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was coming up the highway toward Polisso.
It was a Roman army. The standard-bearers carried gilded eagles above the
letters SPQR. Those stood for Senatus popuiusque P,omanus: the Senate and
people of Rome in classical Latin. The Senate, these days, was a powerless
rich men's club. The people had no voice in politics, and hadn't for two
thousand years. The slogan lived on.
Some cavalrymen were heavily armored lancers. Others were archers, with
quivers full of arrows on their backs. The big, clumsy matchlock pistols they
had here weren't practical for horsemen. Behind the cavalry squadrons marched
troop after troop of foot soldiers. Some men carried tall pikes. Others
shouldered matchlock muskets. They laughed and joked and sang as they tramped
along.
Their being here said they were liable to see action before long. The
government wouldn't reinforce Polisso if it didn't think trouble likely. That
kind of trouble could come from only one place: Lietuva.
Jeremy remembered the gate guard who'd asked if he and his family were
Lietuvan spies. The soldier had been kidding, but he'd been kidding on the
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square. Were some of the
Lietuvan traders in town real spies? Jeremy would have been surprised if
someone in Polisso weren't looking into that right now. He wouldn't have
wanted to be a Lietuvan trader here. No one in this world had ever heard of
laws against illegal search and seizure.
The army's baggage train followed the foot soldiers. Cannon rattled along on
wheeled carriages. Wagons carried food and gunpowder and lead for bullets and
stone or iron cannonballs. Other wagons held surgeons and their supplies,
clerks to keep track of pay records and such, and farriers and blacksmiths and
veterinarians to care for the horses.
Those cannon made Jeremy especially thoughtful. Polisso already had a lot of
artillery. The central government wouldn't move more in unless it really
worried about an attack.
Normally, Jeremy and his family wouldn't have had to fear a war. If it got
bad, they could hop into a transposition chamber and leave it behind. But, at
least for now, he and Amanda were stuck here. That made him take things more
seriously than he would have otherwise.
He was also stuck here in this cave till the army marched past and went into
Polisso. He couldn't come out while soldiers might spot him. They would wonder
what he'd been doing there. Spying on them? The way things were, that would
have to occur to them. They would ask questions. They wouldn't be polite about
it or gentle, either.
Up till then, he'd never worried about how long an army took to pass any
particular place. While he was waiting, it seemed like forever. In fact, it
was several hours. He kept looking down at his wrist to find out just how
long. That would have worked better if he'd worn a wristwatch. In Agrippan
Rome, he couldn't. Even the big mechanical pocket watches Crosstime Traffic
traders sold here were way ahead of the state of the art.
At last, the coast was clear. Jeremy scooted out of the cave and made it to
the road before anybody coming from Polisso spotted him. He sauntered toward
the city as if he had not a care in the world. Pretending to be carefree took
more acting than anything else he'd done since coming to this alternate.
Pretending to be carefree also proved the wrong role. Travelers in Polisso
hadn't been allowed to leave while the army was going in. A gray-haired
merchant leading a train of mules was the first man who came up to Jeremy. The
merchant stared at him and said, Boy, don't you know there's a gods-cursed
army just ahead of you?
Jeremy couldn't very well claim he didn't know. The horses and oxen of the
cavalry and baggage train had left unmistakable hints an army was on the move.
So he smiled and shrugged and nodded.
The merchant's eyes got bigger yet. Well, then, don't you know you're an
idiot?
If he'd smiled and shrugged and nodded again, the older man would have been
sure he was one. Instead, he asked, What are you talking about?
What am I talking about? What am I talking about? The merchant seemed
convinced he was an idiot anyway. The gods must watch over fools like you,
even if you are a big, strong fool. Don't you think those soldiers would have
grabbed you and put you in a helmet if they'd spotted you?
Gurk, Jeremy said. The man with the mule train seemed to think that was the
first sensible thing to come out of his mouth. He got his mules going again
and left Jeremy standing in the middle of the road. After a couple of minutes,
Jeremy walked on to Polisso.
Other travelers coming out of the city sent him strange looks. They too must
have wondered what he was doing ambling along in the army's wake. None of them
asked him any questions, though. They just went on about their own business.
When he got back to Polisso, the gate guard who'd let him out of the city
checked him back in. He too said, You're lucky the soldiers didn't see you.
After a moment, he took off his helmet and scratched his head. How come they
didn't?
I'd gone off the road when they came. I was trying to knock over rabbits with
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rocks, Jeremy answered. He spread his hands. No luck.
I wouldn't think so. The gate guard laughed at the idea. You'd need a cursed
lot of it to hit one. Then he laughed again. And when you saw the soldiers,
I'll bet you bloody well made sure they didn't see you.
Well yes. Jeremy had been inside the cave. Of course they hadn't seen him.
But he could agree without actually lying. The guard clapped him on the back
and waved him into Polisso. He didn't have good news for Amanda: no sign of
the transposition chamber and no contact with the home timeline. But he was
happy just the same. The good news was, he would be able to tell her the bad
news in person. He hadn't been pulled into the army.
What would happen if there really was a war? He did his best not to think
about that.
In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson complained that the King
of England quartered his soldiers on the American colonists. Amanda remembered
that from the U.S. History class she'd taken two years before. It hadn't meant
anything to her then except one more fact she had to know for a test. People
in the United States hadn't had soldiers quartered on them for a long, long
time.
But she wasn't in the United States any more. Some of her neighbors had
soldiers living in their houses and eating their food. She and Jeremy were
lucky it hadn't happened to them. I wonder why they didn't try to give us any
soldiers, she said at breakfast, two days after the army came to Polisso.
They like what we sell, and they don't want to make us so angry we'll go away
and won't come back, Jeremy answered, spooning up barley mush. That's the only
thing I can think of.
What do we do if they say, 'Here, take these four'? Amanda asked.
I'm going to give the city prefect a couple of thousand denari, Jeremy said.
Why not? Silver's not much more than play money for us. I'll tell him to use
it to buy food for the reinforcements. We'll do that instead of letting them
in here.
Can you be smooth enough to get away with it? Amanda asked.
Her older brother shrugged. I can because I have to. Dad would probably do a
better job of it, but he's not here. That leaves me.
I'm not a potted plant, you know, Amanda said. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]