Empire of the Eagle

9

"Faster," Ssu-ma Chao muttered. His chariot rumbled forward, the tower to which Lucilius climbed creaking as the wheels bumped over the rock-strewn sand. "The sun...."

The Ch'in soldiers urged men and beasts to greater efforts. A packhorse tried to hurl its head up and scream defiance as if it were a warhorse, but its heart broke, its knees buckled, and it sank dead in its traces. Too desperate to unload it, the merchants pushed on by. After a moment, the driving yellow sand behind them hid it.

And still the Ch'in officer pushed for greater speed.

Bleary-eyed, Quintus looked along the plodding line of Legionaries. Could they even complete this day's march—whatever you called a day in this no-place of driving sand—let alone quicken their pace? Their faces were gray with exhaustion and grit, but their eyes blazed.

"At the cavalry's pace," he ordered. He remembered how they had marched, hours upon hours in the hot Syrian sun, with those Nabataean and Armenian traitors jeering and the proconsul thinking only of his precious son and his horses. His heart would burst, and he would lie beneath the sand, like that packhorse. They all would, except maybe Lucilius. He wanted him to come down from his perch and march like a Roman, but...

"Sun. And sky! It's blue. By all the gods, it's a beautiful day!" Lucilius shouted.

A weak cheer rose from the Legionaries.

"All right now, none of that," Rufus ordered. "On the double, now!"

Ahead of them, a ray of sun broke through the opaque walls that had encompassed them for so long. One ray, then another, then seven, brushing across their foreheads with the touch of a mother on a fevered child's brow.

Ssu-ma Chao tripped and measured his length. Instead of struggling to his knees and glaring at anyone who had seen him lose his dignity, he knocked his head against the sand as if the light were his Emperor. That was not sweat that ran down a nearby soldier's drawn face, leaving a clean streak in the mask of sand and dried sweat that coated it. It was not sweat that ran down Quintus's face, either.

With the sunlight came fresh breaths of air. He would have thought he'd had enough winds for a lifetime—the howls, the screams, the battering gusts. This came as a reminder of green hills and hidden valleys, of the blue mists and shadows of his lost home. It soothed his parched skin as if he ducked his head into a mountain stream. And, despite its gentleness, where it brushed against the walls that had been their protection and their trap the rush of sand and gravel thinned and the thin shriek of the wind that kept it blowing about them grew fainter than the highest notes of a flute, rising past a man's hearing to the level of a night flyer's hunting song. Now the sunlight filtered through it, kindling the ugly ochres and gray into rich saffrons and golds. And ahead of them, they could see the glowing blue of a tranquil sky.

Behind the Romans, wailing prayers of thanks rose up, almost as hideous as the wind. Quintus could imagine how the barbarians were kneeling and rubbing their faces on the rock. Not so much as one Roman broke ranks: They stood, waiting for orders. And Lucilius dropped with more speed than Quintus would have thought he had left from the chariot's tower to stand with his fellows.

"You put heart into us for this last dash," Quintus said.

For once, there was no mockery in the patrician's gaze.

"Last dash to where?" he asked.

Perhaps he had earned the right to that much irony.

With a final sigh, the last of the sand fell. And the lost caravan stood forth on land that was not covered with grit and gobi, but honest rock. Ahead of them stretched a narrow course sloping down past tall poplars and gleaming rhododendrons into a valley guarded by rock cliffs that jutted up like columns carved and melded together in the morning of the world. The pathway—wide enough for six men to walk abreast or a wagon to traverse carefully—wound past a rock spire. Some cut in the rock caught the sunlight, which pooled there, forming a globe of light from which rays issued.

The light brightened past bearing, then faded. Beyond that rock spire, as much as they could see, stretched a green field tippled with gold and red wildflowers. Willows swayed gently by the deep blue curve of a mountain lake. Beyond, more cliffs rose, sheltering the valley.

The quiet all but sang in their ears. No screams, no hoofbeats or drums, and no whine of Yueh-chih arrows, thank all the gods. Without need of orders, Roman and Ch'in soldiers wheeled to guard the rest of the caravan as it coiled about the entrance to the valley. One by one, they stripped themselves of the heavy felts they no longer needed to wear.

Were they dead? Quintus saw no asphodel on the valley floor. Nothing dead could be as thirsty as Quintus, or as tired. "We are far off my reckoning," Ssu-ma Chao murmured. "I have never heard of this place, and no one I know has ever seen it. I see no mountains, or I would swear we had passed over the desert into the Heavenly Mountains of the North."

He clapped his hands. Merchants, horsemen, and camel drivers attended him while restraining their eager beasts, but their eyes constantly wandered to feast on the green and blue that stretched out below them.

For all his cynicism, the horseman Arsaces swore by his many devas, then choked, "In the midst of the desert, a crystal fountain," he whispered. "I would have taken haoma that it was but a tale told round a fire in the desert."

Rufus cleared his throat, looked for a place to spit, then, obviously, thought better of it. "That looks like real water to me," he said. "Are we going to just stand and admire it?"

Already scenting it, the horses had pressed forward. Even the camels moaned and quickened their gait. Saddles and packs hung low on their backs': The humps in which they stored the precious fluid that made them such fine desert travelers were almost flat. A cart overturned as the beasts drawing it swerved too sharply in their eagerness to get to the water.

"All right, wait your turns!"

The wind blew, overpowering the stinks of frightened, sweaty men and animals with the temptations of water and growing things. The same longing that drove the beasts forward shone in the Romans' eyes. Quintus wanted nothing as much as to stretch out full length by that blue pool and slake his thirst. He and his men joined the other soldiers and the caravan drivers in restraining the animals. After surviving a desert storm and the Yueh-chih, they should not fall victim to their own eagerness in sight of rest and water.

