That was a hard command for any experienced legionary to absorb – and that was why the men’s precious pila, which killed from a distance, had been banned for this encounter – but Quintus, even as he had prepared for this clash, had been thinking of the longer term, of a time when he would need to argue for mercy for his legionaries, who, after all, were never going to leave this place, whatever the outcome of the battle. If they could show restraint now, they might be shown tolerance in the future.

And here came the Incas, at last.

‘Advance!’ yelled Orgilius. ‘Front rank advance, advance!’

With the rest of the front line Quintus raised his shield so he could see, and he ran down the slope with the rest of the front rank of the Romans, twenty or thirty paces, shields lowered. They slammed into the lead Inca warriors. Their sheer momentum and the advantage of height helped the Romans halt the Inca charge, and even push their foe backwards down the hill, back into their own ranks, which turned into a confused crowd of struggling men.

The fight closed up in a static line, a bloody friction.

Trying to keep his shield in the air against the arrows and slingshot stones that still flew, Quintus hacked with his gladio at the man in front of him, aiming for the bare legs under the armoured tunic. He struck flesh and the man fell – but another took his place, standing on the torso of his still-alive comrade, and Quintus found himself parrying blows from a long-handled axe with his sword. The Incas had whips, too, and the crack of one such weapon caught him across the back. But the trick was to step inside the arc of the whip so it became useless, and to close with the man himself.

There were men at his back now, the second rank of Romans, not pushing hard but yelling support, and prodding with their swords. When a Roman did fall, a man from the rank behind stepped up to take his place, and the third rank filled in behind him, just as they had been trained. Even as he fought, hacking at what felt like a solid mass of Inca flesh in front of him, Quintus was aware of the wider formation of his men, how they kept their shape, the chessboard pattern, designed to give each other room to swing the gladio, or thrust with the pugio. Quintus could even hear, over the screaming cacophony all around him, the raucous voice of Scorpus still yelling at the rear rank to keep its formation, not to press, to keep the shape, to plug the gaps.

This battle was worth the fighting – he’d understood that as soon as he’d grasped the nature of the strange history-switching conspiracy web in which humanity seemed to be enmeshed. All they could do was fight, in the end, he and his men. But if in fighting this miniature campaign – even if none of them survived, in the end – if the last of the Legio XC Victrix did something to loosen the grip of that terrible empire-toppling abstract force of which the ColU had spoken, he knew in his heart, in his guts, it was worth it.

Quintus Fabius the commander had done all he could. He’d prepared and equipped his men, found the best position to give battle, led the line to the best of his ability. Now there was only the fight. Around him there was a roar, a confluence of war cries and the screams of the wounded and dying, and still the air was full of arrows and stones any one of which could kill him in a second, and still the terrible erosion of the clashing front ranks continued. In battle it was always the same. It felt like a training exercise right up until the moment the lines closed. Even then you felt invulnerable – the other man would be hit, but not you – and you feared fouling up more than the weapons of the enemy. But there were moments when you faced a foe, and you looked in his eyes, and it was as if only the two of you existed, the war was yours and his alone. So Quintus slashed and stabbed and swung, and held up his shield, and tried to ignore the tiring of his arms, and the pain of the small wounds he’d already taken, a scrape to the belly, a niggling stab in the shin; he would fight on with his men until he could fight no more.

The clay trumpets of the Incas sounded, a ghastly sound.

The fighting continued at the front, but Quintus could see that the rear Inca lines were pulling back – in good order, but retreating back down the steep slope of the ridge.

Quintus yelled to his trumpeter, ‘Give the order! Fall back!’

There were three short blasts in response, and then the Romans stepped back warily from the last of the Incas. Warily, and wearily too; one man stumbled over a still-warm corpse behind him.

Quintus, breathing heavily, his gladio clasped in his bloody palm as if glued there, sought out Orgilius. The man was sitting on the ground, he seemed to have been hamstrung, but he had not abandoned the eagle. Quintus crouched beside him. ‘Aquilifer? Do you know what’s happened?’

For answer Orgilius pointed to the sky.

Quintus looked up, and saw a Condor, a great black bird, dipping into the atmosphere above him, the leading edges of its wings still glowing from the air friction. It fired a shell that trailed white smoke. At the peak of its trajectory the shell exploded with a crack that reached Quintus’s ears a heartbeat after the flash of light. He winced; he couldn’t help it.

Orgilius, obviously in pain from his wounded leg, forced a grin. ‘I think that was more noise than destruction. But still—’

‘But still it’s a projectile weapon of the sort that’s supposed to be banned in here. These Incas – just like the Romans! You never use a fire-of-life weapon inside a spacecraft, until you do. So the adults have shown up, and we children must put away our toys.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Trumpeter! Signal that we’re standing down.’

Orgilius looked over the field. ‘I think there’s a party of their leaders coming over, sir.’

‘I’m not surprised. Come on, aquilifer, let’s get you to the medicus.’ He got an arm under Orgilius’ shoulders and helped him to stand, on one leg. ‘You, Marcus Vinius – carry the eagle for us. We’ve got a lot of talking to do, I suspect, and I need you to help me do it, Orgilius. But now we have to make our peace. After all we’ve nowhere else to go, have we?’

‘No, sir,’ Orgilius said, ‘that we haven’t.’

‘Maybe if we fought well enough they’ll let us join the huamincas.’

‘It was all worth it, wasn’t it, sir?’

‘If they got away, Titus and the rest. If the Malleus was able to pick them up. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know if they succeeded in what they’re trying. Not unless we’re scrubbed from history altogether.’

‘But we wouldn’t know about that either, sir, would we?’

‘I certainly hope not, aquilifer.’

‘And as for Titus and the others—’

‘On their way to Mars by now, I hope. But for us it’s blood and broken heads, as ever. Let’s find that Greek doctor for you, I’m sure he’s having a relaxing afternoon … Now all I’ve got to do is find one of their generals to put his foot on my neck. Have I got that right, Orgilius? That’s how they can tell you’ve surrendered …’

A few days later Quintus, languishing in an Inca cell, received a message, sent via farspeaker by Titus Valerius, picked up by a legionary working on an Inti window, and then smuggled to the centurion in the Inca pukara where he was being interrogated, or negotiating, depending on your point of view.

The plan had worked. And after escaping from the confusion of the Hanan Cuzco hub, it took the Malleus Jesu only days to reach Mars.

CHAPTER 58

Stef Kalinski had to be helped out of the testudo rover, and through the improvised airlock into the dome that long-gone Inca explorers had set up over the Hatch they had discovered. Even once she was safely inside the dome she stumbled, and had to be caught by Mardina, and led to the rest of the party.