"Is this where you died?" asked Ainsley.
For a moment, he thought Gaius hadn't heard him. Then, with no expression on his face, the former tribune shrugged. "I don't think so, Robert. I think we pretty much razed that fortress after we took it. I don't remember, of course, since I was dead when it happened."
Gaius turned his head, examining the walls and crenellations of the castle they were standing on. "It was much like this one, though. Probably not far from here." He gestured toward the native notables standing respectfully a few yards away. "You could ask them. I'm sure they remember where it was."
Ainsley glanced at the short, furry beings. "They wouldn't remember. It was so long ago. Almost two thousand years, now. That was one of your first campaigns."
"They'll know," stated Gaius firmly. "They're a very intelligent species, Robert. They have written records going back well before then. And that was the battle that sealed their fate."
He scanned the fortress more carefully, now, urging Ainsley to join him in that inspection with a little hand gesture.
"You see how well built this is, Robert? These people are not barbarians. They weren't then, either. It was a bit of a shock to us, at the time, coming up against them. We'd forgotten how tough smart and civilized soldiers can be, even when they're as small as these folk."
His face grew bleak. "Two thousand years, Robert. For two thousand years these poor bastards have been frozen solid by the stinking Doges. The ruinous trade relations the Guild forced down their throat have kept them there."
"It wasn't your fault, Gaius," murmured Ainsley.
"I didn't say it was. I'm not feeling any guilt over the thing, Robert. We were just as much victims as they were. I'm just sorry, that's all. Sorry for them. Sorry for us."
Suddenly, he chuckled. "Gods, I'm being gloomy! I'm probably just feeling sorry for myself." With a grimace: "Dying hurts, Robert. I still have nightmares about it, sometimes."
Ainsley pointed down the wooded slope below them.
"Look! Isn't that Clodius Afer?"
Gaius turned and squinted at the tiny figure of the horseman riding up the stone road which led to the castle. After a moment, he chuckled again.
"Yes it is, by the gods. I will be damned. I never thought he'd let the legion fight its first real battle without him there to mother his chicks."
Ainsley raised his eyes, looking at a greater distance. In the valley far below, the legion was forming its battle lines against the still more distant enemy.
"How soon?" he asked.
Gaius glanced at the valley. His experienced eye took only seconds to gauge the matter. "Half an hour, at the earliest. We've got time, before we have to go in."
The horseman was now close enough for Ainsley to see him clearly. It was definitely Clodius Afer.
Fifteen minutes later, the former centurion stamped his way up the narrow staircase leading to the crenellated wall where Vibulenus and Ainsley were waiting. His scarred face was scowling fiercely.
"I couldn't bear to watch!" he snarled. He shot the historian a black, black look. "I hold you responsible, Ainsley. I know this whole crack-brained scheme was your idea."
The centurion strode to the battlements and pointed theatrically toward the valley. "In less than an hour, thousands of witless boys—and girls, so help me!—will lie dying on that field. Crushed under the heels of their pitiless conquerors. And it will all be your fault."
He spit (theatrically) over the wall.
Ainsley's reply was mild. "It was the Poct'on's idea, Clodius Afer, not mine."
"Bullshit. Fludenoc and the other Gha just had a general plan. You're the one put flesh and bones on it—I know you were!"
There was just enough truth in that last charge to keep Ainsley's mouth shut. Vibulenus filled the silence.
"So we've no chance, Clodius Afer? None at all?" The placid calmness of his voice seemed utterly at variance with the words themselves.
"None," came the gloomy reply. "Might as well put sheep—lambs—up against wolves. You should see those frightful brutes, Gaius! Fearsome, fearsome. Ten feet tall, at least, maybe twelve. Every one of them a hardened veteran. I could tell at a glance."
Gaius shook his head sadly. "Such a pity," he murmured. "Throwing away all those young lives for nothing."
He pushed himself away from the wall, shrugging with resignation. "Well, there's nothing for it, then, but to watch the hideous slaughter. Come on, Robert. They should have the scanners in the keep set up and running by now. We can get a much better view of the battle from there."
As he strode toward the stairs, he held up a hand toward the centurion. "You stay here, Clodius Afer! I know you won't want to watch."
The centurion sputtered. Ainsley stepped hastily aside to keep from being trampled as Clodius Afer charged past him.
The room in the keep where the viewscanners had been set up was the banquet hall where the local clan chiefs held their ceremonial feasts. It was the largest room in the entire castle, but, even for Romans, the ceiling was so low that they had to stoop slightly to walk through it. Ainsley, with the height of a modern human, felt like he was inside a wide tunnel.
