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sooner, not later. “Tomorrow,” he whispered, as I drifted off to an uneasy slumber beneath my blanket, too weary despite my worries to stay awake a moment longer.

IV
    In the hour before sunrise, I gradually woke. Night and sleep receded in imperceptible stages. A hazy, dreamlike vision infiltrated the waking world. Out of the grayness, the arena of battle described by Vitruvius emerged before me.
    Huddled in my folding chair with the blanket wrapped around me and over my head like a cowl, I saw the milky white walls of Massilia tinged with a faint pink blush by the growing predawn light. The black behemoth beyond acquired depth and definition, became a ridge of hills with houses crowded close together along the slopes and temples and citadels crowning the hilltops. The sea beyond turned from black obsidian to blue lead. The islands outside the harbor acquired solidity and dimension.
    In the valley below me, the contravallation that circled Massilia cut like a scar across the trampled earth. The embankment that Vitruvius had described rose like a great dam across the valley, and the movable siege tower loomed below us. I saw no sign of the tunnels Vitruvius had talked about, but toward my left, at a corner where the landward wall bent sharply back to run along the harbor, I saw the massive towers that flanked the main gate into Massilia. Somewhere in that vicinity, Caesar’s men intended to dig their way to daylight.
    Slowly but surely—as slowly and surely as these images manifested out of darkness—I came to a decision.
    It seemed to me that in my younger days I had always been methodical and cautious, slow to take any step that might be irrevocable,fearful of making a mistake that might lead to the worst possible outcome. How ironic that in my years of hard-earned wisdom I should become a creature of impulse, a taker of wild risks. Perhaps it was wisdom after all for a man to turn his back on fear and doubt and trust to the gods to keep him alive.
    “Vitruvius?” I said.
    He stirred in his chair, blinked, and cleared his throat. “Yes, Gordianus?”
    “Where does the tunnel begin—the one that’s to break through inside the city today?”
    He cleared his throat again. He yawned. “Over to the left. Do you see that stand of oak trees down there, tucked in a hollow that curves into the hillside? Actually, you can just barely see the treetops. That’s where the entrance of the tunnel is, almost directly across from the main gate but still hidden from the city walls. The sappers are probably down there already, relaying digging equipment, rechecking measurements. The soldiers who’ll take part in the attack will start gathering in about an hour.”
    I nodded. “How will they be equipped?”
    “Short swords, helmets, light armor. Nothing too heavy. They’ve got to stay light on their feet, as unencumbered as possible. We don’t want them tripping or stabbing each other as they scramble through the tunnel, or weighed down with too much equipment when they need to climb out.”
    “Are they all from a particular cohort?”
    “No. They’re special duty volunteers culled from several cohorts. Not every man’s fit for such a mission. You can’t effectively train a man not to be afraid of the dark or not to panic in a tight, enclosed space. Put some men in a tunnel and it doesn’t matter how brave they are, they wet themselves the instant they lose sight of daylight around the first bend. You don’t want to be standing next to such a fellow in a crisis. Sappers thrive in tunnels, of course, but sappers are diggers, not fighters. So you’ve got to have fighting men who aren’t afraid to step on a few earthworms. The volunteers who’ll make the attack have been doing tunnel drills over the last few days. How to carry a lighted taperso it doesn’t go out, how not to stampede your comrades if the tunnel goes black, memorizing signals to advance and retreat, and so on.”
    “Sounds complicated.”
    Vitruvius