Foreign Legions

by David Drake

  "Shoot!"

  The onagers released, their rear edges kicking up as the throwing arms halted—that gave them their military nickname, "wild donkey." Like meteors, the jugs arched across the night. They wobbled, because the fluid inside them shifted as they flew. The onagers were inaccurate at the best of times, and they hadn't been able to sight them carefully, because there was no telling where the enemy would try to cross the ditch.

  They still landed close enough, at least the ones Vibulenus could see. Flame splashed across the massed crowds waiting their turn to storm across the bridge nearest his position. Warriors leapt shrieking into the flooded ditch, but that didn't save them, because the quicklime only burned the fiercer in contact with water. It also burned on the water, floating with a redder, milder flame than he remembered from the distant land that had given him the idea. But it was fatal enough. The water was thick with heads, where enemy troops were swimming the ditch with the bundled sticks—fascines—they'd brought to fill the dry ditch beyond. Many of them ducked under the surface as they saw the waves of fire billowing towards them, but the only way for a naked man to keep his body down was to fill his lungs . . . .

  * * *

  "Eat this," a legionary behind Gaius Vibulenus screamed as he cast his javelin, pivoting on his left foot and bringing his scutum around to balance the throw.

  The Tenth Cohort were charging in line abreast down the ramparts, perpendicular to the parapet on their right hands. Ahead of them was the enemy bridgehead, ladders rearing over the sharpened stakes, feather-skulled figures howling and shaking their weapons at the oncoming Romans. The howls turned to screams as dozens of the heavy pila slashed down out of the night.

  "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.

  But it was so tempting.

  The dead were piled several layers deep against the inner face of the parapet—deeper in the angle than the natural slipperiness of blood-lubricated dead flesh would allow. Not all of that flesh was dead. Vibulenus had let himself relax from the knife-edge concentration of combat, let his muscles feel the trembling exhaustion and stiffen with fatigue poisons. His sword was still rasping from its sheath when the three natives lunged erect, daggers glittering in their hands as they threw themselves towards the Commander.

  Clodius Afer's shield slammed one sideways, and the centurion's sword gutted the native while he fought for balance.

  Cursing silently, Vibulenus threw himself forward, forcing speed out of abused muscles. He didn't think the Guild would be much concerned with abstract rights and wrongs if the Commander was knifed in the presence of the assets who were supposed to absorb the hurt.

  Something warm and salty struck him in the face. His vision blurred, but not so much that he couldn't see the follow-through of the Commander's ape-long arm and the track the four razor claws had cut through the native daggerman's neck. The Commander was smiling—Vibulenus saw the expression and hoped it wasn't really a smile—as he dug the claws of both hands under the last assassin's ribs and dragged him forward. Then, with an almost casual motion, he bit off the top of the local's skull.

  "Incompatible proteins," he said, after he spat the mouthful out and tossed aside the corpse. "Where was I? Ah, yes. The natives hostile to the interests of the Guild and galactic progress were probably aware that the Federation bans advanced weapons on planets such as this."

  He beamed coldly at the Romans. Shreds of matter and feathery not-hair dangled between the multiple rows of teeth. "But as always, they underestimated the organizational skills of the finest trading guild in the galaxy!"

  The Commander turned and swept away, followed by his armored guards. Vibulenus smiled wryly as he sheathed his sword. "Good thing we can both resist temptation, isn't it?" he said.

  "Sir, yessir," Clodius Afer said, cleaning his weapon and doing likewise. He turned his head to look out over the piled dead that carpeted the ground, to the edge of sight in the dull gray light of predawn.

  "Looks like 'e said. They underestimated the fuckin' opposition, all right," he said.

  Gaius Vibulenus Ca
per, military tribune, member of the Equestrian Order and citizen of Rome, put his hand on his fellow-Roman's shoulder. "They underestimated us, by the gods of my hearth," he said.

  They both looked after the Commander, to where the blue-suited figure had vanished behind the smaller turtles that brought water to the legionaries, and the greater one that picked up the repairable dead. Far and faint came wailing from the fortress on the hill, as the natives saw their hope receding with the fleeing barbarians.

  "And someday—" Afer went on.

  Vibulenus smiled, an expression no less sharkish than the Commander's serrated rows of teeth. Someday, someone in a blue bodysuit is going to underestimate us.

  Everyone made mistakes. But that was going to be the last mistake some Commander of the Guild's Roman assets ever made.

  CARTHAGO DELENDA EST

  Eric Flint

  I

  "What is the point of this?" demanded Agayan. The Guild Voivode emphasized his irritation by flexing the finger-clusters of his midlimbs.

  Yuaw Khta ignored both the question and the cluster-flex. The Guild Investigator was immune to the Voivode's displeasure. The Guild's Office of Investigation had a separate command structure from that of the Trade Web. Although Agayan was its nominal superior in their current mission, Yuaw Khta's career in no way depended on the Voivode's goodwill.

  "Again."

  The Gha sepoy it commanded twisted the native's arm further. Gobbling with pain, the native struggled furiously.

  Its efforts were futile, despite the fact that the orange-skinned biped was not much smaller than its Gha tormentor. It was more slender, true—although much of the Gha's squat bulk was the product of its heavy armor. Still, the native was every bit as tall as the Gha. But the real difference lay beneath the surface. For all the near-equivalence of size, the native was a child in the hands of an ogre.

