“Gaius —”Semo began as both men threw their hands up a fraction of a second after they had stopped short of one another.
Semo’s tunic bore the broad stripe of a senatorial family. He had been the legion’s ranking tribune in Parthia, and in a way he still was — though here it only meant that he and Falco were the Romans usually in the Commander’s entourage rather than roving among the line troops.
For all his heredity, Semo remained a plump, pleasant fellow who looked and acted more like a well-bred freedman than a mover and shaker of the Empire. The two men had always gotten along well together; it was without hesitation that Vibulenus said, “Decimus, do you chance to know where the centurion I was, you know, in the gallery with —”
“I have to. . . .”the other tribune blurted. He turned on his heel and strode away from Vibulenus with his legs moving more crisply than they had ever managed during training.
Vibulenus blinked, looking at the man almost running from him. Then he noticed his own hands, stained, and raised them to touch his face. The skin everywhere he touched himself had the tenderness of having been scraped too hard in the baths.
Everyone knew he was dead; they could not look at him and doubt it. Men were shying from him with the wordless distaste with which they would have stepped around a pile of feces in the roadway.
Vibulenus swayed for a moment. Physically, he was as weak as if he were between bouts of relapsing fever. The mental control that kept him upright lapsed. If he looked around him, he saw the faces of those who refused to see him; if he closed his eyes, he would fall as he might fall in any event.
On the corridor ceiling ambled beads of light, cool and pure and non-judgmental as they guided Romans. “Direct me to the centurion Gnaeus Clodius Afer,” the tribune demanded so loudly that several men glanced at him in surprise.
“He is in the Recreation Room,” said the ship in the Commander’s voice — or perhaps the Commander spoke only through the vessel. “Please follow the —” a pause “—yellow dot,” which popped into existence so sharply demarcated that the tribune’s ears supplied an accompanying chime which did not really occur.
Head high, back straight, Gaius Vibulenus strode off to find the man he hoped was still his friend.
* * *
The chance that brought Clodius out the portal of the Recreation Room was so unexpected that he recognized Vibulenus instead of the other way around. Of course, the tribune had been walking in open-eyed blankness in order not to take any details of expression on the faces of those with whom he shared the corridors.
The centurion was in animated conversation with two of the legionaries who had been in the assault force, Pompilius Niger and a file-closer named Helvius. He raised both his hands in a gesture, looked past them, and said, “W — Gaius! By Castor, you did fuckin’ make it!”
The cry shocked Vibulenus and the two other legionaries. Helvius looked up and muttered a curse, while Niger only froze.
“I was. . . .” said Vibulenus.
Clodius caught his companions, one in either hand, and rasped in an undertone through his broad grin, “He saved your butts, boys.” He stepped toward the tribune. When Helvius tried to resist the pull, his biceps went white at the fringes of the centurion’s ferocious grip on his arm.
“Hello, sir,” said Niger with the hopeful stiffness of a pupil who fears his response may have been the wrong one and thus bring him a beating.
“I was hoping I’d be able to find you —” said Vibulenus.
A large party of soldiers jostled their way down the corridor. They pushed past the tribune without remark or reaction because he was part of a group instead of a lone outsider.
“Hoped you’d catch me up on things,” Vibulenus concluded.
Clodius released his companions, took a step closer, and threw his arms around Vibulenus. The centurion’s ox-like strength was all, despite his good intentions, that kept him from springing away from the tribune at the instant of contact.