“My daughters have sharper minds, I swear it. Nothing is certain in battle. The stakes are too high to simply throw armies at each other until there is one man left standing. Rome would be defenseless and our enemies would have nothing to stop them walking into the forum as they pleased. Do you understand that much? There must be a surviving army when all the posturing and bluster is finished.” He sighed at Suetonius’s blank expression. “What will next year hold for us, or the year after? If the victory is decisive, there is no one else to limit the authority of Pompey when Caesar has fallen. If he chooses to make himself a king, or an emperor, even, to abandon the Republic of his fathers, to launch an invasion of Africa—there will be no one who could dare to refuse. If Caesar is triumphant, the same applies and the world will change regardless. This is a new order, boy, no matter what happens here. When one general falls, there must be stability. That is when we will be needed.”

Suetonius remained silent. He thought he could hear fear in Cicero’s warnings and he scorned the old man’s worries. If Pompey triumphed, Suetonius would know only joy, even if it led to an empire begun on the fields of Greece. Caesar was outnumbered and would soon be hungry. Even to suggest that Pompey might not win was an insult. He could not resist a final barb.

“Perhaps your new order will need younger blood, Senator.”

The old man’s gaze didn’t waver.

“If the time for wisdom and debate has passed, then the gods help us all,” he said.

Brutus and Seneca rode together at the head of a host of legions that blackened the countryside of Greece for miles. For once, Seneca was silent and Brutus suspected he was thinking of the orders from Labienus and what they would mean. Though in theory it was an honor to lead the vast army, both men knew the test of loyalty was likely to leave them dead on the field after the first charge.

“At least we don’t have to tread through dung like the rest of them,” Brutus said, glancing over his shoulder.

Seneca forced a tense smile. The legions were separated from each other by thousands of pack animals and carts, and it was true that those further back would march a path made deeply unpleasant by their passing.

Somewhere ahead of them were the legions that had landed at Oricum, led by a general whose name was almost a byword for victory in the army. Every man there had followed the reports from Gaul, and even with the advantage of numbers, there were few who thought the battles to come would be anything but brutal.