Brutus spent a moment arranging himself to be decent enough to walk the streets. Every nerve tingled with the touch of her and he felt completely alive with the intensity of what had happened. He swaggered a little as he walked back to the barracks, and his step was light.

Chapter 35

                  CHAPTER 35                  

Gasping slightly in the cold air, Julius turned to look back at the glittering snake that wound down the Via Flaminia below the high pass. The first three days had been hard on him, before the fitness of his time in Greece began to return. Now his legs had hardened into ridges of muscle, and he relished the pleasure that comes from simple exertion with a body that feels inexhaustible. By the end of the tenth day, he was enjoying the march to Ariminum with the legions at his back. In the evenings in camp, he practiced the gladius with the experts Crassus had brought along, and though he knew he would never be a master, his wrists were strengthening day by day and only the sword teachers themselves could break through his guard.

The wind gusted around the marching column and Julius shivered slightly. Although he’d seen many different lands in his time away from Rome, the cold of the Apenninus peaks was new and he bore it with a grim dislike that was mirrored in many of the soldiers around him.

To break the taste of dust in his throat, Julius took a gulp from his waterskin, shifting the heavy weight of his equipment to pull the stoppered mouth toward his lips. The column stopped only twice a day: briefly at noon and then the evening halt, which began with three hours of exhausting work to prepare the camp boundary against ambush or attack. He looked back again at the legion column and marveled at the length of it. From the high pass through the mountains, he could see a huge distance in the clear air, but the invisible rear guard of cavalry was more than thirty miles behind him. As Crassus was pushing a fast pace of twenty-five miles from dawn till dusk, it meant those at the rear were a day behind the front and would only catch up at Ariminum. Each halt had to be relayed along the column by the cornicens, with the blared notes dwindling with distance until they could not be heard.

Ranging up the steep slopes around were the units of extraordinarii horsemen, scouting the forward line. Mounted on sturdy breeds and advancing in crisscrossing patterns, they covered three or four times the distance the column marched. It was a standard tactic, Julius knew, though anyone who dared to attack a column of their strength would have to be suicidal.