Carnifex

No tiene compassion. No tiene humanidad.

No tiene miedo del enemigo.

Y sigue Carrera a la battalle,

Como siguemos. Porque siguemos?

Porque somos el Legion, somos en la marcha . . . 

'Pretty downbeat,' Carrera muttered to himself, listening to the dreary but moving tune. 'Well, that's fitting. It isn't, after all, like we're going to fight anybody but men who should be our friends, most of them.'

Y somos cansado de la guerra sucia,

Y de la batalle . . . 

'I'm sick of it, too, sons. I'm sick of it, too.

Tenemos esposas, tenemos ninos,

Todos queridos . . . 

'I know, boys, I know,' the legate whispered. 'And I can't tell you when you can go home either, nor even what kind of home you'll find when you get there. I can only tell you that I'm trying to make it a home worth living in.'

Still the song went on. Mentally, Carrera translated:

Our legs are aching

And our backs are in pain

Over the mountains we sweat and strain.

Ruck up, boys.

Weapons off safe.

We're heading off again to earn our pay.

But old Centurion, he keeps on marchin'.

He fears for nothin', not even dyin' . . .

And that, Carrera thought, is a pretty good summary of the centurionate. In a force approaching fifty thousand, itself already pretty elite, only about twenty-five hundred made the cut to centurion. They were awesome men when we started all this . . . . and they've grown.

This portion of the column passed by, struggling and straining, sweating and cursing, up the steep and winding pass. Some of the men recognized Carrera and waved. A grizzled centurion saluted, informally, with his stick. The waving became general and was accompanied by a different song:

Adelante, hijos del Legion.

Adelante, legionarios gloriosos.

Conquiste cada obstaculo . . . 

Carrera stiffened to attention, and saluted in return. He watched the column crest a rise and then turn around a bend. When the last man had gone from view he looked again at where they'd come from and saw a tank, a Jaguar II, being winched, literally, up the pass.

Gonna have to buy a shitload of new power packs and even new armor after this one's done, he thought. These things just aren't made to . . . 

The thought was cut off as a metal cable, seemingly strong but apparently defective, snapped, approximately between the winch and the tank. Both ends went flying at extraordinarily high speed. One was harmless. The other hit a walking legionary in the legs just above his knees. The cable cut through as if the legs weren't even there. The legionary tumbled, end over end, in a spray of blood. It was too quick for him even to feel pain, yet. That, however, would come.

Freed at one corner, the tank lurched back unevenly. The weight now was too much for the single cable remaining. It, too, snapped. In this case, since everyone but the one unfortunate man caught in the legs had fallen belly to the dirt, that cable passed overhead harmlessly. The tank, itself, began sliding back, while men behind frantically tried to get out of the way.

With considerable presence of mind, under the circumstances, the driver applied brakes to one side only. This caused the tank to veer and slam into a rock wall at which point it stopped. Before the shaken driver could emerge, a medic was attending to the now legless trooper, while a maintenance team by the winches began pulling two more cables from the back of a truck.

'Dustoff's already on the way, sir,' one of Carrera's radio carriers announced.

Poor bastard, Carrera thought, with that part of himself he allowed to actually feel. Neither you nor I wanted you to go home like that.

5/5/468 AC, Cruz Residence, Ciudad Balboa

He's been this way for the last three and a half weeks, thought Cara, unhappily, as she did the evening dishes by hand.

Her husband, with a smile on his bruised and battered face, sat on the living room floor playing with the children. He seemed content with the world, as he had most definitely not been content since he'd left the regulars.

And I know why he's this way, too. He got to fight. He got to be a man among men. He was able to test himself and rise above the normal human plane . . . if only for a few minutes. Oh, Ricardo, what have I done to you?

Putting the last of the plates on a rack to drip dry, Cara went and sat on the couch overlooking the rest of her family. She sat there, in inner turmoil, for about a quarter of an hour before saying, 'Children, go out and play until it's dark. I need to talk to your father.'

Cruz looked at her curiously until the kids were out the door and she began to speak.

Cara wasted no time. 'I'm sorry, Ricardo. I didn't know what I was doing when I made you leave the regulars. I didn't understand how much you need it. So . . . if you want to go back, I won't interfere and I'll do my best to put up with the separation and the fear.'

'What brings this on?' Cruz asked, raising one very suspicious eyebrow.

Cara sighed. 'I'd hoped I could be enough for you. But you were miserable. And then I saw you fight, and you were happy, and you've been happy for weeks. But how long can that last, Ricardo? You need the fight, the struggle. You need it in your memory; you need it in your present; and you need the anticipation of it in your future. I see that now. I should have seen it then. I should have known it since we first met and you saved me from those rabiblanco assholes. You were meant to be a soldier first and a husband second. The man I love is meant to be a soldier first and a husband second. And . . . I'm going to have to learn to live with that.'

'Can you learn to live with that?' Cruz asked.

'I don't know. I can try.'

'Fair enough,' her husband answered. Then he went silent for a while, apparently thinking. 'You know,' he said, 'I've fought with and shed blood with the men of my reserve cohort, too, now. There's a good chance that fighting will break out here, come the next election. They'll need me then, if it happens. There aren't that many senior centurions in the