by John Barnes
“A forced night march down an old unpaved military road in the valley, after a forced day march of more than forty miles. His scouts stalked mine, and his whole army slipped in between patrols! Magnificent! I can only hope his men are as tired as they should be from all that.”
Outside, centuries were forming up, and soon the creak and thud of thousands of wooden bicycles filled the air. The finest army Rome had ever seen was rolling out.
The old road down the river valley was not a good one, but it was adequate for the purpose, and the way it was rutted told us clearly that Caesar had indeed passed this way. The dawn found us forming up on the broad plain of Cannae, where Hannibal had thrashed a Roman army 150 years before, using the same double-bow tactic that Pompey had tried unsuccessfully against Caesar.
Caesar’s forces, seen through distance glasses, were unprepossessing; he seemed to have left most of his cavalry and even a great deal of his field artillery behind. If he had hoped to take us from the rear, entirely by surprise, he must have been counting excessively on the power of that surprise, for “I’m not sure there would be enough forces there just to watch us all, even if we were all unarmed prisoners,” Pompey said. “I suppose it could be the madness that is supposed to come with power. Or he has a huge reserve somewhere, but my Parthian scouts have not been able to find that, and two of them have circled his whole force looking for some hidden line of communication. It’s as if he’s daring us to attack. And why no attempt at a last-minute parlay? With the new weapons, even if this is as one-sided as it looks, there will be tens of thousands unnecessarily dead … well, gods hear me, on his head be whatever comes.”
Strangely, too, Caesar sat there waiting for us. His position was good, and well entrenched—we couldn’t take him by surprise with a sudden assault—but he did no probing, did not seem even to be interested in what our scouts were doing around his forces.
“Gods, gods, gods,” Pompey muttered. “It’s so utterly unnecessary if he’s going to do it like this. He didn’t bring forces adequate to win, but he brought more than enough to bring the death toll to the highest Rome has ever seen in battle. What can that madman be thinking? And as the weaker party, I would have expected him to take advantage of the first attack, but no—he sits and waits.” Pompey pushed the map away and straightened. “We can find no trap. If he wants to kill himself in such a novel way, I suppose we shall have to let him.”
The forces had been in position for some hours now; the musket-armed legions mainly in the center, with wings of Parthian cavalry and Greek and Judean archers on the near flanks, and the field artillery to the rear of the flanks, ready either to execute an “end run” and catch Caesar’s army in the cross fire, or to move in and provide cover for the center.
Normally the battle would have been joined within an hour of dawn, but Caesar had not cared to attack, and Pompey had preferred to use the time for thorough preparation, trying to hold the death toll, at least on his own side, down. As I looked out over the broad plain, from where I stood on the hastily erected observation tower with Walks-in-His-Shadow Caldwell, I finally said, “Pompey is right, you know, Walks. This whole thing makes no sense at all.”
“I don’t understand it either,” the Time Scout answered. “And I don’t trust anything I don’t understand. Not when Caesar is involved. There’s something up his sleeve for sure.”
The signal was given, and the standard-bearers advanced; slowly, deliberately, the legions in the center of Pompey’s line began to advance. Just as slowly, those from Caesar’s line—only about two-thirds as many—advanced toward us. I put on my distance glasses and looked; I could see that some of them were exhausted and stumbling already, and my heart ached a little for the fact that they had poured their hearts into getting here for the battle, and now they were not the least bit fit for it. It appeared Pompey was to preside over a massacre, whether he wanted to or not.
Now the Parthians were in motion, swinging wide, getting ready to shower Caesar’s legions with a cross fire of their deadly arrows. The tower under us vibrated so that we could feel it through our feet, and the distant thunder of their hooves put us in awe. In the bright winter sunlight, it was like a scene out of some great epic, the slow-advancing lines in the center led by their eagle standards, and the great sweeps of horsemen on either side.
