Suetonius looked up sharply at the laugh, always seeing insult where there was none. It was hard to resist baiting the young man, but in this Julius had set rigid restrictions on himself. He sensed the spite came from fear that Julius would use his new authority to strike back for old injuries. He could not afford to enjoy even a moment of that luxury, in case it broke up the unit he was trying to make. He knew he had to become the sort of leader who was above small grievances, to appear to them as Marius had once appeared to him—cut from better stone. He nodded to Suetonius briefly, then looked away at the rest.

Gaditicus and Prax supervised the camp, marking the perimeter with fallen branches, for want of anything better. Julius heard them go over the sentry rules with the men and smiled in a moment of nostalgia.

“How many times do you challenge?” Prax was saying to Ciro, as he had for all the men.

“Once, sir. They call to approach the camp and I say, ‘Approach and be recognized.’ ”

“And if they don’t call to approach the camp?” Prax said cheerfully.

“I wake someone else up, wait for them to get close, and chop their heads off.”

“Good lad. Neck and groin, remember. Anywhere else and they can still have enough strength to take you with them. Neck and groin is fastest.”

Ciro grinned, taking in every scrap of information Prax threw at him. Julius liked the big man’s heart. He wanted to be a legionary, to know what his father had once loved. Prax too had discovered that he enjoyed teaching all the things he had learned in his decades of marching and sailing for Rome. Given time, the new men would be able to deceive anyone. They would look like legionaries and speak with the same casual slang and expressions.

Julius frowned to himself as he tried to find a comfortable position to lie down. Whether they would stand when all around them had been cut down and the enemy brought certain death to them with screaming triumph . . . that they couldn’t know for sure until it happened. It didn’t help that the men of Accipiter weren’t even sure themselves where such wild courage came from. A man could spend a lifetime avoiding every conflict, then throw his life away to protect someone he loved. Julius closed his eyes. Perhaps that was the key, but not many men loved Rome. The city was too big, too impersonal. The legionaries Julius had known never thought of the republic of free voters, carved out on seven hills by a river. What they fought for was their general, their legion, even their century or their friends. A man standing next to his friends cannot run, for shame.

Suetonius yelped suddenly, leaping to his feet and beating at himself.

“Help! There’s something on the ground here!” he shouted.