The Field of Swords Read online

  As they gathered, Julius felt himself lifted by their mood. The years of war had not broken his friends. When they spoke of the latest rebellion, it was with anger and resilience rather than defeat. They had all invested years in the hostile land, and every man there was angry to see their future threatened. Though they talked amongst themselves, each man watched Julius for some sign he was about to begin. He was the core of them. When he was absent, it was as if the purest part of their drive and energy had been taken. He bound men together who would not have suffered each other’s company in any other circumstances. Such a bond, in fact, that they did not even think of it as they settled and he faced them. He was simply there and they were slightly more alive than before.

  Cabera was brought in last by two men of the Tenth who acted as his attendants. Julius strode over to him as soon as the old healer was settled and took his frail hands in his own. He spoke too quietly for the others to hear above the noise of the gulls and wind.

  “Farther than any other man in Rome, Cabera. I have been off the edge of the world. Did you see me here, so long ago?”

  Cabera didn’t seem to hear him at first and Julius was sad at the changes age had wrought in him. Guilt too tugged at his conscience. It was at Julius’s request that Cabera had healed Domitius’s shattered knee, and that act of will had been too much for his aging frame. He had not been strong since that day. At last the eyes lifted and the dry, cracked mouth twitched upward at the edges.

  “You are here because you choose to be, Gaius,” the old man said. His voice was little louder than an escaping breath, and Julius leaned closer to his lips. “I have never seen you in this terribly cold room.” Cabera paused then, and the muscles of his neck jumped in spasm as he took a deeper breath.

  “Did I tell you I saw you killed by Sulla?” he whispered.

  “Sulla is long dead, Cabera,” Julius said.

  Cabera nodded. “I know it, but I saw you murdered in his house and again in the cells of a pirate ship. I have seen you fall so often I am sometimes surprised to see you so strong and alive. I do not understand the visions, Julius. They have caused me more pain than I have ever imagined.”

  Julius saw with swelling grief that there were tears in the old man’s eyes. Cabera noticed his expression and chuckled dryly, a clicking sound that went on and on. Though Cabera’s left arm lay useless in his lap, he reached up with the other and brought Julius even closer.

  “I would not change a day of it, the things I have seen. You understand? I haven’t long and it will be a relief. But I regret nothing of what has happened since I stepped into your home so long ago.”

  “I would not have survived without you, old man. You can’t leave me now,” Julius murmured, his own eyes filling with tears and memory.

  Cabera snorted and rubbed his face with his fingers. “Some choices are denied us, Gaius Julius. Some paths cannot be avoided. You too will pass the river in the end. I have seen it in more ways than I can tell you.”

  “What did you see?” Julius said, aching to know, yet gripped by a numbing fear. For an instant, he thought Cabera had not heard him, the old man was so still.

  “Who is to know where your choices will take you?” The voice continued its sibilance. “Yet I have not seen you old, my friend, and once I saw you fall to knives in darkness in the first days of spring. On the Ides of March, I saw you fall, in Rome.”

  “Then I will never be in my city on that day,” Julius replied. “I swear it to you, if it will give you peace.”

  Cabera raised his head and looked past Julius to where the shrieking gulls fought and struggled over some scrap of food. “Some things are better not to know, Julius, I think. Nothing is clear to me anymore. Did I tell you of the knives?”

  Gently, Julius laid the old man’s hands together on his lap and arranged the cushions so he could sit upright.

  “You did, Cabera. You saved me again,” he said. With infinite tenderness, Julius lifted the old man up on the cushions to make him comfortable.

  “I am glad of that,” Cabera said, closing his eyes.

  Julius heard a long breath coming from him and the frail figure became utterly still. Julius gave a muffled cry as he saw the life go out of him and reached out to touch his cheek. The silence seemed to go on a long time, but the chest was still and would not move again.

  “Goodbye, old friend,” Julius said.

  He heard a scrape of wood as Renius and Brutus came to stand with him, and the years fell away so that it was two boys and their tutor standing there, seeing a man hold a bow without a tremor in his arms.

  Julius heard the other members of his council stand as they realized what had happened. He turned red-rimmed eyes to them and they could not bear to meet the pain they saw in his face.

  “Will you join me in the prayers for the dead, gentlemen? Our war will wait another day.”

  As the gulls shrieked in the wind outside, the low murmur of their voices filled the cold room. At the end, there was silence and Julius breathed a last few words as he looked at the shrunken body of the old man.

  “And now I am adrift,” he said, so quietly that only Brutus at his side could hear.

  CHAPTER 43

  _____________________

  It was dark in the tent and Adàn had only a single tallow candle to give him enough light to write. He sat in perfect silence and watched as Caesar sprawled on a bench with his arm outstretched to be bandaged. There was blood on the first layers and the strip of cloth itself was dirty, having been taken from a corpse. Julius grunted as the doctor made a knot and pulled it tight. For a moment, his eyes opened with the pain, and Adàn saw they were dim with exhaustion.

