The flying chariot settled majestically onto the space left open for it beside the gate. Froggie felt the hair on the back of his arms rise as it always did when the machines landed or took off nearby. This was a big example of the breed. It carried the Commander and his driver; two of the Commander’s huge, mace-wielding toad bodyguards; Pollio, the legion’s trumpeter; and five of the male barbs who’d joined the Commander’s entourage almost from the moment he’d strode into the palace still splashed with the orange blood of the barb king.
The top barb aide was named Three-Spire. Froggie had seen him before and would’ve been just as happy never to see him again.
The troopers clashed to attention. Froggie crossed his right arm over his cuirass in salute, sharply enough to make the hoops clatter.
“Sir!” he boomed. “Third Century of the Fourth Cohort, all present or accounted for!”
The Commander stood up, though he didn’t bother to get out of his chariot. The barbs sharing the vehicle with him—all this Commander’s aides were barbs, the first time Froggie remembered that happening—continued to talk among themselves.
“Very good, warrior,” the Commander said. He wore a thin, tight suit that might have almost have been blue skin, but his face was pale behind the enclosing bubble of a helmet. His garb was protection of some sort, but he wouldn’t need the huge bodyguards if he didn’t fear weapons. “Don’t let sloth degrade your unit while you’re on this assignment. No doubt my Guild will have fighting for you in the future.”
Even without using the chariot for a reviewing stand, the Commander would be taller than any trooper in the legion. Back in the days before Crassus, though, Froggie had seen Gauls who were even taller, as well as heavier-bodied than the blue-suited race.
The Commander turned to Slats and spoke again; this time the words that came from the lavaliere around the Commander’s neck sounded like the squeak of twisted sinews: they were in Slats’ language, not Latin or any other human tongue. The administrator spread his six limbs wide and waggled submissively, miming a bug flipped on its back.
Fixing Froggie with a pop-eyed glare that was probably meant to be stern—language could be translated; expressions couldn’t—the Commander resumed, “Obey the orders of the administrator I’ve provided you with as though his orders were mine. You have your duty.”
Three-Spire said something to the Commander. The barb wore one of the little translator plates and must have spoken in the Commander’s own language, instead of speaking barb and letting the Commander’s device translate it.
The Commander flicked his left arm to the side in his equivalent of a nod. “I’ll be checking up on you,” he added to Froggie. “Remember that!”
“Yes, sir!” Froggie boomed, his face impassive. “The Third of the Fourth never shirks its duty!”
Three-Spire looked at the girls with dawning comprehension; his topknot bristled with anger, bringing its three peaks into greater prominence. “You! Warrior!” he said. “Where’s the leader of these females?”
“Hey, Queenie!” Froggie said—in Latin. He could’ve called the chief girl in a passable equivalent of her own language, but he didn’t think it was the time or place to show off. The troopers didn’t have lavalieres to translate for them, but they’d had a lot of experience getting ideas across to barbs. Especially female barbs.
Queenie obediently stepped forward, but Froggie could see that she was worried. Well, so was he.
“No, not a female!” Three-Spire said. The lavaliere wouldn’t translate a snarl, but it wasn’t hard to figure there should’ve been one. “I mean the male who’s leading this contingent!”
The Commander looked from Queenie to his aide, apparently puzzled. He didn’t slap Three-Spire down the way Froggie expected. Hercules! Froggie remembered one Commander who’d had his guards smash a centurion to a pulp for saying the ground of the chosen campsite was too soft to support tent poles. The legion had slept on its tents that night, because spread like tarpaulins the thick leather walls supported the troopers enough that they didn’t sink into the muck in the constant rain.
“We take care of that ourself, citizen,” Froggie said, more polite than he wanted to be. Something funny was going on here, and Froggie’d learned his first day in the army that you usually win if you bet “unusual” meant “bad.”