Ranks of Bronze

Others of the soldiers leaving the booths also bore patches of red. They looked like wounds, but in feet the stained areas had borne fresh wounds-and did so no longer. A Sextus Julius-one of several in the legion, a First Cohort non-com, Vibulenus believed-was massaging his scalp as he walked along. Half of it was hairless and colored deep red; but when he had entered a cubicle, his skull was partly exposed and the flap of skin he tried to hold in place included the ear on that side.

"Will you bleeding come on?" the Medic pleaded. "Next lot, move it!"

"Move," boomed one of the armored toads acting as proctors, reaching out with his long-handled mace. The four Romans at the head of the line moved with more or less haste, away from the spiked knob rather than toward the cubicles.

Nothing to be afraid of, Gaius Vibulenus lied silently as he hopped forward. Then he said aloud, "Nothing to be afraid of, men," turning his head toward Clodius Afer who was walking stiffly beside him.

Oddly enough, that worked. The young tribune strode firmly within the cubicle nearest the seated Medic. Acting like an officer to others made it easier to act like a man within yourself-even though you knew you were a coward and you were so frightened that your eyes didn't focus as you stepped close to the back wall of the booth and the door began to shut.

"Just get bleeding in, will-" the Medic whined to someone else, the words amputated by the door sealing.

The legionaries had stripped under direction of the Commander's guards in the long hallway stretching from the vessel's entrance to this room and the Medic. No one seemed to care about the cohort or rank of the men being ordered into groups of four: those who straggled back to the vessel first had run through this process hours before, and there were still a thousand or more soldiers behind the tribune and his immediate companions.

A blood-warm mist of water with an astringent odor sprayed Vibulenus from all directions. He jumped, but the spray at once relaxed the throbbing veins of his head. As the temperature rose, his left arm began to lose some of its sharp stiffness as well.

Vibulenus' right hand unclenched. The booming guards had insisted that the Romans pile every scrap of clothing and equipment against the wall of the broad hallway, saying that every man's belongings would be returned at the proper time.

That was unimaginable, but probably true: when they mustered in the Main Gallery before marching out against the feathered warriors, Vibulenus had been issued the sword his father bought for him-lost irretrievably to some Parthian, he would have guessed. That sword, the only relic of his previous life, would have felt good in his hand as he stepped into the cubicle.

The water felt better. The booth had a diffuse light source, so he could see the grime and scabbed blood wash away from his body. Something else was happening as well, or perhaps the heat was affecting him after the wounds and-when he had eaten last?

The light was pulsing with his heartbeat. Instead of becoming dizzy, he was weak-too weak to stand, but the solid walls of the booth extended limbs to grip his body in a dozen places. His stomach lurched momentarily, but though the spasm passed it was followed by the surge of well-being that usually followed vomiting during delirium.

Vibulenus would have screamed, but he didn't have that much control of his muscles any more. He was no longer conscious of the water spray, but his scalp and left biceps felt so hot that there was no discomfort. He was wax, melting into oblivion and glad of the fact.

The liquescing heat ceased, leaving behind only the damp ambiance of the warm room of the baths. The light was normal again, and the tribune's head began to sag as the cushioning supports withdrew into the wall. Something pricked the skin above Vibulenus' heart before the wall reabsorbed the chest support. He staggered forward, but instinct threw his hands out to save him against the back of the booth.

The bandage was gone from his left arm, and so was the pain that had gnawed him even when he held the injured limb clamped firmly against his chest. His torn skin had reknitted beneath a coating-a dye, apparently- of brilliant red. There was only a tingling in the muscles to suggest a shard of flint had been rammed deep within them.

The door hissed open. The last of the steam dissipated; there was no drain, but the spray with the bandages and other sludge from Vibulenus' body had been borne off somewhere. Fingering the side of his scalp, now hairless but no longer cut and swollen, the tribune stepped out of the cubicle as the Medic tiredly repeated, "Come on, next lot."

Clodius Afer bolted from the adjacent booth with his face set in the same mask of fear it had worn when he entered.

"Down the hall," rumbled one of the guards. The creatures were wearing their helmet visors down. Not, the tribune suspected, for protection, but rather to cushion the shock the Roman captives were receiving already. There had been none of this the first time they were marched aboard the vessel in Parthia; none of this that any of them remembered, at least. But then, they remembered nothing.

Vibulenus looked at the squat figures who had spoken, visualizing the features behind the iron mesh. The bodyguards were taller than most men-most Romans, at any rate-but it was the breadth and the neckless solidity of their bodies that made them look remarkable when covered with iron. Their strength was in keeping with their appearance, for their armor weighed more than a man could lift, much less wear, and they wielded maces on ten-foot hafts with the ease of a centurion brandishing his swagger stick.

The guards, and the various implications the young tribune drew from them, did not affect Vibulenus' present buoyancy at being suddenly whole, no longer wracked by staggering pain. He clasped his left arm around the shoulders of Clodius Afer, keeping his grip despite the non-com's attempt to shudder away when he saw the patch of red dye next to his own skin.

Clodius' legs and forearms were so ta

"Gnaeus," Vibulenus said, "don't be-" He started to say "afraid" but realized as his tongue touched the word that the veteran would hit him, rank be damned. "Don't be angry because they've cured your pain."

"I don't understand," the file-closer whispered, but his calloused right hand reached up to grip Vibulenus' arm to him.

"We'll understand later," Vibulenus said with the confidence of health, not reason. Together, they led the remaining pair of men from their group toward the doorway at the side of the hall. "For now, it's enough that we don't hurt any more."

He looked up, at the toad-faced monsters to either side of the door. "Soon we'll understand," he said, and this time he spoke more in prayer than belief.

"All perso

"They ought to let us form in centuries," said Gaius Vibulenus as he looked around at as many of the legionaries as he could see milling in the Main Gallery. The room was huge, with a smoothly arched ceiling that showed no sign of the groins and coffers that should have been required to carry the stresses. "I'm going to bring that up at the next command group meeting. This is absurd."

"This tunic don't feel right," said Clodius, pinching out the breast of the garment which had dropped at his feet from a wall dispenser as he left the Sick Bay. The file-closer peered down his nose at the tent of fabric between his thumb and forefinger. "Isn't… I du