Gods and Legions

II

The medical and burial squads that night reported two hundred forty-three Roman soldiers and four officers killed in the battle, including the brave tribune Bainobaudes. The Roman dead, however, were difficult to find on the field, lost as they were amongst the beaten and torn bodies of the six thousand barbarian dead, nameless and unidentifiable, covering vast tracts of land as thickly as a heaving, oozing carpet. No estimate could be made of the numbers drowned in the aftermath of the rout, but undoubtedly thousands were carried off by the river.

With every report and update from the scouts and burial parties, however, Julian, sleepless as usual even after the exertions of a day such as this, had only one question: What of the Beast? Where is the Beast? No one could answer.

Several hours after dark, one of the burial parties raced up to the general staff to announce that as they had approached a heap of cadavers, a man had leaped up from beneath a body where he had been lying and raced into a nearby copse, adjacent to the river. This in itself was not an unusual occurrence, since it is a favorite tactic of deserters and cowards on every battlefield to feign death until the heat of battle has passed by. This man, however, had caught the Romans' eyes for his sheer bulk, which, even accounting for the deceptiveness of the torchlight and shadows, was enormous. The fact that his face was bound in a dirty rag, as if to prevent recognition, was also suspicious. Julian, his eyes flashing, raced to his horse, calling as he ran for his personal guard and his Acolytes.

Thundering to the grove with some two hundred armed men, they dismounted and spaced themselves evenly into a line several hundred yards long, and then at a command, cautiously entered the thick undergrowth.

We had not taken more than a half dozen steps into the dark woods when there was a sudden shout from nearby, and suddenly thirty or forty men burst from the trees in front of us and raced through our line, knocking over and trampling our men, who were so startled at the sudden onslaught in the dark that they did not even have time to raise their weapons. Screaming their battle cry, the barbarians raced to the horses we had just left behind us, untended but for a few unarmed battle squires, who leaped away like a terrified troop of monkeys. The blood-darkened giants bore down like demons, Chonodomarius foremost among them, and leaping upon our horses they spurred them up the steep slope away from the celebrating Roman camp, into the darkness and emptiness of the woods beyond.

Julian and his men raced back to the remaining horses and took pursuit, determined not to lose the trail. The gods of the barbarians, however, false as they are, had turned their backs on the Alemanni. Before the Beast had raced a half mile, his horse, frightened by the strange rider and unaccustomed to the heavier load, slipped in some loose gravel and threw him heavily to the ground. He lay flat on his back, grimacing in pain, as Julian and the others thundered up, dismounted, and aimed the points of their lances at his neck. To their credit, the Beast's companions, though likely to have been able to escape on their own, also pulled their horses up short, and cautiously walked them back to our group, surrendering without protest.

The Beast himself, whose arrogance and daring had struck fear into the hearts of Roman commanders for a decade, laboriously stood up, wincing from pain after his hard fall to the stony ground. Straightening his shoulders he looked quickly around him and identified Julian, who stood only as high as the naked barbarian's bearlike chest. Three Roman guards moved forward to bind the huge German, but Julian signaled them back with his eyes and they reluctantly retreated. Chonodomarius took a step toward the Caesar, Roman lance points pressing upon him from all sides, and as he approached, Julian stood stone-still, his head tilted slightly to the side in observation, almost in curiosity, as if seeing for the first time a new creature brought forth from the wilds of Africa. The Beast moved slowly forward, expressionless, though his eyes darted warily from side to side behind the filth-caked hair obscuring his face. He stopped directly in front of Julian, dropped deliberately forward onto his knees, rested his forehead on the ground, and without a word slowly reached out with one hand to grasp the blade of Julian's sword and guide the tip to the back of his neck. The other barbarians in the group immediately did the same, dropping to the ground at the feet of the nearest Roman and signing with similar gestures to be executed.

We were dumbfounded, and for a moment we all froze, unsure precisely what to do. Had they attacked us, we would have killed them immediately. Had they fled we would have hunted them down like the dogs they were. This, however, was unanswerable.

Julian alone was prepared. With the barbarian lying prostrate on the ground before him, he carefully spread his feet and placed both hands on the sword hilt. With the tip of the blade, he prodded the neck of his son's killer, deftly parting in two the mass of matted and encrusted hair, exposing the white flesh of the nape. All eyes, barbarian and Roman, were fixed on Julian's sword, all lips fell silent. He set the tip into the groove of the neck, just at the base of the skull, and paused.

'Caesar,' I whispered, from close at hand. He remained unmoving, his eyes locked on the sword tip. 'Caesar,' I rasped hoarsely, slightly louder, and I could see the tendons in Julian's forearm quivering. 'Do not have this blood on your hands, Caesar. Send him away — send him to the Emperor. As a credit to you, and a burden to Constantius. The Beast's fate is sealed in either case.'

