Gods and Legions

by Michael Curtis Ford

  I turned back away from the window. The Emperor, whose face in fact was a close image of Julian's, though much doughier and with more of an expression of suspicion or cunning about the eyes, was pacing angrily up and down before a small knot of whispering courtiers. The jiggling rolls of flab at his lower back struggled to keep up with their firmer, more disciplined brethren at his belly, as if in a contest of extraneous tissue, the entire sordid battle visible beneath the fine, rapidly dampening linen fabric of his tight ceremonial toga. I shook my head in disgust at this line of thinking, one that could only have been possible to a bored and underworked imperial physician, until I was interrupted by the messenger's arrival. The Emperor had been in an agony to hear the news personally ever since the first cryptic indications of the disaster had been received in Milan four days before, over the series of coded signal flares erected on mountains and watchtowers the length and breadth of the Empire.

  When the man burst into the room flanked by two beefy guards, Constantius waddled up to him with a speed and energy astonishing for one of his ponderous girth.

  'Out with it, man — is it true? What of Cologne!'

  The courier stopped short, barely into the doorway, and took a moment to get his bearings as he found himself unexpectedly gazing straight into the angry eyes of the Emperor.

  'I don't know what you have been told, Your Highness,' he said simply. 'I know only that five days ago Cologne fell to the barbarians. All are dead, and it is only by the grace of God that I myself was able to escape and reach Milan by the post road relays. Chonodomarius is a devil.' The man swayed and blanched a sickly pale, and I feared he might collapse at the Emperor's feet in his exhaustion.

  Constantius glared at the man in a rage, almost as if he would strike him, and the messenger shrank back slightly, his mouth working as if he were about to tell something more — but what more could he say? Finally the Emperor muttered at him, 'Tell no one of this,' whirled, and stalked back to the throne set in the middle of the room, where courtiers and aides had gone silent as they watched the proceeding. His face reddening in deep anger, he immediately began issuing orders to his generals and advisers. Eunuchs scurried in all directions, and I rose and sidled along the walls to the bewildered courier, who now stood abandoned and silent, looking ill, and seemingly wishing to shrink into the very cracks of the stonework.

  'Come, soldier,' I said, touching his elbow gently.

  He started, then looked at me with unutterable relief at hearing his first friendly words in possibly months.

  I led him down a back passage to my rooms, where he collapsed on my couch, and I offered him some cold meat and stale bread left over from my breakfast that morning. He wolfed it down gratefully, though wincing at a stomach pain, which he attributed to cramps from this being the first meal he had eaten in three days. He also said it was the first food lacking in maggots that he had eaten in a month. Brother, what kind of a physician am I that I accept a patient's own diagnosis unquestioningly? I was ashamed at my employer's rudeness in not having attended to the poor soldier upon his earliest arrival, and embarrassed at my own lack of provisions to offer, for the only other nourishment I had in my store was a bruised apple, which he also gulped down in three or four bites, core and all. I rang for a slave and demanded more food and some uncut wine. While we awaited the servant's return I asked the messenger to relate his story.

  'For months,' he said, 'the Cologne garrison has been under siege by the Alemanni. Their king is Chonodomarius; we call him "the Beast." He's leading them personally. Our garrison commander, Lucius Vitellius, sent runners asking the Emperor and the legions of Gaul to send reinforcements, but got no answer. We figured the messengers had been captured.'

  I said nothing at this, but I knew the messages to Constantius had indeed arrived. The Emperor, dismissing the situation in far-off Germany as inconsequential compared with his more urgent concerns in the Empire's tinderbox Eastern regions, refused to transfer troops to the suffering garrison, believing that his commanders in Gaul and Britain would find the wherewithal to lift the siege.

  'We finally broke, five days ago. The men were starving, sir, and the barbarians had poisoned the city's water supply. I think we might've been able to hold out a few more days, but we broke when the Beast started raining heads down on us.'

