Ranks of Bronze

"The terrain is rolling," said the Commander, "and the soil coarse with no vegetation of military significance."

He paused for thought, then added, "the average temperature is lower than that of the planet where you were purchased, but the conditions for the immediate future are well within the region which you find comfortable."

"What the…?" said the pilus prior. Vibulenus squeezed the armored shoulder again, for the benefit of one or both of them.

"Do your duty to my guild," concluded the Commander, "and we will treat you well. You are dismissed."

The doors in the rear of the Main Gallery never opened when the legion mustered for battle. Instead, the entire wall slid downward. The broad corridor by which the men had entered was gone, and the Main Gallery gaped through a hole in the vessel's outer bulkhead.

"Cohort-" roared Clodius Afer as he turned with a squeal of hobnails on flooring that was harder than iron.

"Century-" echoed the remaining centurions in the cohort, while their fellows in the rest of the legion did the same. In mustering for battle, the First Cohort formed up in the rear of the gallery so that it could lead the way out.

The breath of air sucked into the Main Gallery when the walls slid open was cool and dry, a good temperature in which to march in armor. You were always too hot during actual combat, but in cold weather a man could die of the shock to his system when victory or a wound let him cool off suddenly.

"About face! shouted the sixty centurions in a unison gained through long practice.

In the big room, even that clashing movement was u

Except for a sky as pale as goat's milk, Vibulenus could see nothing of the place they were expected to conquer. The ranks of men striding forward fell into silhouette as each left the gallery and the ship besides. It occurred to the tribune that the legion began each battle with an uphill march, since the Main Gallery was sloped for them to hear the final address by the Commander.

They might profitably dispense with the address to avoid the climb. Sometimes-and this was such an occasion-it seemed they would have been better without the address even if they had to climb a steeper slope to miss it. Why did they put young fools in command of veterans?

And again… Gaius Vibulenus Caper at eighteen had been a joke as a military tribune. He'd known it then and gods! when he now remembered that past, he cringed with knowledge of his callowness. But he'd seasoned into something in time. He'd seasoned into a leader.

Third Cohort was moving in its blare of signals. Why couldn't all the ranks step off together, keeping the separation they had while standing at ease? But experience proved that the legion would bunch and tangle unless the deployment were sequential, though the gods alone knew the reason.

Vibulenus wondered if he were going to die this day. Better to watch horsehair crests wave against a pale sky and to think of the legion as a machine that maneuvered on many legs.

Clodius Afer had walked up to what was now the cohort's front rank, shouting crisp, vicious orders about the alignment of his men. There were still legionaries within arms' length at the tribune, but he felt very much alone at moments like this when anything he did ould put him in the way of the non-coms who had real jobs to perform.

The Commander and the guards who always flanked him-no matter who the Commander wasmarched off through a sidewall of the gallery. Their mounts were stabled somewhere in the ship that Vibulenus had never seen, though it was not in the forward section behind the protective barrier. Falco and the third surviving tribune, Marcus Marcellus Rostratus, were part of the entourage.

Those who led in battle were punished for it. Safer far to ring yourself with guards like mobile fortresses and let others do the fighting. Vibulenus fingered his sword hilt and fingered the scar on his left arm… and he tried to concentrate on the rhythm of marching feet instead of the ragged point of a spear swelling until it was too close to be focused by his eyes.

"Cohort-" ordered the pilus prior. The Main Gallery had thi

"March!"

Would he die… and if he died, would he awaken in the belly of the ship weak and red-dyed and living again… Yet again?

"Vesta, bring me home," whispered the tribune as he started to follow the legion to its latest exercise in blood and death.

The door, invisible until it opened on the wall beside Vibulenus, passed Quartilla.

None of the marching legionaries looked back, but the tribune stumbled and almost fell to the floor when he forgot that he was in the process of taking his first stride. "Quartilla!" he gasped. "What are you doing here?"

The woman started and would have jumped back, but the door had already solidified behind her. She bumped it, then recognized Vibulenus and relaxed enough to lower the hands she had raised clenched to her lips.

"Oh, Gaius," she said. "I'm sorry-I should have waited a little longer, shouldn't I?"

Her nod past him caused the tribune to look over his shoulder at the rest of the legion, disappearing up the sloping floor at the rate of two steps a second. Emptying, the Main Gallery was begi

Quartilla wore a suit patterned with irregular polygons of solid color. Instead of following the curves of her body as did the monochrome suits of guild employees, her garment seemed to have been constructed of flat panels as oddly shaped as the swatches of color- which they did not recapitulate. The form beneath seemed tightly confined as well as distorted: save for her face, the woman looked twenty pounds lighter than she did when Vibulenus visited her room.

It was the first time that he had seen her clothed.

"Well, the Pilot…" she said. The tribune could not tell whether she was nervous because of the way he might react to the news or if she feared one of the manifestations of the guild would punish her for talking. "He… I can't enter the crew space, you know-" she waved a hand, each of whose fingers were a different color, toward the forward bulkhead "-and he doesn't like to come any distance into the cargo section. So he has me meet him here, when the… When it's going to be empty."

The tall Roman said nothing. He was not even sure what he thought, except that there was a block of stone in his stomach as large as Etna and as cold as February dawn.

"It's mostly just the humanoid ones, you know," said Quartilla in a nervous attempt at reassurance.

"I've got to go," said Vibulenus with the clarity that resulted from his mind forcing words through lips from which it had become disassociated.

"Yes," she said, though he was not hearing her because now his entire body was stone. "And be careful, Gaius."

The tribune's intellectual part marveled that his body began to run toward the opening in the hall without him needing to direct the tensing and stretching of each separate muscle. Bodies were wonderous things. Minds were what got men into trouble.

He caught up with the rear rank of the Tenth Cohort just as they strode into the chill sunlight.

The sun was a green dot, low enough in the sky to cast the shadows of the enemy array halfway across the stony field to the Roman lines. Vibulenus shivered.

"Fu