Iron Rebirth: The Eagle Eternal

Corvus left two mornings later, before the camp was properly awake, which Abster suspected was deliberate.

It didn't work. By the time Abster came out into the grey pre-dawn cold, there were already more people near the gate than the hour accounted for. Drusus was crouched by the supply cart, doing something to a wheel that didn't need doing. Glabrio was sharpening a blade that had been sharp for weeks. Pilo was stretching with the focused unnecessary thoroughness of someone who needed his hands occupied. Decimus was at the water trough, refilling it for no reason except that things were happening and he had learned, in three months, that in the XII you showed up when things happened.

Macro was at the gate, had been for a while — the morning's drill roster posted a full hour early, every name in its place. He said nothing about this. He stood with his arms folded and watched the road.

Sura handed Corvus a leather folder. "For the testimony. Indexed by date." Corvus looked at the careful tabs on the edges of the pages. "Thank you," he said. Sura nodded and stepped back, and that was the whole exchange, and it was exactly the right size.

— ✦ —

Corvus found Abster near the horses.

"Aurelius, at the Sucidava depot. Doesn't trust verbal requests — write to him directly if you need something fast. Don't send Tullus; Tullus is too persuasive and Aurelius has learned to distrust persuasive people specifically."

"I'll remember."

"Night watch on the river side gets careless in good weather — full spring flow swallows everything else. Walk that line yourself at an hour they won't expect."

"I will."

Then Abster told him. The Hunnic scouts, forty miles east, a day inside the old line. The camp stakes at the river fork — corners marked, a century's worth of men, not road work.

Corvus was quiet for a moment. "Both in the same two days."

"Yes."

"The Huns concern me more than I'll say in front of the others — not because of what they are now, but because of what pushes them west when they move." He looked east, toward the ridgeline, then back. "When I reach the field army command, I'll push for current intelligence on their patterns. If they're a day inside the old line routinely now, something's moving behind them, and the Goths in the foothills are between that and Rome. They've always been between." He checked the girth on his horse — an unnecessary check, hands wanting something to do. "The camp at the fork. Did you get the unit."

"No insignia I recognized. Different cohort's kit on the officer."

"Find out. Quietly. If it's the field army's advance engineering corps, that's a different thing than if it's a provincial unit doing what provincial units have done for a hundred years before any emperor visits — make the roads look like someone's paying attention." He paused. "Could be either. Find out which."

Then the register changed — not dramatically, just enough.

"The word," he said. "From the first winter. The migration one."

Abster said it. Corvus repeated it once, quietly, and mounted — slower than a year ago, though Abster didn't say so.

"Keep the fires visible above the wall. Both sets."

— ✦ —

The escort was four cavalrymen from a different cohort. One of them — older, grey through the beard, the kind of weathering that came from decades rather than seasons — caught Abster's eye while Corvus finished mounting and gave him a short nod, soldier to soldier, the acknowledgment of someone who'd clocked that this was the optio from the sector everyone had heard about and had decided that was worth a nod and nothing more.

"Honoratus," he said, when Abster nodded back. Just the name, by way of something.

"You've ridden with the Augustus's escorts before?" Abster asked. He wasn't sure why he asked it. The man had the look of someone who'd been everywhere.

"Years back. Before he was Augustus — when he was still just Valens, brother of the Augustus, learning the job." Honoratus settled into his saddle. "Hadrianopolis, this would've been. A grain dispute, nothing important. I remember it because a tribune told him the numbers wouldn't be ready till the following day, and Valens said the numbers would be ready by evening or the tribune wouldn't be a tribune by morning." He shrugged, the gesture of a man recounting weather. "Numbers were ready by evening."

"That's the whole story?"

"That's the whole story. Some men you remember for what they did. Some men you remember for the one time they told you exactly what would happen if you didn't, and then it happened exactly like that." He looked at Abster for a moment — not unkindly, just assessing. "Good luck with your settlement, optio. I hope the numbers are ready."

He rode out with the others.

— ✦ —

Abster stood at the gate until the dust the horses had raised settled back into the road, which didn't take long — Honoratus and the others rode at the pace of men with somewhere specific to be.

It was, he realized, the first morning in fourteen months when the honest answer to *where is Corvus* was not somewhere in this sector. Not on patrol, not at the practice ground, not two tents over with a lamp still burning. Somewhere on a road north, getting further away with every hour, not coming back tonight or tomorrow or — depending on things neither of them controlled — for some number of days that hadn't been fixed yet.

Macro was still at the gate. He looked at Abster for a moment, then at the sky. "Drill's at the usual hour," he said. "Unless you want it moved."

It wasn't a question that needed an answer beyond the obvious one. But it was the day asking him to start it — the first of fourteen months' worth of small decisions that would now arrive with nobody to mention them to afterward, except in the record.

"Usual hour," Abster said.

Macro nodded and went to see to it, and the morning continued, the way mornings did.

— ✦ —

A courier came through at midday, riding east, and stopped only long enough to water his horse.

"Heard things are moving this way," he said, accepting a cup. "Augustus is coming east." He gestured vaguely toward Constantinople. "Also heard — Marcianopolis, this — a dux in Isauria, relieved of command last month. Took two extra days bringing up reserves during some business with raiders. Perfectly defensible by the book. Augustus had him gone before the report finished being read aloud." He shrugged. "Might be true. Might grow in the telling. Either way, people say it like it's true."

He rode on within the hour. Abster told Sura, who wrote it down: *rumor, unconfirmed, relevant to characterizing imperial temperament.* Then, underneath, without being asked: *cf. Honoratus, Hadrianopolis grain dispute — same shape.*

Two stories, two sources, the same shape. Abster sat with that longer than either story alone would have warranted.

— ✦ —

That evening Rufus walked the full night line at the river, post by post, the thing he did approximately twice a year when something was bothering him and he couldn't sleep. Abster recognized the pattern and left him to it.

He came in afterward, damp from river mist, and sat across from Abster without asking.

"Heard the courier," Rufus said. "And whatever the cavalryman said before he left — Decimus told half the camp already."

"It's not a secret."

"It's not about a dux in Isauria either." Rufus looked at the lamp. "It's about what happens to anyone who hesitates once Valens has decided to move. Including generals." He looked at Abster directly — the version of Rufus that used directness as a tool. "How much time do we actually have."

Abster thought about *I don't know.* About *four hundred and thirty-two days, approximately.*

"Less than I'd like," he said. "More than I'm afraid of."

"That's not an answer."

"No," Abster said. "It isn't."

Rufus stood. "Right. Someone should sleep." He went.

— ✦ —

Later, Abster walked toward Corvus's tent before he remembered.

He stopped four steps from the entrance. The lamp inside was dark. Nobody's job to light it. Never had been.

He went back and made the next day's drill decision himself — thirty seconds, not difficult — and sat for a while with the knowledge that Corvus had been making decisions of that size a hundred times a day for fourteen months, in a way that had made every one of them invisible.

The Vellum432 days.

Corvus: find out whose engineers those were. Quietly.

Honoratus: Valens, before he was Augustus. The numbers would be ready by evening or the tribune wouldn't be a tribune by morning. The numbers were ready by evening.

Sura, unasked: same shape as the dux in Isauria story. He's right.

Macro asked if I wanted drill moved. I didn't. That was the whole transfer of command, as far as anyone marked it.

Walked toward Corvus's tent. Lamp wasn't lit. Nobody's job.

Rufus asked how much time. I didn't answer fully. He knew I didn't.