The Field Of Swords

CHAPTER 24

Julius sat on a folding stool in the great tent of the Helvetii king and drank from a golden cup. The mood was light amongst the men he had summoned. The Ariminum generals in particular had been drinking heavily from the king’s private stores, and Julius had not stopped them. They had earned the right to rest, though the work ahead was still daunting. Julius had not appreciated at first how large a task it would be simply to catalogue the baggage, and the night was loud with the sound of soldiers counting and piling the Helvetii possessions. He had sent Publius Crassus with four cohorts to begin retrieving spears and weapons from the battlefield. It was not a glorious task, but the son of the former consul had gathered his men quickly and without fuss, showing something of his father’s ability for organization.

By the time the sun was edging toward the far west, the spear shafts of the Tenth and Third had been returned to them. Many of the heavy iron heads were twisted into uselessness, but Crassus had filled Helvetii carts with them, ready to be repaired or melted down by the legion smiths. By a twist of fate, one of the cohorts had been commanded by Germinius Cato, promoted after Spain. Julius wondered if the two men ever considered the enmity of their fathers behind their polite salutes.

“Enough grain and dried meat to feed us for months, if it doesn’t spoil,” Domitius said with satisfaction.

“The weapons alone are worth a small fortune, Julius. Some of the swords are good iron, and even the bronze ones have hilts worth keeping.”

“Any coin?” Julius asked, eyeing the cup in his hand.

Renius opened a sack at his feet and brought out a few rough-looking disks.

“What passes for it here,” he said. “A silver and copper mix. Hardly worth anything, though there are chests of them.” Julius took one and held it up to the lamp. The circle of tarnished metal had a piece cut out of it, reaching right to the middle.

“A strange thing. Looks like a bird on the face, though with that slice out of it, I can’t be sure.”

The night breeze came into the tent with Brutus and Mark Antony.

“Are you calling the council, Julius?” Brutus asked. Julius nodded and Brutus put his head back out of the flap, shouting for Ciro and Octavian to join them.

“Are the prisoners secure?” Renius asked Brutus.

Mark Antony answered. “The men are tied, but we don’t have nearly enough soldiers to stop the rest of them from leaving in the night if they want to.” He noticed the sack of coins and picked one up.

“Hand stamped?” Julius asked as he saw his interest.

Mark Antony nodded. “This one is, though the larger towns can produce coins as good as anything you’ll see in Rome. Their metalwork is often very beautiful.” He dropped the coin back into Renius’s outstretched palm. “Not these, though. Quite inferior.”

Julius indicated stools for the two men and they accepted the dark wine in the cups from the king’s private hoard.

Mark Antony tilted his up and gasped with satisfaction. “The wine, however, is not inferior at all. Have you thought what you will do with the rest of the Helvetii? I have a couple of suggestions, if you will allow me.”

Renius cleared his throat. “Like it or not, we’re responsible for them now. The Aedui will kill them all if they go south without their warriors.”

“That is the problem,” Julius said, rubbing tiredness from his eyes. “Or rather this is.” He hefted a heavy roll of skin parchment and showed them the leading edge, marked with tiny characters.

“Adàn says it is a list of their people. It took him hours just to get an estimate.”

“How many?” Mark Antony asked. They all looked to Julius, waiting.

“Ninety thousand men of fighting age, three times that amount in women, children, and the elderly.”

The numbers awed them all. Octavian spoke first, his eyes wide.

“And how many men did we capture?”

“Perhaps twenty thousand,” Julius replied. He kept his face still as the rest of them broke into amazed laughter, clapping each other on the back.

Octavian whistled. “Seventy thousand dead. We killed a city.”

His words sobered the others as they thought of the mounds of dead on the plain and on the hill.

“And our own dead?” Renius asked.

Julius recited the figures without a pause. “Eight hundred legionaries with twenty-four officers amongst them. Perhaps the same again in wounded. Many of those will fight again once we’ve stitched them.”

Renius shook his head in amazement. “It is a good price.”

“May it always be so,” Julius said, raising the king’s cup. The others drank with him.

“But we still have a quarter of a million people on our hands,” Mark Antony pointed out. “And we are exposed on this plain, with the Aedui coming up fast to share in the plunder. Do not doubt it, gentlemen.

By noon tomorrow, there will be another army claiming a part of the riches of the Helvetii.”

“Ours, by right, such as they are,” Renius replied. “I haven’t seen much in the way of actual riches apart from these cups.”

“No, there may be something in cutting them a share,” Julius said thoughtfully. “They lost a village and the battle took place on their land. We need allies amongst these people and Mhorbaine has influence.” He turned to Bericus, still in his blood-spattered armor.

“General, have your men take a tenth part of everything we have found here. Keep it safe under guard for the Aedui.”

