Gods and Legions

V

'Oh, sweet Jesus,' he moaned.

'Don't take the Lord's name in vain.'

'I'm not, Caesarius — I'm praying.'

I rolled my eyes and continued massaging the mint oil into the growing goose egg on the back of his head, which I had already shaved and stitched up with cat gut.

'Praying. That's a bit of a novelty for you, isn't it?'

He turned his head slightly to eye me balefully, one eyebrow raised. 'And that's a rather impertinent manner you have of speaking, especially to your Caesar.' He chuckled and tried to turn his head farther, but winced.

I remained silent for a moment, concentrating on cleaning up the dressing, then began straightening my instruments. 'Where else are you injured?'

He sighed ruefully. 'Every muscle in my body. Caesarius, I've spent more time in these past few weeks looking up from the ground at a horse's pizzle than I have riding.'

This, at least, was true, for Sallustius had embarked Julian on an intensive training stage in horsemanship, at an isolated farm outside the city that afforded us privacy from spectators curious to watch the Caesar's progress. Frankly, however, little progress was being made. Even worse, in my own training alongside Julian, I was turning into a rather talented student, magnifying his own ineptitude. Our boyhood bareback riding on horses in the neighbor's paddock, Brother, was bearing fruit! The problem was that Julian had never actually ridden a warhouse. Oh, naturally, he had traveled sedately on mild transport animals, usually supervised carefully by a watching colleague or groom, and even then rarely accelerating beyond a calm trot. But a true warhorse, under battle conditions? Never, and at his age, the ripe, old, out-of-shape age of twenty-four, it was like trying to learn a new language after reaching puberty — seemingly impossible.

Merely mounting the beast was a skill he was having difficulty mastering, and any confidence he had had before embarking on this venture was now severely shaken. He stood only head-high to the shoulders of the Frankish chargers that Roman officers in Gaul ride, and Persian-style mounting, using a slave known as a strator to hoist the rider up onto the horse's back, did not meet Sallustius' standards. You've probably watched soldiers in the field, Brother — the trick is to approach the animal on its left side, and seize the reins loosely along with a good handful of mane from near the horse's ears. Then with your right hand on the middle of its back, you pull yourself up high enough to flop across on your belly and swing your leg over into a sitting position. It can be a daunting task even for a skilled rider, though my own height made it relatively easy for me. While Julian was at first given the gentlest old nags on which to practice, he consistently overshot his flop; or inadvertently kneed the animal in the ribs, causing it to start; or slipped his grip and ended up jerking the mane out by its roots, with predictable results. Sallustius grimaced and shook his head in disgust, forcing Julian to mount again and again, disdaining even to help him up and dust him off after he fell beneath the animal's feet — 'You'll have no one in battle to do that for you,' he stated matter-of-factly.

It took Julian days to master the technique, practicing from both sides of the horse, mind you — and then Sallustius threw him another one.

'On the run!' he shouted. 'Go!'

Julian just stood and looked at him blankly. 'Mount the horse while it's running?' he asked, astonished.

Sallustius paused, as if unable to comprehend the difficulty. Finally he spoke, slowly, as if to a dense child. 'Not the horse,' he said. 'You. Chonodomarius is within your sight, there, in front of you. You've been caught off your animal, but so has he, and you can catch him if you can mount quickly. Now run and vault onto that horse!'

Julian tried gamely, every way he could — leapfrogging from behind over the horse's haunches, side-vaulting as if scaling a rail fence — and I can't help but say that for many days the results were pitiful, Brother, for Julian simply did not have the quickness or strength to make up for his lack of height, and would invariably slam painfully into the horse's side or rear, and end by clawing and scrambling his way up a by now thoroughly flustered animal. Sallustius shrunk from even watching him, as did I–I merely concentrated all the more fiercely on my own animal. Only Paul the Chain, who often slunk out of his quarters to observe the training sessions, continued to observe attentively and cluck his tongue after each fall, until Sallustius, in exasperation, ordered him to leave the premises. After several days of wincing at Julian's failure to mount, Sallustius admitted defeat, at least for the time being.

