Foreign Legions

by David Drake

  It wasn't as though there was much work remaining for them, after all. The barbs' own panic had seen to that.

  "Save me a couple prisoners!" Froggie shouted. "I need a couple of the bastards with axes for prisoners!"

  Dis! he could barely croak. He hadn't been this dry or this tired since . . .

  Dis. Since three months back when the legion entered the barb capital over the smoking ruins of its wall. Same as the time before that, and the one before that, back to the day Cataline thought to become consul by the sword when he couldn't muster the votes. One of the people proving to Cataline that he didn't have enough swords either was a new recruit whose buddies called him Froggie.

  Queenie offered a skin of wine. Froggie tried to sheathe his sword, but the blade was bloody and he didn't have a hand free to wipe it. Queenie put the wooden teat between his lips and squeezed, perfectly judging when to let up.

  Froggie swizzled the unmixed wine, cleansing his mouth of dust and the stench of barb blood. He spewed out the first mouthful, then let Queenie take his sword so that he could drink at his own greedy choice.

  Queenie ripped the kilt off a warrior's corpse and rubbed at the tacky blood on the blade. "You chop bastards good, boss-man," she said. "You chop them real good!"

  * * *

  Half the town of Kascanschi was in flames or in ashes; most of the rest would burn before daylight.

  "Thank Hercules and the luck of a soldier that the wind was from the east," Froggie muttered. "If it'd changed, the temple would've toppled right on top of us here."

  He glanced at the huge mound of bodies and added, "It wouldn't make much difference to the barbs, would it?"

  "Who gives a fuck about barbs?" Glabrio said. He reached out to scratch his left forearm, covered with tarry ointment the girls had daubed on it.

  Glycera grabbed his hand and chittered, stopping him from disarranging her bandage. Glabrio clucked apologetically and put his right hand back on his knee. He'd forget in a moment and try to scratch his burn again.

  Slats came from where he'd been interrogating the prisoners. His head pecked back and forth, more like the play of raindrops on a pond than an animal looking about him.

  Froggie wondered whether the bug's sense of smell was the same as a man's. If it was, then no wonder he looked about ready to collapse. You never really got used to the smell of a battlefield. Especially not one where there'd been fire.

  "They talked?" Froggie said. He supposed he should've been overseeing the questioning, but he'd decided to sit on a low pile of bodies instead and get his breath back for a while.

  "Yes," the administrator said. "I cannot believe it, Centurion Froggie. The warriors with axes were mercenaries from another planet. A rival Guild was interloping on our claim. We've been granted development rights here, but they'd put in a survey team before the Federation Council made the assignment. They had found a product so valuable that they were violating Guild rules to reverse the assignment!"

  "Do tell," Froggie said. He started to laugh at Slats' earnestness, but a fit of coughing broke him up instead.

  "They were engineering a massacre of our pacification team!" Slats continued. "It would appear that the natives had been responsible. Their Guild would have bought the development rights from ours at a low price, and no one would be the wiser . . . but I would be dead!"

  "It happens to everybody sooner or later," Froggie said; though "later" could be a long time if you were a Guild slave, and maybe longer than . . .

  He looked to where the foreigners had been interrogated. They'd captured six of them alive, which was doing pretty well under these circumstances. Two of them had been hoisted with their wrists and ankles tied together so they hung belly down over a slow fire. The first pair had talked. If they hadn't, well, there were four more.

  Naw, life was better. Even as a Guild slave.

  "The product is a drug," Slats said. He kept his head rigid and avoided Froggie's eyes. "Three-Spire is in the pay of the rival Guild. The Commander is addicted to the drug which Three-Spire supplies to him."

  Glabrio's face changed from dreamy somnolence to full, focused awareness of the world around him. A battle like the one just past could put a fellow, even a veteran, into a numb place that he might not come out of for days.

  "Are we the only ones left?" he demanded. "Have they chopped the rest of the legion?"

  Slats looked shocked. "I do not know," he said. "Centurion Froggie took my communicator—"

  "To keep you from putting us deeper in the hole than you'd done when you called in the last time," Froggie snapped. He was coming back up from the gray depths too. "Don't worry, I'll give it back when I'm good and ready to."

  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 return
ed.

  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.

  "Do we untie them first, Top?" Laena asked.

  "Dis, why would you want to do that?" said Froggie. He glanced over the battlefield until he saw Lucky Castus, the leader of First Squad.

  "Hey Lucky!" he called. Froggie's throat was back in service; like its owner, it recovered quick if it got a bit of rest and some wine. "Get your boys together and we'll go visiting. Verruca, you're in charge here till we get back. Set up some kinda chain of command for what's left of the locals, all right?"

  "Where are you going, Centurion Froggie?" Slats asked. All four arms were wrapped around his chest again.

  "I'm going to go finish this business, Slats," Froggie said. "Want to come along?"

  The administrator's body didn't move. His head swivelled, then swiveled back. "You are going to the dimensional portal," he said. "That is so?"

  "That is so," Froggie said. Castus had his boys lined up. Caepio was using a broken javelin as a crutch. He'd have to stay, but they'd still be nine swords counting Froggie. That was plenty for the job.

