themselves into two teams of twenty, distinguished by dramatic enameled masks depicting golden-coiffed Amazons and Olympian gods. At a signal, the two sides raised a shout, and raced toward each other across the arena at a thundering gallop, smashing into their opponents with blunted weapons and a blinding cloud of dust, fiercely striving to knock the opposing riders off their mounts. The ferocity of their charges was astonishing, and at the time, Brother, I could scarcely believe that actual battle with the Alemanni could have been any more brutal. Lance tips snapped in the foining and flew winging into the stands, shields split and shattered from the impact of the collision, and men who failed to grip their horses securely with armor-clad thighs were thrown twisting and grunting to the ground, where they rolled to avoid the horses' flailing hooves. Those who fell were disqualified, and had no recourse but to scramble stiffly from the sand and hobble to the edge of the arena, nursing their bruises and scrapes, to await the outcome of the match. A few remained writhing where they lay, and had to be dragged to safety by attendants.
Sallustius sat his horse at the edge of the pit as a referee, though bearing his own heavy shield and lance for protection against the wide-ranging riders who suffered from terrifyingly poor visibility behind their tragedy masks. Several times he was forced to spur his horse forward into their midst, shouting the men down and splitting them apart if tempers frayed and the teams refused to retreat to their corners after each charge. After a dozen fierce attacks, all to the raucous cheers of a thousand overexcited and half-drunk veterans, he finally awarded the laurel crown to the two horsemen still remaining on their mounts, both of them from the Olympian team — their shattered lances and dented armor attesting to their valor and strength.
Sallustius remained at his post while the arena was quickly swept and the obstacle course erected for the final event, the horsemanship demonstration, in which Julian was scheduled as the last of the riders to participate. His intent, of course, was to observe Julian's performance at close hand, and to shout out any instructions the Caesar might require, though as it turned out, such assistance was entirely unnecessary. When Julian's time arrived, he strode into the ring bearing gold-plated ceremonial armor even heavier than the set I had first seen him wear, and topped by another of the ominous enameled masks depicting a Greek deity with its mouth set in an awful grimace, and only two tiny eyeholes through which to peer.
Despite these encumbrances, his performance soon silenced the skeptical troops who had been led by rumor and past observation to expect at best a clumsy and simple demonstration. He first deftly demonstrated his innovative mounting technique from both sides of the horse, and with each clean vault he made onto the skittish stallion's back, I could almost hear the jaws dropping around me. He then delivered a stunning display of riding and swordplay, weaving through the series of oaken post-men that had been set up in a row among scattered pits, fire walls, and other obstacles. The troops, enthused now at the skill demonstrated by their Caesar, began a rhythmic stamping of feet that drowned out all conversation. Flawlessly Julian ran his spirited animal through its paces, leaping over high rails and sidestepping ground spikes, all of which had been placed so as to simulate true battle conditions as closely as possible. As he approached the mock enemy forces, he twirled his flashing scimitar in the sun and slashed fiercely from side to side, cleaving and demolishing the unresisting heads with his whirling blade, scattering pulpy, melon-seed brains over his legs and the sides of the horse.
The men roared their approval and delight, though Julian was still not without some skeptics. Just in front of me a watching centurion applauded politely, but his gaze continued to range over the obstacle course distractedly. 'Why is he cutting at fruit?' he muttered to a colleague as the cheers died down. 'Couldn't they find a cavalryman to spar him?'
His friend quickly silenced him. 'He's the Caesar! Who would spar with the Caesar in the arena? If you win, you lose. If you lose, you lose. So he hacks at melons.' The logic was impeccable.
Still, Julian's performance was impressive, particularly given his complete lack of skills only scant months earlier, and the troops' applause was genuine as he completed the difficult course and cantered around the arena, acknowledging their cheers. For show, he even stopped his horse suddenly and reared it back, waving with his sword in the classic depiction of the victorious Roman general. At this, Sallustius shook his head in disgust and began trotting slowly off the field to the side stables. His work, for the moment, was complete.
