The trading guild understood that sort of demonstration.
Vesta, hearth and hope; bring us home again!
Vibulenus strode again through the kneeling ranks. He paused only for a moment to grip Niger’s hand, though neither of the childhood friends spoke. The fragrance of the sprawling local vegetation accompanied the tribune and calmed him somewhat. Now that he was thinking again as an individual, he was terrified by what he had done . . . but there was no going back.
And anyway, he had been right. Execution by the Commander could leave him no more dead than disaster in battle would. He had seen enough of the guild’s philosophy by now to realize that it would make no attempt to recover and revivify those who had failed it, whatever excuses the dead might have been able to claim.
“Awaiting further orders, sir,” said Clodius Afer in a voice so neutral that it was disquieting.
Gaius Vibulenus had to remember that the actions he took affected hundreds, thousands, of other men; even after he was thinking again as a fearful individual and not the tribune — more than tribune — who had given the orders. “Either,” he said in a voice that steadied after the first syllables, “we’ll have some help over here soonest, or we march back to the ship and discuss matters at leisure.”
Or you watch me burned to charcoal and a puddle of bronze, his fear added silently.
The tribune looked toward the enemy whom he had ignored through the minutes since they ceased to be the primary threat. The Romans’ actions and lack thereof appeared to have confused the hostile chieftains as well. The signallers had drifted to a halt, midway across the gap that had separated the two armies. All but one of the bull-roarers were silent, the wielders leaning on their staves, panting with the exertion they had undergone. Individually, the figures seemed to be tall and gangling, with skins whose color approached bright orange.
And gods! there were hordes of them.
“Maybe,” Vibulenus said to himself aloud, “he can shift a cohort from the right to give us some depth. Six ranks isn’t enough, not on this flank.”
“They want us to come out,” said the pilus prior with a nod toward the hesitating foe. “They aren’t used to this.”
“That was what happened the first time,” said the tribune, voicing a train of thought wholly inappropriate at the present time. “The, you know, the first battle we fought for this guild? Those big fellas with the carts, they expected to fight a civilized little battle. Then the loser’d withdraw behind the screen of light troops and everybody’d go home.”
“I’m not looking forward to this neither,” said the centurion; and when Vibulenus processed the words, he too understood why he had been babbling about the distant past. He had survived that past.
There was a stir around the command group. Eight or ten — ten, half the contingent — of the Commander’s bodyguards suddenly rode toward the left flank at a shambling trot. They sat their mounts ably enough with no squirming or slipping in their saddles, but because of their size and featureless armor they looked more like howdahs than riders.
They carried their maces upright, waving ten feet above the saddles like papyrus stalks when wind sweeps up the Nile.
All the warmth and strength drained out of the tribune’s body. His clammy fingers touched the hilt of his sword, wondering whether to defend himself with the weapon or fall on it . . . and whether the guild would revivify him for punishment if he tried to forestall them by suicide.
Clodius Afer had remained standing when he ordered his troops to kneel. Now, looking over their heads toward the armored riders, he said in a raspy, carrying voice, “Boys, it may be there’ll be a little trouble in a moment. If we put our spears up the belly of those overgrown dogs from below, then we can take care of the prettyboys ridin’ ’em in our own good time.”
“I don’t want —” Vibulenus started to say before it struck him that he couldn’t keep these men from trying to defend him — and that he didn’t want to call them off anyway. They’d been together for a long time, he and the legion. Maybe this wouldn’t be the worst way for it to end.