Iron Rebirth: The Eagle Eternal

The patrol that didn't come back was a two-man check along the Sucidava road, due in by full dark, and Abster knew something was wrong before anyone told him, because Tullus came to find him at a pace Tullus didn't usually move at.

"Decimus and Glabrio. Should've been in an hour ago. Light's gone."

Decimus was three months in the sector — his first posting anywhere that wasn't a training camp. Glabrio was not new. That was the only reassuring part.

Abster's first thought arrived before he could stop it: *Greuthungi. Raiding party, the road, two soldiers in the open.* The pattern his mind had been trained into for months. He caught it before it became a conclusion and set it down. What he actually knew: two men, a road, darkness, nothing else.

"The wool cart," he said. "Liuva, the Gothic trader. Went out this morning toward Sucidava."

"Same road. Could be connected. Could not be."

"We go. Small group — myself, Macro, Tullus, Rufus. Torches carried low. Call out at every bend — Latin first, then Gothic, loud enough to be heard before we're seen." He looked at Macro. "Post the horn at the gate. One long if we need the camp. Two short if we're fine."

"And if it's not fine," Macro said.

"Then we'll have already called for the camp, and you'll know before we say another word." He turned to Sura. "Start the log now. Time we left, who, why, route."

Sura was already writing.

— ✦ —

The road at night was a different road. The river was louder by night — full spring flow swallowing sounds at the edges of hearing, Corvus's warning landing differently with his feet on the actual ground.

At the first bend past the old milestone, Rufus raised his hand. They stopped. A sound — not the right kind, not ambush, but something wrong on the road ahead. Then cursing, in a mix of Gothic and Latin, resolving into Liuva.

The cart was at the second bend. Wheel gone, axle dropped into a rut invisible by daylight. Liuva sat on an overturned sack with the patience of a man who'd been stuck for hours. Decimus was working the wheel with a length of wood as a lever. Glabrio held the torch and gave advice Decimus was visibly not finding useful.

"We stopped to help," Glabrio said, before anyone asked. "Wheel was going to take the axle with it if we left it overnight, and the road's too narrow for a dropped cart — first thing through at first light hits it blind." He gestured at the dark. "Lost the light getting it sorted."

A completely reasonable account, delivered by a man who didn't appear to understand that anyone had been worried.

"Two short," Abster told Tullus. Then, quietly, to Macro: "Walk the verges. Both sides, full distance."

Macro took a torch and went without comment, doing what Abster had been doing in his head since they left — checking the dark beyond the torchlight for anything that shouldn't be there. He came back. "Nothing."

Abster felt the specific release of a conclusion that had been held back, landing harmlessly.

— ✦ —

"There's a camp," Liuva said, while they worked the wheel back on. He said it conversationally, the way a man mentioned weather. "Three days now. Had to take the long way round it coming out — they've got the river fork roped off, won't let carts through the old crossing."

"Roman?" Abster asked, though he already knew.

"Romans I've never seen before. Not your lot, not Vallio's. Different kit." Liuva shrugged. "Polite enough. Just wouldn't let me through. Cost me an hour, the long way." He said it as an inconvenience, not an event — a trader's complaint, filed alongside the wheel.

Abster filed it differently. *Three days. Roping off the crossing.* Not survey anymore. Occupation of the ground, even if temporary, even if only for engineering purposes. He didn't say this out loud. There would be time to write it down.

— ✦ —

They were getting the wheel back on — six of them now, Liuva directing in Gothic, Decimus translating badly — when torches appeared on the road from the opposite direction.

Everyone went still. Six men, dark road, more torches from the Gothic side at night. Every instinct reached for the same place at once. Rufus had his pilum upright.

Then a voice called: Latin first, then Gothic, announcing approach.

Ragnaris. Six warriors behind him — and on the tailboard-side, Abster recognized one of them after a moment: Vidimer, from the cart two days ago, looking considerably more alert than he had on the tailboard.

A beat of recognition, then the absurdity landing on both sides — two armed search parties, both looking for the same broken cart, having very nearly frightened each other into something neither wanted.

"Found him," Abster said. "Wheel's nearly back on."

Ragnaris looked at the scene — the cart, Decimus's translation attempts, Liuva sitting on his sack looking faintly amused. "His wife sent word an hour ago. Said if he wasn't back by dark something had gone wrong, because he worries about being late more than he worries about anything."

"A wheel," Rufus said. "Of course it's a wheel."

They got it sorted together — ten men around one cart wheel was more than the job needed, but nobody hurried to point it out. Vidimer caught Abster's eye and grinned — the same grin from the tailboard, two days and one Hunnic scouting report removed. Abster found himself almost smiling back before he caught it.

At the boundary marker, where the groups split, Ragnaris said quietly, to Abster alone: "This isn't the first time. Patrols meeting on this road at night. Smaller things than tonight. Nobody's reported it because nothing needed reporting." His mouth did something that wasn't quite a smile. "My men know to call out in Latin first now. You didn't know that."

"No."

"Most things, you don't, until someone tells you." He turned to follow his men. "Good patrol. Bad timing. Either way."

He went.

— ✦ —

Back in camp, Decimus's hands were shaking — the delayed arrival of something that had been waiting all night for somewhere to go.

"Sit," said a voice, and a legionary Abster knew by sight but not well — an older man, Castor, who shared Decimus's tent and had been training him since he arrived — put a hand on Decimus's shoulder and steered him toward the fire without ceremony. "Eat something hot. Then tell me about the wheel. I want the whole thing, the part where Glabrio's advice wasn't helping especially."

"It really wasn't," Decimus said, and something in his voice cracked toward a laugh, which was, Abster thought, exactly what Castor had been going for.

He left them to it and went to write up the night with Sura — the patrol, the cart, Ragnaris, the existing pattern of meetings nobody had thought worth reporting. Then a second entry, separate: *Liuva — Roman engineering detachment at the river fork, three days, roping off the old crossing. Unknown unit. Confirms what was seen from the ridge two days prior. Not isolated. Ongoing.*

He sent both to Sebastianus. The second one, he thought, mattered more, and he wasn't certain Sebastianus would read it that way — a trader's inconvenience, against a night of successful cooperation. But the cooperation had been happening for months, unremarked. The roped-off crossing was three days old and getting older.

The Vellum428 days.

Thought Greuthungi before I had any reason to. Caught it. Set it down. It was a wheel.

Liuva: roped off the old crossing, three days, polite but firm. Said it like weather. It isn't weather.

Vidimer was with Ragnaris's patrol. Grinned at me like we'd already done this before. We had, two days ago, in a different way.

Castor took Decimus to the fire without being asked. Told him to tell the whole story, including the part where Glabrio wasn't helping. Decimus laughed. That's the job too.

Three days at the fork. How many more before someone above me decides it's been long enough to stop calling it engineering.