David Drake - Hammer's Slammers 16 - Other Times Than Peace

Other Times Than Peace

Table of Contents

Introduction: A Range of Treatments

Lambs to the Slaughter

Men Like Us

The Day of Glory

The Interrogation Team

A Death in Peacetime

Dreams in Amber

Safe to Sea

The Murder of Halley's Comet

The Hunting Ground

The False Prophet

A Grand Tour

About The Author

Introduction: ARangeofTreatments

I started out writing horror stories. To be precise, I started out by writing a pastiche of August Derleth

pastiches of H.P. Lovecraft horror stories. (It was very bad. The only collection I can imagine reprinting

it in is a retrospective where I can point to it and say, "See how much better I've gotten?" Which, believe

me, will be damning my later work with faint praise.)

From horror I moved to heroic fantasy (sword and sorcery, if you prefer), to mainstream SF, to space

opera, to military SF (I distinguish between those two subgenres), and even to humor. I've also written

quite a lot of fantasy—the Isles series of Tolkienesque fantasies for Tor of course, but quite a lot before I

started that series as well.

There aren't any fantasies in this collection, but I've included samples from the other named subgenres. I

read widely across the spectrum of SF/fantasy, and I don't see much difference between writing one type

and another. The stories I like are about characters—about people—and that's a constant in all genres.

These stories include one of my earliest as well as the two most recent (as of this writing). Some are

self-standing, some were written for series of my own, and several were written for shared universes.

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There are light stories and some of the grimmest things I've ever written. (Yes, I know what I'm saying.)

Some are carefully researched historicals, some take place in the far future, and one was set in the place

and time where I wrote it.

What the stories have in common is that they're all about war. Some of the protagonists are fighting for

the survival of the human species; some are fighting for national political ends; and many are simply

fighting because it's their job. The reasons don't really matter to the people at the sharp end.

And above all, these are stories about people.

Dave Drake

david-drake.com

Lambs to the Slaughter

A trumpet called, giving the go-ahead to a detachment leaving by one of the other gates of the Harbor.

Half of Froggie's bored troopers looked up; a few even hopped to their feet.

The century's band of local females roused, clucking like a hen-coop at dinner time and grasping the

poles of the handcarts holding the troopers' noncombat gear. Slats, the six-limbed administrator who

Froggie was escorting out to some barb village the gods knew where, clambered into his palanquin and

ordered his bearers to lift him.

"Everybody sit down and wait for orders!" Froggie said in a voice that boomed through the chatter.

"Which will come from me, Sedulus, so you can get your ass back into line. When I want you to lead the

advance, I'll tell you."

That'd be some time after Hermes came down and announced Sedulus was the son of Jupiter, Froggie

guessed.

Three days after Froggie was born, his father had lifted him before the door of their hut in the Alban Hills

and announced that the infant, Marcus Vibius Taena, was his legitimate son and heir. He'd been

nicknamed Ranunculus, Froggie, the day the training centurion heard him bellow cadence the first time.

Froggie's what he'd been since then; that or Top, after he'd been promoted to command the Third

Century of the Fourth Cohort in one of the legions Crassus had taken east to conquer Parthia.

Froggie'd continued in that rank when the Parthians sold their Roman prisoners to a man in a blue suit,

who wasn't a man as it turned out. A very long time ago,that was.

The girls subsided, cackling merrily. Queenie, the chief girl, called something to the others that Froggie

didn't catch. They laughed even harder.

The barbarians in this place were pinkish and had knees that bent the wrong way. They grew little ruffs

of down at their waists and throat, and the males had topknots of real feathers that they spent hours

primping.

Froggie's men didn't have much to do with the male barbs, except to slaughter enough of them the day

after the legion landed that the bottom lands flooded from the dam of bodies in the river. As for the

girls—they weren't built like real women, but the troopers had gotten used to field expedients; and

anyway, the girls were close enough.

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"Don't worry, boys," Froggie added mildly. "We'll get there as soon as we need to."

And maybe a little sooner than that. Froggie didn't understand this operation, and experience had left him

with a bad feeling about things he didn't understand.

Commanding the Third of the Fourth didn't give Froggie much in the way of bragging rights in the legion,

but he'd never cared about that. Superior officers knew that Froggie's century could be depended on to

get the job done; the human officers did, at least. If any of the blue-suits, the Commanders, bothered to

think about it, they knew as well.

