Gods and Legions

III

Having split off Procopius' forces, the army continued its march to the south and east, reaching the fortified Euphrates city of Callinicum a mere three weeks after our departure from Antioch. Here Julian received homage from the chieftains of several groups of nomadic Saracens, who vowed obeisance to the Emperor on bended knee and offered him a golden crown. He received them graciously and accepted the military assistance they offered, since these tribesmen were known to harbor an abiding hatred for the Persians, and were considered to be excellent at guerrilla warfare. Here, too, we reunited with the fleet that had been slowly making its way downriver, and from this point on, the massive river and land forces advanced together into the heart of ancient Mesopotamia.

Over the next week the force covered ninety miles before arriving at Cercusium, a stronghold at the junction of the Chaboras and Euphrates rivers that Diocletian had fortified years before, because of its critical location in defending Syria from Persian invasions. Julian rotated and reinforced the local garrison, assigning four thousand troops from his own army, and ordered the construction of a pontoon bridge to cross the tributary. The fifty engineering barges, bearing precut beams and pilings and stacked with miles of lashings, swung into action, to the astonishment of the sleepy local inhabitants, and within two days a magnificent bridge had been constructed across the half-mile-wide mouth of the Chaboras, over which the entire army, including supply wagons, camels, horses, and provisions, crossed in a matter of a few hours. The army cheered as the last of the ox teams bearing fodder and siege equipment lumbered over the solid timbers of the bridge, and the men stood by, aghast, as Julian gave orders to pour pitch on the timbers of the very bridge he had just built, and to fire it behind us. With the bridge destroyed, there could be no hope of turning back. His confidence, and arrogance, knew no bounds.

Evil omens followed as if by divine retribution, making the men increasingly nervous. During a sudden storm that had appeared out of a clear blue sky, a lightning bolt killed two horses and a soldier named Jovian, whose name derived from that of Jupiter, the king of the Greek gods; a flood caused several dozen ships to be driven through the stone dikes protecting the riverbank and sink from the damage; and a sudden tornado tore tent pegs from the ground and set the soldiers' tents flying, even throwing many of the men themselves painfully to the ground. Like the previous signs, Julian chose to ignore these, yet the men themselves could not, and in fact some even claimed that a Roman expedition so far east was beyond peacetime precedent and need. When we came to a place called Zaith, two days out of Cercusium, where lay the magnificent tomb of the Emperor Gordian, the muttering and lack of discipline had reached such a point that several legions of auxiliaries refused to march any further until the evil portents were addressed.

When informed of the troops' concerns, Julian was outraged at their lack of faith in him. His initial reaction was to order the mutinous troops to continue marching under pain of court-martial and death. His generals pointed out, however, and Maximus quietly concurred, that even if he were successful in forcing the men to march, they would not be supporting him in their hearts. A soldier who has lost confidence in his leader is worse than useless — he is, in fact, a positive danger, because of his propensity to lose courage and run, endangering the courage and lives of even staunchly loyal troops.

'Talk to them, Julian,' I urged. 'Put your skills to use. Remember Gaul, before the Battle of Strasbourg? You have always been able to fire up your troops.'

He calmed himself, but remained indignant. 'I refuse to believe,' he said, 'that Alexander had to coax his troops across the desert like so many blind puppies to their milk bowl. Still, if that's what it takes to make the Saracens march, let's go to it.'

And without a moment's thought or planning, he strode over to a great mound of earth near the elaborately modeled, boat-shaped marble tomb in which Gordian lay, and stood waiting with his senior officers as heralds hastily assembled the troops. Within moments the army had gathered, all the centuries, cohorts, and maniples assembling in order, with those at the farthest reaches of the camp running as if to battle, for indeed the heralds had, at Julian's order, blown the call to arms to induce the troops to arrive yet more quickly. There, beneath a clear blue sky with scarcely a cloud to be seen, with the sun shining on rolling plains of low brown grass spreading away from the broad expanse of river like a vision from a pastoral of Virgil, he delivered the most, let us say, educational address I have heard, barring your inspired sermons, of course, Brother.

