"David Drake - Foreign Legions" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

The novel, alsoRanks of Bronze, was a Novel of EducationтАФaBildungsroman , to use the normal
German term for such a work. I started out with a young boy and ended with him having grown to
manhood. Both Jim and I were very pleased with the book.

That's where the trouble started: Jim wanted a sequel. I was flabbergastedтАФyou can't have a sequel to a
Bildungsroman . What was I supposed to do? Take my character from adulthood to senility in the
second volume?

Jim kept asking. I kept saying no. (I'm not good at saying no to friends, but on this one I was adamant.)
Finally he got sneaky and suggested that I let three writers (whom he picked) do novellas in the Ranks of
Bronze universe,and that these novellas be bound in with the original novel. I agreed, since I wasn't going
to have to do any work myself and the project would get Jim off my back about doing a sequel.

Hope springs eternal. Or, alternatively, there's a sucker born every minute. . . .

What you see is a self-standing volume with some excellent new stories built around my original (well,
Andre's original) concept, but with no other criteria. I told the writers they could do what they pleased.
Eric wrote the sequel Jim was begging for, while Steve used the characters from my novel in a campaign
I hadn't described. Dave and Mark did something completely different within the basic parameters. And I
used Crassus's legion but not any of the characters I'd written about in the original novel.

So . . . it's been a long road but an interesting one. And after all, the road for the original survivors of
Crassus's legions was longer yet.



Dave Drake

david-drake.com




RANKS OF BRONZE
David Drake

The rising sun is a dagger point casting long shadows toward Vibulenus and his cohort from the native
breastworks. The legion had formed ranks an hour before; the enemy is not yet stirring. A playful breeze
with a bitter edge skitters out of the south, and the tribune swings his shield to his right side against it.

"When do we advance, sir?" his first centurion asks. Gnaeus Clodius Calvus, promoted to his present
position after a boulder had pulped his predecessor during the assault on a granite fortress far away.
Vibulenus only vaguely recalls his first days with the cohort, a boy of eighteen in titular command of four
hundred and eighty men whose names he had despaired of learning. Well, he knows them now. Of
course, there are only two hundred and ninety-odd left to remember.
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