  The doctor gathered his sack of equipment and left, letting a blast of air into the stuffy interior that made the candle flicker. Adàn looked over the words he had recorded and wished Julius would sleep. They were all hungry, but the winter had burnt flesh from the commander as much as any of the men. His skin was tinged with yellow and tight across his skull, and Adàn saw dark hollows underneath his eyes that gave him a look of death.

  Adàn thought Julius had slid into sleep and began to gather his scrolls to steal away without waking him. He froze as Julius scratched at the sweat stains of his tunic and then rubbed his face. Adàn shook his head slowly at the changes in the man since he had first known him. Gaul had taken more than it had given.

  “Where did I finish?” Julius said, without opening his eyes. His voice was a croak that made Adàn shiver in the gloom.

  “Avaricum. The doctor came in as I was writing about the final day.”

  “Ah yes. Are you ready to go on?”

  “If you wish it, sir. It might be better if I left you to get some rest,” Adàn said.

  Julius did not respond past scratching his unshaven chin.

  “Avaricum came soon after the murder of three cohorts under Bericus. Are you writing this?”

  “I am,” Adàn whispered. To his surprise, he felt the sting of tears begin as Julius forced himself on, and the Spaniard could not explain them.

  “We built a ramp up to the walls and stormed the town. I could not hold the men back after what they had seen. I didn’t try to hold them.” Julius paused and Adàn could hear his breath as a harsh susurration above the noise of the legions outside.

  “Eight hundred survived us, Adàn. Record the truth for me. Out of forty thousand men, women, and children, only eight hundred lived when we were finished. We burned the town around them and stripped what grain they had left in their stores. Even then, you could count the ribs on the soldiers with me. Vercingetorix had moved on, of course, and every town we came to was destroyed. He drove the cattle before him and left us nothing but birds and wild hares to trap. To feed forty thousand men, Adàn. Without the stores of Avaricum, we would have been finished.

  “We routed them over and over whenever we caught them in the open, but all the tribes of Gaul had joined him and he outnumbered us every time. Bericus was killed in the third month,
or the fourth, I cannot remember. His own irregulars caught him in an ambush. We did not find his body.”

  Julius lapsed into silence as he remembered how Bericus had refused to believe that the men he had trained would kill him. He had been a decent man and he paid with his life for that belief.

  “Vercingetorix moved on south to Gergovia and the hill forts there, and I could not break those walls.”

  Adàn looked up at the silence and saw Julius’s mouth twist in anger. Still, he lay back with his eyes closed and the croaking voice seemed to come from deep within.

  “We lost eight hundred men at Gergovia and as spring came I saw my soldiers eat green corn until they vomited. Still, we destroyed the armies who dared to take the field against us. Brutus and Octavian did well against the banners there, but the numbers, Adàn . . . Every tribe we have called friends has risen against us and there are times . . . no. Strike that out, my doubts are not to be written.

  “We could not starve him out in Gergovia and our own men were weakening. I was forced to move west to gather supplies, and still we could barely find enough to stave off death. Vercingetorix sent his generals against us and we fought all the way while he raced ahead by night. I have marched a thousand miles this last year, Adàn. I have seen death walking with me.”

  “But now you have trapped him in Alesia,” Adàn said softly.

  Julius struggled to sit up and leaned over his knees, his head sagging. “The greatest hill fort I have ever seen in Gaul. A city on four hills, Adàn. Yes, I have him trapped. We starve on the outside while he waits for us all to die.”

  “Grain and meat are coming in from the south now. The worst is over,” Adàn said.

  Julius shrugged so lightly it could have been a breath. “Perhaps. Write this for me. We have built trenches and fortifications for eighteen miles around Alesia. We have thrown up three great hills from the earthworks, so massive as to allow us to build watchtowers on them. Vercingetorix cannot leave as long as we remain here—and we will remain. Our prisoners talk of him as king of all the Gauls, and until he is dead or captured, they will continue to rebel. We have cut them down in thousands and they will still come each spring until their king is dead. Let them know in Rome, Adàn. Let them understand what we are doing here.”

  The tent flap opened and Brutus was there in the darkness, glancing over at Adàn as he saw the light of the tiny flame.

  “Julius?” he said.

  “I am here,” came the voice, barely a whisper.

  “You must come out once more. The scouts are back and they say an army of Gauls is coming to relieve the forts.”

  Julius looked at him with red-rimmed eyes that seemed more dead than alive. He stood and swayed from exhaustion and Brutus stepped in to help him pull on the armor and scarlet cloak that the men needed to see.

  “So those men who escaped the fort were to bring an army back,” Julius murmured as Brutus began to lace the chestplate to the strips of iron around his neck. Both men were dirty and stank with sweat, and Adàn was struck by the tenderness as Brutus took a rag and wiped the armor down with it, handing Julius his sword from where it lay propped and forgotten against a pole. Without a word, Adàn took the red cloak from its peg and helped Brutus drape it around the shoulders. It could have been his imagination, but in the armor he thought Julius stood a little straighter, sheer will forcing some of the weariness from his face.

  “Summon the council, Brutus, and bring the scouts to me. We shall fight on both sides if need be, to put an end to this king.”

  “And then we shall go home?” Brutus said.

  “If we live, my friend. Then we shall go home at last.”