'Gallant men,' he shouted, a promising beginning, 'seeing all of you, heroes, so full of energy and eagerness, I have summoned you here to explain to you that, contrary to what has been suggested by certain rumormongers and malcontents, this is not the first time Romans have invaded the kingdom of Persia. Antony's general Ventidius gained innumerable bloody victories over these people, to say nothing of Lucullus. Pompey, after decimating so many hostile tribes that stood in his way, also broke through into this country and viewed the Caspian Sea with his own eyes. I will admit, however, that these were from very early times. More recently, Trajan, Verus, and Severus all returned from Persia crowned with laurels and triumph, and Gordian the Younger, whose tomb we here honor, would have done the same after defeating the Persian king at Resaina and putting him to shameful flight, if he had not fallen victim at this very spot to a wicked plot hatched by his own men. But justice weighed Gordian's enemies in her scales, and the dead Emperor's spirit did not long wander unavenged. All those who conspired against him, who plotted to thwart the Emperor's will while the army was vulnerable and distant from home, met agonizing deaths — as is right for anyone who conspires against their legitimate sovereign.'

At this he paused, and stared pointedly at the companies of Saracens, whose grumbling had led to the calling of this assembly in the first place. They had fallen silent, and the Gallic legions adjacent to them eyed them coldly and almost imperceptibly sidled away. Having made his implicit threat, Julian continued, his voice rising fiercely and carrying effortlessly on the still air of the grassy plains.

'But all these emperors — all of them — were driven by base desires. Ambition to achieve great victory, a yearning for wealth, the quest for unchecked territorial expansion. Wicked motives yield corrupt results. Our own motive, however, is of the greatest nobility: We are here to avenge the shades of our slaughtered armies of the past. We are here to recover our lost battle standards and repair the damage done to the Roman cities Persia has recently captured, which under Persian rule are mired in wretchedness and slavery. Above all, we are here to restore the glory and civilization of Rome! All of Rome, both past and present, those who live and the spirits of those who are dead, are watching you now, gauging the extent to which they are avenged, based on your valor here. Be the heroes your forefathers are calling you to be! Do not let them down! We all, from Emperor to infantryman, are united in our desire to right these wrongs, to overturn past disasters, to strengthen the flank of the great Roman Empire. Posterity shall record the glories of our efforts and achievements!

'Soldiers, it remains only for you to check your greed for loot and plunder, to which Roman armies have so often fallen victim. Remain in formation as you advance. Follow your commanders, and when the time comes to fight, do so with every fiber of your body! In the end, any orders I give, any actions I take, any strategies I devise, are yours to follow, not on my authority as Emperor, but on my skills as general, and your trust in those skills. Our foe is wily and dishonorable, but I promise that any man who lags behind will be hamstrung, if not by the enemy then by me!

'By the grace of the Eternal Deity, I pledge my honor that I will be with you everywhere. The front ranks will see me fighting among them, as will the cavalry and the archers, and the omens support me in my hopes. But should fickle fate strike me low in battle, I will be content to have sacrificed my life for Rome and for you, my heroic troops. Whatever fortune I may gain, whatever hopes I harbor, I now consign to you. Screw up your courage, in full expectation of victory. Know that I will take an equal share in any hardships you may suffer. And remember — a just cause always triumphs, and our cause is just! Be heroes!'

They applauded with an enthusiasm I had not seen since we had departed Antioch, though it fell far short of what I witnessed during Julian's early triumphant days in Gaul. The soldiers beat their shields desultorily on their knees, some of them calling for him to stand on his mound and salute them, which he did dutifully, though for too long after the cheers had died down. I noticed that he had masterfully skirted the divisive issue of religion in the ranks, referring only to the 'Eternal Deity,' and that his Christian soldiers as well as the pagans appeared to accept his encouragement equally. The Gallic troops alone demonstrated enthusiasm in their shouts of joy, remembering all those times, when Julian was in command and fighting at their side, that they had seen powerful barbarian peoples destroyed or forced to beg for mercy.

The men now marched in silence, forgoing the idle chatter and singing that often accompanies troops on the march. The sun had become hot; each day's route was long; and though morale was now higher since Julian's harangue, the troops were tense and thoughtful, and preferred to conserve their energy for the task that lay ahead.

