Ranks of Bronze

And anyway, he had been right. Execution by the Commander could leave him no more dead than disaster in battle would. He had seen enough of the guild's philosophy by now to realize that it would make no attempt to recover and revivify those who had failed it, whatever excuses the dead might have been able to claim.

"Awaiting further orders, sir," said Clodius Afer in a voice so neutral that it was disquieting.

Gaius Vibulenus had to remember that the actions he took affected hundreds, thousands, of other men; even after he was thinking again as a fearful individual and not the tribune-more than tribune-who had given the orders. "Either," he said in a voice that steadied after the first syllables, "we'll have some help over here soonest, or we march back to the ship and discuss matters at leisure."

Or you watch me burned to charcoal and a puddle of bronze, his fear added silently.

The tribune looked toward the enemy whom he had ignored through the minutes since they ceased to be the primary threat. The Romans' actions and lack thereof appeared to have confused the hostile chieftains as well. The signallers had drifted to a halt, midway across the gap that had separated the two armies. All but one of the bull-roarers were silent, the wielders leaning on their staves, panting with the exertion they had undergone. Individually, the figures seemed to be tall and gangling, with skins whose color approached bright orange.

And gods! there were hordes of them.

"Maybe," Vibulenus said to himself aloud, "he can shift a cohort from the right to give us some depth. Six ranks isn't enough, not on this flank."

"They want us to come out," said the pilus prior with a nod toward the hesitating foe. "They aren't used to this."

"That was what happened the first time," said the tribune, voicing a train of thought wholly inappropriate at the present time. "The, you know, the first battle we fought for this guild? Those big fellas with the carts, they expected to fight a civilized little battle. Then the loser'd withdraw behind the screen of light troops and everybody'd go home."

"I'm not looking forward to this neither," said the centurion; and when Vibulenus processed the words, he too understood why he had been babbling about the distant past. He had survived that past.

There was a stir around the command group. Eight or ten-ten, half the contingent-of the Commander's bodyguards suddenly rode toward the left flank at a shambling trot. They sat their mounts ably enough with no squirming or slipping in their saddles, but because of their size and featureless armor they looked more like howdahs than riders.

They carried their maces upright, waving ten feet above the saddles like papyrus stalks when wind sweeps up the Nile.

All the warmth and strength drained out of the tribune's body. His clammy fingers touched the hilt of his sword, wondering whether to defend himself with the weapon or fall on it… and whether the guild would revivify him for punishment if he tried to forestall them by suicide.

Clodius Afer had remained standing when he ordered his troops to kneel. Now, looking over their heads toward the armored riders, he said in a raspy, carrying voice, "Boys, it may be there'll be a little trouble in a moment. If we put our spears up the belly of those overgrown dogs from below, then we can take care of the prettyboys ridin' 'em in our own good time."

"I don't want-" Vibulenus started to say before it struck him that he couldn't keep these men from trying to defend him-and that he didn't want to call them off anyway. They'd been together for a long tme, he and the legion. Maybe this wouldn't be the worst way for it to end.

The toad-faced guards rode past the flank of the cohort. Instead of reining their beasts across the face of the kneeling unit to arrest the tribune as he expected, they fa

"Get them on their feet again," said the tribune in a rush of triumph and relief that elevated him beyond human concerns. "We've got a battle to fight."

"Cohort!" shouted Clodius Afer. "Fall-in!"

Hidden by the scrunch of gravel under hobnails, the pilus prior muttered, "And just what're they doing, you think-sir?"

"They're the unit guarding our left flank," Vibulenus said, watching armored men rise from the stony soil like the crop Jason sowed with dragon's teeth. Shifting their grip on javelins, adjusting shields and raising reflections on the bronze bosses and edge reinforcements from the light of the greenish sun.

There was nothing in particular in the eyes that met the tribune's as he sca

"Not exactly a regiment of cavalry," grumbled Clodius in a husky whisper. "Ten of 'em. How's that going to help?"

"He gave us half of what he had," the tribune remarked with a detached shrug. "We'll call that a win. Anyway, they'll keep the natives off our backs-they look so mean."

The bull-roarers were begi

"Mean? We'll give 'em mean," said the pilus prior as he strode away, checking the dress of his lines again.

The bodyguards must be bitter, the tribune thought, ordered to take a place in the line where they might see real action. Maybe it'd be good for them.

At least it might get a few of the bastards killed.

The command group's trumpeter blew his long preliminary call again. Bronze ranks of legionaries, their plumes and javelin points trembling, interrupted Vibulenus' view of the figure in the blue suit who was probably watching the Tenth Cohort in nervous anticipation.

The Commander had turned out to be willing to learn from people who knew more than he did about the situation. That put him a notch up on Crassus and more than one other Roman consul.

"Signallers!" Vibulenus called as he strode across the front of the cohort toward its right, where he would find a place between the files of the Tenth and Ninth Cohorts. "Sound the attack!"

It was not his place to give that order. But, as when Vibulenus had the cohort kneel and take itself out of the battle, it was the fastest possible way to send the Commander a message he would understand.

The part of Vibulenus' mind that considered practical things expected two or three of the signallers to be able to hear his command-and perhaps none of those to obey him. Instead, all the horns and trumpets of the Tenth and Ninth Cohorts blew the concentus. His voice carried- and it carried authority to every legionary that heard it.

By Hercules, they were men and were soldiers; and so was Gaius Vibulenus.

"Cohort-" roared Clodius Afer, picking up the tribune's intent.

"Century-" from multiple throats.

First the horn and trumpet from the command group, then the signallers throughout the legion joined the concentus.

"Forward-march!"

The legion crashed off toward another enemy at two steps a second, while four thousand right arms readied javelins. The left flank was a half stride ahead of the remaining cohorts; and that wasn't a bad feeling either.

Vibulenus settled his shield so that the point of his left shoulder took some of the weight. He drew his sword, the same fine Spanish blade his father had bought him so long ago. Its bone hilt and the calluses of his right hand had shaped to one another over the years, and the blade-though frequently sharpened-was poised and balanced to slash a life out.

As it had done hundreds of times already.

The enemy began to chant in high-pitched voices, so many of them that it sounded like a chorus of frogs in a swamp swollen by springtime rains. The sparkling crunch of gravel beneath hobnails was the only noise the legion made in reply, but to the ears of a trained soldiers the sound of that disciplined advance was more terrible than any amount of barbarian yammer.