Gods and Legions

V

I misspoke. There was nothing separating us from Ctesiphon except the Euphrates and Tigris, two of the largest rivers known to man. At this point of their flow, the enormous courses come within a mere several miles of each other, forming in their midst a rich region dedicated solely to the King's defense and pleasure, a fertile river island of smiling vineyards, bountiful orchards, and shade groves, dotted here and there with royal hunting lodges and reserves teeming with stocked game from all corners of the earth. Yet how to cross these two rivers and mount the steep heights of the left bank of the Tigris to the strategic location of Ctesiphon? And how to convey our valuable fleet across the land between the two flows? This, I confess, Brother, had kept me deeply worried ever since Julian had decided upon this route down the right bank of the Euphrates — in fact, I was not alone, for the Emperor's generals had been whispering their own fears concerning this very matter for weeks now. Only Julian and Sallustius appeared unconcerned about the approach to Ctesiphon; and so it should be, for only they had read their history.

Two centuries and a half before this time, when the Emperor Trajan had himself followed this precise path in attacking King Sapor's ancestor, he had had the foresight to bring with him a remarkable detachment of engineers, led by a hydrographic genius whose name has been lost to us, but whose works remain more enduring than those of Trajan himself. This man had seen from his study of the elevations and the lay of the land that a canal could be cut between the two rivers, diverting water from the Euphrates to convey ships to the Tigris. Indeed, Trajan had performed this very task, and though the great work had later been filled in by the Persians, a century later Severus reexcavated it in a similar effort. Again the Persians filled it in, this time blocking the water head with enormous boulders and disguising the actual course of the canal so that future generations would be unable to find it. They had not counted on Julian's persistence, however. After quickly assembling a pontoon bridge across the Euphrates, over which his entire army crossed, he captured and interrogated numerous peasants and farmers in the area. By doing so, he was able to ascertain the precise path where the soil was looser and more fertile than that of the surrounding river plains, and setting his own engineers to the task, they discovered the traces of the ancient canal and the boulders that had been rolled into place to block the flow.

It was an easy matter to dig it out again, once forty thousand men were put to work on it. A matter of a week of solid mudslinging, to which even Julian contributed his share, stripping naked and standing shoulder-deep in the enormous ditch like the lowliest slave, exhorting his men to haul the rubble and dirt of the generations for the glory of Rome. With a rush and a surge when the last boulder was removed, the mighty Euphrates immediately dropped two feet in depth downstream of the canal entrance and the enormous fleet sailed merrily upon a tide of muddy water to its junction with the Tigris, where it anchored scarcely two miles upstream and across from the city of Ctesiphon itself.

When he arrived at the Tigris in the lead vessel, festooned with the banners and standards of all his legions and lined with a ceremonial guard of burly legionaries, Julian was hardly able to concentrate on the task at hand. He gave scarcely a glimpse toward the massive walls of the city now visible just downriver, but rather focused an unrelenting gaze on the horizon to the northwest, anxiously anticipating the arrival of Sapor at the head of his hordes at any time. He prayed aloud that Sapor might have been delayed, or even defeated, by the forces of Armenia in alliance with his general Procopius, from whom he had not heard a word since the split of the armies weeks before.

'It's suicide,' Victor exclaimed, glancing at the other generals gathered in the tent to ascertain their support. 'Utter suicide!'

Outside, we could hear the cheers of the troops gathered on the near bank of the Tigris in the waning light of the early evening as the horse races continued. Julian had ordered a spontaneous series of games to celebrate our imminent arrival at Ctesiphon, hastily laying out a Coliseum-sized horse track, sandpits for the wrestling and boxing events, and a long, straight course along the shore for the footraces. He had gone so far as to delineate precisely where the spectators — the bulk of the footsore army — were to stand for the betting and lusty cheering of their comrades, carefully arranging it so that the blare of the trumpets and the roar of the excited troops would carry over the water to the left bank of the river, even to the city itself. He had also taken the precaution of posting military guards at discrete intervals along the water's edge to prevent spectators from gathering on that side to watch the events. He wanted the Persian garrison on the other side of the river to have an unimpeded view of the activity, and in this he was rewarded, for like low-caste Romans able to afford only the cheap seats at the games, the entire Ctesiphon garrison, some twenty or thirty thousand men, had gathered in ranks a quarter mile across the water, watching the proceedings with huge interest. They hauled stools and blankets to the water's edge and passed wine flasks among themselves, cheering on their favorites and audibly moaning when they lost, and in general behaving precisely as if they were guests — which they were, by personal invitation of the Roman Emperor. He observed it all with amused satisfaction.