'We'll go back to mounting later,' he grumbled, to Julian's infinite relief. 'In the meantime, we'll work on actual riding. As far as mounting goes, for now you're a Persian,' and he called over a hulking Gallic slave from the stables who bent his back for Julian to step on and more gracefully mount his horse.

When riding in battle, Brother, good form is of the utmost importance, from the carriage of one's head to the hang of one's foot. I have seen inexperienced riders in battle who grip their horses' sides not merely with the thighs, as they should, but with their calves and ankles as well, keeping their feet rigid against the animals' ribs rather than letting them dangle loosely from the knee. If their stiff leg strikes against anything hard, like a stump or a rock, or even the armored knee of an onrushing enemy rider brushing close by, it will snap like a twig just at the joint. This is an injury which, despite all the miracles that modern medical science is capable of offering, rarely heals properly and usually leaves the victim a cripple. If the leg hangs easily from the knee down, however, it will yield when struck, without moving the thigh or its rider from position.

Just so, there are proper ways of carrying one's weapons, of wielding one's shield, even of draping one's mantle over the shoulders and dropping one's visor over the eyes, so as to most effectively ease one's own efforts while increasing the threat to the enemy. For weeks Julian was trained intensively in hurling the javelin from horseback, two of which he carried in his left hand behind his shield, while Sallustius cantered alongside on his own mount, shouting out instructions step by step and handing him replacement weapons.

'Left shoulder forward, right one back — good! Eye your target — eye your target, damn it, Caesar, not your horse! Now, grip with your thighs and rise up for leverage… No, not too high… NO!'

Thank goodness, Brother, for the back padding and safety helmet he wore in training, for he took a tremendous beating learning to stand erect on his thighs and hurl the javelin forward without allowing the horse to run straight out from under him — I lost count of the bruises and scrapes he received, though one corner of the farm's stable I had converted into a regular infirmary, where I spent a great deal of time treating him after his mishaps.

As Julian slowly progressed, Sallustius moved on to more dangerous techniques as well — stringing and firing a bow while riding, like the dark-faced Huns; rearing the horse into the air to allow it to kick out at enemies with its sharpened forehooves; and slashing Persian-style with a curved scimitar, a much more effective weapon for a mounted horseman than a straight stabbing sword. With this weapon, Julian practiced on a man-sized oaken post Sallustius had driven into the middle of the arena, which was later dressed up in Germanic clothing and armor, using a melon mounted on the top as a head. Scimitar practice on horseback was far too dangerous to practice with living opponents, as there is no practical way to shield the blows; but not so for lance practice. By placing a hard clay ball on the lance tip, these weapons can be rendered somewhat less deadly to one's sparring partner, though by no means painless when contact is made.

Sallustius himself charged at Julian repeatedly with the blunted lance, as Julian alternately attempted to defend himself against the attack with his shield, and took the offensive with his own blunted weapon. Again and again Sallustius' lance tip slammed into Julian's padded practice armor, though the skilled instructor was sufficiently deft as to divert the weapon at the last moment so that it would generally glance off Julian's side without knocking him from his horse, leaving him unharmed but for a weltering bruise or a cracked rib. One day, however, after Sallustius carefully glanced around to see if I was nearby, he rode down on Julian full bore, lance tip tracing tight, maddening circles in the air as it feinted and dodged Julian's wavering shield, and then slammed full into the middle of Julian's chest, lifting him clear off the horse into the air and throwing him hard onto his back on the packed ground. He lay still as his riderless horse cantered to the far end of the paddock, as if attempting to evade any blame for the mishap.

I rushed from where I had been preparing for my own sparring session with Sallustius, and knelt beside Julian. To my relief he soon began sputtering and gasping for air. The wind had been knocked out of him, and he was badly shaken, but was otherwise unhurt. He was still dizzy, however, and barely able to talk, when Sallustius rode up calmly on his horse. The man didn't even bother to dismount, and I glared up at him accusingly.

'Look at him! Were you trying to kill him?'

Sallustius glanced down at Julian impassively. 'Yes,' he said simply.

