by D. J. Bodden
Or the meanest and the most corrupt. Gaius probably fell into the first category. Still, I could see where he was coming from, especially if it was a world he’d been born into.
“What about the army, if that’s my next step?”
“Most people are leves and skirmishers. You’re given a spear, a sling, or a javelin, and you do what you’re told. Then there are hastati, principes, and triarii. Those are the trained soldiers who do the real work once the melee starts. In a perfect world, decanii lead teams of nine legionaries, centurions lead ten decanii, and there are six centuries in a cohort.”
“Who leads the cohort?”
“The most senior surviving centurion.”
“Ah.” That told me a lot about the survivability of a centurion in battle. “And above that?”
“Above that it gets complicated. There are nine cohorts to a legion, plus cavalry detachments and special units under the command of decurions, double-centuries of elite soldiers under the command of the primus pila, who is usually the most senior centurion and can be promoted to the rank of prefect. On top of that are foreign-recruited auxiliaries, which is considered a desirable command assignment for knights who are given the rank of tribune.”
“So you’ve commanded hundreds of people.”
“I have.”
“In battle?”
Provus shook his head. “Just a few small engagements against bandits and insurgents; never more than a century at a time.”
It was still huge. Provus didn’t look much older than me. When had he done this, when I was just getting done with college? “So there are a bunch of twenty-something knights out there leading armies of several hundred men and killing people? I mean, no offense, but that seems a bit crazy.”
“A legate and his staff command all of them, but they are often from the senator class and have neither the desire nor the field experience to do more than administer the army’s movements and supply.”
“I thought you said senators don’t have to serve?”
“They don’t, but it’s fashionable.” Provus’s lip curled up as he said the word.
We walked most of the rest in the way in silence. Provus was hard to read. I could tell there was a lot going on there, behind the severe expression he wore like it was part of his uniform, but I didn’t have enough points of reference to start making guesses. We passed through the piazza where Titus had his shop. Provus nodded toward Bespoke Arms and Artifices. “Want to get that soulbinding taken care of?”
“He’s an Enchanter?”
Provus snorted. “Felix Acilia? He’s a magician with a story and a polishing rag, all right, but he does have an Enchanter on call.”
I thought of what the merchant would do if I walked in with a second dagger—a real one, this time. “I’d rather take my business elsewhere,” I said. Besides, from what I could see through the window, Felix was busy fawning over some woman who wanted to try all the swords.
“Suit yourself,” Provus said, continuing past the store without waiting to see if I would follow.
We walked on past the Praetorian barracks to the Legion’s main camp in the city.
THE LEGION CAMP WAS massive. It was like a city within a city.
We’d been walking between the three- or four-story commercial and residential buildings that made up most of the second ring of the city, and then they just stopped. And the paving gave way to gravel. We were in a massive fairground at the heart of the Empire’s capital, a tent city whose every road was guarded and whose perimeter was walked by roaming patrols of ten legionaries.
Based on what Provus had explained to me, there had to be anywhere up to 700 ten-man or ten-woman tents in the Legion camp, not counting mess halls, smithies, armorers, cobblers, supply points, and any number of other logistical details it took to maintain 7,000 troops and close to 500 mounts in an area as big as forty football fields. It made our little team in Stanton, California, look like a small gathering of friends, and my mouth nearly watered at the thought of everything that probably went into making a place like this work. The tents were pitched on bare earth or grass, so close to each other the guy ropes overlapped, split into neat groups of twenty by gravel roads and drainage ditches. It looked like the precursor of the modern city grid, which of course was exactly what it was.
For all that, the smell wasn’t too bad. There was leather and sweat, and the occasional sting of smoke in the air. I smelled meat cooking, and tobacco smoke. But there were no latrines or cess pits, and no piles of manure.
Not for the first time, but certainly the first at this scale, I was glad Kronos hadn’t enabled bodily functions to make the game more realistic.
We entered from the side of the camp with the bigger tents, which I figured was due to Provus’s rank. Legionaries saluted, officers called out to him in a friendly tone, and Provus seemed to finally relax. I got the feeling that Provus’s time as an auxiliary commander had left him a bit rough around the edges, and it took the company of rough men to make him feel at home.
About a third of the way through the camp, we reached an open area that was being used for training. Teams of legionaries in groups of thirty or more drilled in formation, going through quick direction changes, charging, breaking, and reforming. Individuals practiced weapon drills on targets, dummies, or each other. The sound of blunted steel hitting wood, hay, and flesh, along with the screaming and grunting common to any team sport like rugby or the mechanical slaughter of enemy soldiers filled the air with constant, irregular noise.
Provus headed toward a scarred Imperial veteran near the center of the training field. The man was short and wide, wearing a simple brown tunic and a belt with a truncheon. He turned as we approached, as if he’d sensed us in spite of the din of mock battle. “Tribune,” he said.
“Prefect. I need this man trained.”
The veteran looked at me like I was something he’d scraped off his sandal. “Any experience?”
“None.”
“What position?”
“Specialist. He’s one of Titus’s.”
The prefect grunted. Apparently Titus was someone worthy of that much. “Any special handling?”