Another deep roar drowned out Victor's comments in the tent. When it had subsided, Julian glared at the other generals, pointedly ignoring Victor's pessimism.

'Delaying,' he said dismissively, 'will not make the river any narrower, nor the opposite bank any lower. Time will only make the enemy's position stronger, their numbers greater. Our success cannot be achieved by waiting — we must act now. The enemy is relaxed, thinking our men will spend tonight in revelry. There is no better opportunity. Rome cannot wait.' He then turned away.

Sallustius stood up and made to leave. 'Unload the largest vessels,' he ordered the others, 'and form them into three squadrons. Keep the men reveling — the more noise, the better. It will keep the garrison off its guard. At midnight we move. Victor, you lead with five vessels. Directly across and a mile downstream. Take the beachhead silently to divide the garrison from the city. The rest of the fleet, carrying the army, will then join you, squadron by squadron. Now, move.'

The generals filed silently out into the evening's dusty heat, leaving Julian and me alone in the tent. He bent silently over his work for a time while I reviewed some notes, occasionally pausing to look up as some particularly raucous cheering wafted in through the door from outside. After a while he sat back against the frame post and stretched, rubbing his eyes wearily. Suddenly he stopped and gazed at me, as if having just noticed my presence.

'Caesarius,' he said, almost apologetically. 'Still the only man in the entire camp who will stay awake with me. Still the truest friend I have.' He grinned at me, and shook his head slowly.

I smiled back, but said nothing, and he noticed the air of hesitancy about me, my unwillingness to fully accept his olive branch, to repair the friendship that had been so deeply cracked at the palace the previous year. A shadow passed over his face, and his eyes grew troubled.

'And yet there is still that distance between us,' he said. 'That barrier, which I created, which I am unable to tear down. You still begrudge me my rudeness at that wretched banquet — Caesarius, if I haven't told you before, I will do so now: I am truly sorry for my behavior that night.'

I shook my head. 'It's not that — that is long past. But you're right, the barrier is there. I can't help but regret your hostility toward your past, to all things Christian, to-'

He interrupted my words with an exasperated sigh, standing up suddenly and walking to the side of his table, where he commenced pacing.

'Does it always come down to that, Caesarius? You still refuse to compromise, to even meet me halfway? I have outlawed no religion, I have thrown no man to the lions or the gladiators — is it not enough that I allow all sects to peacefully coexist within the Empire? Why must I kiss the feet of the Pope before you will be satisfied?'

'Because God does not coexist with other gods,' I said simply.

'No?' He whirled on me, his face flushed and excited. 'Caesarius, we have marched through the desert and conquered the lands of the most powerful king Persia has known in generations. We have destroyed every stronghold we have encountered along the way — all to the steady beat of our paeans to Ares, and with our hands washed in the blood of the sacrificial oxen. Surely, if your God were so jealous of other gods, he would not have allowed me such success in battle? Caesarius, Caesarius — be rational! By insisting that I worship as you do, that I enslave myself to your God, you mock me! You mock everything I have accomplished thus far!'

I remained seated where I was, gazing at him calmly as he resumed his agitated pacing against the short side of the tent wall. Then, as now, eloquent words did not come to my lips, and I resolved to take your advice, Brother, to speak simply and to utter only the truth.

'And for my part,' I said evenly, 'I see nothing but God's benevolence in allowing you such success. And yet you demand that I shift the credit for your glory to some long discredited Greek deity. If I were to change gods like the shifting of the winds, that would say very little for my character in your eyes, would it not? Would you have me convert to your gods at your merest word and whim? How would that reflect on me, or on your choice in comrades?'

