“Is there no Senate?” Rick asked.
“Certainly. I am a senator of Rome.”
“Curious. When does it meet?”
“When Caesar wills it, of course.”
It turned out that Caesar willed it about once every five years. The meetings were brief and did nothing more than ratify Caesar’s decisions and perhaps vote Caesar a new accolade. Compared to the Assembly, though, the Senate was nearly omnipotent: the Assembly met precisely once in each reign, to proclaim its acceptance of whatever new Caesar the army had elected. Otherwise the citizens had no part in government and wanted none; they were happy enough if Caesar would leave them alone. In exchange they got peace and order and protection from bandits like Rick.
Late Empire, Rick decided. The military was more like the time of Charlemagne, but the government
was definitely from the Dominate period of the Roman Empire. The army kept the citizens from making trouble, the Praetorian regiments kept the rest of the army under control, and Caesar spent most of his time worrying about how to control the Praetorian guard.
Once Rick had Sempronius talking about politics, he was able to extract a little more information. The most important was that there was a town about twelve Roman miles away.
It had a granary, and the harvest had been good this year. Now all he had to do was get through the Roman legion guarding it.
Tylara turned quickly at the sound of footsteps on the roof behind her.
“I thought I told all my officers to go to bed,” Rick said.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Me neither.” He came over to the parapet to stand beside her. The flat roof of the villa gave a good view of the watchfires spread out across the estate. Edward III had used a windmill as a command post at Crécy. This villa would be better.
“Do you truly believe we can win?” Tylara asked.
“Tomorrow? Yes. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t. We’ve got more troops, and we’ve got better weapons.”
“I know you have few thunderbolts for your weapons,” she said.
“Gwen must have told you,” Rick said. Tylara nodded. “And yet you came with us, and you haven’t told your father.”
“For all my life I believed that the Empire had the best soldiers in the world,” she said. “But now we will beat them, and it will not be because of the weapons.”
“Weapons, organization—Tylara, nothing’s ever certain in war, but if I wasn’t pretty sure of the result, you wouldn’t be here.”
“How would you send me away?”
“If necessary, tied to a led horse,” Rick said.
“Do you dislike me that much?”
“You know better. You must know better,” he said. He moved closer to her. “I don’t dislike you at all.”
“But you have a woman—”
“Gwen? She’s not my woman.”
“Her child is not yours?”
“Yatar, no! What made you think that?”
“No one wanted to ask,” Tylara said. “Then— there is no one else? No one you will return to?”
He put his hands on her shoulders. “The only girl I care about is you. Didn’t you know?”
“I hoped.” She hesitated. “Rick, I will always love Lamil. My husband—”
“And never anyone else?”
“I already love someone else.”
Custom demanded a longer mourning period, but if Rick didn’t care, she didn’t. When he came to her, she did not resist.
2
He was awakened at dawn, as he’d ordered, but the cavalry screen reported no signs of movement in the Roman camp. Rick sent out another scouting force and tried to return to bed; after half an hour he knew it was no use and went out to see that the troops all had a hot breakfast. Wellington had insisted on hot meals the morning of Waterloo, and always believed the biscuit and “stirabout” had as much to do with his victory as anything else.
If the Romans attacked early, the sun would be in his archers’ eyes. There wasn’t anything he could do about that except worry.
The camp was deathly still. It wasn’t the silence of professional soldiers confident in their abilities. There were sporadic murmurs, small jokes that normally would have brought belly laughs, speculations about various women, even some attempts to cheer, but each conversation died away to silence again.
“They’re scared, Cap’n,” Mason said. “I can feel it.”
“Me too.”
“It’s the waitin’,” Mason said. He squinted to the east. “Almost wish they’d come and get it over with, even if it’d be better with the sun higher.”
“They’ll be here soon enough. Walk around a lot. Look mean and be sure they see your rifle.”
Mason grinned. “Won’t show ‘em the bandolier, though.”
“This won’t be our only battle,” Rick warned. “Don’t shoot yourself dry.” He hesitated. “If everything comes apart, I’ll try to get Tylara out. The Romans will try to cut us off from the road back. If I can get to that first villa we sacked, I’ll wait for you there as long as I can. You do the same.”
“Right. I wouldn’t worry so much, Cap’n.”
“Don’t you worry?”
“Don’t get paid to worry. That’s what officers are for.”
The true sun was half high and the Firestealer three hands above the horizon when the scout messenger rode in. The legion was coming.
“All of them?” Rick asked. “How are they formed?”
“They are all together,” the scout reported. “They come in two large groups. The one on their left is slightly ahead of the other one.”
“And where is the lady Tylara?”
“As you commanded, she is retreating from them but keeping them in sight. She will send messengers
if they divide their force.”
“Excellent,” Rick said. He turned to Drumold. “Sound the battle horns.”
The Tamaerthon hill people were obviously of Celtic origin, and Rick had expected them to have bagpipes; but either their ancestors had been from a group that didn’t use them, or the art had been lost during the centuries on Tran. Instead they employed a long, curled horn that looked something like a thin tuba. At Drumold’s wave, these sounded, and the camp followers began the rattle of drums. The pikemen and archers ran to their weapons.
Rick climbed to the roof of the villa. It would be better for morale if he were with the ranks, but he couldn’t afford courageous gestures. More than one battle had been lost because the commander didn’t know what was happening to all his forces. The staff officers he’d chosen to keep with him didn’t like being up there either, but he’d stressed the importance of communications until at least a few of them understood how vitally he’d need messengers whose orders would be obeyed.
His view to the east was partly obscured by low hills, but from the vantage point of the roof he could just see the scarlet and yellow pennants of his light cavalry. They had stopped at the brow of the hill and were looking at something beyond. He tried to pick out Tylara, but the distance was too great. He felt a momentary panic. Suppose she’d been caught by the Romans? But there was no point in worrying about that now.
The First Pikes were moving nicely into formation, a rectangle 125 men wide by 8 deep. The Swiss had formed their pikemen into precise square blocks, but he had too broad a front to cover for that. As he watched, they grounded arms, acting nearly in unison. That way they wouldn’t be exhausted when the combat began.
What looked like a forest of pikes came up just in front of him as the two thousand men of the Second presented pikes. The binoculars let him see individual troopers. They looked nervous. Well, so was he. Here came the archers to take their places among the checkerboard of sharpened stakes that marked their position. Their ranks were nowhere near as geometrical as the pikemen. They weren’t supposed to be. If those heavy cavalrymen ever got among the archers to melee in hand-to-hand fighting, the battle would be over.
He shifted back to the horizon. His light cavalry were facing him now, and riding like hell. He raised the binoculars in time to see the first of the enemy come over the low hills twelve hundred meters away.
The Romans trotted toward them like an armored flood. Tylara had no difficulty getting the light cavalry force to simulate panic. The problem would have been to hold them once the Roman horses broke into a trot. It looked as if nothing could stop that steel tide.
They rode hard, past the First and Second Pikes and down the cleared lanes leading to the villa. Their horses were lathered before they were inside their own lines. Tylara had deliberately stayed in front, and now when she reined in, the others halted. Some of them might not have. One cavalry group—Rick called it a “platoon,” a strange word—would go on south beyond the slave barracks to warn of any Roman attempt to circle the woods and attack from behind, but Rick had stressed the importance of halting first to demonstrate that they weren’t really running away.