefore if we were somehow able to strike soon, before the enemy's troops were reinforced, their unwarranted fears might somehow work to our favor.

Julian, however, for the first time in years, was paralyzed by indecision – no, not indecision, for what options did he have from which to decide? The result was the same, however, a lack of action, endless and inconclusive meetings with his military advisers, entire nights of restless pacing through his quarters and among the encampment. Reinforcements were out of the question – the word from our rear was that Jovinus had become hopelessly tied down in northern Italy with various local rebellions and was scrambling to prevent the uprising of the entire countryside at our back. Julian was clearly suffering, though for what it was worth, I made my own peace with him after our earlier dispute. This was no time to be engaging in personal quarrels, and at least my conscience is clear on that score.

Two weeks after the arrival of Count Marcianus' troops in the valley, we noted further activity.

Shouts of drovers and the cracking of whips that could be heard as far as our entrenchments suddenly floated to our ears, and the forward sentries clambered atop rocky outcroppings and craned their necks to see what might be emerging in the valley below us now. At first far in the distance, and then slowly becoming more visible, teams of oxen appeared, yoked in sets of twelve and twenty-four, hauling enormous wagons with wheels the height of a man, bearing equipment or goods invisible to us because covered by heavy canvas tarps. For three days the beasts strained up the steep, rock-strewn pass, with the creaking, groaning wagons bearing their heavy burden, followed improbably by an additional two legions of light infantry,
lancearii
bearing their long, bronze-tipped weapons and
mattiarii
armed with their small javelins. These were the vanguard of Constantius' eastern army under the command of a general named Arbetio, who had rushed west to reinforce the Emperor's Thracian troops. Arbetio had only now arrived, just in time to become bogged down in the narrow road by the siege engines ordered up by Marcianus weeks before.

The contraptions were enormous, cunningly designed to topple or batter through the flimsy, stacked-rock fortifications our troops were rushing to complete before the first snows arrived. Huge
ballistarii
to fling heavy stones at our troops as they worked, catapults armed with enormous iron-tipped bolts, quantities of other equipment, all intended to soften up our defenses and prevent us from strengthening our own fortifications. Why, you might ask, did we not build our own engines, and rain destruction down on our attackers from the heights with gravity as our ally, to prevent them from establishing a base so near our lines? I hesitate to place blame, Brother, but this was clearly an oversight on our part – for on our side of the pass for many tens of miles there grew no trees sturdy enough to support the enormous stresses caused by the whipping of the levers or the weight of the boulders, much less to construct the carts needed on which to mount such devices; nor did we have the manpower to send off into distant woods to cut and move such timber. The oversight? That Julian had failed to foresee this lack of materials, and remedy it by capturing territory in the valley on the far side of the pass, where the trees grew larger and in greater profusion, and where he could have set up a more defensible forward position, using the heights of the pass as a fallback.

All this our troops watched with wonder, their confidence in their leader's skills beginning to wane, despite the fact that several times in the past Julian had faced overwhelming odds but had returned victorious. All our past victories, however, had been against untrained barbarian troops. Now, for the first time, we were facing a
Roman
army, and the difference was clear, in the deliberation of its preparations, the ponderous inevitability of its movements, the sheer discipline evoked in the straight lines of the streets of tents laid out in the camp below, the simplicity yet impermeability of the log palisades, the hourly trumpet blasts we could hear from our heights, calling the troops to review, to dinner, to rise, to sleep, to parade and drill. We were facing a
Roman
army, each man worth any three barbarians we had ever faced before; and their loyalty to their own Emperor was unshakable.

Our men might have been able to endure this, even through the entire winter, had it not been for the enemy's letter. How much of this sad tale has been subject to the impact of a letter? A letter addressed not to Julian but to our men, and its effectiveness rivaled that of its twin earlier in the year, the one drafted by Oribasius, which had so fired up our own troops and their families as to acclaim him a new emperor. After the enemy had set up its first
ballista,
an enormous, ugly affair with a sling braided of the hair of Persian prisoners, and its wheels and stave painted jet black to appear more ominous, they took careful aim and fired a test round at our garrison on the top of the pass, containing not a boulder or incendiary pellets, but rather a sturdy wooden chest filled with hundreds of small sheets of papyrus, which burst when it landed upon the rocky soil of our fortification, strewing the papers about and sending them flying to the four winds.

Each of our two thousand troops on rotation at the pass that week seized one, of course, which turned out to contain the transcript of a speech Constantius had given to his assembled army on the eastern front several weeks before. Nor was it lacking in oratorical skill. In it the Emperor assumed the position of a disappointed father, one who had lavished favor and praises on his trustee Julian, who had returned this love with ingratitude tantamount to patricide. What Julian's actions amounted to, according to the speech, was not only an attack on the unity of the entire Empire, but on the very life of his mentor. Constantius, therefore, had entrusted his soldiers with the task of restoring sanity to the earth by punishing the ungrateful and clearly deranged young man, and by bringing his supporters to justice. All of this was to be meted out with the assistance of the Supreme Deity, whom Constantius, in his sagacity and knowledge of the mixed religious loyalties within his army, declined to identify. In what seemed a pointed reference to Julian's own love of Homer, the Emperor closed his speech with an uncharacteristic quote from the
Iliad
rather than the Scriptures:
A multitude of rulers is not a good thing; let there be one ruler and one king.
On some of the letters the scribes were even kind enough to describe the reaction of Constantius' troops upon hearing this vibrant speech, which naturally involved enthusiastic applause and demonstrations entirely analogous to those that had greeted Julian's own harangue to his soldiers the year before.

