And what of poor Helix, you might ask, Brother? I daresay he is not in heaven, nor is that because he has made his lodgings in hell. After the chaos of the initial attack, he found his way to me with the help of a comrade, for the garrison was so understaffed it did not even have a camp doctor. Appalled at his grisly appearance, with the arrow still emerging two feet from the front of his face, I resigned myself to his imminent death and resolved simply to make his last hours more comfortable. Surprisingly, his greatest source of pain was his broken leg, and seeing that this was also the injury I could most easily fix, I ordered his comrade and a passing slave to hold the man down while I set it and splinted it. This Helix endured with nary a grimace, distracted, no doubt, by the strange sight of the arrow's fletching hovering before his eyes wherever he looked. Then as an academic exercise, I took a closer look at the arrow.
Having apparently been shot from rather a long distance, it had fallen into his face at a downward angle, and was aimed toward a point in the back of his neck. I walked behind him as he sat erect on the stool, and pressing his neck there I could actually feel a hard lump, which made Helix wince in pain as I touched it. Borrowing a pair of tin snips from a smith, I clipped off the shaft close to his nose, and then carefully cutting into the back of the man's neck, I located the arrowhead, grasped it with a pair of surgical pliers, and drew the entire arrow cleanly through, barb and all. Helix fainted from the pain and had to be supported by his comrade, and at first I thought he was dead, as the blood hardly flowed from either hole. Amazingly, however, he came to his senses an hour or two later, sat up in his cot, and weakly asked for water. When I handed him a cup I half expected it to flow out the back of his neck, but it did not, and after I had cleaned and sutured the injuries he stood and limped dazedly out of the room of his own accord, leaning on a crutch. Though weak of leg for many months afterwards, he eventually recovered completely and survived to fight more battles for Julian. As far as I am aware, Helix creeps still.
Julian's first act was to order the arrest of Marcellus. When Sallustius heard this, he was livid, despite Marcellus' undeniable treachery. Striding into Julian's library, where he and I were assessing the procurator's report on the damage to the city, Sallustius closed the door sharply behind him.
'By the gods, Julian!' he protested, waving a copy of Marcellus' arrest order in our faces. 'He was appointed by the Emperor! You may outrank him on paper, but you are defying the Emperor himself by arresting his general! This is not your mandate!'
With his face reddening and eyes flashing, Julian stood up slowly and snatched the paper away from his mentor. 'Damn the Emperor!' he said deliberately, with calm but unmistakable fury. We immediately fell silent. After a moment, Sallustius let out his breath.
'I'd advise you to hold your tongue,' the older man said quietly, staring hard at Julian. 'The rank of Caesar has never before stopped Constantius from eliminating a rival who defied him.'
Julian held his gaze, clenching and unclenching his fists in pent-up emotion. 'For a year you've known me, Sallustius,' he said, his voice barely controlled. 'And you, Caesarius, for longer than that. With your help, I have built up the armies of Gaul. I have campaigned from the Atlantic to the Rhine. I have resisted every German assault and we have reconquered territory the barbarians had held for years. I have reformed the tax system, the state's coffers are overflowing, government administration has never been more efficient.'
'This we know,' I interjected. 'Why recite it to us?'
His eyes remained locked on Sallustius. 'You tell me,' he said. 'What was my mandate?'
Sallustius glared at him in silence.
'What was my mandate?' he roared.
Still we said nothing, though Sallustius dropped his glare.
'By God, my mandate was to do nothing! To let the state continue to rot, to see Gaul fall piecemeal to the barbarians while the Emperor's incompetent generals cowered behind their walls. My mandate was to be a figurehead!'
Julian strode around the end of the table to Sallustius and laid a hand heavily on his shoulder, placing his face within inches of the older man's.
'You trained me, Sallustius!' he shouted hoarsely, his eyes full of emotion. 'You made me march, up there in the Alps above Vienne! You have watched every step I've taken since I arrived in this bloody province! Where in the hell do you think my loyalties lie? With an emperor who would just as soon have me dead as see me take any initiative beyond feasting and protocol? My ruler is Rome itself! Rome! All that I've accomplished, all that we've accomplished, Sallustius, has been for the glory of Rome! Caesars are beheaded, emperors die, but Rome lives forever — and Rome will not be stymied by a petty general in Reims who refuses to come to the aid of a besieged garrison!'
Sallustius stared thoughtfully at the floor for a moment, then nodded, composed his face, and strode out without a word. In the hallway I heard him barking orders to a centurion of military police to send a squad to Reims immediately to arrest General Marcellus. Julian slumped back down in his seat, exhausted, his hands over his face. I sat in silence for a moment, observing him, then quietly stood to go out myself. Just as I approached the door, however, he stopped me.
'Caesarius,' he muttered, and I turned to face him. 'We are doing right, are we not?'
I thought for a moment before answering. 'Can you have any doubt?' I asked. 'Have faith, in both God and yourself.' I took the heavy codex of the Gospels and set it on the table in front of him. 'Count on this,' I continued. 'And count on me.'
He put his hands down, and his face looked years older from tiredness and strain. He ignored the book I had set in front of him, but instead looked up at me steadily, and smiled with genuine warmth.
'Sometimes,' he said, 'the hardest battles to be fought are within one's own camp.'
When the military police arrived in Reims several days later to discharge their duty, they found that the commander of the Roman army of Gaul had already anticipated them, and fled days before to Rome. By this time, Sallustius' anger had cooled, and he strode into Julian's room to announce the unfortunate news.
'Marcellus has fled to the Emperor, Julian,' he said impassively. 'It is his version of events, now, that the Emperor will hear first, not yours. The first rule in court politics is to control the flow of information — and in this instance we have failed.'
'We have not failed, Sallustius,' Julian said, glancing up from the parchment he was reading. 'We have the power of right and the good of Rome on our side, and with Marcellus gone we now have the entire army of Gaul at our disposal. With assets such as those, are Marcellus and the Emperor really of such concern?'