I bristled. 'You had better be joking.'

'Do you see me smiling?'

'You never smile.'

'Nor do I joke,' he replied.

Julian struggled to sit up. 'I–I could have you arrested for that…' he gasped.

Sallustius looked down with an expression of mock puzzlement on his face. 'For failing to joke?'

Julian's face turned red in anger as the breath rushed back into his lungs. 'For trying to kill me!'

'So arrest me.'

Now it was Julian's turn to look puzzled.

'You should thank me for trying to kill you,' Sallustius continued coldly, 'for if I don't try to do so now, and fail, someone else will surely try in the future and succeed. And you fault me?'

'Damn you, Sallustius,' Julian muttered, staggering to his feet. 'Where's my horse?'

In private, Sallustius shook his head in admiration as the young Caesar continued to make the long ride out to the farm every morning for further drilling, never complaining of his aching muscles and the knots on his head. To Sallustius' great satisfaction, once Julian finally developed a basic level of strength and dexterity, his military skills improved amazingly, and what he lacked in pure physical ability, he more than made up for in wit and cunning. His major frustration, however, continued to be mounting; here his skills continued to fall embarrassingly short, and this failure was having an effect on his confidence in all other areas of horsemanship and weaponry. After several weeks, however, the camp's head blacksmith arrived, bearing with him a stout cavalry lance with a curious supplement to it — a thick iron hook attached to the shaft by a sturdy band, about four feet from the butt end.

'This,' Sallustius said, 'is your strator.'

The next day, as Julian prepared to ride out to the farm to resume his lessons, he asked with a wry smile that I not accompany him for a time. Though surprised, I presumed that it was to spare his dignity when learning yet another impossible technique, and so I agreed without protest. His uncommon cheerfulness upon his return from the paddock each day, however, kept me wondering, and when next I was allowed to accompany him several weeks later, I was astonished at the sight that met my eyes. There stood Julian calmly, in full cavalry regalia, stiff mailed tunic descending to his hips, thigh plates, mailed knee joints and greaves, crowned by a tight-fitting, open-faced bronze cavalry helmet, all of which weighed near sixty pounds. He had been fitted with a gilt-plated, full-sized Roman cavalry shield, a richly decorated scimitar, and a gleaming officer's lance, twelve feet long, its painted wood sanded smooth and enameled to a polished, ivory gleam. These weapons lay neatly against a fencepost, as they would be positioned while in camp, except for his scimitar, which he hung in a scabbard against his left leg. His horse pawed the dirt nervously at the far end of the paddock.

As I leaned against a rail watching, the stable slave gave a signal and then began loudly counting beats with a drum, measuring elapsed time. Julian rushed to his gear while simultaneously cinching his armor, and in a single, fluid motion that astonished me with its focused gracefulness, he hoisted the heavy shield onto his left shoulder and picked up the lance. He then began running toward his waiting horse, which was itself heavily mailed, even to the bronze faceplate and rounded iron blinders over its eyes to prevent it from seeing anything but straight ahead.

At first, Julian lumbered slowly in his heavy armor, then gradually picked up speed and momentum, as the slung shield slapped loudly against his back. It was then that I noticed something odd — the lance he was carrying in his right hand, which had been fitted with the strange hooked device, was backward — the tip was pointed to the rear. I sighed, and resigned myself to another embarrassing attempt by Julian to demonstrate skill at arms.

Just as he neared the animal, however, which was beginning to skitter and paw in anticipation as he heard his rider's clanking approach, Julian planted the thick butt end of his lance into the ground some four feet from the horse's left hooves, and drove his body in toward the shaft. The pole lifted to the vertical, flexing slightly, and he leaped into the air and swung upward with his two hands on the shaft. He then planted his left foot on the hook as if it were a ladder rung, lifted his right leg, and dropped easily and gracefully up onto the enormous horse's back, armor and all. In the same motion he kneed the animal sharply, causing it to rear back and paw the air as he calmly tightened his grip on the reins with his right hand and flipped his lance forward with his left; then deftly swinging the pointed head of the weapon forward, he braced the shaft squarely against the top of the horse's head, between its ears, and raced off like an arrow shot.

