Daniel Ottalini - Brass Legionnaire

“Quick! Into the tower!” someone yelled, and the men racedtoward the safety of the guard towers, rocks and water and sizzling hotfragments falling all around them. A particularly huge chunk of wall hurtledtoward them and slammed into the walkway like a freight train. Constantine wasthrown off his feet, and darkness took him.

From his bed in the governor’s lavish mansion, aconvalescing Constantine stared up at the white mesh fabric draped over the bedat ceiling level, forming a translucent pavilion around his bed. Snapping tohis senses, he sat up abruptly, then stopped just as abruptly as his stomachtwisted, protesting such quick movement. He dropped sideways and was thankfulto see a wastebin beside the bed as his breakfast made a U-turn in his gut.

Several minutes later, he wiped his mouth and rolled backfrom the wastebin to carefully sit up. Pushing aside the gauze curtain, heswung his legs over the side of the bed and gingerly got to his feet, curiositydriving him to examine his hospital ward. He knew he’d been here for a week.He’d lost all memory of the events on the wall after this close combat duelwith the warrior chieftess, Amalia, and had relied on visitors’ accounts torefresh it.

He’d not been wearing his helmet when the explosion came,leaving his head unprotected during the aerial deluge produced by the massiveexplosion that ruptured the sea wall. Engineers examining the aftermathestimated that the explosives needed to rupture the sixty-foot thickness of thesteel and stone wall must have been stored in a warehouse that touched the wall,and that the rebels had likely been drilling into the wall for months to placethe explosives at its true center, already weakening it from the inside out-allpart of a nefarious plot to destroy the very city the rebels had fought so hardto seize.

“They might even have used acids or seawater on a targetedportion of the wall to weaken it. That would have taken weeks of planning, ifnot months,” one engineer had reported to him. That spoke of better planningand treason that ran much deeper than what anyone had suspected.

Within seconds of the explosion, the Mar del Nort had comeflooding into the city, wiping out the low-lying Sludge Bottom and reaching asfar as the heavily damaged air terminal in the northern quadrant and thecentral plaza in the eastern part. Estimates of dead or missing were in thetens of thousands. Between the flood and the fighting, most of the citygarrison and constabulary auxilia were dead or injured. The XIII Germania hadbecome the enforcers of martial law until fresh auxilia forces arriving fromthe south and east could relieve them.

Two figures approached Constantine as he turned back towardhis bed. He smiled as Centurion Julius Caesar raised a hand in greeting; he should be smiling, Constantine thought, now that Legion Command Northwest hadconfirmed word of his brevet rank of centurion. Unfortunately the confirmationof rank had dumped weeks of overdue paperwork onto the newly minted centurion’sshoulders, as well. Constantine didn’t envy the young man that.

Maria, the head nurse, scuttled behind the centurion,already fluttering her hands in agitation. The appearance of the junior officeralways left Constantine in, as she put it, an especially challenging mood. Likemany nurses, she considered her word to be law. Her patient would restthe proper amount of time prescribed by the doctors, or else.

Julius was walking much faster than normal. Constantine knewthat he did not like to disturb the men recuperating in the ranks of beds thatstretched along the wall on either side of Constantine’s. Today, though, hisboots click-click-clicked across the floor, forcing Maria, shorter by a headand a half, to nearly run to keep up.

“You will not disturb my peace and quiet during non-visitinghours!” he heard her saying as they drew nearer.

Constantine placed his hand on the bed frame to helpalleviate a brief moment of dizziness. I must have taken a fairlysubstantial knock on the head, he thought for the umpteenth time. Atleast I didn’t lose all of my memory, as some men do. Imagine having to betaught how to be a legionnaire for a second time!

He held up his hand to stop the nurse. “Now, Maria,” he saidin a mollifying voice. “I’m sure that the centurion here had a good reason forinterrupting your perfectly good midday nap.” He smiled his best smile.

Flustered, the nurse backed away. She checked the largeclock on the wall at the end of the ward. “Five minutes, then you’re out ofhere, regardless of how ‘important’ that paper is.” She waggled a finger at thepouch Julius’s waist, scowling, then turned and stomped back out of the ward.Constantine cringed. Julius looked apologetic.

When the door punctuated Maria’s exit from the ward,Constantine observed, “That is one woman I would not like to be on the wrongside of.” He looked at Julius. “And yet I get the feeling I’ll still besuffering for your little invasion later tonight, when I get poked and proddedwith needles at two a.m. What is so important that you broke multiple layers ofrules and actually penetrated our vast and uncaring medical bureaucracy?”

He was truly curious. In the short time he had known Juliusas an officer, he had pegged him as a by-the-books centurion, especiallysince he hadn’t yet learned all the ins and outs of working the system. Notthat I’ve been able to yet, but all I have to do is wave my Imperio signet coinin the air and it parts the sea like magic.

Julius displayed a face-splitting grin. He leaned closer tothe tribune to whisper conspiratorially, “We’ve got orders.”

Constantine smiled as well, although it became a tad frozenby another short bout of dizziness. It had been happening less and less, thankthe gods, but still often enough to really annoy him. “Excellent. I’ll be gladto get out of this hellhole.” At Julius’s stricken expression, he quirked aneyebrow. “What, Centurion? Just because it used to be a grand metropolisdoesn’t mean it’s that way anymore. Maybe in a few years it will be again, whenthey’ve rebuilt the wall and purged the flooded areas. Until then, this city isa hellhole. A toxic, disease-ridden, soggy, smelly, and somehow stillfunctioning, hellhole. We need to get out of here.”

Julius sighed. “I suppose so, sir,” he mumbled.

Constantine remembered the root of Julius’s sadness. “Haveyou found any trace of your family yet?” he asked in a softer voice.

Julius shook his head. “I borrowed a few squads to comb theneighborhood. I found some things of theirs, but there were no bodies orsurvivors. I can’t tell if the destruction is from the explosion, the fighting,or the flood.” He spread his hands in frustration. “I’m not giving up hope,though. I can feel they are alive.” His voice hardened. “I want to deliver somepainful vengeance on those who did this.”

Constantine nodded. “Don’t give up hope. Besides, there isalways retribution, as well.” Both men grinned. “So, are you going to tell methose orders, before Nurse-Empress Maria comes marching her way back into theward to throw you out on your behind?”

Julius reached into his belt pouch and withdrew the sheaf oforders. He handed them over to the tribune. Constantine read them over, whileJulius tried hard not to look as if he was attempting to read through the thinparchment.

Constantine rolled up the orders and handed them back to thecenturion. “Well, Centurion, before you go, I have a question.” Julius tried tohide his disappointment that the tribune was not going to share their orders.Constantine smiled. “Have you requisitioned your cold weather gear yet? ’CauseI think it’s about time we taught those fur-coated northern barbarian raiders alesson: Don’t. Mess. With. Us.”