He stopped his pacing again and stared at me a long moment, then relaxed and gave a low chuckle.

'For someone who has always claimed ignorance of the art of rhetoric, that was very well put,' he said grudgingly. 'So meanwhile, I am made to look the fool if you remain the token Christian in my court, yet I am damned for allowing a moral weakling if I insist that you convert. Either way it is I who loses. You strike me with an arrow fletched with a feather from my own wing.'

'I had no such intent. I have made no insistence on your beliefs. Why concern yourself with mine?'

'Ah, but you have made insistence, Caesarius,' he said, his eyes narrowing. 'Not in so many words, but in your expression. You accuse me every time you look at me. You speak to me, if at all, with the barest minimum of words. You walk away and hide during my sacrifices, refusing the place of honor set for you with my other advisers, leaving an unsightly vacant chair. Everything you do is insistence upon me.'

I stood up. 'Perhaps it is best, then, that I not attend you any further. I will provide my services among the camp surgeons.'

Julian reflected on this briefly, and then his face softened somewhat. 'No, I won't have you relegated to working with those sawbones. The problem is mine, Caesarius, and mine alone, if my own peace of mind is so disturbed by a single man of stubbornness in my midst. Your services are needed here.'

He resumed his seat, and the openness and yearning I had seen flicker briefly across his face were immediately removed, like the snuffing of a candle, to be replaced by a neutral, determined expression. I stood silently for a moment, waiting for him to say something more. He did not look up further from his work. His own silence, however, I took as a sign that my presence was no longer needed, and I slipped out the door.

The five vessels slipped quietly from their moorings, each carrying eighty picked men, their weapons and shields carefully wrapped to prevent clanking, their oars muffled with rags to reduce splashing. The troops remaining in the camp had been warned of what was to come, yet even as they sharpened their weapons and assembled in ranks on their own vessels, they continued to feed the hundreds of campfires lining the shore, and kept up the hoots and laughter of revelry, automatically and absentmindedly, shouting bets and curses to each other and singing bawdy songs that coursed their way across the silent, black river.

The five darkened ships pointed their prows straight into the river for fifty or a hundred feet until they were clear of the sandbanks along the edge, then eased downstream, aiming to land at a point reconnoitered stealthily just before dark, where the banks seemed to rise more gradually. No moon lit their way, for the night had been carefully chosen. Three scouts had swum the distance to the landing beach at dusk, each bearing a sealed jar containing a smoldering coal, and an oilskin packet containing dry kindling smeared with pitch. If any of the swimmers still survived after hiding submerged in the reeds for several hours, they would stealthily light a signal fire to guide the landing boats into place.

Julian stood among the fleet assembled at the shore, surrounded by his generals, staring intently into the darkness. The forced shouts and singing around us were intolerable, clashing and dissonant, for the tense moment cried out only for silence, for concentration. Across the river, at the Persian camp, all remained as before, fires burning gently down to coals, the occasional cries of the pickets calling the watchwords to one another in the darkness. I struggled to block out the harsh, irritating cacophony around me, focusing on other sounds and sensations, but my eyes could see only blackness as I peered down the river in the direction the ships had disappeared. My overly sensitized ears were tormented not merely by the revelry, but by the insignificant sounds of mere being and existence — the slow lapping of the water against the sandy bank, the soft squelching of the sandals of the man next to me as he rocked irritatingly back and forth on the balls of his feet.

Suddenly Julian stepped forward into the water.

'Look!' he said in a hoarse whisper. 'Is that the signal fire?'

Faintly, like nothing more than a spark thrown up from one of our own bonfires, I could see a tiny orange speck far across the water. It flickered for a moment, seemed to disappear, then suddenly grew larger as it made contact with the tinder and kindling, and its maker frantically blew it and added the pitchy wood he had painstakingly carried on his back. Within a moment it was visible to all, reflecting its twin in the rippling blackness of the water below it.

