Vibulenus screamed. Even after he leaped from the couch in the Recreation Room, he could feel his hand tingle with the bones crunching in his own image’s forehead.
Pompilius Niger wrapped his strong arms around the tribune’s chest and shouted through the bleats of revulsion, “Sir! Sir! You’re here again!”
Vibulemis let his body sag against his friend while he mastered the terror and fury of his mind. There were staring faces all around him, but the expression of their own emotions had blended into a general concern for the tribune.
For their leader.
“So that’s what the bastards’ve thought of us all along, said Clodius Afer in a harsh, deadly whisper. Both he and Niger must have lifted their heads back into reality as soon as they understood the incident around which the Recreation Room had woven its current game. “Like dancing bears . . . or frogs!”
The disgust in his voice reminded Vibulenus of how much his friend hated smooth-skinned amphibians. Certainly there was something in the current revelation about the Rec Room — and about the legion’s status — to horrify and enflame every Roman aboard the vessel.
And it was the duty of Gaius Vibulenus Caper, military tribune by the whim of Crassus and leader of the men around him by the will of the gods, to keep that flaming anger from exploding in a suicidal fashion.
Calm again, so frigidly controlled that his mind did not notice the way his right hand — spear hand — was quivering, Vibulenus used Pompilius Niger for a not-wholly-needful brace as he stepped up onto the couch on which he had recently lain. Rusticanus said something, but the tribune ignored the words. He already had enough information to deal with the immediate situation, and this was not the time for long-term planning.
But by Jove and the Styx, the guild would pay: for this, and for everything.
“Fellow soldiers!” shouted Vibulenus, words that he and no creature in a blue suit had a right to speak. “You will not raise your voices, you will not attempt to damage the ship or the crewmen or your fellow soldiers because of your distress at what you’ve seen here.”
The snarling response from the faces lifted toward him was unplanned, instinctive.
Vibulenus raised his arms with his fingers spread in a gesture of forcing back the anger by sheer dint of personality. The men quieted, his men.
“You brought me here to see this,” the tribune cried into the feral silence, “and I have seen. Now, leave the matter in my hands.”
He could feel the hatred boiling in the domed room, even without the growls and the anguished voice nearby which called, “No! We gotta kill the bastards!”
Vibulenus chopped his arms sideways and back, stilling the tumult again. “I give you my word,” he said in a voice as clear as light dancing from the edge of his Spanish sword, “as a Roman, and as the man who fought at your head on more fields than any of us can remember . . . this will not pass unchallenged.
“I swear it to you. I swear it to you.”
He waited a moment, then dropped his arms. The sounds that exploded into the room where no less bloodthirsty than those of moments before — but these were cheers.
The tribune was shaking with reaction, but the injuries and malaise he had brought from the battlefield were gone. He had thought slaughter was the only thing that could take him wholly out of himself, but he had been wrong.
He stepped down.
“What do you want us to do, sir?” demanded Rusticanus in a husky voice while Niger, wrapping the tribune again in an arm, babbled excitedly, “What’re you going to do, Gaius?”
Vibulenus looked from one man to the other, taking in the way other soldiers were pressing toward him from all sides with hopes, advice, and congratulations on their lips.
Clodius Afer grinned sardonically, but it was his back and spread arms which provided the tribune with breathing space.
“Out,” Vibulenus said, nodding toward the nearest doorway because he knew his voice might not be audible in the commotion.