The Field of Swords

by Conn Iggulden

“I know, I saw him.” Neither man needed to say more. They had both known him when they were little more than boys, and some griefs are cheapened by words.

  “You led them?” Julius said. Though his voice was strengthening, he still seemed confused.

  “No, Julius. They followed you.”

  At dawn, Julius sent a messenger up to Vercingetorix and waited for the response he knew must come. Every man and woman in Alesia would have heard of the slaughter of Avaricum. They would be terrified of the grim soldiers who stared up at the fortress. Julius had offered to spare them all if Vercingetorix surrendered by noon, but as the sun rose, there was no response.

  Mark Antony and Octavian were with him. There was nothing to do but wait, and one by one, those who had been there from the beginning came to stand at his side. The missing faces hardly seemed worth the price, at times. Bericus, Cabera, Renius, too many more. Julius drank the wine he was offered without tasting it and wondered if Vercingetorix would fight to the bitter end.

  The legions were never silent when the killing was done. Each man had his particular friends to boast with, and in truth, there were many stories of bravery. Many more could not answer their names at the dawn muster, and the pale bodies that were brought in were testimony to the struggle they had fought together. Julius heard a cry of agony as a soldier recognized one of the corpses and knelt, weeping until others in his century took him away to get him drunk.

  Renius’s death had hurt them all. The men who had fought with the old gladiator had bound his neck in cloth torn from a tunic and laid him out with his sword. From Julius to the lowest-ranking legionary, they had suffered through bouts of his temper and training, but now that he had gone, the men came in silent grief to touch his hand and pray for his soul.

  With his dead laid out in the cold sun, Julius looked up at the walls of Alesia and thought through ways of burning them out of their stronghold. He could not just sit idle with Gaul in his hands at last.

  There could be no more rebellions. Over the days to come, the word of the defeat would be taken to every tiny village and town across the vast country.

  “Here he comes,” Mark Antony said, interrupting Julius’s thoughts.

  They all stood as one, straining to see the king as he descended the steep path to where the legions waited. He was a lonely figure.

  Vercingetorix had changed from the angry young warrior Julius remembered so long before. He rode a gray horse and wore full armor that gleamed in the first light. Julius was suddenly aware of his own grime and reached to detach his cloak, then let his hand fall. He owed the king no special honor.

  Cingeto’s blond hair was bound and plaited in heavy cords to his shoulders. His beard was full and shone with oil, covering the gold links he wore at his throat. He rode easily, carrying an ornate shield and a great sword that rested on his thigh. The legions waited in silence for this man who had caused them so much grief and pain. Something about his stately descent kept them quiet, allowing him this last moment of dignity.

  Julius walked to meet the king with Brutus and Mark Antony at his sides. As he strode to the foot of the road, the rest of his generals fell in behind and still no one spoke.

  Vercingetorix looked down at the Roman and was staggered at the differences since their first meeting, almost a decade before. His youth had been left on the fields of Gaul, and only the cold, dark eyes looked the same. With a last glance up at the forts of Alesia, Vercingetorix dismounted and lifted his shield and sword in his arms. He dropped them at Julius’s feet and stood back, holding the Roman’s eyes for a long moment.

  “You will spare the rest?” he asked.

  “I gave you my word,” Julius replied.

  Vercingetorix nodded, his last worry vanishing. Then he knelt in the mud and bowed his head.

  “Bring chains,” Julius said, and the silence was shattered as the legions banged their swords and shields together in a cacophony that drowned out all other sound.

  CHAPTER 45

  _____________________

  As winter came again, Julius took four of his legions across the Alps to base themselves around Ariminum. He brought five hundred chests of gold with him on carts, enough to pay the tithe to the Senate a hundred times over. His men marched with coins in their pouches, and good food and rest had restored much of their polish and strength. Gaul was quiet at last and new roads stretched across the fertile land from one coast to another. Though Vercingetorix had burnt a thousand Roman farms, the land was taken up by new families before the end of summer and still they came, lured by the promise of crops and peace.

  A bare three thousand of the Tenth had survived the battles in Gaul, and Julius had awarded land and slaves to each man under his command. He had given them gold and roots and he knew they were his, as Marius had once explained to him. They did not fight for Rome or the Senate. They fought for their general.

  He would not hear of a single one of them spending a night out in the open, and every house in Ariminum was suddenly home to two or three of the soldiers, packing the town with life and coins. Prices went up almost overnight, and by the end of the first month there, the last of the wine ran dry, right across the port city.

  Brutus had come with the Third Gallica and set about drinking himself to oblivion as soon as he was free and alone in the city. Losing Renius had hit him hard, and Julius heard continual reports of his friend involved in a different brawl each night. Julius listened to the innkeepers who brought their complaints, and paid their bills without a murmur of protest. In the end, he sent Regulus to prevent Brutus killing someone in a drunken rage and then heard reports of the two of them roaring around the town together, causing even more damage than Brutus alone.

