Foreign Devils Read Free

waggoneers, the waterwagon and engineer vardos, brought their charges within the perimeter and set up rolling camp, sleeping bags laid out underneath the wagons – except in the case of the engineers, who disappeared inside the lacquered vardo and were not seen again until morning.
    Inside the senator’s tent, the sounds of legionnaires fell away as Lupina and two of her junior household slaves bustled about. Cornelius washed his face in a bowl of water, cleared his nostrils like a cornicen blowing assembly, then paced and fretted until the dvergar woman poured him a tall whiskey in a cut crystal tumbler and lit his cigar.
    ‘Ahh, that’s better,’ Cornelius said, sitting down upon one of the wicker travel-chairs before his desk, beads of water caught in his whiskers and blue smoke collected around his head.
    Cornelius propped his artificial leg on the desk. The thing was intricate; wrought from his own severed legbone, gold and silver filigree danced down its length, and on one side there was a neat little ceremonial skean and on the other, a small silver flask. I’d never seen that particular drinking container tarnished. The leg ended in fur and long hinged claws – the paw of the bear that took his foot. ‘Daughters! My legate! Attend me!’
    Carnelia sulked into the common area of the tent. ‘Yes, Tata?’
    ‘Not you, Carnelia. I’ve been looking at your face all day. You may go.’ He waved his hand, and slurped some whiskey, sighing again.
    Rumans fascinate me by what they’re able to ignore, in this case his youngest daughter’s look of outrage.
    ‘Secundus! Livia! My legate!’
    Miss Livia appeared, still wearing her riding leathers, a sawn-off Hellfire blunderbuss strapped to her hip. Life in the Hardscrabble Territories had been kind to her, if not clean. There was a rime of sweat-lined dust on her collar and she was wiping her hands on a dirty towel as she approached, but her face was bright, if tanned, and her eyes shone with fierce intelligence. The child she carried in her stomach was just beginning to alter her slim figure after three months, but, if anything, her pregnant state had increased her activity, as if she wanted to do and see everything she could before the child came into the world.
    Fisk followed after Livia, his grey hat removed and his hair wet from his post-trail ablutions. My friend and partner for more than ten years now, but life, rank and marriage had been drawing us apart. Before Livia he was pained, and incomplete – there’s no other way to say it. The meanness of the trail, the loss of his family, the necessities of living on this wide expanse of harsh earth – all had coarsened him. Wounded him. Once, it seemed, wounded him irrevocably. Yet. There came Livia. Now, Fisk was, if not whole – some things cannot be healed – at least content.
    ‘What of the trail, children? Will there be stretchers?’ Cornelius asked as Secundus emerged from his quarters – a partition, really, of the command tent. ‘What awaits us?’
    Fisk pulled out a wicker seat for his wife, dusted his trousers with his hands, and sat down. Cornelius snapped his fingers at Lupina, motioning for her to be free with the whiskey. Lupina poured a dram or two for Fisk, who cupped the tumbler in his hands and breathed the fumes deeply before sipping. Livia motioned Lupina away. ‘I must see to the legionnaires.’
    Fisk swallowed a measure of whiskey, and said, ‘Tomorrow we go north, a few miles to get around that gulch, and then east again. We should hit the spur by evening of the following night, barring any other gulleys or sundered earth. Or stretchers.’ He glanced at me. I knew the look.
    ‘In your opinion,’ Cornelius asked, his voice excited. ‘What are the chances we’ll encounter vaettir ?’ Patricians. Sometimes they don’t even have the sense to be afraid.
    ‘Not something I’m willing to speculate on, sir. They are always around. Or never. You just can’t know.’
    ‘I would