'The swimmers made it!' Julian shouted in relief, and all around us men clapped one another on the shoulders, for the five advance vessels would be landing in moments to secure the beach. We began climbing onto our own ships, preparing to cast off, when suddenly the eastern sky lit up with a thousand balls of fire, arching through the air in streaking, yellow trails. The men around us erupted in panic.

'Fire arrows! The Persians have attacked them with fire arrows!' someone shouted. More fiery trails streaked through the sky and a bluish conflagration spread to reveal the hellish roaring of a ship destroyed. Running figures began to be visible in front of the flames, and faint shouts were carried to us on the wind.

'No!' Julian cried, leaping out of the water and clambering over the gunwales of the nearest ship. 'That's the signal! They've secured the beach! They're signing for us to come, that the heights are ours for the taking!'

Sallustius stared at him, agape. 'Lord Augustus! That's not-'

'Release the fleet!' Julian bellowed, shouting him down. 'That's the signal! All hands to the oars! Ctesiphon is ours!'

With a roar the men leaped at the ships, pushing those already loaded out into the swift-moving current, surging onto those still awaiting their loads. In a moment the fleet was in the river, the men no longer concerned with stealth, but lighting lanterns, chanting the count of the oars as the vessels raced with the current to the designated landing spot. Across the Tigris the Persian camp was in an uproar, men and horses scurrying madly in all directions in front of the fires, a confused shouting and clamor rising up and drifting across the water to fill the gaps between our men's chants.

By the time we arrived Victor's ships were only fiery hulks, destroyed by the pots of naphtha and flaming arrows hurled at them by the large detachment of Persians cunningly posted to patrol this portion of the river in case such an invasion was to occur. Victor's men, however, had managed to leap out into the reeds and attack and kill many of the enemy, who had run splashing gleefully into the water to plunder the Roman vessels before they burned to the waterline. These survivors bought time for the rest of the fleet to safely land, as Julian had predicted with his fortuitous lie. They took the heights of the bank before the bulk of the Persian garrison could race back down the road to intercept us. By the time the garrison arrived, it was too late for them: thirty thousand Roman troops had already landed and leaped ashore, and more were arriving every moment on the vessels that were left, on barges and livestock rafts, some men even paddling across on their curved, wooden shields, towed by ropes dangling off the backs of the vessels if there was no room for them on board.

The night was long, but the beachhead held. As the first rays of the morning sun peered over the massive walls of Ctesiphon, a mere half mile distant, the entire Roman army was drawn up in battle array at the top of the high riverbank, the Tigris below them filled across its width by half a thousand bobbing transport craft. Despite Victor's initial hesitation, he had performed magnificently, clearing the ground of defenders and bringing the incoming troops to order. Artillery weapons and heavy equipment were being assembled by the engineers, some even before being removed from their landing craft. Even livestock were now beginning to be ferried across, a deliberate indication to the Persians of our intent to remain on the Tigris' left bank.

The Ctesiphon garrison, for its part, had recovered from the turmoil of the night before, and to the Persians' credit, the size of the forces opposing us had grown considerably from what we had estimated the previous day, to a level close to or even larger than that of our own army. Either a large body of troops had been held in reserve inside the city walls, or the local governor had quickly summoned garrisons from neighboring towns and villages to augment his own forces. As the Romans stood calmly in formation, awaiting the command to attack, we watched with considerable trepidation as the Persians made their own preparations. The advantage of the field was theirs, situated as they were at the top of a long, upward slope that rose to the very gates of the city, and supported by a series of bulwarks and ditches that had been dug over the past several days as they anticipated the Roman approach. A half mile uphill is an eternity to run in full armor while facing withering Persian arrow fire, and the defenders intended to make us sweat blood for every step of ground. Thousands of onlookers from the city, even women in finery, had set up positions on top of the walls, shaded under awnings and umbrellas, to watch the affair.

