The Fourth Rome (28 page)

“There’s a German warband following us,” Gerd said. “I can’t be sure of numbers because they’re six kilometers distant”—in
the face of present danger he no longer played with jargon—“but there are probably more than a hundred. There are fifty or
more horses with the band, though a percentage are certain to be remounts.”

Pauli rubbed his face with his knuckles. It hadn’t rained in almost a day but the sun was staying out of sight. Astronomical
sundown wasn’t for three hours, but it was already dark enough for twilight.

“Chasing us or also going toward the Rhine?” Pauli asked. He’d made the decision to ride directly to the rivjr rather than
head for Varus’ summer camp even though the road east from there would make the rest of the journey much easier. He’d crossed
his fingers that Gerd’s sensors and database would prevent the team from riding into a bog or being blocked by a swollen stream.

“I can’t tell unless we turn to the side and they follow us,” the analyst said. “I believe there are larger numbers of Germans
at a greater distance, moving in this direction. The amount of refined steel is consistent with thousands of men in armor.
I doubt that many legionaries escaped the ambush with their equipment.”

“I doubt it, too,” Pauli said. His mistake in judgment was a cold mass in his stomach. He hadn’t expected the Germans to move
so quickly after slaughtering the Roman field army. “Barbarian” wasn’t the equivalent of “stupid,” at least not if you were
talking about Arminius.

“All right,” he said. “We’ll ride and hope for the best.”

He wiped his left palm on his thigh. “Gerd, Beckie,” he said. “Do you need help mounting?”

“I’m all right,” she said, smiling faintly.

“If we ride through the group of refugees,” Gerd said as he rose to his feet with the stiff articulations of a scarecrow,
“they’ll occupy the Germans while we reach the Rhine. Getting across will still be a problem. Though we can—”

He pursed his lips.

“—cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“Yes,” said Pauli Weigand. “Sacrifice the refugees to save our mission.”

The cold weight almost choked him. He was the wrong man for the job. He couldn’t be trusted to make decisions. “All right,
that’s what we’ll do.”

He waited for Gerd to grab the mule’s saddle, then boosted him aboard.

Though Pauli Weigand knew he was the wrong man for the job, he’d keep on going till he died in the midst of his mission’s
crashing failure.

R
ebecca Carnes was in the lead because Pauli insisted on riding at the back, the direction the Germans would be coming from.
She saw the refugees fifty yards ahead when she came through a patch of bracken growing tall from the well-watered soil.

“We’ve found them,” she called over her shoulder. Her heels prodded the horse to a slight increase in speed, all she thought
either of them could survive. Days of the horse’s rocking motion made the muscles at the small of her back so stiff she was
afraid they’d crack.

There were ten of them, all on foot except the pregnant girl riding a very expensive bay horse. The refugee!, were so exhausted
that it was the horse who noticed the approaching riders and whinnied. Gerd’s mule blatted an ill-tempered response. Only
then did the humans turn.

Three of the six legionaries had javelins. The others and two civilians drew swords, while the third male civilian lowered
a twelve-foot German lance. They might have captured the horse as well from a German noble in the vicious fighting.

The girl was dark, fifteen, and eight months pregnant if Rebecca was any judge. How she rode bareback was as much a wonder
as how the refugees had come so far from the scene of the massacre.

“Castor and Pollux!” a legionary cried hoarsely. “It’s Gaius Clovis and his household! Well, you’ve got a report for Augustus
now, don’t you!”

“Flaccus?” Rebecca said. It hadn’t occurred to her that the refugees might include somebody she knew. The sight of the legionary’s
face beaming beneath a freshly dented helmet made her heart sink.

“It’s all right, boys,” Flaccus said to his fellows. Rebecca didn’t recognize any of them. “Clovis here’s one of the emperor’s
horse guards. Glad to see you, Clovis. We thought you were another batch of Fritzes wanting to nail our heads to trees!”

Pauli rode up beside Rebecca. He looked at the refugees with hard eyes. A bandaged thigh kept one of the legionaries from
walking without the help of his fellows. He stood with his legs braced, trying to fit his short sword back into the scabbard
without falling over.

Half the others had wounds; all were on the tottering edge of collapse from hunger and exhaustion. They’d thrown away their
shields, though the legionaries wore full body armor and the civilians had picked up helmets. They must have been marching
with only the briefest halts for sleep. They knew what to expect if the Germans caught them before they reached the Rhine.

