Thomas Harlan - The Gate of fire

"Don't forget the sewers," answered Sextus. "Ctesiphon had nearly five hundred thousand citizens before the big boots knocked it over. That's nearly two hundred miles of conduit! We were right glad for the opportunity to show these effete Persians how to deal with such things, too. But here we are, sitting beside as fine an artificial harbor as ever built, five hundred miles from Babylon and all its ancient wonders…"

Frontius sighed again. "And barely a serviceable aqueduct in the whole province."

Sextus turned to Nicholas, his face grave, and put his hand on the thin man's shoulder. "Aqueducts are what Frontius here does best. He's one of the masters of the craft."

Frontius shook his head severely and raised a finger. "No, I am but an apprentice. No Vetruvius I!"

Nicholas pressed his fingers to his forehead, hoping to forestall an incipient headache.

"I don't suppose," he said slowly and carefully, "that any of you are actual legionnaires? Like the kind who march on roads, with say a pilum or spear or perhaps a scutum among you?"

Sextus and Frontius stared at him in surprise, taken aback.

"Why surely, Centurion!" Sextus gestured to a stack of tools set beside the barracks door. A collection of hardened leather lorica, iron helmets with hinged neck flaps, short swords in wooden cases, and throwing spears lay against the wall in neat bundles. "Every Legion engineer has to train beside his fellows. We're just…" He paused, then smiled and said, "We're specialists!"

"I'm a specialist too," sneered Nicholas, "but it's rather more specific to what we're actually supposed to be doing than you are."

Frontius frowned, his face quizzical. "Centurion, you always need an engineer along. You're just blessed by having a whole century of them! How much luckier could a field commander get? Often I've heard a tribune or general complain about the lack of sappers or engineers."

"Or surveyors," interjected Sextus, looking solemn. "Can't have too many surveyors about! You know, sir, there's many a time I've had to sneak about under the noses of the Germanii-it's not an easy life of draughts and wine cups for a librator, no indeed!" He picked up the hem of his tunic, showing a length of hairy thigh marked with a curling puckered scar. "Got that from a Frankish throwing axe I did, when we were putting a pontoon bridge across the Rhenus at Bonna. That was a close thing."

Nicholas looked around and sat on the nearest bunk. The previous inhabitant, seeing that the centurion was coming his way, had decided he really needed to use the privy. The Scandian laid his orders packet on the thin cotton sheet and put the palms of his hands over his eyes. He wondered for a moment if it were too early to get a stiff drink at the caupona they had passed.

"Tell me," he said after a moment of reflection, "what you do… what your specialties are."

Sextus narrowed his eyes and surveyed the room, taking a tally in his head. Dwyrin and Vladimir, seeing that things were going to go on for a while, made themselves scarce. Nicholas was sure he could find them later in the caupona, half-sick from strange local food and too many overripe olives in garlic pickle.

"Well, sir, we've nine lead surveyors with me as their chief, a senior-and a junior-level man each as assistants. Then there are the stonemasons, another dozen, with about twenty apprentices for the smoothing, tunneling, and the detail work. Frontius has his pack of carpenters, calculators, and copyists-that's an easy fifteen fellows right there. We've two cooks, that's a bit of luck for you there, sir, you won't have to eat the local food. Oh wait, Frontius has two more draftsmen who work for him-his assistants really. How many does that make?"

Nicholas sneered, saying, "Eighty and two. And the rest of these layabouts?"

"Ah," said Sextus sagely, "those will be the semaphore men-for six-and the runners for the last four. I always forget about them… but, sir, you'll miss them if they're not about!"

"Fine," said Nicholas, rubbing his chin. "Have you any experience riding?"

Sextus beamed and rubbed the top of his head. "Sir, we ride everywhere."

"On horses?" Nicholas gritted his teeth. It had better not be shanks-mare!

