We were dumbfounded, and for a moment we all froze, unsure precisely what to do. Had they attacked us, we would have killed them immediately. Had they fled we would have hunted them down like the dogs they were. This, however, was unanswerable.
Julian alone was prepared. With the barbarian lying prostrate on the ground before him, he carefully spread his feet and placed both hands on the sword hilt. With the tip of the blade, he prodded the neck of his son's killer, deftly parting in two the mass of matted and encrusted hair, exposing the white flesh of the nape. All eyes, barbarian and Roman, were fixed on Julian's sword, all lips fell silent. He set the tip into the groove of the neck, just at the base of the skull, and paused.
'Caesar,' I whispered, from close at hand. He remained unmoving, his eyes locked on the sword tip. 'Caesar,' I rasped hoarsely, slightly louder, and I could see the tendons in Julian's forearm quivering. 'Do not have this blood on your hands, Caesar. Send him away — send him to the Emperor. As a credit to you, and a burden to Constantius. The Beast's fate is sealed in either case.'
Julian looked up at the silent men around him, then focused on me. His eyes had a strange light — as of intense feeling or turmoil, but uncontrolled, with a gleam of perhaps something like madness. 'This man is a scourge,' he said throatily, adjusting his fingers and tightening his grip on the handle. 'With one thrust I avenge thousands of innocent Romans killed, with one stroke I prevent thousands more from being murdered in the future. What is the life of this wretched… killer, compared to the souls of all those he has destroyed, compared to the life of my own son?' He spat out these words in a kind of muted sob, and Chonodomarius froze in his position on the ground, not understanding the words but surely gathering their meaning, waiting for the swift thrust that would end his life.
I stepped closer, locking my eyes on Julian's wild gaze and speaking evenly. 'Your justice requires a rule of law — even in times of war. That is what separates you from him. He is unarmed and helpless. It is never right to execute a man this way. Your son's soul would not be avenged. God would see it not as justice but as cold murder, no better than the barbarian's own crimes. In God's name, let him up.'
Julian stared at me grimly, composing his face into an expressionless mask. A hint of a smile curled at the corners of his mouth and he leaned slightly forward over Chonodomarius, again adjusting his fingers on the grip. I saw he was going to do it, he would do it, if I did not do something, did not risk something.
'Julian — ' I urged once more, using his given name even though we were in the presence of his troops. 'Julian. As a favor to me, in the name of our friendship — let the man stand.'
Julian's stare remained locked on mine for a long moment, weighing my words, the burden I had placed on him. For that instant I felt as if his hate were directed at me. Then looking away, he slowly straightened his back, lifted his sword away from the man's neck, and sheathed it. The terrible gleam disappeared from his eyes and they returned to their former depth and intelligence, though they were not without a sharp flash of anger — at the actions of Chonodomarius, or at the terrible toll I had charged on our friendship. He set his mouth in a narrow grimace, turned impassively, walked to his horse, and mounted.
The pattern was now set by Sallustius. Expressionless and cool as ever, he bent down to the barbarian that had prostrated himself before him, a large fellow of a height equal to his own, and seizing him by the hair he lifted him bodily to his feet in a single, swift motion. Cutting the reins of his own horse, Sallustius roughly tied the man's wrists behind his back, jerking the knot tight until the barbarian winced in pain.
The rest of us swiftly followed suit, until the only barbarian remaining unbound was Chonodomarius, who still lay motionless at the place where Julian had stood. As the rest of us watched in not a little trepidation to see how the Caesar would handle the prostrate king, he walked his horse over and stood staring at the huge body for a moment. Then, with a terse 'On your feet!' he ordered Chonodomarius to stand and walk behind him. To the surprise and wonder of all, the Beast did his bidding, and the entire party walked slowly and deliberately back to the camp. The procession was led by a grave Julian, walking his horse calmly in front of the towering, unbound Alemanni king, his long auburn hair and mustaches flowing, his heaving chest still painted with the flames of war and destruction, his cheeks flushed with frustration and shame.
In a subsequent search of the woods, an additional two hundred barbarians, many of them Chonodomarius' personal escort, were rounded up and taken back to camp. Three of his closest allies, including Serapion, his son, were among them. After several days of deliberation, it was decided to spare their lives and to send them to the Emperor in Rome, as the ultimate trophy of war: the Beast, who had troubled Constantius for so many years, with a troop of his fiercest warriors.
Again, Your Holiness, if I might supplement my brother's narrative with a touch of additional background: Chonodomarius, though treated with mercy by his fellow blasphemer Julian, nevertheless met a tragic end. In Rome, the so-called 'Beast' was looked upon with awe and fear, not only for his great size but for the devastation he had wreaked among the Roman armies over the years, and out of deference to his military skills he was treated as something of a prisoner of honor, held in the castra peregrinorum, hunkered between the Caelian and Palatine hills. Tradition has it that it was at this very site that Saint Paul had been held in custody when sent to Rome in chains three hundred years earlier, though far be it from me to make any comparison between the two. From the windows of his confinement, the barbarian king would have had a clear view of the Coliseum and the Arch of Constantine, and no doubt his last contact with his kinsmen would have been as they were later led in chains through that very arch as prisoners of war, surrounded by jeering women and pelted with rotten fruit. These barbarians would then be thrown to the wild beasts for the entertainment of the crowds, or to be matched against the murmillones and the retiarii, the swordsmen and the net-minders, in the bloody gladiatorial combats.
There, in the darkness of his damp, stone cell, far from the fragrant pines of his shady Germanic forests and lost in the blackness of his own soul, wretched Chonodomarius died of consumption, coughing up his own lungs. May Our Most Merciful Father forgive him his wicked deeds at the last.
BOOK SIX
All things that happen are as common and familiar as the rose in spring and the apple in summer; for such is sickness and death, calumny and treachery, and whatever else delights fools or vexes them.
I
That winter was the first of several Julian spent at his new military headquarters of Paris. This city, before Julius Caesar's time, had been little more than a flood-prone fishing village clinging to a marshy island in the middle of the Seine and inhabited by the now vanished tribe of the Parisii. In the intervening centuries, however, it had become an administrative and cultural center of the highest repute, Brother, as you are aware from your contacts with your fellow bishops of that Christian urb. It had long since expanded beyond the confines of the miserable river island, and the walls had several times been extended outward along the left bank to encompass a magnificent forum; a large arena, capable of seating sixteen thousand people and hosting gladiator spectacles and mock naval battles; and what was the greatest comfort to Julian, appealing to those slight sybaritic tendencies that remained in his soul after having been largely driven out by his Christianity and Stoic philosophy, a series of most magnificent baths.