Clash of Eagles by Alan Smale

savages we’re seeing around here are painted odd, and they move different. They’re real hunters and killers.” He gestured at Sigurdsson’s body. “If the Iroqua got their hands on Fuscus, they’d probably do this to
him.
”
    The Praetor looked down. Fuscus was groveling so hard that he was practically tunneling into the ground. He seized Fuscus by his topknot and dragged the man up onto his knees.
    “Look, spare him,” said Aelfric. “God knows we might need—”
    Marcellinus slit the word slave’s throat. He died quickly, gurgling, his eyes bulging almost out of his head as he drowned in his own blood.
    “Never mind,” said Aelfric.
    Marcellinus swayed. Had he really just slain a defenseless man in anger? Would he have done such a thing anywhere other than this despicable, gigantic, savage land?
    He pulled himself together. His legionaries had died more barbarically in the trees and from the air. And here was Sigurdsson, scalped, burned, maimed. Marcellinus let go of Fuscus, and the word slave’s body tumbled forward onto the ground.
    Aelfric was staring. “Something you wanted to say?” Marcellinus said coldly, his sword still unsheathed.
    The Briton shrugged. “Me? No. We don’t need him. There’ll be no more talking to his kind.”
    “That’s right.”
    The atmosphere over the glade remained icy as the last echelons of the Legion straggled past. At the end, Corbulo cleared his throat, stoodeasy, and broke the silence. “Good. The men are fired up now. I pity the poor red bastards we encounter next.”
    Marcellinus nodded tautly. Corbulo and his other tribunes saluted him and the hideous remains of Sigurdsson once more and rode forward to rejoin their cohorts.
    The Praetor looked down again at the mutilated body of his Norseman and for the first time on this campaign felt genuinely exhausted. Not just in his body, because physical weariness was a constant aspect of commanding a legion, but also in his soul.
    All his life he had fought for Roma, struggled for rank and authority, just to be sent westward into a brutal wilderness on a fool’s errand. To see his men killed slowly, one by one.
    Yet again, Aelfric had presumed to stay behind. “They knew the path we’d take,” said the Briton. “They arranged him here, right in our way. You bloody Romans and your straight lines.”
    “For gods’ sakes, we
want
to be predictable,” said Marcellinus. “We know where we’re going. So do they. We
want
to fight them. Let the scum try to stop us. And in case you’ve forgotten, you’re a Roman, too.”
    “I wonder what became of the other scouts,” Aelfric said moodily.
    Enslaved, perhaps. Or cooked and eaten for all they knew.
    “March on, Tribune,” Marcellinus responded gruffly.
    He felt dazed. Could the Hesperians really not distinguish between soldiers and scouts? Did they intuit nothing of civilized conduct? How could a war even take place without scouts to guide the armies together?
    “Cowards,” he said. “An entire landmass of bloody cowards.” Corbulo was right, after all.
    Marcellinus and his tribune were off the back of the Legion now, guarded only by First Centurion Scapax and four contubernia of trusted soldiers. Normally it would be untenable for a legion commander to be this exposed, but the undergrowth was sparse and the sight lines long. A quarter mile away, and despite the recent passage of his army, he saw a pair of white-tailed deer meandering through the trees. This was very different terrain from the dense woods that lined the coast of the Chesapica.
    The sandals of thousands of marching Romans and the wheels of dozens of baggage carts had beaten quite a furrow into the meadow floor. Marcellinus looked down thoughtfully, then stepped onto undisturbed ground.
    “Praetor,” said Scapax. “We must advance and rejoin the Legion.”
    Scapax might well worry. By law he faced summary execution if his Praetor came to harm while under his protection. Marcellinus didn’t