Gains Vibulenus, eighteen years old, drew his sword and almost lost it as he jumped down. A warrior thrust at him, and only Clodius’ quick sideways chop kept the spear from taking Vibulenus through the chest. . . .
It was also hard to remember that men who had been side by side so many times, and through so much of the battle just completed, had not been together in the immediate aftermath. The pilus prior had led the sweep mopping up the right flank, while Vibulenus had knelt at the Commander’s side when —
“Yes, it was a flying wagon from the trading ship that picked the Commander up,” said the tribune as the three of them resumed their ambling pace toward their own vessel. The great doors already swarmed like the entrance of an anthill, shimmering with the forms of legionaries happy in their victory. “The tortoise came by, but it ignored him. They — I guess they don’t expect commanders t’ be hurt.”
Killed, Vibulenus guessed with a great deal of experience on the subject, by the time the vehicle with six panicky figures in yellow suits had arrived. The tourniquets could not prevent shock, and blood loss from the wounds had probably proceeded beyond hope of recovery by the time the tribune had bound the limbs off.
“You know,” said Niger, who had been sucking at his finger off and on with a contemplative expression, “they didn’t pick up the bodyguards a’tall. I’d have thought they might be alive, some of ’em. Fixable, anyway,” he added with a nod toward the tribune.
The three of them did not discuss the aftermath of the tower’s collapse, so many . . . battles; what was a year? — battles ago. They had all received wounds since then, but none so serious that they could not stagger to the Sick Bay with the aid of friends.
“They can replace people to stand around and look ugly,” Clodius said. “Wouldn’t be surprised they could replace people to wear blue suits and stick their thumbs up their ass . . . though I dunno, prob’ly they’ve got a different kinda medic on the big ship, a veterinarian I shouldn’t wonder.
“But anyhow, they can’t replace us. Because nobody’s ever been as good as we are.”
Instead of clapping the senior centurion on the shoulder with a boastful echo of his own, Niger smiled oddly — the distortion was not solely a result of swollen tissues — and said, “Falco was there too. I guess they don’t pick up the ones they can’t, you know, help.”
His voice paused for a moment. The scrunch of the trio’s boots, in unison by habit, was the only sound the men made for several seconds. Then Niger resumed, “Mostly it’d bother me, you know, anybody I’d been together with so long. Even ones I don’t rightly know. It’d be like it was —”
“Could’ve been you or me,” said Clodius Afer, who kept his eyes straight ahead.
“Like that, yeah,” the junior centurion agreed. “Only it isn’t, you know? Nothing about that bastard has anything to do with me or anybody I care about. Alive or dead. The vultures around here —” there had been nothing in the local skies save the wagons after the traders landed “—can have what they want of him.”
Vibulenus laughed harshly and said, “As much epitaph as he deserves.” But in his heart he knew that he and Rectinus Falco had been shoots from the same vine, and the way they had twisted was the choice of the gods alone.
From habit, the soldiers began to strip away their gear as soon as they reentered the vessel. The hatch was the same one by which they had disembarked, but now the hall to the Sick Bay lay beyond it instead of the Main Gallery. Like the fact that the sun rose and set — used to rise and set — the internal workings of the ship had ceased to be matters for comment. None of the soldiers — none of the surviving soldiers — had enough philosophical bent to waste energy trying to explain the inexplicable.
The line was moving faster than Vibulenus expected. The aisle was scarcely half full even though the trio of friends had been among the last Romans to drift back to the vessel. Men were piling up their equipment for the ship to process at leisure, then walking on without the usual delay.