“There’s a German warband close behind,” Pauli said ex-pressionlessly. “They’ll be up with us in an hour.”

He glanced back at Gerd and raised his eyebrow. The analyst nodded. “Sooner,” he said. Under his breath he added, “Although
a Roman hour considered as one twelfth of daylight is a flexible concept to begin with.”

“Oh, Mithras,” Flaccus said. His weather-beaten features sagged, softened. “Then we’re screwed for sure. It can’t be less
than five miles to the river.”

“About eight Roman miles,” Gerd said calmly.

One of the legionaries knelt and started to unbuckle his sword belt. The girl wiped her face with a hand. Her exprèssion hadn’t
changed, but there were tears at the corners of her eyes.

The kneeling legionary tugged up the front of his mail shirt. He placed the pommel of his reversed sword on the ground.

“No!” Rebecca said. She kicked her horse. It lurched forward with an angry neigh. The would-be suicide scrambled clear of
the hoofs, dropping the sword in his haste.

Rebecca dismounted awkwardly. “Pauli,” she said. “We can’t—”

“I’ll decide what we can do,” Pauli Weigand said in a voice like steel. “This is
my
responsibility.”

Rebecca stiffened. She swallowed from a dry throat. “Yes, Pauli,” she said; because he was right. What could the team do anyway,
besides add more bodies to the toll?

Pauli dismounted. He handed the reins of his horse to the legionary with the leg wound. “Here,” he said. “Can you ride bareback?”

“Gerd, you’d better stay on the mule,” Rebecca said. Her relief was as bright as the sun breaking out after a storm. “You
there”—to a legionary with his right arm splinted with a javelin shaft; his legs were uninjured, but his face was gray with
pain—“mount this horse. And move it or we’ll have the Germans arrive before we’ve got our thumbs oui.”

The Roman looked startled but obediently shifted to the animal’s flank. Beckie Carnes had a lot of experience sounding like
she meant it when she gave orders to wounded soldiers. She made a stirrup of her hands to boost him into the saddle.

“The leaders are two miles behind us,” Gerd said in his usual tones of disinterested helpfulness. “The remainder of the band
stretches back almost another half mile. They number about seventy all told.”

“If there’s that many, it’s all over,” another legionary said. “Urso’s right—we may as well fall on our swords.”

He looked from Rebecca to the pregnant girl. “The women might be all right,” he added doubtfully.

“First,”
Pauli said in a crackling voice. “I’m in charge from now till we get across the river. Second, the three of us are magicians
from the east and the chances are pretty decent that we’re going to pull this off. Third and most important—we don’t quit.
None
of us quits. Do all you men understand me?”

He looked fiercely around the band of refugees. His left hand was on the pommel of his long horseman’s sword. His knuckles
were mottled with the tension of his grip.

“Mithras, I’m a believer,” Flaccus said. “I didn’t much like the idea of being cheated out of my pension by some fucking Fritz.”
He turned to the others and said, “All right, you scuts! You heard the man. We got eight miles to go. Anybody who doesn’t
keep moving’s going to have my boot up his bum before the Fritzes get around to putting a spear there. Move out!”

Gerd prodded the mule with his heels. It ignored him. The analyst did something with his sensor pack. The animal skipped forward
with a disbelieving bleat. Gerd had generated a spark—low amperage, but obviously placed where it did the most good. “To the
left at the fork,” he announced, his eyes on the projected display.

“I’ll take the rear, Beckie,” Pauli Weigand said. He sounded embarrassed for the way he’d taken charge. “They’ll probably
surround us when they see what’s going on. I’ll need you up front.”

“Right,” she said. She handed him the submachine gun she carried with her last nineteen rounds in the magazine. “At the range
I can hit anything with this, the microwave does a better job anyway.”

“All right,” Pauli said, nodding.

Rebecca started forward, then looked back over her shoulder. “Pauli?” she said. “About the horses we had to kill back there?”

“What about them?” he said.

“People are more important than horses.”

He grinned. “Yeah, I think so, too,” he said. “And if the folks at Central don’t see it that way, well, they can come here
and tell me.”

