Lots of soldiers work for civilians they don't like, but these Romans had It worse than most -- their commanders were blue-skinned aliens!

The guilds of star-traveling merchants had strict rules to prevent their technology from falling into the hands of the natives of planets they were exploiting: military operations had to be carried out with weaponry no more complex than swords and bows. That was no handicap to merchant princes with a galaxy to scour for military slaves to do their fighting for them. Some came to Earth for soldiers and returned to the stars with the best the planet had to offer. For over two thousand years the aliens thought they'd succeeded brilliantly -- but then things changed! Set in the universe of Ranks of Bronze, masterful new novellas by David Drake, Eric Flint, S. M. Stirling, Mark L. Van Name, and David Weber explore the bleeding edge between human courage and the science of alien slavemasters. The right man with a sword is just as deadly as a technician with a laser -- and not all the blood spilled is red.