I was dumbfounded.

'Nothing like four hours of practice a day to improve your mounting,' said a voice next to me. It was Sallustius, who had sidled up in silence as I watched.

'The lance hook is ingenious,' I said. 'I'm sorry I doubted you.'

'Developed by the Spartans,' he noted laconically, ignoring my apology, as we watched Julian canter confidently around the arena. 'I've ordered one made for every cavalryman in Vienne.'

It was Julian, naturally, who first demonstrated the lancevault technique to the city's garrison and reserves at a ceremony held at the arena that spring to launch the campaigning season. The garrison's champion swordsmen first gave an impressive show of the bladework and shield technique for which they had trained all winter and in which they were now to drill their comrades. Boxing and wrestling then ensued, followed by demonstrations of feats of strength among the infantry companies. Finally, the cavalry squad, decked in heavy ornamental armor, divided themselves into two teams of twenty, distinguished by dramatic enameled masks depicting golden-coiffed Amazons and Olympian gods. At a signal, the two sides raised a shout, and raced toward each other across the arena at a thundering gallop, smashing into their opponents with blunted weapons and a blinding cloud of dust, fiercely striving to knock the opposing riders off their mounts. The ferocity of their charges was astonishing, and at the time, Brother, I could scarcely believe that actual battle with the Alemanni could have been any more brutal. Lance tips snapped in the foining and flew winging into the stands, shields split and shattered from the impact of the collision, and men who failed to grip their horses securely with armor-clad thighs were thrown twisting and grunting to the ground, where they rolled to avoid the horses' flailing hooves. Those who fell were disqualified, and had no recourse but to scramble stiffly from the sand and hobble to the edge of the arena, nursing their bruises and scrapes, to await the outcome of the match. A few remained writhing where they lay, and had to be dragged to safety by attendants.

Sallustius sat his horse at the edge of the pit as a referee, though bearing his own heavy shield and lance for protection against the wide-ranging riders who suffered from terrifyingly poor visibility behind their tragedy masks. Several times he was forced to spur his horse forward into their midst, shouting the men down and splitting them apart if tempers frayed and the teams refused to retreat to their corners after each charge. After a dozen fierce attacks, all to the raucous cheers of a thousand overexcited and half-drunk veterans, he finally awarded the laurel crown to the two horsemen still remaining on their mounts, both of them from the Olympian team — their shattered lances and dented armor attesting to their valor and strength.

Sallustius remained at his post while the arena was quickly swept and the obstacle course erected for the final event, the horsemanship demonstration, in which Julian was scheduled as the last of the riders to participate. His intent, of course, was to observe Julian's performance at close hand, and to shout out any instructions the Caesar might require, though as it turned out, such assistance was entirely unnecessary. When Julian's time arrived, he strode into the ring bearing gold-plated ceremonial armor even heavier than the set I had first seen him wear, and topped by another of the ominous enameled masks depicting a Greek deity with its mouth set in an awful grimace, and only two tiny eyeholes through which to peer.

Despite these encumbrances, his performance soon silenced the skeptical troops who had been led by rumor and past observation to expect at best a clumsy and simple demonstration. He first deftly demonstrated his innovative mounting technique from both sides of the horse, and with each clean vault he made onto the skittish stallion's back, I could almost hear the jaws dropping around me. He then delivered a stunning display of riding and swordplay, weaving through the series of oaken post-men that had been set up in a row among scattered pits, fire walls, and other obstacles. The troops, enthused now at the skill demonstrated by their Caesar, began a rhythmic stamping of feet that drowned out all conversation. Flawlessly Julian ran his spirited animal through its paces, leaping over high rails and sidestepping ground spikes, all of which had been placed so as to simulate true battle conditions as closely as possible. As he approached the mock enemy forces, he twirled his flashing scimitar in the sun and slashed fiercely from side to side, cleaving and demolishing the unresisting heads with his whirling blade, scattering pulpy, melon-seed brains over his legs and the sides of the horse.

