Slats mimed submission. “I do not know,” he repeated to Glabrio, “but I do not think the others have been attacked. Our rivals planned to wait for another ten days, when they would have been ready to capture the Harbor as well as eliminate the detachments. We were made an exception because of what we had discovered.”
He made a kak-kak-kak sound which the lavaliere didn’t translate; maybe it was a cough of embarrassment. “That is, what Centurion Froggie had discovered.”
Froggie got up slowly and took stock. Barbs were starting to come out of the town, using other gates or just climbing over the walls. Most all of them were women. They picked over bodies, looking up fearfully whenever a trooper moved but continuing to search anyway.
“How many times have we seen that, Glabrio?” Froggie asked, nodding to the women. Glabrio shrugged but didn’t answer.
The notch in the upper rim of Froggie’s shield meant he’d need a replacement as soon as he got back to the Harbor, but it’d serve for now. He’d sharpen his sword when he got a moment but the edge wasn’t notched the way you’d expect from as much work as the blade had done tonight. The barbs didn’t wear proper armor, and not a one of them had tried to block Froggie’s stroke with a blade of his own.
Six troopers would be out of action till they got back to the Guild’s mechanical surgeons, but nobody was dead or in real danger. Froggie looked at the piles and long windrows of barb corpses. That’s the way battles ended, in cheap victories till the day one went the other way and the legion didn’t have enough survivors to form a burial party.
“The Anroklaatschi were not really responsible,” Slats said. He’d turned to see where Froggie was looking. “It is a pity that so many of them died.”
“Slats,” Froggie said. His tone drew the eyes of everybody within twenty paces, despite the continuing snarl of the flames. “I don’t really give a fuck what somebody’s reasons are when he tries to burn me alive. I wouldn’t give a fuck if we’d chopped every fucking barb there was!”
Queenie rubbed her cheek against his. Froggie hugged her and let her go. The girls weren’t barbs, not now. They belonged to the Third of the Fourth.
“I understand, Centurion Froggie,” Slats said quietly; and perhaps he did.
Froggie walked over to the prisoners. One of them was their leader, still wearing the gold wristlets. He glared at Froggie but didn’t speak.
“Top?” said Laena, offering the lavaliere the barb had been wearing openly during the battle. Froggie took it, weighing it absently in his palm.
“I am very angry at this violation of Council regulations,” Slats said. “If rules are ignored, how can the structure stand?”
He’d followed Froggie the way a puppy would. Queenie was close by also, her dagger thrust through a fold of her sash. It’d been bloody after the battle, same as Froggie’s sword was. Nobody was going to confuse Queenie with a puppy.
“Don’t get mad about that, Slats,” Froggie said, dropping the lavaliere around his neck. The barb leader was one of the pair who’d been questioned. The down singed off his belly stank even with so many competing smells. “It’s just business, you know.”
Troopers had cut off the leader’s harness so that the leather cross-belts wouldn’t get in the way of questioning. The scraps lay on the ground with the pouch still attached. Froggie pulled the ties back and took out the key which the leader’s girlfriend had returned.
Wonder where that barb woman was now? Maybe she’d been the one who tried to warn the Romans when the mob moved on them.
“What do you want us to do with the prisoners, Froggie?” Laena asked.
Froggie gave the field a quick, cold appraisal. “Leave the locals be,” he said. “Slats is right—they weren’t the problem. The foreigners here—”
He toed the leader in the ribs. The fellow twisted, trying to bite Froggie’s ankle. Froggie gave him a bootheel in the face in an absent gesture.
“Take ’em into the town and toss them into a building that’s still burning good,” Froggie went on, pointing with his thumb.