After two days we arrived at Dura, an important trading and caravan center, which at Sapor's orders had been completely deserted. Our hopes had led us to believe that here, in the heart of Assyria, we would encounter plunder that would well compensate us for our hardships thus far — for it is said that this region was personally chosen by the Great King Cyrus, Sapor's ancestor, as his principal source of supply. Four entire villages in those days had been assigned to providing subsistence for his Indian dogs alone; eight hundred stallions and sixteen thousand mares were maintained at the public expense for the royal stables. Yet in this regard we were sorely disappointed, for the granaries were empty, the kitchen gardens plucked, and the surrounding fields burned. Our only consolation lay in the great herds of deer that also inhabited the area, which, driven to desperation by the loss of their pasturage from the fires set by the King's troops, behaved wholly out of character for such animals. They would cluster together weakly even after sighting us, staring at us with eyes glassy with hunger, and would attempt only feeble flight as we approached, allowing us to save ammunition by capturing them with nets or even by beating them over the heads with heavy oars from our boats as they attempted to swim across the river to safety. Venison was a refreshing change for the troops.

It was here, during our brief rest, that Julian accepted an offer from a local Bedouin guide to visit an ancient temple to Apollo carved into the steep sandstone banks of a dry riverbed. The narrow path that wound down along the rock walls to the structure from the plains above had long since washed out. We were forced to take a detour of several miles to an appropriate descent down into the gully, and then retrace our steps along the dry bed at the bottom. We could see the temple high above us, appearing almost as a cave but with exquisitely carved fluted columns and age-worn stone figures adorning the entrance.

Through a complicated system of ladders and ropes that had been rigged ahead of time in anticipation of the Emperor's visit, Julian was hauled up to the opening. His eyes shone with anticipation as he ascended slowly up the rocks, and he glanced at me cheerfully — how long had it been since I had seen him thus, relaxed and happy, away from the pressures of command and the visions that haunted his sleep? Even the prospect of witnessing his abominable prayers at an ill-kept shrine to an unidentifiable cave deity did not seem as horrifying to me as it once might have — for where he was content, reason and calm prevailed, and many good things, Brother, can come of reason and calm. It is not for nothing that the devil prefers chaos.

We scrambled the last few feet along a crumbling ledge that had once served as a footpath for the caretakers, ropes still fastened securely about our waists. When we arrived at the cave, however, our eyes met not with the ancient statue of Apollo and the primitive murals from Homeric times that Julian's imagination had led him to expect but rather — a Christian church.

Actually, Brother, you should not raise your hopes, for out in that desert fastness it is unlikely that any such structure is deserving of the name of 'church.' It would be better described as a hermitage, for it was inhabited by precisely one person, an emaciated, long-bearded old man wearing nothing but a dirty loincloth and as blind as a salamander from staring into the sun, which he did incessantly, seated in the entrance, facing the dry canyon before him. The room behind him was empty, scoured of all traces of past pagan presence, the only adornment being a single, tiny cross hung on the bare stone wall — which the hermit could not see, in any case.

Julian was at first dumbfounded, and then his astonishment grew to outrage. He stormed up and down the confines of the cave, poking his head and hands desperately into nooks and cracks in search of a carving, an engraving, anything that might bespeak the presence of one of his laughable deities. His Bedouin guides were terrified at his wrath, for being neither Christian nor Hellenist themselves, they had failed to understand the distinction between one Roman religion and another and had not realized that the Emperor might be offended. It was precisely at this time, just as Julian angrily gave up his search, that the ancient hermit's single daily meal arrived — dry bread and a lentil broth, brought by three Christian ascetics from a tiny community living among the rocks just below, and proffered in a bucket which the old man drew up with a frayed hemp rope.

Julian began harshly questioning the old one, though to no avail, as the man spoke only an obscure Syriac dialect which even our guides were unable to interpret. He then sent several of the guards that had accompanied us to intercept the three ascetics and haul them up to the temple for an explanation. They arrived trembling and bowing, astonished at somehow encountering a furious Roman emperor in their tiny desert chapel.

Grilling them angrily in the pidgin Greek that one of them spoke with difficulty, Julian finally turned away in disgust.