Opposing us the Persians had set up thick ranks of archers, their tight-fitting, fish-scale armor polished to such a brilliance that it hurt our eyes. They were supported by glaring detachments of infantry, bearing the foot-to-shoulder curved shields of the King's guard, sturdy though lightweight contraptions of wicker hung with hardened, polished rawhide for strength. The officers' white stallions were protected by the same wrought leather, and the officers themselves wore helmets and armor gilded and bejeweled with stones of such size that we could make out their colors from where we stood. Most terrifying of all, however, were the squads of elephants looming skittish and impatient behind the serried ranks of troops, looking for all the world like moving hills with their huge, gray bodies. Our troops eyed them nervously, for we had heard that such beasts were used by King Sapor, though we had hoped that they had been taken with him on his march to meet us up the Tigris.

Despite the chaos and turmoil of our crossing only hours before, Julian had left no detail forgotten in preparing his own battle lines. He had taken care to identify his weakest forces, the Asian troops who had joined us in Antioch, and to place them not in the rear, where they could panic and retreat with no one to stop them, nor in the van, where they might stumble in their fear and lead the entire army into rout; but rather disbursed in small groups amongst all his other companies, between the beefy Gauls who had stood with him steadfast ever since Strasbourg and on whom he could count to remain loyal even in the face of a charging bull elephant. Julian himself, shadowed by a squadron of light-armed auxiliaries and his council, ranged widely from one end of the lines to the other, bullying a laggard squadron into formation here, shouting encouragement to a cavalry officer there. His relentless energy drove the waiting troops into a fever of anticipation.

Suddenly he stopped in front of his lines, the eyes of all the troops upon him. Sallustius and Victor rode up and flanked him on either side with their skittish mounts. They also stopped, facing the troops. Silence fell over the field as Julian slowly surveyed the lines of sunburned, dusty men, men who had marched with him five hundred miles from Antioch, across burning sands and leech-infested marches, some of whom had traveled with him even thrice that distance more, from the farthest western reaches of the Empire. All stood silent, watching, as a smile slowly spread across his face, a gash of white teeth gleaming through the brown beard that had grown thick and unruly on the march. Wordlessly he grinned at them, this trained orator and rhetorician, a man who had never in his life been at a loss for words and had never failed to take the opportunity to lecture to his men, to encourage them in battle, to admonish them, even to give them a history lesson. His broad smile demonstrated, however, more than any words of praise, his love and pride for them and for all they had accomplished, and wordlessly they grinned back. As they responded, he raised his right arm to the men in the Roman salute, a gesture reserved only for the men themselves to give to their own conquering general. After a moment of stunned silence, with an almost audible intake of breath from the vast forces, they burst forth in a roar capable of shaking the thick walls of Ctesiphon itself, a bellow that made Julian's mount rear in startlement, though his broad grin and outstretched arm did not falter. After a moment, however, his smile disappeared back into his beard, and lifting his fist straight up in the air, above his head, he brought it down to his hip in a slashing motion, the field signal for attack.

Immediately the ox-hide drums sounded their deep, anapestic rhythm, the ominous, repetitive, three-beat tattoo that marks the Pyrrhic march step. Developed by the Spartans, it is dancelike in its movement, hypnotic in its relentless, deadly rhythm. Three steps forward, pause for a beat. Such concentration on the rhythm, each man keeping in step with his comrades, gives a soldier substance to occupy his mind, distraction from the approach of painful death. Three steps, pause. Gleaming shields swinging deliberately from left to right in strict unison. Sixty thousand men marching thus in utter precision, the strange, trance-inducing beat and vast walls of swaying shields striking terror into the watching enemy. Three steps, pause. Thud, thud, thud, silence. The low chanting of the hymn to Ares served as an undercurrent to the beat, growled rather than bellowed, felt as a vibration in the gut rather than heard. The vast, swaying monster of metal and death advanced slowly and implacably toward the lines of astonished defenders.

The Persians didn't stand a chance.

The first volley of arrows, a thousand whistling missiles, struck our front ranks full on. From this distance they did slight damage, sticking harmlessly in the troops' heavy shields or skittering off to the ground. A few men fell, though the mesmerizing rhythm of the drums did the work for which it was designed, and there was no faltering in the steps. The ranks behind simply stepped over the fallen, and moved up to take their place. The Persians paused for a moment in their shooting, dumbstruck at the display.

