The Cutting Edge Read Free Page A

knocked down by his own countrymen in the scrimmage.
    He had saved a standard. He might be going to survive this. This wasn't the XXth Legion, though. He glanced up and registered that he had just transferred to the XIIth.
    The XIIth! One of the crack outfits!
    A man who saved a standard won the right to bear it till his dying day-assuming that day was not this day. No more filthy ditch-digging . . . no more mind-destroying weapons drill.
    He was a signifer, a standard-bearer. Attaboy, Ylo!
    Signifers wore wolfskin capes over their armor, with a hood made from the wolf's head. Barbaric? Romantic! He could guess how girls would react to that. Women would be free again. Signifers had the nearest thing to a soft job the army ever offered. Even those twenty-three years might not seem too bad as a signifer-not much danger, and lots of respect. Perks! Yea, Ylo!
    Then he took another look. This was no mean run-of-the-mill standard he'd rescued, emblem of maniple or cohort. At its top was the Imperial star and below that the lion symbol of the XIIth. Red bunting floated from the crosspiece, and the rest of the shaft was laden with battle honors in silver and bronze. This was the legionary standard itself.
    Signifer for the XIIth Legion? Hey, Ylo!
    You are going to eat meat again, Ylo!
    The war had gone away. Order was being restored. Bugles were sounding in the distance.
    Suddenly officers were beckoning, and he led where they pointed. They followed him to the crest of a small hillock, the only high ground in sight. A voice beside him barked, "Pitch camp!" and his shredded wits were just operational enough to realize that it was addressing him. He swung the standard in the proper signal, barely registering protests from his battered muscles. Distant bugles picked up the call.
    Signifer!
    And of course the speaker had been the legate himself, with a green-crested helmet and gold-inlaid breastplate. Of course. Where else would the legate be but beside the standard? Legates were not supposed to have blood on their swords, but this one did. He was dirty and sweaty, and his dark eyes blazed below the brim of his helmet as he appraised Ylo. He held a canteen in his left hand.
    "Well done, soldier! I saw."
    Ylo muttered, "Sir!" but his mind was on that canteen. With the bottle almost at his lips, the legate paused, and his mouth showed that he was frowning. "What outfit?"
    Ylo had lost his shield; his mail shirt was totally coated in mud and blood, although none of that seemed to be his. He was anonymous. "The XXth, sir."
    "God of Battles!" the legate said. "All night? Here, you need this more than I do." And he handed over the canteen. That was Ylo's first inkling.
    The Impire had held the field. The fighting was ending as the surviving djinns surrendered or were cut down. More standards were arriving, and more officers.
    One of those was the commander, Proconsul Iggipolo himself, and the way he returned the legate's salute was another inkling.
    Ylo glanced up again at that potent pole he held. How could he have missed it? Above the battle honors and even above the crossbar shone a wreath of oak leaves, cast in gold.
    Only one man in the entire army could put his personal signet on a legionary standard.
    Ylo's mind reeled. He forgot honor and comfort and doeeyed girls. He thought Revenge! He thought hatred. He thought of his father and brothers, his cousins, his uncles. He thought of his mother, dying disgraced, in exile. He thought that man killed my family.
    Trust. Confidence. Being close in dark places. He thought knife between the ribs.
    And then he was limping painfully along, bearing the standard high, heading for the tents that had sprouted like a field of orderly mushrooms at the edge of the swamp. Behind him came the legate.
    And all the way battle-weary soldiers were scrambling to their feet to laud the leader of the XIIth, the hero, the man who had saved the day. Their cheers rang sour in Ylo's ears and the sound was bitter. He