Conn Iggulden - The Field Of Swords

“Perhaps. We didn’t plan it, Brutus. I didn’t want you to walk in on us.”

The sword was a still point in a moving world. Julius clenched his jaw, a vast sense of calm settling over him. He relaxed every muscle consciously and stood waiting. He did not want to die, but if it came, he would treat it with contempt.

“This is no small thing, Marcus. Not for me, not for her,” he said.

The sword came down suddenly and the manic light died from Brutus’s eyes.

“There is so much between us, Julius, but if you hurt her, I will kill you.”

“Go and see her. She’s worried about you,” Julius replied, ignoring the threat.

Brutus held his gaze for a long moment more before walking away and leaving him alone in the training yard. Julius watched him go, then opened his hand with a wince. For a moment, anger surged again. He would have hanged any other man who dared to raise a sword against him. There could be no excuse.

Yet they had been boys together and that counted. Perhaps enough to swallow the betrayal of a blade aimed at his heart. Julius narrowed his eyes in thought. It would be harder to trust the man a second time.

The next six weeks were filled with almost unbearable tension. Though Brutus had spoken with his mother and given a tight-lipped blessing to the union, he walked the compound with his anger and loneliness like a cloak around him.

Without a word of explanation, Julius began to drill the Tenth himself again. He took them out alone for days at a time and never spoke except to give his orders. For their part, the legionaries struggled through pain and exhaustion just to receive a nod from him and that seemed to be worth more than effusive praise from anyone else.

When he was in the barracks, Julius wrote letters and orders far into the night, cutting deeply into the reserves of gold he’d built up. He sent riders back to Rome to commission new armor from Alexandria’s workshop, and caravans of supplies wound their way through the mountains from Spanish cities. New mines had to be cut to supply iron ore for the swords being produced at Cavallo’s design. Forests were felled for charcoal and there was never a moment when any one of the five thousand soldiers of the Tenth did not have two or three tasks that needed doing.

His officers were caught between the pain of being excluded and a kind of joy at seeing Julius rediscover the old energy. Long before Julius summoned his subordinates from their posts around the country, they guessed the time in Spain was coming to an end. Hispania was simply too small to contain the general of the Tenth.

Julius chose the most able of the Spanish quaestors to take his place in the interim until Rome appointed another of her sons. He handed over the seal of his office and then threw himself back into working all day and night, sometimes going without sleep for three days in a row before collapsing in exhaustion. After a short rest, he would rise and begin again. Those in the barracks trod carefully around him and waited nervously for the result of all his labor.

Brutus came to him in the early hours of a morning, when the camp was still and silent all around them. He knocked on the door and entered as Julius called out a muttered response.

Julius sat at a desk strewn with maps and clay tablets, with more on the floor at his feet. He stood as he saw Brutus, and for a moment the coldness between them seemed to prohibit speech. The habit of friendship was rusty for both of them.

Brutus swallowed painfully. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Julius remained silent, watching him. The face he presented was like a stranger’s, with nothing of the friendship Brutus missed.

Brutus tried again. “I was a fool, but you’ve known me long enough to let it go,” he said. “I am your friend. Your sword, remember?”

Julius nodded, accepting him. “I love Servilia,” he said softly. “I would have told you before anyone else, but it came too quickly between us. There are no games here, but my relationship is private. I will not answer to you for it.”

“When I saw you together, I-” Brutus began.

Julius held up a stiff hand. “No. I don’t want to hear that again. It’s done.”

“Gods, you won’t make this easy for me, will you?” Brutus said, shaking his head.

“It shouldn’t be. I care more for you than any man I’ve ever met, and you struck to kill me in the training yard. That is hard to forgive.”

“What?” Brutus replied quickly. “I didn’t-”

“I know, Brutus.”

Brutus slumped slightly. Without another word, he pulled up a stool. After a moment, Julius took his own seat.

“Do you want me to keep apologizing? I was raging. I thought you were using her like… It was a mistake, I’m sorry. What more do you want?”

“I want to know I can trust you. I want all this to be forgotten,” Julius replied.

Brutus stood. “You can trust me. You know it. I gave up Primigenia for you. Let this go.”

As they looked at each other a smile crept onto Julius’s face.

“Did you notice how I parried the stroke? I wish Renius could have seen that.”

“ Yes, you were very good,” Brutus replied sarcastically. “Are you satisfied?”

“I think I could have won,” Julius said cheerfully.

Brutus blinked at him. “Now that’s going too far.”

The tension between them receded to a distant pressure.

“I’m going to take the legion back to Rome,” Julius said in a rush, relieved to have his friend to share his plans once again. He wondered if the weeks after the fight had hurt Brutus half as much as they had hurt him.

“We all know, Julius. The men gossip like a group of old women. Is it to challenge Pompey?” Brutus spoke casually, as if the lives of thousands didn’t hang on the answer.

“No, he rules well enough, with Crassus. I will put my name forward to be consul at the elections.” He watched Brutus for a reaction.

“You think you can win?” Brutus replied slowly, thinking it over. “You’ll have only a few months and the people have a short memory.”

“I am the last surviving blood of Marius. I will remind them,” Julius said, and Brutus felt the stirring of the old excitement. He reflected on how his friend had experienced almost a rebirth in the last months. The snapping anger had gone, and his mother had played her part in it. Even his dear little Angelina was in awe of Servilia, and he could begin to understand why.

“It’s almost dawn. You should get some sleep,” he said.

“Not yet, there’s a lot still to do before we can see Rome again.”

“Then I will stay with you, unless you mind,” Brutus said, stifling another yawn.

Julius smiled at him. “I don’t mind. I need someone to write as I dictate.”

Renius stood in the dry riverbed and looked up at the bridge. The structure swarmed with Romans and local men, clambering over a skeleton of wood that shifted and creaked as they moved along the walkways. Two hundred feet from the dry riverbed to the stones of the road above. When it was complete, the dam upriver would be removed and the water would hide the massive feet of the bridge, washing around the shaped edges for long after the builders had gone to dust. Just being in the shadow of it was a strange feeling for the old gladiator. When the waters came, no one would ever stand there again.

He shook his head in silent pride, listening to the orders and calls as the winch teams began to raise another of the blocks that would form the arch. Their voices echoed under the bridge and Renius could see they shared his satisfaction. This bridge would never fall and they knew it.

The road above his head would open up a fertile valley in a direct line to the coast. Towns would be built and the roads extended to meet the needs of the new settlers. They would come for the good ground and for trade and most of all for the clean, sweet water issuing from the underground aqueducts that had taken three years to build.