Foreign Legions Read online

  Foreign Legions

  by

  Created by David Drake

  Table of Contents

  * * *

  Foreign Legions

  Created by 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.

  Copyright © 2001 by David Drake. "Ranks of Bronze" copyright © 1975 by UPD Publising Corp., August 1975 Galaxy Magazine.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  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

  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 ra
nks 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 plac
e 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 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.