  'Soldier,' I said, 'I've never been to war, but I've heard that this is often a tactic of the besiegers — to place the heads or even the bodies of their captured enemies onto the engines and launch them into the fortifications to demoralize the defenders. Surely you expected something of the sort.'

  'Indeed we did, sir, but nothing like this. You see, sir, they weren't even Roman heads. It was worse. They were Germans. You could tell by their long blond mustaches.'

  I looked at him in puzzlement. 'German heads? Why would Chonodomarius rain German heads on you?'

  'We asked the same question, sir, of course. Then it dawned on us when we looked out at the hills. Sir, the hills were swarming with Germans, on every side. Just arrived. Every tribe from the Pannonians to the Frisians had sent their men in reinforcement, thousands, tens of thousands. They were cutting down every tree to the horizon, making hundreds of catapults, battering rams, siege towers — you name it, sir, they'd learned their lessons well from us. But the Beast didn't have Roman heads to shoot at us. Hell, he hadn't caught enough of us outside the gates, I suppose. So he used his own Germans. Lord, he had enough to spare, he just had his guards seize a couple hundred prison drunkards, lopped off their heads, and sent them on over. When we saw that we knew we were through.'

  I sat in stunned silence.

  'And that's not the worst of it, sir,' the man continued after a short pause to catch his breath. 'The worst was when Chonodomarius himself rode up to the gates of the city, bellowing at Vitellius to come out and parley. Sir, you've never seen a man like the Beast.'

  The messenger shuddered, and I begged him to continue.

  'He's a giant, sir — stands seven feet if he's an inch, and with muscles like an ox. He wears a bloodred plume from some huge evil bird affixed in his helmet, and no clothes but a loincloth — just paints his body with red and blue streaks, the worst sort of barbarian you can imagine. He rides up like that practically naked, hair and mustaches flowing in the wind, on his enormous white horse, itself painted with flames like the devil's own steed, foaming and rearing, its eyes rolling around it its head, and he waves his weapon in the air, not a spear like any normal barbarian would carry, but a harpoon — sir, I haven't seen the likes of that thing since those whalers from Hibernia. I swear, no normal man could even lift it, but the Beast is waving that piece of iron around in the air like it was a twig, and bellowing for the garrison commander to come out of the gates and surrender.

  'Well, sir, I hand it to old Vitellius, he doesn't flinch from anything, not even this barbarian. He calls two cohort commanders to come with him, and they're trembling like virgins on their wedding night, I tell you, but Vitellius, he's cool as a Spanish melon. Out they go, the three of them, in full polished dress armor, the horses all brushed and freshened to make it look like we've all been having a wonderful comfortable old time for the past three months in that death trap. They walk their horses up to that fire-breathing barbarian while thirty thousand Germans behind him fall silent and all of us are standing there on the ramparts watching the proceedings.'

  I was breathless. 'What happened to Vitellius?'

  The man shuddered. 'It was horrible, sir. Chonodomarius didn't even wait to allow him to surrender. He just gave the nod, and his men surrounded our commanders and dragged them right off the horses. Kept them in the same sitting position as when they were riding, but turned them around to face us, up on the walls. Before you could blink an eyeball, the Germans had set all three of them down on long stakes they had pounded into the dirt. Right up their arses, sir, you're a physician, you know what that'll do to your insides. Points came out their necks, spewing filthy blood all over the place. God Almig
hty, it was dreadful. The two cohort commanders died on the spot, or maybe passed out and saved themselves some pain before they did die, but old Vitellius wasn't ready to go. He jerked and twitched on his stake like a fish on a spit for a good long while, and the Beast stood there bellowing out a laugh to raise the dead. He finally got tired of Vitellius' moaning and walked over himself, grabbed the man's head with his two hands, gave it a good twist, and ripped it off his shoulders by the roots like you do to a chicken when you don't have an ax to finish the deed more cleanly. I nearly puked when I saw that, and we all knew the game was over. Chonodomarius lifted that head, with the neck bones and skin flaps still hanging out the bottom, and heaved it at the gate. Splattered like a rotten egg, and then all those barbarians set up an awful roar and charged it in a mass. Broke the gates down by their sheer weight, they didn't even wait for the battering rams. Must have killed a couple hundred of their own men by trampling.

