Gods and Legions by Michael Curtis Ford

faint shouting and the galloping hoofbeats of a single horse, and bored and disgusted with Constantius' farcical planning exercises, I wandered over to an open window and peered outside.
    An exhausted, dusty courier had been practically yanked off his horse at the palace gates and was being led straightaway up the massive colonnaded balustrade and through the iron doors. He had not even been given the customary goblet of wine to cool his parched throat, and the splash of cold water over his face and neck to calm his labored breathing. He glanced longingly at the bubbling fountains and pools he passed in the courtyard, and he marched limping in pain, his riding togs filthy, the battered leathern pouch slung carelessly over his neck and shoulder by one precariously threadbare strap. The sweat from his lank, uncut hair dripped steadily into the weeks-old growth of beard and thence to the polished marble floor of the steps, leaving a treacherous, slippery trail in his wake.
    I turned back away from the window. The Emperor, whose face in fact was a close image of Julian's, though much doughier and with more of an expression of suspicion or cunning about the eyes, was pacing angrily up and down before a small knot of whispering courtiers. The jiggling rolls of flab at his lower back struggled to keep up with their firmer, more disciplined brethren at his belly, as if in a contest of extraneous tissue, the entire sordid battle visible beneath the fine, rapidly dampening linen fabric of his tight ceremonial toga. I shook my head in disgust at this line of thinking, one that could only have been possible to a bored and underworked imperial physician, until I was interrupted by the messenger's arrival. The Emperor had been in an agony to hear the news personally ever since the first cryptic indications of the disaster had been received in Milan four days before, over the series of coded signal flares erected on mountains and watchtowers the length and breadth of the Empire.
    When the man burst into the room flanked by two beefy guards, Constantius waddled up to him with a speed and energy astonishing for one of his ponderous girth.
    'Out with it, man – is it true? What of Cologne!'
    The courier stopped short, barely into the doorway, and took a moment to get his bearings as he found himself unexpectedly gazing straight into the angry eyes of the Emperor.
    'I don't know what you have been told, Your Highness,' he said simply. 'I know only that five days ago Cologne fell to the barbarians. All are dead, and it is only by the grace of God that I myself was able to escape and reach Milan by the post road relays. Chonodomarius is a devil.' The man swayed and blanched a sickly pale, and I feared he might collapse at the Emperor's feet in his exhaustion.
    Constantius glared at the man in a rage, almost as if he would strike him, and the messenger shrank back slightly, his mouth working as if he were about to tell something more – but what more could he say? Finally the Emperor muttered at him, 'Tell no one of this,' whirled, and stalked back to the throne set in the middle of the room, where courtiers and aides had gone silent as they watched the proceeding. His face reddening in deep anger, he immediately began issuing orders to his generals and advisers. Eunuchs scurried in all directions, and I rose and sidled along the walls to the bewildered courier, who now stood abandoned and silent, looking ill, and seemingly wishing to shrink into the very cracks of the stonework.
    'Come, soldier,' I said, touching his elbow gently.
    He started, then looked at me with unutterable relief at hearing his first friendly words in possibly months.
    I led him down a back passage to my rooms, where he collapsed on my couch, and I offered him some cold meat and stale bread left over from my breakfast that morning. He wolfed it down gratefully, though wincing at a stomach pain, which he attributed to cramps from this being the first meal he had eaten in