From the middle of Caesar’s forces came a thin, black stream of something into the air—something almost invisible that seemed to scatter. “Walks,” I said, “what do you think that is?”
“What do I think what—Holy shit.”
The Parthians went first, horses slowing to a walk and then stopping, their bewildered riders perhaps kicking them once before falling off them. Then the legions began to fall over, and I realized that “I think he has—”
Suddenly my knees became very warm, soft, and weak, and I sank to the floor of the observation tower. It got really dark, darker than it ever does at night, and I had the most wonderful, happy dreams.
When I woke up, three hours later, I was quite hungry, and there was the pleasant odor of hot beef soup. I opened my eyes to find I was sitting upright, with my feet in leg irons, inside a large tent. Crassus and Pompey sat facing me, and Walks was to my left, and all of them were locked up, too. All of us were just coming awake, Pompey next after me, then Walks, and finally Crassus, who had a joyous, beaming smile on his face until he began to wake.
With all of us awake, none of us could think of anything to say, so we remained silent. I kind of wished I could fall back into my dreams.
The smell of soup got stronger, and the tent flap opened, and in came Gaius Julius Caesar himself, followed by slaves with the hot soup. “Now, gentlemen,” he said, “you are supposed to be hungry, so first you will eat and then we will talk.”
I was about to say something when a bowl of soup was put in one of my hands, and a spoon in the other; then I was eagerly gobbling it, as was everyone else there. When we had all finished, I said, “You figured out how to use the NIFs. And you must have figured out how to reload them as well, because they don’t carry enough rounds to knock out the whole army. You took us all prisoner—”
“Almost all,” Caesar said. “I’m afraid there were at least eight broken necks from people who fell unconscious at bad times—snipers dropping out of trees, men whose horses hadn’t been knocked out first, that sort of thing. It’s odd, but I find I’m made more sad by those deaths than by all the ones my legions ever suffered—perhaps because I know all their names, and saw all their bodies, and I am now writing letters back to their families.”
Pompey sighed. “So now you have us utterly in your power. What do you intend to do with us?”
Caesar smiled. “Would you concede that I have the power of the imperium? I mean, in all truth, Cnaeus. Does it seem to you that my genius has given me that?”
“I suppose I must concede it—I would have to be stupid not to. And I must say that I don’t feel very confident that I have any such power anymore.”
“Nonsense,” Caesar said. “It is only that mine is superior to yours. Is that clear to you?”
“Painfully so.”
“And you, Marce,” he said to Crassus. (Crassus’s name was also Marcus, like mine. The Romans only had fourteen first names, so it was hardly surprising that there were a lot of us.) “Would you, too, bow to my imperium—if it were understood that you had an imperium of some worth yourself, inferior only to mine, coequal with Pompey’s?”
Crassus seemed uncomfortable. “Gaius,” he said, “the gods alone can bestow imperium or take it away from us; we claim that we have it, but it is up to them to make that true or not. I would not want to tempt divine audiority, but, nonetheless, I would say that it is clear your imperium supersedes mine, and I bow to your better judgment for the rest.”
“One might even argue,” Caesar said, “that a better judgment in such matters is very nearly a matter of divinity. But this would be for later.”
“You would dare that?�
� Pompey said. There was no horror in his voice, the way a modern Christian might feel about a man declaring himself to be god; there was only admiration at the audacity, I realized.
“I would,” Caesar affirmed. “Though not just immediately. But how is a man to know what he can grasp unless he reaches, eh? Well, then, you see what I offer.”
“You would like,” Crassus said slowly, “to merge our armies, to re-create the Triumvirate, and then, I should guess, to reconstitute the Republic with your family as the most important, and with ours heavily married into it. You will make great men of us so that you can be the greatest man in history, without rivals.”
“Just so.”
“I accept,” Pompey said at once. “I have battled your genius too long, Caesar, and mine is not up to yours.”
“And I accept as well,” said Crassus. “So far as I am concerned, you are the one true imperator.”