Froggie's men could be sure that their centurion wasn't going to volunteer them for anything, not even

guard duty on a whore house, because there was always going to be a catch in it. And if the century

wound up in the shit anyway, Froggie'd get them out of it if there was any way in Hell to do that. He'd

always managed before.

The howl of the Commander's air chariot rose, then drummed toward the gate. Froggie stood, using his

vinewood swagger stick as a cane.

"Nowyou can get your thumbs out, troopers!" he said in a roar they could hear inside the huge metal ship

that the legion had arrived on. Froggie was short and squat—shorter than any but a handful of the

fifty-seven troopers in his century—but his voice would have been loud in a man twice his size.

The troopers fell in with the skill of long practice; their grunts and curses were part of the operation. Men

butted their javelins and lifted themselves like codgers leaning on a staff, or else they held their heavy

shields out at arm's length to balance the weight of their armored bodies as their knees straightened.

They wore their cuirasses. They'd march carrying their shields on their left shoulders, though they'd sling

their helmets rather than wear them. Marching all day in a helmet gave the most experienced veteran a

throbbing headache and cut off about half the sounds around him besides.

Froggie remembered the day the legion had marched in battle order, under a desert sun and a constant

rain of Parthian arrows. They all remembered that. All the survivors.

Besides his sword and dagger, each trooper carried a pair of javelins meant for throwing. Their points

were steel, but the slim neck of each shaft was soft iron that bent when it hit and kept the other fellow

from pulling it out and maybe throwing it back at you. After you hurled your javelins it was work for the

sword, and Froggie's troopers were better at that than anybody who'd faced them so far.

Slats stood on his two legs with his four arms crossed behind his back. He'd travelled in the same ship as

the legion for the past good while. Slats wasn't a Commander any more than Froggie was, but he seemed

to have a bit of rank with his own people. Like all the civilians who had to deal with the barbs, Slats wore

a lavaliere that turned the gabble from his own triangular mouth into words the person he was talking to

could understand.

"The bug's been around a while, right?" murmured Glabrio, a file-closer who could've had more rank if

he'd been willing to take it. Though Slats looked a lot like a big grasshopper, he had bones inside his

limbs the same as a man did.

"Yeah, Slats was in charge of billeting three campaigns ago," Froggie said. "He's all right. He'd jump if a

fly buzzed him, but seems to know his business."

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Glabrio laughed without bitterness. "That's more'n you could say about some Commanders we've had,

right?" he said.

"Starting with Crassus," Froggie agreed.

Froggie'd stopped trying to get his mind around the whole of the past; time went on too far now. Little

bits of memory still stuck up like rocks in a cold green sea. One of those memories was Crassus,

red-faced with the effort of squeezing into his gilded cuirass, telling the Parthian envoys that he'd explain

the cause of the war at the same time as he dictated terms in the Parthian capital.

The Commander's flying chariot came over a range of buildings. The guards in the gate tower here, a

squad from the Ninth Cohort, leaned over the battlements to watch. One of them made a joke and the

others laughed. Glad they weren't going, Froggie guessed.

The Harbor, the Commanders city across the river from what had been the barb capital, had started as a

Roman palisade thrown up half a mile out from the huge metal ship from which the legion had landed. The

open area had immediately begun to fill with housing for civilians: those from the metal ship and also for

barbs quick to take allegiance with the new masters whom Roman swords had imposed.

Glabrio must've been thinking the same thing Froggie was, because he eyed the barbs thronging the

streets and said, "If anybody'd asked me, I'd have waited till I was damned sure the fighting was over

before I let any of the birds this side of my walls. The men, I mean. They strut around like so many banty

roosters."

"Next time I'm having dinner with the Commander," Froggie said sourly, "I'll mention it to him."

The flying chariot settled majestically onto the space left open for it beside the gate. Froggie felt the hair

on the back of his arms rise as it always did when the machines landed or took off nearby. This was a big

example of the breed. It carried the Commander and his driver; two of the Commander's huge,

mace-wielding toad bodyguards; Pollio, the legion's trumpeter; and five of the male barbs who'd joined

the Commander's entourage almost from the moment he'd strode into the palace still splashed with the

orange blood of the barb king.

