Ranks of Bronze э-1

by David Weber

  Quartilla wore a suit patterned with irregular polygons of solid color. Instead of following the curves of her body as did the monochrome suits of guild employees, her garment seemed to have been constructed of flat panels as oddly shaped as the swatches of color- which they did not recapitulate. The form beneath seemed tightly confined as well as distorted: save for her face, the woman looked twenty pounds lighter than she did when Vibulenus visited her room.

  It was the first time that he had seen her clothed.

  "Well, the Pilot…" she said. The tribune could not tell whether she was nervous because of the way he might react to the news or if she feared one of the manifestations of the guild would punish her for talking. "He… I can't enter the crew space, you know-" she waved a hand, each of whose fingers were a different color, toward the forward bulkhead "-and he doesn't like to come any distance into the cargo section. So he has me meet him here, when the… When it's going to be empty."

  The tall Roman said nothing. He was not even sure what he thought, except that there was a block of stone in his stomach as large as Etna and as cold as February dawn.

  "It's mostly just the humanoid ones, you know," said Quartilla in a nervous attempt at reassurance.

  "I've got to go," said Vibulenus with the clarity that resulted from his mind forcing words through lips from which it had become disassociated.

  "Yes," she said, though he was not hearing her because now his entire body was stone. "And be careful, Gaius."

  The tribune's intellectual part marveled that his body began to run toward the opening in the hall without him needing to direct the tensing and stretching of each separate muscle. Bodies were wonderous things. Minds were what got men into trouble.

  He caught up with the rear rank of the Tenth Cohort just as they strode into the chill sunlight.

  The sun was a green dot, low enough in the sky to cast the shadows of the enemy array halfway across the stony field to the Roman lines. Vibulenus shivered.

  "Funny how it looks different depending on where you are when you see it," Clodius Afer muttered, to himself but with a sideglance at the tribune. "The sun, you know. Stars too, it seems sometimes."

  "Yeah, I'd noticed that," said Vibulenus, wondering how far the Commander was going to march them across the front of a hostile army. For that matter, who in Hades was going to close their flanks? Even in extended order, the legion formed too narrow a front to match that of the mass slowly accreting toward the east.

  Hercules! there were a lot of the bastards.

  "Really wouldn't mind bein' back home," said the pilus prior in what was almost a whisper.

  "Yeah," said Gaius Vibulenus, who did not trust himself to say more.

  The ground was of gravel averaging about the size of walnuts: unattractive, but solid footing. Hobnails sparked on it as the legion tramped along in a column only six ranks wide. The normal front rank was at the moment the left flank of the column, while the file on the right side would form the rear rank when the legion halted and faced left-toward the east and the enemy a half mile distant.

  Unless the enemy attacked while the legion was still moving sideways. That wouldn't be a disasterthey were veterans, after all. But it would be one more cursed thing along with being outnumbered ten to one and being commanded by a kid who didn't know his mouth from his asshole.

  A horn blew.

  "Cohort-" roared the pilus prior.

  "Century-"

  One trumpet, that carried in the command group, sounded and all the other trumpets in the legion joined the piercing note.

  "Halt!" bellowed the centurions, and the legion crashed motionless. Sparks shot from beneath boots and from the pointed iron ferule of the javelin each soldier carried in his right hand.

  The ground looked flatter than the Commander's description of it ("rolling") but the tribune could not see the left flank of the enemy when the halt gave him leisure to observe them. In fact, the Commander had marched them so far across the front that the entire eastern horizon was filled with a line of shields whose garish colors were muted by the light behind them.

  All the vegetation the tribune could see was the same variety, a gray-skinned plant whose center was a squat trunk the size and shape of a large wine jar. A dozen leaves two handbreadths wide and as much as twenty feet long trailed across the shingle from each trunk, covering much of the ground despite the sparseness of individual plants. The legionaries did surprisingly little damage when they trampled the leaves with their heavy boots, but the cool air filled with an odor like that of bergamot.