The poor lighting added to his claustrophobia. The natives normally lighted the interior of the castle with a type of wax candles which human eyes found extremely irritating. So, for the occasion, they had decided to forgo all lighting beyond what little sunlight came through the narrow window-slits in the thick walls.
"I still say we could have put in modern lighting," grumbled Vibulenus, groping his way forward. "Temporarily, at least. The Guild command posts always used their own lighting."
"We already went through this, Gaius," replied Ainsley. "The Federation observers are going to watch us like hawks. Especially here, in our new Guild's first campaign. They'll jump on any violation of the regulations, no matter how minor—on our part, that is. They'll let the established Guilds cut every corner they can."
"You can say that again," came a growling voice from ahead.
Peering forward, Ainsley saw Captain Tambo's face raising up from the viewscreen.
"Come here and take a look," grumbled the South African. "The Ty'uct are already deploying their Gha. The battle hasn't even started yet, for Christ's sake—and they've got plenty of native auxiliaries to begin with. They don't need Gha flankers."
Gaius reached the viewscreen and bent over.
"That's it!" cried Clodius Afer. "Gha flankers? The legion's doomed!"
Vibulenus ignored the former centurion's dark prediction. Silently, he watched the formations unfolding on the large screen in front of him.
After a minute or so, he looked up and smiled. "Speaking of Gha flankers, you might want to take a look at this, Clodius Afer. After all, it was your idea in the first place."
The centurion crowded forward eagerly. "Did Fludenoc and his lads move up?"
He stared at the screen for a moment. Then, began cackling with glee. "See? See? I told you those stinking hyenas were just a bunch of turbo-charged jackals! Ha! Look at 'em cringe! They finally ran into something bigger than they are. A lot bigger!"
Ainsley managed to shove his head through the small crowd and get a view of the screen.
"I will be good God-damned," he whispered. He patted the former centurion on the shoulder. "You're a genius, Clodius Afer. I'll admit, I had my doubts."
Clodius Afer snorted. "That's because you modern sissies never faced war elephants in a battle. The great brutes are purely terrifying, I'm telling you."
"As long as they don't panic," muttered Gaius.
"They won't," replied Clodius Afer confidently. "These are that new strain the geneticists came up with. They're really more like ancient mammoths than modern elephants. And they've been bred for the right temperament, too."
He pointed to the screen. "Besides, the Gha know just how to handle the damn things. Watch!"
The scene in the viewscreen was quite striking, thought Ainsley. The main body of the Ty'uct army was still milling around in the center of the field, whipping themselves into a frenzy. On the flanks, Gha bodyguards had pushed forward on their "turbo-charged" giant quasi-hyenas. But they were already falling back before Fludenoc and the other Poct'on members who were serving the legion as a special force. There were thirty-two of those Gha, all mounted on gigantic war elephants, all wielding the modified halberds which human armorers had designed to replace the traditional Gha maces.
The Poct'on warriors loomed over their counterparts like moving cliffs. The giant "hyenas" looked like so many puppies before the elephants. Bad-tempered, nasty, snarling puppies, true. But thoroughly intimidated, for all that. Despite the best efforts of their Gha riders, the hyenas were slinking back toward their lines.
Ainsley could hardly blame them. Even from the remoteness of his televised view, the war elephants were—as Clodius Afer had rightly said—"purely terrifying." These were no friendly circus elephants. They didn't even look like elephants. To Ainsley, they seemed a perfect reincarnation of mammoths or mastodons. The beasts were fourteen feet high at the shoulders, weighed several tons, and had ten-foot-long tusks.
They also had a temperament to match. The elephants were bugling great blasts of fury with their upraised trunks, and advancing on the hyenas remorselessly.
"Jesus," whispered Tambo, "even the Gha look like midgets on top of those things. They seem to have them under control, though."
"I'm telling you," insisted Clodius Afer, "the Gha are wizards at handling the brutes." He snorted. "They always did hate those stinking hyenas, you know. But with elephants and Gha, it was love at first sight."
Tambo glanced up. "Whatever happened to their own—uh, 'hyenas'? The ones they had on the ship they seized?"
Gaius whistled soundlessly. Clodius Afer coughed, looked away.
"Don't rightly know," he muttered. "But Pompilius Niger—he raises bees now, you know, on his farm—told me that Uddumac asked him for a couple of barrels of his home-brewed mead. For a private Gha party, he said."
Tambo winced. "Don't let the SPCA find out."