Bericus rose and saluted. Like the others, he was pale with weariness, but he left the tent quickly and they all heard his voice growing in strength as it snapped out orders in the darkness.

“So what are you going to do with the prisoners?” Brutus asked.

“Rome needs slaves,” Julius replied. “Though the price will plunge, we must have funds for this campaign. At the moment, coins like this one are the only wealth we have. There is no silver to pay the Tenth and Third, and six legions eat their way through a fortune each month. Our soldiers know the slave price of captured soldiers comes to them, and many are already discussing their new wealth.”

Mark Antony looked a little stiff at hearing this. His own legion received their pay directly from Rome, and he had assumed it was the same for the others.

“I did not realize…” he began, then paused. “May I speak?”

Julius nodded. Mark Antony held out his own cup to Brutus, who ignored him.

“If you sell the tribe back in Rome, the lands of the Helvetii will remain empty, right up to the Rhine.

There are Germanic tribes there who would be only too willing to cross and occupy undefended land. The Gauls revere strong warriors, but they have nothing good to say about the men across the river. You would not want them on the borders of the Roman province.”

“We could take that land ourselves,” Brutus broke in.

Mark Antony shook his head. “If we left a few legions there to guard the Rhine banks, we would lose half our force for no good end. The land is worthless ash at present. Food would have to be brought in until the fields could be cleared and resown, and then who would work them? Our legionaries? No, it is far better to send the Helvetii back to their own country. Let them guard the north for us. They have more to lose, after all.”

“Would they not be overrun by these savage tribes you mentioned?” Julius asked.

“They have twenty thousand warriors left to them. No small number, and more importantly, they will fight to the death to repel any new invader. They have seen what legions can do, and if they can’t migrate south, they must stay and fight for their fields and homes. More wine here, Brutus.”

Brutus looked at Mark Antony with dislike as the man held out his cup again, apparently unaware of the first refusal.

“Very well,” Julius said. “Though the men won’t be pleased, we will leave the Helvetii enough food to go home, taking the rest for ourselves. I will arm one in ten so that they may protect their people. Everything else comes back with us, bar the share for the Aedui. Thank you, Mark Antony. It is good advice.”

Julius looked around at the men in the tent. “I will tell Rome what we achieved here. My scribe is copying the reports as we speak. Now, I hope you are not tired, because I want that column moving home by first light.” There was a barely audible groan from them, and Julius smiled.

“We will stay to hand over their portion to the Aedui, and then an easy march back to the province, arriving the day after tomorrow.” He yawned, setting off one or two of the others. “Then we can sleep.” He rose to his feet and they stood with him. “Come on, the night is short enough in summer.”

The following day gave Julius a more than grudging respect for the organizational skills of the Helvetii.

Just getting so many people ready to move was difficult enough, but weighing out enough food to keep them alive for the march home took many hours. The Tenth was given the task and soon long lines stretched out to the soldiers with their measuring cups and sacks, doling out the supplies to each surviving member of the tribe.

The Helvetii were still stunned by their sudden reversal of fortunes. Those of the Aedui they had taken as prisoners had to be forcibly separated after two stabbings in the morning. The Aedui women had taken revenge on their captors with a viciousness that appalled even hardened soldiers. Julius ordered two of them hanged and there were no more such incidents.

The army of the Aedui appeared out of the tree line before noon, when Julius was wondering if they were ever going to get the huge column moving. Seeing them in the distance, Julius sent a scout out to them with a one-word message: “Wait.” He knew the chaos could only be increased with several thousand angry fighters itching to attack a beaten enemy. To help their patience, after an hour Julius followed the message with a train of oxen, bearing Helvetii weapons and valuables. The prisoners he had liberated were sent with them, and Julius was pleased to have them off his hands. He had been generous with the Aedui, though Mark Antony told him they would assume he kept the best pieces for himself, no matter what he sent them. In fact, he had kept back the gold cups, splitting them between the generals of his legions.

As noon passed and the Helvetii were still on the plain, Julius became red-faced and irritated with the delays. Part of it was down to the inescapable fact that the leaders of the tribe had all been killed in the fighting, leaving a headless mass of people who milled about until he was tempted to have the optios use their staffs on them to start them on their way.

At last, Julius ordered swords to be returned to two thousand of the warriors. With weapons in their hands, the men stood a little more proudly and lost the forlorn look of prisoners and slaves. Those men bullied the column into something like order, and then, with a single horn blowing against the breeze, the Helvetii moved off. Julius watched them go with relief, and as Mark Antony had predicted, the moment it was clear they were heading north the Aedui started streaming onto the plain, calling and shouting after them.

Julius had his cornicens summon the six legions to block the path of Mhorbaine’s warriors, and as they approached he wondered if they would stop or whether another battle would end the day. In the mood he was in, he almost welcomed it.

