Gods and Legions

by Michael Curtis Ford

  'And I have experience with war injuries?'

  He waved me off with a grin. 'Bah, I've seen you dive into those autopsies. You yourself boast of your detailed knowledge of anatomy. Not like those butchers Constantius already has assigned to the army as physicians, who would just as soon saw off my leg to cure me of a spider bite. I'll trust my bodily safety to no one else, Caesarius.'

  After a forced march of four days, we arrived in Autun on the twenty-fourth of June. The barbarians, having espied our arrival from the fields surrounding the city's besieged walls, swiftly abandoned the site before we were even within view of the garrison. Julian had won his first battle, with a ragtag, improvised army, without letting fly a single arrow.

  To my great surprise, however, he was terribly disappointed at not having encountered the enemy, for during the march he had taken pains to closely question Sallustius and veterans familiar with the layout of the land at Autun. He had devised a complicated plan of attack involving feints and counterfeints and was eager to try out his newfound military skills. Declaring this the beginning of the season's campaign, he resolved to set out for Reims, to combine his little force with the army's main body there. Accordingly, he gathered that portion of the local garrison that Autun could spare — a company of cataphracti, heavily armored cavalry troops, and a squad of ballistarii, soldiers in charge of the large rock-hurling machines. He also decided not to take the safest route to the army at Reims, but rather the shortest — a road that led him through Auxerre and Troyes, but which passed through some of the most dangerous country in the province, where his troops would be constantly exposed to ambush by the marauding Alemanni.

  As at Autun, the mere appearance of a Roman legion was sufficient to drive the outnumbered barbarians away without mishap. Julian stood on the crumbling city walls and surveyed the lightly armored forces of barbarian raiders beating an expert, controlled retreat across the surrounding fields on their swift horses, shouting taunts at the Romans as they melted into the forests. He then continued on toward Troyes. This time, however, his troops faced the full brunt of an Alemanni force that attacked them on the way. The barbarians would have done better to strike sooner, however, for Julian's marching strength by this time was close to five thousand, from the additional troops he had picked up in Autun and Auxerre. With the discipline of his battle-hardened veterans, and some quick-thinking tactical maneuvers he devised on his own, to the quiet admiration of Sallustius, he was able to turn back the barbarians from two vicious attacks, even taking a quantity of valuable plunder and horses.

  He arrived at Troyes a full three days before the besieged garrison thought it would be possible — so early, in fact, that the garrison at first refused to even recognize their new leader, fearing instead some ruse on the part of the Alemanni. It took a great deal of effort, and Julian's very best rhetoric shouted through a bullhorn, before the Troyes garrison could be persuaded to voluntarily open the gates to us. After a brief rest here for his increasingly enthusiastic troops, he collected another two thousand soldiers and veterans from the surrounding cities and countryside, and marched on Reims to meet his generals, with an impressive array of somewhat mismatched forces that scarcely three weeks earlier had hardly existed as a military body, except in Julian's imagination.

  Arriving at the city after a three-day march, he was greeted at the gate by an honor guard of Roman soldiers, who led him and his seven thousand troops through the thronging streets of the ancient city under the watchful eyes of its curious citizens. At the gates of the palace that Marcellus and Ursicinus occupied along with their staff, the two generals stood on the front steps, in formal greeting of their Caesar, who was nominally their direct superior. The word 'greeting,' however, does not adequately describe their attitude, for the term typically implies a form of welcome, and, in cases involving a direct representative of the Augustus himself, should involve at least a certain degree of supplication. There was nothing of supplication, however, in the expressions and stances demonstrated by the two generals waiting for Julian.

  The bulk of his troops halted and stood at regal attention, arrayed by company, in the enormous courtyard in front of the forbidding palace, which was actually the former outer walls of an ancient military fortress that had been overtaken and encompassed by the growing city around it. The walls and battlements, themselves no longer performing the defensive task for which they had been built centuries before, had had their outer stones redressed and artfully plastered as befitted the elegant administrative headquarters of a sophisticated major regional city; yet they still retained the imposing height and thickness of the fortress they once guarded.

