Free Clash of Eagles by Alan Smale

white-tailed deer. With supplies this short, forbidding the men to hunt was futile, yet all too often they themselves became the prey.
    By now everyone knew that they were going on, that there could be no return to the Chesapica before winter, that once the weather turned cold they would be building a fortress and staying put out here in the wilderness.
    The heat and damp and uncertainty played with men’s tempers. Marcellinus lost an additional seven soldiers to violence when a brawl turned murderous and he had to execute the culprits. Once more he cursed the ill mix of the men given him to command: raw Nubians, Magyar mercenaries, veteran Teutons, and even some patrician Romans, a mixed bag of races and languages that turned his centurions into diplomats who spent as much time coaxing their men not to kill one another as they did in maintaining their battle readiness.
    His feelings of isolation grew. Urbs Roma became a marbled dream. And just as his legion eroded further into squalor and ill temper, the barbarians around them seemed to grow ever more civilized.
    Though they saw few natives, they passed plenty of evidence of their activities. The tents and lean-tos of the east had given way to firmer structures of wood and wattle and daub. In some areas the remains of broad tree stumps showed that the locals had torn down the forests forfarmland. Though Marcellinus was no lover of trees for trees’ sake, he was surprised at how much of an effect this had on him.
    The Romans became the beneficiaries of the increased cultivation of the land; they swarmed the corn like locusts, leaving only stalks behind them. Deer would still appear startlingly close to the Legion’s path and die quickly in a hail of arrows. The soldiers often had to pull fifteen or twenty arrows out of a downed buck before they could skin and dress it for the fire.
    Despite their living off the land as much as they were able, the Hesperian corn still provided a paltry yield compared with the robust crops of Europa. Leogild’s baggage carts continued to grow lighter as the victuals dwindled. A few thousand men on the march ate a great deal.
    As long damp day followed long damp day, Marcellinus saw more and more evidence of how the local tribes were taming the land. And more than once he could have sworn he saw an aviator fly by, banking and swooping behind the trees.
    In his dreams they wheeled over him in a giant flock, and he awoke with his ears still full of the beating of their wings.
    Now the Legion started coming across the mounds: small conical earthworks in the clearings by the abandoned villages. In the days that followed, the number of villages and the size of the mounds both showed a marked increase.
    “This is more like it,” said Marcellinus as they rode past a mound fifteen feet tall.
    “Piles of earth?” Corbulo said.
    “Yes, just piles of earth, patted down nice and neat. We could put one up in an hour that would put this one to shame. But these people aren’t Romans. For them to build a mound like this is a triumph of effort and organization. And these are just the beginning. Ahead, there are cities of these things.”
    “Ah,
big
piles of earth,” said Corbulo. “You should have said so sooner.”
    “Support me, Lucius,” Marcellinus said quietly. “Your sarcasm grows wearying.”
    “Of course. Sorry.”
    Leogild cleared his throat. “Sir, we should talk again about supplies.”
    “Supplies, always supplies.” Corbulo put his hand up to his temple as if deafened by the Visigoth.
    Leogild eyed him. “Fine. You don’t want to eat, that’s more for everyone else.”
    Until now they had scavenged from the fields and forests as they’d gone by. Now the tended forests were giving way to plains, and—at long last—Bjarnason’s promised fields of tall, odd-looking, but well-tended corn were replacing the earlier sickly patches. The cornfields were separated by stands of nut trees; by this time nobody doubted that the