'Their motto, they say, is that old chestnut, "Forsake all and ye shall find all." That is why they live so wretchedly at this pathetic little shrine to their fisherman's religion.' He paced back and forth a moment in the tiny room, fuming. 'I have my own version of the saying to confront such nonsense.' He turned to the three bewildered ascetics. 'It's from Plotinus, whom you would do well to read, rather than your uneducated Galilean: "Remove all."'

And so saying, he ordered his guards to clear the church of everything, cross, hermit, and bucket, and prepare it for a cleansing sacrifice of blood on the following day.

I stood listening dumbfounded to his furious ranting, while the three ascetics huddled uncomprehendingly in the corner, pleading with their eyes to be let go unharmed, while the ancient mystic remained sitting where he was in the doorway, facing the dry riverbed and obliviously mumbling a prayer.

'Julian — this is madness!' I interrupted in the middle of his tirade. 'The guides say the temple had been unused for centuries before the hermits found it. No one knows whether it had ever been dedicated to Apollo, or to some desert scorpion god instead. It is just as fairly used as a church as a pagan temple. You must stop this scandalous treatment of these men!'

Julian stopped and glared at me for a moment, but then ignored my argument as he continued his angry pacing.

'"The ultimate sacrifice," they call it, and this old blind man, their leader, they call him "the sainted hermit." The hypocrisy of it all!' he raged. 'The old fool sleeps on the ground in a bare room and eats lentils and calls it a sacrifice! By the gods, I do the same thing! Yet at least I work for a living. His is not a sacrifice, it is the ultimate extravagance, for he relies completely on the service of these others. They are in his employ! They prepare all his food to be hauled up in buckets and his waste is let down the same way, and in some ill-begotten sense of holy sacrifice or just plain ignorance of basic sanitation, they use the same bucket for both tasks! What kind of a religion is this, Caesarius? Are they lunatics?'

I stood by in a silent rage, furiously clenching and unclenching my fists in an attempt to control the emotions I felt at that moment. The sullen guards carefully roped and carried the silent old man out of the room from which he had not set foot in thirty years, accompanied by the moaning and hymn singing of his distraught companions. Never again, I swore, would Julian commit such an atrocity.

This event, Brother, was unremarkable — though I can almost see your eyes widening in fury as you read that word. 'Unremarkable!?' you bellow. 'That a community of Christian ascetics be driven like dogs from their home by this… this Antichrist?!' Allow me to explain. Of course, Brother, it was remarkable as a single act, but when accrued to the sum total of all such remarkable outrages that Julian committed, which are too numerous to be recounted here, it was but a drop of water in the sea. In that sense, as the Sophists might put it, it was unremarkable in its very remarkability. And like a small wound that festers and suppurates for a time, but in the end reluctantly heals, the event would have remained small in my mind too, had it been small in Julian's — but such was not the case.

That night, still furious, I strode uninvited into his tent to reclaim some papers I had left there the day before. I found him slumped over his table asleep, yet dreaming fitfully and talking loudly and incoherently enough to make the guards restless as they paced outside.

'Demons!' he moaned. The events of the day were clearly tormenting him as much, in their own way, as they were me. 'Demons, the Christians! Devils!'

Further such epithets sprang from his lips, but I ignored them, transfixed as I was by those initial words, and by the sight of him sprawled sweating and twitching across his table, his face grimacing in the imagined fears and torments reserved only for lunatics and the possessed.

God help me, Brother, murder came to mind, murder! And what is worse, the notion came in such a powerful rush, with such an infernal roaring, that I was unable to control the path down which my thoughts led me. I could not simply banish the notion as I have trained myself to do with other unworthy thoughts, by uttering a quick paternoster or a prayer to the Virgin. No, murder came to mind and murder stayed, and I froze as much in fascination at the sight of the Emperor of Rome spewing mad obscenities in his sleep, as in horror at the thought of what I might do, and at the pleasure I took in thinking it. How simple it would be to pick up a leather sandal thong, step over to the man and throttle him silently till he lay still. With a mere rag for a cushion around his neck it could even be done without bruising or abrasion — the Emperor would be found in the morning and thought to have swallowed his tongue in a fit of epilepsy! Or with only slightly more risk to my being caught as an assassin, I could, within seconds, crush his head with a quick blow from a brass candlestick, or simply slip his own dagger from his belt and thrust it into his heart, carefully placing his hands around the shaft to feign self-infliction. So easy it would be, mere seconds, and the course of this campaign, the entire future of Rome and Christianity, could be changed!

