Gods and Legions

IV

The instant the sun shot its first rays over the camp, like bolts fired from a catapult, the long knife slid home. Steaming blood spewed forth in thick, ropy bursts, drenching the spotless white folds and purple hem of Julian's linen gown and pulsing into the large, wrought-silver basin at his feet. The breathing of the quivering animal, stunned in advance with a blow from a poleaxe, subsided into a choked gurgle, and its huge eyes bulged and then clouded as the lifeblood drained from its body. The assembled troops watched silently as the seers' florid prayers to the war god Ares rang in their ears. A moment after the gash was inflicted in the throat, the purple stream hissing into the basin lost momentum and subsided to a low trickle; the trembling head flopped limply to the dust, and with an enormous shudder the animal died.

Immediately the two Etruscan haruspices, dark, smallframed men in conical hoods who had accompanied Julian on all his travels since his apostasy and for whom I had no use, leaped to their tasks with their knives held high in enthusiasm. Slicing open the lower belly with a neat flourish, they beckoned Julian over. Well versed in his technique, he bent down on one knee before the still-quivering animal, inserted both arms up to the elbow into the cavity, which the largest of the two sorcerers struggled to hold open for him, and, after a moment of grunting and tugging, emerged with the glistening purplish liver clutched tightly in both hands like the head of an enemy grasped triumphantly by a barbarian as a trophy. He knelt reverently before the haruspices and Maximus as the three solemnly placed their hands on his head and then on the liver, palpating it, testing its firmness, examining its color and the thickness of its vesicles. Each man finally mumbled some abomination to the gods and daubed a streak of blood on Julian's forehead and temples. Standing erect he raised the liver high above his head, blood pouring in rivulets down his arms, dripping onto his beard and bared chest, staining the sleeves and bodice of his ceremonial vestments, as the assembled troops held their breaths.

'Thus ordain the gods,' he shouted. 'That like unto Alexander in ages past, the Persians must submit, both this city and Ctesiphon itself. So their conquerors shall join the ranks of the immortals, and by the holy blood of this sacred ox shall you, my men, be strengthened and purified for the triumph that awaits you. To conquer!'

'To conquer!' roared fifty thousand voices, a cry that carried to the battlements of the doomed Maozamalcha. 'To conquer!' they repeated again and again, increasing in pitch and volume, aiming to send their message, throbbing and reverberating, to the gates of Ctesiphon itself. 'To conquer!' the voices boomed, and Julian stood motionless, the unspeakable, dripping organ held high over his head, staring at the heavens as the troops raged and raved before him. The enormous pyre behind him, prepared in advance with a stack of cottonlike palm wood smeared with pitch to receive the sacrificial carcass, burst into a ball of flame shooting into the sky, an acrid black smoke pouring in pulses into the air and settling heavily over the men. Their excitement had grown to a fever pitch with the rhythmic chant, and as I glanced at the walls of the city looming high over us, across the river flats I saw the battlements filled with a line of silent Persians. The garrison and the city's inhabitants, thousands of them, had been drawn from other parts of the fortifications in their curiosity at the uproar in the Roman camp below, the soldiers' polished mail gleaming starlike in the early rays of the sun.

Suddenly Julian dropped his bloody arms, passed the liver to Maximus, and drawing a sword turned his back to the men. He faced the lines of artillery and engines that had been set up in the night parallel to the walls: a dozen huge ballistae, their cords wound taut on the massive winches and loaded with enormous, iron-tipped wooden javelins; a row of 'scorpions,' each bearing a boulder the weight of a man, poised in a long net to be whipped slinglike over the top of the lever when the tension on the cords was released; field catapults poised to let fly showers of deadly, thick-stocked bolts; and a thousand archers, long bows at the ready. He thrust his sword into the air in a prearranged signal. With an earsplitting screech that silenced the roar of the men before us, the cords of the engines snapped to and screamed off their reels. Forty massive levers from the engines shot up simultaneously. Oak slammed against iron and iron against earth, and the air became black with boulders and bolts, whistling toward the astonished defenders. The mob of Persians on the wall scarcely had time to blink before the stones slammed into their ranks, each of them carrying away a dozen men at a time. A huge wooden bolt shot completely through a Persian officer's chest armor and impaled three men behind him, leaving holes in their torsos big enough to insert a hand. One scorpion, misfiring from careless loading of the boulder the night before, flipped into the air at the release of its cord and hurled its chassis directly backward, crushing and mangling the body of an engineer so badly as to defy recognition. But the worst terror was in the city itself.

