Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (494 page)

One of the men unholstered a pistol. Before anyone could react, it spat twice.

Gelatin capsules hit the morphs and burst, releasing lysis catalysts. In under a minute, the two morphs were a single mingled puddle of thick slime, atop which for a minute floated the Moon Moth’s tougher gemmed wings.

“Okay, folks—” began the leader.

Unnoticed, Little Worker had slyly extended an arm toward the bare ankle of Mister Michael’s wife. Now, she pricked it deeply with a newly unsheathed razored claw.

Mister Michael’s wife screamed.

The terrorist with unsteady nerves shot her through the eye.

Before the man’s trigger-finger could relax, or any of the others could tighten theirs, Little Worker moved.

The part of her inheritance that was 30 percent wolverine took over.

The four intruders soon lay dead with their throats torn out, soaking the carpet with their blood where once the Bull and Lyrical had coupled.

Little Worker calmly licked the blood from her lips. She really preferred the taste of jelly. Wetting her palms repeatedly with her tongue, she meticulously cleaned the fur on her face. When she was done, she turned toward Mister Michael.

He had collapsed across the body of his wife and lay sobbing.

Little Worker gently approached. She touched him tenderly. He jumped.

“Mister Michael,” said Little Worker, “everything is all right now.”

“You and I are alone.”

* * * *

Copyright © 1989 by Mercury Press, Inc.

(1945– )

An important voice in the late-1970s resurgence of military science fiction, David Drake’s first story was actually a Lovecraft pastiche, “Denkirch.” Drake sold it to August Derleth in 1967, the same year he graduated from the University of Iowa with a BA in History and Latin. Duke Law School was interrupted in 1969 when Drake was drafted into the Army; he spent the next two years as an interrogator for the Eleventh Armored Cavalry Regiment in Vietnam and Cambodia. After coming home and finishing law school, Drake worked as an Assistant Town Attorney until 1980, then as a bus driver part-time for a year to focus more on his writing. Since 1981 he’s been a full-time writer.

Drake’s first novel was the sword and sorcery
Dragon Lord
in 1979. The same year he published the first novel in his signature military SF series,
Hammer’s Slammers
, which eventually grew to eight books and about thirty shorter works. Since then, Drake has authored or co-authored nearly seventy-five books.

First published in
Galaxy
, August 1975

The rising sun is a dagger point casting long shadows toward Vibulenus and his cohort from the native breastworks. The legion had formed ranks an hour before; the enemy is not yet stirring. A playful breeze with a bitter edge skitters out of the south, and the Tribune swings his shield to his right side against it.

“When do we advance, sir?” his First Centurion asks. Gnaeus Clodius Calvus, promoted to his present position after a boulder had pulped his predecessor during the assault on a granite fortress far away. Vibulenus only vaguely recalls his first days with the cohort, a boy of eighteen in titular command of four hundred and eighty men whose names he had despaired of learning. Well, he knows them now. Of course, there are only two hundred and ninety-odd left to remember.

Calvus’ bearded, silent patience snaps Vibulenus back to the present. “When the cavalry comes up, they told me. Some kinglet or other is supposed to bring up a couple thousand men to close our flanks. Otherwise, we’re hanging….”

The Tribune’s voice trails off. He stares across the flat expanse of gravel toward the other camp, remembering another battle plain of long ago.

“Damn Parthians,” Calvus mutters, his thought the same.

Vibulenus nods. “Damn Crassus, you mean. He put us
there,
and that put us
here.
The stupid bastard. But he got his, too.”

The legionaries squat in their ranks, talking and chewing bits of bread or dried fruit. They display no bravado, very little concern. They have been here too often before. Sunlight turns their shield-facings green: not the crumbly fungus of verdigris but the shimmering sea-color of the harbor of Brundisium on a foggy morning.

Oh, Mother Vesta, Vibulenus breathes to himself. He is five foot two, about average for the legion. His hair is black where it curls under the rim of his helmet and he has no trace of a beard. Only his eyes make him appear more than a teenager; they would suit a tired man of fifty.

A trumpet from the command group in the rear sings three quick bars. “Fall in!” the Tribune orders, but his centurions are already barking their own commands. These too are lost in the clash of hobnails on gravel. The Tenth Cohort could form ranks in its sleep.

Halfway down the front, a legionary’s cloak hooks on a notch in his shield rim. He tugs at it, curses in Oscan as Calvus snarls down the line at him. Vibulenus makes a mental note to check with the centurion after the battle. That fellow should have been issued a replacement shield before disembarking. He glances at his own. How many shields has he carried? Not that it matters. Armor is replaceable. He is wearing his fourth cuirass, now, though none of them have fit like the one his father had bought him the day Crassus granted him a tribune’s slot. Vesta.…

A galloper from the command group skids his beast to a halt with a needlessly brutal jerk on its reins. Vibulenus recognizes him—Pompilius Falco. A little swine when he joined the legion, an accomplished swine now. Not bad with animals, though. “We’ll be advancing without the cavalry,” he shouts, leaning over in his saddle. “Get your line dressed.”

