With their king alone and embattled, the guards were struggling desperately to reach him. The veterans tired and fell against them, their strength faltering. Mithridates seemed to sense it.

“To me, my sons!” he shouted. “Come to me!” And their efforts doubled into a frenzy.

Julius leaned back around the outside of a blow and then cut in fast, tearing his jagged blade through the shoulder. Mithridates stumbled as Ciro stabbed him in his powerful chest, shouldering into him with an explosion of strength. The king’s blood poured out and he dropped his sword from limp fingers. His eyes met Julius’s for a moment, then he slipped down into the press of mud and bodies. Julius raised a red sword in triumph and Accipiter hit the Greek flank, breaking them utterly and sending them running with the last of their brothers.

*                                                      *                                                      *

They had no oil to burn the bodies, so Julius ordered great pits to be dug at the rear of the camp. It took a week to make them deep enough to hold Mithridates’ dead. Julius had forbidden celebration with so many of the broken army still alive. The irony of having to set up an armed perimeter of the very camp he had attacked for so long did not escape him, but he knew that with the charismatic king dead, there was little chance of the survivors gathering for another attack. He hoped the nerve had been cut out of them, but though Mithridates’ sons had been killed at the end, Gaditicus thought more than four thousand others had escaped, and Julius wanted to get away from the valley as soon as the last of his wounded had recovered or died.

Less than five hundred of the Wolves had survived the attack on the camp, most of their number lost in the last battle around the Greek king. Julius had them buried separately and no one complained about the work. They gave them a full funeral that lasted most of a day, and the funeral torches gave off a stinking black smoke that seemed fitting for their sacrifice.

When all the dead were in the ground and the camp was clear of wreckage, Julius gathered his officers to him. From the veterans, he chose the ten most senior centurions to represent their voice and was sad that Cornix had not survived the fight to join them, though he knew the ancient warrior had chosen the manner of his death without regret. Quertorus came with the others and it was only as they sat down together that Julius noticed Suetonius too had joined them, though he held no command. The young man’s arm was heavily bound where it had been cut, and the sight of it prevented Julius from sending him away. He had earned his place, perhaps, though Julius wondered if he had enjoyed it half so much as the night attacks he seemed to relish.