Another hundred yards the men marched, shields swaying in perfect unison. Thump, thump, thump, pause. The Persians fired another volley, this time from a more lethal range. More men stumbled and fell. Victor, I saw, who was as heedless as the Emperor in riding at the front of his forces and engaging the enemy directly, caught an arrow in the right shoulder and lurched back on his horse in pain. Julian saw it too and whipped his horse toward the front to investigate, but Victor recovered and waved him off, sitting bolt upright on his mount now, the arrow emerging straight out in front of him. Julian stared a long moment to be sure he was able to ride, then raised his sword high in the air toward Victor, the long-awaited signal to charge.

Victor did not hesitate. Spurring his horse forward he raced to the front of the Roman lines, transferring his sword to his left hand as his right arm dangled useless and bloodied at his side. Raising the weapon high in the air, he opened his mouth wide to bellow the command to charge, though before the words reached my ears it was drowned by the shrill howl of the Gauls' battle cry, which the entire army had taken up as its own.

Breaking their three-step rhythm, the men burst into a mad dash, shields held high, straight into the midst of the enemy arrows, which now rained down on them in a thick hail, a cloudburst of whizzing death. Long had we known that the Persians' greatest strength lies in the skill of their archers, and the most effective though painful method of defeating them is to charge into their very teeth, straight into the bows, and simply bowl the devils over, for the archers have little defense besides light wicker shields, which they prop up before them on the ground, braced with one foot. Such a charge is terrifying — into the very maws of death, hiding your face in the concave shelter of your shield, running blindly forward and struggling to align yourself with your comrades on either side, peering occasionally over the rim to gauge your distance. The steady pelting of the missiles on your shield and armor intensifies and thickens, and sometimes arrowheads emerge through to pierce your cheek or your eye if you huddle too closely behind the deceptive wall of ox hide and bronze you are carrying.

With the sudden clash of the lines a huge cloud of dust arose on the plain and I lost track of the battle, concentrating instead on keeping Julian in sight, should my services be required. He ranged back and forth across the field, straining to peer into the roiling haze, shouting furious oaths in his frustration at being unable to see. At one point he leaped into the thick of it on his horse, and I despaired of seeing him emerge alive, but emerge he did, several moments later, hacking viciously at a pair of Persian cavalry riders who were flanking him and attempting to trip up his horse with their lances. They were quickly dispatched by his guard, who had been as disconcerted as I when he had disappeared into the dust and as relieved when he rode out again, though to their horror he quickly dove back into the fray and emerged once again many moments later, his sword and greaves covered in gore.

The fighting that day was horrendous, hand-to-hand under the broiling sun and that fatal dust cloud. When the filth rose occasionally, lifted by the faint wafting of a breeze, one could see mountains of corpses and writhing horses in the ditches and at the bulwarks where they fell, so covered by layers of blood and filth that I was unable to make out to whose side they belonged. In the end, the dust cloud began slowly moving back, yielding toward the thick-stoned walls of Ctesiphon, as the Persians retreated. The cloud moved gradually at first, then faster, until with a final clash and a weary shout the Persian lines finally broke, and from the rear of the haze thousands of enemy raced panic-stricken toward their city, and I saw the enormous gates begin to swing ponderously open to receive them.

'The gates!' Julian cried, rushing toward the battle line, which was quickly moving away from him as the men raced to the walls to head off the Persians. 'Victor — seize the gates!'

It would have been impossible to hear him above the mad fray, but Victor was still there with his men, now slumped painfully over his horse's neck, supported by a guard who rode alongside him. The wounded general, weak from loss of blood, struggled to shout out his orders. The rout swirled around him as the Romans followed hard on the terrified enemies' heels, hacking at their backs and calves, hamstringing hundreds and tripping them up, then quickly slashing them to immobilize them and leave them to die in their own spilled juices. The Persians ran headlong toward the city and began pouring through the gates as the townsfolk on the walls above wept and tore their hair, raining rubble and bricks down on the Romans who were as yet too far down the slope to be hit.

