Ranks of Bronze

But he still didn't see…

"Gnaeus," said the tribune, interrupting Clodius Afer's description to his admiring junior of the way the legionaries should deploy after they had breached the wall, "how would the lasers keep them from pouring down fire? When they stick their spouts through the embrasures, they're still under cover behind the stone. Lasers wouldn't do any more than the archers did. Unless maybe they curve, do you-"

"No, no," the centurion said, harsher than he would have chosen because his dream was being assaulted from false grounds. Clodius had already convinced himself, at least for this moment with friends, that a deputation from the legion would convince the Commander to break the rules-in a way that would mean his death and the immediate dissolution of his trading guild by investigators of the Federation. "Sir, you see, the stuff burns, right?"

Vibulenus started to lift his jaw in agreement with the rhetorical question, but the centurion was already hastening on to cover his lapse of respect by saying, "And they've got, who knows, hundreds of gallons of the stuff up there-" he cocked his eyebrows to the breastwork beside him and the lordly tower beyond "-maybe thousands.

"Now," his voice sank with the beauty of the thought it was about to express, "what if all that fire-piss was to light up on top the tower instead of when they pour it down on us? How'd you like to see that, Gaius, see all them bastards jumpin' every whichaway and burnin' like fuckin' night games at the Circus?"

"I'd like that a lot," said Vibulenus slowly. Indeed, he could imagine it even as he spoke: the bolt of sudden light ripping apart the spout, scattering blazing fluid among the defenders and the open vats which they prepared to pour down on the legion. The fire would go where arrows could not-nor the laser beam itself, directly. That was very good thinking.

"But," Vibulenus went on, "there's no way we'll get a laser. The Commander himself doesn't dare carry one when he's out of the ship. You know that."

"Maybe," said Niger, hopeful even though both his superiors had lapsed into glum silence, "we could get the artillery to do it? You know, shoot a firepot into the battlements?"

As if supporting the suggestion, a pair of ballistas slammed missiles leaving smoke trails toward the fortress. One pot sailed into the hidden courtyard. The other splashed its contents in a great oval of flame onto the wall it had failed to clear. The blaze was lambent anger against the black stone, streaking and then shrinking into a score of orange hotspots that continued to sizzle around unusually large globs of pitch.

"Naw, not accurate enough," explained the centurion, thumbing in the direction of the fortress as if he or his companions could see it. Their ears and past experience told them as surely as direct sight could have done what had been the result of the ballista shots. "Especially with firepots, since they're lighter 'n stone and they wobble when the fluid shifts."

His listeners lifted their eyebrows in agreement. The smoke trails from the weapons that had fired held their corkscrew shape even as they drifted downwind, dispersing.

Niger's lips pursed, however, as he followed his own line of thought even while ceding the truth of what Clodius Afer had just said. "Well," he offered hesitantly, "if they don't hit it the first time, sir-and I don't guess they would neither-what's to stop they keep trying until they do?"

For a moment, it looked as if the senior non-com were about to snarl an angry put-down instead of giving the suggestion a proper reply. Perhaps if Vibulenus had not been present, that would have happened, but the tribune's expression of something between agreement and expectancy calmed Clodius Afer.

With a smile instead of a bark of haughty dismissal, he said, "If I can see the chance, lad, you can bet your hopes of a woman that this lot we're gettin' wiped by'll see it if we draw a line to it, plinkin' away with firepots.

Mayhap they do already and they store the shit down a floor with a layer a' stone between the tubs and anything we could touch with the splash if we did hit."

"All right, I see," said Vibulenus who at last did understand what had been so obvious to the centurion that it took him this long to realize what he had to explain to his juniors.

The tribune was smarter than the older man-either of them would say-and was certainly better educated. But Clodius Afer had the habit of looking at military problems and military solutions, putting himself in the other man's boots. At one time or another he'd been on the other side of most problems during service in Lusitania and Gaul, besides the catastrophic last thrust into the Parthian domains.

For some problems, there is no satisfactory substitute for experience. Learning that had been a valuable piece of experience for Gaius Vibulenus.

"Now, I don't think they're worried about that yet," the centurion continued, glowing now from the approval of his social and military superior. "The way they poured the stuff down the first time, they weren't takin' time to haul it up any distance-and why would they bother? They're no more used to our artillery than we are to their cursed fire! But I guess they're smart enough to learn."

Niger spat angrily beyond the edge of the guardwalk. "Learn quicker 'n some folks does, I reckon. Or else we wouldn't be buildin' right up't' the wall for another bath any time they get good and ready't' offer it."

Bows snapped faintly from the top of the tower. The missiles, moving in several flights as the archers pumped their cocking levers, quivered in the sunlight as they arched upward. When they dropped at last, it was almost vertically. They had been aimed at the teams laboring forward, dragging the hundred-foot timber that had been brought so far with such effort-and would blaze with empty magnificence in a few days or weeks, along with the remaining material of the rebuilt siege-works.

Even with their height advantage, the defending archers were unable to get much more than a furlong's range from their bows. The breeze scattered the light missiles terribly, so that only a few of the dozen or more launched even landed on the track smoothed onto the surface of the ramp for transport.

Though the wood was soft, one of the bolts flopped back after it struck point-first, lacking the slight momentum that would have enabled it to stick. With poison, of course, it could have left a dangerous wound on bare flesh or-possibly-the tougher hide of one of the draft animals. There was little chance of that, since the drivers had already halted fifty feet back of the zone of danger.

"Sure wisht we could borrow that laser," said Clodius Afer with a sigh.

"We won't get that," said the tribune, his voice calm but his mind dancing with a sudden thought as blazingly splendid as the flames which had destroyed the siege works and twenty-seven men.

"Not that," he repeated, "but by all the gods, we will get something as good."

And before either of the non-coms realized his intent, Gaius Vibulenus had ducked down the steps to the gallery which led to the rear-and to the means of putting his idea, all their idea, into effect.

The shimmering surface of the Commander's face flowed and distorted as he drank something that was not ration wine from his goblet. "I don't see how this could possibly work," he said with less than his usual detachment. "Is this something you've used on your own planet?"

Vibulenus was familiar with the word "planet" from the astronomical poetry of Aratus, which had formed part of his education. It was nonsensical in this context, so he ignored it and said, conscious that not even the friendly eyes around the circle held belief, "Sir, this is not a familiar technique for us-" He glanced to his side and got shocked disavowal from Pacuvius Semo, the tribune nearest to him, in place of the smile of solidarity for which he had been fishing.