"But what about Pompey's superior numbers?" said Manlius. "Above and beyond his Roman legions, they say Pompey's gathered hundreds of archers from Crete and Syria, slingers from Thessaly, thousands of cavalrymen from Alexandria-"

"We know about Pompey's forces only from rumors. People always inflate the actual numbers," said Canininus.

"But Pompey's fleet isn't a rumor," observed Hieronymus. "Surely that's real. People have seen galleys sailing into the Adriatic Sea for months, hundreds of them arriving from all over the eastern Mediterranean. Battle-hardened or battle-weary makes no difference if Caesar can't get his men across to the other side."

"His timing could hardly be worse," observed Volcatius the Pompeian, smiling grimly. "Winter's arrived. Boreas can blow a storm from the north and whip the Adriatic into a seething caldron before a ship's captain has time to utter a prayer to Neptune. They say Caesar consulted the auguries before he left Rome, and all signs boded against him. Birds were seen flying north instead of south, and a sparrow attacked a vulture-bad omens! But Caesar hushed up the augurs before his troops could hear about them and raise another mutiny."

"That's a lie," said Canininus, "a blasphemous lie!" He lurched toward Volcatius, but some of the others held him back. Hieronymus raised an eyebrow at the spectacle of a truculent, one-armed Roman attempting to physically attack the oldest graybeard in the group.

All this time I said nothing. In the contest between Pompey and Caesar, I had so far managed to keep myself neutral-more or less. Like virtually every other Roman citizen, especially those who played any part whatsoever in the city's public life, I had strong ties to both sides. If anything, my loyalties and animosities were more conflicted and tortuously intertwined than most because of the sort of work I had done all my life-playing the hound for advocates like Cicero, digging up the truth about powerful and not-so-powerful men accused of everything from deflowering a Vestal Virgin to murdering their own fathers.