David Weber - Ranks of Bronze

There was a commotion behind them in the baggage train, cause for a glance over the shoulder but not concern. Several vehicles from the merchant vessel, looking like slightly larger versions of the water carts, were gliding among the wagons. They carried half a dozen passengers apiece, men or not-men of a variety even wider than that of the legion's successive commanders. Each individual was clad in monochrome, but the selection of single colors ran the gamut from violet to a red so dark it was nearly black.

"Oh, it wouldn't be hard, Gaius," said Niger as rolling ground dropped them out of sight of the train and the field. They were not tribune and centurions at the moment; and Niger, too, was happy to return to the terms of boyhood.

"You see," he explained, so intent on his subject that he would have stepped into a flat-stemmed, spikey bush had not Clodius steered him aside, "the guards at the Medic's check, they don't care about anything 'cept fighting or pushing in line."

"Or," Vibulenus said tartly, "if somebody tried to slip contraband into the ship proper after they've gone through the Sick Bay. I've seen them collar people doing that, and sometimes it meant another trip through the booth to get fixed up."

"Niger, if you don't watch where you're going," the pilus prior interjected sharply, "you'll fall down the fuckin' side. And by Apis' dick, I'll let you lie there. If you can't talk and walk at the same time, shut the fuck up."

"Sorry, sir," the junior centurion answered, abashed. They had reached the sinkhole. While the trail winding down its side was occasionally wide enough for three or four men abreast, it was never regular enough to be safe for someone talking over his shoulder instead of keeping his eyes to the front.

"Here, I'll lead," said Vibulenus as he stepped ahead of his companions. He was feeling human again, tired but human. The leather backing of his body armor was clammy and beginning to chafe. As he walked down the steep incline, he tried again to pull the locking pin. It came without effort, and he flopped the breastplate wide against its left-side hinges.

"Yessir," said Niger and cleared his throat. "I mean, sure, Gaius, that's right-they grab guys with contraband. But not because they see it but because they're told about it."

"The Medic?" Clodius put in from the end of the line where he was apparently able to hear well enough.

"Naw, he doesn't care," the younger centurion replied. "No, I figure it's the whole ship, you know? It watches. But all it sees is metal, so you try to get in with gold, you get grabbed. Lots of guys bring in jewels, though, sometimes stuck up their ass but even open in their hands."

Vibulenus hadn't known that. He paused at the bottom of the trail to strip off his armor and prop it against a rock, watching Niger with interest. It seemed to be his day to learn unexpected things about the men he helped to lead but did not command.

"Sure," said Clodius, sealing the statement without room for doubt as he followed the others into the lumpily-flat bottom of the sinkhole. "But all that crap disappears when we march out after the next muster. They must, I dunno, give everything aboard a real goin' over whenever we're out. So it's really just there till we go into Transit. Whatever the fuck that is."

"But sometimes we got a couple months aboard before that, right?" said Niger. "That's time for mead to get enough of a bite to be worth doing, you know? I don't mean it'll be the vintage you bring out when your son gets married, sure… but it'll be mead, and that's all I'm after. Just something, you know. To remind me of home and all."

Vibulenus was picking his way along the track to the cave at the best pace possible under the circumstances. They had lost direct sunlight even before they stepped within the sinkhole, and now the sky above, though clear, was beginning to take on a rich maroon tinge that scattered very little sun into the natural pockmark.

Ground water had dissolved a pocket in limestone. When that bubble in the rock had reached the surface, or an earthquake had shaken the area, the roof had collapsed to leave a sheer-sided valley a quarter mile in diameter and a hundred feet deep. The channel cut by the water at one end still ran down into the earth, probably as deep as the stratum of limestone itself.

The floor of the sinkhole was covered with debris from the roof and windblown loess trapped by the sides. Rock fragments, gorse-like vegetation, and quantities of droppings from the animals corraled here made the footing difficult even before the trio of Romans reached the cave.

A hundred yards down its sloping throat, the cave would be pitch dark even at noon on Midsummer's Day.

"Helvius!" the tribune shouted. The trio could be anywhere, not even within the cave. He stumbled forward. Breaking your neck here in the darkness might be as effectively fatal as having your spine hacked through by a slope-browed swordsman. "Helvius! Will you at least come out and talk to somebody with sense before you do this!"

"Careful here, sir," said Niger, whose night vision seemed to be better than that of Vibulenus. The throat of the cave dropped away slickly, but broad steps had been roughed into one side. The other side. The sky still looked bright if you looked at it directly, but that was by contrast with the lumpy blackness of everything on solid earth.

There didn't seem to be any peasants around-the sound and smell of their herds was unmistakable-but that made little difference. When the legion was to work with local auxilliaries, the men mustered out with the ability to speak the necessary languages as long as they kept their helmets on. Here they had been operating alone.

So, for that matter, had the enemy: a force of heavy infantry moving across the face of the land more as conqueror than defender. The politics of what they did at the guild's behest sometimes bothered Vibulenus, but he never had-the legion never had-enough information to decide whether or not they really agreed with the choices the guild had made.

For that matter, he had never been sure why they were invading Parthia. It had something to do with the Kingdom of Armenia, he'd been told, a Roman ally… or with rivalry between Crassus and the partners in his political machine, Caesar and Pompey, if you listened to other opinions. He'd been scared green himself- gods! but that had been a long time ago-but he'd have been just as scared if he were being called up because Hannibal was at the gates of Rome again. Nothing political in fear.

His father might have had doubts about the expedition, but the Vibuleni had made a very good thing out of farming taxes in the Province of Asia and weren't the people to decry military adventurism in the East. Besides, a family of their stature had a duty to the Republic, to act as exemplars for lesser folk in taking arms to Rome's glory.

The tribune's fingers caressed the bone hilt of the sword which he had learned to use so much better after he left Rome's service than he ever had before.

As for the "lessee folk," the common legionaries and the non-coms who had fought their way up from that status-so far as Vibulenus could recall, their major concern had been whether the King of Parthia drank from gold cups or hollowed jewels, and which would bring more from the merchants who trailed the army to buy its loot. After a time, they all had more pressing concerns-heat and thirst and the arrows that fell like rain-but those were not political either.

And besides, by then it was too late to matter.

"Decimus!" called the pilus prior, a hand on both Niger and Vibulenus to keep them from trying to descend dangerously farther. The cave had only a slight average slope, but descents when they came tended to be abrupt. "Marcus, Gaius. C'mon and talk for a minute so we don't fall and kill ourselves, all right? It's just me, Niger, and Gaius Vibulenus-you know he's all right. No tricks, just a little talk that can't hurt nothing."