  The Gha were a heavy-planet species. Due in large part to that gravity, theirs was the most inhospitable world that had ever produced an intelligent race. The Gha were few in numbers, but all the great trading Guilds and Combines favored them as bodyguards for their strength and physical prowess.

  The native's gabbles reached a crescendo, but they still expressed nothing more than pain—and curses.

  "Again," commanded the Guild Investigator. The Gha twisted; the native howled.

  Guild Voivode Agayan ceased his finger-flexing. He transformed his mid-limbs into legs and stalked off in disgust. While the native continued to screech, the Voivode stared out at the landscape.

  The scene was as barren as their investigation had thus far proven to be. The sun—a green-colored dot in the sky—cast a sickly hue over the gravelly terrain. The land was almost flat, broken only by a scattering of squat gray-skinned plants with long, trailing leaves.

  And the bones. Gha bones, and the skeletal remains of the huge carnivores which served as mounts for the sepoys. The bones were picked clean, now, and bleached white by the sun. Every other relic of the battle which had raged across this plain was gone. The natives had buried their own dead, and scavenged all the discarded weapons and armor.

  Behind him, Agayan heard a cracking noise. The native shrieked and fell suddenly silent. The Voivode twisted his body, caterpillarlike, and examined the situation. As he had expected, the Gha had finally broken the native's arm. And, still, without the Investigator learning anything they didn't already know.

  "Are you quite finished?" he demanded.

  Again, Yuaw Khta ignored him. But, after a moment, the Investigator made a gesture to the Gha. The sepoy released its grip. The native, now unconscious, collapsed to the ground.

  Satisfied that the charade was at an end, Agayan transformed his forelimbs into arms and reached for his communicator. After summoning the shuttle, he amused himself by watching the Investigator scampering about the area, looking for some last-minute clue.

  As always, the Voivode found Yuaw Khta's movements both comical and unsettling. The Investigator, like all members of his species, was a tall and gangling creature. Its long, ungainly head hung forward from its neck like certain draft animals Agayan had observed on various primitive planets. That much was amusing. Yet there was a quick, jerky nature to the Investigator's movements which created a certain sense of anxiety in Agayan's mind. His own species, supple but slow-moving, retained a primordial fear of predators.

  He shook the uneasiness off. Ridiculous, really. Even a bit embarrassing. Such atavistic fears had no basis in reality. Agayan's race—like that of the Investigator—was counted among the Doge Species which dominated both the Federation and the great trading Guilds and Combines.

  The Doge Species numbered only twenty-three. All other races were subordinate, to one degree or another. Some, like the species which provided the Pilots and Medics for the great trading ships, were ranked Class One. Class One species were privy to the highest technology of galactic civilization, and enjoyed many privileges. But they were still subordinates. Others, specialized laborers like the Gha, were ranked Class Two. Below Class Two species came nothing but indentured servant races, like the quasi-reptilian Ossa whose flexible phenotypes made them useful, or outright slaves like—

  The shuttle swept in for a landing. The Investigator joined Agayan as they marched up the ramp.

  "I told you the humans did it," he hissed, knotting the finger-clusters of his forelimbs in satisfaction.

  II

  After their ship left the planet, Agayan pressed the advantage.

  "It is the only possibility," he announced firmly. "Ridiculous to think those natives were responsible!"

  He and the Investigator were in that chamber of the vessel which combined the functions of a lounge and a meeting room. In deference to its multispecies use, the room was bathed with soft indirect light and bare of any furnishings beyond those of use to its current occupants. Each of those two occupants, in his or its own way, was relaxing. For Agayan, that involved nothing more elaborate than draping his body over a sawhorse-shaped piece of furniture and enjoying a tumbler of a mildly intoxicating liquor.

  For the Investigator, relaxation was more intense. Yuaw Khta was also positioned on its preferred furniture, in that posture which almost all bipeds adopted when resting. (In their different languages, it was called sitting. As always, it seemed peculiar to Agayan—as if a person would deliberately choose to break his body in half.) Yuaw Khta was also sipping at a beverage. A different one, of course. The liquor in Agayan's tumbler would poison the Investigator; and, while Agayan would survive drinking the blue liquid in Yuaw Khta's cup, he would certainly not enjoy the experience.

  In addition, however, the Investigator enjoyed the ministrations of a personal attendant. As it leaned forward in its chair, the Ossa behind it subjected Yuaw Khta's long neck to a vigorous massage.

  Between grunts of pleasure, the Investigator said:

  "No variant explanation can be discounted in advance, Voivode Agayan. Proper investigatory technique is primarily a process of eliminating possibilities, one by one, until the solution finally emerges."

  Agayan's forelimb finger-cluster flexed sarcastically. "And are you now satisfied? Can we finally lay to rest the—variant explanation!—that primitives somehow seized a Guild vessel? After they had already been decisively defeated in battle?"

  "Your own explanation would also have primitives seizing the ship," pointed out the Investigator.

  Agayan restrained his anger. The self-control was difficult, but allowances had to be made. Yuaw Khta, after all, had never personally witnessed the humans in action.

  "There is no comparison," he said forcefully. "It is true that the humans were also iron-age barbarians. But their discipline and social coordination were many levels beyond those of any other primitives you may have encountered."

  "So you say," grunted the Investigator. Its long, bony face was twisted into an expression which combined pain and pleasure.