The Field of Swords Read online

  As noon passed and the Helvetii were still on the plain, Julius became red-faced and irritated with the delays. Part of it was down to the inescapable fact that the leaders of the tribe had all been killed in the fighting, leaving a headless mass of people who milled about until he was tempted to have the optios use their staffs on them to start them on their way.

  At last, Julius ordered swords to be returned to two thousand of the warriors. With weapons in their hands, the men stood a little more proudly and lost the forlorn look of prisoners and slaves. Those men bullied the column into something like order, and then, with a single horn blowing against the breeze, the Helvetii moved off. Julius watched them go with relief, and as Mark Antony had predicted, the moment it was clear they were heading north the Aedui started streaming onto the plain, calling and shouting after them.

  Julius had his cornicens summon the six legions to block the path of Mhorbaine’s warriors, and as they approached he wondered if they would stop or whether another battle would end the day. In the mood he was in, he almost welcomed it.

  The lines of the Aedui halted a quarter of a mile away on the plain. They had crossed the site of the battle and tens of thousands of unburied bodies that were already beginning to stink. There could be no greater way of demonstrating the power of the legions facing them than walking over a field of the dead they had left behind. They would spread the word.

  He watched as Mhorbaine rode out with two followers carrying high pennants that fluttered on the breeze. Julius waited for them, his impatience disappearing as the Helvetii began to dwindle behind. Many of his men threw glances at the receding column, feeling the soldier’s natural dislike at being trapped between large groups, but Julius showed nothing of this, his weariness giving him an empty calm, as if all his emotion had been drained away with the column.

  Mhorbaine dismounted and opened his arms in a wide embrace. Gently, Julius deflected him and Mhorbaine covered his confusion with a laugh.

  “I have never seen so many of my enemies dead on the ground, Caesar. It is astonishing. Your word was good to me and the gifts you sent make it sweeter, knowing the source. I have brought cattle for a great feast, enough to fill your men until they are near bursting. Will you break bread with me?”

  “No,” Julius replied, to the man’s obvious astonishment. “Not here. The bodies bring disease if they are left. They are on your land and they should be buried or burnt. I am returning to the province.”

  Mhorbaine looked angry for a moment at the refusal. “You think I should spend a day digging holes for Helvetii corpses? Let them rot as a warning. As a stranger here, you may not know the custom to hold a feast after a battle. The gods of the earth must be shown the living have respect for the dead. We must send those we kill on the path, or they cannot leave.”

  Julius rubbed his eyes. When had he last slept? He struggled to find words to appease the man.

  “I will return to the foot of the mountains with my men. It would be an honor to have you join me there. We will feast then and toast the dead.” He saw Mhorbaine look speculatively at the retreating column and continued, his voice hardening. “The Helvetii who live are under my protection until they return to their lands. Do you understand?”

  The Gaul looked doubtfully at the Roman. He had assumed the column was under guard and being taken into slavery. The idea of simply letting them go was difficult for him to take in.

  “Under your protection?” he repeated slowly.

  “Believe me when I say that whoever attacks them will be my enemy,” Julius replied.

  After a pause, Mhorbaine shrugged, running a hand over his beard. “Very well, Caesar. I will ride ahead with my personal guard and be there to meet you as you come in.”

  Julius clapped him on the shoulder, turning away. He saw Mhorbaine was watching in fascination as Julius nodded to the cornicens. The notes blared out across the plain and six legions turned on the spot. The soft earth trembled and Julius grinned as they marched away in perfect lines, leaving Mhorbaine and the Aedui behind. As they entered the tree line at the edge of the plain, Julius called Brutus to him.

  “Pass the word. I will not be beaten home. We march through the night and will feast when we get there.” Julius knew the men would accept the challenge, no matter how exhausted they were. He sent the Tenth to the front to set the pace.