  'I didn't wait, I tell you. I dove into some old sapper tunnels we had found a few days earlier, and stayed there till night, till I got lost and crawled out just outside the walls, where there was still a mob of barbarians milling around, drunk as mule drivers. They must have thought I was one of them on account of the beard, and figured I had just stolen my armor as plunder, so they took no notice of me. I found poor old Vitellius' horse still tied to his master's stake, hopped on, and rode as casually as I could out to the post road. The barbarians hadn't even placed guards, I wasn't challenged once. And then I hightailed it here, stealing horses as I went. I believe I'm the only survivor.'

  I stared at the man, appalled at the horrifying story and deadpan delivery. Was this what we were up against in Gaul? Just then there was a light knock at the door, and the sour-faced slave minced in, bearing a tray heaped with more cold meat, a large platter of chilled grapes and sliced peaches, and decanters of wine and cold water. I upbraided the surly brute for taking so long, and then cleared room on my low table, which I normally use as a resting place for half-read books, scrolls, and medical reports.

  The slave took twice as long as he should have arranging the food and carrying out the tray, and when he finally left I latched the door behind him for privacy and turned back to my filthy and starving guest.

  He sat motionless, his eyes wide as they took in the platter of artfully arranged food, and a look of calm resignation on his face. A small pool of blood, however, which I had not noticed during his tale, had formed on the floor beneath his couch.

  I rushed forward to help him, almost slipping in the trail of sweat drippings he had made when entering the room, and ripped open his tunic from neck to belly. His ribs were wrapped tightly in filthy linen, stuffed to bursting with blood-soaked dittany leaves. I seized a penknife from a nearby writing desk and cut into the crude wrappings, my task made more difficult by the foul smell that wafted out. The fabric had adhered to the skin as securely as glue, from the combined effect of the dried blood, sweat, and the juices of the crushed plant. Beneath the navel and somewhat to the side, the broken shaft of an arrow protruded just beyond skin level, the puncture wound around it swollen and an angry purple, oozing pus in an advanced stage of infection. The arrowhead itself was lodged deep in the liver. I looked up at his face questioningly, demanding to know why he had not told me earlier that he was wounded, my mind racing to decide what measures could be taken to extract the arrow as quickly as possible.

  It was too late, Brother. The man was dead.

  V

  I had no time to dwell on such matters, however, for the fall of Cologne had thrown Constantius into a flurry of activity. Because he had ordered the soldier's news to be kept secret as long as possible, however, the court staff could only wonder at the unusual shifts in troop deployments the Emperor ordered, the sudden cancellation of social events at the palace, and the constant comings and goings of tight-lipped senior military and diplomatic officials. For several days it was all I could do to keep up with Constantius as he waddled swiftly through the corridors from conference to advisory session to negotiations with foreign emissaries. During that period I had no time to see Julian, nor even to apprise him of the general situation at the palace, though in the past I had visited him at the villa several times a week. No doubt these new distractions would even further delay the Emperor's decision as to my unfortunate friend's fate.

  Strangely enough, I needn't have concerned myself on this account: at the very height of the palace uproar, Julian's presence was suddenly recollected, and a peremptory summons was issued to him for an audience with Constantius in little more than an hour. On horseback, I accompanied the litter-bearers out to the villa to retrieve him, and watched as he prepared himself with resignation, for he was still completely in the dark as to what was to become of him. I myself had overheard fragmented discussions of his fate over the past several days from among the courtiers and eunuchs, hints of argument and dissent, of urgings for him to be eliminated as a possible threat to the throne, countered by equally persuasive arguments that the Emperor was in need of delegating his duties, so as to focus more of his own attention on the Empire's crumbling eastern borders. None of this, however, did I recount to Julian — he had no doubt already heard it all before, through his previous dealings with the palace eunuchs.

