Carnifex

5/5/468 AC, Kibla Pass, Pashtia

"Up the fucking hill, soldier-boy," said the youngish centurion as he smacked a dawdling legionary across the buttocks with the stick that was his sole badge of rank.

Several things are required to make an army so that it can displace quickly. It must have limited baggage, not merely for ease of transport but for ease of breaking down and loading. It must have transport, of course, but not more than it can keep moving. It must have a staff capable of planning the movement with considerable efficiency but allowing for the inevitable screw ups. It must have soldiers willing and able to march hard. It needs officers and non-coms, pitiless in their drive to obey their orders and meet their march objectives. It needs a mindset, as an army, that inclines it to rapid movement.

Above all, perhaps, it must have a commander willing to give the order, "Move it, you fucks." As Carrera stood on a rocky outcropping overlooking the metalled road through the pass, he whispered just that: "Move it, you fucks."

There were still bandits in the hills. Aircraft circled over head to watch for them, out to a distance of seven kilometers—mortar range—from the main column. Pashtun scouts and Cazadors, with dog teams, likewise secured the long, winding triple eel of men, machine and animals from interference. Even Carrera let himself be surrounded by half a dozen bodyguards; sharp men, well armed and armored and each one a match for him in size and color.

It was hardly secure, though, not against an enemy who would die, eagerly, if he could just take one infidel with him. If the legions hadn't caught so many of the Ikhwan's fighters and annihilated them or driven them far away, the passage over the mountains would have taken a lot longer.

One had to wonder, as some of the legionaries wondered, just how long Carrera had been planning the upcoming confrontation with the troops of the Tauran Union in Pashtia.

I've been considering it for the last five years, Carrera thought, to no one in particular.

Below, in tactical road march order, with trucks and other vehicles in between, the men sang. Carrera heard them singing a new song, Rio Gamboa, which was mostly about getting back home:

. . . Centurio viejo, aun en la marcha.

No tiene compassion. No tiene humanidad.

No tiene miedo del enemigo.

Y sigue Carrera a la battalle,

Como siguemos. Porque siguemos?

Porque somos el Legion, somos en la marcha . . .

"Pretty downbeat," Carrera muttered to himself, listening to the dreary but moving tune. "Well, that's fitting. It isn't, after all, like we're going to fight anybody but men who should be our friends, most of them."

Y somos cansado de la guerra sucia,

Y de la batalle . . .

"I'm sick of it, too, sons. I'm sick of it, too.

Tenemos esposas, tenemos niños,

Todos queridos . . .

"I know, boys, I know," the legate whispered. "And I can't tell you when you can go home either, nor even what kind of home you'll find when you get there. I can only tell you that I'm trying to make it a home worth living in."

Still the song went on. Mentally, Carrera translated:

Our legs are aching

And our backs are in pain

Over the mountains we sweat and strain.

Ruck up, boys.

Weapons off safe.

We're heading off again to earn our pay.

But old Centurion, he keeps on marchin'.

He fears for nothin', not even dyin' . . .

And that, Carrera thought, is a pretty good summary of the centurionate. In a force approaching fifty thousand, itself already pretty elite, only about twenty-five hundred made the cut to centurion. They were awesome men when we started all this . . . . and they've grown.

This portion of the column passed by, struggling and straining, sweating and cursing, up the steep and winding pass. Some of the men recognized Carrera and waved. A grizzled centurion saluted, informally, with his stick. The waving became general and was accompanied by a different song:

Adelante, hijos del Legion.

Adelante, legionarios gloriosos.

Conquiste cada obstaculo . . .

Carrera stiffened to attention, and saluted in return. He watched the column crest a rise and then turn around a bend. When the last man had gone from view he looked again at where they'd come from and saw a tank, a Jaguar II, being winched, literally, up the pass.

Gonna have to buy a shitload of new power packs and even new armor after this one's done, he thought. These things just aren't made to . . .

The thought was cut off as a metal cable, seemingly strong but apparently defective, snapped, approximately between the winch and the tank. Both ends went flying at extraordinarily high speed. One was harmless. The other hit a walking legionary in the legs just above his knees. The cable cut through as if the legs weren't even there. The legionary tumbled, end over end, in a spray of blood. It was too quick for him even to feel pain, yet. That, however, would come.

Freed at one corner, the tank lurched back unevenly. The weight now was too much for the single cable remaining. It, too, snapped. In this case, since everyone but the one unfortunate man caught in the legs had fallen belly to the dirt, that cable passed overhead harmlessly. The tank, itself, began sliding back, while men behind frantically tried to get out of the way.

With considerable presence of mind, under the circumstances, the driver applied brakes to one side only. This caused the tank to veer and slam into a rock wall at which point it stopped. Before the shaken driver could emerge, a medic was attending to the now legless trooper, while a maintenance team by the winches began pulling two more cables from the back of a truck.

"Dustoff's already on the way, sir," one of Carrera's radio carriers announced.

Poor bastard, Carrera thought, with that part of himself he allowed to actually feel. Neither you nor I wanted you to go home like that.