RANKS OF BRONZE BY DAVID DRAKE

RANKS OF BRONZE DAVID DRAKE

RANKS OF BRONZE DAVID DRAKE

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To Jim, who bought the story ten years ago;

to Janet, who reminded me of the BATRACHOMYOMACHIA;

and to Jo, who liked the completed result.

PROLOGUE

On a farm in the Sabine hills of a planet called Earth, a poet takes a stylus from the fingers of a nude slave girl and writes, very quickly, And Crassus’ wretched soldier takes a barbarian wife from his captors and grows old waging war for them.

The poet looked at the line with a pleased expression. “It needs polish, of course,” he muttered. Then, more directly to the slave, he says, “You know, Leuconoe, there’s more than inspiration to poetry, a thousand times more; but this came to me out of the air.”

Horace gestures with his stylus toward the glittering night sky. The girl smiles back at him.

BOOK ONE

THE FIRST CAMPAIGN

Gaius Vibulenus wore a white horsehair crest to mark him as a tribune. Fear turned the dew dribbling from that insignia into drops of acid on the back of his neck. Dawn was beginning to raise a bitter-flavored mist from the valley before them, and the occasional serpentine trees seemed to writhe as they bathed in the thick air.

The enemy was deploying from its camp in the shelter of great basalt pyramids that the sun revealed as a natural rock formation, not the godlike city which the young tribune had thought he saw against the night sky.

“Mother Vesta,” Vibulenus whispered as his fingers tightened on the bone hilt of the sword sheathed at his left side, “let me live to see my hearth again. Father Hercules, give me strength to endure this time of testing.”

A signal began to boom from the enemy camp. It sounded like thunder, a crash which built into a rumble and did not slacken though the whole valley began to echo with it.

“Mother Vesta,” the tribune repeated, “let me live to see my hearth.”

“. . . ten feet tall,” a legionary was muttering to his fellow as the Tenth Cohort lurched towards its position on the left flank. “And they eat their enemies raw.”

“No talking in ranks!” snarled a non-commissioned officer — Gnaeus Clodius Afer, the file-closer who ranked second of the eighty-odd men in the cohort’s Third Century. In barracks, Clodius would have carried a swagger stick, but here in the field he bore two javelins and a shield like any other line soldier. He rang the butt of the lighter javelin on the bronze helmet of the man who had spoken.

The legionary yelped and stumbled. Dim light and the helmet’s broad cheek pieces concealed the man’s face, but the tribune recognized the voice as that of Publius Pompilius Rufus — one of the few legionaries he actually knew. Rufus and his first cousin, Publius Pompilius Niger, came from farms adjoining that of Vibulenus’ own family, and the three boys had attended school together in Suessula.

“Here, fellow,” Vibulenus said in a squeak that was meant to be a growl of warning to the non-com. He put his arm around Rufus’ shoulders and glared back at Clodius. “No need for brutality.”

“Sir, that’s all right,” the legionary whispered hastily, jumping sideways and hunching as if the tribune’s arm were afire. Rufus collided with the trooper to whom he had been speaking — his cousin Niger, of course — in a clash of equipment much louder than that of the non-com’s blow a moment before.

“No need for little pricks too young to shave, neither,” Clodius muttered, enough under his breath that Vibulenus could pretend the words were lost in the artificial thunder from across the valley.

Vibulenus stepped back, rubbing the lip of his Greek-style helmet, more of an ornate bronze cap than functional protection like those of the line soldiers. With his hand raised that way, his forearm concealed the face which he was sure glowed with his embarrassment.

Anyway, it wasn’t true. He had shaved, and that first beard had been dedicated in a golden casket in the temple of Juno of Suessula which his father had refurbished for the occasion.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132

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