The men roared their approval and delight, though Julian was still not without some skeptics. Just in front of me a watching centurion applauded politely, but his gaze continued to range over the obstacle course distractedly. 'Why is he cutting at fruit?' he muttered to a colleague as the cheers died down. 'Couldn't they find a cavalryman to spar him?'

His friend quickly silenced him. 'He's the Caesar! Who would spar with the Caesar in the arena? If you win, you lose. If you lose, you lose. So he hacks at melons.' The logic was impeccable.

Still, Julian's performance was impressive, particularly given his complete lack of skills only scant months earlier, and the troops' applause was genuine as he completed the difficult course and cantered around the arena, acknowledging their cheers. For show, he even stopped his horse suddenly and reared it back, waving with his sword in the classic depiction of the victorious Roman general. At this, Sallustius shook his head in disgust and began trotting slowly off the field to the side stables. His work, for the moment, was complete.

Suddenly, just as the raucous cheering had begun dying down, Julian leaned forward, adjusted his mask, and kneed his animal. The horse leaped ahead, eyes rolling in excitement, and the troops again fell silent at the prospect of another display. He accelerated into a flat-out charge, lowering the blunted lance he had been carrying against his hip to the horizontal attack position. At the loud thudding of hooves behind him, Sallustius stopped his own mount and turned around to see what foolishness Julian might be attempting. As far as Sallustius was concerned, the demonstration was over, but from the glint in Julian's eyes behind his white-faced mask, I could see that this was no demonstration, and that Julian was now in earnest.

Sallustius spied the charge from half the arena's length away, and with his practiced soldier's ease and a hint of a smile he quickly unslung and mounted his own shield and steadied his own ball-tipped lance while spurring his horse forward to a sprint. Julian thundered straight and unhesitatingly, his heavy bronze cavalry shield braced firmly against the fulcrum of his thigh, swaying only slightly back and forth as he countered the bobbing arc of Sallustius' lance tip, while at the same time feinting and weaving with his own weapon. In complete concentration he sought the slight opening, the overplayed hand, that would allow him to slip the balled point around his opponent's shield to the face or chest behind.

The watching troops fell silent — to the point that I could hear Julian's rhythmic breathing and grunts behind his mask as the horses stormed toward each other. With a flurry of dust and a loud CRACK! both weapons slammed into the opposing shields, and a three-foot section of shattered lance flew into the air and spun crazily into the crowd. With the brutal crash of the weapons, both lance-wood and men yielded and broke. The warhorses, reins loosened and riders' knees ungripped, continued forward in their own fierce momentum and smashed into each other, falling in a writhing, whinnying heap of hooves and snapping teeth. As the animals struggled to their feet and staggered off to the edge of the ring, both men lay still for a moment where they had fallen. I began pushing past the troops at my side, making my way toward the arena to treat the injuries I was certain to find there. This was unnecessary, however, for first Julian, then Sallustius, sat up and painfully rose to their feet, groggy and unbalanced under the stiff weight of the heavy cavalry armor.

Immediately, spontaneously, the troops stood and erupted in a loud roar, and Julian raised his mask and acknowledged their cheer with a weary grin and a wave of his hand, blood flowing from one nostril down his chin and dripping to the sand from beneath his helmet. Sallustius, too, face impassive as ever, nodded to the soldiers and accepted their praise. Julian then bent slowly and picked up his lance, the tipped end neatly broken off during the tremendous impact with Sallustius' shield. He examined it ruefully, and then held it high in his right hand in a kind of salute, raising another roar from the men at this trophy of his mock battle. Finally, turning to Sallustius with a sheepish expression, he advanced toward him with his arms wide, as if to embrace him in acknowledgment of his courage and skill.

He didn't make it far, though to his credit the judges deemed it a perfectly fair blow, and the men's raucous laughter afterwards would appear to confirm them in this ruling. For as Sallustius bent awkwardly in his stiff-kneed armor to pick up his own dropped weapon, Julian took careful aim, and with a robust prod of his broken lance, knocked the surprised Sallustius ignominiously back into the dust.