“He’s been wanting to get away for a long time,” Niger interjected. “He even said it to you, sir. He didn’t think it was leading anywhere.”
“Did he figure he was going to be consul if we got back home, then?” Vibulenus snapped.
His anger was always close to the surface now. Here it had the advantage of sending a surge of warmth through his shaking limbs. The willowy shrubs fringing the creek had been trampled flat or leafless during the fighting. Their bare silhouettes marked but did not block the huge sun which was bloating into a red oval on the horizon.
“If we were home,” the tribune said, arguing with himself rather than his listeners or even his memory of Decimus Helvius, “he’d have died on campaign, or on a farm. Now, well, there’s fewer choices but the payoff doesn’t have to be anytime soon.” He looked up from the hands he had clenched in front of him.
“He could have raised sons,” said Clodius simply.
“Well, he can’t fucking do that here either, can he?” the tribune blazed. “If we ever get back somewhere I recognize or somebody recognizes, then we’ll talk about ransom or maybe even running. But not here.”
The stars above them as they bivouacked in the sinkhole the night before had proved to anyone who cared to understand that they were very far from home indeed.
The battle had gone according to the Commander’s desires and perhaps even his plan — though probably not. The hostile force had marched straight toward the sinkhole, apparently intending to laager a camp there, instead of arraying themselves against the nine cohorts which were counterfeiting the entire legion.
That wasn’t by plan either: the enemy was moving in utter ignorance. Their scouting was quite as abysmal as that which led Crassus’ army, and so many Roman armies before his, into disaster. Though Vibulenus had lived through a major intelligence failure, it was not until he became used to working for the guild that he realized how valuable knowledge of hostile dispositions could be.
That didn’t help when you were in command of four hundred men, and almost ten thousand heavily-armed opponents were headed for you.
“I thought I saw Helvius during the fighting, though,” the tribune said in puzzlement. He fingered his dripping scalp and remembered that he needed to pick up his helmet, tossed to the stream edge when he decided to duck himself. No need to look for his shield: it had been literally hacked to splinters by the swords and axes of the enemy.
“Oh, he wouldn’t desert us,” said Niger in real surprise. “Nor Grumio and Augens neither. But afterwards, I saw them jogging back toward the sinkhole and I knew what that meant.” He paused, then added, “I was looking for bees, you know.”
“That’s who the others are, then?” Vibulenus asked struggling with the pin under his right shoulder that would unlatch his body armor. It caught with an inch or more still within the interlocked tubes of the breast and back plates. “Grumio and Augens? And you think they’ll try to hide in the cave in the end of the sinkhole.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” said Clodius.
“Here, I’ll get it,” said Niger, reaching for the recalcitrant pin with short, strong fingers. His hands and forearms were drenched with alien blood that fell deeper into orange and red as it dried and scaled away.
“Leave it,” said Vibulenus, batting away his friend’s hand when he had meant only to block it with his own. “Let’s go find the cursed fools before the crew decides it has to.”
The little Summoners with blue beacons atop were beginning to drift over the field, calling men back to the ship. There would be no immediate alarm, but the sight was enough to spur the trio back in the direction from which they had marched that morning in battle order. Vibulenus’ legs were weary, but his arms were so weak that they flopped like wooden carvings unless he made a conscious effort to control them.
The enemy’s course had eliminated any chance of striking their army from the rear while they were heavily engaged with the rest of the legion. To cower in the sinkhole would have meant massacre by missiles hurled down unanswerably from the rim.