The legion’s depth was almost no distance at all to the strides of an angry man. That fact penetrated, and it formed a blazing backdrop to the tribune’s icy resolve.
A trumpet from the command group gave the preliminary advance signal with a long clear note.
“Kneel!” ordered the centurions of the Tenth Cohort. The rank and file legionaries dropped as though the trumpet had made the ground settle beneath them.
That would make the Commander sit up and take notice, thought the tribune with satisfaction as he stepped through the sixth rank and into sight of the command group — to the rear, as always.
Behind him, the enemy was beginning to chant in unison with the pulses of the bull-roarers.
Vibulenus started to jog toward the command group, almost as far away from him as the enemy lines had been. The bodyguards oiled their armor but did not polish it, so they sat on their powerful mounts like dark lumps which turned to watch the tribune with the inanimate fascination of toads.
About and beyond them glittered the legion’s silver eagle standard and the silvered bronze trumpet and horn, all carried by Romans on foot. The signallers were lowering their instruments and looking toward Vibulenus — more accurately, looking at the cohort kneeling on the flank which had caused the Commander to delay the concentus of all horns and trumpets to order the attack.
There was one figure more, a Roman in gilded helmet and breastplate who spurred his mount so savagely toward Vibulenus that pebbles spurned by the beast’s pads rattled on the armor of the guards and their own mounts. The Commander had sent Lucius Rectinus Falco to learn what was wrong with the left flank.
And by Hercules, he would learn.
The carnivore that Falco rode had a pace something like that of a horse cantering, but when the clawed forepaws reached out, the creature bowed its chest so that it nearly scraped the ground. The motion by which the beast recovered, arching its back, would have pitched off any but the most expert of riders — and Falco was that, give the little swine his due.
The Commander and the toad-things of his bodyguard supported their feet in steel loops slung from their saddles — stirrups — which made an amazing difference in ease of riding at anything above a fast walk. Falco disdained them, continuing to ride Roman fashion with only the pressure of his bent legs on the beast’s heaving flanks to keep him astride. Thus mounted, he rode with a verve that the guards were too heavy to equal and the Commander — all the commanders — had too much caution to attempt.
Vibulenus halted. If a messenger were coming, he had no reason to run himself into heatstroke while his equipment pummeled him. Some of the rear-rank legionaries turned to check furtively on what was happening behind them.
The carnivore closed the gap with astonishing speed. It was ridden on a hackamore that left its jaws free to rend from eye-teeth to shearing molars, and the lips were already slavering. Though of rangy build, the beast must have weighed over two thousand pounds even without the added mass of its draperies of scale armor. The tribune was not conscious of being afraid, but by instinct his left arm swung the shield so that the blazon of triple thunderbolts on its face was squarely toward Falco.
The hind claws of that cursed brute flung gravel as much as twenty feet in the air when they scrabbled for purchase.
Falco realized at the last moment that he was going too fast to skid to a halt directly in front of his rival. He tugged the reins and his mount’s head to the left at the same time he pulled back with enough strength to mottle his knuckles with the effort. The pebbles that he had intended to spray across Vibulenus rattled instead on the backs and helmets of the soldiers of the rear rank as the messenger skidded to a halt.
One of the men, a centurion by the transverse crest, leaped to his feet while the mounted tribune was still trying to bring his carnivore under proper control. The non-com — Pompilius Niger, by Pollux! Of course, Niger had the Fourth Century now — thrust at the beast’s snarling jaws with his shield boss, making the creature start and very nearly upsetting the rider for all his skill.