Free Arts of Dark and Light: Book 01 - A Throne of Bones by Vox Day Page A

bleeding line, with huge gaps torn in it. The goblin infantry hadn’t run before contact like their cavalry had, but stunned and in disarray, they were even more helpless than the fleeing wolfriders against the shock of the Amorran cavalry charge.
    A centurion approached him. It was Caius Proculus, the senior centurion of the second cohort. “Well met, Tribune.”
    Fortex grinned and extended his hand, but the centurion gripped his forearm as if he were a fellow legionary, not an officer. “Most kind of you to leave us a few goblins, Centurion,” Fortex replied, well-pleased by the implicit compliment. “I thought surely you’d have eaten them all by the time we got here.
    “They say you knights all have arses like plums and livers like sheep, but I say you can stand with the hastati any time, Tribune.”
    Fortex was delighted, but he hid it with a contemptuous snort. “Proculus, the fact that I’m foolish enough to do your bloody work for you doesn’t mean I’m dumb enough to walk when I can ride. Tell you what, though, you buy yourself a mule when we get back to Berdicum, and I’ll make you a decurion.”
    The centurion barked with laughter and saluted. “By the bones, Tribune, don’t tempt me! I just may take you up on that! God and Amorr, sir!”
    Fortex returned the centurion’s salute with his own, then urged Incitatus to follow the rest of the Second Knights, who were trotting leisurely toward what looked to be general direction of the camp. He was desperately hungry, and now that the rush of battle fury had faded, the disgusting smell of the goblin blood in which he had all but bathed was beginning to make him feel faint.
    He mused upon the centurion’s salute as they rode. God and Amorr? He didn’t see that the Immaculate had had much to do with the charnel house of this battlefield. When he looked down at the stinking blood and gore splattered across his arm, chest, and leg, it was, in fact, hard to imagine anything less immaculate.
    He wasn’t even sure what Amorr had to do with it either, come to think of it. Had there ever been a goblin tribe known to march on the great city? Marcus would know, he supposed. But, to be honest, he couldn’t care less. Victory in battle was its own reward, and a man no more needed to justify war than he needed to justify wine.
    The camp was in sight when he saw a tribune and a centurion riding toward him. It was Crescentius, the laticlavius, easily recognizable by the broad white strip at the bottom of his red tribune’s cape. He didn’t know the centurion’s name, although he seemed to recall the man was with the seventh cohort.
    They were probably coming to fetch him on behalf of the legate, Fortex concluded. He wasn’t surprised that Saturnius would want to honor him in some way, although the infantry hadn’t been in nearly enough danger to justify anything like the grass crown. Wouldn’t that have been something, though! Magnus would have been fair to burst with pride.
    Caught up in his idle daydreaming, Fortex nearly fell off Incitatus at the first words out of Crescentius’s mouth. They were, in fact, very close to the last thing he could have possibly imagined under the circumstances.
    Gaius Valerius Fortex, you will accompany us now. Give the centurion your sword. I have orders in the name of Marcus Saturnius, legate of the legion, to place you under arrest.”

SEVERA

    The autumn sun was unseasonably hot as it beat down on the forty thousand people sitting or standing on the stone rows of the great arena. Fortunately, the slaves had brought some thick white cloth with them and, with the use of some wooden posts, had arranged it to provide shade for Severa and the others seated in the box. Below them, a pair of female fighters in leather armor were jabbing their spears at a nearly naked male goblin armed with only a dagger, but the uneven battle held little interest for her. She was thinking about one of the attractions to come later in the day, and