The centurion mumbled something under his breath. Ainsley wasn't sure, but it sounded like "modern sissies."
"The hyenas are breaking," announced Gaius. "Look at them—they're completely cowed."
Tambo slapped the heavy wooden table under the viewscreen. The gesture expressed his great satisfaction.
"It'll be a straight-up fight, now! Between the legion and those—what in the hell are they, anyway? Have you ever seen them before, Gaius?"
The tribune grinned. So did Clodius Afer.
"Oh, yes," he murmured. "These boys were the opposition in our very first Guild campaign."
"Sorry clowns!" barked the centurion. "Look at 'em, Gaius—I swear, I think those are the same wagons they were using two thousand years ago."
The Ty'uct mercenaries started their wagon charge. Clodius Afer watched them on the screen for a few seconds before sneering: "Same stupid tactics, too. Watch this, professor! These galloping idiots are about to—"
He scowled. "Well, if they were facing a real Roman legion."
Deep scowl. "As it is—against these puling babes—?" Low moan of despair. "It'll be a massacre. A massacre, I tell you."
"Actually," murmured Gaius, "I think the puling babes are going to do better than we did."
He glanced over at Tambo, who was sitting to one side of the big screen. The naval officer's eyes were on a complex communication console attached to the viewscanner. "Are we secure?" asked Gaius.
Tambo nodded. "Yeah, we are. Our ECM has got the Federation's long-distance spotters scrambled. Everything in the castle is out of their viewing capability."
He sat up, sneering. "And, naturally, the lazy galactics never bothered to send a personal observer. Even if they shuttle one down now, it'll be too late. The battle'll be over before they get here."
"Good." Gaius turned and whistled sharply. A moment later, several natives appeared in the main doorway to the great hall. Gaius gestured, motioning for them to enter.
Somewhat gingerly, the natives advanced into the room and approached the small knot of humans at the viewscreen.
"You watch now," said Gaius, in simple Latin.
"Is safe from Federation?" asked one of the natives, also in Latin. Ainsley recognized him. The Fourth-of-Five, that one was called. He was a member of the clan's central leadership body, as well as the clan's warchief.
"Safe," assured Gaius. "They can not see you here with"—he groped for a moment, in the limits of the simplified language—"high-raised arts. But must keep this secret. Not tell them. Not tell anyone."
"Secret be keep," said the Fourth-of-Five. Still a bit gingerly, the warchief leaned forward to examine the scene on the scanner.
"Battle start?"
"Yes," replied Gaius. "Now you watch. I explain what we do. Why we do."
Two minutes later, the battle was joined in earnest. As it unfolded, Gaius followed the action with a running commentary for the benefit of the Fourth-of-Five, explaining the methods and principles of Roman tactics. The warchief was an attentive student. A very knowledgeable one, too, who asked many pointed and well-aimed questions. His own people had never been slouches, when it came to warfare; and now, hidden miles away in a forest camp, the warchief's own native legion had already begun its training.
Commander Tambo watched some of the battle, but not much. He was a naval officer, after all, for whom the tactics of iron-age land warfare were of largely academic interest. He was much more concerned with keeping a careful eye on the ECM monitors. By allowing the natives to follow the battle with the help of modern technology, the humans were breaking the letter of Federation law.
The spirit of that law, of course, they were trampling underfoot with hobnailed boots.
Ainsley simply watched the battle. Quite transfixed, he was; oblivious to everything else.
Ironically, his interest was purely academic. But it was the monomaniacal interest of a man who had spent all but the last few years of his adult life studying something which he was now able to see unfold before his own eyes. A Roman legion in action.
A purist, of course, would have been outraged.
Such a purist, in his own way, was the legion's expert consultant and field trainer, the former centurion Clodius Afer. Throughout the course of the battle, Clodius Afer danced back and forth between the viewscreen and the far wall, to whose unfeeling stones he wailed his black despair.
Roman legion, indeed!
Smiling, Ainsley leaned over and whispered to Gaius: "Is the rumor true? Did Clodius Afer really call Colonel Tsiang a 'slant-eyed bastard'?"
Gaius grinned, though his eyes never left the screen. He was keeping a close watch on the legate commanding the legion, in order to provide him with expert consultation after the battle.
That legate was a former colonel in the Chinese Army. Of the ten tribunes commanding the legion's cohorts, four were Chinese, three North American, one German, one South African and one Pakistani. True, there was one Italian centurion, and three Italian file-closers. But the overall national and racial composition of the legion was a fair reflection of modern Earth's demographics, except that it was skewed toward Chinese and North Americans. This, for the simple reason that all the legionnaires were former soldiers, and only the North Americans and Chinese still maintained relatively large standing armies.
