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