  "Yes, Centurion Froggie," Slats said. "I will come along. And we will finish the business!"

  * * *

  Glabrio led and Froggie was at the end of the line, since they were the two who knew the way. Froggie guessed the squad sounded like a drove of cattle—hobnails, shields clanking against cuirasses, and every couple of strides a man tripping on a root and swearing like a, well, a trooper. Slats said the folks inside the portal couldn't see or hear till it opened; that had better be true.

  The administrator walked right in front of Froggie, making just as good time as the troopers. The bug's legs were plenty strong enough for his thin frame, and he seemed to see better than a man in this shadowed forest.

  "We're getting close, now," Froggie said, as much to remind himself as to encourage Slats. Froggie'd come back mentally after the battle, but his body was still weaker than it'd been this morning. "It'll be right over the next rise."

  Slats swivelled to look over his shoulders. He kept on walking and didn't stumble. Did he have eyes someplace besides the ones on the front of his face?

  "I am still surprised that our rivals found it worth the expense of a dimensional portal," Slats said. "Though of course that is the only way they could carry out their regulation-breaking activities. The product must be of remarkable value."

  "The Commander seems to think so," Froggie said. "If 'thinks' is the right word for the state he's in."

  "Yes," Slats said. His words came eerily to Froggie's ears through the administrator's translator and directly to Froggie's mind, he guessed because of the lavaliere he'd taken from the barb. "The mercenary leader said the dose Three-Spire gives the Commander is a dangerously heavy one. It saps the user of all will, but our rivals were concerned that only slightly more would be fatal. The Commander's death would require a replacement and cause them problems."

  Froggie caressed the hilt of his well-used sword. "They'll learn about problems," he said quietly.

  Word came down the line over the shoulder of each trooper in turn. Froggie already knew what it was. "We've arrived, Slats," he said.

  Lucky lined the squad up to face the spike of rock. Everybody had his sword drawn. Froggie took the key out of his pouch and handed it to the administrator.

  "Open it when I tell you, Slats," he said. "Not before."

  Now that the troopers' clattering equipment didn't mask it, the night was bright with animal sounds: chirps, peeps, and a thoom, thoom, that could almost have been a bullfrog sounding from a bog in the Sabine Hills. Froggie missed being able to wander around in the countryside at night the way he had as a kid . . . but Hercules! that was asking to get chopped in a place the legion had just conquered. Since the Guild bought him, Froggie was only going to see places just before or just after the legion had smashed the local king or chief or priestess.

  "All right, boys," Froggie said. His breathing was under control and his body ready now. His sword was the only one still sheathed. "When Glabrio and me was here before it was just a guy in a blue suit—he's not our Commander, don't worry—"

  "Who was worried?" Glabrio muttered.

  " . . . along with two bodyguards and that barb Three-Spire from the Harbor," Froggie continued. "These bodyguards look like monkeys, but they're big and they've got spiked gloves."

  A trooper spit on the ground and grinned.

  "There was two axemen besides from the town," Froggie added with a gesture back the direction they'd come, "but they won't be there this time."

  "There may be messengers from the other locations, however," Slats said. "This same portal can serve many local sites. I would expect our rivals to keep in touch with all thirty locations to which detachments from your legion were sent."

  Froggie shrugged. "Regardless," he said. "There's not room inside for more than maybe a dozen people, and they won't be expecting us. Glabrio and I lead in, then the rest of the squad by pairs till the job's done. Lucky, you watch our rear. There's the off chance that a few of the barbs got loose back at the town. They could be waiting for us to get focused on what's inside the cave before they weigh in."

  "Pollux, Froggie!" Lucky said. "I ought to be in front with you. It's my squad!"

  "Lucky," Froggie said, "if I thought you had anything to prove, you wouldn't be here. Now, carry out my orders or it won't be your squad."

  Lucky nodded. "Sorry, Top," he said through tight lips.

  Froggie drew his sword and walked close enough to the rock that he could touch it with the outstretched blade. He hefted his shield, making sure that the heavy oblong was balanced to swing or smash. A shield was a better weapon than a sword, often enough.

  "All right, Slats," he said calmly. "Do it!"

  Solid basalt dissolved into a cave. The vanishing rock gave Froggie an instant of vertigo: his mind told him he'd plunged over a cliff. He strode forward.

  The Commander looked up angrily and said, "You're off your sched—"

  His face blanked. He shrieked and dived behind his bodyguards.

  Three-Spire was talking to the barbs behind the Commander. Two were axemen like the batch who'd been running things at Kascanschi, but the third was a real local with strings of quartz and coral beads woven through his topknot. He was taking a cake of tarry-looking stuff from the sack he held.

  A guard drove a spiked fist at Froggie. Froggie raised his shield a hand's-breadth and twisted his body out of the line of impact.

  It was like being punched by a battering ram. Froggie heard two boards of the outer lamination split; the shield's lower edge rocked up, using Froggie's grip as a fulcrum and absorbing the force of the blow. Froggie thrust at the ape's knee, feeling the thin armor over the joint separate an instant before gristle and spongy bone did.

  The ape bellowed. He swung with his other fist but he was already toppling toward his crippled leg. The spike that brushed Froggie's helmet gouged through the bronze and even nicked the leather harness within.