If it was not strictly the duty of Gaius Vibulenus Caper to find a place in the front rank of the legion, then it was surely the business of an officer to look after the welfare of his men. It was time to ask the questions that he had been afraid to ask when they were marched aboard the giant vessel or later when they were mustered again in its hold and deployed here — wherever here was.
“Well, come on, dammit!” Clodius Afer snapped to the legionaries. “Get your gear together.”
Niger sighed. He freed his hands by tossing the maybe-bees off in ballistic arcs from which they did not recover until, ten feet away from their captor, they were beyond accurate sight range. They hovered for a moment to get their bearings, then sailed off as copper glints in the air. “I sure wish. . . ,” the legionary murmured as his eyes tracked them. Donning his helmet and lifting his shield by one handle, he followed the others.
Vibulenus checked the blade of the sword he was carrying. He was pleased that he was so alert. Pleased, in fact, that he had not simply forgotten the weapon on the ground where he sprawled. His left arm was beginning to throb in the intervals in which his head did not, but there was no return of the nausea he had felt just after being clubbed down.
The sword was not clean, but what Vibulenus had not wiped off on the grass was at least dry. He sheathed the weapon, swaying a little because his balance did not seem to be everything it should have been.
“They’re picking up bodies,” said Rufus, squinting toward the floating turtle on the opposite side of the valley.
“No it’s not,” insisted his cousin. “Look, you can see there’s bodies still lying there behind it.” He paused before adding, “Maybe it’s the wounded it’s picking up.”
The glance Vibulenus risked to the side told him only what he had expected: that he would fall down if he tried to walk without keeping his eyes straight ahead. He continued forward with thirty-inch marching steps. That stride, ingrained during training, was easier for him to maintain than shorter paces. Every time his left heel struck the ground, jagged lightning flashed in his arm. When his right boot came down, dull thunder echoed from his skull. The muscles of his face bunched tautly about the prominent bones.
“No, it’s taking bodies,” said the file-closer, “some bodies. I saw Crescens of the Fourth Century skewered the same time Vacula bought it.”
And I nearly bought it, interjected the tribune’s mind but not his mouth.
“Vacula’s still lying there,” Clodius continued, “and all the big wogs we chopped are there, but I don’t see Crescens at all.”
“Maybe —” offered Niger.
“And maybe he didn’t crawl off with three foot of spear through his middle,” the file-closer snapped to crush the suggestion even before it had been articulated.
A mobile fountain had halted nearby when a legionary stepped close to it. Now the vehicle was surrounded by thirsty men, baked in their armor by their exertions and the climbing sun. The vehicle was broader than Vibulenus had realized, so that thirty or forty men at a time were able to slurp, dip, or even duck their heads into the water. The fountain continued to dance playfully above them.
“Keep moving,” Clodius Afer gruffly ordered the accompanying legionaries, but he himself angled toward the fountain. He jogged the first steps but quickly fell back to a walk.
Vibulenus noticed that the file-closer was favoring his left leg and felt pleased by the fact in a guilty way. It proved that he hadn’t been the only one who took a battering this morning. Then the tribune remembered Vacula flopping backward with a ragged hole in the middle of his face. He touched two fingers to the bruise on his forehead left when his helmet was hammered off, and his skin flushed with embarrassment that he had felt his own injuries were exceptional.
Clodius doffed his helmet. Vibulenus thought he might plan to use it for a club to get through the soldiers already struggling for water, but the file-closer instead used the edge of his shield to slice his way expertly to the front. There, he dipped the helmet full without ceremony and wrenched his way out of the confusion again to rejoin his companions.