Foreign Legions

by David Drake

  "You're not going to live there?" Slats said in desperate hope. His triangular head moved back and forth in quick jerks, the way a human might have done with his eyes alone. "I thought . . . "

  Froggie had left Verruca to deal with the fort because he was more worried about the way the temple had been constructed. The wall was well begun already. The ground cover here didn't bind the soil the way grass did, so the squads were trading off on the task of weaving brush into rough baskets to hold dirt.

  This sort of construction would keep out prying eyes better than a stockade. Besides, when the troopers had time in a day or two to wet and tamp the soil, the result'd be as good as a turf wall.

  The men had stripped off their helmets and body armor, but they still wore their sword belts. Four fully-equipped troopers guarded the gear of the others in the center of the rising fort. No point in taking chances.

  "But the female barbarians?" Slats said. "They have remained, against the Commander's clear orders."

  "Huh!" Froggie said. "I guess you're right. Who'd have thought it?"

  Most of the girls were helping with the work, but a pair were coming back from the stream with buckets of water for the evening meal. They waved gaily to Froggie. Queenie came out from behind the barrier that protected the fort's gateway and walked over.

  "But they must leave," Slats said in frightened animation. "You must order them to leave!"

  "Oh, I did," Froggie said. He'd said the words to Queenie, true enough. He'd sooner not tell a lie if he could avoid it, and a long career in the army had taught him lots of ways to avoid it. "Maybe you should try yourself, Slats."

  The administrator rotated his head toward the approaching girl. Froggie patted Slats on the back and said, "Go ahead. Maybe you'll have better luck."

  And maybe pigs would fly. The troopers had seen stranger things since they'd been bought by the Guild.

  Slats' translator blurted a demand that was so full of apologies you'd have thought he was talking to the Commander. Slats really didn't like saying things the listener might not want to hear.

  "Go fuck tree, bug-man," Queenie said in cheerful pidgin. "We stay."

  "I guess they can camp out in the fort," Froggie said. "Since it's built, after all."

  "But—" said Slats. "They're supposed to go—"

  The village chief spoke to Queenie. She'd known to be politic when Three-Spire was here with the Commander, but the local hick got out less than ten words when Queenie lit into him.

  Queenie didn't kick the barb in the balls, but she did everything short of that. He bobbed and fluttered his arms up and down. Other girls called raucous support, and half a dozen of the nearest troopers rested their hands on their swordhilts as they smiled and watched.

  Slats turned to Froggie. "She says—" he began.

  Queenie whirled toward the centurion and administrator. "We no need him shitpot village!" she cried. "We stay out here, take care boss-man and great warriors like always!"

  The village chief skittered back when Queenie let him go, but the captain of his guards caught him by the arm and pushed him forward again. Froggie stepped between the chief and Queenie.

  "Slats," he said without looking around, "to make sure that none of the girls leave their quarters at night, I'm going to station an outpost here during the four watches."

  "An outpost?" Slats said. Froggie could hear the administrator's limbs rubbing against the slick, copper-colored robe he wore.

  "Just two men," Froggie said reassuringly. "Tell the chief that if he's got problems with Guild personnel and their slaves using waste ground outside his village, he'd better keep them to himself."

  The administrator's lavaliere began chirping away in rapid barb. Froggie looked the head of the axemen in the eye and said, "And by the way, Slats. I don't guess the girls'll have any trouble with the local barbs . . . but you might let the chief know that we were the first troops through the breach when the capital fell. If there is any trouble, we won't stop killing while there's one barb alive here. And we'll burn the houses down over their bodies."

  Slats looked at the centurion and opened his mouth as if to comment. Then he spread his limbs and resumed his directions to the village chief, speaking with great earnestness.

  * * *

  Froggie woke before the man coming down the ladder had reached the top level of the temple's own staircase. There were two sentries on the temple roof as well as the pair at the entrance. Froggie was with the squad sleeping in the nave of the temple, while for official purposes the other men were distributed in the rooms on higher levels.

  When he'd gotten his boots laced, Froggie started up the stairs to meet the messenger. He hadn't put on his cuirass, but he carried it on his left forearm. The information coming down from the roof wasn't an immediate crisis—there was a gong for that—but something might blow up while Froggie was talking to the messenger. He didn't want to be in the dark and a level away from his armor if that happened.

  "Top?" Glabrio whispered. Froggie figured it'd be him. "There's a couple guys went out through the wicket in the gate tower. They started west toward the hills, but from up in the tower we couldn't see 'em once they got into the brush."

  "A couple of the bodyguards, did it look?" Froggie said.