The effect on our troops was immediately clear. While desertions in an army under stress are a fact of life, the letter sparked a furor that Julian was unable to contain. The military guard around the camp had to be doubled, then tripled, not to repel the enemy but rather to contain our own troops, until even the guard itself began deserting in droves. The prison stockade that had been hastily assembled was soon filled, until as a gesture of mercy all of those convicted of desertion were released on condition that they not attempt it again. In vain. Within a fortnight of the letter's arrival, a third of our troops had disappeared, either into the cold scrub around us, or, what is more likely, to the enemy position below. Julian's army was falling apart before our very eyes, and Julian himself was increasingly exposed to betrayal or assassination. At this rate, Marcianus and Arbetio would be able to defeat us exactly as they had the King of Kings – without losing a man.

In the absence of any response from Julian, the opposing Romans in the valley became bolder. They had found their aim with the
ballistae,
and now launched random barrages at us, without so much as a warning from their trumpets. Our troops would be hunkered down in their blankets at night, or dispiritedly picking at their cold breakfasts, when suddenly the air would be filled with a rushing and humming sound, as if infested by a flock of gigantic birds. Dozens of stones, some as big as sheep, would come crashing into the camp, sending men diving out of their fragile tents and into the holes they had dug for such an occasion, where they would cower, cursing, festering in their own waste because they were afraid to emerge, waiting for the next volley, which might come five minutes later, or not until late the next day. Though few men were killed in such attacks, the very randomness of the volleys was wearing on us. It was a clear sign, as if we were still ignorant of it, that Constantius' legions were toying with us, knowing they could trample us any day they chose by sheer superiority of numbers, but preferring to wait us out, to risk as few dead on their own side as possible, until our untenable supply lines and our troops' desertions simply caused us to collapse.

Still, however, Julian took no action. Now he hardly emerged from his tent, and only rarely did he even confer with his generals, for there was little to discuss. His contacts were limited to his closest friends, and when I was with him his expression bore a tremendous strain, the tension between the improbability of his hopes and the inevitability of his fears. In the field, there was no movement from either side, with the exception of the continual jostling and blaring of the Roman troops in the valley, who were reinforced by the thousands every day as the eastern legions arrived from the Persian campaign. More leaflets were showered on us by
ballista,
more rocks and missiles, and our men's nerves were at a breaking point. I was sure we could hold no more than a few more days, since even with the desertions there was insufficient food, and Julian had ordered all men on half rations.

On a cold, drizzling day in mid-November two riders were spotted picking their way carefully up the pass. They were dressed in full ambassadorial regalia, and followed at a respectful distance by a small squadron of armed cavalry. Julian was not present at the pass that day, and so the captain in charge of the garrison, a Gaul named Honorius, waited until they had come within easy earshot and then shouted at them to halt, identify themselves, and state their business.

The two ambassadors shouted back that they were Counts Theolaif and Aligildus, that they had just arrived from Constantius' court, and that they demanded to see the Caesar immediately. Honorius had to think quickly. He was under strict orders not to let any of the enemy cross behind his lines on the pretext of negotiations or consultations, for fear they would see how truly thin our defenses were, though by now the enemy must have had a good idea of our predicament from their interrogation of deserters. Nevertheless, although constrained by his orders, he felt the ambassadors might not strictly be covered by the Caesar's prohibition.

Shouting back that he would admit the two counts, but not their bodyguard, the ambassadors quickly conferred with each other, and then, nodding their agreement, raised both their hands and rode slowly up to our lines, where their horses' bridles were seized by our men. The Roman guard stood still for a moment, watching, until the two ambassadors disappeared from view, and then slowly trotted back to their own position.

Honorius raced ahead of the procession to Naissus to inform the Caesar of his guests' imminent arrival, and as the news was broken, a look almost of relief passed across Julian's face.

'So it has come to this,' he said after a moment, dismissing Honorius to await the ambassadors' arrival. 'The ultimatum I have been expecting. How go your prayers, Caesarius? Be current with your confessions, because surely you will either die in the attack today if I refuse their demands, or be slowly flayed when you are brought before Constantius if I surrender.'

Within moments of Honorius' departure Theolaif and Aligildus arrived and were ushered into the headquarters. Their faces were as inscrutable as those of peasants, and to their credit, I thought, they at least avoided the smug, victorious expression that Constantius would certainly have worn under similar circumstances. Julian stood up to greet them, and they cordially bowed to him, even then acknowledging his superior rank.