The Blood of Gods A Novel of Rome - By Conn Iggulden Page 0,111
anything I tell them.’
Brutus grunted and tossed the silver coin to the bath attendant. The slave bowed his head, delighted at the windfall.
‘I never denied having personal reasons for my part in it, Cassius. Everything I have done, everything I achieved, was as nothing in his shadow. Well, I shone a light into the dark places and cast him off. The coins are true in their way. We did save the Republic, unless we lose it now to this boy Octavian.’
‘We will not lose,’ Cassius said. ‘He will come to us, and when he does, he must come by sea.’
‘Unless they march round the north of Italy and strike south by land,’ Suetonius said grimly. Brutus and Cassius looked at him, but he was long past courting their admiration. ‘Well? It is no further than Syria. You cannot simply ignore the threat of a land attack. What is a thousand miles or so to legions?’
‘Senator,’ Brutus said scornfully, ‘if they move so many men that far north, we will be told. We have the fleet, remember? If the Caesarians take their army north, we will be safe in Rome for months before they can make it back. I’d be happy for them to try it! It would solve all our problems at once.’
Suetonius grunted unintelligibly, his face red as they left the bath-house. The Romans stood out in the Greek crowd, if only for their short-cropped hair and military bearing. As he reached the street, Brutus gestured to a group of soldiers waiting for him and they saluted smartly, forming up on all sides.
‘I have to say you did well in choosing Athens, Brutus,’ Cassius observed, looking around him as they walked. ‘This is pleasant, a home away from home. I’m afraid Syria is too hot in summer and much too cold in winter. It is a harsh place, but then the legions there are harder still.’
‘How many ships do you have to bring them over?’ Brutus asked.
‘Ships? None at all. The ones I had I sent to Sextus Pompey. I don’t need them, with land all the way from here to Beroea. There are ferry boats to take them across the Bosphorus strait, by Byzantium. You should see that place one day, Brutus, if you do not know the area. In some ways it is as Greek as Athens, older even than Rome.’
‘Yes, when my neck is not on the line one day, perhaps I will waste my time with old maps and cities. How long to march your legions into Macedonia?’
‘They are already marching. Come the spring, you and I will have an army to face anything the triumvirate has left after the crossing. We can put nineteen legions into battle, Brutus – more than ninety thousand men and most of them veterans. Whatever half-drowned rabble lands in Greece when Sextus is finished with them will not last long against such a host.’
‘I will command, of course,’ Brutus said.
Cassius came to a sudden stop in the street and the others paused with him, so that the crowd was forced to go around them, like a rock in a river. There were curses thrown their way in Greek, but the Romans ignored them.
‘I believe I have the greater number of legions, Brutus. We do not want to lose the war before it has even begun by squabbling over this.’
Brutus weighed the determination in the sinewy man who faced him.
‘I have more experience than you or any five of your legates,’ he said. ‘I fought in Gaul and Spain and Egypt, for years on end. I do not dispute their loyalty to you, Cassius, but I have been wasted before by Caesar. I will not be wasted here.’
In turn, Cassius judged how far he could resist and gave up.
‘Joint command then,’ he said. ‘The numbers are too great for just one man to give orders. Will that satisfy you? Each to his own legions?’
‘I’ll have eight to your eleven, Cassius, but, yes, I think I can make them dance when the time comes. I’ll want the horsemen, though, under my own command. I know how to use extraordinarii.’
‘Very well,’ Cassius replied. ‘I have eight thousand. As a gesture of friendship, they are yours.’
As they walked on, Suetonius shook his head, his irritation growing as they discussed the future with no acknowledgement of the part he and Bibilus had played.
‘You think this is all about a war?’ he said with a sneer. ‘Or a few coins, with boastful words on them?’