Has any man ever held so much power in his hands, so much unchallenged, world-cracking, empire-toppling power as I held for those few brief moments in the tent? Had Christ himself wielded such concentrated potential on that fortieth day in the desert, when Lucifer offered Him all the kingdoms of the earth in return for a mere act of homage? Was Lucifer tendering the same offer to me, here in my own desert — and if so, would it be more of a sin to accept the Evil One on his terms, or to place myself on the same level as Christ by refusing them, knowing that the man before me may have been Satan's own representative on earth? When Lucifer appeared to Christ as a man, would Christ Himself have been justified in murdering him? My entire life I had sought only to serve God, by serving and healing man — is this what it all came down to, a sordid decision as to whether to use a leather thong on the neck or a candlestick on the skull?

My mind swam, and the canvas walls seemed to close in on me, and, stiffly, like one benumbed with cold or with horror, I took two shuffling steps forward, my hand reaching out for the candlestick — and then stopped. Julian still lay awkwardly across the table, head to the side facing me, but now, and perhaps for some time, though I hadn't noticed from the effect of my own burning brain, he was silent and still. In the dim light I saw that his one visible eye was fixed steadily on me, wide and unblinking. How long he had been watching me, and whether he suspected the thoughts that had been racing through my mind, I did not know.

He slowly lifted his head and shoulders, sat back in his chair, and ran his fingers through his hair, reviving himself from his nap as I had seen him do so many times in the past. His expression was now calm, like that of the Julian I remembered from Gaul, and a faint smile was even visible on his lips from his embarrassment at having been caught napping. I stared at him, at my friend and companion for the past eight years, and a wave of nausea passed over me, of disgust that I could have so easily acted upon the terrible thought I had been contemplating. It is not for nothing that the name Lucifer may be translated as 'light bearer,' though the light he sheds is one that blinds rather than illuminates. Shaking my head in confusion, as if it were I who had just woken up, I stepped to the table to retrieve my papers and left the tent wordlessly, while Julian stared after me in puzzlement.

The next day, as we marched past the cliffs, I was told by the sentries that the bitter ascetics had left their community and dispersed into the desert in the night, God only knows where. May He keep them safe.

Continuing our descent down the Euphrates, we accepted the surrender of Anatha, a small, well-fortified island in the middle of the river. During the inspection of the prisoners, we were astonished to find an elderly Roman man, a century or more in age, who could barely speak Latin for having lived in these parts so many years. Doddering rheumatically up to the Emperor and his astonished advisers, he threw back his shoulders, peered as best he could through his cataract-thickened eyes, and barked out an order in a surprisingly clear and authoritative voice: 'Take me to your general, tribune!'

Julian, taken aback at first, quickly recovered his poise, and solemnly placed his hand on the old man's shoulder. 'I am the local commander,' he said evenly. 'How may I be of service?'

The ancient one stared long at him, then took a shaky step back and raised his arm in a creaky military salute. 'Hail, tribune. Infantryman Cassius Rufinus reporting for duty, sir!'

With a faint smile appearing through the dusty tangle of his beard, Julian ordered the man to stand at ease, then after nodding respectfully to the crowd of overawed family members who had begun to gather, he invited the old soldier to accompany him to his field tent for a cup of wine. Cassius Rufinus assented to this with great dignity, and had I more time and papyrus than have been allotted to me, Brother, I could write an entire book of the old scoundrel's adventures, for over the next two hours his rambling story was allowed to spill out uninterrupted, a veritable living history of Rome's long-forgotten wars. He recounted how he had participated in the Emperor Galerius' campaigns in Persia seventy years earlier, had been abandoned by the legions in Anatha to die of fever from a wound, but had later recovered. There he ended up making his home, became prosperous, took several wives, and had many children and grandchildren, several of whom were called to the tent to witness a most extraordinary fact: that for decades Cassius Rufinus had predicted that he would be buried on Roman soil in his hundredth year.