  Glabrio nodded. "Hard to see much by starlight, but they had axes," he said. "Besides, who else would it be?"

  Slats came through the curtained doorway of the room beside them. "Centurion Froggie?" he said. "There is trouble?"

  "Naw," said Froggie. He'd forgotten that the room was occupied. "Not just yet, anyhow. Glabrio tells me a couple barb soldiers went out of the village tonight. Tomorrow night him and me'll be in the fort with the girls, so if it happens again we'll follow them."

  Glabrio grinned. "Hoped you might say that," he murmured.

  "Do you think that's . . . ?" Slats began, but his voice trailed off. He twisted his head fiercely.

  "Centurion Froggie," he said, facing away from the two Romans. The words still whispered from the translator on his chest. "I do not understand what is happening and I'm very concerned."

  "Well, sir," Froggie said judiciously, "that's true of the rest of us too. We ought to know more soon, though; and anyhow, we're working on ways to handle whatever might come up."

  Slats faced around. "I am glad to hear that," he said, though he didn't sound glad about much of anything. "I have heard at the Harbor that the aide Three-Spire visits the Commander often in private. And I have heard—I have never seen this!—that sometimes after those private meetings, the Commander dances to music only he can hear."

  "The barb's fixing up our blue-suited leader with drugs, you mean," Froggie said bluntly. Glabrio was holding as still as a hare in covert. Froggie trusted Glabrio with anything there was to know, but he doubted the administrator would feel that way except he was so upset.

  "I don't know that!" Slats said, flailing his middle limbs like they were wings. "And even if it were true, why would Three-Spire want to split the legion up into tiny groups? How would he gain if we were all killed?"

  "I wouldn't guess Three-Spire was in charge of whatever's going on," Froggie said. "But we'll know more soon. Why don't you go back to bed, Slats?"

  "To sleep?" Slats said. His mouth gave a clack that the lavaliere couldn't translate. "How could I do that? But I will try."

  He paused and cocked his head. "Centurion Froggie?" he said. "I hear the sound of tools."

  "No," Froggie said. "You don't hear tools. Remember that, Slats. It's important."

  "Ah," said the administrator. "I will remember that, Centurion Froggie. And perhaps I will sleep after all."

  * * *

  Froggie could stay awake constantly for half an eight-day market cycle if he had to, but pieces started coming off his concentration early on. He'd napped because there was no reason not to. Now he got up, cinched his swordbelt tighter—he hadn't actually unbuckled it or taken his boots off—and sauntered out of the temple. The guards murmured
politely.

  Slats was checking the village's warehouses, great thatch-roofed rounds of basketry. Brush filled the space between the double walls, so air could circulate among the vegetables on shelves inside but rain couldn't get in even when the wind was driving it.

  Froggie knew Slats was in the warehouse because a squad of troopers waited at the doorway, taking it easy. There wasn't room within for both of the squads Slats insisted on having around him at all times. He was a nervous little bug, he was; not that he didn't have reason to be.

  The troopers started to rise when they saw their centurion. Froggie waved them back. They'd been putting in long hours, and there'd be more work for them tonight. It wasn't safe to keep on with the real job during daylight; there were too many barbs up and moving around the streets near the temple.

  Laena came out of the fort scratching himself. He'd probably been sleeping, which was fine under the circumstances; the men had orders just not to lay about where the barbs could see them, since somebody might wonder what they were doing at night to be so tired.

  Laena saw Froggie and came trotting over. He leaned his face close to the centurion's ear and said, "Hey, Top? You know my girl Glycera?"

  "I believe I've seen her," Froggie said carefully. Every place that relative anatomy permitted it, Laena paired off with a local girl and called her Glycera. For most of his existence, Laena seemed to have no desire except to argue about orders. You didn't want to touch—or even look hard at—any of his current Glyceras, though.

  "Our girls talk with the ones from the town while they're all down at the creek doing wash, you know?" Laena said. "You know them guards the chief's got around him? They're not from here!"

  "Right," said Froggie mildly. He'd have thought Laena was smart enough that he wouldn't have to be told that the axemen weren't local.

  Laena looked miffed at the centurion's lack of surprise. He was one of the real linguists of the legion: give Laena three days anydamnplace and he'd be chattering to "Glycera" like they'd grown up in the same hamlet. Like a lot of other specialists, though, he tended to think that his way of learning things was the only one there was. Froggie never got beyond basic pidgin, but he knew how to keep his eyes open.

  "Well, it's more'n that," Laena said. "The local girls say that under those kilts they wear, them guys are more different from the barbs here than we are. What do you think of that?"

  Froggie mulled the question. Queenie was coming toward him, her neck ruff in an angry flare.