  As dawn came, the six legions crossed the last crest before the Roman settlement at the foot of the Alps. The men had jogged and marched for more than forty miles, and Julius was just about finished. He had marched every step of the way with his men, knowing his example would force them to keep going. Such small things mattered to those he led. In spite of their blisters, the men gave a ragged cheer at the sight of the sprawling buildings, moving easily into the faster pace for the last time.

  “Tell the men they have eight hours of sleep and a feast to bulge their bellies when they wake. If they’re as hungry as I am, they won’t want to wait, so have cold meat and bread served to them to take the edge off. I am proud of them all,” Julius said to his scouts, sending them away to the other generals. He wondered idly whether his legions would have proved a match for the armies of Sparta, or Alexander. He would have been surprised if they hadn’t been able to run the legs off them, at least.

  By the time Mhorbaine reached the same crest with fifty of his best fighters, the sun was above the horizon and Julius was sound asleep. Mhorbaine reined in there, looking at the changes the Romans had wrought. The dark wall they had built curved north into the distance, a slash in the fertile landscape. Everywhere else he could see was being transformed into squares of buildings, tents, and dirt roads. Mhorbaine had crossed the legion trail a few miles before, but he was still astonished to see the reality. Somehow, he had been left behind in the darkness. He leaned on his saddle horns and looked back at the massive figure of his champion, Artorath.

  “What a strange people they are,” he said.

  Instead of replying, Artorath squinted behind them.

  “Riders coming,” he said. “Not ours.”

  Mhorbaine turned his horse and looked back down the gently sloping hill. After a while, he nodded.

  “The other leaders are gathering to see this new man in our land. They will not be pleased that he beat the Helvetii before they could get here.”

  Holding flags of truce high above their heads, groups of riders approached. It looked as if every tribe for two hundred miles had sent their representatives to the Roman settlement.

  Mhorbaine looked down at the vast encampment with its orderly lines and fortifications.

  “If we are canny, there is a great advantage here for the taking,” he said aloud. “Trade in food, for one, but those pretty legions are not a standing army. From what I’ve seen so far, this Caesar is hungry for war. If he is, the Aedui have other enemies for him to fight.”

  “Your schemes will get us all killed, I think,” Artorath rumbled.

  Mhorbaine raised his eyebrows at the man who sat a heavy stallion as if it were a pony. Artorath was the biggest man he had ever known, though sometimes he despaired of finding an intelligence to match his strength.

  “Do you think bodyguards should talk to their masters in that way?” Mhorbaine said.

  Artorath turned his blue eyes to meet him and shrugged. “I was speaking then as your brother, Mhor. You saw what they did to the Helvetii. Riding a bear would be easier than using your silver tongue on these new men. At least when you jump off the bear, you can still run for it.”

  “There are times when I can’t believe we share the same father,” Mhorbaine retorted.

  Artorath chuckled. “He wanted a big woman for his second son, he said. Killed three men to take her from the Arverni.”

  “To make an ox like you, yes. But not a leader, little brother, remember that. A leader needs to be able to protect his people with more than just unpleasantly bulbous muscles.”

  Artorath snorted as Mhorbaine continued, “We need them, Artorath. The A
edui will prosper with an alliance and that is the reality, whether you like it or not.”

  “If you use snakes to catch rats, Mhor . . .”

  Mhorbaine sighed. “Just once, I would like to talk to you without having animal wisdom thrown in my face. It does not make you sound intelligent, you know. A child could put things more clearly, I swear it.”

  Artorath glowered at him, remaining silent. Mhorbaine nodded in relief.

  “Thank you, brother. I think, for the rest of the day, you should consider yourself my bodyguard first and my brother second. Now, are you coming with me?”

  His men were given tents while they waited for Julius to wake. Mhorbaine sent riders back to hurry on the herd he had brought for the feast, and before noon had fully passed, the slaughter of the animals had begun, with Mhorbaine and Artorath taking a personal hand in the preparation and spicing of the meat.

