David Drake - The Road of Danger

The Road of DangerARC

David Drake

Advance Reader Copy

Unproofed

BAEN BOOKS by DAVID DRAKE

THE RCN SERIES

With the Lightnings

Lt. Leary, Commanding

The Far Side of the Stars

The Way to Glory

Some Golden Harbor

When the Tide Rises

In the Stormy Red Sky

What Distant Deeps

HAMMER'S SLAMMERS

The Tank Lords

Caught in the Crossfire

The Butcher's Bill

The Sharp End

Paying the Piper

The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 1 (omnibus)

The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2 (omnibus)

The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3 (omnibus)

Voyage Across the Stars (omnibus)

INDEPENDENT NOVELS AND COLLECTIONS

Into the Hinterlands with John Lambshead

Loose Cannon: The Tom Kelly Novels (omnibus)

The Reaches Trilogy

Seas of Venus

Foreign Legions, edited by David Drake

Ranks of Bronze

The Dragon Lord

Birds of Prey

Northworld Trilogy

Redliners

Starliner

All the Way to the Gallows

Grimmer Than Hell

Other Times Than Peace

Patriots

THE GENERAL SERIES

Warlord with S.M. Stirling (omnibus)

Conqueror with S.M. Stirling (omnibus)

The Chosen with S.M. Stirling

THE BELISARIUS SERIES with Eric Flint

An Oblique Approach

In the Heart of Darkness

Belisarius I: Thunder at Dawn (omnibus)

Destiny's Shield

Fortune's Stroke

Belisarius II: Storm at Noontide (omnibus)

The Tide of Victory

The Dance of Time

Belisarius III: Flames at Sunset (omnibus)

The Road of Danger

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Copyright 2012 by David Drake

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 978-1-4516-3815-8

Cover art by Stephen Hickman

First printing, April 2012

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

To Scott Van Name

Who was much younger than I was when he learned to appreciate Gaudi.

Acknowledgments

Dan Breen continues as my first reader. Thank goodness.

Dan, Dorothy Day, and my webmaster Karen Zimmerman archive my texts. I copy them to three machines of my own, but given my track record with computers I feel a lot happier having the texts spread around.

Though for a wonder, I didnt kill (or even badly bruise) any computers on this book. The last time that happened, I lost two computers and a separate keyboard in the course of writing the next one. I am prepared!

Dorothy, Karen, and Evan Ladouceur help with research and continuity problems. Basically, I say, What was the name of? or Where the dickens did X take place? and an answer appears in my in-box. My focus is on story, not continuity, and Im sure it shows; but the situation would be much worse without the help of my friends.

Indeed, life would be much worse without the help of my friends. Thats another matter, but it seems proper to make public acknowledgment of that too.

The reason the RCN series has great covers is that Toni Weisskopf, the publisher, hires Steve Hickman to do the art. Steve consistently paints a lovely and evocative image; whereupon Jennie Faries, Baens designer, does all the considerable range of things that turn the raw materials into a cover.

Sure, theyre all doing their jobs, but heaven knows that there are a lot of people doing those jobs professionally who arent any good. There are very few who are better than those working on my books, and I appreciate them.

My wife Jo continues to run the house and coddle me while Im writing. Which I do most of my waking life, so it isnt a small or an easy task.

I could not write as I do without the help of those named and of many others. Thank you all. I know how lucky I am.

Dave Drake

Authors Note

I use both English and Metric weights and measures in the RCN series to suggest the range of diversity which I believe would exist in a galaxy-spanning civilization. I do not, however, expect either actual system to be in use in three thousand years. Kilogram and inch (et cetera) should be taken as translations of future measurement systems, just as Ive translated the spoken language.

Occasionally I think that I dont really have to say that in every RCN book. Its obvious, after all, isnt it? But theres a certain number of people to whom it isnt obvious. Theyll write to correct me, and that gets on my nerves.

The plots of my RCN novels often come from classical history. Ordinarily that means something Ive found in a Greek historian whom Ive been reading in translation. In the present case, however, I resumed reading the Roman historian Livy in the original. I found my situation in the disruption which followed the Battle of Zama and the surrender of Carthage to end the 2nd Punic War.

One of the advantages in going back to primaryor at least ancientsources is that the ancient historians mention things which modern histories ignore as trivial. They werent trivial to the people living them, and to me they often do more to illuminate the life of the times than do ambassadors speeches and the movements of armies.

Northern Italy at the end of the 3d century ad was a patchwork of Roman colonies and allies; Celtic tribes recently conquered by Rome; and independent tribes, mostly Celtic. A man calling himself Hamilcar and claiming to be a Carthaginian raised a rebellion against Rome. In the course of it he sacked cities and destroyed a Roman army sent against him.

Nobody was really sure where Hamilcar came from. Supposedly he was a straggler from one of the Carthaginian armies which passed through the region, but there was no agreement as to which army.

There are two perfectly believable accounts of his defeat and death. They cant both be true, which leads to the possibility that neither is true. All we know for certain is that Hamilcar disappears from the record and from history more generally.

The point that particularly interested me was that the Roman Senate reacted by sending an embassy to Carthage, demanding that the Carthaginians withdraw their citizen under terms of the peace treaty. This makes perfect legal sense, though appears absurd in any practical fashion.

Livys account got me thinking about the problems that the envoys would have had. The Romans were going to Carthage with demands which werent going to be greeted by their listeners with any enthusiasm.

They had it easier, however, than the Carthaginians who were presumably tasked to proceed to the chaos in Northern Italy and corral Hamilcar. Whatever the Carthaginian people thought of the situation, they were in no position in 200 bc to blow off a Roman ultimatum. Theres no record of the Carthaginian response, but I believe they made at least some attempt to comply. Otherwise there would be more in the record.

I decided that I could find a story in that. This is the story I found.

Dave Drake

david-drake.com

But if you come to a road where danger

Or guilt or anguish or shames to share,

Be good to the lad that loves you true

And the soul that was born to die for you,

And whistle and Ill be there.