The top barb aide was named Three-Spire. Froggie had seen him before and would've been just as

happy never to see him again.

The troopers clashed to attention. Froggie crossed his right arm over his cuirass in salute, sharply enough

to make the hoops clatter.

"Sir!" he boomed. "Third Century of the Fourth Cohort, all present or accounted for!"

The Commander stood up, though he didn't bother to get out of his chariot. The barbs sharing the

vehicle with him—all this Commander's aides were barbs, the first time Froggie remembered that

happening—continued to talk among themselves.

"Very good, warrior," the Commander said. He wore a thin, tight suit that might have almost have been

blue skin, but his face was pale behind the enclosing bubble of a helmet. His garb was protection of some

sort, but he wouldn't need the huge bodyguards if he didn't fear weapons. "Don't let sloth degrade your

unit while you're on this assignment. No doubt my Guild will have fighting for you in the future."

Even without using the chariot for a reviewing stand, the Commander would be taller than any trooper in

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the legion. Back in the days before Crassus, though, Froggie had seen Gauls who were even taller, as

well as heavier-bodied than the blue-suited race.

The Commander turned to Slats and spoke again; this time the words that came from the lavaliere

around the Commander's neck sounded like the squeak of twisted sinews: they were in Slats' language,

not Latin or any other human tongue. The administrator spread his six limbs wide and waggled

submissively, miming a bug flipped on its back.

Fixing Froggie with a pop-eyed glare that was probably meant to be stern—language could be

translated; expressions couldn't—the Commander resumed, "Obey the orders of the administrator I've

provided you with as though his orders were mine. You have your duty."

Three-Spire said something to the Commander. The barb wore one of the little translator plates and

must have spoken in the Commanders own language, instead of speaking barb and letting the

Commander's device translate it.

The Commander flicked his left arm to the side in his equivalent of a nod. "I'll be checking up on you," he

added to Froggie. "Remember that!"

"Yes, sir!" Froggie boomed, his face impassive. "The Third of the Fourth never shirks its duty!"

Three-Spire looked at the girls with dawning comprehension; his topknot bristled with anger, bringing its

three peaks into greater prominence. "You! Warrior!" he said. "Where's the leader of these females?"

"Hey, Queenie!" Froggie said—in Latin. He could've called the chief girl in a passable equivalent of her

own language, but he didn't think it was the time or place to show off. The troopers didn't have lavalieres

to translate for them, but they'd had a lot of experience getting ideas across to barbs. Especially female

barbs.

Queenie obediently stepped forward, but Froggie could see that she was worried. Well, so was he.

"No, not a female!" Three-Spire said. The lavaliere wouldn't translate a snarl, but it wasn't hard to figure

there should've been one. "I mean the male who's leading this contingent!"

The Commander looked from Queenie to his aide, apparently puzzled. He didn't slap Three-Spire down

the way Froggie expected. Hercules! Froggie remembered one Commander who'd had his guards smash

a centurion to a pulp for saying the ground of the chosen campsite was too soft to support tent poles. The

legion had slept on its tents that night, because spread like tarpaulins the thick leather walls supported the

troopers enough that they didn't sink into the muck in the constant rain.

"We take care of that ourself, citizen," Froggie said, more polite than he wanted to be. Something funny

was going on here, and Froggie'd learned his first day in the army that you usually win if you bet "unusual"

meant "bad."

"That's not permitted!" Three-Spire said. "Sawtooth here will accompany you."

He spoke to the barb beside him, then opened a bin that was part of the chariot and handed the fellow a

lavaliere from it. Sawtooth walked toward the girls clustered around the carts. He didn't look any too

pleased about the assignment.

"What's this barb mean 'not permitted'?" Glabrio said in a ragged whisper. "If he don't watch his tongue,

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he's going to lose it!"

"Take your own advice," Froggie said out of the side of his mouth. Loudly, facing the Commander, he

said, "Yes, sir!" and saluted again. "Century, form marching order and await the command!"

The Commander blinked inner eyelids that worked sideways the way a snake's do. He spoke to Pollio,

who obediently stood and raised his trumpet.

"You're going to take this from a barb?" Glabrio demanded.

Pollio blew the long attention call, then the three quick toots for Advance. He looked past the tube of his

instrument at his fellow troopers, his eyes troubled.

