Gods and Legions

by Michael Curtis Ford

  As I leaned against a rail watching, the stable slave gave a signal and then began loudly counting beats with a drum, measuring elapsed time. Julian rushed to his gear while simultaneously cinching his armor, and in a single, fluid motion that astonished me with its focused gracefulness, he hoisted the heavy shield onto his left shoulder and picked up the lance. He then began running toward his waiting horse, which was itself heavily mailed, even to the bronze faceplate and rounded iron blinders over its eyes to prevent it from seeing anything but straight ahead.

  At first, Julian lumbered slowly in his heavy armor, then gradually picked up speed and momentum, as the slung shield slapped loudly against his back. It was then that I noticed something odd — the lance he was carrying in his right hand, which had been fitted with the strange hooked device, was backward — the tip was pointed to the rear. I sighed, and resigned myself to another embarrassing attempt by Julian to demonstrate skill at arms.

  Just as he neared the animal, however, which was beginning to skitter and paw in anticipation as he heard his rider's clanking approach, Julian planted the thick butt end of his lance into the ground some four feet from the horse's left hooves, and drove his body in toward the shaft. The pole lifted to the vertical, flexing slightly, and he leaped into the air and swung upward with his two hands on the shaft. He then planted his left foot on the hook as if it were a ladder rung, lifted his right leg, and dropped easily and gracefully up onto the enormous horse's back, armor and all. In the same motion he kneed the animal sharply, causing it to rear back and paw the air as he calmly tightened his grip on the reins with his right hand and flipped his lance forward with his left; then deftly swinging the pointed head of the weapon forward, he braced the shaft squarely against the top of the horse's head, between its ears, and raced off like an arrow shot.

  I was dumbfounded.

  'Nothing like four hours of practice a day to improve your mounting,' said a voice next to me. It was Sallustius, who had sidled up in silence as I watched.

  'The lance hook is ingenious,' I said. 'I'm sorry I doubted you.'

  'Developed by the Spartans,' he noted laconically, ignoring my apology, as we watched Julian canter confidently around the arena. 'I've ordered one made for every cavalryman in Vienne.'

  It was Julian, naturally, who first demonstrated the lancevault technique to the city's garrison and reserves at a ceremony held at the arena that spring to launch the campaigning season. The garrison's champion swordsmen first gave an impressive show of the bladework and shield technique for which they had trained all winter and in which they were now to drill their comrades. Boxing and wrestling then ensued, followed by demonstrations of feats of strength among the infantry companies. Finally, the cavalry squad, decked in heavy ornamental armor, divided themselves into two teams of twenty, distinguished by dramatic enameled masks depicting golden-coiffed Amazons and Olympian gods. At a signal, the two sides raised a shout, and raced toward each other across the arena at a thundering gallop, smashing into their opponents with blunted weapons and a blinding cloud of dust, fiercely striving to knock the opposing riders off their mounts. The ferocity of their charges was astonishing, and at the time, Brother, I could scarcely believe that actual battle with the Alemanni could have been any more brutal. Lance tips snapped in the foining and flew winging into the stands, shields split and shattered from the impact of the collision, and men who failed to grip their horses securely with armor-clad thighs were thrown twisting and grunting to the ground, where they rolled to avoid the horses' flailing hooves. Those who fell were disqualified, and had no recourse but to scramble stiffly from the sand and hobble to the edge of the arena, nursing their bruises and scrapes, to await the outcome of the match. A few remained writhing where they lay, and had to be dragged to safety by attendants.

  Sallustius sat his horse at the edge of the pit as a referee, though bearing his own heavy shield and lance for protection against the wide-ranging riders who suffered from terrifyingly poor visibility behind their tragedy masks. Several times he was forced to spur his horse forward into their midst, shouting the men down and splitting them apart if tempers frayed and the teams refused to retreat to their corners after each charge. After a dozen fierce attacks, all to the raucous cheers of a thousand overexcited and half-drunk veterans, he finally awarded the laurel crown to the two horsemen still remaining on their mounts, both of them from the Olympian team — their shattered lances and dented armor attesting to their valor and strength.