  "I'll tell you the truth, Laena," he said. "I don't know what I think. Did the girls say anything about a metal ship landing like, you know, when we came?"

  "Nope," said Laena. "They just come out of the hills. The Commander's pet barb Three-Spire come along with them and told the elders the new guys were in charge now. They looked tough enough that the local guys didn't argue matters. The warriors left here were the ones who'd run fast enough when they met us, after all."

  "Boss-man!" Queenie said. She didn't even bother to look at Laena. Froggie was boss-man and she was the leader of Froggie's women, so nothing a mere trooper had to say was important when she needed to talk. "Fucking barb warriors here—they mean bastards! You chop them quick-quick, yes?"

  Queenie's notion of how to solve a problem usually involved somebody getting chopped. That was probably why she got along so well with troopers.

  And if the bodyguards had been bothering the girls . . . Froggie's hand touched the ivory hilt of his sword, smoother than silk by now from all the use it'd gotten. He'd warned them, hadn't he?

  "What's the problem, Queenie?" he asked, his tone quiet but a little thicker than usual.

  "Them take girls from village," Queenie said. "They no feed meat, boss-man!"

  Froggie frowned at Laena. An argument about how much some other soldier paid his whore didn't strike either of them as a killing business.

  "No meat, girl not right inside!" Queenie said. "Girl hurt, girl scream! Bastards laugh, they like girl to hurt! All them bastards!"

  "Ah," said Froggie as he understood. Not that he hadn't known soldiers who liked their girls to scream; pretty good soldiers, some of them, and it wasn't something he figured he'd need to interfere with if they'd been his men.

  But these weren't his men. And it wasn't one or two of them, it was the whole troop. And truth to tell, when Froggie'd had a guy like that in his squad, the fellow'd got all the dirty jobs there were till he transferred to another cohort.

  "I hear you, Queenie," he said. "We no chop-chop yet. Right now, you slip other girls meat, yes? Me tell boys this all right."

  He slapped his armored breast with the flat of his hand.

  Queenie clucked happily. "Me fix!" she said. "Later you chop-chop, all right?"

  "I wouldn't be a bit surprised," Froggie said. "Not one little bit."

  * * *

  The trail was as dark as the inside of a grave. A piece of quartz clicked under Froggie's hobnails. The barefoot Glabrio turned and glared, but Froggie met the trooper's gaze with cold unconcern. He knew it was important to follow as quietly as possible, but he also knew the pair of axemen ahead were talking in normal voices and occasionally clearing branches from the trail with a swipe of their weapons. He gestured Glabrio on with a flick of his finger.

  Some of the trees here had thorns. Glabrio might be able to avoid stepping on one as he trotted down the shadowy track, but Froggie wasn't that confident. He wouldn't make near the racket with his heavy bootsoles as he might if a thorn drove into the ball of his foot and jolted loose a curse.

  Glabrio grimaced and went on. Froggie kept Glabrio in sight. He could've followed the barbs by ear alone if he'd had to, as nonchalant as they were, but Glabrio was the real expert.

  Froggie wasn't as good a tracker as Glabrio. He wasn't the best swordsman in the century, he didn't have the best range with a javelin, and there were three or four of the troopers who could take him apart in a barehanded fight.

  But Froggie could do every job in the unit nearly as well as his best man; and there was nobody the Third of the Fourth trusted more to bring them alive out of the sort of ratfuck they were surely in the middle of now.

  They'd come nearly a mile from the village. The barbs had left at midnight, same as the night before; as soon as they reached the woods, they'd started acting like there was nothing to worry about except maybe tearing their clothes on a prickly branch. As a veteran, Froggie was pleased to see how badly the enemy was underestimating him; but he was human enough to feel insulted, too.

  Glabrio started around a tree with six trunks braided together like a horsehair rope. He stopped and flashed his hand toward Froggie, palm out and fingers spread. Froggie stopped dead, then hunched forward to a curtain of tasseled vegetation on the other side of the trail. He extended his left arm carefully to make an opening so he could watch the pair of barbs.

  The axemen stood at the base of a thirty-foot basalt thumb poking through the weathered shale. Only a few sprays of vegetation blotched the hard rock, but trees growing nearby shaded all but the very peak of the intrusion. The barb leader took something from a pouch on his harness and pointed it at the basalt.

  There was a clicking sound like a treefrog winding up for its mating call. A circle of rock dissolved.

  Glabrio had the point of his dagger clear of the sheath before his mind got control of his instincts. The barbs could've heard his blurted curse if they been paying attention to anything but what was in front of them.

  Froggie didn't move. He hadn't expected this, exactly, but he'd expected something.