"March!" Froggie called. The century was too small a unit to have a proper standard to tilt forward, so

Froggie swept his swagger stick toward the open gateway instead. To Glabrio, in a voice that could

scarcely be heard over the crash of boots and equipment, he added, "For a while, sure. Look what

Crassus bought by getting hasty, trooper."

Before his Third Squad was out of the gate, Froggie heard the chariot lift with a frying-bacon sizzle. A

moment later he saw it fly over the palisade, heading for the next gate south where the Fifth of the Fourth

waited to escort another administrator out into the sticks. Pollio looked down at the troops; none of the

others aboard the vehicle bothered to.

Froggie stepped out of line, letting Lucky Castus of the first squad lead. Sunlight winked on the battle

monument which the legion had set up outside the main gate of the Harbor: a pillar of rough-cut

stonework, with captured armor set in niches around it and a barb war chariot filled with royal standards

on top.

The barbs used brass rather than bronze for their helmets and the facings of their wicker shields.

Polished brass shone like an array of gold, but verdigris had turned this equipment to poisonous green in

the three months since the battle.

A lot of things had gone bad in the past three months. Froggie'd be glad to get out of this place. If it

could be done alive.

The girls came through the gate, pushing the carts. Froggie'd heard Sawtooth shouting, "March! March!

March!" for as long as the Commander's chariot was visible, but the barb was silent now.

Queenie saw Froggie watching. She twitched the point of her shoulder in Sawtooth's direction. Froggie

smiled and moved his open hand in a short arc as though he were smoothing dirt.

That was a barb gesture. For men with damage to the spine or brain that even the Commanders'

machines couldn't repair, the legion continued the Roman practice of cremating corpses. The barbs here

buried their dead in the ground.

Slats came through the gate after the last cart, swinging in his palanquin. His four girls handled the weight

all right, but they didn't seem to have much sparkle. Well, that'd change when they started eating army

rations along with the century's girls.

As soon as Slats saw Froggie, he desperately beckoned the Roman to him. Froggie didn't care for

anybody calling him like a dog, but there wasn't much option this time. As clumsy as Slats was, he'd

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probably break his neck if he tried to climb out of the palanquin hastily. Froggie sauntered over and

walked beside the vehicle. That wasn't hard; the carts were setting the pace.

"Centurion Vibius," the administrator said, "I'm pleased to see you. I have studied your record. There is

no unit whose escort on this expedition I would prefer to yours."

Froggie thought about that for a moment. You'd rarely go wrong to assume whatever your officers told

you was a lie . . . but Slats wasn't exactly an officer. Also, Froggie'd gotten the impression back when

Slats was billeting officer that his race of bugs couldn't tell lies any better than they could fly.

"If we're going to be stuck in the middle of nowhere for however long," the centurion said, "then you may

as well learn to call me Froggie. And I'm not sorry we're with you, Slats, if we've got to be out here at

all."

Pollio's trumpet called again, ordering Postumius and his boys into the back of beyond. Three centuries

from each cohort, half the strength of the legion, had been sent off these past two days on individual

escort missions.

"Exactly!" said Slats. He spoke through his mouth—not every race serving the Commanders did—but

he had three jaw plates, not two, and he looked more like a lamprey talking than he did anything Froggie

wanted to watch. "Ifwe have to be here. What do you think of the expedition, Centurion Froggie?"

Froggie thought it was the worst idea he'd heard since Crassus marched intoParthia with no guides and

no clue, but he wasn't going to say that toany damnbody. Aloud he said, "I would've thought that maybe

waiting till this place was officially pacified so you guys could move in your burning weapons and so

forth . . . that that might be a good idea."

The First Squad with Glabrio in front was entering the forest. It niggled Froggie that he wasn't up with

them, though he knew how sharp Glabrio's eyes were. The file-closer had served as the unofficial unit

scout ever since Froggie got to know him.

"Exactly!" Slats repeated. "It is extremely dangerous to treat the planet as pacified when it isnot pacified.

What if the Anroklaatschi—"

The barbs; Froggie never bothered to learn what barbs called themself. Most times you couldn't

pronounce it anyway.

"—attack the Harbor in force as they attacked when we landed? They could sweep right over the few

troops remaining, could they not?"

