“Oh, he’s not mine.” Vix mopped out his bowl with a scrap of bread. “His father was a clerk the legate brought over from Bithynia a few years back. The clerk brought Demetra and the boy with him from his village, but he died the first winter and left ’em alone. German winters aren’t for everyone.” Vix punched Titus’s arm, jostling the stew in his bowl. “Try not to cry when you get your first chilblains.”

“I’ll do my best.” Titus ruffled the little boy’s curls, the same dark-honey color of his mother’s. “Good of you to look after him, with no father in the world.”

“He’s not much trouble.”

“He shouldn’t be bothering you!” Demetra swooped down and bore her handsome son away, scolding in soft Greek.

“So what else did the legate say when you made your report?” Vix reached for the clay jug on the table. “They’ll mobilize the Tenth for sure; we’re the best legion outside Gaul, and closer too.” He still had mud on his boots from the endless riding of the past weeks, but he looked ready to throw his cloak over his shoulder and march for Dacia on the spot. “How long till we march, you think? Two weeks, maybe three—”

“More like three months,” Titus said, and sipped from his cup. Cold local mead rather than wine; rotgut stuff, but he’d have choked it down if it had been vinegar. He hadn’t felt so warm and welcomed since—well, since he’d come to Germania.

Vix sputtered. “Three months?”

“At least. I sit at the Senate a great deal—just listening at the back during public sessions when my grandfather speaks—and I hear a great many wranglings about the disposition of the legions.” Titus picked at the mud flaking off his tunic. “It will take time to mobilize everything, send for reinforcements, call in additional legions. At least three months, and more like four.”

“Mobilize?” Demetra said behind them, her brown eyes wide. “The Tenth, you mean—it’s going east, sir? To fight?”

“Nothing’s certain yet,” Titus reassured her.

“There had better be a fight this time,” Vix snorted. “Five years in the legions, and I haven’t had a single good battle! That first go-round Trajan had at the Dacians, when I was just out of training? The Dacians ran before the fight even started, damn them. How am I supposed to get a battlefield promotion to centurion when the buggers settle everything by treaty?”

“Why on earth would anyone want to be a centurion?” Titus asked. “Haven’t you seen how hard they have to work?”

“I want all of it,” Vix said unhesitatingly. “The work, the rank, the battles; campaign tokens, looted gold, and a triumph in Rome.”