'The gates!' Julian called as he thundered forward on his mount, his voice hoarse from his exertions but his eyes glinting in triumph at having thus achieved his goal. 'Look, Caesarius! The city is ours!'

Victor, in a supreme effort, pushed himself up from his horse's neck and rode directly in front of his line of men, between them and the fleeing Persians, the now broken arrow shaft still protruding forlornly from his injured shoulder. Stopping his mount and facing his troops, he raised his left arm, holding the sword sideways. It was the signal to halt. The exhausted Romans did so immediately, some almost collapsing in their weariness, falling to their knees, and then to their sides in fatigue, mingling indiscriminately with the thousands of cadavers already occupying the height.

Victor sat swaying on his horse, triumphantly surveying the terrible carnage before him, as the last of the Persians scrambled up the hill toward the walls. As they limped and scurried inside, the huge gates again swung heavily shut; Julian stopped and sat thunderstruck, watching the scene before him, and a single, enraged, sobbing bellow filled the air, echoing over the field.

'Victor, you fool… you fucking fool! The gates!'

Two and a half thousand Persians had been killed, to our seventy Romans. The ground was covered with enemy cadavers, and wealth greater than that of all the cities we had taken on our march thus far was stripped from the bodies of the officers alone. Still, Julian was desolate, for Ctesiphon remained unconquered, its vast walls impregnable, its defenses intact. Victor was delirious from loss of blood and the pain of his wound, but in a lucid moment he justified his halt of the attack because he felt the exhausted men would have been endangered had they continued their mad rush into the circuit of the walls and been overwhelmed in the streets of the strange city. The argument had merit, but Julian was inconsolable.

After raging in his tent for an hour, talking and muttering to himself while the generals cowered outside in the doorway, Sallustius entered.

'My lord — the men have fought hard… fearfully hard. They will require some words from you, perhaps a sacri-'

'And so they shall have one,' interrupted Julian, 'so they shall have one. Tonight let them sleep the sleep of the dead, for this they deserve even more than the dead themselves. At first light we shall have a sacrifice such as has not been seen this entire march!'

The next morning as Dawn, the saffron-robed child of morning, spread her rosy fingers across the purple sky, the men were rousted from their sleep and gathered haggardly at the enormous altar that had been set up almost within an arrow's distance of the very gates of Ctesiphon. They limped and groaned into formation, stretching their protesting muscles, some of them bearing armor still slathered with the gore of their efforts the day before, but their quiet chatter was content as they looked forward to the sacrifice and the distribution of plunder that would follow soon afterwards. I stayed to watch, Brother; for one of those rare occasions I willingly stayed to watch Julian's sacrifice, for in truth, in that vast, empty plain, occupied only by our army and the enormous walls of the huge city, there was nowhere else for me to go. I stood among the ranks of a body of archers, rather than take one of the places of honor he always reserved for his inner court, Maximus, Sallustius, Oribasius. In any case, he was so accustomed to my absence from these bloody ceremonies that I suspect he would have been startled to know that this time I was watching the entire proceeding.

At the very moment the sun's rays shot over the horizon, Julian slowly climbed the steps that led to the makeshift wooden platform on which the sacrifice to the war god Ares was to take place. He was dressed in the spotless white linen of a high priest, the only concession to his political standing being the broad purple border embroidered to the hem and sleeves of his robe. The men broke out in a lusty, enthusiastic cheer that swept over the plain and reverberated off the hard stone walls of the city, causing the heads of Persian guards and spectators to pop up over the edge of the ramparts to view the commotion, and drowning out the women's eerie keening and wailing that wafted over the walls, and which had been a constant background din ever since the end of the battle the evening before. Ctesiphon, I wagered, had never before experienced the death of so many of her native sons all at one time, and the city was in a paroxysm of mourning and fear for what was to come.

As the men's cheering died, Julian gave a nod to Maximus, who stood waiting with the Etruscan haruspices on the ground just before the steps to the platform, and one by one they solemnly filed up, their flowing robes and conical hoods lending a funereal pallor to the clear brightness of the early morning rays. Each was accompanied by a herd boy leading by the halter a pure-white ox, ten in all, carefully chosen for the sacrifice from King Sapor's massive herds of cattle that had been grazing in the green pasturelands between the rivers. From these herds, our army had taken sufficient head for our immediate needs and scattered the rest. And on this day, as the ten bulls were led carefully up to the platform, a most extraordinary thing happened.