Froggie thought about the question. The barbs came riding to battle on chariots. One fellow with only a

kinked sword drove while two warriors with long spears and full armor stood in the back. The driver

held the "horses" behind the lines while his betters stomped forward in no better order than a flock of

sheep wearing brass.

The barbs had gotten a real surprise when—instead of spending half the afternoon shouting

challenges—the legion had advanced on the double, launched javelins, and then waded in for the real

butcher's work with swords. That surprise couldn't be repeated, but so long as whoever was in

command of the understrength legion kept his head . . .

"Some folks' swordarms are going to be real tired by the time it's over," Froggie said judiciously, "but I

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guess they'd come through all right."

The smooth-barked trees in this place were tall, some of them up to two hundred feet. The branches

came off in rows slanting up the trunks to end in sprays of tassels like willow whips instead of proper

leaves.

Froggie hadn't seen real trees since he'd marched intoMesopotamia . He'd seen a date palm there and

wondered what he was doing in a place so strange. He'd been right to worry.

Slats and the Commander called this place a planet, just like the Commanders did every place they took

the legion to. The only thing "planet" meant to Froggie was the stars that he used to watch move slowly

across the sky while he tended sheep before he enlisted.Hercules! but he wished he was back in the

Sabine Hills now.

"Well, all right, the Harbor may hold," Slats said peevishly, "but what about you and I, Centurion

Froggie? What chance do we have if the Anroklaatschi attack?"

"Well, Slats . . ." Froggie said. "That depends on a lot of things. I'd just as soon it didn't happen, but me

and the boys'll see what can be done if it does."

Froggie and the palanquin reached the shade of the forest. This wasn't a proper road but it was a lot

more than an animal track. Two and generally three men could march abreast, though their outside knees

and elbows brushed low growth which looked like starbursts from a peglike stem.

Tassels closed all but slivers of the sky overhead, and the trunks cut off sight of the Harbor. Froggie

knew the Commander had ways to see through trees or even solid rock, but he still relaxed a little to

have the feeling of privacy.

"I'm wondering . . ." Slats said. He spoke softly and seemed to be afraid to meet Froggie's eyes. "I'm

wondering if perhaps the Commander is sending us and the others out to give him warning if the

Anroklaatschi are planning an attack? They would hit us first, and of course I would call a warning to the

Harbor."

He waggled a little rod that Froggie had taken for a writing stylus.

Froggie sighed. "Well, I tell you, Slats," he said. "A long time ago I gave up expecting what officers did

to make a lot of sense. But I gotta say, as a plan that'dreally be a bad one. He's weakening his base too

much."

"Nothing about this planet makes sense!" Slats burst out. "None of the products are of real value to the

Guild. Oh, in the long term, certainly—but nothing worth the loss of warrior slaves as valuable as you are,

Roman. And to lose my life as well over this wretched planet! Oh, what a tragedy!"

"I can see you'd feel that way about it," Froggie said. "Well, you worry about your business, Slats, and

me and the boys'll worry about ours."

He stepped aside and let the column tramp on by him. He'd see how Verruca, his number two, was

making out at the end of the line; then he'd go up with Glabrio again where he belonged.

It didn't make Froggie feel good that the administrator was just as worried about this business as he was,

but sometimes it's nice to know that you can trust your instinctseven when they're telling you you're

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stepping into a pool of hog manure.

After all, you had to trust something.

Froggie looked at the sun, a hands-breadth past zenith. He thought the days here were about the same

length as those in Italy—that wasn't true a lot of places the legion had been—but home was too long ago

for him to be sure.

A few big trees sprang from the protection of a limestone outcrop, but only saplings grew in the rest of

the broad floodplain. At the moment the river was well within its channel.

"Queenie!" Froggie said. The chief girl, older than the others by a ways, didn't actually push one of the

carts. She trotted over to him. "River there—much water come down? Quick quick happen?"

Half his words were Latin, most of the rest were in Queenie's chirps or as close as Froggie could come

to the sounds. Trooper pidgin had bits and pieces of other tongues, too, some of them going back to the

Pahlevi the legions had picked up marching into Parthia.

Queenie glanced at the river, using Froggie's gestures as much as his words to figure out what he was

asking. Some troopers had a knack for jawing with barbs. Froggie didn't, but he could make out. It

wasn't like they were going to be talking philosophy, after all.