  The Roman generals who came to the central camp at the foot of Alesia showed the marks of the wars they had fought. Drinking water had been rationed as well as food, and not one of them had enough to shave or wash the grime of months in the field from their faces. They sank onto the benches and sat listlessly, too tired to talk. The scorched earth and months of war since returning from Britain had hurt them all, and now this last blow had brought them to the edge of despair.

  “Generals, you have heard from the scouts and there is little more for me to tell you,” Julius said. He had taken a pouch of precious water from a guard and upended it into his mouth to take away the dust from his throat.

  “The men are eating at last, though supplies are thin and of poor quality. Without the sacrifices of our settlers, we would have even less. Now the Gauls have gathered all the tribes against us, and even the Aedui cavalry have vanished to join them. Mhorbaine has betrayed me at the last.”

  Julius paused and rubbed a hand over his features.

  “If the scouts are right, we have little chance of surviving the battle. If you ask it of me, I will try for an honorable surrender and save the lives of our legions. Vercingetorix has shown he is no fool. We would be allowed to travel back to the Alps with our settlers. Such a victory would establish him in his role of High King, and I think he would accept. Is this what you want?”

  “No, it isn’t,” Domitius said. “The men would not accept it from us, and not from you. Let them come, Caesar. We will destroy them again.”

  “He speaks for me,” Renius added, and the others nodded. Brutus and Mark Antony joined the voices and Octavian rose to his feet. Despite their tired faces, there was determination there still. Julius smiled at their loyalty.

  “Then we will stand or fall at Alesia, gentlemen. I am proud to have known you all. If this is where the gods say it ends, then let it be so. We will fight to the last.”

  Julius scratched the bristles on his face and smiled ruefully.

  “Perhaps we should use a little of the drinking water to look like Romans for tomorrow. Bring me my maps. We will make plans to humble the tribes one more time.”

  Vercingetorix stood at the high walls of Alesia, looking out over the plain. He had rushed up to the windswept heights at the first reports from his watchmen, and he gripped the crumbling stone fiercely as he saw a mass of torches moving toward them.

  “Is it Madoc?” Brigh asked eagerly.

  The king looked at his youngest brother and held his shoulder in a sudden burst of affection. “Who else would it be? He has brought the armies of Gaul to sweep them away.” With a glance around him, he leaned his head close. “The princes of the Arverni are hard men to defeat, are we not?”

  Brigh grinned at him. “I had begun to lose hope. There’s not more than a month of food left. . . .”

  “Tell the men to eat well tonight, then. Tomorrow we will see the Romans broken and then we will cut our way out past their forts and walls and reclaim Gaul from them. We will see no more of these legions for a generation.”

  “And you will be king?” Brigh asked.

  Vercingetorix laughed. “I am king, little brother. King of a greater nation. Now the tribes remember the call of blood, there is nothing in the world to hold us down. Dawn will end it and then we will be free.”

  The first gray light revealed a camp of Gaulish horsemen that stretched for three miles across the land. As the legions awoke, they heard a dim and tinny cheering from the great linked forts of Alesia as the inhabitants saw those who had come to relieve them.

  The morning was cold, despite the promise of summer. The food that had been brought in from the Roman province at the foot of the Alps was prepared and handed out on tin plates, the first hot meal in days for many of the men. With the Gauls arrayed before them, they ate without joy and the plates emptied too quickly. Many of the men licked them clean for the last scrap of sustenance.

  The Roman fortifications around Alesia were high enough to give the Gauls pause as they considered the best manner of attack. The walls reached twenty feet and were manned by forty thousand of the best foot soldiers in the world. It was no easy task, even with the colossal numbers Madoc had assembled.

  Madoc did not know himself how many were with him, just that he had never seen such an army gathered in one place. Even then, he w
as cautious, as Vercingetorix had told him to be when he escaped from Alesia to summon the tribes.

  “Remember the Helvetii,” Vercingetorix had said.

  Even when vastly outnumbered, the Romans had beaten every army sent against them, and those who still lived were veterans and survivors, the ones hardest to kill. Madoc wished his brother was out there to direct the horsemen. He could feel the scrutiny and hope of the defenders in the Alesia forts, and it intimidated him. He knew by then that his brother was a better king than he would have been. Madoc alone could not have bound the tribes together, more closely than they had known for a thousand years. Old disputes had been forgotten and in the end they had all sent their best men to aid the High King and break the back of the Roman occupation.

  Now it all depended on his word, and tens of thousands waited on him as the sun rose.

  Julius climbed a hill to address the men he had fought with for nine years in Gaul. He knew hundreds by name, and as he reached the crest and steadied himself against the base of the watchtower, he saw familiar faces waiting for him to speak. Did they know how weary he was? He had shared the privations of the march and the battles across Gaul. They had seen him push himself further than any of them, going without sleep for days at a time until there was nothing left in him but an iron will that kept him on his feet.

  “I will not ask you to fight for Rome!” he roared out to them. “What does Rome know of us here? What does the Senate understand of what we are? The merchants in their houses, the slaves, the builders, and the whores have not been with us in our battles. When I think of Rome, I cannot think of them, so far away. My brothers are those I see before me.”