Julius rubbed his eyes. When had he last slept? He struggled to find words to appease the man.

“I will return to the foot of the mountains with my men. It would be an honor to have you join me there.

We will feast then and toast the dead.” He saw Mhorbaine look speculatively at the retreating column and continued, his voice hardening. “The Helvetii who live are under my protection until they return to their lands. Do you understand?”

The Gaul looked doubtfully at the Roman. He had assumed the column was under guard and being taken into slavery. The idea of simply letting them go was difficult for him to take in.

“Under your protection?” he repeated slowly.

“Believe me when I say that whoever attacks them will be my enemy,” Julius replied.

After a pause, Mhorbaine shrugged, running a hand over his beard. “Very well, Caesar. I will ride ahead with my personal guard and be there to meet you as you come in.”

Julius clapped him on the shoulder, turning away. He saw Mhorbaine was watching in fascination as Julius nodded to the cornicens. The notes blared out across the plain and six legions turned on the spot.

The soft earth trembled and Julius grinned as they marched away in perfect lines, leaving Mhorbaine and the Aedui behind. As they entered the tree line at the edge of the plain, Julius called Brutus to him.

“Pass the word. I will not be beaten home. We march through the night and will feast when we get there.” Julius knew the men would accept the challenge, no matter how exhausted they were. He sent the Tenth to the front to set the pace.

As dawn came, the six legions crossed the last crest before the Roman settlement at the foot of the Alps. The men had jogged and marched for more than forty miles, and Julius was just about finished. He had marched every step of the way with his men, knowing his example would force them to keep going.

Such small things mattered to those he led. In spite of their blisters, the men gave a ragged cheer at the sight of the sprawling buildings, moving easily into the faster pace for the last time.

“Tell the men they have eight hours of sleep and a feast to bulge their bellies when they wake. If they’re as hungry as I am, they won’t want to wait, so have cold meat and bread served to them to take the edge off. I am proud of them all,” Julius said to his scouts, sending them away to the other generals. He wondered idly whether his legions would have proved a match for the armies of Sparta, or Alexander. He would have been surprised if they hadn’t been able to run the legs off them, at least.

By the time Mhorbaine reached the same crest with fifty of his best fighters, the sun was above the horizon and Julius was sound asleep. Mhorbaine reined in there, looking at the changes the Romans had wrought. The dark wall they had built curved north into the distance, a slash in the fertile landscape.

Everywhere else he could see was being transformed into squares of buildings, tents, and dirt roads.

Mhorbaine had crossed the legion trail a few miles before, but he was still astonished to see the reality.

Somehow, he had been left behind in the darkness. He leaned on his saddle horns and looked back at the massive figure of his champion, Artorath.

“What a strange people they are,” he said.

Instead of replying, Artorath squinted behind them.

“Riders coming,” he said. “Not ours.”

Mhorbaine turned his horse and looked back down the gently sloping hill. After a while, he nodded.

“The other leaders are gathering to see this new man in our land. They will not be pleased that he beat the Helvetii before they could get here.”

Holding flags of truce high above their heads, groups of riders approached. It looked as if every tribe for two hundred miles had sent their representatives to the Roman settlement.

Mhorbaine looked down at the vast encampment with its orderly lines and fortifications.

“If we are canny, there is a great advantage here for the taking,” he said aloud. “Trade in food, for one, but those pretty legions are not a standing army. From what I’ve seen so far, this Caesar is hungry for war.

If he is, the Aedui have other enemies for him to fight.”

“Your schemes will get us all killed, I think,” Artorath rumbled.

Mhorbaine raised his eyebrows at the man who sat a heavy stallion as if it were a pony. Artorath was the biggest man he had ever known, though sometimes he despaired of finding an intelligence to match his strength.

“Do you think bodyguards should talk to their masters in that way?” Mhorbaine said.

Artorath turned his blue eyes to meet him and shrugged. “I was speaking then as your brother, Mhor.

You saw what they did to the Helvetii. Riding a bear would be easier than using your silver tongue on these new men. At least when you jump off the bear, you can still run for it.”

“There are times when I can’t believe we share the same father,” Mhorbaine retorted.

Artorath chuckled. “He wanted a big woman for his second son, he said. Killed three men to take her from the Arverni.”

“To make an ox like you, yes. But not a leader, little brother, remember that. A leader needs to be able to protect his people with more than just unpleasantly bulbous muscles.”

Artorath snorted as Mhorbaine continued, “We need them, Artorath. The Aedui will prosper with an alliance and that is the reality, whether you like it or not.”

“If you use snakes to catch rats, Mhor…”

Mhorbaine sighed. “Just once, I would like to talk to you without having animal wisdom thrown in my face. It does not make you sound intelligent, you know. A child could put things more clearly, I swear it.”

Artorath glowered at him, remaining silent. Mhorbaine nodded in relief.

“Thank you, brother. I think, for the rest of the day, you should consider yourself my bodyguard first and my brother second. Now, are you coming with me?”

His men were given tents while they waited for Julius to wake. Mhorbaine sent riders back to hurry on the herd he had brought for the feast, and before noon had fully passed, the slaughter of the animals had begun, with Mhorbaine and Artorath taking a personal hand in the preparation and spicing of the meat.

As the other leaders began to arrive, Mhorbaine greeted them with intense inner amusement, thoroughly enjoying their surprise at seeing him red to the elbows and issuing orders to boys and men as the bellowing cattle were killed and cut into a feast for thirty thousand. The sizzle of beef filled the air as a hundred fire pits were fed and heavy iron spits erected. Drowsy legionaries were rousted out of their warm blankets to help with the work, rewarded with a taste as they licked burnt fingers.

When Mark Antony woke, he had slaves bring buckets of river water for him to wash and shave, refusing to be hurried. If Julius was prepared to sleep through the biggest gathering of tribal leaders in living memory, then he was certainly not going out to them with two days of stubble on his face. As each hour passed, Mark Antony was forced to wake more and more of the soldiers, ignoring the swearing that came from the tents as his messages broke through the numbness of their exhaustion. The promise of hot food did wonders for their tempers, and hunger silenced the complaints as they followed Mark Antony’s example and washed before dressing in their best uniforms.

There were many small villages in the Roman province, and Mark Antony sent riders out to them for oil, fish sauce, herbs, and fruit. He thanked his gods the trees were heavy with unpicked apples and oranges, no matter how green. After drinking water for so long, the bitter juice was better than wine after it had been pressed out into jugs for the men.

Julius was one of the last to wake, sticky with the heat. He had slept in the solid buildings of the original settlement, now much extended. Whoever designed them had shared the Roman taste for cleanliness, and Julius was able to sluice himself with cold water in the bathing room, then lie on a hard pallet to have olive oil scraped on and off his skin, leaving him clean and refreshed. The muscles that ached in his back finally eased as he sat to be shaved, and he wondered whether the daily massage kept him supple. Before he dressed, he looked down at himself, checking his bruises. His stomach in particular was tender, and marked as if he had taken a heavy impact. Strange that he did not remember it. He dressed slowly, enjoying the coolness of clean linen against his skin after the smell of his own sweat on the march. His hair snagged in the fine teeth of the comb, and when he tugged, he was appalled to see the mass of strands that came away. There was no mirror in the bathing rooms and Julius tried to remember the last time he had seen an image of himself. Was he losing his hair? It was a horrible idea.