Screams arose from the towers opposite us, and scarcely had the dust of the initial impact cleared when Julian's thousand archers, at a command, dipped the tips of their arrows into the pots of flaming pitch that had been placed at their feet and filled the air with a black cloud of smoking, stinking missiles, aimed high over the heads of the defenders on the ramparts to land in the roofs and hayricks of the city behind them. More screams of pain and terror rose into the air, this time from women behind the walls, and as the archers and artillery filled the sky with their whizzing, shattering hell, a pall of thick smoke rose from a dozen points within the walls and obscured our view.

At the first, massive eruption of artillery, the infantry troops at the sacrifice were shocked into silence and awe. Within seconds, however, a huge cheer welled up and the men broke out of the parade ground like water bursting through a dam, racing to their cohorts' assigned positions behind the artillery, prepared to leap forward at Julian's command to storm the city as soon as it had been softened by the barrage. The sun rose higher in the sky, the smoke behind the walls thickened, and the stench it carried to our lines carried the smell of death, of roasting meat, of excrement and vomit and all the unspeakable carnage and suffering of a city under siege. For hours the artillery attack continued, relentless, pounding, each stone driving into the granite-hard walls, forcing open fissures and cracks, toppling battlements — yet still the walls held, still the massive gates remained closed. The defiant defenders, during the occasional lulls in our hails of missiles, let fly taunts and obscene insults to our parentage or genitals, in ancient and crudely inflected Greek.

At first our troops, out of sheer nervous energy and anticipation of the pillage to come, were unable to remain still; when their offers to assist with the engines were rebuffed by the methodical artillery engineers, they put themselves to use hauling boulders and other ammunition for the machines to fire. Even so, the growing heat of the day under the blazing sun, and the thickness and stink of the black air began taking their toll. Frustrated and angry at the delay, the men collapsed in the dirt, tugging at their stifling armor and helmets, shading their heads under shields hastily propped on lances embedded in the ground. Shortly after noon, after a sustained artillery attack of such force that it would have leveled the walls of Rome itself, Julian rode through the ranks, furious and dripping with sweat, and issued the order to cease fire. The engineering companies collapsed exhausted on the ground, calling for water and food, and the support staff came running to assist them. Julian stood a moment watching the men eat and drink greedily but silently, and then, dismounting, he stalked wrathfully into his field tent, where he remained for the rest of the day.

Things fared no better the next morning, when our troops again watched in resentment and rage as the Roman engines and artillery poured a withering hail of missiles and boulders on the benighted city, still without fatal effect. Julian was almost crazed with impatience and fury. Five bulls he had sacrificed that morning to Ares, magnificent beasts that the haruspices argued the army could not spare for merely one offering, and for a minor city at that. He knew, for his whole life he must have known, that such offerings to false gods were of no more effect than a man's footsteps on the shifting sands, yet still he persisted in his folly. That whole day he refused to meet my eyes, the eyes of a man who would not have hesitated in calling him to task for his damnable obstinacy. He paced up and down the lines angrily, raging at the impregnable walls as a wolf prowling round a sheepfold howls at the gates, jaws thirsting for blood while lambs and ewes huddle fearfully within. He brutally abused the hapless engineers as they struggled to keep up the rate of firing he demanded, calling down the gods' curses on the steadfast Persians in their hellhole of a stronghold, refusing the entreaties of his advisers to drink water or to rest. Fear was developing in him that he would be unable to take the city without a protracted effort. What was worse: the first, early rumors had been received by his scouts that King Sapor was approaching with his massive army.

His mood broke when a short, slightly built legionary trotted up to him late in the afternoon, his hair not merely matted but encrusted with sweat and grime, flakes of drying dirt covering his torso like a skin disease, his eyes red and squinting in the bright sunlight. The watchful guard of suspicious Gauls at first refused to let him pass to address the Emperor, until Julian glanced over and spied the commotion the small man was beginning to make as he raised his voice indignantly. The Emperor smiled as he called the guards back.

