We marched fast out of Mog. Half of us were leaving bad debts and pregnant women behind, and all of us were happy to be marching toward action. Slaves, loot, plunder—plenty of rewards, once we mashed down that Dacian king. Even the lowly soldiers like me could come out rich.

“I don’t care about rich,” Boil confided between marching songs as we proceeded arm to arm. “I just want me one of those Dacian women. Wildcats, they are. I’ll bring her back to Germania with me—”

“And then she’ll leave you for a tavernkeeper like the last one did,” Simon teased.

“That was a long time ago.”

“Four months! And the one before that left you for a lute player—”

“Slaves for me,” Philip was saying on my other side. “A dozen big muscular warriors. Send them to my woman, she can feed ’em up and train ‘em—”

“If they don’t up and kill her.”

“You ever seen my woman?” Philip shuddered. “She’ll have ’em heeling like dogs. A fat profit on the market, that is. Gladiator schools pay well for barbarians—”

“Enough to stake your dice for a month at least,” I agreed, and Philip whacked me over the head with his javelin. I shoved back.

“Order in the ranks!” Our centurion rode by, shouting, and we straightened hastily. “Step lively, now.”

“Bastard has something to prove,” Simon muttered.

“Don’t we all?” Julius peered up the road through the dust, where the Fourth were trotting double-quick. “You want to see the Fourth get into Dacia first? As my ancestor the noble Julius Caesar was first across the Rubicon, we shall be first into the east.”

We shifted our packs and quickened our steps. The Tenth Fidelis could easily make eighteen miles in a day—twenty-two if we hurried. Not bad at all for a fort-based legion that only did one or two route marches a month.

Though if I’d been commander of the Tenth, I’d have made it twenty-four miles a day.

I hadn’t seen anything of Legate Publius Aelius Hadrian since the start of the march, when he’d sallied out on horseback, very noble in a red cloak. He rode far ahead with the Emperor and the rest of the legates, and as far as I was concerned he could stay there. A legion was a big place—more than five thousand men when we were up to full complement. Big enough to avoid even the man in charge if you were bent on it, and I was bent on it. That bearded bastard wasn’t going to lay eyes on me for the entire campaign if I could help it… had I really made a point of pushing my legate into the mud in front of a cluster of snickering centurions?