  Julian's coterie of 'senior officers,' twenty or thirty grizzled centurions he had pulled out of retirement from their allotted farms around Vienne and pressed into service with a promise of promotion and double wages, walked their horses to the foot of the stairs with him, where he motioned them to halt, but to remain mounted. He himself dismounted, as did Sallustius, and side by side the two strode up the long flight of stone steps to the portico, where the generals stood at attention, watching them coldly.

  If ever I have seen the eye of a dead man, and I have seen plenty, it was nothing compared with the cold, lifeless stare of Marcellus as he observed Julian approaching him from below. A short, stocky man of middle age, with a dark shadow of beard showing beneath the cheek plates of his ceremonial helmet, he stood squarely, chest thrust, shoulders back, drawn up to his full height, and utterly motionless with the exception of his small, dark eyes. His twitchy gaze as it passed between Sallustius and Julian was all the more bright and disturbing as it gleamed from under the dark foreridge of the headgear.

  Ursicinus, the former commander whom Constantius had ordered kept in his position as an adviser to Marcellus, was easier to read. Several inches taller than his younger colleague, he too was stocky and swarthy, though his weight appeared not to be of the hard-muscled variety, but rather of the softness of age, of one having served too long in the military in regions requiring little physical challenge on the part of the local garrisons. His face was paler and somewhat plumper, and his eyes, too, darted back and forth between Julian and Sallustius, though with more than a hint of amusement in them, and a slight upturn to the corners of the mouth.

  'Hail, Caesar!' Marcellus said loudly when Julian and Sallustius arrived at the top of the stairs. I noticed, however, that the general was facing Sallustius when he said this, and that Julian even stepped slightly to the side, perhaps out of amusement. 'As general of the Roman army in Gaul, I bid you welcome to the stronghold of Reims, which the barbarians tremble to approach and where the townspeople live in peace and safety under the protection of the twenty-five thousand troops serving the mighty Emperor Constantius. Greetings, Caesar, and all hail!' He then swept low and stepped to the side, beckoning for Sallustius to pass and enter the Great Hall.

  To my amazement, I realized that General Marcellus had somehow confused the two men, though upon further reflection I admit that this is not as astonishing as it may sound. Sallustius had spent most of his career in the eastern theater of operations and was unknown to Marcellus, and of course Julian had never had any exposure to the military ranks at all before arriving in Vienne a few months before. Marcellus had most likely been apprised of Julian's promotion through a dry military dispatch, which lacked any sort of physical description of the new Caesar. Believing him to be a mere figurehead, there is really no reason why Marcellus should have been concerned with the prospect of meeting Julian personally. And when the occasion did arise, he simply assumed that the more regal-looking of the two men — Sallustius — was the Caesar.

  Sallustius stared at Marcellus silently for a moment, deciding how best to disabuse the general of his misplaced identification, and then glanced slyly over to Julian. Julian gave Sallustius a quick, expressionless, almost imperceptible wink.

  Sallustius nodded slightly to the two generals and strode imperiously past them into the Great Hall, an
d Julian began to step into place behind him. Marcellus and Ursicinus quickly closed ranks with their own bodies directly behind Sallustius, however, and marched him into the palace, leaving Julian to trail in the rear. As he disappeared behind the enormous, bronze-sheathed doors guarding the palace's entrance, he gave a quick look back at the troops, his face betraying only the slightest hint of amusement. Scattered titters rose from those in the front ranks on the steps below who were able to see and hear the brief ceremony of welcome, and then the palace guards stepped back into their places before the doors and snapped to attention, glaring haughtily down the steps at the battle-stained men before them. The troops broke formation and sat where they were in the middle of the forum, trading loud wisecracks with the starched and polished garrison, who remained at attention around them. The garrison troops' shining armor, clean-shaven jaws, and immaculately tanned strap leather were in sharp contrast to the grimy, sweat-drenched veterans who had accompanied Julian from routing the barbarians in three cities.

