“That’s not permitted!” Three-Spire said. “Sawtooth here will accompany you.”
He spoke to the barb beside him, then opened a bin that was part of the chariot and handed the fellow a lavaliere from it. Sawtooth walked toward the girls clustered around the carts. He didn’t look any too pleased about the assignment.
“What’s this barb mean `not permitted’?” Glabrio said in a ragged whisper. “If he don’t watch his tongue, he’s going to lose it!”
“Take your own advice,” Froggie said out of the side of his mouth. Loudly, facing the Commander, he said, “Yes, sir!” and saluted again. “Century, form marching order and await the command!”
The Commander blinked inner eyelids that worked sideways the way a snake’s do. He spoke to Pollio, who obediently stood and raised his trumpet.
“You’re going to take this from a barb?” Glabrio demanded.
Pollio blew the long attention call, then the three quick toots for Advance. He looked past the tube of his instrument at his fellow troopers, his eyes troubled.
“March!” Froggie called. The century was too small a unit to have a proper standard to tilt forward, so Froggie swept his swagger stick toward the open gateway instead. To Glabrio, in a voice that could scarcely be heard over the crash of boots and equipment, he added, “For a while, sure. Look what Crassus bought by getting hasty, trooper.”
* * *
Before his Third Squad was out of the gate, Froggie heard the chariot lift with a frying-bacon sizzle. A moment later he saw it fly over the palisade, heading for the next gate south where the Fifth of the Fourth waited to escort another administrator out into the sticks. Pollio looked down at the troops; none of the others aboard the vehicle bothered to.
Froggie stepped out of line, letting Lucky Castus of the first squad lead. Sunlight winked on the battle monument which the legion had set up outside the main gate of the Harbor: a pillar of rough-cut stonework, with captured armor set in niches around it and a barb war chariot filled with royal standards on top.
The barbs used brass rather than bronze for their helmets and the facings of their wicker shields. Polished brass shone like an array of gold, but verdigris had turned this equipment to poisonous green in the three months since the battle.
A lot of things had gone bad in the past three months. Froggie’d be glad to get out of this place. If it could be done alive.
The girls came through the gate, pushing the carts. Froggie’d heard Sawtooth shouting, “March! March! March!” for as long as the Commander’s chariot was visible, but the barb was silent now.
Queenie saw Froggie watching. She twitched the point of her shoulder in Sawtooth’s direction. Froggie smiled and moved his open hand in a short arc as though he were smoothing dirt.
That was a barb gesture. For men with damage to the spine or brain that even the Commanders’ machines couldn’t repair, the legion continued the Roman practice of cremating corpses. The barbs here buried their dead in the ground.
Slats came through the gate after the last cart, swinging in his palanquin. His four girls handled the weight all right, but they didn’t seem to have much sparkle. Well, that’d change when they started eating army rations along with the century’s girls.
As soon as Slats saw Froggie, he desperately beckoned the Roman to him. Froggie didn’t care for anybody calling him like a dog, but there wasn’t much option this time. As clumsy as Slats was, he’d probably break his neck if he tried to climb out of the palanquin hastily. Froggie sauntered over and walked beside the vehicle. That wasn’t hard; the carts were setting the pace.
“Centurion Vibius,” the administrator said, “I’m pleased to see you. I have studied your record. There is no unit whose escort on this expedition I would prefer to yours.”
Froggie thought about that for a moment. You’d rarely go wrong to assume whatever your officers told you was a lie . . . but Slats wasn’t exactly an officer. Also, Froggie’d gotten the impression back when Slats was billeting officer that his race of bugs couldn’t tell lies any better than they could fly.