Julian treated him gently and with great honor, attaching him and his huge family, laden with gold representing seventy years of back wages and pension, to a dispatch caravan being sent to the Roman governor of Syria. I was later told that the old man did, in fact, die there quite peacefully. This was a blessing, for as soon as the patriarch and his family had departed, Julian destroyed the town.

Following the river further we passed by the impregnable fortresses of Achaiachala and Thilutha without stopping, judging that speed of approach to Ctesiphon was of greater value than the destruction of these two minor strongholds. This was a wise decision, for the Persian garrisons stationed therein were so small as to be of little danger to our troops as we passed by them, yet it would have been enormously costly in terms of treasure and men to subdue them. At Baraxamalcha we crossed to the right bank of the Euphrates on a hastily assembled pontoon bridge, which, as before, Julian destroyed after its use. Seven miles farther downstream we encountered the large, beautiful city of Diacira, which like others we had passed had been largely abandoned, though this one more recently. In it we found large stores of grain and powdery white salt, which our quartermasters eagerly seized. A few women were discovered hiding here as well, but were found to be mad, and so put to death. We then continued our march along the dryer right bank of the Euphrates, passing a spring bubbling not with water, but with a strange, black, bitumenlike substance which we found to burn foully and unendingly with a thick black smoke when ignited. After much wonder at the strangeness and seeming lack of utility of some of the substances with which God finds fit to bless us, we finally arrived at the town of Ozogardane, a beautiful city of spas and pleasure facilities which was, again, deserted. Here we stopped for a much-needed rest and reorganization, though the troops could hardly relax: on every hill and rise around us, Persian cavalry scouts stood in silhouette, carefully observing our movements. The reason? This spot was a mere three days' march from Ctesiphon itself.

From here, the approach to Ctesiphon was guarded by a string of fortified cities, each more strongly garrisoned than the next. Unlike the fortresses earlier on our march, it could not be ignored. And though we were a mere fifty miles distant from our ultimate goal, the mere act of marching became an ordeal, for the Persians had summoned the rivers themselves to their aid. They opened the sluice gates to their massive irrigation canals, destroying their own lands and villages in a huge wash of water and mud, yet at the same time flooding all the fields and plains over which we were required to advance. The roads were covered with water, and our camp was inundated. Sloshing through the marshes for two days, the men assisting the oxen to drag the supply carts through the mire, we arrived finally at Pirisabora, the city whose name means 'Victorious Sapor' and whose walls of baked brick laid in bitumen were bronzelike in strength. Julian's military engineers stared up at the battlements in dismay, but their complaints were useless; the city had to be taken.

Our missiles, large flaming rocks and ironclad bolts fired from close at hand by the ballistae and catapults the troops had painstakingly dragged all the way from Antioch, were of no avail. The besieged, whose courage even Julian's normally disdainful Gauls grudgingly acknowledged, had rigged curtains of soaked goat hides, awnings, and even family quilts and bed linens in front of the walls to cushion and dispel the impact of our weapons. Prince Ormizda, Sapor's exiled brother who accompanied us as a guide and who was sent to the front lines to negotiate the defenders' surrender in their own language, was greeted by them with jeers and abuse. Much to Julian's dismay, the taking of this minor city had degenerated into a drawn-out siege; yet time was of the essence. According to our scouts, King Sapor, who weeks before had marched up the Tigris in a fruitless search for our forces from that direction, had now realized his error and was marching rapidly back to defend his city.

The entire night Julian spent conferring with his generals as to the best means of achieving a quick victory. Ultimately, however, his strategy was decided not on the basis of military counsel, but from his reading of history. At dawn, bleary-eyed but excited at the solution he had devised, he summoned Sallustius, who entered the tent with his usual dignity and calm.

'This is the key to our victory!' Julian exclaimed enthusiastically. 'This will have us in the gates by tomorrow without further bloodshed.' They conferred quickly in low tones, the older man shaking his head slowly at first, and then forcefully, his face reddening in anger when he saw that Julian was refusing to listen.

'Madness!' Sallustius muttered as he stormed out of the tent a few moments later.

Julian smiled at me wearily. 'He's no longer schooling a boy soldier,' he said, a touch of defensiveness in his tone. 'You would think that an Emperor's word would have counted for something in that old fool's mind.'