  There did not seem to be any animal life except the other army. The region raised a right plenty of warriors, if it did nothing else.

  "Cohort-"

  "Century-"

  "Left… face!"

  Scrunch-crash! as slightly over four thousand men turned on their left heels, then slammed their right boots down in unison. Their capes and the crests above their helmets waved like the lovely, languid fins of a reef fish swinging into position to strike. Vibulenus looked at them, turning his back on the enemy, and his heart thrilled within him. He was no longer afraid.

  "Dress right-" shouted Clodius Afer, his voice as strong and no huskier than it had been when he started bellowing commands. A pause while the junior centurions echoed him, then: "Dress!"

  The Tenth Cohort glittered as every man stretched out his right arm to the side, gripping the javelin against his palm with his thumb.

  The ranks began to shift to their right as each man edged away from the extended fingers of the man to his left. The motion became increasingly pronounced as the men on the cohort's right compensated for the few inches that every one of the fifty men to their left had closed up improperly during the march.

  Cursing, the pilus prior of Cohort Nine continued the process. The legion wriggled to its right with a peristaltic spasm like that of a slug advancing.

  Or a snail; a bronze-armored, steel-fanged snail.

  Clodius Afer began striding between the files of his cohort, shouting in what was only partly-feigned nervousness. "Come on you fuckers, what d'ye think this is, a fuckin' defaulters' parade? They'll kill yer fuckin' asses if you don't dress those linesl Second rank, shift right, yer not fettm-fucking the first rank, you're ready't' lock shields with 'em!"

  Each legionary stood with three feet of empty space on all sides of him: room to cock back his javelin or to swing his sword without fouling a comrade; room enough to stride forward and lock a shield wall with the rank ahead if the enemy advanced in a phalanx of its own.

  It was not quite a parade formation, because irregularities in the ground skewed the array the way dense forest curves over the surface of a hill. But a parade is a purpose unto itself, sterile and emotionless. Here the legion breathed and its spearheads, sharpened as well as polished, quivered with restless animation.

  There was still no one-no cavalry, no light infantry, nothing to close the legion's left flank. The hordes of the enemy would be all over the Tenth Cohort as soon as battle was joined, as sure as dead men stink.

  There was a noise from the enemy lines greater than the whisper of equipment. Voices drifted toward the Romans on the light breeze. Warriors holding short staves upright were walking forward from the hostile mass.

  Standard bearers, Vibulenus thought, or heralds… but it was not until he realized that the warriors were swinging their staves that he understood what the sound was.

  There was a rope at the upper end of each staff and, spinning at the end of the rope's arc, a bull-roarer visible only as a shimmer in the air at this distance. The noisemakers had an angry drone, peevish in the upper registers and distinctly threatening in the lowest bass.

  There were at least a dozen of the signallers being advanced from the enemy's front. They were not-could not be-tuned to identical frequencies, and the disharmonies and near harmonies that resulted raised hairs on the back of the Romans' necks the way the growl of a big cat could do.

  The storm of battle was abo
ut to break over this arid plain; and unless there were immediate changes, the legion would be swept away in torrents of its own blood.

  "Sir," said the pilus prior from unexpectedly beside the tribune, "who's supporting our left flank?"

  Vibulenus' heart jumped when someone else broke into the mental structure he was building and all the delicately-balanced probabilities crashed down into the one gut-certainty of disaster.

  "Nobody," he snapped, wholly an officer and not a man for the moment; a tribune of this legion and by all the gods its leader, whoever the trading guild might appoint to its command. "They've gotten greedy, and we're not going to let 'em get away with it. Order the men to ground their shields and kneel while I straighten it out."

  He strode through the six ranks, oblivious to the looks of nervousness or curiosity which the nearest soldiers flashed him. Just now they existed only as statues, thoughtfully offset to provide Vibulenus a slanted path between them.