  I regret, Brother, that I was unable to be a fly on the wall at this initial meeting with his army's two top generals, though I later heard snatches of what transpired from comments dropped by Sallustius. Although Ursicinus wisely remained silent for most of the conversation, in his role as observer, Marcellus, apparently, made a regular fool of himself. He spoke endlessly without letting the others get in a word, alternately fawning on Sallustius as the presumed Caesar, and patronizing him as the militarily ignorant cousin of the Emperor, who would be learning under the expertise of himself, the true military strategist.

  The truth became apparent only when Marcellus stopped to catch his breath, preparing to dismiss his presumptive superior and the casually dressed young lackey tagging behind. At that point, Julian stepped forward.

  'Thank you, General, for your warm welcome of both myself and my adviser Sallustius,' he said, and Sallustius bowed to Marcellus as the general stared in astonishment. 'I am indeed grateful for your military preparedness, though I might have been more impressed had you used your twenty-five thousand soldiers to rid your territory of barbarians, which I have somehow been able to do with a handful of retired veterans over the past four weeks.'

  Marcellus mouthed silent protests like a fish gasping out of water, and the meeting only further degenerated from there. After an hour, I heard scattered shouts as the men around me began to gather their weapons and stand, and looking up I saw that the four leaders had emerged, though in quite a different order of appearance than before. Julian marched first out the brass doors, looking younger than before, if possible, his eyes flashing as he gazed down proudly at his troops. Sallustius stood just behind and to his right, his brooding presence impassive as ever, his dark eyes betraying no hint of any emotion as he stared calmly out at the men gathered in the forum.

  Behind them walked Marcellus, stoop-shouldered and with a haggard face, like one whose diet consists of too much lard and insufficient fruit. His gaze avoided his own wondering troops lining the outside of the forum. He focused instead, with an expression of muted fury, on the animated face of Julian, whose arms were now raised as he motioned the troops to silence. Ursicinus, standing beside Marcellus, bore an expression of slight bemusement.

  'Soldiers!' Julian shouted, and the men's shouts and calls gradually died to a subdued murmur. 'Soldiers! I address you not as "gentlemen," as did Xenophon when exhorting his troops, nor as "countrymen," as does the Emperor, but with the proudest title a Roman can bear: "Soldiers!"'

  The men cheered lustily. Julian sought out my eyes in the crowd and smiled slightly. His stance and gestures as he stood before the troops were somewhat awkward and contrived, the pose of a student calmly debating a belabored point of sophistry before a like-minded crowd of academics. Still, I noticed as he raised his hands to quiet the troops that he consciously mimicked the broad, sweeping arm motions and commanding jut of the chin that had so well served Constantius, who himself was a master orator. Julian's trump was his youth and confidence, his open sincerity with his men. With a little practice and coaching, I reflected, young Julian would be giving even the Emperor a run for his money.

  'For too long,' he continued as the men gradually fell silent, 'you have been serving inside your walls; for too long you have been on the defensive; for too long you have been eating preserved rations from the quartermaster, polishing your armor, maintaining your fitness by combat among yourselves, unable to prove your superiority against the barbarians just outside your gates. For too long, soldiers, the Alemanni have failed to feel the fury and the might of the Roman army. They have strayed with impunity beyond their borders, ravaging the countryside and occupying the lands — Roman lands, for this is Gaul, this is land your ancestors conquered under Julius Caesar four hundred years ago, this is land as Roman as Sicily — and it shall remain Roman!'

  The cheers increased in volume, with scattered clanging of shields on knees. I felt a terrible unease, however — Julian had stepped far beyond the role to which Constantius had assigned him. Julian would ascribe his actions to a greater cause, to the task of saving a diminished Roman Gaul from attacks by savages and the incompetence of its own military leaders. True, patriotism is a cause that is difficult to reproach. But overriding those same military leaders without orders, as he was so blatantly doing — at what point does patriotism become treason?