Within an hour he had put his plan into play. He ordered the artillery and archers to provide a withering cover fire on the city's battlements, forcing the defenders to dodge behind their motley protective curtains for safety. He then stationed himself in the middle of a phalanx of a hundred handpicked troops, their tightly packed shields arranged over his head and to the sides of the wedge like an enormous tortoise, to protect him from arrow shots and other missiles. In this formation they awkwardly stormed the city's main gate, which consisted of a huge wooden structure reinforced with iron bars and fittings. Instead of weapons, the men bore only crowbars, chisels, and carpentry tools.

The army held its collective breath, praying to all its gods for the safety of the Emperor. The enemy, quickly realizing the identity of the daring raid's commander, in turn focused all its efforts on destroying the squad of makeshift locksmiths cowering under the shields below them. A deadly hail of arrows, bricks, and stones poured down upon Julian and his men, clattering upon the raised shields and staggering the soldiers beneath with the force of their impact. Several fell as their shields buckled from the weight of the rocks dropped from above, and when other men stepped in to fill the gap they too stumbled and swayed. Even to us standing in safety in the lines fifty yards away, Julian's voice was audible under the tenuous roof of shields, bellowing at his men. 'Put your backs into it!' he cried as they worked to pry off the door's iron bars. 'Burst the hinges, men, saw the boards!' To no avail. Try as the Roman artillery might to repel the defenders above the main gate, all the Persians' resources were being focused on the small Roman squad, for the winnings at stake were too great for them to ignore.

The effort was doomed. Several moments more, and the defenders began hauling up to their tower enormous rectangular building blocks, the kind that would crush a man's foot even if gently set down upon it — the effect they would have being dropped from fifty feet would be too horrible to contemplate. A shout rose up from the Roman army, urging the small squad to return before disaster ensued, and this time Julian heeded. Carefully retaining their formation, still sheltered beneath their dented and splintered shields, the wedge of men stumbled back to their lines, out of the defenders' stone-throwing range, dragging with them those who had been wounded in the ill-fated foray. The army cheered as if it had won a great victory, while the Persians on the battlements matched the shouting with their own hoots and obscene gestures.

Sallustius was furious as he strode back into the tent that afternoon, but Julian silenced him with a baleful stare before he had a chance to say a word.

'Are you going to dispute the wisdom of Scipio, Rome's greatest general?' Julian asked, pushing forward a battered scroll containing Polybius' history of the Carthaginian War.

Sallustius eyed the volume suspiciously, then looked coldly at Julian.

'Read it!' Julian ordered.

Sallustius remained immobile, still staring at Julian, coolly, calculatingly, as if seeking to assess what might be passing through his mind, to determine how far he might be pushed.

'READ IT!' Julian screamed, his voice cracking and his eyes bulging. The guards stopped their pacing outside and one of them peered cautiously in through the door.

Still Sallustius held his stare until Julian glanced away; then slowly and deliberately he stepped forward and picked up the volume with the thumb and forefinger of his hand, as if handling a bit of rotten carrion with tongs. He scanned the passage that had been marked in the margin with a bit of charcoal.

'I read here,' said Sallustius dryly, 'that the gate Scipio attacked was sheltered by a stone arch, and that he and his men were able to work on the door at their leisure while the barbarians above them were helpless to repel them, since their missiles could not strike. Scipio was indeed a wise general.'

With that he turned on his heels and stalked out, leaving Julian glaring after him in silent rage.

In the end, the city Pirisabora posed no further hardship to us, once the proper resources were applied. Sallustius walked straight from Julian's tent to the quarters of the engineering brigades, and ordered that a machine the Greeks know as a helepolis, a 'city taker,' be constructed with all possible speed. Few in the army had ever seen or even imagined such a device, though Sallustius' own encyclopedic knowledge of military history allowed him to easily rattle off a description of the machines Poliorcetes had developed in Macedonia centuries before: an enormous tower constructed of strong wooden beams and covered with hides, green wicker, mud, and other noncombustible materials. Within two days it was complete, standing six stories tall, towering over even the city's ramparts. Twenty archers armed with flaming arrows and soot pots manned the topmost level, while ten feet below them a ramp was suspended by chains, to be dropped down onto the top of the battlements as soon as the device had been rolled close to the base of the walls. Fifty soldiers were picked to lead the rush from the tower into the city, and the entire army would follow close behind, either up the five flights of wooden stairs and over the ramparts, or through the city gates themselves if the attackers from the tower were able to open them from the inside.