  The trip into the city was the first Julian had taken since his arrival many weeks before, and he peered out the curtains of the litter in astonishment at the numbers of people thronging the streets. The occasion might have equally been a market day, or a public execution at the gallows platform in the palace courtyard. In response to Julian's shouted questions directed at the bearers, he received only a stony silence.

  Arriving at the back gates of the palace to avoid the crowds gathering ominously at the front, he was met by a silent, scowling group of eunuchs, who inspected him there on the street. Even from where I stood at the edges of the group, quietly observing the scene, I could sense his agitation and contempt as he looked about him, trying to peer through the crowd of smooth and haughty courtiers surrounding him. They led him into the palace, where he was hastily stripped and rebathed, his hair dressed and oiled in the dandified manner he had despised ever since his school days. He was given a fresh and exceedingly elegant tunic and toga to replace the clean though threadbare student's clothes that had served him well since his trip to Athens months earlier. All his questions, put both politely and rudely, in both Latin and Greek, were met with studied silence, as if the attendants had been expressly forbidden to speak with him or, more likely, disdained to do so even if permitted.

  At length he was led into the reception hall, where by this time the entire inner court had gathered in anticipation of the great event Constantius was about to stage. As always, I remained close to the Emperor in the event he should feel the need for one of the many syrups and tinctures I kept for his constant stream of maladies, both real and imagined. Though I tried to catch Julian's eye, to reassure him with a wink or a smile, his gaze as he approached was fixed steadily on the Emperor.

  Constantius stood near a small fountain burbling into an exquisite mosaic rendering of the sea god Triton astride the backs of two dolphins. The eunuchs led Julian through the scattered groups of advisers and courtiers, who parted for him in goggle-eyed silence, their eyes ranging back and forth between the slim, hunch-shouldered young man, and the pacing, restless sovereign, the supreme ruler of the Roman Empire, the Augustus. As Julian approached, the room fell silent, with the single exception of the Emperor himself, who continued the low monologue he was giving to a slow-witted general named Barbatio, a lackey who had been instrumental in the treacherous seizure and murder of Gallus several years before. Constantius was facing away, and seemed to be in no hurry to finish the conversation and attend to his young cousin, and Julian shifted on his feet, staring fixedly at the back of the Emperor's head, fidgeting and tugging at the unfamiliar clothing. Barbatio glanced at him condescendingly, eyes filled with frank appraisal and malice, while the eunuchs exchanged superior s
mirks with each other and stood up all the straighter and more elegantly to emphasize the contrast between their own courtly and confident demeanor and that of the wretched student they had dragged unwillingly into the Emperor's presence.

  Constantius finally finished his conversation and turned around, feigning surprise. Despite the Emperor's weeks of cold treatment, he greeted his cousin warmly, fatherlike, in fact, quite as if he had just arrived in the city with his feet still dusty from the road, rather than cooling his heels in the abandoned, echoing villa in the suburbs. Julian was astonished; the sight of Barbatio could not but make him wonder whether the Emperor had welcomed his brother Gallus the same way when he had been invested with the purple, before being led to his death a short time afterward. Julian's own reaction to the Emperor's greeting was stiff and formal. It was a studied effort to disguise the utter repugnance he felt toward this man, this killer of his family, while simultaneously avoiding an overly warm approach, which all present would have recognized as dissimulation and hypocrisy of the worst kind. His feelings toward the Emperor, though they had never met as adults, nor had either of them ever spoken of the matter, could hardly have been less secret, nor could the fact that the younger man was utterly beholden to the older for his very survival at this point. Protocol and simple human decency, however, prevented this from being openly acknowledged by either.

  'My boy,' Constantius said, 'you look splendid. I'm pleased to see that my people seem to be treating you well at your new lodgings.'