"David Drake - Hammer's Slammers 16 - Other Times Than Peace" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

didn't catch. They laughed even harder.

The barbarians in this place were pinkish and had knees that bent the wrong way. They grew little ruffs
of down at their waists and throat, and the males had topknots of real feathers that they spent hours
primping.

Froggie's men didn't have much to do with the male barbs, except to slaughter enough of them the day
after the legion landed that the bottom lands flooded from the dam of bodies in the river. As for the
girlsтАФthey weren't built like real women, but the troopers had gotten used to field expedients; and
anyway, the girls were close enough.
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"Don't worry, boys," Froggie added mildly. "We'll get there as soon as we need to."

And maybe a little sooner than that. Froggie didn't understand this operation, and experience had left him
with a bad feeling about things he didn't understand.

Commanding the Third of the Fourth didn't give Froggie much in the way of bragging rights in the legion,
but he'd never cared about that. Superior officers knew that Froggie's century could be depended on to
get the job done; the human officers did, at least. If any of the blue-suits, the Commanders, bothered to
think about it, they knew as well.

Froggie's men could be sure that their centurion wasn't going to volunteer them for anything, not even
guard duty on a whore house, because there was always going to be a catch in it. And if the century
wound up in the shit anyway, Froggie'd get them out of it if there was any way in Hell to do that. He'd
always managed before.

The howl of the Commander's air chariot rose, then drummed toward the gate. Froggie stood, using his
vinewood swagger stick as a cane.

"Nowyou can get your thumbs out, troopers!" he said in a roar they could hear inside the huge metal ship
that the legion had arrived on. Froggie was short and squatтАФshorter than any but a handful of the
fifty-seven troopers in his centuryтАФbut his voice would have been loud in a man twice his size.

The troopers fell in with the skill of long practice; their grunts and curses were part of the operation. Men
butted their javelins and lifted themselves like codgers leaning on a staff, or else they held their heavy
shields out at arm's length to balance the weight of their armored bodies as their knees straightened.

They wore their cuirasses. They'd march carrying their shields on their left shoulders, though they'd sling
their helmets rather than wear them. Marching all day in a helmet gave the most experienced veteran a
throbbing headache and cut off about half the sounds around him besides.

Froggie remembered the day the legion had marched in battle order, under a desert sun and a constant
rain of Parthian arrows. They all remembered that. All the survivors.

Besides his sword and dagger, each trooper carried a pair of javelins meant for throwing. Their points
were steel, but the slim neck of each shaft was soft iron that bent when it hit and kept the other fellow