The lines of the Aedui halted a quarter of a mile away on the plain. They had crossed the site of the battle and tens of thousands of unburied bodies that were already beginning to stink. There could be no greater way of demonstrating the power of the legions facing them than walking over a field of the dead they had left behind. They would spread the word.

He watched as Mhorbaine rode out with two followers carrying high pennants that fluttered on the breeze. Julius waited for them, his impatience disappearing as the Helvetii began to dwindle behind. Many of his men threw glances at the receding column, feeling the soldier’s natural dislike at being trapped between large groups, but Julius showed nothing of this, his weariness giving him an empty calm, as if all his emotion had been drained away with the column.

Mhorbaine dismounted and opened his arms in a wide embrace. Gently, Julius deflected him and Mhorbaine covered his confusion with a laugh.

“I have never seen so many of my enemies dead on the ground, Caesar. It is astonishing. Your word was good to me and the gifts you sent make it sweeter, knowing the source. I have brought cattle for a great feast, enough to fill your men until they are near bursting. Will you break bread with me?”

“No,” Julius replied, to the man’s obvious astonishment. “Not here. The bodies bring disease if they are left. They are on your land and they should be buried or burnt. I am returning to the province.”

Mhorbaine looked angry for a moment at the refusal. “You think I should spend a day digging holes for Helvetii corpses? Let them rot as a warning. As a stranger here, you may not know the custom to hold a feast after a battle. The gods of the earth must be shown the living have respect for the dead. We must send those we kill on the path, or they cannot leave.”

Julius rubbed his eyes. When had he last slept? He struggled to find words to appease the man.

“I will return to the foot of the mountains with my men. It would be an honor to have you join me there.

We will feast then and toast the dead.” He saw Mhorbaine look speculatively at the retreating column and continued, his voice hardening. “The Helvetii who live are under my protection until they return to their lands. Do you understand?”

The Gaul looked doubtfully at the Roman. He had assumed the column was under guard and being taken into slavery. The idea of simply letting them go was difficult for him to take in.

“Under your protection?” he repeated slowly.

“Believe me when I say that whoever attacks them will be my enemy,” Julius replied.

After a pause, Mhorbaine shrugged, running a hand over his beard. “Very well, Caesar. I will ride ahead with my personal guard and be there to meet you as you come in.”

Julius clapped him on the shoulder, turning away. He saw Mhorbaine was watching in fascination as Julius nodded to the cornicens. The notes blared out across the plain and six legions turned on the spot.

The soft earth trembled and Julius grinned as they marched away in perfect lines, leaving Mhorbaine and the Aedui behind. As they entered the tree line at the edge of the plain, Julius called Brutus to him.

“Pass the word. I will not be beaten home. We march through the night and will feast when we get there.” Julius knew the men would accept the challenge, no matter how exhausted they were. He sent the Tenth to the front to set the pace.

As dawn came, the six legions crossed the last crest before the Roman settlement at the foot of the Alps. The men had jogged and marched for more than forty miles, and Julius was just about finished. He had marched every step of the way with his men, knowing his example would force them to keep going.

Such small things mattered to those he led. In spite of their blisters, the men gave a ragged cheer at the sight of the sprawling buildings, moving easily into the faster pace for the last time.

“Tell the men they have eight hours of sleep and a feast to bulge their bellies when they wake. If they’re as hungry as I am, they won’t want to wait, so have cold meat and bread served to them to take the edge off. I am proud of them all,” Julius said to his scouts, sending them away to the other generals. He wondered idly whether his legions would have proved a match for the armies of Sparta, or Alexander. He would have been surprised if they hadn’t been able to run the legs off them, at least.

By the time Mhorbaine reached the same crest with fifty of his best fighters, the sun was above the horizon and Julius was sound asleep. Mhorbaine reined in there, looking at the changes the Romans had wrought. The dark wall they had built curved north into the distance, a slash in the fertile landscape.

Everywhere else he could see was being transformed into squares of buildings, tents, and dirt roads.

Mhorbaine had crossed the legion trail a few miles before, but he was still astonished to see the reality.

Somehow, he had been left behind in the darkness. He leaned on his saddle horns and looked back at the massive figure of his champion, Artorath.

“What a strange people they are,” he said.

Instead of replying, Artorath squinted behind them.

“Riders coming,” he said. “Not ours.”

Mhorbaine turned his horse and looked back down the gently sloping hill. After a while, he nodded.

“The other leaders are gathering to see this new man in our land. They will not be pleased that he beat the Helvetii before they could get here.”

Holding flags of truce high above their heads, groups of riders approached. It looked as if every tribe for two hundred miles had sent their representatives to the Roman settlement.

Mhorbaine looked down at the vast encampment with its orderly lines and fortifications.

“If we are canny, there is a great advantage here for the taking,” he said aloud. “Trade in food, for one, but those pretty legions are not a standing army. From what I’ve seen so far, this Caesar is hungry for war.