"Oh, yes," murmured Gaius. "Fortunately, Tsiang's a phlegmatic kind of guy. Good thing for Clodius. The colonel has a black belt in at least five of the martial arts."
He turned his head. "You might want to watch this, Clodius Afer! They're getting ready for the first volley of javelins!"
Two seconds later, the former centurion's face was almost pressed to the screen. "They'll screw it up," he groaned. "Damned amateurs think they're throwing darts in a tavern."
Silence ensued, for a few seconds. Then:
Gaius grinned. Clodius Afer scowled and stalked off. Robert Ainsley hissed, face pale.
"God in Heaven," he whispered shakily. "I had no idea."
The former tribune's grin faded. "A good javelin volley is like the scythe of death, Robert. It's pure butchery."
"Was this one good?"
"As good as you'll ever see. I knew it would be."
Ainsley studied Gaius for a moment.
"You've never shared Clodius Afer's skepticism. Why?"
Gaius snorted. "The old bastard's just jealous, that's all."
The former tribune jabbed his forefinger at the screen. "Every single one of those legionnaires, from the legate down to the last man in the ranks, is a hand-picked volunteer. The cream of the crop—and it was a huge crop of volunteers. Every one's a soldier, and every one's dedicated to this cause. Not to mention the fact that, on average, they're probably half again as strong and twice as fast as the average Roman legionnaire of our time. So why shouldn't they do well?"
Ainsley rubbed his chin. "It's still their first real battle."
Gaius shrugged. "True. And it shows." He nodded at the screen.
"They're sluggish, right now. They're not reacting as quickly as they should to the success of their javelin volley. That's inexperience. A blooded legion would already be down the enemy's throat. But—see? Tsiang's already bringing the line forward. Good formations, too. The spacing's excellent."
He glanced over his shoulder at the figure of Clodius Afer, wailing against the wall.
"Clodius forgets. How good do you think we were in the beginning? A bunch of ignorant kids, half of us. Marched off to slaughter in the desert and then sold to aliens. I had no idea what I was doing, at first. This legion's already doing well. Give them three more campaigns and they could have chopped us up for horse meat."
He turned back to the screen. "Trust me, Robert. There's never been a better Roman legion than the one down there on that field today."
Again, he cocked his head and bellowed at Clodius Afer. "They've almost closed with the enemy! Oh—and look! The Tenth Cohort's going to bear the brunt of it!"
"That bitch!" shrieked Clodius Afer, charging back to the screen. "She's going to get 'em all killed!"
Silence, for two full minutes. Then:
Gaius laughed. Clodius Afer spit on the floor and stalked back to the wall. Spit on the wall. Ainsley wiped his face.
"I thought the Tenth Cohort was supposed to be the legion's shield, not its sword arm," he muttered.
Gaius's grin was cold, cold. "Yeah, that's the tradition. But traditions are meant to be broken, you know. And Tribune Lemont is not the phlegmatic type."
"Is it true?" whispered Ainsley. "Did Clodius Afer really call Shirley Lemont a—"
Gaius laughed. "Oh, yes! Then, after he woke up, he insisted on a formal rematch. He didn't quit until she threw him six times running, and told him she was going to start breaking his puny little bones."
Ainsley stared at Clodius Afer. The former centurion was studying the stone wall with a deep interest which seemed entirely inappropriate to its bare, rough-hewn nature.
"I guess it took him by surprise, seeing women in the legion's ranks."
Gaius started to reply but broke off suddenly, rising halfway out of his seat. "Gods, look at them rolling up the flank! This battle's already won, Robert." Turning his head, he bellowed:
"Hey, Clodius Afer! You might want to see this! The enemy's pouring off the field! The legion's hammering 'em into mash! And—guess what?—great news! It's our old Tenth Cohort that turned their flank! God, what a maneuver! I'm telling you, Clodius Afer—that Shirley Lemont's the best tribune I've ever seen! Come here! You don't want to miss it!"
In the next five minutes, Gaius Vibulenus went over the battle with the Fourth-of-Five, patiently answering the native warleader's many questions. Robert Ainsley simply sat, recovering from the experience—simultaneously exhilarating and horrifying—of finally seeing the Roman war machine in action.
Clodius Afer leaned his head against the stone wall. Banged it once or twice. Wept bitter tears for the lost legacy of ancient Rome.
Ruined—ruined—by modern sissies. Girls.