  Sallustius remained at his post while the arena was quickly swept and the obstacle course erected for the final event, the horsemanship demonstration, in which Julian was scheduled as the last of the riders to participate. His intent, of course, was to observe Julian's performance at close hand, and to shout out any instructions the Caesar might require, though as it turned out, such assistance was entirely unnecessary. When Julian's time arrived, he strode into the ring bearing gold-plated ceremonial armor even heavier than the set I had first seen him wear, and topped by another of the ominous enameled masks depicting a Greek deity with its mouth set in an awful grimace, and only two tiny eyeholes through which to peer.

  Despite these encumbrances, his performance soon silenced the skeptical troops who had been led by rumor and past observation to expect at best a clumsy and simple demonstration. He first deftly demonstrated his innovative mounting technique from both sides of the horse, and with each clean vault he made onto the skittish stallion's back, I could almost hear the jaws dropping around me. He then delivered a stunning display of riding and swordplay, weaving through the series of oaken post-men that had been set up in a row among scattered pits, fire walls, and other obstacles. The troops, enthused now at the skill demonstrated by their Caesar, began a rhythmic stamping of feet that drowned out all conversation. Flawlessly Julian ran his spirited animal through its paces, leaping over high rails and sidestepping ground spikes, all of which had been placed so as to simulate true battle conditions as closely as possible. As he approached the mock enemy forces, he twirled his flashing scimitar in the sun and slashed fiercely from side to side, cleaving and demolishing the unresisting heads with his whirling blade, scattering pulpy, melon-seed brains over his legs and the sides of the horse.

  The men roared their approval and delight, though Julian was still not without some skeptics. Just in front of me a watching centurion applauded politely, but his gaze continued to range over the obstacle course distractedly. 'Why is he cutting at fruit?' he muttered to a colleague as the cheers died down. 'Couldn't they find a cavalryman to spar him?'

  His friend quickly silenced him. 'He's the Caesar! Who would spar with the Caesar in the arena? If you win, you lose. If you lose, you lose. So he hacks at melons.' The logic was impeccable.

  Still, Julian's performance was impressive, particularly given his complete lack of skills only scant months earlier, and the troops' applause was genuine as he completed the difficult course and cantered around the arena, acknowledging their cheers. For show, he even stopped his horse suddenly and reared it back, waving with his sword in the classic depiction of the victorious Roman general. At this, Sallustius shook his head in disgust and began trotting slowly off the field to the side stables. His work, for the moment, was complete.

  Suddenly, just as the raucous cheering had begun dying down, Julian leaned forward, adjusted his mask, and kneed his animal. The horse leaped ahead, eyes rolling in excitement, and the troops again fell silent at the prospect of another display. He accelerated into a flat-out charge, lowering the blunted lance he had been carrying against his hip to the horizontal attack position. At the loud thudding of hooves behind him, Sallustius stopped his own mount and turned around to see what foolishness Julian might be attempting. As far as Sallustius was concerned, the demonstration was over, but from the glint in Julian's eyes behind his white-faced mask, I could see that this was no demonstration, and that Julian was now in earnest.

  Sallustius spied the charge from half the arena's length
away, and with his practiced soldier's ease and a hint of a smile he quickly unslung and mounted his own shield and steadied his own ball-tipped lance while spurring his horse forward to a sprint. Julian thundered straight and unhesitatingly, his heavy bronze cavalry shield braced firmly against the fulcrum of his thigh, swaying only slightly back and forth as he countered the bobbing arc of Sallustius' lance tip, while at the same time feinting and weaving with his own weapon. In complete concentration he sought the slight opening, the overplayed hand, that would allow him to slip the balled point around his opponent's shield to the face or chest behind.