“Osiris’ bloody dick we will!” the Tribune snaps. “Where’s our support?”

“Have to support yourself, I guess,” shrugs Falco. He wheels his mount. Vibulenus steps forward and catches the reins.

“Falco,” he says with no attempt to lower his voice, “you tell our deified Commander to get somebody on our left flank if he expects the Tenth to advance. There’s too many natives—they’ll hit us from three sides at once.”

“You afraid to die?” the galloper sneers. He tugs at the reins.

Vibulenus holds them. A gust of wind whips at his cloak. “Afraid to get my skull split?” he asks. “I don’t know. Are you, Falco?” Falco glances at where the Tribune’s right hand rests. He says nothing. “Tell him we’ll fight for him,” Vibulenus goes on. “We won’t let him throw us away. We’ve gone that route once.” He looses the reins and watches the galloper scatter gravel on his way back.

The replacement gear is solid enough, shields that do not split when dropped and helmets forged without thin spots. But there is no craftsmanship in them. They are heavy, lifeless. Vibulenus still carries a bone-hilted sword from Toledo that required frequent sharpening but was tempered and balanced—poised to slash a life out, as it has a hundred times already. His hand continues to caress the palm-smoothed bone, and it calms him somewhat.

“Thanks, sir.”

The thin-featured tribune glances back at his men. Several of the nearer ranks give him a spontaneous salute. Calvus is the one who spoke. He is blank-faced now, a statue of mahogany and strap-bronze. His stocky form radiates pride in his leader. Leader—no one in the group around the standards can lead a line soldier, though they may give commands that will be obeyed. Vibulenus grins and slaps Calvus’ burly shoulder. “Maybe this is the last one and we’ll be going home,” he says.

* * * *

Movement throws a haze over the enemy camp. At this distance it is impossible to distinguish forms, but metal flashes in the viridian sunlight. The shadow of bodies spreads slowly to right and left of the breastworks as the natives order themselves. There are thousands of them, many thousands.

“Hey-yip!”
Twenty riders of the general’s bodyguard pass behind the cohort at an earthshaking trot. They rein up on the left flank, shrouding the exposed depth of the infantry. Pennons hang from the lances socketed behind their right thighs, gay yellows and greens to keep the lance heads from being driven too deep to be jerked out. The riders’ faces are sullen under their mesh face guards. Vibulenus knows how angry they must be at being shifted under pressure—under his pressure—and he grins again. The bodyguards are insulted at being required to fight instead of remaining nobly aloof from the battle. The experience may do them some good.

At least it may get a few of the snotty bastards killed.

“Not exactly a regiment of cavalry,” Calvus grumbles.

“He gave us half of what was available,” Vibulenus replies with a shrug. “They’ll do to keep the natives off our back. Likely nobody’ll come near, they look so mean.”

The centurion taps his thigh with his knobby swagger stick. “Mean? We’ll give ’em mean.”

All the horns in the command group sound together, a cacophonous bray. The jokes and scufflings freeze, and only the south wind whispers. Vibulenus takes a last look down his ranks—each of them fifty men abreast and no more sway to it than a tight-stretched cord would leave. Five feet from shield boss to shield boss, room to swing a sword. Five feet from nose guard to the nose guards of the next rank, men ready to step forward individually to replace the fallen or by ranks to lock shields with the front line in an impenetrable wall of bronze. The legion is a restive dragon, and its teeth glitter in its spears; one vertical behind each legionary’s shield, one slanted from each right hand to stab or throw.

The horns blare again, the eagle standard slants forward, and Vibulenus’ throat joins three thousand others in a death-rich bellow as the legion steps off on its left foot. The centurions are counting cadence and the ranks blast it back to them in the crash-jingle of boots and gear.

Striding quickly between the legionaries, Vibulenus checks the dress of his cohort. He should have a horse, but there are no horses in the legion now. The command group rides rough equivalents which are…very rough. Vibulenus is not sure he could accept one if his parsimonious employers offered it.

His men are a smooth bronze chain that advances in lock step. Very nice. The nine cohorts to the right are in equally good order, but Hercules! there are so few of them compared to the horde swarming from the native camp. Somebody has gotten overconfident. The enemy raises its own cheer, scattered and thin at first. But it goes on and on, building, ordering itself to a blood-pulse rhythm that moans across the intervening distance, the gap the legion is closing at two steps a second. Hercules! there is a crush of them.

The natives are close enough to be individuals now: lanky, long-armed in relations to a height that averages greater than that of the legionaires. Ill-equipped, though. Their heads are covered either by leather helmets or beehives of their own hair. Their shields appear to be hide and wicker affairs. What could live on this gravel waste and provide that much leather? But of course Vibulenus has been told none of the background, not even the immediate geography. There is some place around that raises swarms of warriors, that much is certain.