'Suffer the little ones to come unto me,' he said calmly, with a sly look my way, which I ignored. 'Even the filthy little ones. In fact — especially the filthy ones, if the news this man bears is what I hope.'

The trooper approached, his face still flushed in anger at the guards, and there was no indication of obeisance in his posture or voice as he stood before the Emperor. 'It is ready,' he said simply.

'Good man,' replied Julian, clapping him on his dirt-laden shoulder without hesitation. 'What is your name, soldier?'

'Exsuperius, my lord.'

'Exsuperius. "The overpowering one." Your name is a good omen, soldier, for this very night the Persians will receive their comeuppance from one who is indeed overpowering. "Exsuperius" will be our password this night, and you, soldier, will personally open the gates of this foul city to the Roman army.'

Exsuperius nodded, slowly and with a great dignity utterly at odds with his ditchdigger's appearance. Without another word he turned and walked sedately past Julian's fidgety guards and disappeared into the bowels of the vast Roman camp.

It was once believed that the Romans were aided in their struggle against the Lucanians in the Pyrrhic War by Ares himself, though far be it from me to understand why such a god, even if he did exist, would compromise his majesty by consorting with mortals in such a way. The story was that in the very heat of battle an armed soldier of tremendous stature was seen carrying a huge scaling ladder and leading an impossible charge up the city walls to ultimate victory. The next day, during review, no such soldier could be found, though rewards and honor would have been his to receive — hence the belief that he must have been a god.

No such problem confronted Julian, however, for Exsuperius lived up to all the Emperor's expectations of him, and happily received a laurel crown for his efforts. Long into the night, after the enemy's still-enthusiastic catcalls and jeering had finally subsided, the little miner led fifteen hundred picked troops slithering on their bellies through a tight, sandy tunnel a hundred yards long that had been hastily braced with bridging timbers carried by the river fleet. Shortly before they were expected to arrive at the end of the tunnel, trumpets sounded the attack and the entire army rushed to arms, throwing up simultaneous assaults on three sides of the city and raising a terrifying clamor to distract the wary inhabitants from the clinking of metal tools beneath their feet.

The ruse was successful. As the Persian garrison leaped to the walls to repel the night attack, the mine was opened, and Exsuperius and his band sprang out to find themselves in the bedroom of an elderly woman so fragile, or so weary, that she failed even to wake up at the sound of her floor bursting open and three cohorts of armed Romans storming through. They made their way into the streets, which were empty, as every able-bodied inhabitant of the city was fighting at the walls or cowering in their houses. After finding their bearings, the invaders raced to the main gate, slew the sentries from behind without difficulty, and threw open the doors.

The Persians stood shocked on their battlements, forgetting even to fling their missiles, as the Romans rushed into the city in a frenzy. Julian himself was in the front ranks, shouting his demands for the enemy to surrender, but his words were drowned by the screaming of women and children and the clamor raised by his troops as they destroyed everything and killed everyone in their path without regard to age or sex. He sat his horse in the middle of the tumult the remainder of the night, coldly surveying the destruction, watching expressionless as Persian soldiers on the high battlements drew their daggers and slew themselves, stabbing their own throats or hurling themselves to the ground.

Nabdates, the governor of the city, was brought in the morning with eighty of the King's soldiers, all of them badly mauled and beaten by their captors, some with eyes already put out or ears lopped off. They had been found cowering in a hidden cellar, hoping to survive the carnage above them until the Romans departed, when they would be able to emerge in safety. Julian put his face up close to Nabdates, who averted his swollen and blackened eyes, and then he turned back to Sallustius, his lip curled in a disdainful sneer.

'Turn them loose,' he said.

Sallustius stared. 'My lord?'

'You heard me. Turn them loose. Give them horses and a day's rations and let them go. They will bring to Ctesiphon news of the Emperor's strength and the fury of the Roman gods. And their very survival will be a permanent testimony to their cowardice.'

At this Nabdates himself spoke up.

'No, mighty Augustus,' he pleaded in courtly Greek. 'Kill me now.'

'Nonsense. Do it yourself. You are free to use the cliffs or ropes as you wish.'