  "Prepare to kneel!" bellowed Clodius Afer. It was not a standard command, but if he ordered "Prepare to receive cavalry" from the drill manual, the ranks would close up before kneeling with javelins slanted over shields.

  The legion's depth was almost no distance at all to the strides of an angry man. That fact penetrated, and it formed a blazing backdrop to the tribune's icy resolve.

  A trumpet from the command group gave the preliminary advance signal with a long clear note.

  "Kneel!" ordered the centurions of the Tenth Cohort. The rank and file legionaries dropped as though the trumpet had made the ground settle beneath them.

  That would make the Commander sit up and take notice, thought the tribune with satisfaction as he stepped through the sixth rank and into sight of the command group-to the rear, as always.

  Behind him, the enemy was beginning to chant in unison with the pulses of the bull-roarers.

  Vibulenus started to jog toward the command group, almost as far away from him as the enemy lines had been. The bodyguards oiled their armor but did not polish it, so they sat on their powerful mounts like dark lumps which turned to watch the tribune with the inanimate fascination of toads.

  About and beyond them glittered the legion's silver eagle standard and the silvered bronze trumpet and horn, all carried by Romans on foot. The signallers were lowering their instruments and looking toward Vibulenus-more accurately, looking at the cohort kneeling on the flank which had caused the Commander to delay the concentus of all horns and trumpets to order the attack.

  There was one figure more, a Roman in gilded helmet and breastplate who spurred his mount so savagely toward Vibulenus that pebbles spurned by the beast's pads rattled on the armor of the guards and their own mounts. The Commander had sent Lucius Rectinus Falco to learn what was wrong with the left flank.

  And by Hercules, he would learn.

  The carnivore that Falco rode had a pace something like that of a horse cantering, but when the clawed forepaws reached out, the creature bowed its chest so that it nearly scraped the ground. The motion by which the beast recovered, arching its back, would have pitched off any but the most expert of riders-and Falco was that, give the little swine his due.

  The Commander and the toad-things of his bodyguard supported their feet in steel loops slung from their saddles-stirrups-which made an amazing difference in ease of riding at anything above a fast walk. Falco disdained them, continuing to ride Roman fashion with only the pressure of his bent legs on the beast's heaving flanks to keep him astride. Thus mounted, he rode with a verve that the guards were too heavy to equal and the Commander-all the commanders-had too much caution to attempt.

  Vibulenus halted. If a messenger were coming, he had no reason to run himself into heatstroke while his equipment pummeled him. Some of the rear-rank legionaries turned to check furtively on what was happening behind them.

  The carnivore closed the gap with astonishing speed. It was ridden on a hackamore that left its jaws free to rend from eye-teeth to shearing molars, and the lips were already slavering. Though of rangy build, the beast must have weighed over two thousand pounds even without the added mass of its draperies of scale armor. The tribune was not conscious of being afraid, but by instinct his left arm swung the shield so that the blazon of triple thunderbolts on its face was squarely toward Falco.

  The hind claws of that cursed brute flung gravel as much as twenty feet in the air when they scrabbled for purchase.

  Falco realized at the last moment that he was going too fast to skid to a halt directly in front of his rival. He tugged the reins and his mount's head to the left at the same time he pulled back with enough strength to mottle his knuckles with the effort. The pebbles that he had intended to spray across Vibulenus rattled instead on the backs and helmets of the soldiers of the rear rank as the messenger skidded to a halt.

  One of the men, a centurion by the transverse crest, leaped to his feet while the mounted tribune was still trying to bring his carnivore under proper control. The non-com-Pompililius Niger, by Pollux! Of course, Niger had the Fourth Century now-thrust at the beast's snarling jaws with his shield boss, making the creature start and very nearly upsetting the rider for all his skill.

  What?" Falco bleated as his mount pawed halfheartedly at the shield and Niger cocked a javelin to stab for an eye if things went further.

  "Falco!" Vibulenus shouted, stepping forward to seize the other tribune's right knee and deflect his attention back to where it should be. Niger ought to have had enough discipline to ignore being pelted with rocks… but they were, all of them, keyed up, waiting for slaughter and wondering whose it would be. "Centurion, back to your duties!"