And they have iron. The black glitter of their spearheads tightens the Tribune’s wounded chest as he remembers.

“Smile, boys,” one of the centurions calls cheerfully, “here’s company.” With his words a javelin hums down at a steep angle to spark on the ground. From a spear-thrower, must have been. The distance is too long for any arm Vibulenus has seen, and he has seen his share.

“Ware!” he calls as another score of missiles arc from the native ranks. Legionaries judge them, raise their shields or ignore the plunging weapons as they choose. One strikes in front of Vibulenus and shatters into a dozen iron splinters and a knobby shaft that looks like rattan. One or two of the men have spears clinging to their shield faces. Their clatter syncopates the thud of boot heels. No one is down.

Vibulenus runs two paces ahead of his cohort, his sword raised at an angle. It makes him an obvious target: a dozen javelins spit toward him. The skin over his ribs crawls, the lumpy breadth of scar tissue scratching like a rope over the bones. But he can be seen by every man in his cohort, and somebody has to give the signal….

“Now!” he shouts vainly in the mingling cries. His arm and sword cut down abruptly. Three hundred throats give a collective grunt as the cohort heaves its own massive spears with the full weight of its rush behind them. Another light javelin glances from the shoulder of Vibulenus’ cuirass, staggering him. Calvus’ broad right palm catches the Tribune, holds him upright for the instant he needs to get his balance.

The front of the native line explodes as the Roman spears crash into it.

Fifty feet ahead there are orange warriors shrieking as they stumble over the bodies of comrades whose armor has shredded under the impact of the heavy spears. “At ‘em!” a front-rank file-closer cries, ignoring his remaining spear as he drags out his short sword. The trumpets are calling something but it no longer matters what: tactics go hang, the Tenth is cutting its way into another native army.

In a brief spate of fury, Vibulenus holds his forward position between a pair of legionaries. A native, orange-skinned with bright carmine eyes, tries to drag himself out of the Tribune’s path. A Roman spear has gouged through his shield and arm, locking all three together. Vibulenus’ sword takes the warrior alongside the jaw. The blood is paler than a man’s.

The backward shock of meeting has bunched the natives. The press of undisciplined reserves from behind adds to their confusion. Vibulenus jumps a still-writhing body and throws himself into the wall of shields and terrified orange faces. An iron-headed spear thrusts at him, misses as another warrior jostles the wielder. Vibulenus slashes downward at his assailant. The warrior throws his shield up to catch the sword, then collapses when a second-rank legionary darts his spear through the orange abdomen.

Breathing hard with his sword still dripping in his hand, Vibulenus lets the pressing ranks flow around him. Slaughter is not a tribune’s work, but increasingly Vibulenus finds that he needs the swift violence of the battle line to release the fury building within him. The cohort is advancing with the jerky sureness of an ox-drawn plow in dry soil.

A window of native bodies lies among the line of first contact, now well within the Roman formation. Vibulenus wipes his blade on a fallen warrior, leaving two sluggish runnels filling on the flesh. He sheathes the sword. Three bodies are sprawled together to form a hillock. Without hesitation the Tribune steps onto it to survey the battle.

The legion is a broad awl punching through a belt of orange leather. The cavalry on the left stand free in a scatter of bodies, neither threatened by the natives nor making any active attempt to drive them back. One of the mounts, a hairless brute combining the shape of a wolfhound with the bulk of an ox, is feeding on a corpse his rider has lanced. Vibulenus was correct in expecting the natives to give them a wide berth; thousands of flanking warriors tremble in indecision rather than sweep forward to surround the legion. It would take more discipline than this orange rabble has shown to attack the toad-like riders on their terrible beasts.

Behind the lines, a hundred paces distant from the legionaries whose armor stands in hammering contrast to the naked autochthones, is the Commander and his remaining score of guards. He alone of the three thousand who have landed from the starship knows why the battle is being fought, but he seems to stand above it. And if the silly bastard still has half his bodyguard with him—Mars and all the gods, what must be happening on the right flank?

The inhuman shout of triumph that rises half a mile away gives Vibulenus an immediate answer.

“Prepare to disengage!” he orders the nearest centurion. The swarthy non-com, son of a North African colonist, speaks briefly into the ears of two legionaries before sending them to the ranks forward and back of his. The legion is tight for men, always has been. Tribunes have no runners, but the cohort makes do.

Trumpets blat in terror. The native warriors boil whooping around the Roman right flank. Legionaries in the rear are facing about with ragged suddenness, obeying instinct rather than the orders bawled by their startled officers. The command group suddenly realizes the situation. Three of the bodyguard charge toward the oncoming orange mob. The rest of the guards and staff scatter into the infantry.

The iron-bronze clatter has ceased on the left flank. When the cohort halts its advance, the natives gain enough room to break and flee for their encampment. Even the warriors who have not engaged are cowed by the panic of those who have; by the panic, and the sprawls of bodies left behind them.