"No way, boss-man!" Queenie said. "Sky get cold first, then get warm, thenhoosh ! sweep all shit

downstream. Long time, boss-man."

Then, hopefully, "We camp here?"

"We camp here," Froggie agreed. The century had already halted and the men were watching him; it

wasn't like they were recruits who couldn't figure out what was going to happen next.

"Fall out!" Froggie said. "First and Third Squads provide security, Second digs posts every twelve

feet—" for a marching camp there was no need to set every timber of the palisade in the ground, the way

you'd do for a more permanent structure "—and the rest of you start cutting timber. I want this complete

before sunset, and Idon't mean last light."

Verruca and Blasus already had the T-staff and measuring cord out. Any of the troopers could survey a

simple camp by now, and with the right tools Blasus could've set an aqueduct.

He'd never have occasion to do that, of course. The Guild didn't use the legion for that kind of work.

Well, Blasus was a good man to have at your side with a sword, too.

Troopers unlimbered axes, saws and shovels from the leading cart. The first job was to remove trees

from the campsite, but they'd need to clear a wider area to complete the palisade. There wasn't a high

likelihood that the barbs would try anything, but—

"Hey, Froggie!" Galerius called. "You know it's a waste of time to fort up in the middle of a nowhere like

this. Ain't the blisters on our feet enough for today that we got to blister our hands, too?"

"Yeah, Froggie," Laena said. "Give it a rest for tonight, why don't you? We all know you're boss—you

don't got to prove it."

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There was a chorus of agreement, though Froggie was glad to notice the grumblers continued to pick up

their tools. "You're damned right I don't have to prove it!" Froggie said. "And if you don't start working

your shovel instead of your tongue, Laena, you're going to have four shifts of night watch on top of the

post-holing!"

"By Hercules!" Laena said as he strode toward the line the surveyors were laying out. "One of these

days I'll get some rank myself so I can stand and watch other guys sweat!"

It was the same thing every halt, whether they were operating as the whole legion or in detachments like

now: the centurions ordered the troopers to fortify the camp and the troopers complained.Every damned

time!

And the troopers went ahead and fortified the camp anyway, with palisades, turf walls, drystone, or

even fascines of spiky brush. Whatever there was that'd make a wall, that's what the legion used.

The troopers didn't obey because they were afraid of Froggie. Oh, he was tough enough—but Froggie'd

seen Laena strangle a barb half again his own size in a place where the grass grew to the height of a small

tree.

They obeyed, Laena and the rest, because they knew Froggie was right: that one of these nights they'd

bed down in a spot just as empty as this one, and the walls Froggie had forced them to build would be

the difference between seeing the dawn and having barbs cut all their throats. But they'd still complain

and fight the orders, just like Froggie had before he got promoted.

The girls were starting cookfires and getting ration packs out of the third cart. The barbs here used

wooden pistons to light wads of dry moss, quicker and at least as easy as striking sparks off steel with a

flint. Queenie'd called something to Slats' porters, who obediently put him down.

The barb aide, Sawtooth, trotted over to Froggie. "You, warrior!" he said, his words coming out of the

translator on his chest. "Why are we stopping?"

Glabrio put a hand on his swordhilt. Froggie waved him to calm down and walked over where Slats was

cautiously stepping out of his vehicle. Sawtooth continued to jabber, but Froggie ignored him.

"Slats, this is a good place to set up," Froggie said. "When we get out of this bottom the trees'll be too

big for us to build a stockade with the manpower we got. Besides, I don't want to work the girls too

hard. This is a damned poor road for carts."

"Do not be concerned for the females," Sawtooth said. His barb chattering was an overtone to the

accentless Latin coming out of the lavaliere. "We must push on till dark. Then we will reach Kascanschi

by tomorrow!"

"Another thing, Slats," Froggie said without turning to look at the aide. "I wish you'd tell that barb who

got wished on us that all he has to do to live a long, happy life is to keep his mouth shut and let me forget

he's around. If he can't do that, then there's going to be a problem and he ain't going to like the way it

gets solved."

"What?" said Sawtooth. "What do you mean? Three-Spire gave me complete authority over the

females!"

"But Centurion Froggie . . . ?" Slats said. The translated words were without inflection, but the way the

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

David Drake - Hammer's Slammers 16 - Other Times Than Peace

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