His cousin reached for the tribune’s head with thumb and forefinger extended, saying, “Well, these men we’re fighting. They don’t look like —”
What Vibulenus hoped was the last of the insects escaped ahead of Rufus’ fingers, its wings beating what seemed to be an angry note. Perhaps he was projecting his own irritation onto the wasp.
“That’s what I mean, don’t you see?” explained Niger, gesturing with both trapped insects like a priest conducting some sort of bizarre rite. “Things don’t look like what we’re used to in this part of Parthia —”
Vibulenus glanced sharply at Clodius, but the file-closer appeared to have heard nothing to which he would take exception.
“—so maybe these’re bees, not wasps, and I can make mead, honey-wine, if I can find their hive,” the legionary finished triumphantly.
His cousin grimaced, then said apologetically to the tribune, “Niger’s been fancying his chances to make mead ever since we boarded ship at Brundisium.”
“Well, what are the damned things doing on his excellency?” demanded the file-closer. The respect in his words was mostly formal, because as he spoke he unceremoniously squeezed at the edges of the pressure cut on Vibulenus’ scalp to determine its severity. Clodius’ touch syncopated the measured beat of the pain in the tribune’s head, but it did not make it worse.
“Well, we always helped Daddy make it,” Niger said defensively, “and I just thought as it’d make things, you know, more like home.”
“There’s something sweet. . . ,” Rufus said, touching the right side of Vibulenus’ scalp gently and bringing his fingertip back to sniff, then tongue. “Don’t think it’s honey.”
He, his cousin, and even Clodius Afer reached out simultaneously to continue the examination. Vibulenus, feeling like a common serving dish at a banquet, lurched upright and this time gained his feet with only a momentary spell of dizziness.
“Pollux!” he muttered as he swayed, the others rising also with expressions of concern both for his condition and the way that they, also detached from routine by the events of the morning, had been treating an officer.
“I’m going to go over there,” Vibulenus said with careful distinctness, pointing toward the command group which had at last reached the enemy camp, “and demand to know why there are no water bearers.”
“All right. . . ,” said the file-closer. He bent to pick up his helmet and shield. The vermilioned leather face of the latter had been gouged in a score of places, and a flint point had been driven deep enough into the plywood to cling there even after the shaft was broken off. “You two,” he ordered the Pompilii. “Pick up your gear and come along. We’re going to escort his excellency.”
“There’s water, sir,” said Niger, pointing in a gesture distorted by the fact that he still held an insect.
At first the tribune thought Niger meant the gigantic turtle which floated down the line of first contact, moving toward the left flank. The device was particularly evident at the moment Vibulenus glanced back because it was lifting five or six feet in the air to clear the wreckage of two war cars, one run up on the other when javelins killed the drivers of both.
But besides the larger device, there were a dozen or more smaller scurrying constructs, coursing up the slope toward the victorious legion. A fountain on the back of each bubbled high enough to dazzle in the sun. The vehicles were each the size of an ox, small only by contrast with the metallic turtle. They moved at a respectable pace, faster than a man marching, but their jets of water were angled so that they fell back onto the vehicles instead of being wasted on the ground.
“I’m still going to see the Commander,” said Vibulenus abruptly. He was not sure whether the decision was the result of reason or because he was dazed and as dangerously monomaniacal as he had been when he returned to the front of the battle without his shield or helmet.
What the young tribune did know was that he had been driven by fear ever since he met the Parthians as a member of Crassus’ army, and the rain of arrows from those horsemen had continued for an afternoon that seemed eternity. The battle this morning had shown him that there was something in the world to strive for besides freedom from fear: there was success, in terms however limited; and there was the respect of men who were now his fellows, because he had been their fellow when the chips were down.
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