Roma Mater by Poul Anderson

trundled along the roads, driven by men in smocks and wooden shoes. Other passers-by rode mules, or walked carrying baskets or tools. What few women appeared were afoot but seemed unafraid. When they saw the squadron, people gaped, then often waved their hats and cheered. Every fifty or sixty miles the highway passed through a small town This country lay at peace.
    Yet Gratillonius noticed how hastily those towns had been walled of late, with anything that came to hand, even tombstones and broken-up monuments. And they had shrunk. Deserted buildings on the outskirts, stripped of everything valuable, were crumbling into grass-grown hillocks. The inhabitants looked poor and discouraged, save those who sat in taverns getting drunk. On market days the forums remained half empty. As for the hinterlands, the farmers ate better, but most of them were serfs. Or worse; Gratillonius remembered the publican. Whenever he passed a villa – a fundus, they called such an estate in Gallia – or a latifundium, a plantation which had devoured many a farm, he thought a malediction.
    He would have liked commandeering fresh rations from those places as the need arose, but that was too chancy. Instead, he levied on military warehouses. Sometimes he had trouble getting what he wanted, because the garrisons were composed of alien auxiliaries with their own ideas about diet. His requirement was for what would keep inthis wet climate, while being nutritious and easy to prepare: parched grain, biscuit, butter, cheese, dry sausage, preserved meat, beans, peas, lentils, pickled cabbage, dried apples, raisins, wine. That last was apt to be poor, and the water that would dilute it to be muddy, but beer was too bulky for what you got out of it. Not that he allowed drunkenness. However, it was wise to let the men have a treat at day’s end, while supper cooked or in their tents if rain forced a cold meal.
    The first night out was mild. They pitched camp in a pasture and grinned and winked at some towheaded youngsters, driving cattle home, who stopped to stare timidly. Gratillonius ordered a kettle of warm water brought him when it was ready, sought his shelter, removed his armour, and sighed in relief. Give him a scrub and change of linen, and he’d be ready for a drink himself. He insisted the troops keep clean too, but if he bathed out in the open among them, it would be bad for discipline.
    Budic carried the water in, set it down by Gratillonius’s bedroll, and straightened. He could stand upright in an officer’s tent, though his blond hair brushed the leather. He saluted. ‘Sir,’ he said in a rush, ‘may I ask a great favour?’
    Gratillonius laughed. ‘You may. You won’t necessarily get it.’
    ‘If … the centurion would allow me an extra ration of bread and cheese … and if, when the chance comes, we would lay in some kippered fish –’
    ‘Whatever for?’
    It was getting dim in here, despite the flag being folded back. Did the boy blush? He certainly gulped. ‘Sir, this is Lent.’
    ‘Lent. Ah. The long Christian fast. Are you sure? I’vegathered the Christians can’t agree among themselves how to calculate the date of their Easter.’
    ‘I didn’t – didn’t think, I forgot about it, in all the excitement of departure, and then on the march I lost track of time. But that terrible happening on the ship, it shocked me into recalling – this, and all my sins, like lust when I see a pretty girl or anger when some of the men bait me – Equinox has just passed, with the moon new. Lent is already far along. Please, sir, let me set myself a penance, and also do right in the Faith.’ Budic swallowed again. The centurion is not a Christian, but he is a pious man.’
    Gratillonius considered. He wanted everybody fit, not weakened by a growling belly; and special privilege might well cause discord. Yet this was a deprivation, not a luxury. He doubted others would want it, he having picked men he knew weren’t holy-holy sorts –