  For the first time since Spain, Julius did not know what the next year would hold for him. A million men had died in Gaul to serve his ambition, and another million had been sold to Roman quarries and farms, from Africa to Greece. He had more gold than he had ever seen, and he had crossed the sea to beat the Britons. He had expected to feel joy in his triumph. He had equaled Alexander and found a new world beyond the maps. He had taken more land in a decade than Rome had managed in a century. When he was a boy, if he could have seen Vercingetorix kneel, he would have gloried in it, seeing only the achievement. But he would not have known how much he would miss the dead. He had dreamed of statues and his name being spoken in the Senate. Now that those things were real, he scorned them. Even victory was empty because it meant the struggle was at an end. There were too many regrets.

  Julius had taken Crassus’s house in the center of the city, and at night he thought he could still smell the perfume Servilia wore. He did not send for her to come to him, though he was lonely. Somehow the thought that she would break him out of his depression was too much to bear. He cherished the dark days of winter as reflections of himself and embraced the black moods as old friends. He did not want to pick up the reins of his life and go on. In the privacy of Crassus’s home, he could waste the days in idleness, spending afternoons watching the dark skies and writing his books.

  The reports he had written for the city of his birth had become something more for him. Each memory was somehow constrained as he wrote it down. The ink could not express the fear and pain and despair, and that was right. It eased his mind to write each part of the years in Gaul and then put it aside for Adàn to copy out.

  Mark Antony joined him at the house at the end of the first week. He set to work removing dustsheets from the furniture and making sure Julius ate at least one good meal a day. Julius tolerated the attention with reasonably good grace. Ciro and Octavian came to the house a few days later and the Romans set to work making it as clean as a legion galley. They cleaned out the clutter of papers in the main rooms and brought a bustle to the house that Julius found harder and harder to dislike. Though he had enjoyed the isolation at first, he was used to having his officers around him and only raised his eyes in mock indignation when Domitius turned up to take a room and the following night
Regulus brought Brutus in over his shoulder. Lamps were lit all around the house, and when Julius went down to the kitchens, he found three local women hard at work there making bread. Julius accepted their presence without a word.

  The wine shipments from Gaul arrived by ship and were seized upon thirstily by the citizens. Mark Antony secured a private barrel and in a night where they managed to forget the barriers of rank, they drank themselves unconscious to finish it in one session, lying where they fell. In the morning, Julius laughed aloud for the first time in weeks as his friends staggered about and crashed, swearing, into the furniture.

  With the passes closed, Gaul was as distant as the moon and ceased to trouble his dreams. Julius’s thoughts turned to Rome and he wrote letters to everyone he knew in the city. It was strange to think of those he had not seen for years. Servilia would be there and the new Senate house must have been completed. Rome would have a fresh face to cover her scars.

  In the mornings, with his study door closed to the rest, Julius wrote to his daughter at length, trying to make a bridge to a woman he did not know. He had given permission for her to marry in his absence two years before, but he had heard nothing since. Whether she read them or not, it was balm to his conscience to do it and Brutus had urged him to try.

  It was tempting to gather a few horses and go back to the city, but Julius was wary of the changes that could have occurred in his absence. Without consular immunity, he would be vulnerable to his enemies there. Even if the Senate had left him the rank of tribune, it would not save him from the charges of killing Ariovistus or exceeding his orders over the Rhine. Julius was owed more than one Triumph by the Senate, but he doubted Pompey would be pleased to see him lauded by the citizens. Marrying Julius’s daughter should have been a rein on his temper, but Julius knew him too well to trust his goodwill, or his ambition.

  The winter passed in slow comfort. They rarely talked of the battles they had fought, though when Brutus was drunk, he would arrange bread rolls on the table and demonstrate to Ciro what the Helvetii should have done.

  When the winter solstice came, the legions celebrated with the city, lighting lamps on every house so that the promise of spring could be seen in the streets. Ariminum shone like a jewel in the darkness and the whorehouses ran double shifts all night. From that point on, the atmosphere changed subtly. With the longest night over, the reports of damage and brawls came with greater frequency to Julius’s desk, until he was half tempted to send the lot of them out to the plains to camp in the barren fields. Slowly, he began to spend more and more of each day on the business of supply and pay, falling back into the routines that had sustained him all his adult life.

  He missed Renius and Cabera more than he could believe. It had come as a surprise for Julius to realize that he was the oldest of the men who shared Crassus’s house with him. Where the others seemed to expect him to provide order in their lives, he had no one, and the habits of war were too strong to lightly lay aside. Though he had known some of the men in the house for years, he was the commanding officer and there was always a slight reserve in their manner around him. At times, Julius found the busy house strangely lonely, but the coming of spring went some way to complete the restoration of his goodwill. He took to riding around the outskirts of the city with Brutus and Octavian, building up their fitness. Ciro watched him closely whenever they were together, smiling as touches of the old Julius were visible, however briefly. Time healed what did not show, and though there were dark days still, all the men felt the rise of spring in their blood.

  The bundle of letters that came on a bright dawn looked like any other. Julius paid the carrier and shuffled them into piles. He recognized Servilia’s handwriting on one for her son and was pleased to find another for himself toward the bottom. His mood was one of pleasant anticipation as he took his letter into the front room of the house and lit a fire, shivering as he broke the seal and opened it.