Y
ou’ve got fifteen minutes with the Chief, TL Roebeck. This is the seating plan,” said the ARC Chief of Staff’s aide. The aide
had helmet-cut red hair and a dusting of freckles. Scrubbed and polished, stiff as a board, he held out the seating plan to
her as if it, and not the meeting; requiring it, were the most important issue at hand. “Sirs, if you’ll just let me walk
through this so you’ll understand it… TL Roebeck, you sit opposite the Chief. Specialist Chun, you sit on your TL’s left;
Specialist Grainger, on the right.”

The Chief’s office was the size of a TC bay. To reach its threshold, the team had walked two miles of conidor. To get in here,
the ARC Riders had passed by two guards in dress uniforms of the sort that Roebeck hadn’t worn since her graduation. Each
guard stood at unblinking attention beside a pole of battle standards on either side of the hallowed portal. Nan Roebeck had
hoped to complete her career and never set foot in such an office. Now she was here with only hur recon staff for support.

The Chief’s aide was terrified that these field operators were going to blow some bit of protocol and gel him in trouble.
His lips were white with strain.

Roebeck knew exactly how he felt. She bit her own lips under the cover of one hand to make sure they weren’t bloodless when
she walked into the Chief’s conference room.

Grainger couldn’t resist the opportunity to tweak the kid’s tail. “So, team, I figure we do this fifteen-minute parade drill,
and we’re out of here. When we get back downrange, we’ll have the comfort of knowing we got an official blessing.”

The kid ignored Grainger pointedly. “Team Leader Roe-beck, if you haven’t any questions, please sit down and make yourself
comfortable.”

Nan had been looking at the seating chart. Four other places would be occupied at the long briefing table. “Who are these
other guys indicated?”

“Senior Steering Committee officials, sir.”

“Got an attendee list?”

“List?” said the youngster.

“Yeah, list. I want to see the list. Names. Office symbols. Contact numbers. The regular sort of thing.” Roebeck was beginning
to regret she’d asked for this meeting at all. She hadn’t really expected to get it. But she and her ARC Riders had been briefing
up the chain at the speed of infection ever since they’d displaced back to ARC Central.

“I’ll see, sir. Coffee, anyone?” asked the kid weakly. “Tea? Soft drinks?”

“List,” Nan Roebeck insisted.

She was hoping that her direct superior was on that list, or at least his boss. When you got a meeting like this, way above
your pay grade, it meant somebody asked for that meeting who could get it—and you—on the Chief’s schedule. That sure wasn’t
her.

They sat down on a soft blue couch with gold cord trim. Grainger said, “Lay this plan out for the Chief in fifteen minutes?
Not possible.”

Chun said, “Want to bet? I could do it in my sleep.” She pulled out her handheld and brought up a text screen. Then she tapped
for a bit. “Here, Nan. How’s this?”

Nan looked at the text screen. Chun had reduced everything that had happened to four bullet points. Below the bullet-speak
were three action items and one recommendation in three parts.

It would have to do.

She gave Grainger the handheld. “Make it better.” Grainger was their area specialist, after all.

The kid came back with a tray holding china cups emblazoned with the Chief’s office symbol in gold. His face was arranged
in a determinedly polite smile.

“Fancy, fancy,” Chun breathed.

The kid had the attendee list with him.

By then Roebeck didn’t need it. The others were filing in. She could tell their offices by their outfits. A horse-faced lawyer
from ARC CENTCOM sauntered in lazily, wearing plainclothes and a holographic entry badge thai proclaimed his status as SES—Senior
Executive Service. SEiS pay grade was four times the rate of equally ranked military personnel. Following him came a joint
staffer, the J-3 himself, with three gold braid strips encircling his cuffs, who nodded his dark curly head to them stiffly.
Then came the Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff for Ops and Plans, in operational dress greens. The ADCSOPS planted himself
squarely in front of the coffee table, regarding the operations team with a proprietary air. Only the last to join them, Dr.
Bill, the ARC Riders’ Chief Scientific Advisor in ARC Science blues, was familiar to Roebeck. The scientist’s shock of white
hair above a bumper crop of liver spots wasn’t a sight Roebeck was likely to forget. Neither was the nervous way Dr. Bill
twisted his big Citadel class ring on his finger when he was about to speak. Among the officials her team had briefed during
the last two hours, he’d given her ARC Riders the hardest time, the most resistance.