'Augustus, I cannot face the Great King, or my people…'

But Julian had already turned away dismissively, making his way slowly down the street through the throngs of guffawing, drunken soldiers who slapped his back and reached for his hand. He picked his way carefully through the rubble of what had once been an elegant main thoroughfare, now completely demolished, roofs thrown down into the street, pots and furniture broken and hurled through the crumbled window frames. Everywhere were the dead — bodies cut and smashed, men's faces destroyed by bricks and stones, women lying naked, their pale bodies bloody and askew, violated and then fatally discarded through fourthstory windows. The Emperor kept his gaze straight as he shouldered through the mob of cheering and rampaging soldiers, showing no emotion at either the dreadful carnage or the evidence of his astounding victory, until he finally arrived at a small forum where a Persian-speaking Roman tribune was directing the collection of captives and plunder from all quarters of the city.

Even a town preparing for war, ostensibly hiding its valuables and sending its nobles to safe havens, contains booty sufficient as to make most soldiers' eyes glaze over, and doomed Maozamalcha was no exception. The pile was already large, and growing every moment as legionaries entered from every side street. Their arms were laden with gold and silver plate from the palaces and houses of the rich, rings and bracelets dripping with blood from the dead limbs from which they had been hacked, golden and marble statuary from the temples, and all manner of costly fabrics, silks, and linens, some unused and wrapped on their original bolts, others in the form of beautiful gowns and vestments still warm from the bodies of their final wearers. Girls and women huddled wretchedly around the heap of riches, keening and wailing in their misery, many swollen and bleeding if they had presented any resistance to their attackers, most of them still undamaged. The value of their beauty had been recognized by even the most brutal of their captors, whose craving for slave gold exceeded even the ache in their loins. A few young children had also been included in the group, having followed their female relatives and been spared by their own resourcefulness or the soldiers' mercy.

When Julian was recognized, the tribune and soldiers backed tactfully away from the plunder, and even the desolate females quieted their wailing to a slightly more respectful sob. It is known by all, of course, that the Emperor has first pick of the spoils, half of which belong to him, and after his lot has been separated the remainder is to be split among the rest of the army in accordance with rank and deed.

He walked solemnly around the gleaming pile, picking up a trinket here and there and, tossing it back onto the heap, reaching down to touch the chin of a weeping young girl and force her face up so he could inspect her more closely. An unusual vase caught his eye, and after holding it to the sunlight for a moment for a better view, he carefully set it upright in a more sheltered location. One ragged young boy and his older sister sat slightly apart from the others. The boy alone seemed to be untroubled, his large, limpid eyes fixed not on the Emperor, as were those of every other prisoner and bystander, but on the lips of the girl as she rocked back and forth, crooning softly in Greek an ancient Christian children's hymn.

The Mother of Christ,

Al-le-lu-ia

Her most precious child,

Al-le-lu-ia

The Father in Heaven,

Alleluia, Al-le-lu-ia.

The girl became silent as Julian stopped directly in front of them, yet the boy remained staring expectantly at his sister's lips, ignoring the presence of the Roman Emperor, the man whose troops had destroyed his city and killed his family. The boy did not move, even as the girl shrank back in fear at Julian's approach. Julian stared, wondering at the boy's audacity, or whether he was simply an imbecile. He called the Persian-speaking tribune over to him.

'Ask the boy who he is, why he alone is not afraid.'

The tribune looked down at the lad skeptically, and barked out a harsh command. The boy peered at him quizzically.

'That's not how you talk to a child,' Julian reprimanded him. 'Soften your voice, tribune, and question him. I am curious.'

The tribune stood stiffly for a moment, collecting his wits, and then in a voice only slightly less jarring continued his guttural interrogation. Julian sighed.

'My lord,' the girl mumbled fearfully, and as she looked up I could see why her voice had been so small, so tuneless, for her face was frightfully battered, her upper lip split to her nose from a blow. I reflected that with her beauty gone, she had little chance of surviving the distribution of spoils, and perhaps that was all for the better. 'My lord,' she said again in Persian that the tribune could barely hear, 'the boy is deaf and mute.'

'Ah,' said Julian as he looked more closely at the lad.