“No,” Provus said, looking at me with a grin that gave me goosebumps. “Treat him like any other conscript. Try not to kill him.” With that, he left.
The prefect looked at me for a moment, as if he were unsure what to do with me. I decided to break the ice. “Hi, I’m—”
With an economy of motion I might, under other circumstances, have admired, the prefect brought his bony forehead down on the bridge of my nose and knocked me to the ground. “Run around the camp,” he said.
I was still writhing on the ground, holding my face.
He kicked me. Not hard, mind you; he just snapped the ball of his foot into my ribs, and I heard and felt one crack. “Run around the camp, soldier. Don’t make me tell you again.”
I scrambled to my feet, face on fire, lungs unable to fully inflate, and stumbled toward the first of several laps.
<<<>>>
Current Debuffs
CONCUSSED: You have sustained a severe head injury! Confusion and disorientation; duration, 1 minute.
Broken Rib: Everything hurts. All actions are 10% slower and require 30% more Stamina; duration, 1 minute.
<<<>>>
I basically stumbled forward at a half-jog while trying to keep my left elbow tucked against my body. If I held it tight to my side, my broken rib hurt a little less. My nose was dripping blood onto my now grass-stained new clothes, and the pain in the center of my face was like a starburst of white light behind my eyes.
I’d never gotten into a fight, as a kid. Not once. An older girl pushed me around once in middle school and I ratted her out, and people called me a snitch, and you know what? I didn’t give a crap. I still don’t. The game kept dumping me from the literal heights of the city into piles of horsecrap and pain, and I was close enough to the twenty-four-hour mark that I was done.
&n
bsp; <<<>>>
Log out: Yes/No?
<<<>>>
“No, no, no! Alan! I need you to stay in the game, killer,” Sandra said.
“You what?”
“I need you to stay in the game. I’ve been scanning the logs. It’s not enough.”
My nose was blocked, which was unfortunate because I really needed to breathe. I closed my mouth and exhaled as hard as I could, blowing out a big ball of blood and mucus. My nose still wasn’t completely clear, but I could get air through it. “How is that not enough?”
Sandra paused for a second, while I kept my feet moving.
Then I stopped. Why was I taking orders anyway? “Seriously, Sandra, how is this not enough? I stabbed a man through the chest earlier.”
“Monster, and he kind of fell on you, Alan.”
“There was a spear involved!” I heard someone breathing hard, and the sound of fast footsteps. I turned just in time to see the other legionary before he rammed into me, knocking me flat, and kept running. “What the fuck?” I shouted.
“Keep running!” he yelled over his shoulder, sounding just as angry as I was.
I gulped half-lungfuls of air. The impact had dropped me by another 15% of my Health and restarted the timer on my concussion, as well as upgraded my broken rib to broken ribs. I was 20% slower and my actions required a whopping 45% more Stamina for two minutes. This was such utter bullshit.
“Alan, you need to move.”
“I don’t understand what’s happening.”
“But I do, and you need to get moving. Now.”
I got to my hands and knees, the world spinning, and managed to get on my feet again. Every time I took a breath, it felt like my lungs were catching on something sharp. “So...” I huffed, after a few steps. “Explain...”
“It’s the prefect. He’s sending other recruits to hit you.”
I started to laugh, but that hurt like getting stabbed probably does, and I was worried I was going to find out on that count real soon. “Duh,” I managed.
“No, you don’t get it. At least I think you don’t. That legionary’s doing the full lap, just like you.”
She really wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t know. I could see the guy who hit me, although the distance between us was opening at an embarrassingly high rate.
“I don’t think he did anything wrong, Alan. I think the prefect punished him for your weakness.”
I kept moving. I didn’t have enough air to talk to her. What she said didn’t make sense. As I got farther, the sound of the training field died down. The other legionary reached the edge of the camp and turned right. I focused on the sound of my feet on the packed gravel. After a minute, the concussion cleared. I turned right the same as the other runner had. I made it all of five paces before I ran out of Stamina and had to stop. God, this hurts. It wasn’t as bad as the dislocated shoulder had been—I could remember that as a sort of ringing sound in my ears more than actual pain—but I hurt all over.
“You have to keep moving, Alan.”
“Can’t.”
“Just jog. Walk. Something.” I could hear the beginnings of disgust in her voice, so I walked, holding my side. Then I heard footsteps.
He’d known I’d stop. I had this sudden picture in my mind of the prefect staring at me through dozens of tents, still standing where he’d been at the center of the training field. The legionary was a woman this time, and she looked pissed.
I ran. Red, stabbing pain in my left side, but I swung my arms and ran from her. She looked like five feet and five inches of wrath and retribution. My Stamina ran out again, so I stumbled to a half-jog and she caught me, shoving me to the ground, but my forward motion took some of the impact out of it.
“Keep running!” she shouted without slowing her pace.
“He’s going to keep sending them, Alan.”
I scrambled to my feet. “Why am I putting up with this?” I asked her, though it came out half-choked and whiny.
“This is exactly what we need.”