Imperator, I thought to myself. One who has the power of the imperium. In my timeline, that title came down to English as emperor.
The Republic had died here, too—five to twenty years early, depending on what you counted as its end—and here, too, the Empire had been born. Brutus and Cassius, along with most of the Senate, were already dead. Julius Caesar was the true first emperor—
“And as for you of ATN,” Caesar said. “Hear me. I shall move my timeline forward as fast as I can, and I acknowledge that your enemies, the Closers, are equally my enemies—any Roman’s enemies in that they are Punics and Moloch-worshipers. I will gratefully accept any assistance you offer. I trust that this is satisfactory?”
Walks-in-His-Shadow glanced at me, and said, “You’re the senior ATN officer in this timeline.”
“Then it’s fine with me,” I said. “More than fine. I am delighted that matters have come out in this way.”
Inside me there was a sigh of relief; mad as Caesar might be in some ways, and repellent at the personal level, we knew also that he was brilliant, and that in his drive to make Rome great, he would build us a powerful ally. Something somewhere had gone wrong, clearly; perhaps Hasmonea had managed to divert the timeline a little bit. But still, we had given them a huge technical boost, and Walks-in-His-Shadow would have decades more here to move them along. With the Triumvirate intact again, there was also little to fear in the way of a civil war; the battles of Falerii and of Second Cannae would be the whole history of the war.
The new Empire would still have the military genius of Pompey and of Caesar himself, and the business acumen of Crassus, working together in a world that was much larger and much less damaged. Their future, in short, was as bright as it could be, and if Caesar was not a paragon of virtue, he would rule efficiently, intelligently, and humanely, and that’s what matters in a ruler.
Then Caesar knelt and unfastened the leg irons on all of us; more than that, he handed me my .45 in its shoulder holster. Clearly he believed that when you trust a man, you should trust him all the way.
I fastened on the holster, knowing now that whatever I had been told, it was wrong. I would never assassinate Caesar; my mission here was accomplished, and no such thing had been necessary. If this was a screwup, I was damned proud of it.
“For the rest,” Caesar said, “I regret to say that we haven’t found any trace of your wife yet, though I do still have people working on that. We’ll provide you every assistance once we get back to Rome, where you can draw on whatever resources you need in your search.”
I nodded. “Thank you, imperator.” The term seemed to come very naturally to the tongue already.
“And also,” Caesar said, “there are some people who would like to see you.”
Five minutes later I was being hugged as hard as Porter and Paula could manage. I wanted Chrysamen to turn up, and I was worried, but there was a good chance that she had just been lying low in Rome until it became clear which way the wind was blowing. If so, she would probably come out to meet the army as we moved up to Rome. Somehow I felt very sure that I would see her again.
That evening, there was another special event; Porter had been practicing for many hours on the lyre and the Roman flute, having nothing better to do with her time, and she gave a private concert for the Triumvirate and a small circle of invited guests. I sat next to Paula, who said, “I worry a little about her and Caesar.”
“Is she, uh, encouraging—”
“God, no, but she still glows with pleasure at the attention from him, and that encourages him even though she doesn’t mean it to. And besides, she really is fascinated with the Roman instruments, and he really does have a great ear for music.”
The music was just beautiful and everyone applauded madly; Porter seemed delighted, and I don’t drink I’ve ever heard her play better. During the party afterward, everyone crowded around her to praise her playing, and I could see the kind of glow that Paula was talking about. It did look really good on her.
The celebration of the New Triumvirate and of Caesar’s investment as imperator was made all the more uproarious by the fact that so many thousands of men who had expected to die, or to see their friends die, were alive and unhurt. The release from the terror of the new weapons seemed to come out in a sort of joyful silliness that veered between an orgy and a really good kids’ birthday party.
