David Drake - Foreign Legions

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Foreign Legions

David Drake

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real

people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Galaxy Magazine.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-671-31990-6

Cover art by Dru Blair

First printing, June 2001

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Foreign legions / created by David Drake.

p. cm.

“A Baen Books original”—T.p. verso.

Contents: Ranks of bronze / by David Drake — Sir George and the

dragon / by David Weber — Lambs to the slaughter / by David Drake

— A clear signal / by Mark L. Van Name — The three walls—32nd

campaign / by S.M. Stirling — Carthago delenda est / by Eric Flint.

ISBN 0-671-31990-6

1. Science ficton, American. 2. Human–alien encounters—Fiction. 3.

Life on other planets—Fiction. 4. Space warfare—Fiction. 5. War

stories, American. 6. Soldiers—Fiction. I. Drake, David.

PS648.S3 F66 2001

813’.0876208—dc21 2001025187

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

BAEN BOOKS by DAVID DRAKE

RCN Series:

With the Lightnings

Lt. Leary, Commanding

Hammer’s Slammers:

The Tank Lords

Caught in the Crossfire

The Butcher’s Bill

The Sharp End

Independent Novels and Collections:

The Dragon Lord

Birds of Prey

Northworld Trilogy

Redliners

Starliner

All the Way to the Gallows

Foreign Legions (created by David Drake)

The Belisarius series:

(with Eric Flint)

An Oblique Approach

In the Heart of Darkness

Destiny’s Shield

Fortune’s Stroke

The Tide of Victory (forthcoming)

The General series:

(With S.M. Stirling)

The Forge

The Chosen

The Reformer

The Undesired Princess and The Enchanted Bunny

(with L. Sprague de Camp)

Lest Darkness Fall and To Bring the Light

(with L. Sprague de Camp)

Armageddon

(edited with Billie Sue Mosiman)

Introduction: WELL, IT HAPPENED THIS

WAY. . .

In 1975 I was finally able to write a story that had been knocking about in my mind for ten

years. It began with an undergraduate class in Horace which started me reading (and

repeatedly rereading) the whole of that wonderful poet’s work. I found particularly evocative

the lament which I quote in my original story:

“And Crassus’s wretched soldier takes a barbarian wife from his captors and grows old

waging war for them.”

In a course in Chinese history a year or two later, the professor mentioned in passing a unit

of troops armed like Romans which was destroyed in Central Asia in 36 B.C. at the height of

Chinese westward expansion. He speculated that these were the men Horace refers to,

captured by the Parthians at Carrhae in 53 B.C. and sold as mercenaries to kingdoms east of

Mesopotamia.

I was trying to write sf back then, so it immediately occurred to me that there was a story

there if only I could get to it. What if the folks who bought the Romans weren’t Huns but

rather interstellar aliens who wanted low-tech soldiers for commercial expansion (I got that

notion from Andre Norton; one of many things I got from that fine writer)? And what if the

alien wives were really alien?

The difference between an idea and a story is the difference between a wannabe and a

writer; it was a long time before I was writer enough to tell that deceptively simple story.

When I did I cast it in the historical present, copying the style of a passage in Sallust’s

Jugurthine Wars. This was a silly thing to do; but apart from that, I’m still pleased with the

result.

The story, “Ranks of Bronze,” went off to Galaxy magazine, edited by a fellow named Jim

Baen who’d bought three other stories of mine. I was paid for the story before the magazine

came out (unique in my experience of Galaxy at the time). As a result I was a lot less angry

than I’d otherwise have been to see that the editor had added a couple hundred words to the

conclusion without telling me.

I’m glad I didn’t get angry, because if I had I’d also have had to apologize to Jim later,

since he was absolutely correct in adding the exposition there. The story in Galaxy (and in

every reprint) is a collaboration between Drake and Baen. (Jim and I continue to mesh well

together, but we do so with fewer sparks nowadays.)

Jim really liked “Ranks of Bronze”; so much so that when he started his own publishing

house, Baen Books, the first thing he asked me to write for him was a novelization of that

story. I agreed, though at the time I didn’t know how I was going to do it.

The writing turned out to be easier than I’d expected (not least because I’d done an

enormous amount of research for the short story, including reading the whole of Vegetius in

Latin). I had things to learn about my craft (and still do today), but a lot of the bits came

together right on this one.

The novel, also Ranks of Bronze, was a Novel of Education—a Bildungsroman, to use the

normal German term for such a work. I started out with a young boy and ended with him

having grown to manhood. Both Jim and I were very pleased with the book.

That’s where the trouble started: Jim wanted a sequel. I was flabbergasted—you can’t have

a sequel to a Bildungsroman. What was I supposed to do? Take my character from adulthood

to senility in the second volume?

Jim kept asking. I kept saying no. (I’m not good at saying no to friends, but on this one I

was adamant.) Finally he got sneaky and suggested that I let three writers (whom he picked)

do novellas in the Ranks of Bronze universe, and that these novellas be bound in with the

original novel. I agreed, since I wasn’t going to have to do any work myself and the project

would get Jim off my back about doing a sequel.

Hope springs eternal. Or, alternatively, there’s a sucker born every minute. . . .

What you see is a self-standing volume with some excellent new stories built around my

original (well, Andre’s original) concept, but with no other criteria. I told the writers they

could do what they pleased. Eric wrote the sequel Jim was begging for, while Steve used the

characters from my novel in a campaign I hadn’t described. Dave and Mark did something

completely different within the basic parameters. And I used Crassus’s legion but not any of

the characters I’d written about in the original novel.

So . . . it’s been a long road but an interesting one. And after all, the road for the original

survivors of Crassus’s legions was longer yet.

Dave Drake

david-drake.com

RANKS OF BRONZE

David Drake

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’s 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 of 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’s 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’s 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 virid 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’s 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 relation to a

height that averages greater than that of the legionaries. 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’s cuirass, staggering him. Calvus’s 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’s 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 windrow 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?

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摘要：

ForeignLegionsDavidDrakeThisisaworkoffiction.Allthecharactersandeventsportrayedinthisbookarefictional,andanyresemblancetorealpeopleorincidentsispurelycoincidental.Copyright©2001byDavidDrake.“RanksofBronze”copyright©1975byUPDPublisingCorp.,August1975GalaxyMagazine.Allrightsreserved,includingtherightt...

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