The trial had gone some way to restoring Marius’s name in the city, but while Sulla’s friends still lived and played their spiteful games in the Senate, Julius knew he could not build the sort of Rome that Marius had wanted. Cato was safe enough while his main opponents were in the field, but when they returned, Julius would join forces with Pompey to break him. The general understood the need as few others could. For a moment, Julius considered the fate of Cato’s son. It would be too easy to put him in the first rank of every charge until he was killed, but that was a cowardly sort of victory over Cato. He vowed if Germinius died, it would be as any other soldier, at the whim of fate. Pompey’s daughter had been found with Sulla’s name on a clay token in her limp hand, but Julius would not stoop to killing innocents, though he hoped Cato would be terrified for his son. Let him lose sleep while they fought for Rome.

Long, bitter months of campaign had to come first. Julius knew he’d be lucky to see the city walls again in less than a year, and much longer if the slaves were as well led as the reports claimed. He could be patient. Only an army could take his estate, and Cornelia’s father, Cinna, had remained behind to block Cato in the Senate. They had formed a very private alliance and Julius knew that with the strength of Pompey and the wealth of Crassus, there was little they couldn’t achieve.

The cornicens blew the halt sign as Julius marched through the pass into fading sunlight. He could see the Via Flaminia stretching down into a deep valley before working up the heights of a distant black peak that was said to be the last climb before Ariminum. He wished Brutus could be with him to see it, or Cabera, who traveled with the auxiliaries even farther down the column. His tribune rank had allowed him to take station close to the front, but the march in battle order was not a place for friends to idle away the time.

With the sun setting, the first watch took positions, leaving their shields with their units from long tradition. Order was imposed on the broken landscape. Ten thousand soldiers ate quickly and bedded down in the miniature town they had made. Through the night, they were woken in turns to stand their watches, the returning sentries taking the still-warm pallets with relief after the mountain cold.