  As Julius read, he rose from his seat and stood in the full glare of the rising sun. He read the letter from Servilia three times before he began to believe it, and then he sank back, letting the letter fall.

  The merchant prince had fallen.

  Crassus and his son had not survived the attacks of the Parthians. Most of the legion Julius had trained had fought clear, but Crassus had led a wild charge when he saw his son unhorsed, and the enemy had cut him off from the rest of his men. The legionaries recovered their bodies and Pompey had declared a day of mourning for the old man.

  Julius sat and stared out at the sun until the glare was too much for him and his eyes stung. All the old names were gone now, and for all his faults, Crassus had been a friend to him through the darkest days. Julius could read Servilia’s own grief in the neat lines as she described the tragedy, but Julius could not think of her. He rose and began to pace the room.

  As well as the personal feelings of loss, Julius was forced to consider how Crassus’s dying would change the balance of power in Rome. He did not like the conclusions he drew. Pompey would suffer least. As Dictator, he was above the law and the triumvirate and would miss only Crassus’s wealth. Julius wondered who would inherit the old man’s fortune now that Publius was dead with him, but it hardly mattered. Far more important was the fact that Pompey no longer needed to have a successful general in the field. He might well view such a man as a threat.

  As Julius thought through the implications, his expression became bleak. If Crassus had lived, some new compromise could have been hammered out between them, but that hope had died in Parthia. After all, Julius knew if he had found himself in Pompey’s position, he would have been quick to clear the field of anyone who could be a danger. As Crassus had once told him, politics was a bloody business.

  With a sudden dart, he stepped over to the table and opened the rest of the letters, looking only at the first lines of each, until he froze and took a deep breath. Pompey had written to him and Julius felt fury surge as he read the pompous orders. There was not even a mention of Crassus in the lines, and Julius threw the letter down in disgust as he began to pace once again. Though he knew he should have expected no more from the Dictator, it was still a shock to read his future in the lines.

  The door to the room slammed open and Brutus entered, holding his own sheaf of letters.

  “Have you heard?” Brutus said.

  Julius nodded, plans forming in his mind. “Send men out to collect the legions, Brutus. They’ve grown fat and slow over the winter and I want them out of the city by noon tomorrow to begin maneuvers.”

  Brutus gaped at him. “Are we heading back to Gaul, then? What about Crassus? I don’t think—”

  “Did you hear me?” Julius roared at him. “Half our men are near useless with their whores and wine. Tell Mark Antony we are leaving. Have him start at the docks and round them up.”

  Brutus stood very still. Questions came to his lips and he throttled them, his discipline forcing a salute. He left and Julius could hear his voice rousing the others in the house.

  Julius thought again of the letter from Pompey and the betrayal. No sign of the years they had known each other had been present in the words. It was a formal order to return to Rome—alone. To return to the one man in the world who might fear him enough to kill him.

  Julius felt light-headed and weak as he considered the implications. Pompey had no rivals except one and Julius didn’t trust his promise of safe passage for a moment. Yet to disobey would launch a fight to the death that could very well destroy the city and everything Rome had won over centuries.

  He shook his head to clear it. The city was stifling him and he longed for the breezes of the plains. There he could think and plan his answer. He would gather the men on the banks of the Rubicon River and pray for the wisdom to make the right choice.

  Regulus stood alone in the little courtyard of Crassus’s home, looking at the letter in his hands. An unknown hand had written the words on the parchment, but there could only have been one author. Just two words sat
like spiders in the center of the blank page and yet he read them over and over, his face tight and hard.

  Take him, it said.

  Regulus remembered how he and Pompey had spoken the last time they had been in Ariminum. He had not wavered then, but that was before he had been to Britain with Julius and seen him fight at Avaricum, Gergovia, Alesia. The last most of all. Regulus had seen Julius lead legions past the point when any other would have fallen and been destroyed. He had known then that he followed a greater man than Pompey, and now he held an order to kill the general.

  It would be easy, he knew. Julius trusted him completely after so many years together, and Regulus thought there was friendship there between them. Julius would let him come close and then it would be just another life to add to those Regulus had taken for Rome. Just one more order to obey as he had obeyed so many thousands before.

  The dawn breeze chilled the skin of the centurion as he tore the letter into halves, then quarters, not stopping until the shreds lifted in the wind and flew. It was the first order he had ever disobeyed, and it brought him peace.

  CHAPTER 46

  _____________________

  Pompey leaned against the columns of the temple to Jupiter and looked over the moonlit city below the Capitol. Dictator. He shook his head and smiled in the darkness at the thought.

  The city was quiet and already it was hard to imagine the gangs and rioting that had once seemed like the end of the world. Pompey looked over to the new Senate house and remembered the flames and screams in the night. In a few years, Clodius and Milo would be all but forgotten in the city, but Rome went on and she was his alone.

  The Senate had extended his Dictatorship without the slightest pressure from him. They would do it again, he was sure, for as long as he wanted. They had seen the need for a strong hand to cut through all the laws with which they had bound themselves. Sometimes it was necessary, just to make the city work.