There was a three-inch band of paint or discoloration, bright Pompeian red, around the thigh, but there was no sign of the wound which had gaped to splintered yellow bone. Caprasius stumbled and fell sideways when muscles caught in a way he had not expected, but he was rolling again to his feet before his friends could help him.
“Hades,” he repeated, grinning like a man reaching the head of a prostitute’s queue. “It works, by Hercules, it fuckin’ works.”
Others of the soldiers leaving the booths also bore patches of red. They looked like wounds, but in fact the stained areas had borne fresh wounds — and did so no longer. A Sextus Julius — one of several in the legion, a First Cohort non-com, Vibulenus believed — was massaging his scalp as he walked along. Half of it was hairless and colored deep red; but when he had entered a cubicle, his skull was partly exposed and the flap of skin he tried to hold in place included the ear on that side.
“Will you bleeding come on?” the Medic pleaded. “Next lot, move it!”
“Move,” boomed one of the armored toads acting as proctors, reaching out with his long-handled mace. The four Romans at the head of the line moved with more or less haste, away from the spiked knob rather than toward the cubicles.
Nothing to be afraid of, Gaius Vibulenus lied silently as he hopped forward. Then he said aloud, “Nothing to be afraid of, men,” turning his head toward Clodius Afer who was walking stiffly beside him.
Oddly enough, that worked. The young tribune strode firmly within the cubicle nearest the seated Medic. Acting like an officer to others made it easier to act like a man within yourself — even though you knew you were a coward and you were so frightened that your eyes didn’t focus as you stepped close to the back wall of the booth and the door began to shut.
“Just get bleeding in, will —” the Medic whined to someone else, the words amputated by the door sealing.
The legionaries had stripped under direction of the Commander’s guards in the long hallway stretching from the vessel’s entrance to this room and the Medic. No one seemed to care about the cohort or rank of the men being ordered into groups of four: those who straggled back to the vessel first had run through this process hours before, and there were still a thousand or more soldiers behind the tribune and his immediate companions.
A blood-warm mist of water with an astringent odor sprayed Vibulenus from all directions. He jumped, but the spray at once relaxed the throbbing veins of his head. As the temperature rose, his left arm began to lose some of its sharp stiffness as well.
Vibulenus’ right hand unclenched. The booming guards had insisted that the Romans pile every scrap of clothing and equipment against the wall of the broad hallway, saying that every man’s belongings would be returned at the proper time.
That was unimaginable, but probably true: when they mustered in the Main Gallery before marching out against the feathered warriors, Vibulenus had been issued the sword his father bought for him — lost irretrievably to some Parthian, he would have guessed. That sword, the only relic of his previous life, would have felt good in his hand as he stepped into the cubicle.
The water felt better. The booth had a diffuse light source, so he could see the grime and scabbed blood wash away from his body. Something else was happening as well, or perhaps the heat was affecting him after the wounds and — when he had eaten last?
The light was pulsing with his heartbeat. Instead of becoming dizzy, he was weak — too weak to stand, but the solid walls of the booth extended limbs to grip his body in a dozen places. His stomach lurched momentarily, but though the spasm passed it was followed by the surge of well-being that usually followed vomiting during delirium.
Vibulenus would have screamed, but he didn’t have that much control of his muscles any more. He was no longer conscious of the water spray, but his scalp and left biceps felt so hot that there was no discomfort. He was wax, melting into oblivion and glad of the fact.