Ranks of Bronze

There were smells in the air besides those of the burning shield. Partly the addition was the choking sharpness that near-striking thunderbolts left at the back of a man's throat-but there was charred flesh in the air as well. Something lay on the floor just outside the partition between death and life which Rufus had limned with his body. Vibulenus could not be sure, but he thought it was the heel of one of the boy's feet, sheared off because it did not have quite enough momentum to carry it across the barrier on its own.

"Now," the blue figure concluded, pausing for a perfect smile toward the assembly which stirred like a wheatfield in a fitful breeze. "Go and relax. We are already under way to a new engagement."

"What's he mean by that?" Clodius Afer demanded querelously. He gave Vibulenus a rough shake in an attempt to get his attention. "We can't be going anywhere. We'd hear it. Wouldn't we? Sir?"

The Commander turned and manipulated the hexagon on the wall. The invisible barrier did not affect him, except that one of his feet slipped a trifle in the slime Rufus had left at the demarcation line. Light twinkled within the hexagon and the door drifted open. His bodyguard, pair by pair, shuffled through the portal behind him.

Gaius Vibulenus could not understand the words the file-closer was throwing at him in a desperate attempt to deny what he had just seen. The tribune's mind danced with a montage of images, from the first moment he realized the guards were throwing his friend toward the wall, to the flash of richly-saturated earth-tones as the legionary disintegrated.

"Sir, please tell me we're not moving," begged Clodius Afer.

The younger man blinked down at the file-closer's hands. They gripped his shoulders but no longer tried to shake him into a response. He was a Roman citizen and an officer. He had his duties.

Taking one of Clodius' hands in each of his own and lowering them, Vibulenus said, "I think probably we are moving if he says we are, Gnaeus. I don't understand how that is either, but perhaps we'll learn. We have a lot of things to learn, I think."

He looked at the bulkhead and the door closing with another flicker behind the last of the guards. His eyes were again able to see what was there, rather than what had been happening there in the recent past.

He had a duty to Pompilius Rufus, also. Some day he would fulfill it.

"Get up now," repeated the voice in Vibulenus' ears. "This room is about to be cleaned."

The tribune snorted and turned his head on the pillow, thinking in muzzy error that he could muffle the intrusion that way.

A jet of cold-very cold-water from the ceiling played the length of his spine.

Vibulenus leaped up, screaming and certain that he was being burned alive. The water from what looked like an ordinary rivethead splashed momentarily on his chest, but he did not co

There were half a dozen other men in the room. Those who had started to get up at the summons were staring in bemusement at Vibulenus and two others, prodded by separate spikes of water. None of the men were known by name to the tribune, though he recognized a couple of the faces. He did not know how he had gotten here, but the pounding of his head told him that he had been drunk at the time.

"Leave at once," ordered the calm voice. It would have passed for the Commander speaking, but Vibulenus did not imagine the Commander concerned himself with housecleaning. "Other rooms are open for your use."

The studs which had jetted cold water were now wreathed in steam, and the temperature of the room was already begi

It had been an odd room, now that Vibulenus was alert enough to notice it. The floor was spongy, but its covering and the cushioned banquettes seemed to be of one piece with the walls-which were metal.

The only opening was the door into a broad hallway. That should have made the room stuffy or close under the circumstances, but the wastes voided by sleeping drunks were merely a whiff, not a suffocating reek.

"Pollux, but I need a bath," Vibulenus muttered. Out in the hall he couldn't blame the odor he smelled on his fellows.

"Follow the blue dot in the ceiling to the baths which have been provided for your comfort," said the voice.

The tribune jumped and looked around uselessly. There was a pulsing blue dot on the ceiling, right enough. "You there," he snapped to a legionary who had exited the room with him. "Did you hear something about the baths?"

"Hah? Nossir," said the other, giving a glance at the russet border of Vibulenus' tunic, marking him as a member of the equestrian order-and making the young tribune flush by recalling his mind to the garment's stains. "Good idea, though; if you know where one is?"

Something spoke to the legionary's hopeful question, and the man's eyes flickered up toward the blue dot. "All right," he said cheerfully. Nodding to Vibulenus, he strode off down the hall.

The blue dot preceded him; and the tribune, grimacing, followed an identical dot that waited until he stepped toward it before it slid on. There were other men in the hallway, some of them wandering with puzzled expressions but most seeming to follow beads of varicolored light, just as Vibulenus was. He vaguely remembered that Clodius Afer had said something about wine as the Main Gallery lowered itself after the assembly, and then the two of them had gone off after a bead of orange light.

The ship contained huge areas of open space, making it more like a city than it was a vessel. Most of the rooms flanking this hallway were similar to the one in which Vibulenus had awakened, twelve feet to a side with an eight-foot ceiling and no furnishings except for the cushions built against all four walls.

A few had doors shut flush with the passageway. One of these slid upward as the tribune passed, puffing out a wisp of steam and humid air. He paused-the dot of light halted a half step farther onand peered in. The room was of the standard pattern, glistening now as steam cleared in tendrils sucked rapidly toward the solid walls. It was clean and ready for occupancy; as, no doubt, was the room Vibulenus had occupied until being turned out.

The bead of light made a right turn down a cross hall long enough that the tribune could not see to either end. The hangover was only a dull shadow of the way battle injuries had left him feeling. Nonetheless, he saw other figures only as blurs. Afterwards he thought he remembered being hailed by name-but he could not be sure.

He would have stumbled past the paths, had not the voice in his ears said sharply, "This is your destination. The dot will go no farther with you."

Alerted if not truly alert, Vibulenus stopped at the open doorway beside him. It was twenty feet wide, opening onto a circular bay that was larger than any room he had seen aboard the vessel except for the Main Gallery. Despite its size, it was thronged by soldiers, many of them bearing the deep scarlet dye of healed injuries.

"Discard your garments here," said the omnipresent voice as Vibulenus took a puzzled step within the bay. "New clothing will be issued as you leave."

There was a shallow bin beside the door, empty; but as the tribune paused, a legionary with less compunction wadded up his own tunic and tossed it in. The garment melted into the bottom of the bin, leaving it empty again.

Shivering with youthful embarrassment, Vibulenus pulled off his tunic and promised himself that he would never again drink more than he could handle. The men around him were not slaves and social equals-the former beneath notice; the latter in no better state because of partying. These were social and military subordinates to whom he must provide an image of irreproachable dignity.