'Good for you, Caesarius!' he said. 'The adventure is only beginning. Would that I myself could complete what I started!'
What he had started? I paused in puzzlement and looked over to the table where he had been sitting, with the piles of broadsheets, all upside down to me so I could not read them from where I stood. It occurred to me that I had never actually seen Oribasius read or write anything — in fact, I had often wondered if he was illiterate, and his talk of compiling a vast medical encyclopedia merely a sham. The stacks of sheets were strange to find in the camp hut, and it was even stranger to find him burning valuable parchment, but a light was slowly dawning.
'Oribasius,' I said, pointing to the stacks of texts on his table, 'what have you been burning in here so diligently?'
He smiled mysteriously, but shifted his considerable bulk slightly so as to hide my view of the texts. Though upside down, their letters, I saw, were large and crudely written, and it would be easy for me to make them out if I could just stand a little closer…
'Nothing important,' he chuckled, attempting to disguise the slight wince of alarm as he saw where my attention was directed. 'A few medical texts of your misguided Hippocratics,' he joked.
I shouldered past him, attempting to mask my sudden suspicion with a lame joke of my own: 'Oribasius, I didn't even know you could write! And here you are practicing your ABC's.'
Moving to the side of the table I stopped short as I saw the top sheet on the stack, and the crude Latin words instantly jumped out at my eyes: We are to be driven to the ends of the earth like common criminals, and our dear families, whom we have set free from their earlier bondage only through murderous fighting, will once again become the slaves of the Alemanni…
'Oribasius!' I hissed, barely containing the fury in my voice at finally identifying the author of the anonymous missive that had caused such an uproar. 'You didn't… This is your work?'
His cunning smile never faltered, even as he shrugged his shoulders self-deprecatingly.
'My work — yes. And Julian's as well, of course.' He sighed dramatically. 'Though truth be told, the original idea was certainly mine. And the text of the broadsheet as well. Ah well — the secret would be out sooner or later. The crudity of the Latin was a nice touch, though, don't you think?'
'Do you realize this may be the death of Julian and of all of us?' I shouted.
Oribasius shook his head, his smile fading as his small, piggish eyes took on a look of dead seriousness. 'Do not cross me, Caesarius,' he intoned, though his voice was not threatening but rather that of a father scolding a dense son, 'for by crossing me in this, you cross Julian himself, and through Julian your destiny is made. You are young, and your adventure is just beginning. I am fat and lame, I have now completed my duty to the Emperor, and I expect nothing from my actions, except…'
He paused.
'Except what, you fool?' I pressed angrily, seeing his focus wander off as if he were deep in thought. He looked back at me.
'Just this,' he said, 'and you are the only man to whom I have told it: the fact is, I take great satisfaction in knowing that it was not the crowds, not the generals, not even the gods themselves, but rather fat, jolly Oribasius with his clever pen and ambitious mind — I, Oribasius — who made Julian Emperor. Oh, Julian knew of my actions, of course, for I proposed them shortly after the arrival of that buffoon Decentius — but the execution was all mine. History may forget me as a physician, Caesarius, it may even deride me as an encyclopedist; but as a king-maker, I rank among the best.'
II
Of our march, Brother, I have hardly a word to say, for although we and Jovinus' unit constituted the first hostile armies in generations to pass those ancient Roman cobbled roads through the Alps, to Italy and beyond, we met not a single enemy, none of the ambushes and other obstructions we had anticipated, not so much as a stone thrown by a mischievous boy. You may doubt whether such a short description as the one that follows can adequately cover the story of a secret march of nearly eight hundred miles through hostile territory. Yet I truly cannot recall any events I have omitted that might swell this brief recounting to something more substantial. The troops were force-marched twenty miles a day and more, and the speed of the army's sweep and its surprise tactics created the intended effect, without need for us to strike a single blow. Panic ensued in the lands around us. Days before our arrival word had already been spread by Constantius' scouts, and cities were emptied, their garrisons scattered or force-marched farther south and east. The praetorian prefect for Italy, the most powerful civil official in the province, fled before Jovinus, taking with him the prefect of Illyricum as well. The speed and smoothness of our approach to the Danube was breathtaking, almost worrisome in its lack of impediment, as if Constantius were reserving his forces for some massive attack upon our arrival.
Smooth and speedy, I say, except for my own duties. As master of the couriers I worked day and night coordinating the messages and dispatches between Jovinus and Nevitta, as well as all the myriad details unrelated to official correspondence with the three armies — arranging advance supplies, resolving administrative issues back in Gaul, and promotions and transfers within the legions, but in one area, the most important of my duties, I failed miserably, and this I was sick about. For during the long, uneventful weeks of our march, not a single contact did I make with Julian — not a single order received from him, not a single progress report successfully sent to him. Every one of my post-riders returned to me weeks after having been sent off, unable or unwilling to enter far into the Black Forest in search of him, stymied in their attempts to obtain news of his whereabouts. The forest is big, I mused, huge — but large enough to swallow an Emperor and three thousand men without a trace?
At first I attributed the loss of Julian simply to my post-riders' incompetence, or to mine in giving them faulty instructions or incentive. Week after week of silence from one's commander, however, gives one pause. Nevitta was outraged, terrified at having committed his life and promising career to the insane venture of rebelling against Constantius with a meager force of ten thousand men, and with his leader consumed by wild beasts or tribes in the wilderness. All we could do, I told him, was to arrive at Sirmium ourselves to wait for him, pray, and hope for the best.
Limping sore-footed into Sirmium on the appointed day, with Jovinus' troops still two weeks' march behind us in their arrival, we were astonished to see the city gates wide open in welcome. Cheers erupted from the town walls and battlements as the population gathered to throw flowers down on our weary troops. We were met at the entry by fresh and rested Gallic troops, who escorted us to the central forum, where we were greeted smilingly by — who else? — Julian, who had, unbelievably, arrived two days earlier, having outrun every single one of my messengers along the way with his three thousand cavalry, and arranged the welcoming party for us upon our arrival. Our jaws dropped upon seeing him thus, and I wager that the only person more surprised than we was one Lucillianus, the Roman commander in charge of Pannonia before our arrival, whose story is worth a slight diversion to make up for the lack of events to recount to you of our own march.
Count Lucillianus was a veteran soldier who had fought bravely against the Persians and had recently been promoted to his present position. Several days before, he had received vague intelligence of Julian's approach, which, to give the man credit, was more than I myself had been able to arrange. Thinking, however, that he had several days or a week by which to arrange his defenses successfully and thereby garner great favor from Constantius, he went to bed that night content in the thought of his upcoming victory. He slept soundly until he was rudely awakened in the dim hours of the morning by the point of a sword against his throat and a crowd of evilly grinning men gathered about his bed. No answer was given to his shouts of protest, but he was bound, gagged, placed on the first available beast they were able to find in the barracks outside, which happened to be a donkey, and driven like a wretched prisoner past his own personal guard, themselves gagged and trussed like chickens, to the military quarters in the center of town. Upon being frog-marched into his office, Lucillian found Julian calmly sitting in his own chair, reading Marcus Aurelius.