Suddenly, however, the child seemed to perk up, for looking straight at the tribune, whose lips he had read, he carefully and silently pantomimed his life — his father was a presbyter in the small Christian church — I reflected that he had most likely traveled abroad in his studies, hence the Greek rhyme — his mother was a weaver, he had a small sister, or perhaps a brother…

Julian watched, fascinated, as the boy's hands slowly and eloquently spun the story, many of the motions and concepts unrecognizable though all of them extraordinarily structured and deliberate. His eyes were still large and expressionless, but his lips silently formed the precise Persian words of his tale, imitating the mouthings of those around him who in the past had sought to communicate with him through his veil of silence.

'How old is he, tribune? Ask him. He looks about the same age my own son would have been.'

The officer barked out the question in a loud voice such as is used by ignorant folk who believe that speaking in such a way will allow them to be better understood by old people and foreigners. The boy carefully studied his lips, and before the tribune had even finished, the child held up six fingers, turning solemnly to Julian. He then began rapidly making other counting motions with his hands, which I took to mean his indication of the precise number of months and days since he had turned that age. The lad was clever.

The tribune glared, as if at a street mime in Rome mocking passersby at the taverns. Finally, weary and uncomprehending of the boy's gestures, the officer turned.

'Perhaps, Augustus, if you would care to point out which articles are of particular interest to you, I could set them aside. Some jewelry, or a fine virgin?'

Julian snorted with disdain. 'I have no need of virgins. Nor did Alexander or Scipio Africanus. It is enough to be victorious in war without staining some poor girl with my lust. My wants are few.'

Bending down to a small cedar box he opened it to find it laden with coins, gold darics, and silver sigloi, a veritable fortune, along with several precious stones and a number of loose pearls — the entire inventory of a jewelry merchant, perhaps, or the carelessly hidden life savings of a wealthy nobleman. He squatted down and absentmindedly picked through the hoard with his forefinger, occasionally lifting an item to his eyes for closer inspection and then placing it back in the box. He finally stood up, holding in his hand three coins, the smallest, oldest, and most worn of the lot. He turned to the tribune.

'I shall take these,' he said, 'for they come from the time of Alexander and the fact that they have not been melted down for new coinage is a sign from the gods that they have been preserved for me.'

The tribune stared at the tiny coins, and then glanced helplessly at the growing pile of plunder. 'And what else, my lord?'

Julian smiled. 'Just this,' he said, placing his hand on the young deaf-mute's head, and leading him away, 'for he speaks most eloquently in a language known only to the gods.'

As we marched out the next day, the army was shadowed and harassed by a ragged and half-crazed band of Persians. They were unarmed, and so had passed through our outlying scouts and sentries without challenge, playing the part of desert traders or merchants, but as soon as they approached within earshot of the Roman column they began setting up the familiar hooting and catcalls that had so annoyed us outside Maozamalcha.

'What in the gods' name is that?' wondered Julian aloud, and a Gallic guard rode over to the unlikely mob of tormenters to gain a better look at them.

He galloped back with a wry smile.

'Nabdates and his men, my lord. They say they aim to accompany us to Ctesiphon.'

'Tell them they are forbidden to follow us. Tell them to go away.'

The sentry rode back to the Persians. A moment later the jeering rose up even louder, and the Gaul returned, shrugging helplessly.

The entire day the Persians followed our every move, loudly insulting our fighting ability, our strength, and our grandmothers. Julian had them run off, but they returned. Two of them he ordered blinded, in the hopes that would frighten off the rest, but Nabdates calmly blinded two more of his own men in return, and they continued to laugh and jeer as they doubled up on the horses of their comrades, blood streaming from their empty sockets. Finally, as we prepared to make camp that evening, Julian sighed.

'I refuse to allow them to torture me all night with their infernal wailing,' he said resignedly.

Sallustius looked at him guardedly. 'What do you suggest?'

'Give them what they want.'

Sallustius ordered Nabdates to be ostentatiously thrashed and then burned alive, to which the poor man submitted with cries of thanks and praise to his gods. After a few hours of grief-stricken howling, the rest of his men were driven to the hills by Victor's cavalry, where they scattered and did not return.

Now nothing separated us from the great city of Ctesiphon.