The Field of Swords

by Conn Iggulden

  Those left alive had been disarmed as quickly as the Tenth could spread amongst them. In small groups, they searched the mercenaries, a single Roman removing blades while the others watched in grim concentration, ready to punish any sudden movement.

  The mercenary officers had been called out of the ranks to stand in front of Julius. They watched him in silent resignation, a strange group, dressed in rough cloth and mismatched armor.

  A breeze blew coldly through the battlefield as the sun sank toward the horizon. Julius looked at the kneeling prisoners arranged in a semblance of ranks, with corpses breaking the neat lines. Catiline’s body had been found and dragged to the front. Julius had looked down at the pierced and bloody thing that had been a senator. There would be no answers from him.

  Though Julius thought he knew the truth of the failed rebellion, he suspected Crassus would remain untouched by his part in it. Perhaps some secrets were better kept from the public gaze. It could not hurt to have the richest man in Rome in his debt.

  He glanced over as Octavian slapped his mount’s neck, practically glowing with the fading thrill of speed and fear. The extraordinarii had been blooded at last. Horses and men were spattered with gore and earth thrown up in the charge. Brutus stood amongst them, exchanging quiet words of praise while he waited for Julius to end it. It was not an order he would have enjoyed, Brutus admitted to himself, but Rome would not allow a show of mercy.

  Julius signaled to the men of the Tenth to herd the officers closer to him. The optios thumped their staffs into the mercenaries, knocking one of them sprawling. The man cried out in anger and would have thrown himself at them if another hadn’t reached out to hold him. Julius listened as they argued, but the language was unknown to him.

  “Is there a commander amongst you?” he asked them at last.

  The leaders looked at each other and then one stood forward.

  “Glavis was, for those of us from Gaul,” the man said. He jerked a thumb back at the piles of bodies that littered the ground. “He’s back there, somewhere.”

  The man returned Julius’s cold appraisal before looking away. He gazed over the battlefield with a sad expression before his eyes snapped back.

  “You have our weapons, Roman. We’re no threat to you anymore. Let us go.”

  Julius shook his head slowly. “You were never a threat to us,” he said, noting the spark of fire that shone in the man’s eyes before it was hidden. He raised his voice to carry to all of them.

  “You have a choice, gentlemen. Either you die at my word . . .” He hesitated. Pompey would go berserk when he heard. “Or you take an oath as legionaries for me, under my orders.”

  The babble of noise that followed was not restricted to the mercenaries. The soldiers of the Tenth gaped at what they were hearing.

  “You will be paid on the first day of each month. Seventy-five silver coins to each man, though part of that will be kept back.”

  “How much of it?” someone called.

  Julius turned in the direction of the voice. “Enough for salt, food, weapons, armor, and a tithe to the widows and orphans. Forty-two denarii will be left for each man to spend as he sees fit.” A thought struck him then and made him hesitate. The pay for so many men would amount to thousands of coins. It would take huge wealth to keep two legions, and even the gold he had brought back from Spain would quickly dwindle under such a demand. How had Catiline found the money? He thrust the sudden suspicions aside to continue.

  “I will seed your ranks with my officers and train you to fight as well as the men who made you look like children today. You will have good swords and armor and your pay will come on time. That or you die now. Go amongst your men and tell them. Warn them that if they are thinking of slipping away, I will hunt them down and hang them. Those who choose to live will be marched back to Rome, but not as prisoners. The training will be hard, but they have courage enough to make a beginning. Anything else can be taught.”

  “Will you give us back our weapons?” the voice came from the officers.

  “Don’t be a fool,” Julius said. “Now move! One way or another, this will be over by sunset.”

  Unable to meet his glare, the mercenaries moved off, heading back to their brothers kneeling in the mud. The legionaries let them pass through, exchanging glances of amazement.

  While they waited, Brutus walked over to stand at Julius’s side.

  “The Senate will not be pleased, Julius. You don’t need any more enemies.”

  “I am in the field,” Julius replied. “Whether they like it or not, in the field I speak for the city. I am Rome, here, and the decision is mine.”

  “But we had orders to destroy them,” Brutus said quietly enough not to be overheard.

  Julius shrugged. “It may come to that yet, my friend, but you should be hoping they will take the oath.”

  “Why should I be hoping that?” Brutus asked suspiciously.

  Julius smiled at him, reaching out to clap him on the shoulder.

  “Because they will be your legion.”

  Brutus held himself very still, taking it in.

  “They broke against us, Julius. Mars himself couldn’t make a legion out of this lot.”

  “You did it once, with Primigenia. You will do it with these. Tell them they survived a charge by the best legion ever to come out of Rome, under a general blessed. Raise their heads for them, Brutus, and they will follow you.”

  “They will be mine alone?” Brutus asked.

  Julius looked into his eyes then. “If you will still be my sword, I swear I will not interfere, though the overall command must be mine when we fight together. Aside from that, if you walk my path, it will be by your own choice—as it has always been.”

  One by one, the mercenary officers were gathering again. As they met, they nodded sharply to each other, visibly relaxing. Julius knew he had them before their spokesman walked toward him.