Suddenly, just as the raucous cheering had begun dying down, Julian leaned forward, adjusted his mask, and kneed his animal. The horse leaped ahead, eyes rolling in excitement, and the troops again fell silent at the prospect of another display. He accelerated into a flat-out charge, lowering the blunted lance he had been carrying against his hip to the horizontal attack position. At the loud thudding of hooves behind him, Sallustius stopped his own mount and turned around to see what foolishness Julian might be attempting. As far as Sallustius was concerned, the demonstration was over, but from the glint in Julian's eyes behind his white-faced mask, I could see that this was no demonstration, and that Julian was now in earnest.
Sallustius spied the charge from half the arena's length away, and with his practiced soldier's ease and a hint of a smile he quickly unslung and mounted his own shield and steadied his own ball-tipped lance while spurring his horse forward to a sprint. Julian thundered straight and unhesitatingly, his heavy bronze cavalry shield braced firmly against the fulcrum of his thigh, swaying only slightly back and forth as he countered the bobbing arc of Sallustius' lance tip, while at the same time feinting and weaving with his own weapon. In complete concentration he sought the slight opening, the overplayed hand, that would allow him to slip the balled point around his opponent's shield to the face or chest behind.
The watching troops fell silent — to the point that I could hear Julian's rhythmic breathing and grunts behind his mask as the horses stormed toward each other. With a flurry of dust and a loud CRACK! both weapons slammed into the opposing shields, and a three-foot section of shattered lance flew into the air and spun crazily into the crowd. With the brutal crash of the weapons, both lance-wood and men yielded and broke. The warhorses, reins loosened and riders' knees ungripped, continued forward in their own fierce momentum and smashed into each other, falling in a writhing, whinnying heap of hooves and snapping teeth. As the animals struggled to their feet and staggered off to the edge of the ring, both men lay still for a moment where they had fallen. I began pushing past the troops at my side, making my way toward the arena to treat the injuries I was certain to find there. This was unnecessary, however, for first Julian, then Sallustius, sat up and painfully rose to their feet, groggy and unbalanced under the stiff weight of the heavy cavalry armor.
Immediately, spontaneously, the troops stood and erupted in a loud roar, and Julian raised his mask and acknowledged their cheer with a weary grin and a wave of his hand, blood flowing from one nostril down his chin and dripping to the sand from beneath his helmet. Sallustius, too, face impassive as ever, nodded to the soldiers and accepted their praise. Julian then bent slowly and picked up his lance, the tipped end neatly broken off during the tremendous impact with Sallustius' shield. He examined it ruefully, and then held it high in his right hand in a kind of salute, raising another roar from the men at this trophy of his mock battle. Finally, turning to Sallustius with a sheepish expression, he advanced toward him with his arms wide, as if to embrace him in acknowledgment of his courage and skill.
He didn't make it far, though to his credit the judges deemed it a perfectly fair blow, and the men's raucous laughter afterwards would appear to confirm them in this ruling. For as Sallustius bent awkwardly in his stiff-kneed armor to pick up his own dropped weapon, Julian took careful aim, and with a robust prod of his broken lance, knocked the surprised Sallustius ignominiously back into the dust.
VI
That Spring of the year commonly calculated as being the three hundred fifty-sixth since the birth of Our Lord and the one thousand ninety-first since the founding of the city of Rome, Sallustius, Julian, and I spent daily in deep discussion at the headquarters, surrounded by an enormous quantity of maps, crumpled parchment, and reference documents, planning the campaign for the year to come. Many hours were spent in close consultation with the various tribunes and cohort leaders of the legions, devising strategy and shuffling troop deployments, arranging supply drops and reviewing prisoner interrogations. It was during one such session that the old eunuch Eutherius entered without knocking, eliciting an irritated glance from Julian.
This breach of protocol, so minor by any stretch of the imagination as to hardly be worthy of notice in this chronicle, was, however, so extraordinarily out of character for the excellent Eutherius as to beggar a short digression.
Like his old tutor Mardonius or his physician Oribasius, there was not a time in the young Caesar's life when
