Conn Iggulden - The Field Of Swords

Julius had chosen a room that looked over the sea for their gathering, and birds wheeled and screeched outside on the gray rocks. He greeted each man with real pleasure as they came in. Bericus had taken a wound in the first engagement with Vercingetorix and had his shoulder and chest bandaged. Though the Ariminum general looked tired, he could not help but respond to Julius’s smile as he showed him a seat and brought a cup of wine for his good hand. Octavian came in with Brutus and Renius, in the middle of a discussion of tactics for the cavalry. All three men greeted Julius and made him smile at their confidence.

They seemed not to share his own doubts and worries, but then they were used to having him there to solve them. He had no one.

As they gathered, Julius felt himself lifted by their mood. The years of war had not broken his friends.

When they spoke of the latest rebellion, it was with anger and resilience rather than defeat. They had all invested years in the hostile land, and every man there was angry to see their future threatened. Though they talked amongst themselves, each man watched Julius for some sign he was about to begin. He was the core of them. When he was absent, it was as if the purest part of their drive and energy had been taken. He bound men together who would not have suffered each other’s company in any other circumstances. Such a bond, in fact, that they did not even think of it as they settled and he faced them.

He was simply there and they were slightly more alive than before.

Cabera was brought in last by two men of the Tenth who acted as his attendants. Julius strode over to him as soon as the old healer was settled and took his frail hands in his own. He spoke too quietly for the others to hear above the noise of the gulls and wind.

“Farther than any other man in Rome, Cabera. I have been off the edge of the world. Did you see me here, so long ago?”

Cabera didn’t seem to hear him at first and Julius was sad at the changes age had wrought in him.

Guilt too tugged at his conscience. It was at Julius’s request that Cabera had healed Domitius’s shattered knee, and that act of will had been too much for his aging frame. He had not been strong since that day. At last the eyes lifted and the dry, cracked mouth twitched upward at the edges.

“You are here because you choose to be, Gaius,” the old man said. His voice was little louder than an escaping breath, and Julius leaned closer to his lips. “I have never seen you in this terribly cold room.”

Cabera paused then, and the muscles of his neck jumped in spasm as he took a deeper breath.

“Did I tell you I saw you killed by Sulla?” he whispered.

“Sulla is long dead, Cabera,” Julius said.

Cabera nodded. “I know it, but I saw you murdered in his house and again in the cells of a pirate ship.

I have seen you fall so often I am sometimes surprised to see you so strong and alive. I do not understand the visions, Julius. They have caused me more pain than I have ever imagined.”

Julius saw with swelling grief that there were tears in the old man’s eyes. Cabera noticed his expression and chuckled dryly, a clicking sound that went on and on. Though Cabera’s left arm lay useless in his lap, he reached up with the other and brought Julius even closer.

“I would not change a day of it, the things I have seen. You understand? I haven’t long and it will be a relief. But I regret nothing of what has happened since I stepped into your home so long ago.”

“I would not have survived without you, old man. You can’t leave me now,” Julius murmured, his own eyes filling with tears and memory.

Cabera snorted and rubbed his face with his fingers. “Some choices are denied us, Gaius Julius. Some paths cannot be avoided. You too will pass the river in the end. I have seen it in more ways than I can tell you.”

“What did you see?” Julius said, aching to know, yet gripped by a numbing fear. For an instant, he thought Cabera had not heard him, the old man was so still.

“Who is to know where your choices will take you?” The voice continued its sibilance. “Yet I have not seen you old, my friend, and once I saw you fall to knives in darkness in the first days of spring. On the Ides of March, I saw you fall, in Rome.”

“Then I will never be in my city on that day,” Julius replied. “I swear it to you, if it will give you peace.”

Cabera raised his head and looked past Julius to where the shrieking gulls fought and struggled over some scrap of food. “Some things are better not to know, Julius, I think. Nothing is clear to me anymore.

Did I tell you of the knives?”

Gently, Julius laid the old man’s hands together on his lap and arranged the cushions so he could sit upright.

“You did, Cabera. You saved me again,” he said. With infinite tenderness, Julius lifted the old man up on the cushions to make him comfortable.

“I am glad of that,” Cabera said, closing his eyes.

Julius heard a long breath coming from him and the frail figure became utterly still. Julius gave a muffled cry as he saw the life go out of him and reached out to touch his cheek. The silence seemed to go on a long time, but the chest was still and would not move again.

“Goodbye, old friend,” Julius said.

He heard a scrape of wood as Renius and Brutus came to stand with him, and the years fell away so that it was two boys and their tutor standing there, seeing a man hold a bow without a tremor in his arms.

Julius heard the other members of his council stand as they realized what had happened. He turned red-rimmed eyes to them and they could not bear to meet the pain they saw in his face.

“Will you join me in the prayers for the dead, gentlemen? Our war will wait another day.”

As the gulls shrieked in the wind outside, the low murmur of their voices filled the cold room. At the end, there was silence and Julius breathed a last few words as he looked at the shrunken body of the old man.

“And now I am adrift,” he said, so quietly that only Brutus at his side could hear.

It was dark in the tent and Adàn had only a single tallow candle to give him enough light to write. He sat in perfect silence and watched as Caesar sprawled on a bench with his arm outstretched to be bandaged. There was blood on the first layers and the strip of cloth itself was dirty, having been taken from a corpse. Julius grunted as the doctor made a knot and pulled it tight. For a moment, his eyes opened with the pain, and Adàn saw they were dim with exhaustion.

The doctor gathered his sack of equipment and left, letting a blast of air into the stuffy interior that made the candle flicker. Adàn looked over the words he had recorded and wished Julius would sleep. They were all hungry, but the winter had burnt flesh from the commander as much as any of the men. His skin was tinged with yellow and tight across his skull, and Adàn saw dark hollows underneath his eyes that gave him a look of death.

Adàn thought Julius had slid into sleep and began to gather his scrolls to steal away without waking him. He froze as Julius scratched at the sweat stains of his tunic and then rubbed his face. Adàn shook his head slowly at the changes in the man since he had first known him. Gaul had taken more than it had given.

“Where did I finish?” Julius said, without opening his eyes. His voice was a croak that made Adàn shiver in the gloom.

“Avaricum. The doctor came in as I was writing about the final day.”

“Ah yes. Are you ready to go on?”

“If you wish it, sir. It might be better if I left you to get some rest,” Adàn said.

Julius did not respond past scratching his unshaven chin.

“Avaricum came soon after the murder of three cohorts under Bericus. Are you writing this?”