Ranks of Bronze

Hercules, shield a soldier from harm.

The natives were packed too tightly to use their weapons properly. A warrior stabbed overhand at the tribune's face with an all-iron spear very different from the darts which had fallen on the legion's advance. Instead of a shaft, this stabbing weapon was forged in one piece with two double-edged blades joined back to back by a rod no longer than a sword hilt.

The warrior's face was painted in quadrants-red, green, blue and a yellow turned fiery by the tone of the skin beneath it. Vibulenus ducked and raised his shield in the same motion. Wood split and the spearpoint reached an inch through the felt backing: the natives might be ski

Instead of trying to slash around the edge of his opponent's buckler, painted in the same pattern as his face, the tribune stabbed directly at the center where the four colors met. Spanish steel slid through leather and the wicker frame with little more delay than it had made of the paint. Even dazed by the blow to his head, Vibulenus' eye had correctly gauged the flimsiness of the equipment beside the sprawled corpse.

The warrior screeched as the sword grated through the bones of his hand. He would have jumped backward, but the press of his fellows was too great.

Vibulenus put all his weight behind the swordhilt. His point met ribs and drove on into the chest cavity. His opponent cleared his own weapon with a hysterical jerk and flailed behind him with it. The victims he slashed down fell too late to provide him with any space but that he died on.

Shouting, the tribune leaped into the gap, joined on the carpet of squirming bodies by a legionary who had retained a javelin for thrusting.

His head did not hurt. The memories-Pompilius Rufus… Helvius in coruscating death… a centurion with no name, no legs, and no hope but the false one of Gaius Vibulenus-they were still present, but flows of molten glass insulated the tribune from that greater pain also.

There should have been a place other than battle where he could be free of pain, fear, and all-consuming hatred for his fate-as well as for the guild which was that fate. Vibulenus had found no other release its equal, though.

When he drank, it turned memories into nightmares until he awakened drenched with his own sweat and vomit. The fellowship of Clodius and Niger, friends as no one would have been his friend under circumstances his birth made normal, were constant reminders of other men who had died around him, beside him, even for him… and for no human purpose.

A soldier shouldn't talk of love and should never think of it… but for all that, Vibulenus found something not far from peace occasionally in Quartilla's arms. But there were memories in that, too, and knowledge of what she was as surely as he was a Roman and a soldier. The only purity he found in life was in slaughter. He knew the feeling did not come from a healthy mind; but it was no less real for that.

For now-Vibulenus chopped overarm at a warrior who had interposed his own stabbing spear. Steel bit deeply into thin iron, but the native expertly spun his weapon like a whirled baton to bring forward an undamaged blade. The tribune punched forward his shield, knocking the enemy shield aside, then swung low. His sword cut its own depth in the warrior's shield rim and stopped only because, nearer its tip, the blade had crunched into the native's femur.

Vibulenus brought the iron-bound edge of his shield down as he stepped over his fallen opponent. Bones and teeth splintered at the blow; and another warrior, with a clear look at the tribune's torso, thrust with all his strength.

Vibulenus pitched backward off the quivering body which his hobnails gouged. There was a dent in his breastplate, centered and between the fifth and sixth ribs. The iron spearpoint had doubled back for three inches. While the warrior tried to swap ends for another stroke, a legionary crushed his face with the ferule of a javelin.

The natives' blood was pale, and it had an odor like that of raw wool which struggled with the scent of trampled vegetation.

The tribune, half supported by a soldier whom he did not bother to thank or even look at, staggered back to his feet. Every time he drew in a breath there was a sharp pain where the spear had struck him; but even if it were a cracked rib rather than a bruise, he could still function.

He could still kill.

The fighting was begi

The warriors stood in a ring, shoulder to shoulder. Perhaps because there were no others immediately behind them to foul their strokes, the circle was defending itself ably. The height advantage permitted the long-armed natives to strike down at the eyes of legionaries attacking them, and that too contributed to the hillock being bypassed instead of overrun.

The soldiers fighting here had won many battles since they marched away from Rome; and these were the men who survived.

Titius Hostilianus, the soldier who had taken out the native who speared Vibulenus, paused to consider the defended hillock. There were twenty or so warriors here, and at least half of them bore shields painted solid blue in distinction to the multihued array of their fellows. A legionary lay at their feet. He had bent the stabbing spear when he fell on it, but its black iron point still projected through the back of his neck and spine.

Titus nodded and started to edge around the hillock. Vibulenus halted him with the flat of his bloody sword.

"Kill that one," ordered the bareheaded tribune, pointing the weapon toward the center of a blue shield four feet away.

The native snarled like a furious cat. His spear rang on the sword, forcing the tribune's arm down.

The shank of Titius' javelin had bent the first time he stabbed with the point. He scowled at Vibulenus, then eyed the native who flashed his blade through the empty air in threat.

Grunting, the legionary hurled his javelin. The ferule's four-sided spike tore through the shield and the warrior's throat.

Gaius Vibulenus jumped into the gap, even as the native pitched backward. The Roman's shield thrust the warrior to his left sideways, off the gravel knob, and a sword slash hamstrung the native to his right.

Warriors turned, crying out at the sudden threat in their midst. A spear cut the tribune's left thigh and another wedged its point in the crack of his clamshell armor, breaking one hinge and gouging into his right armpit despite the resistance of the spreading bronze.

Everything was white pain. He swung about him like a blinded bear, striking but not harming his assailants. Then he stumbled to his knees in the midst of orange-ski

It had taken the nearest soldiers only seconds to clear the hillock once the ring was disrupted. Thanks to that and to armor with which the natives had not dealt before, Vivulenus had no wounds that were not superficial.

He hurt as if he had rolled naked in nettles.

"Are you fucking crazy?" wheezed Niger. One front tooth was broken, and his face was cut from his upper lip to the left cheek guard. When he spoke, he sprayed blood as well as spittle. "What're you fucking doing?"

"Needed the height," the tribune mumbled back. "Had to be able to see." And speaking the words, he straightened his legs to use the vantage point for which he had risked his life.

It was hard to concentrate on what he had to know as an officer in the midst of battle. It would have been easier to block severe pain, a limb crushed or the shattered-glass jaggedness of breathing with an arrow through the lung. Vibulenus felt instead that ants were crawling over him, gnawing and dribbling a poison from their tails that made his flesh burn and veins throb.