  As the other leaders began to arrive, Mhorbaine greeted them with intense inner amusement, thoroughly enjoying their surprise at seeing him red to the elbows and issuing orders to boys and men as the bellowing cattle were killed and cut into a feast for thirty thousand. The sizzle of beef filled the air as a hundred fire pits were fed and heavy iron spits erected. Drowsy legionaries were rousted out of their warm blankets to help with the work, rewarded with a taste as they licked burnt fingers.

  When Mark Antony woke, he had slaves bring buckets of river water for him to wash and shave, refusing to be hurried. If Julius was prepared to sleep through the biggest gathering of tribal leaders in living memory, then he was certainly not going out to them with two days of stubble on his face. As each hour passed, Mark Antony was forced to wake more and more of the soldiers, ignoring the swearing that came from the tents as his messages broke through the numbness of their exhaustion. The promise of hot food did wonders for their tempers, and hunger silenced the complaints as they followed Mark Antony’s example and washed before dressing in their best uniforms.

  There were many small villages in the Roman province, and Mark Antony sent riders out to them for oil, fish sauce, herbs, and fruit. He thanked his gods the trees were heavy with unpicked apples and oranges, no matter how green. After drinking water for so long, the bitter juice was better than wine after it had been pressed out into jugs for the men.

  Julius was one of the last to wake, sticky with the heat. He had slept in the solid buildings of the original settlement, now much extended. Whoever designed them had shared the Roman taste for cleanliness, and Julius was able to sluice himself with cold water in the bathing room, then lie on a hard pallet to have olive oil scraped on and off his skin, leaving him clean and refreshed. The muscles that ached in his back finally eased as he sat to be shaved, and he wondered whether the daily massage kept him supple. Before he dressed, he looked down at himself, checking his bruises. His stomach in particular was tender, and marked as if he had taken a heavy impact. Strange that he did not remember it. He dressed slowly, enjoying the coolness of clean linen against his skin after the smell of his own sweat on the march. His hair snagged in the fine teeth of the comb, and when he tugged, he was appalled to see the mass of strands that came away. There was no mirror in the bathing rooms and Julius tried to remember the last time he had seen an image of himself. Was he losing his hair? It was a horrible idea.

  Brutus entered with Domitius and Octavian, all three men wearing the silver armor they had won in the tournament, polished to a high sheen.

  “The tribes have sent their representatives to see you, Julius,” Brutus said, flushed with excitement. “There must be thirty different groups on our land, all under flags of truce and trying to hide how interested they are in our numbers and strategy.”

  “Excellent,” Julius replied, responding to their enthusiasm. “Have tables put up for them in the dining hall. We should be able to get them all in, if they don’t mind the crush.”

  “All done,” Domitius said. “Everyone is waiting for you to join them, but Mark Antony is frantic. He says they won’t move until you invite them to your table, and we wouldn’t let him wake you.”

  Julius chuckled. “Then let us walk out to them.”

  CHAPTER 25

  _____________________

  The air in the dining hall was thick with the heat of bodies as Julius took his seat at the long table. Though linen covered its length, Julius could not resist running a hand underneath to feel the rough new wood. It had not been there when he’d arrived that morning, and he smiled to himself at the energy of Mark Antony and the legion carpenters.

  He asked Mhorbaine to sit on his right hand, and the Gaul took his place with obvious pleasure. Julius liked the man and wondered how many of the others would be friends or enemies in the years to come.

  The men at his table were a mixed group, though all of them shared features as if their ancestors had sprung from the same tribe. They had hard faces, as if carved from pine. Many were bearded, though there was no style that dominated the gathering, and Julius saw as many mustaches and shaved skulls as there were beards and long braids dyed red at the roots. In the same way, there was no pattern to their clothes or armor. Some wore silver and gold brooches that he knew would fascinate Alexandria, while others were bare of any ornament. Julius saw Brutus eyeing an ornate clasp on Mhorbaine’s cloak and decided to bargain for a few fine pieces to give to her when they next saw Rome. He sighed at the thought, wondering when he would sit with his own people at a long table and hear their beautiful language rather than the throaty expectoration of the Gauls.