At the mere sight of this terrible machine the inhabitants surrendered without further struggle.

The destruction of Pirisabora renewed the troops' spirits. With considerable hardship, but now eagerness to match, the troops floundered and sloshed again through the marshes and fields, commandeering dugout canoes and rafts from the inhabitants and running down and slaughtering the disorganized Persian defenders in the swamps. Fourteen miles we traveled this way, a distance that under normal circumstances would be scarcely more than a morning's easy trot, even with the crushing load of gear each man bore on his back. With the flooding and skirmishing, however, the journey took nearly two full days. Small bridges were constructed of planks cut from the spongy wood of palm trees, resting on rock pillars built in the waterways. Where the marshes were too deep, platforms were floated on inflated bladders cunningly sewn together of sheep hides coated with bitumen. We were so close to Ctesiphon we could even smell it; at times, when the wind was from the east, it bore with it faint whiffs of the spices and herbs of a marketplace, a marketplace so massive that only Ctesiphon could contain it. Julian knew that if he could reach the city before the King was able to reinforce its garrison, then its walls and all its wealth — indeed control of the entire Persian Empire — would fall to him.

It was fourteen miles, as I said, until we arrived at the ancient city of Maozamalcha, before which the army stopped and stared in awe. On every side rose steep, high rocks allowing only a narrow approach with winding detours. Huge towers rose over the outcropping nearly as high as the central citadel, itself standing on a formidable, rocky eminence. The land was slightly less severe to the rear of the city, with a slope leading down to the river, yet on these walls the defenders had amassed a fearsome array of artillery and other weapons that prevented attackers from forming up for a sustained assault. Spies informed us that the city's garrison was not the meager, underfed, and undertrained local militia that we most often found defending the battlements in such situations. Rather, the walls were defended by a large detachment of King Sapor's regulars whom he had assigned here before he departed up the Tigris, on the off chance that we might take this approach to Ctesiphon. For once, the hapless King had guessed right.

Julian slowly picked his way around the city on his horse, surrounded by a handful of generals, his deformed shadow Maximus, and a small coterie of light-armed guards, scanning the walls from all angles, careful to remain out of shooting range of the obscenity-shouting defenders on the ramparts. They stopped here and there to examine a landscape feature, the opportunity for an approach, a perceived weakness in the structure of the battlements — there were none. No city is completely impregnable, but it takes a trained eye to envision how a stronghold like this might be taken, and a strong stomach to imagine the consequences of doing so — or of failing to do so. If we were to succeed in our attack on Ctesiphon, this large garrison could not be left at our back.

Late that night, after consulting with Sallustius and his generals, Julian decided on a classic siege approach. He himself would direct the open assault and the placement of the artillery and siege engines. Just as we were leaving the tent after making this decision, the cavalry commander Victor galloped up with a small guard, their faces dimly lit by the sputtering torches they carried.

'What news, Victor?' Julian asked as the man stiffly dismounted from his foam-flecked horse. 'If you miss another strategy meeting we'll assign you to the kitchens.'

'A thousand pardons, Augustus,' Victor mumbled calmly, above the snickers of Maximus and the others. 'I went out last night on reconnaissance down the eastern road and was delayed in returning.'

Julian's expression sobered. 'No trouble, I hope? Any sign of Sapor advancing down the Tigris?'

Victor straightened his shoulders proudly. 'No trouble, Augustus. On the contrary. I rode to the very walls of Ctesiphon and encountered no opposition.'

The gathering went dead silent. Julian stared.

'To Ctesiphon and back, in one day? My God, Victor, that's seventy miles.'

'Yes, sir. There are one or two more forts to be taken, but the garrisons are huddled inside like virgins, afraid to show. The roads are clear. Sapor is nowhere in sight.'

Julian smiled thinly as he glanced around at his officers. 'Men — Ctesiphon is ours.'