The broken ribs debuff cleared, and I gasped in a full breath. I’d never realized breathing was so awesome. Holy balls, being able to breathe is the best.
I turned the next corner and jogged past a patrol. The legionaries jeered at me, and one of them stuck the butt of his spear out to trip me but I managed to hop over it. I gave them the finger, and they laughed. “What a bunch of dicks,” I said.
“Not really,” Sandra said.
IT WAS A TRAINING EXERCISE. Private Second Class Bullard was just out of Basic and going through convoy defense exercises during AIT. She was the driver, and her assistant driver was Private Carnegie. Carnegie was overweight and talked too much, which made Sandra uncomfortable. She’d known fat, noisy people before the Army, and that was fine, because everyone had different genes and ideas of what beauty was, but things were different now.
Sandra Bullard was third-generation Army. She’d enlisted out of high school in the best shape of her life, and gotten meaner and stronger in the ten weeks of Basic Training. She’d busted her ass and finished in the top ten percent of her platoon. She’d picked Motor-T because she hadn’t been good enough for the Rangers, and she’d wanted to get as close to the next “fight” as she could.
Carnegie had picked Motor-T because he didn’t like to walk. He was in for four years, then on to a free education and the rest of his life. He’d told her so. He set her teeth on edge every time he opened his mouth.
He’d been telling her about some stupid thing he was interested in when they hit a simulated explosive he was supposed to be watching for. The real thing would have turned Sandra’s body into aerosol and flipped her cargo, currently twenty of her classmates. At AIT, they just made her and Carnegie walk the course while the next two students drove it. She’d been furious.
It was while listening to Carnegie bitch about the heat, and how the United States would never go to war in the Middle East again anyway, that Sandra had learned to hate. He wasn’t Private Carnegie from Michigan, the son of Martha and Truman Carnegie. He wasn’t Jim Carnegie yet, the veteran who’d re-upped after Ukraine and Crimea, her friend from the Army with the wife and the gym who’d looked her up because they were both in LA.
Back then, he was just the man who would get her killed.
“SO EXPLAIN IT TO ME,” I said to Sandra. “How is this useful?”
I was on the second to last stretch of the run. I’d found my pace, speeding up or backing off to keep my Stamina bar down to about a third. That let me speed up just enough to avoid getting clobbered when the third and fourth legionaries caught up with me. It’s crazy how quickly something can become normal.
“You spent your first day in the most advanced fantasy VRMMORPG talking to a blind beggar, eating, and drinking. You didn’t even drink that much.”
“That beer in the inn must have been twelve percent alcohol!” I said.
“Oh, boo hoo, Alan. Maybe the prefect can lend you his man card and you can use it when you sip on girly drinks to go with your craft beer.”
I laughed. “Are you seriously asking me to get trashed in V.G.O. for marketing purposes?”
“No,” Sandra said. “But do something. Fight someone. Tame a dragon. Dungeon delve. If you don’t have the balls for that, carouse a bit and try to bed a tavern wench. I can’t sell a conversation on the rank structure of the Imperial army to teenagers.”
“Teenagers,” I huffed, rounding the last corner. “Got it.”
She had a point, though. I’d spent a good part of my first day in the game acting like a total newb. It was time to step up and do something awesome.
I heard footsteps behind me. A quick glance showed me the fifth legionary was about to catch up. I sprinted. I gave it all I had left. The prefect watched me arrive, and as I stumbled to a stop in front of him, he waved the legionary off. “Do you have any questions?” he asked me.
I smirked and channeled my inner teen. “Yeah, I have a—”
The prefect’
s hand shot out like a snake and caught me in the throat. I choked.
<<<>>>
Current Debuffs
Induced Suffocation: You are being suffocated. You suffer 10 pts of Stamina damage each second until you can breathe once more; duration, 15 seconds! If your Stamina reaches 0, you will die.
Current estimated time of death: 25 seconds.
<<<>>>
“Run,” the prefect said, turning his back on me. “Faster this time. If you try to pace yourself, I’ll send a whole squad after you.”
BULLARD LAUGHED OUT loud, covering her mouth. There was something about her that made Jeff uneasy, like the fact that he was a guy and outweighed her by more than fifty pounds made no difference to her.
Jeff reached over and put the two of them on mute. “You do know the pain is real, right?”
The petite, raven-haired woman who’d taken his chair and his headset looked at him with genuine amusement in her eyes. “But that just makes it better.”
“How?” Jeff asked. “I mean, Alan can be a bit cocky and annoying sometimes, but he’s not a bad guy.”
Sandra shook her head. She took the headset off and set it on his desk. “It’s not about Alan. That officer—was it Provus?”
“Yes.”
“Provus gave the prefect an impossible task, training someone like Alan in a short amount of time. Did the prefect complain? No, he just assessed his resources and started working the problem.”
“By headbutting him?”
“Alan only got headbutted after he tried to be friendly. He got throat jabbed when he tried to be insolent. I’m more curious about you. Why do you care? Alan’s funny, talented, reasonably good looking; he’s never had to push through real adversity.” Her eyes went to Jeff’s right arm like the tattoos weren’t there and she could only see the scars.
Jeff swallowed.
