David Weber: Ranks of Bronze

"Truth," he said in a flat voice, "isn't as important as perception." He wasn't even close to considering whether he could live with the situation he now perceived. For now it would be enough that he be permitted to try- that she permit him to try.

Quartilla smiled as he met her eyes, but it wasn't a particularly happy smile.

He didn't, now that he was aware of externals again, remember when he had stood up. His knees were quivering and he wanted very badly to sit down again, but "We'll either get through this," said Quartilla gently, "or we won't. And 'won't' could be a very long time for both of us, the way things are."

She took one plump hand from Vibulenus' shoulder and gestured toward the couch. The tribune read the gesture in his peripheral vision, still afraid to break the eye contact he had regained. He sat or collapsed, and Quartilla curved gracefully down beside him, her breast wobbling momentarily against his elbow.

"I want to change the way things are, Quartilla," Vibulenus said. "I want to take my men home, and I need your help."

"Gaius," said the woman with new concern in her eyes. "You can't go home."

"And just now," the tribune continued, without recognition that he knew something had been said in the interval, "I want most of all to think that you'll forgive me for what I did."

Quartilla slid her left hand from Vibulenus' shoulder to the back of his neck. Her fingertips toyed with his scalp while her free hand plucked open the knotted sash of his tunic. She smiled again.

Vibulenus knew that he was not being given an answer, however much his body was willing to believe otherwise.

But he knew also that the woman was willing to try to work through it; and that was perhaps as much undeserved mercy as he could have accepted anyway.

The sweat of Tenth Cohort in sword drill overloaded the Exercise Hall's ventilation system with an effluvium made bitter by fatigue poisons. Men grunted, and the clack of practice weapons was supplemented frequently by the duller sound of a riposte getting through to human flesh.

"Up, Decimus, up," snarled Clodius Afer as his swagger stick-which looked like, but probably was not, vine wood-prodded the legionary who had just been knocked down by a head blow. "You're favoring your right hip, and that's why he's coming over your guard." Decimus' duelling partner, a gray, featureless automaton like the hundreds of others in the Exercise Hall, waited with its sword crossed over the face of its shield- both pieces of equipment equally-gray extrusions from its body.

"Yessir," the legionary muttered, though his eyes were crossed, and the only movement of which he seemed capable was to clench and unclench his hand on the hilt of his practice sword, formed from the same material as the automaton. It was heavier than a real sword, and-though its edges were rounded and slightly resilient-a blow from it could send a man to the Sick Bay easily enough.

"Let's get him checked over, pilus prior," said Gaius Vibullenus, threading his way a step behind Clodius through the ranks of duelling pairs.

His own temple throbbed in sympathy with the blow Decimus had taken. The Medic had assured him that there was no organic injury-the booths would have seen to that. But something in the tribune, his mind if not his body, remembered the blow it had taken in the ancient distance.

"Cohort," roared Clodius Afer, "at ease!" He would not have had to raise his voice, because in this room a unit leader spoke directly to all his men as if he were the Commander. Battle practice for a pilus prior, however, was not limited to exercise in swinging personal weapons.

At the Roman's order, all the automatons froze into their upright position, waiting for another command to reactivate them. Soldiers who had kept moving on adrenalin knelt, wheezing and supporting themselves on the shields which, like all their practice gear, were overweight. Drill had to be harsher than the real thing, because real battle could not be halted save by victory- the victory of either side.

"Good drill, boys," the pilus prior said mildly, this time letting the vessel's communications system do the work. "File-closers and watch clerks're responsible for getting whoever needs it to the Sick Bay. Rest of you, stack arms and dismissed."

"Yessir," repeated Decimus in the hubbub. He was still playing with his sword hilt on the floor. The file-closer from that century clumped over, swearing softly.

"Not bad," Clodius Afer said to the tribune as men streamed past them. "They're good. Pollux, they're the best."

"Stacking arms" meant carrying all the practice equipment to the wall at the distant end of the Exercise Hall where the smooth gray surface would reabsorb the helmets and body armor, swords and shields. With dismissal as a spur, the men moved as fast as their exhaustion would permit them-and that prevented their muscles from cramping as they would if allowed to cool suddenly and completely after that level of exercise.

"They'd better be good," Vibulenus answered grimly. "We've got to make our play soon, before the ship goes into Transit. And if we try and it doesn't work… they won't let things be. The Commander won't."

"Nobody in the whole fuckin' legion won't be willing to try, sir," said Clodius Afer, flexing his swagger stick gloweringly to the curve just short of breaking. "Nobody said there wasn't a risk when they swore us in, did they?"

"In Capua," the tribune said, with a bitter smile because he remembered little of the city save its name. Would he recognize his father's face?

"In fuckin' Capua, and that's where we're goin' back," said the centurion in what was more a soldier's prayer than agreement.

"Let's go take a look," Vibulenus said, shrugging. Today neither he nor the pilus prior had donned equipment themselves, but he thought he might return later for some individual exercise. His mind alone could not burn off the nervous energy with which his plans filled him. "Quartilla'll join us there."

"I swear those dummies, they hit harder every time," said Pompilius Niger, jogging drunkenly from the wall where he had dumped his gear. He was not gasping, but he drew in full breaths through his mouth in between phrases. "You guys willing't' head for the baths with a fella been doin' some work?"

Vibulenus briefly surveyed their surroundings. None of the hurrying legionaries showed any particular interest in the three of them. "We're going to the Main Gallery, going to take a look. Wouldn't mind another set of eyes if you're up to it."

"Sure, why not?" agreed the junior centurion. He put a hand on the shoulder of each of his companions and sagged there momentarily, miming total exhaustion. "Sure. You know," Niger continued, setting the trio a brisk pace through the door, "if enough of us stare at it, maybe its teeth all fall out, hey?"

"That still leaves the claws, don't it?" Clodius noted dourly.

"Guide to the Main Gallery," said Vibulenus to the ceiling, and a red dot appeared.

"Thing is," Niger went on, his breathing under control and a serious frown on his face, "we do need to…" He touched his friends' shoulders again, though without looking up from the floor. "Look, guys, if we don't do something, there's going to be trouble. Maybe not just now. But sure as shit, when we wake up after Transit and they issue real weapons-somebody's going to put a javelin through the Commander."

"Gonna try, anyway," the pilus prior agreed.

"And then," Niger concluded morosely, "I guess we can all figure out what's going to happen. Might be wrong on details… but it won't be a detail sort of job the guild does on us."

"We're going to do something," Caius Vibulenus said flatly. He spoke with the absolute certainty he felt, although he could not have explained why he was so certain. Not quite.