“What?” Falco bleated as his mount pawed halfheartedly at the shield and Niger cocked a javelin to stab for an eye if things went further.
“Falco!” Vibulenus shouted, stepping forward to seize the other tribune’s right knee and deflect his attention back to where it should be. Niger ought to have had enough discipline to ignore being pelted with rocks . . . but they were, all of them, keyed up, waiting for slaughter and wondering whose it would be. “Centurion, back to your duties!”
“Vibulenus,” said Falco as he slapped the hand away from his knee, “the Commander will burn you to death by inches. Why have these fools squatted down in the very face of the enemy?”
His voice was husky with emotion and the effort of controlling his mount.
“Lucius Falco,” said the tribune standing, “tell our commander that if we engage like this, they’ll be all around us. We can’t win if we’re being pressed from three sides.”
The effluvium of warm dead meat bathed the carnivore, rolling from under the blankets of armor covering the beast. Its breathing slowed from the quick gasping of the first moments after its run. During each of the intakes that filled the creature’s great lungs, the whirr of the slotted disk on its chest picked up to a racing whine.
“You don’t decide tactics, tribune,” sneered the tribune in gilded armor, his leg moving up and down with the rise and fall of his mount’s chest, “And you don’t give orders.”
“Falco, listen to me,” said Vibulenus in the high carrying voice that compelled attention. “Tell our commander that we’ll fight for him, but we won’t let him throw us away. We went that route once, with Crassus.”
He paused as arrows in his mind shot toward him from all sides, but memories of Parthia no longer froze the tall tribune. He continued, “If he doesn’t get us cavalry to close our flank, or at least some auxiliary infantry —” he realized now what the Commander had been hinting about the failure of preparations “—then we form a square and march back to the ship. Otherwise we’ll be killed for nothing.”
Clodius and the Tenth Cohort would follow him, even in the likelihood that they would find sealed hatches and perhaps lasers when they reached the ship. Would the rest of the legion march with him also? Possibly; very possibly. He had led them before, taking the only position from which men could really be led — one step in front of them.
“I thought you were a hero, little Gaius,” said Falco, and the bitterness of truth was so clear in his voice that it overwhelmed the sarcasm he had intended. “Are you afraid to die after all?”
Nothing could disturb the calm of leadership that enveloped Gaius Vibulenus at this moment. There was no room for anger, no room for personalities; no room for anything but what conduced to the result of getting support for their flank.
“Afraid to get my skull split, you mean, Lucius?” Vibulenus asked as his right hand moved. “I don’t know. Are you?”
Falco looked at where his rival’s hand now rested, and looked at the millennia-old eyes in Vibulenus’ eighteen-year-old face. “You’ll pay for this, you arrogant bastard,” the rider whispered with all the venom that his fear let pass.
“Tell him, Falco,” said Vibulenus steadily. “Tell him we need something to keep them off our flank and rear while we grind through their front.”
Falco jerked his mount’s head left and kicked the beast’s haunch to tighten the turn. Its iron-scaled hindquarters brushed Vibulenus’ shield as the creature broke into a racking trot, then its canter, as the rider goaded it back toward the command group.
“Thank you, sir,” said somebody.
Vibulenus shuddered and took his hand away from his sword. He had been gripping the bone hilt so fiercely that the muscles ached all the way up his forearm. Not in anger. If he had chopped Falco down, hacked through the helmet and skull until the Spanish steel of his blade was nicked by his rival’s sneering teeth, then it would have been done coolly to demonstrate to the Commander how serious was the demand for support.