onto the platform to hand the organ to Maximus, who, after a quick examination of it, turned his back to the troops and left the stage without a word. Julian turned back to the men and raised his hand still bearing the bloody knife, to call their attention.
'By the king of gods, Zeus!' he cried, his voice unnaturally high-pitched and shaking, and the troops fell silent. 'By the holy god Mithras and by all the inhabitants of Olympus, I swear: never, by the gods, never shall I make sacrifice to Ares again! For a more fickle and treacherous god than he has never before cursed the race of man!'
The men stood silent a long moment, frozen in their shock at his cursing of the god of war. Julian leaped off the platform, his gaze avoiding the panting and twitching bulls littering the ground around him, and swept past his court to his tent without a word. Shaking their heads ruefully, the men slowly scattered to their quarters while I stood gazing at the ruins of the ceremony. It was not the first pagan sacrifice I had ever witnessed, but it was undoubtedly the foulest ever undertaken, and I confess the question crossed my mind as to whether the cursed results had been due to my presence.
Julian kept his oath, to the letter.
VI
'Burn the fleet.' Maximus' head shot up, his red-rimmed eyes wide in a kind of malignant amazement. Even staid Sallustius recoiled.
'Sire?' he inquired after a moment, setting to one side the maps he had been examining in Julian's tent.
'You heard me. Burn it. Every vessel. We'd have to occupy half the army dragging the damn ships up the Tigris, and they would be a temptation for us to flee. Burn the fleet, or it will prevent us from meeting Sapor with all our strength and wits.'
Already the decision had been made not to lay siege to Ctesiphon. The city was simply too strong, its surviving garrison too numerous, its supplies, according to information we had received from defectors, too copious. Moreover, our position at the foot of the walls was untenable, if only for a hazard we had not counted on: the enormous clouds of biting flies and mosquitoes that swarmed in from the nearby river and canals, in such quantities that they dimmed the sun by day and obscured the stars by night, driving the men and animals to near madness. Thus God's tiniest creatures summon the attention of His largest. Sapor's prime minister within the city had sent Julian a cautious embassy, offering to cede back to him all the Roman cities the Persians had taken in the last decade, but this proposal was scornfully rejected.
'Returning that which is already rightfully ours is no concession!' Julian stormed, flinging the calligraphed document back in the face of the startled ambassador. 'Let the cowardly Persians emerge from their walls and fight on the plains like men!'
But this the Ctesiphon garrison would not do. They shouted taunts and fired arrows at us desultorily, challenging the Emperor to demonstrate his bravery by seeking out the Great King himself and engaging his army rather than a besieged city garrison. Julian took the insult to heart. But to attack King Sapor without being pincered by the garrison on the other side would require leaving Ctesiphon and marching north along the Tigris — upstream. It would be impossible to bring the enormous fleet.
'Burn it,' he repeated stubbornly.
'Augustus,' Sallustius interjected cautiously, as if addressing an overexcited child, 'at least keep it here where it is, as a… as a…' He faltered uncharacteristically for a moment as Julian glared at him stonily. '… as a fallback. Post a guard on it to defend against attacks by the Ctesiphon garrison. If worse comes to worse, our men can burn it then, to prevent it from being captured. Otherwise, if Sapor forces us to… retreat, we would still be able to sail down the Tigris to the Gulf and make our way safely from there to Egypt.'
These were more words than Sallustius was accustomed to speak at any one time — clearly the issue was important to him. Julian would have none of it, however.
'Retreat is not an option, Sallustius,' he snapped, 'and I will suspect your loyalty, as I already do your wisdom, if you raise the issue again. Nor do we return the way we came. We have already laid waste to that country and there would be no provisions for us. Tomorrow we march up the Tigris to meet with Procopius, and Sapor, sooner or later, will meet us and fall. Burn the fleet.'
As he looked around the tent, all his old comrades, Oribasius, Sallustius, myself, all of us who had served him so faithfully in Gaul, whose advice he had solicited and followed in the past, all fell silent. Even Maximus remained motionless, refraining from his customary whispering in Julian's ear.
Julian surveyed our sullen faces with what seemed a look of satisfaction.
'Is that clear?'
As we left, Sallustius pulled me aside. It was the first time, I believe, he had ever sought me out directly.
'Physician,' he said gruffly, as if embarrassed, though staring at me intently, 'you have served him for years. Has he gone mad?'
'Yes,' I said, without hesitation. 'Years ago, when he first made sacrifice to Mithras.'
Sallustius snorted. 'Then we are all of us mad, are we not? Except you. Are you the one voice of sanity in the Emperor's circle?'
'Perhaps. I cannot speak for the rest of you.'
At this, Sallustius' face became uncharacteristically tense.
'If he is mad, why did you follow him to this hellhole, rather than staying in your precious Nazianzus?'
I paused, slightly stunned at this one time I had ever seen Sallustius drop his perpetual mask of calm and self-composure. Sallustius apparently thought I had not heard, for his face contorted even more. 'I said, physician, if he is mad-'
I snapped out of my reverie and interrupted him.
'You are asking the wrong person, General,' I said. 'I go where healing is required. It is because he is mad that I followed him to this hellhole. You would do better to ask that question of yourself.'
The next morning the greasy, black smoke from the sacrifice was uncustomarily thick. For twenty miles around the city, every field, every mill, every orchard, house, and vineyard had been torched. The pall mingled dolorously over the river with the thin wisps still wafting up from the smoldering remains of a thousand ships — the largest destruction of a Roman fleet since Actium four centuries before. Within an hour we had broken camp.
The inhabitants of Ctesiphon lined the city ramparts to watch our departure, shaking their heads in relief and wonder.
For a week we marched north, our goal the Roman province of Corduene, some three hundred miles distant. We lived only on the provisions we carried with us, for all about us, for miles on every side, the country had been laid to waste, first by our own troops in the vicinity of Ctesiphon, and thereafter by the Persians themselves. A large body from the Ctesiphon garrison followed us at a respectful distance. Not large enough, Brother, to engage us in pitched battle, for the Persians had found that their forces were no match for us in direct combat. Nevertheless, they continually harassed and raided our flanks, making off with precious supply wagons, diverting troops that could otherwise have been used to assist with the provisions, and burning the country far ahead of us, leaving us to march in ashes. At one point we were unable even to move for two days, surrounded by flaming grasses and choking smoke on all sides.
Finally, Julian could take no more of the men's muttering and fears, for even the Gallic veterans were beginning to openly express their doubts as to our prospects. He resorted to an old tactic of the Spartan king Agesilaus, and calling a hurried assembly, he stood before them with Arintheus, a burly Thracian commander. Exhausted in both body and mind, Julian could scarcely bring himself to talk, much less compose a rousing speech of the kind he had habitually used in the past to encourage his men.
'Tribunes, centurions, and soldiers of the Roman army!' he shouted hoarsely. His voice barely carried beyond the front rows. 'Word has come to my ears of the fright you are taking from the enemy's harassment. Their armor, you say, is impenetrable. Their archers are unerring. Their cavalry too fleet of foot for our heavy Roman ponies to catch.'