  The watching troops fell silent — to the point that I could hear Julian's rhythmic breathing and grunts behind his mask as the horses stormed toward each other. With a flurry of dust and a loud CRACK! both weapons slammed into the opposing shields, and a three-foot section of shattered lance flew into the air and spun crazily into the crowd. With the brutal crash of the weapons, both lance-wood and men yielded and broke. The warhorses, reins loosened and riders' knees ungripped, continued forward in their own fierce momentum and smashed into each other, falling in a writhing, whinnying heap of hooves and snapping teeth. As the animals struggled to their feet and staggered off to the edge of the ring, both men lay still for a moment where they had fallen. I began pushing past the troops at my side, making my way toward the arena to treat the injuries I was certain to find there. This was unnecessary, however, for first Julian, then Sallustius, sat up and painfully rose to their feet, groggy and unbalanced under the stiff weight of the heavy cavalry armor.

  Immediately, spontaneously, the troops stood and erupted in a loud roar, and Julian raised his mask and acknowledged their cheer with a weary grin and a wave of his hand, blood flowing from one nostril down his chin and dripping to the sand from beneath his helmet. Sallustius, too, face impassive as ever, nodded to the soldiers and accepted their praise. Julian then bent slowly and picked up his lance, the tipped end neatly broken off during the tremendous impact with Sallustius' shield. He examined it ruefully, and then held it high in his right hand in a kind of salute, raising another roar from the men at this trophy of his mock battle. Finally, turning to Sallustius with a sheepish expression, he advanced toward him with his arms wide, as if to embrace him in acknowledgment of his courage and skill.

  He didn't make it far, though to his credit the judges deemed it a perfectly fair blow, and the men's raucous laughter afterwards would appear to confirm them in this ruling. For as Sallustius bent awkwardly in his stiff-kneed armor to pick up his own dropped weapon, Julian took careful aim, and with a robust prod of his broken lance, knocked the surprised Sallustius ignominiously back into the dust.

  VI

  That Spring of the year commonly calculated as being the three hundred fifty-sixth since the birth of Our Lord and the one thousand ninety-first since the founding of the city of Rome, Sallustius, Julian, and I spent daily in deep discussion at the headquarters, surrounded by an enormous quantity of maps, crumpled parchment, and reference documents, planning the campaign for the year to come. Many hours were spent in close consultation with the various tribunes and cohort leaders of the legions, devising strategy and shuffling troop deployments, arranging supply drops and reviewing prisoner interrogations. It was during one such session that the old eunuch Eutherius entered without knocking, eliciting an irritated glance from Julian.

  This breach of protocol, so minor by any stretch of the imagination as to hardly be worthy of notice in this chronicle, was, however, so extraordinarily out of character for the excellent Eutherius as to beggar a short digression.

  Like his old tutor Mardonius or his physician Oribasius, there was not a time in the young Caesar's life when he could not remember being in the near presence of this ancient eunuch, who was now well into his ninth decade. The fellow had served Julian's uncle Constantine as head chamberlain forty years before, and Constantine's son Constans after that, and it may sound incredible to say, but although he was a eunuch, he was possibly the most honorable, gentle, and trustworthy man I had ever met. Xenophon had observed long ago that while castration in animals might tame their wildness, it did not diminish their strength or spirit; and he claimed that among men, those who were separated by castration from the rest of humankind would become even more personally loyal to their benefactor. My own experience with eunuchs, this disruptive, meddling breed, would seem to put the lie to such a claim. In fact, it was once said that if the great Socrates were to speak well of a eunuch, even he would be accused of lying. Old Eutherius, however, was a pearl, far removed from the unctuous, sneering, conniving sorts usually representative of such men, a true example of how roses may grow even in the midst of thorns.

  Perhaps the quality of his manhood was so high because he was not raised as a eunuch, but rather as a freeborn son of free parents, who was captured as a young adult by pirates, castrated out of sheer maliciousness, and then sold into slavery. Far from falling into despair over this unfortunate turn of events, he made the most of his new condition, and his studious nature, rectitude, and intelligence were soon recognized and brought to the Emperor's attention. Eutherius was found to have a prodigious memory and the judgment of a sage, and as a counselor and mentor he was perhaps the most valuable property that Julian inherited from Constans after his assassination. Eutherius had been allowed to recede into a gentle retirement only a few years before, but when Julian was made Caesar, he called his old friend out to Gaul, to serve as a reminder of his past and to help him ground his decisions on proper judgment. The man was loyal to a fault, to the point of being entrusted with all of the Caesar's personal financial affairs, and Julian would have happily staked him his own life.