  'Tomorrow, lads — tomorrow, soldiers! — by the grace of the Almighty God we shall emerge from our walls fighting, and we shall not stop until we have reached the Rhine and cleared it of the infernal barbarian presence, from its source in the Alps to its mouth in the North Sea! We have marched from Vienne to Autun, from Auxerre to Troyes, routing the Alemanni and reclaiming Gaul for Rome and the Emperor. We will continue our march of death and salvation. Tomorrow, by God, our forces will have been combined under the joint command of General Marcellus and myself, and woe to the barbarians, who have never seen such fire and steel as we will give them in the bellies, who have never felt such muscles as we will flex — whose memories of mighty Rome, their rulers and masters, have begun to fail them, but who will soon be reminded of the penalties to be paid for their insolence. Tomorrow we shall start!'

  The forum erupted in a massive cheer, as Marcellus' disciplined forces lining the colonnade joined with Julian's rough-hewn veterans. The Caesar stood erect and still for a moment, and then stepping forward to the front ranks of his men, he seized a cavalry lance that had been fitted with one of the mounting hooks. Spying his horse, which a groom had led forward as if by prearrangement, he deftly flipped the weapon backward, raced several steps toward the waiting stallion, and vaulted flawlessly onto its back. The troops exploded. Never had they had a leader, much less a full Caesar, who was so much one of them. Julian drank it in, his lance raised in triumph and his horse rearing and prancing on cue, as Marcellus slumped, glaring in fury at the man who had so deeply humiliated him.

  That night the air was heavy with the smell of burning flesh, as the worshipers of Mithras among Julian's troops celebrated their triumph over the Alemanni with a sacrifice of three oxen. The carcasses burned on an altar whose flames were visible for miles around, a stark repudiation of the attacks of the roving barbarians. It was also, I felt, a repudiation of the victory of Christ over these obsolete and satanic pagan sacrifices, and I sought Julian out to demand that he put a stop to such rituals. I found him in the vicinity of the altar itself, from which sizzling blood was still flowing down the makeshift gutters and forming in pools at the feet of the priests who energetically tended the roaring flames. He was surrounded by a company of his men, eating heartily of the charred meat they offered him from the coals and laughing uproariously at the crude camp jokes and ditties they plied him with in their drunken good humor. Unable to force my way through the crowd of troops to catch his attention, I left in a foul mood.

  That summer was one to remember, one of terror and victory. Though Sallustius continued to offer valuable advice from his long years of experience, he
no longer dominated the late-night strategy sessions. Julian had gained much confidence, and the student now surpassed the master in craftiness and skill. Gathering together the bulk of his combined army, the Caesar marched east to the Rhine, leaving sulking Marcellus behind to consolidate the earlier conquests of that spring. Despite the barbarians' best efforts, their wiliness, their ability to appear unexpectedly in our very midst or melt into the forests at will, Julian seemingly had them stymied. With almost bewildering speed and precision, he divided his forces to lure the Alemanni into indefensible valley positions, where they were surrounded. He routed their camps and destroyed their fortresses, capturing their scouts to prevent his presence and intentions from being disclosed, seeming to be everywhere at once, yet nowhere the barbarians ever expected him.

  In fury they fled east before him to the Rhine, where they resolved to make their pitched stand; yet in Julian's cunning, he had sent divisions of troops racing ahead of them through the Vosges mountains to intercept them before their arrival at the river, preventing them from consolidating their forces into a beachhead. The barbarians fled across the river in disarray, commandeering any available vessels, sometimes riding nothing more than logs paddled out into the stream for the current to take them away, anywhere, as long as it was far from the Caesar's fury. After every victory, large or small, he ordered an immediate count and inspection of the enemy dead, even before the Roman victims themselves were buried, and it was always the same question he anxiously put to Sallustius:

  'What of Chonodomarius, the Beast? Has he been captured? Killed?'

  Sallustius would carefully scan the ledgers prepared for him by the parties detailed to strip the enemy dead, seeking any description that might indicate great physical size, or armor or body ornamentation more elaborate than that of the typical barbarian soldier — even evidence that uncommonly large weapons had been retrieved — but his answer was always the same.