  When they were all seated, Julius motioned for Adàn to stand at his side and rose to address the chieftains. For such an important meeting, he’d banished the elderly interpreter back to his tribe.

  “You are welcome in my land,” Julius said, waiting for Adàn to echo the words in their own language. “I believe you know I prevented the Helvetii cutting through my province and that of the Aedui. I did this at Mhorbaine’s request and I use it to show my good faith to you.”

  While Adàn translated, Julius watched their responses. It was an odd advantage to be removed from them by that one step. The pauses gave him the chance to marshal his arguments and see how they went across while the eyes of the Gauls were on Adàn.

  “The people of Rome do not live in constant fear of enemy attack,” he continued. “They have roads, trade, theaters, bathing houses, cheap food for their families. They have clean water and laws that protect them.”

  He saw from the expressions around the table that he was on the wrong track with his description. These were not men to care about the luxuries given to those they ruled.

  “More importantly,” Julius went on quickly, as Adàn struggled over a word, “the leaders of Rome have vast lands and homes ten times the size of this small fort. They have slaves to tend their needs and the finest wines and horses in the world.”

  A better reaction.

  “Those of you who become my allies will come to know all of that. I intend to bring the roads of Rome farther into Gaul and trade with the farthest recesses of the land. I will bring the biggest market in the world here for your goods.”

  One or two of the men smiled and nodded, but then a young warrior stood and all the Gauls looked to him, becoming still. Julius could feel Brutus bristle on his left. There was nothing unusual in the figure who faced Julius twenty feet away. The Gaul wore his beard short and his blond hair tied back in a club on his neck. Like many of the others, he was a short, powerful figure dressed in wool and worn leather. Yet, despite his youth, the Gaul looked arrogantly around at the gathered representatives of the tribes. His face was badly scarred and cold blue eyes seemed to mock them all.

  “And if we refuse your empty promises?” the man said.

  As Adàn translated, Mhorbaine rose at Julius’s side.

  “Sit down, Cingeto. You want another enemy to add to your list? When did your father’s people last know peace?”

  Mhorbaine spoke in his own language and the young Gaul responded far too quick
ly for Adàn to follow. The two men roared at each other across the table, and Julius swore he would learn their language. He knew Brutus was already studying it and he would join his daily lesson.

  Without warning, the yellow-haired warrior stormed away from the table, slamming the door open to the outside. Mhorbaine watched him go with narrowed eyes.

  “Cingeto’s people would rather fight than eat,” Mhorbaine said. “The Arverni have always been that way, but do not let it trouble you. His elder brother, Madoc, has less of a temper, and it is he who will wear his father’s crown.”

  The exchange had clearly worried Mhorbaine, but he forced a smile onto his face as he looked at Julius.

  “You must ignore the rudeness of the boy. Not everyone feels as Cingeto does.”

  Julius called for the plates of beef and mutton to be brought in from the fire pits, glistening with oil and herbs. He tried to hide his surprise as they were followed with heaped platters of fresh bread, sliced fruit, and roasted game birds. Mark Antony had been busier than he realized.

  The awkward pause after Cingeto’s departure disappeared in the clatter of plates. The chieftains fell to with a will, each man bringing out his own knife to slice and spear the hot food. Finger bowls of fresh water were used to dilute the wine, to the surprise of the servants, who quickly refilled them. Julius understood that the chieftains did not want to lose their wits in drunkenness, and on reflection, he tipped his own water bowl into his wine cup as well. Brutus and Octavian followed his example with a private grin between them.

  A sudden crash from outside the hall brought two of the guests half to their feet. Julius rose with them, but Mhorbaine remained in his seat, frowning.