“Roma!” Vibulenus shouted as he ducked under the thrust of a long spear.
His round shield hooked aside a tower-tall one shaped like a figure eight, and his sword of Spanish steel punched upward under a rib cage. There was a crisp popping feeling as things parted under the sharp point and edge. Behind him Clodius Afer punched a native in the face with the boss of his shield, slid nine inches of sword in under a raised arm. The scrimmage was over in seconds; Vibulenus’s sword was still making small stabbing motions in the air as he pivoted and looked for another opponent. The forward ranks of the Tenth Cohort spread out to cover the section of wall the enemy had swarmed; cutting the leather cords attached to the grappling hooks sunk in the rampart, pushing ladders over, throwing pila down into the crowded mass in the ditch below. They followed that with showers of one-pound stones still piled ready for use, and iron-shod stakes the auxiliaries’ smiths had run up.
“Determined bunch,” Vibulenus wheezed, letting his shield-arm drop. His bronze corselet squeezed at his ribs, and his mouth was dry and gummy. Somewhere he’d picked up a shallow slash over his left knee that he hadn’t noticed until now, and it hurt like Hades himself was retracing it with a red-hot knife.
“They’re running!” someone shouted.
Vibulenus pushed himself to the rampart. They were—and the fire from the towers was taking them in the back, now.
“Well, that’s that,” he said dully. Now we wait a day or two until the ones in the fort surrender, and then we get back on the ship, and in a few weeks we all go to sleep and wake up for another fucking campaign.
Clodius Afer held out a helmet full of water. “Here, sir,” he said, with a quirking smile.
“Thanks,” Vibulenus said. Hercules, how many campaigns ago was it that he gave me that drink, the first time, those eight-foot-tall bastards with the carts?
They weren’t quite in the same position as that poor bastard in the old story, the one condemned to roll a boulder up a slope for all eternity and have it slip right down again. He’d been alone. If you were going to be in hell, at least it helped to have some good friends along.
He took the helmet and drank, then upended it over his own head and almost groaned at the feeling of cold water trickling down under his armor into the sweat-sodden tunic and overheated flesh.
“Heads up,” Afer said tonelessly.
The Commander was coming, walking along with his giant iron-armored toad-guards. It was a little cramped here for their huge hyena-mounts; of course, this was also a bit closer to the sharp end than Commanders usually came. Tired Romans snapped erect and into their ranks, stepping back for the bubble of space that Commanders always required . . . and the spiked maces of their guards enforced.
The blue-suited figure walked forward, over and among the piled enemy dead. “Congratulations, Gaius Vibulenus Caper,” the too-perfect voice said. “Once again, you brave warriors have prevailed over great odds.”
The triangular face of the Commander swung forward to peer over the parapet. “Very great odds. In fact—”
Clodius Afer was as rigid beside the tribune as a statue cast from bronze. Vibulenus knew why, because his mind was as rigid with the need to control a sudden vision of two swords meeting together in the middle of the inhuman body, scissoring back to leave the torso split nearly in half, whatever the Commander used for guts spilling out on the enemy dead and the soaked dirt. . . . No. Better to go for the skull; two steps forward and he could put the edge right through the thing’s temple, right to the central ridge of the blade—
Which neither of them was going to do. Because the guards might well smash them down before their swords were well drawn; the toad-things were fast, not just inhumanly strong. Because unless they managed to get the brain or spine, the Commander would be revived just as mostly dead legionaries were. Because although trading their own lives for that of the Commander might be, would be perfectly acceptable, the legion would still be there, exposed to the Guild’s vengeance and without centurion and tribune.