Janus smiled. “Then he should be safe from any accidents should you find yourself slipping in your old age.”
Mars let a deep belly laugh out with such force it nearly made Marius jump. “I miss your company since you have become a hermit, Janus. We should sup again soon. It has been so long since the last time.”
“You are welcome in my home on any occasion,” Janus said solicitously.
“And you in mine,” Mars said with a nod of courtesy. He sighed. “I suppose I should get to work.”
“It would be greatly appreciated if you could spare Rome from the incompetence of her generals and the far-flung crusades of her emperor,” Janus said with a smile that Marius did not quite understand. He glanced back to the battle, which seemed to be going very poorly in his eyes. The usurper’s men were now through the Roman legion, had neatly divided it in half. They were swarming back and enveloping them with superior numbers. It was not what Marius thought a victory should look like.
Mars urged his horse forward a few paces with a nudge, putting himself in front of the line of gods atop the hill. Marius kept his eyes on the man—Mars, the God of War. He watched him, and Mars lifted his hands and sighed again, then pushed his hair back over his shoulders.
Mars lifted his hands in the air and held them aloft, eyes closed. He stood, still as a statue, facing the battle below. Marius heard faint whispering, like voices over the horizon, the maddening sounds of people just beyond his sight but not beyond his ears.
The wind swirled past him in hot tongues, the summer sun heating the air around him. Marius kept his eyes upon Mars, watching him hold there, the whispers raging around them. Marius’s eyes broke from the God of War and looked all around for the source of the whispers. The gods were all silent, gazes fixed on Mars, and the hillside around them was devoid of any spectators or speakers.
Marius turned his attention to Janus, ready to break the silence and ask the question, but Janus held a finger up to his lips to quell it before it was even asked. He then took it and pointed it to the battle, and Marius let his gaze fall back upon the site of the rout.
Where the usurper’s men were now losing.
It was not even a contest. He watched in the outlying spaces as the men of Proculus’s army fell upon their own spears by the dozens, by the hundreds. Even those not taking arms up against themselves were finding the Roman Legion surging through their number with increased ferocity. Marius squinted, his superior eyesight giving him a close view of the fight, as though it were happening right in front of him. The men of the Roman legion were moving with speed beyond that of normal humans, their blades moving up and down in fast, precise motions that sent the blood of their foes through the air in sprays and gushes.
Marius turned back to look at Mars, who was now lowering his hands. The battle was won, the enemy lines dissolved in a frenzy of suicide and panic. Mars let a long sigh of satisfaction and spoke. “Your servant yet lives, Janus. No accidents this time, you see.” He wheeled and smiled, his blunt, flat face suffused with a satisfaction that Marius had seen only a few times on the faces of people.
“Indeed, your skill is great, Ares,” Janus said with a nod. “I saw one of your children once attempt to influence a battle a tenth of this size.” He chortled. “They all killed themselves, to the last man.”
Mars’s face lost its look of amusement. “What can I say? Sometimes the apple is kicked far from the tree.”
“Indeed,” Janus said, and his eyes fell upon Marius, favoring him with a smile. “This is true.”
Marius turned his attention toward the battlefield below, a bloody mess of corpses and wounded, the screams echoing up to the hilltop. It was an utter display of cruel death, inconceivable defeat pulled from certain victory. Death grabbed whole from the jaws of life.
Marius realized after a moment that the sight of the battle’s more grisly elements—the blood, the screams—did not bother him at all. He looked back at Janus and saw the subtle nod. And he returned his mentor’s smile.
Chapter 29
Sienna
Now
Reed was already halfway out the door and I was right behind him when Harper yelled out, “Wait!” I glanced back and she tossed me something small, like the size of a shelled peanut. “Ear mic. I’ll be able to give you eyes in the sky.”
Reed hesitated and she tossed him one as well. He caught it and poked it into his ear, and I saw the look on his face. “We’re at least twenty minutes out, if we’re lucky. We’ll never make it in—”
I surged past him, pushing him out of the way as I headed out into the bullpen. “Maybe you won’t—”