Julian looked up at the silent men around him, then focused on me. His eyes had a strange light — as of intense feeling or turmoil, but uncontrolled, with a gleam of perhaps something like madness. 'This man is a scourge,' he said throatily, adjusting his fingers and tightening his grip on the handle. 'With one thrust I avenge thousands of innocent Romans killed, with one stroke I prevent thousands more from being murdered in the future. What is the life of this wretched… killer, compared to the souls of all those he has destroyed, compared to the life of my own son?' He spat out these words in a kind of muted sob, and Chonodomarius froze in his position on the ground, not understanding the words but surely gathering their meaning, waiting for the swift thrust that would end his life.

I stepped closer, locking my eyes on Julian's wild gaze and speaking evenly. 'Your justice requires a rule of law — even in times of war. That is what separates you from him. He is unarmed and helpless. It is never right to execute a man this way. Your son's soul would not be avenged. God would see it not as justice but as cold murder, no better than the barbarian's own crimes. In God's name, let him up.'

Julian stared at me grimly, composing his face into an expressionless mask. A hint of a smile curled at the corners of his mouth and he leaned slightly forward over Chonodomarius, again adjusting his fingers on the grip. I saw he was going to do it, he would do it, if I did not do something, did not risk something.

'Julian — ' I urged once more, using his given name even though we were in the presence of his troops. 'Julian. As a favor to me, in the name of our friendship — let the man stand.'

Julian's stare remained locked on mine for a long moment, weighing my words, the burden I had placed on him. For that instant I felt as if his hate were directed at me. Then looking away, he slowly straightened his back, lifted his sword away from the man's neck, and sheathed it. The terrible gleam disappeared from his eyes and they returned to their former depth and intelligence, though they were not without a sharp flash of anger — at the actions of Chonodomarius, or at the terrible toll I had charged on our friendship. He set his mouth in a narrow grimace, turned impassively, walked to his horse, and mounted.

The pattern was now set by Sallustius. Expressionless and cool as ever, he bent down to the barbarian that had prostrated himself before him, a large fellow of a height equal to his own, and seizing him by the hair he lifted him bodily to his feet in a single, swift motion. Cutting the reins of his own horse, Sallustius roughly tied the man's wrists behind his back, jerking the knot tight until the barbarian winced in pain.

The rest of us swiftly followed suit, until the only barbarian remaining unbound was Chonodomarius, who still lay motionless at the place where Julian had stood. As the rest of us watched in not a little trepidation to see how the Caesar would handle the prostrate king, he walked his horse over and stood staring at the huge body for a moment. Then, with a terse 'On your feet!' he ordered Chonodomarius to stand and walk behind him. To the surprise and wonder of all, the Beast did his bidding, and the entire party walked slowly and deliberately back to the camp. The procession was led by a grave Julian, walking his horse calmly in front of the towering, unbound Alemanni king, his long auburn hair and mustaches flowing, his heaving chest still painted with the flames of war and destruction, his cheeks flushed with frustration and shame.

In a subsequent search of the woods, an additional two hundred barbarians, many of them Chonodomarius' personal escort, were rounded up and taken back to camp. Three of his closest allies, including Serapion, his son, were among them. After several days of deliberation, it was decided to spare their lives and to send them to the Emperor in Rome, as the ultimate trophy of war: the Beast, who had troubled Constantius for so many years, with a troop of his fiercest warriors.

Again, Your Holiness, if I might supplement my brother's narrative with a touch of additional background: Chonodomarius, though treated with mercy by his fellow blasphemer Julian, nevertheless met a tragic end. In Rome, the so-called 'Beast' was looked upon with awe and fear, not only for his great size but for the devastation he had wreaked among the Roman armies over the years, and out of deference to his military skills he was treated as something of a prisoner of honor, held in the castra peregrinorum, hunkered between the Caelian and Palatine hills. Tradition has it that it was at this very site that Saint Paul had been held in custody when sent to Rome in chains three hundred years earlier, though far be it from me to make any comparison between the two. From the windows of his confinement, the barbarian king would have had a clear view of the Coliseum and the Arch of Constantine, and no doubt his last contact with his kinsmen would have been as they were later led in chains through that very arch as prisoners of war, surrounded by jeering women and pelted with rotten fruit. These barbarians would then be thrown to the wild beasts for the entertainment of the crowds, or to be matched against the murmillones and the retiarii, the swordsmen and the net-minders, in the bloody gladiatorial combats.

There, in the darkness of his damp, stone cell, far from the fragrant pines of his shady Germanic forests and lost in the blackness of his own soul, wretched Chonodomarius died of consumption, coughing up his own lungs. May Our Most Merciful Father forgive him his wicked deeds at the last.