It was a long party, and it got pretty wild after a while; I noticed Porter had gotten drunk, and in my guardianly role, I had Paula drag her off to bed, not complaining much. Paula had had about two beers, I think (Roman beer was heady stuff but they served it in small cups), and they hadn’t affected her at all. I figured Paula was probably glad to go—she must be missing Robbie, the Romans were extremely uptight about the kind of things Paula enjoyed, and besides, some of the men had been leering and making suggestions to her.
They were starting to bring in the slave girls, and being the married kind of stodgy guy I was, I wasn’t interested. That reminded me that I still didn’t know where Chrys was, let alone know for certain if she was okay, and at that point it became a little too depressing to stay at the party. I made my excuses and staggered back to the small tent I had, next to Caesar’s, between his tent and the one Porter and Paula shared.
Where the hell was Chrys? It profits a man nothing if he saves the whole universe and loses his reason to live there …
Tired as I was, and even having consumed as much alcohol as I had, I was really having trouble sleeping. I thought I might get up and take a walk through the camp, but then on the other hand, getting dressed seemed like too much work. I let my mind drift to happier times, but all the happier times brought my thoughts back to Chrysamen.
There was a scream; I sat straight up in bed. It was Porter’s voice. I had thrown my tunic on over my head before I knew what I was doing, yanked my boots onto my feet, and was racing around to Porter and Paula’s tent. The tent suddenly glowed as someone unshuttered the night lantern inside it. Porter screamed again. I rushed harder, for I could see motion that looked like a struggle.
Then I heard Caesar’s voice say, “Don’t, don’t, please”—and then I heard a flat barking shot: Paula’s .38 had fired once.
There was a long, frozen silence, before the camp had time to react to the shot. In that dull silence, knowing what I would find, I walked to the lit tent, parted the flap, and silently stepped inside.
17
Porter lay on her bed, yanking her nightclothes back down—Caesar had apparently pulled them all the way up, just taking what he wanted, as he always did. Paula still held the .38 snubnose in her hand, her face a mask of flat, bitter hatred.
I reached and took the gun from her. “You don’t want to see what kind of justice they have for women here,” I said. I felt curiously numb and dead; it was as if I could see the future.
The future arrived in the form of a muscular centurion who seized the gun and knocked me flat with one blow of his fist. I had an untreated concussion from that and didn’t wake up for two days, but that posed no problem to Roman justice; it wasn’t at
all necessary to have the defendant present at his own trial. If he made it to his punishment, that was plenty.
Paula and Porter weren’t called on to testify either. There was this minor problem that I had been a prisoner of Caesar’s, and he had never formally manumitted me; I was therefore his slave. And when a slave killed a master, no matter what the provocation, there was exactly one possible penalty. Walks-in-His-Shadow couldn’t even get in to talk to Pompey or Crassus about it (they were as adamant as any other Romans), and the deliberation lasted a couple of minutes.
It was a good thing my head was still spinning, and I was still dizzy; I had only about enough concentration to wonder why it was in movies and books that if you got knocked hard on the head, you got up in three hours without even a headache. I had been knocked out once playing football and a few times in martial-arts practice, plus I’d had such concussions here and there as bodyguards and Crux Ops will tend to have.
And never once had I felt just fine afterward. Rather, it usually required days to get over it, and I often wasn’t quite myself again for two weeks.
Roman justice was not the kind that waited two weeks. As soon as I was coherent enough, and a squint-eyed legion surgeon who smelled heavily of wine attested that he thought my pupils were the same size, they scheduled the execution for the next day at noon.
At least it was winter; that would make it quick. I found out later that Walks-in-His-Shadow had lost his holy-shit switch somewhere in India, in one of those stupid things that can happen to anyone, and that was why a dozen Crux Ops hadn’t shown up to whisk us all away, but it was so foreign to my nature to think about calling for help that I never even wondered why he hadn’t. Indeed, that was part of why his had gotten lost, the same reason mine had so often—he didn’t think about it much either.
You could call it an exaggerated form of not wanting to stop and ask for directions.
