An Emperor for the Legion by Harry Turtledove Read Free Book Online Page A

agreement, but hardly by his unflattering description of the legionaries.
    *   *   *
    The shrill sound of a squabble woke Marcus before dawn the next morning. He cursed wearily as he sat up in his bedroll, still worn from the previous day’s march through broken country. Beside him Helvis sighed and turned over, fighting to stay asleep. Malric, who never seemed to sleep when the tribune and Helvis wanted him to, did not stir now.
    Scaurus stuck his head through his tent flap. He was just in time to see Quintus Glabrio’s companion Damaris stamp from the junior centurion’s tent. She was still shouting abuse as she angrily stode away: “—the most useless man I can imagine! What I saw in you I’ll never know!” She disappeared out of the tribune’s line of vision.
    In fact, Scaurus was more inclined to wonder what had attracted the Roman to her. True, she was striking enough in the strong-featured Videssian way, with snapping brown eyes. But she was skinny as a boy and had all the temper those eyes foretold. She was, the tribune realized, as hotheaded as Thorisin’s lady Komitta Rhangawe—and that was saying a great deal. Nor did Glabrio have Thorisin’s quick answering contentiousness. It was a puzzler.
    Glabrio, rather in the way of a man who pokes his head out the door to see if a thunderstorm is past, looked out to see which way Damaris had gone. He caught sight of Marcus, shrugged ruefully, and withdrew into his tent once more. Embarrassed at witnessing his discomfiture, the tribune did the same.
    Damaris’ last outburst had succeeded in rousing Helvis, though Malric slept on. Brushing sleep-snarled brown hair back from her face, she yawned, sat up, and said, “I’m glad we don’t fight like that, Hemond—” She stopped in confusion.
    Marcus grunted, his lip quirking in a lopsided smile. He knew he should not be bothered when Helvis absently called him by her dead husband’s name, but he could not help the twinge that ran through him every time she slipped.
    “You might as well wake the boy,” he said. “The whole camp will be stirring now.” The effort to keep annoyance from his voice took all emotion with it, leaving his words flat and hard as a marble slab.
    The unsuccessful try at hiding anger was worse than none at all. Helvis did as he asked her, but her face was a mask thatdid as little to hide her hurt as had his coldly dispassionate tone. Looks like a fine morning already, just a fine one, the tribune thought as he laced on his armor.
    He threw himself into his duties to take his mind off the almost-quarrel. His supervision of breaking camp was so minute one might have supposed his troops were doing it for the first time rather then the three-hundredth or, for some, the three-thousandth. He heard Quintus Glabrio swearing at the men in his maniple—something rare from that quiet officer—and knew he was not the only one with nerves still jangling.
    The matter of guides went as Gaius Philippus had guessed. The Romans were passing through a hardscrabble country, with scores of rocky little valleys running higgledy-piggledy one into the next. The coming of any strangers into such a backwater would have produced a reaction; the corning of an army, even a small, defeated army, came close to raising panic.
    Farmers and herders so isolated they rarely saw a tax collector—isolation indeed, in Videssos—wanted nothing more than to get the Romans away from their own home villages before pillage and rape broke loose. Every hamlet had a young man or two willing, nay, eager, to send them on their way … often, Marcus noted, toward rivals who lived one valley further east.
    Sometimes the tribune’s men got a friendlier reception. Bands of Yezda, with their nomadic hardiness and mobility, had penetrated even this inhospitable territory. When a timely arrival let the Romans appear as rescuers, nothing their rustic hosts owned was too fine to lavish on them.
    “Now this is the life for me, and