  In any event, on this day Eutherius entered the staff room without knocking, and unceremoniously cleared his throat. Julian looked up.

  'My lord,' he said, 'forgive me for disturbing you, but we have just received an urgent missive from the garrison at Autun. The barbarians have laid siege.'

  Sallustius and Julian stood up, their stools clattering to the floor behind them. The matter was serious. Autun was a noble and industrious city, an important trading center in the interior of the province. It was a stronghold, though the walls had been weakened by centuries of decay, and Constantius and his generals had not made the effort to rebuild them. It was inconceivable that the Alemanni could have strayed so far from their Rhone forests, for Autun was a good hundred miles from the previous limits of their invasions. In fact, it put them within striking distance of even more important Roman cities, Auxerre, Sens, and Paris to the north, Lyons and even Vienne to the south, which would block the entire Rhone river. The main body of the Roman army under Marcellus was still in winter quarters far to the north in Reims, and we could not be certain they had even received news of the attack. In any case, Autun and the besieging barbarians now stood between us and Marcellus, so with our direct line of communication to the main army cut, it would be impossible to coordinate effectively with them, even if Marcellus did receive word in time to take action himself. Julian began quickly ruffling through the stack of military maps on the table before him. Sallustius gazed down at him coolly.

  'Gently, gently,' he warned. 'Neither battles nor women are won by rushing. Invite your worthy chamberlain to sit with us and explain what he has heard, and we shall devise a plan.'

  Though Sallustius moved calmly, encouraging lengthy pondering of the situation, Julian acted instinctively, issuing orders to the troops to mobilize immediately. In addition to the warrior clerics he had inherited from Milan, who by dint of steady and exhaustive training had become a formidable if somewhat reluctant fighting force whom he referred to as his Acolytes, he had available some two thousand other troops in various garrisons within two days' march of Vienne, as well as that many again retired veterans of the Roman army who had taken Gallic wives and settled in the area. Sallustius and Eutherius worked tirelessly, night and day for three revolutions of the sun, to mobilize and equip a fighting force. Julia
n himself dealt with the prefects and provincial administrators, promising future payment and honors, to obtain the equipment, road crews, and civil support he needed to accompany a Roman army on the march. To my great surprise and pleasure, though Julian still had little firsthand experience with administration, he was proving to be a master at improvisation. On the fourth day, he reviewed his troops, possibly the largest body of soldiers Vienne had seen in one gathering since Julius Caesar had passed through centuries earlier.

  Helena wept. 'You're only a boy,' she sobbed, in unwitting condescension. 'Send Sallustius to lead the troops and stay with me. Stay with your child.'

  Julian hesitated, knowing that the duty and the objective he had created for himself lay with the army, but uncertain how best to comfort his wife. I stepped forward and placed my hand on Helena's shoulder.

  'She'll be fine,' I said, reassuring him. 'There is nothing you can do for her here, until her time. Meanwhile I will continue to monitor her. She is having an exemplary pregnancy.'

  He looked at me with a hint of amusement. 'I'm pleased she's doing so well,' he said, 'and that you're so willing to make the sacrifice. But there's no need. Oribasius will care for Helena in my absence.'

  My face must have registered my surprise at this news, for although Oribasius was considered one of the best of his profession, I still had little trust in his techniques. To me they smacked too much of witchcraft and soothsaying rather than the solid science I hoped to promote among Julian's family and the army.

  Before I could protest, however, he explained. 'Don't reproach me, Caesarius. I need my best men with me on campaign, not monitoring morning sickness — even for the Caesar's wife! Oribasius is too unfit to accompany me into battle — and he has no experience with war injuries in any case.'