"Not at all, sir. Nasty balky beasts, always biting you when you're not looking! No sir, like any engineer's cohort we've a good twenty military reda for the equipment, plus the cook's carruca. We can all fit quite handily on board. You needn't worry, Centurion, we've got all our kit, baggage, and mules ready to go."

"Those things you mentioned," said Nicholas, racking his brain for what little Latin he had gathered while in the Empire, "those would be… wagons?"

"Yes, Centurion, fine steel-sprung wagons, too. Very comfortable."

Nicholas grimaced, then fought down a surge of bile.

"Sextus," he asked politely. "Have you ever chased bandits over hill and dale in your… wagons?"

The engineer thought for a moment and then shook his head sadly, no.

The Scandian repressed another sigh and opened one of the sheets of his briefing packet. He spread it out on the bedsheet.

"Our orders are to proceed from the port here…" His thumb indicated the symbol for Caesarea. "…to here, Aelia Capitolina, to deal with some provincial troubles. I expect that those troubles will involve bandits who will take great delight in flitting about on horses over the local hills while we are stuck on the local roads with these wagons…"

Frontius sniffed and turned up his nose. "No aqueducts for Capitolina. No need-whole town's fed by springs right within the walls. A silly place to build it too, right on the highest ground thereabouts… can't get water to run uphill, you know." He paused. "Well, that's not exactly true… you can get it to run uphill, but you need a big mountain to start from."

Sextus shrugged, saying "well, sir, I suppose we can swan about on horses with the best of them."

"Good," muttered Nicholas, gathering up his papers. "We leave in the morning."

– |It got worse, as far as Nicholas could see, the farther inland you went. Barren dry hills rose upon either side of the road and the bottomland wasn't much greener. Even the olives and junipers were stunted and the air had a funny brittle quality to it. All the villages seemed to be crouched on hilltops and were mean places with reclusive citizens, stout walls, and an angry feeling in the air. Nicholas' heart sank the higher they went into the hills. The only birds seemed to be crows and buzzards.

"This has all the signs of a badly managed province," he muttered to Vladimir, who was riding at his side, wrapped in a white-and-tan striped cloak and a sun hat. The Walach grunted in agreement, keeping his hands inside his cloak. Vladimir's pale skin had started to burn on the voyage from Constantinople and now he was peeling and in a particularly bad mood. "This may take some doing."

Nicholas wheeled his bay mare around and dropped back to allow the first engineer's wagon to catch up with him. He and Vladimir had been in the lead, a dozen paces ahead of the first wagon, with the surveyors out in front of them as scouts. The rest of Sextus' apprentices and the semaphore men made the rear guard. In his usual good humor, Sextus grinned at the centurion as he came alongside. Despite his fear that the engineer's wagons would slow him down, Nicholas was impressed by the conveyance.

The reda was a four-wheeled box with high hinged sides and an elevated riding seat for a driver and passenger. A long wooden tongue ran out to harness four fast-stepping mules. The wheel rims were of a standard size and covered with layers of heavy canvas, which seemed to reduce the noise and rattle that wagons usually generated. Nicholas had inspected the wagons before they had left the Legion camp at the port. They were impressive; carefully packed full of all the materials and tools that the engineers would need in their work. Spades, picks, mauls, adzes, axes large and small, chisels, precut support timbers, five big dioptra for taking sightings and finding levels, broken-down leveling tables called chorobates, metal fittings for ballista and onagers, water screws, and barrels and barrels of nails and precut wooden pegs. Each man had his own kit, too, in addition to the light leather armor cuirass of a Legion auxillia; a saw, a heavy hand-hammer, a plane, and a hand-held water level as well as plumb bobs and a groma for finding straight lines and right angles. The stonemasons had a whole other set of gear in their wagons, too, all designed for finding, cutting, moving, finishing, and cementing stone. Each wagon had its own packing order, which had really impressed Nicholas-used, as he was, to the lax logistical methods of the Scandian tribes or the Eastern Empire-which was tracked by square-cut leather tags tied to each piece of equipment.