  "Vibulenus," said Falco as he slapped the hand away from his knee, "the Commander will burn you to death by inches. Why have these fools squatted down in the very face of the enemy?"

  His voice was husky with emotion and the effort of controlling his mount.

  "Lucius Falco," said the tribune standing, "tell our commander that if we engage like this, they'll be all around us. We can't win if we're being pressed from three sides."

  The effluvium of warm dead meat bathed the carnivore, rolling from under the blankets of armor covering the beast. Its breathing slowed from the quick gasping of the first moments after its run. During each of the intakes that filled the creature's great lungs, the whirr of the slotted disk on its chest picked up to a racing whine.

  "You don't decide tactics, tribune," sneered the tribune in gilded armor, his leg moving up and down with the rise and fall of his mount's chest. "And you don't give orders."

  "Falco, listen to me," said Vibulenus in the high carrying voice that compelled attention. "Tell our commander that we'll fight for him, but we won't let him throw us away. We went that route once, with Crassus."

  He paused as arrows in his mind shot toward him from all sides, but memories of Parthia no longer froze the tall tribune. He continued, "If he doesn't get us cavalry to close our flank, or at least some auxiliary infantry-" he realized now what the Commander had been hinting about the failure of preparations "-then we form a square and march back to the ship. Otherwise we'll be killed for nothing."

  Clodius and the Tenth Cohort would follow him, even in the likelihood that they would find sealed hatches and perhaps lasers when they reached the ship. Would the rest of the legion march with him also? Possibly; very possibly. He had led them before, taking the only position from which men could really be led-one step in front of them.

  "I thought you were a hero, little Gaius," said Falco, and the bitterness of truth was so clear in his voice that it overwhelmed the sarcasm he had intended. "Are you afraid to die after all?"

  Nothing could disturb the calm of leadership that enveloped Gaius Vibulenus at this moment. There was no room for anger, no room for personalities; no room for anything but what conduced to the result of getting support for their flank.

  "Afraid to get my skull split, you mean, Lucius?" Vibulenus asked as his right hand moved. "I don't know. Are you?"

&nb
sp; Falco looked at where his rival's hand now rested, and looked at the millennia-old eyes in Vibulenus' eighteen-year-old face. "You'll pay for this, you arrogant bastard," the rider whispered with all the venom that his fear let pass.

  "Tell him, Falco," said Vibulenus steadily. "Tell him we need something to keep them off our flank and rear while we grind through their front."

  Falco jerked his mount's head left and kicked the beast's haunch to tighten the turn. Its iron-scaled hindquarters brushed Vibulenus' shield as the creature broke into a racking trot, then its canter, as the rider goaded it back toward the command group.

  "Thank you, sir," said somebody.

  Vibulenus shuddered and took his hand away from his sword. He had been gripping the bone hilt so fiercely that the muscles ached all the way up his forearm. Not in anger. If he had chopped Falco down, hacked through the helmet and skull until the Spanish steel of his blade was nicked by his rival's sneering teeth, then it would have been done coolly to demonstrate to the Commander how serious was the demand for support.

  The trading guild understood that sort of demonstration.

  Vesta, hearth and hope; bring us home again!

  Vibulenus strode again through the kneeling ranks. He paused only for a moment to grip Niger's hand, though neither of the childhood friends spoke. The fragrance of the sprawling local vegetation accompanied the tribune and calmed him somewhat. Now that he was thinking again as an individual, he was terrified by what he had done… but there was no going back.

  And anyway, he had been right. Execution by the Commander could leave him no more dead than disaster in battle would. He had seen enough of the guild's philosophy by now to realize that it would make no attempt to recover and revivify those who had failed it, whatever excuses the dead might have been able to claim.

  "Awaiting further orders, sir," said Clodius Afer in a voice so neutral that it was disquieting.