Ranks of Bronze

"Hello, sir," said Niger with the hopeful stiffness of a pupil who fears his response may have been the wrong one and thus bring him a beating.

"I was hoping I'd be able to find you-" said Vibulenus.

A large party of soldiers jostled their way down the corridor. They pushed past the tribune without remark or reaction because he was part of a group instead of a lone outsider.

"Hoped you'd catch me up on things," Vibulenus concluded.

Clodius released his companions, took a step closer, and threw his arms around Vibulenus. The centurion's ox-like strength was all, despite his good intentions, that kept him from springing away from the tribune at the instant of contact.

The younger man became light-headed as the breath was crushed out of his lungs. His knees, already quivering, gave way and he could scarcely clasp his hands behind the centurion's broad back.

He felt better than he had ever felt before. He was not just alive, he was a member of the human race.

"Man, you had me worried, sir," said Clodius as he stepped away but kept his palms on Vibulenus' back to steady him. "You weren't hardly breathing when we got all that rock clear and handed you up to the turtle."

He looked back over his shoulder. "That's true, ain't it, boys? He wasn't hardly breathing?"

Both of the other soldiers raised their eyebrows in cautious, silent agreement. Niger's expression became even more fixed.

Sometimes the best thing was for all parties to tell a lie and stick to it, thought the tribune-and bless a man like Clodius Afer who had enough experience to know what those times were. He slapped the older man's shoulder in camaraderie but also as a signal that he could stand unaided again.

"Yeah, Gnaeus," he agreed loudly, "it hurt like blazes when you were picking me up. I tried to swear at you but the words wouldn't come out right. Guess that's a good thing, since you were doing the best anybody could already."

"But I thought-" said Helvius. He rubbed his balding scalp with a hand whose back curled with hair.

"Say," said Vibulenus, only partly so that he could silence the puzzled legionary. "There was another fellow in the gallery with me, a centurion. I wonder if he made it?"

"That's how," Niger said, suddenly animated. "He was in the gallery, Gnaeus. That's why we were able to, you know, find him."

The centurion nodded in distracted agreement, but his lips were pursed to form an answer to Vibulenus' question. "Well you see, sir," he explained, "the shed was broken up so bad I don't guess anybody thought of it being there to begin with. So long as it lasted long enough to give you the edge, that's fine… but there wasn't anybody else down there the turtle thought we need bother diggin' out, you know?"

"A friend of yours?" Niger asked, and he reached out to grip Vibulenus forearm to forearm.

"Don't even know his name," the tribune said. The corridor and his companions withdrew as his mind superimposed the face of the grizzled veteran as he had first and last seen it.

"Just a soldier doing his job," Vibulenus' lips said. "Just like the rest of us."

"Well, you know," said the centurion, gesturing up the corridor in the direction the three non-coms had been headed when Vibulenus met them, "not everybody makes it, sir. That sure hasn't changed."

"No, I guess it hasn't…" the tribune agreed while he remembered the blue figure in his bodyguard of living iron, prancing daintily toward victory as men were crushed beyond locating on the ground before him.

"Say, but in there," said Helvius with a nod to indicate the recreation room from which they were all walking, "they've got bears and dogs fighting with spiked gloves on. I like it a lot better than the one they had last, the crabs and jellyfish."

"I didn't have gloves," said Niger. Both he and the file-closer were glad to skirt the subject of which they would be reminded until the stain faded from Vibulenus' flesh. "I had a little short sword and a buckler. I think it's only the bears have gloves."

"Glad you're back, sir," Clodius Afer murmured from close to the tribune's ear. In a normal voice, he continued, "You know, draggin' those rocks outa the wall I thought was the hardest work I ever did, but-" He paused, because as he spoke the words he realized they were false. He had been so directed on the task that he hadn't been conscious of how hard the job was.

"Well, anyway," the centurion concluded lamely, "that wasn't a patch on gettin' them cursed blocks off you. Don't know what we'd have done if it weren't the shear legs was right there from slewing the log on target."

"All perso

All the other guide beads blinked out, including the mauve one that Vibulenus assumed they were following according to a request made before he met the non-coms. The ceiling began to stream with red dots, moving at a comfortable pace in the opposite direction.

"Oh, bugger it all," snapped Clodius Afer, but he turned around in the middle of a stride because the habit of discipline was so strong.

"Couldn't we…?" suggested Helvius, gesturing in the direction they had been going. He was a bigger and possibly stronger man than the centurion, but his deference was as much a matter of relative personality as rank.

"Come on," Clodius ordered, not harshly but with no sign that he was interested in a discussion, His stride swung his three companions into the broken, ground-covering pace of a route march. "We'll do their business and then we'll take care of ours. This is the army, after all."

The tribune opened his mouth to ask what "our business" was.

Before he could get the question out, Niger laughed and said, "Well, guess the edge's off now, but yesterday the first time, it didn't take longer 'n to walk in the room and walk back. I'd figure the Commander could wait that long."

"Yeah," said Helvius, "but yesterday was the first time in a long time any of us had a woman. Today I want it to be worth waiting for."

Vibulenus tried again to speak. No sound came out. Although he continued to stride along with the others, his body had become as hot and weak as it had been in the first moments after his awakening.

The Main Gallery was familiar because the legion mustered in it before every battle. This was only the second time they had gathered for an address by the Commander, though, and recollections of that first assembly vibrated at the back of the tribune's mind. He was afraid to look at Pompilius Niger squarely in case that surfaced memories which the other, judging from his continued banter, had suppressed.

There had been losses. Vibulenus surveyed the room from where he stood at the front, just short of the stolid bodyguards and the deadline which they marked.

It was less evident during pre-battle musters when the room shook with the clash of men moving into ranks to don the equipment they had just been issued from otherwise featureless walls. You couldn't even estimate numbers under those conditions. Besides, the glitter and sway of equipment bulked out the sparseness of the troops wearing it.

Vibulenus had seen the returns. The legion had lost eighty-three men before the start of its operations against the fortress, and the fortress had not come cheap. His fingers kneaded the muscles over his ribs, whole to the touch… but he could not bring himself to look down and see the stain which only natural healing would leach from his flesh.

Lights glittered in the bulkhead behind the guards. The forward door, unlocked by its spi