The first bull balked at climbing the four steps, not an unusual occurrence, for cattle are unaccustomed to such structures. This one did not do so out of stubbornness, however, but out of sheer lassitude — it was physically exhausted. As it began slowly walking up, it collapsed on one foreleg, and it was only with great difficulty that the herd boy and two of the Etruscans were able to force it back to its feet, jerking at its halter and whipping it from behind, until it made its shaking but docile way to the edge of the altar.

Had it been overdrugged? Poisoned? I wondered. It is well-known that such large beasts, who spend most of their time grazing in the wild, must often be fed drugged fodder to sedate them sufficiently to stand quietly at the altar until they can be clubbed and their throats cut — still, the seers were generally more skillful with their dosages. Perhaps Persian cattle were less tolerant of the poppy extract than were our hardy Cappadocian animals? In any event, the poor beast made its trembling way to the edge of the altar and promptly collapsed. Julian stood agog, and the entire camp went silent at this spectacle.

Nor did it end there. All the rest of the oxen did precisely the same thing, stumbling and collapsing in various postures on the platform, draped over the steps, on the ground at the base, where they stood waiting to climb the riser. Their tongues lolled lazily out of their mouths and their flanks heaved as if from a great exertion, while their great moist eyes simply stared straight ahead, dumbly, unlike the fearful rolling one would expect to see in an animal being led before sixty thousand men. All the beasts, that is, but the tenth, which, after being urged to step over its prostrate and flagging comrades, suddenly perked and rebelled, emitting a bellow and kicking its rear legs into the air like a newly captured colt brought in to be broken. It shook its great head in terror and flung a spray of foamy spittle and mucus over the nearest soldiers, who recoiled in fear of being trampled. A dozen burly guards leaped onto the maddened animal, wrestled it to the ground, and held it immobile as the poor beast continued to bellow frantically, calling perhaps for its companions under Helios to come to its rescue, but the only response was from Julian himself.

The Emperor, his face red with fury and the veins in his neck standing out in his tension, vaulted off the stage, ignoring the sickened and prostrate animals surrounding him, and without a word strode directly to the trembling, struggling bull lying on the ground. A priest brought the iron hammer crashing down onto its forehead to stun it, and with a swift knife stroke to the throat, the animal was dispatched and fell silent. Julian, without even waiting for the assistance of Maximus, as was his custom, bent down, sliced open the lower belly, and thrust his hands blindly into the steaming stew in search of the critical organ.

What he found left him stunned, and the Gallic guards around him sucking in their breath. The liver was cancerous, riddled with dry spots and scar tissue, swollen to twice its normal size. The crowd of soldiers surged forward for a better look, until driven back by the swatting swords of the bodyguards. In the end Julian rushed back onto the platform to hand the organ to Maximus, who, after a quick examination of it, turned his back to the troops and left the stage without a word. Julian turned back to the men and raised his hand still bearing the bloody knife, to call their attention.

'By the king of gods, Zeus!' he cried, his voice unnaturally high-pitched and shaking, and the troops fell silent. 'By the holy god Mithras and by all the inhabitants of Olympus, I swear: never, by the gods, never shall I make sacrifice to Ares again! For a more fickle and treacherous god than he has never before cursed the race of man!'

The men stood silent a long moment, frozen in their shock at his cursing of the god of war. Julian leaped off the platform, his gaze avoiding the panting and twitching bulls littering the ground around him, and swept past his court to his tent without a word. Shaking their heads ruefully, the men slowly scattered to their quarters while I stood gazing at the ruins of the ceremony. It was not the first pagan sacrifice I had ever witnessed, but it was undoubtedly the foulest ever undertaken, and I confess the question crossed my mind as to whether the cursed results had been due to my presence.

Julian kept his oath, to the letter.