David Weber: Ranks of Bronze

"You earned it," the tribune said, saved by his instincts. He clapped the older man on the shoulder as they strode off together toward the camp.

Legionaries who had scaled the enemy's sloping wall were now staggering back with all manner of loot, most of it as odd as the huge bronze sheet that early-comers had carried off. Vibulenus noticed a trio of soldiers returning through the gate, passing a skin of what he supposed was wine. They supposed it was wine also; but, like a scene from a farce, they spewed up the entire contents of their stomachs and collapsed on a count of three.

Another legionary tried to drag the skin out from under the third victim before all its contents dribbled out. A wiser companion tugged him away.

During the battle, the gate of the enemy camp had been closed by a framework around which were woven briars, a sort of vegetation Vibulenus had not encountered in the valley. Some of the panicked native troops had pulled the barrier aside to flee in one direction or the other. The opening made little difference, because the sloping wall was only a slight impediment without troops willing to defend it.

The Commander and his mounted entourage, who had entered by the gate, were making a dignified exit through the same opening when Vibulenus reached it. The bodyguards stalked out in pairs until six of them were aligned in front of the entrance, armored ankle to armored ankle, to block any Romans who might wish to accost the Commander.

As Gaius Vibulenus did.

The young tribune stepped ahead of his companions, to within six feet of the mounted guards and well within reach of their long-shafted maces. Two of the beasts growled, and a third hunched down on his forequarters, baring his teeth. A gap had been cut in the beast's upper molars to insert a bit.

The guard made no attempt to draw up on his reins. Gravel scattered beneath the creature's non-retractile claws, one of which was bloodied, as the paws extended toward Vibulenus.

"I wish to speak to the Commander," the tribune said in the piercing, inescapable voice which his throat provided at need. "I am Gaius Vibulenus Caper; citizen, military tribune, and member of the equestrian order." In fact, his family was wealthy enough that his father could have bought a Senate seat if he had wanted the trouble… and not that it made the least difference any more, except in Vibulenus' mind and the minds of those captured with him.

There were slotted disks a foot in diameter and four inches thick on the chests of all the lion-like mounts. Vibulenus had assumed the disks were part of the beasts' protection but now, as close as he was, he could see this was not the case: the actual armor was formed by blankets of heavy iron scales wired to a leather backing, cut away at the breast so as not to foul the disks-which moaned constantly. From the motion of dust particles, the tribune saw that air was being drawn in fiercely through the slots.

A guard raised the perforated visor of his helmet. The face beneath the iron was broad and brown and looked more like that of a toad than anything else in the tribune's previous experience. He could hear a gasp behind him-from Clodius, he thought. None of them had seen the guards' faces before.

"Get out of the Commander's way," the guard boomed, Latin in a voice so low-pitched that the words, though distinct, were barely intelligible.

Upright, the mount was as high at the shoulder as Vibulenus was tall. Even with its forelegs outstretched, the beast's eyes glared from behind filigreed protectors on a level with the tribune's. The eyes were set frontally, like those of a man or a lion, giving the good depth perception a predator needs but not the nearly 360° field of view that makes a horse sure-footed.

"I must speak to the Commander!" Vibulenus shouted. He set his shoulders, but he could not bear to front the line of guards squarely. Rather, his left side was slightly advanced, and he was glad that he had lost his shield because otherwise he could not have kept from cringing behind it.

The beast carried its rider a clawed step closer, breaking the alignment and bathing the tribune in an exhaled breath compounded of dead meat and less familiar odors.

Vibulenus heard the sound of metal behind him, the ringing of a sword edge as it cleared the lip of its sheath. He did not dare turn his back, but he opened his mouth to shout a warning to his companions-to his fellows, to his friends-not to escalate matters into disaster.

Before the tribune could speak, a voice from behind the guard advancing on him croaked an order made obvious by its timbre although it was not in anything Vibulenus recognized as a language. He thought another guard had spoken, but when those of the front rank reined their mounts aside, the Roman recognized his error.

There were three riders behind the front line of guards, two of them Roman tribunes on horses. The third mounted personage rode a beast like those of his bodyguard, though its only armored trappings were studs on the reins and the saddle between the beast's high, humped shoulders. Because it was not covered in iron, the mount had even more of a shaggy, carnivorous look than did those of the guards, but it was under perfect control as it advanced with measured strides into the gap the guards had provided.

"What is it you want to say, Gaius Vibulenus Caper?" asked the Commander, leaning forward as he spoke, past the bristly mane of his mount.

He looked tiny on his present perch, though he had seemed a man within normal limits earlier, when he presided over the mustering and reequipping of the legion in the hold of the vessel. Vibulenus had assumed the Commander was human, as he had assumed the warriors the legion met and slaughtered in this valley were human for all their height and the feathers which grew from the sides of their skulls.

But the toadlike bodyguards were not men, even if the tales were true of Nubia, where the Blemmyes were said to wear their heads in their bellies and other men sported tails. If the guards were not human, then there was no certainty of anyone except the legionaries themselves…

Falco smirked down from horseback. Vibulenus felt a rush of loathing greater than anything the face of the guard had drawn from him.

"I demand to know why we are here," he cried, speaking loudly because the intake whine of the disks on the guard beasts added to something like a howl. The disk on the breast of the Commander's own mount was connected to the beast's throat by a short metal hose, and similar rigging seemed to lurk beneath the armor of the other mounts. "We are Roman citizens!"

"You are here to fight, Roman citizen," said the Commander. There was a high squeal, the sound of an axle with an unlubricated bearing, but it came from the Commander's slight body as his bellowed order to the guards must have done. "To fight for my trading guild on worlds where the Federation does not permit weapons of higher than the local technology,

"And you fought splendidly, Roman. Superbly."

The Commander wore body-covering tights whose fabric was the same shade of blue as the mobile fountains. His face was the only part of him which the suit did not cover, and the flesh there returned sunlight in a direct reflection like that of metal or glass when the angle was right. The hands that gripped the reins, and the feet that rested on the pegs which the Romans were learning to call stirrups, each seemed to have six digits beneath the soft blue cloth.

"I don't-" the tribune said. "Understand," Vibulenus would have continued, but that would be pointless. "Where are we?" he asked instead, the timbre of his voice rising with desperate emotion instead of rhetorical effect.

"That doesn't matter," the Commander replied simply. Probably that answer would have done as well for the other statement, the one Vibulenus had swallowed. "You won't be asked to do anything unfamiliar to you. Anything-" his six-fingered hand gestured broadly toward the wrack of bodies lying on the far slope, giant warriors strewn like driftwood storm-tossed on a beach "-anything but what you do so well. And-" the Commander withdrew his hand and straightened in the saddle "-you will become immortal."