Fools. That’s exactly where they would wind up — at the leisure of a burial party.
The part of the tribune’s mind that came with the body he now inhabited did not understand the army that was tramping down at him. It glittered with metal, each warrior dressed in the trappings of a great chief. But those same warriors moved as a single serried mass, each front-rank champion advanced only a long stride in front of the followers arrayed behind to his right and left.
It was not a wedge formation. It was the edge of a saw sweeping toward Vibulenus.
He strode off his vehicle, heartened by the rumble of the bronze gongs in each of the cars lurching toward the enemy. Now free of the need to stabilize him, his left hand gripped the shield and swung it in front of him. The strap’s friction irritated his neck despite the leather throatlet he wore against that problem, but his muscles made nothing of the shield’s weight. The consciousness that was a Roman tribune remembered that the shields of hide on heavy wooden frames weighed around a hundred pounds apiece.
That same mind also knew the way to break the Roman advance, to smash the legion’s integrity so that the mass of light-armed thralls on the hill behind Vibulenus and the other champions could nibble clots of Romans like nodes of sand in the surf. He opened his mouth to shout orders to his immediate companions, and the rain of javelins washed the words back down his throat.
Vibulenus’ shield was like a section of leathern tower. Its lower rim was only a handbreadth off the ground, but it was tall enough that he could duck his head and broad shoulders to safety without lifting the shield higher. Javelins were the weapon of thralls, a part of him thought, not of warriors who dared challenge —
The javelin that struck the upper edge of his shield buried its point in the frame and did not penetrate. It slapped the shield back against Vibulenus’ skull hard enough to dizzy him for an instant, and one of the three other missiles went far enough through the center of the hide to prick his left biceps.
The second flight was already arching down.
The chariot overturned with a crash behind Vibulenus, throwing sod and bits of broken wheel against his calves. He lunged forward, away from the touch and toward the real threat, the ranks running forward as they drew swords much heavier than the knife in Vibulenus’ sash which he used only to silence the screaming wounded.
The weight of javelins clinging to his shield dragged its edge against the ground and made him stumble. His toes hurt where they stubbed the shield rim, and the javelin hurled by a strong man scratched both his left arm and his chest as its point slammed several inches through the thick leather.
That did not make the body’s consciousness afraid: he was a warrior, a champion who met the best each enemy offered and slew them, knowing that he would be slain in turn some day. But the near escape made him respectful of missiles that were more than the stone-weighted ox-goads his own thralls hurled.
“Lock shields!” the tribune’s mind ordered through the warrior’s lips. Normally, champions would duel before the weight of reinforcements to both sides made the engagement a general one of armies and shield walls. But this was not a normal battle. . . .
Oxen bellowed in terror as three of them dragged the overturned chariot and the yoke-mate which was interested only in biting off the javelin that quivered in its haunch. The warrior who had stepped off with Vibulenus was still all right, though a javelin with a bent shaft dangled from his shield face also.
The pair who had jumped from the chariot a moment earlier had been off balance when the missiles struck. One was down his face, a javelin at belt height beneath him and three more fanning from his back which he had turned in staggering away from the first. The remaining warrior was upright, but only because he leaned on his grounded shield to take the weight off the right thigh from which a javelin protruded.