  “It wasn’t much of a choice,” the man said.

  “There are no . . . dissenters?” Julius said softly. The Gaul shook his head.

  “Good. Then have them stand. When every man has taken the oath, we will light torches and march through the night back to Rome. There is a barracks there for you and a hot meal.” Julius turned to Brutus.

  “Send out the freshest riders carrying messages for the Senate. They won’t know whether we’re the enemy or not, and I don’t want to set off the very rebellion we have fought to prevent.”

  “We are the enemy,” Brutus muttered.

  “No longer, Brutus. Not one of them will take a step before he is bound by oath. After that, they will be ours, whether they know it or not.”

  As Julius rode up to the city with a picked guard of the extraordinarii, he saw the gates had been closed against them. The first gray light of dawn was already showing on the horizon and he felt a gritty tiredness in his joints. There was still more to be done before he could sleep.

  “Open the gate!” he shouted as he reined in, looking up at the shadowed mass of timber and iron that blocked his way.

  A legionary wearing Pompey’s armor appeared on the wall, looking down at them. After a glance at the small group of riders, he peered out along the road, satisfying himself that there was no hidden force waiting to storm into the city.

  “Not till dawn, sir,” he called down, recognizing Julius’s armor. “Pompey’s orders.”

  Julius swore under his breath. “Throw me a rope, then. I have business with the consul and it won’t wait.”

  The soldier disappeared, presumably to see his superior officer. The extraordinarii stirred restlessly.

  “We were told to escort you to the Senate house, General,” one of them ventured.

  Julius turned in his saddle to look at the man. “If Pompey has sealed the city, his legion will be out in force. I’ll be in no danger.”

  “Yes, sir,” the rider replied, discipline preventing him contesting the order.

  On the walls, an officer appeared in full armo
r, his helmet plume moving slightly in the night breeze.

  “Aedile Caesar? I’ll send a rope down to you if you give me your word to come alone. The consuls made no allowance for you to return this early.”

  “You have my oath,” Julius replied, watching as the man signaled and heavy coils came thumping down to the ground at the foot of the gate. He saw archers covering him from the gate towers and nodded to himself. Pompey was no one’s fool.

  As he dismounted and took hold of the rope, Julius looked back at the extraordinarii.

  “Return to the old Primigenia barracks with the others. Brutus is in command until my return.”

  Without another word, he began to climb hand over hand.

  CHAPTER 13

  _____________________

  A light rain began to fall as Julius walked through the empty city. With dawn on the horizon, the streets should have been filled with workers, servants, and slaves, bustling along on a thousand errands. The cries of vendors should have been heard, coupled with the din of a thousand trades. Instead, it was eerily quiet.

  Julius hunched his shoulders against the rain, hearing his own footsteps echo back from the houses on either side. He saw faces at the high windows of the tenements, but no one called down to him and he hurried on toward the forum.

  Pompey’s men stood at every corner in small groups, ready to enforce the curfew. One of them gripped his hilt as he caught sight of the lonely figure. Julius threw back his riding cloak to reveal the armor underneath, and they let him pass. The whole city was nervous and Julius felt a prickling anger at the part Crassus had played in it.

  He strode quickly along the Alta Semita, following the Quirinal hill down into the forum. The great flat crossing stones kept him clear of the sluggish filth of the roadbed below his feet. The rain had begun to wash the city clean, but it would take more than a brief shower to finish the task.

  In all his life, he had never seen the vast space of the forum so empty. A wind that had been blocked by the rows of houses hit him as he passed into it, making his cloak snap out behind. There were soldiers at the entrances to the temples and the Senate house itself, but no lights showed within. The temple priests had lit flickering torches for those who prayed inside, but Julius had no business with them. As he passed the temple to Minerva, he muttered under his breath to her, that he might have the wisdom to see his way through the tangle Crassus had made.

  The iron studs of his sandals clacked on the flagstones of the great space as he approached the Senate building. Two legionaries held station there, absolutely still despite the rain and wind that bit at their exposed skin. As Julius set his foot on the first step, both men drew their swords and Julius frowned at them. They were both young. More experienced men would not have drawn with so little provocation.

  “By order of Consul Pompey, no one may enter until the Senate is called again,” one of them said to Julius, filled with the importance of his duty.

  “I need to see the consuls before that meeting,” Julius replied. “Where are they?”

  The two soldiers glanced at each other for a moment, trying to decide whether it would be right for them to volunteer the information. Soaked to the skin by then, Julius felt his temper rising.

  “I was told to report as soon as I returned to Rome. I am here. Where is your commander?”

  “The prison house, sir,” the soldier answered. He opened his mouth to continue, then thought better of it, resuming his position as before and sheathing his gladius. Once again they were like twin statues in the rain.

  There were dark clouds over the city by then and the wind was growing in strength, beginning to howl as it rushed across the empty forum. Julius resisted the urge to run for cover and stalked over to the prison that adjoined the Senate house. It was a small building, with only two cells belowground. Those who were to be executed were held there on the night before their death. There were no other prisons in the city: execution and banishment prevented the need to build them. The very fact that Pompey was there told Julius what he would find, and he prepared to face it without flinching.