If he is, the Aedui have other enemies for him to fight.”

“Your schemes will get us all killed, I think,” Artorath rumbled.

Mhorbaine raised his eyebrows at the man who sat a heavy stallion as if it were a pony. Artorath was the biggest man he had ever known, though sometimes he despaired of finding an intelligence to match his strength.

“Do you think bodyguards should talk to their masters in that way?” Mhorbaine said.

Artorath turned his blue eyes to meet him and shrugged. “I was speaking then as your brother, Mhor.

You saw what they did to the Helvetii. Riding a bear would be easier than using your silver tongue on these new men. At least when you jump off the bear, you can still run for it.”

“There are times when I can’t believe we share the same father,” Mhorbaine retorted.

Artorath chuckled. “He wanted a big woman for his second son, he said. Killed three men to take her from the Arverni.”

“To make an ox like you, yes. But not a leader, little brother, remember that. A leader needs to be able to protect his people with more than just unpleasantly bulbous muscles.”

Artorath snorted as Mhorbaine continued, “We need them, Artorath. The Aedui will prosper with an alliance and that is the reality, whether you like it or not.”

“If you use snakes to catch rats, Mhor…”

Mhorbaine sighed. “Just once, I would like to talk to you without having animal wisdom thrown in my face. It does not make you sound intelligent, you know. A child could put things more clearly, I swear it.”

Artorath glowered at him, remaining silent. Mhorbaine nodded in relief.

“Thank you, brother. I think, for the rest of the day, you should consider yourself my bodyguard first and my brother second. Now, are you coming with me?”

His men were given tents while they waited for Julius to wake. Mhorbaine sent riders back to hurry on the herd he had brought for the feast, and before noon had fully passed, the slaughter of the animals had begun, with Mhorbaine and Artorath taking a personal hand in the preparation and spicing of the meat.

As the other leaders began to arrive, Mhorbaine greeted them with intense inner amusement, thoroughly enjoying their surprise at seeing him red to the elbows and issuing orders to boys and men as the bellowing cattle were killed and cut into a feast for thirty thousand. The sizzle of beef filled the air as a hundred fire pits were fed and heavy iron spits erected. Drowsy legionaries were rousted out of their warm blankets to help with the work, rewarded with a taste as they licked burnt fingers.

When Mark Antony woke, he had slaves bring buckets of river water for him to wash and shave, refusing to be hurried. If Julius was prepared to sleep through the biggest gathering of tribal leaders in living memory, then he was certainly not going out to them with two days of stubble on his face. As each hour passed, Mark Antony was forced to wake more and more of the soldiers, ignoring the swearing that came from the tents as his messages broke through the numbness of their exhaustion. The promise of hot food did wonders for their tempers, and hunger silenced the complaints as they followed Mark Antony’s example and washed before dressing in their best uniforms.

There were many small villages in the Roman province, and Mark Antony sent riders out to them for oil, fish sauce, herbs, and fruit. He thanked his gods the trees were heavy with unpicked apples and oranges, no matter how green. After drinking water for so long, the bitter juice was better than wine after it had been pressed out into jugs for the men.

Julius was one of the last to wake, sticky with the heat. He had slept in the solid buildings of the original settlement, now much extended. Whoever designed them had shared the Roman taste for cleanliness, and Julius was able to sluice himself with cold water in the bathing room, then lie on a hard pallet to have olive oil scraped on and off his skin, leaving him clean and refreshed. The muscles that ached in his back finally eased as he sat to be shaved, and he wondered whether the daily massage kept him supple. Before he dressed, he looked down at himself, checking his bruises. His stomach in particular was tender, and marked as if he had taken a heavy impact. Strange that he did not remember it. He dressed slowly, enjoying the coolness of clean linen against his skin after the smell of his own sweat on the march. His hair snagged in the fine teeth of the comb, and when he tugged, he was appalled to see the mass of strands that came away. There was no mirror in the bathing rooms and Julius tried to remember the last time he had seen an image of himself. Was he losing his hair? It was a horrible idea.

Brutus entered with Domitius and Octavian, all three men wearing the silver armor they had won in the tournament, polished to a high sheen.

“The tribes have sent their representatives to see you, Julius,” Brutus said, flushed with excitement.

“There must be thirty different groups on our land, all under flags of truce and trying to hide how interested they are in our numbers and strategy.”

“Excellent,” Julius replied, responding to their enthusiasm. “Have tables put up for them in the dining hall. We should be able to get them all in, if they don’t mind the crush.”

“All done,” Domitius said. “Everyone is waiting for you to join them, but Mark Antony is frantic. He says they won’t move until you invite them to your table, and we wouldn’t let him wake you.”

Julius chuckled. “Then let us walk out to them.”