  Another pair of Pompey’s men guarded the outer door. As Julius approached, they nodded to him as if he were expected and threw open the locking bars.

  The armor he wore was marked with the insignia of the Tenth, and he was not questioned until he reached the steps leading down to the cells. Three men moved subtly apart as he announced himself, and another went down the steps behind them. Julius waited patiently as he heard his name spoken somewhere below and Pompey’s answering rumble. The men who watched him were stiff with tension, and so he leaned against the wall in the most relaxed fashion he could, brushing some of the surface water from his armor and squeezing it from his hair. The actions helped him to relax under their silent stares, and he was able to smile as Pompey came up with the soldier.

  “That is Caesar,” Pompey confirmed. His eyes were hard and there was no answering smile. At the confirmation from their general, the men in the room took their hands from their sword hilts and moved away, leaving the entrance to the steps open.

  “Is there still a threat to the city?” Pompey asked.

  “It is ended,” Julius replied. “Catiline did not survive the battle.”

  Pompey swore softly. “That is unfortunate. Come down with me, Caesar. You should be part of this,” Pompey said.

  As he spoke, he wiped sweat from his hairline and Julius saw a smear of blood on his hand. He followed Pompey down the steps with his heart thumping in anticipation.

  Crassus was there in the cells. The blood seemed to have drained from his face, so that under the lamplight he looked like a figure of wax. He looked up as Julius entered the low room, and his eyes glittered unhealthily. There was a sickly smell in the air and Julius tried not to look at the figures bound to chairs in the center of it. There were four of them and the smell of fresh blood was one he knew well.

  “Catiline? Did you bring him back?” Crassus asked, putting a hand on Julius’s arm.

  “He was killed in the first charge, Consul,” Julius replied, watching the man’s eyes. He saw the fear go out of them as he had expected. Catiline’s secrets had died with him.

  Pompey grunted, motioning to the torturers who stood by the broken bodies of the conspirators. “A pity. These creatures named him as their leader, but they know nothing of the details I wanted. They would have told us by now.”

  Julius looked at the men and repressed a shudder at what had been done to them. Pompey had been thorough and he too doubted the men could have held anything back. Three of them lay as still as the dead, but the last rolled his head toward them with a sudden jerk. One of his eyes had been pierced and wept a shining stream of liquid down his cheek, but the other peered around aimlessly, lighting up as he saw Julius.

  “You! I accuse you!” he spat, then cackled weakly, dribbling blood over his chin.

  Julius fought against a rising gorge as he caught sight of small white shards on the stone floor. Some of them still had the roots attached.

  “He has lost his mind,” he said softly and, to his relief, Pompey nodded.

  “Yes, though he held out the longest. They will live long enough to be executed and that will be the end of it. I must thank you both for bringing this to the Senate in time. It was a noble deed and worthy of your ranks.” Pompey looked at the man who would stand for the position of consul in only two months.

  “When my curfew is over, I suppose the people will rejoice at being saved from bloody insurrection. They will elect you, don’t you think? How can they not?”

  His eyes belied the light tone and Julius did not look at him as he felt the man’s gaze. He felt shamed by all of it.

  “Perhaps they will,” Crassus said softly. “We three will have to work together for Rome. A triumvirate will bring its own problems, I am sure. Perhaps we should—”

  “Another time, Crassus,” Pompey snapped. “Not now, with the stink of this place in my lungs. We still have a Senate mee
ting at sunrise and I want to visit the bathhouse before that.”

  “Dawn is here now,” Julius said.

  Pompey swore softly, using a rag to wipe his hands clean. “It’s always night down in this place. I am finished with these.”

  He gave orders to the torturers to have the men cleaned and made presentable before turning back to Crassus. As Julius watched, dark sponges were dipped in buckets and the worst of the blood began to be sluiced away, running in stone gutters along the floor between his legs.

  “I will set the execution for noon,” Pompey promised, leading them up the stairs to the cool rooms above.

  The gray light had taken on a reddish tint as Julius and Crassus stepped out into the forum. The rain pounded on the stones, rebounding in thousands of tiny spatters that drummed in the emptiness. Though Julius called his name, Crassus walked quickly away into the downpour. No doubt a bath and a change of clothes would remove some of the sickly pallor from his skin, Julius thought. He hurried to catch up with the consul.

  “Something occurred to me when I was destroying the rebels gathered in your name,” Julius called, his voice echoing.

  The consul stopped dead at that, looking around. There was no one close.

  “In my name, Julius? Catiline led them. Did his followers not murder your soldiers in the street?”

  “Perhaps, but the house you showed me was a modest one, Crassus. Where would Catiline have gathered enough gold to pay ten thousand men? Very few in this city could have paid for such an army, don’t you think? I wonder what would happen if I sent men to investigate his accounts. Would I find a traitor with huge reserves of hidden wealth, or should I look for another, a paymaster?”

  Crassus could know nothing of the burnt papers Brutus had found at the house, and the spark of worry Julius saw was all he needed to confirm his suspicions.