The air filled with noises as those beasts too weak to go any further in safety were unharnessed or relieved of packs and led down to the pool, where others would have to restrain them from drinking till they swelled from it. But the choking dust that rose in the desert was absent: Quintus watched the tally of soldiers, merchants, beasts, and carts.

He had seen that horse collapse in the last rush from the blowing sand. Who else had been lost? Some, wounded, clung to carts, were loaded face-down across pack-animals or tied to their mounts.

"That one won't last the night," Arsaces pointed as a driver clung to one of his charges that was too weary to shy away from the blood scent. "At least he'll have enough water while he dies."

No one will die.

"What did you say?" Quintus started.

No one has died here for ... the voice trailed off.

"Sir are you all right? Your eyes just rolled up...."

"I'm fine." Quintus waved off the concern with what he hoped could pass for irritation. The Romans owed what freedom they had to Ssu-ma Chao's belief they brought him fortune: no use frightening everyone else. Or, he thought, with a countryman's shrewdness, letting the rest of them know.

You are wise, though you are a warrior, not a priest. I have always thought so.

The tattered caravan staggered past him into safe haven. He started to ask if any others had been lost, but his words were lost in the clatter of warped cartwheels on rock. The men of Hind. The Persians. Even the wagons of that fat man who had been so afraid outside Merv, and the man himself, now not nearly so fat and moving the faster for it.

Then, leading their horses, heads down and shuddering, passed the merchants Quintus had seen the night he had emerged from long, long dreams. Seen and distrusted, with their high-bred faces, their hooded eyes, and their tightly held mouths. There had been—how many of them?

More, it was certain, than now passed under his gaze. And there had been women in their numbers, gone now, too. Had part of their train perished under the blades of the Yueh-chih? Or had they decided to take their own escape?

Last of all came the soldiers, limping down the path. Sunlight blazed out overhead, hiding them, for an instant. As the track wound around the spire of dark rock that blocked a full view of the lake below, they paused. Horses and camels balked, but the crack of whips and oaths in a tongue Quintus had never heard (and liked as little as he liked those who spoke it) forced them back up the slope.

"Our beasts ... cannot make it downhill," said one of the merchants, his face still muffled in the wrappings that had protected him from the storm. "We camp here ... outside."

He held up a hand, interrupting the instinctive protests of the soldiers at their charges' foolishness. "We have supplies."

If there had been any one group likelier to husband their own goods while all around them went in need, Quintus had yet to see it. Let them thirst in sight of a blue lake. Let their beasts eat stored fodder when fresh green stalks waited to be cropped—though it was a shame to treat honest animals that way.

"And we will pay—in gold—for water to be brought."

"Wouldn't you just know it?" Lucilius hissed. "You might as well let them go their own way. They will, anyhow."

"Merchants!" This time, Rufus did spit as he watched the strangers coil about the lip of the valley.

The eyes of tribune, centurion, and Ch'in officer met in perfect understanding: Tonight and all the nights thereafter, these travelers would be placed under watch.

Now that all the others had descended, they too could head for the water and rest their bodies craved. First, Quintus thought, water. Then, perhaps there would be fish or even waterfowl, feeding near the lake. In that moment, he might even have traded his lost farm for rest—for him and all of the Romans who had lived.

Shadows began to deepen in the valley. The sky turned indigo, as it did in the hills, and a long sunbeam slanted down the track, pointing out the way.

He nodded to Rufus, who raised a battered vinestaff. "Let's show them how Romans do it, lads," he rasped.

They formed ranks and marched: Rome's pace, Rome's race, down the path toward safety. If the rock slabs underfoot were not the good roads of the Republic, at least they did not shift underfoot.

Another ray from the sun, heading like they themselves to its well-earned rest, struck the rock spire as they passed. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but as it died, Quintus thought he saw etched into the rock a serpent, seven heads crowning its sinuous body. Wherever the light touched it, it was slow to fade.

He waited for whatever voice had guided him into safety or madness—whichever—to offer an explanation. None came. But reassurance seemed to radiate from his bronze talisman.

I know, he told it. Fare forward.

They passed under the shelter of the rock spire and into a circular valley so pure it made his heart ache.

Fire crackled, casting long shadows on the grimy tents that Rufus had insisted the men pitch even here. Quintus shivered. The heat, the twilight wind, cooked food, fresh clothing, the cold water drying in his hair, even the small, familiar camp sounds of men repairing gear and dicing, luxuries he had forgotten.

The last sunlight winked at the horizon like the eye of a sleepy creature, urging all in the valley to rest. Not all could, or would. Some would stand guard, while others would sit up tonight with wounded or dying men and beasts. When Quintus was certain that the last stake that could be pounded, bandage that could be wrapped, or Legionary to be stationed were all in place, he would be free to rest. The other tribune had retired, and even Rufus, yawning ferociously, had threatened him with feeling like grim Orcus himself on the morrow.

So it stood to reason that he could not sleep. Too far gone, he told himself. Let him be less tired, and sleep would come. But the exhaustion that had numbed his mind and body had vanished. He would have been glad, had it been suitable, to trade tales with Arsaces—he would have bet the pay he would never collect that the Persian auxiliary knew more about this place than he would say. But fed, secured, with a proper camp set up and officers near his own rank within earshot, he could not properly do so. Besides, the horseman had gone off after referring to the valley as a "pardesh." "Garden," Quintus knew it meant, but it did seem like some paradise of the Golden Age.

He shifted restlessly, hating the need to remain within a tent on a night as fine as this one. As a boy, he had loved to slip out by night and wander in the lands around his house. Sometimes, sleep would come upon him as he rested by the river. Drawing his cloak about him, he rose. Just as he left the tent, he swung back for his sword.

His boots crunched on the trampled long grass and rocks of their campsite, drawing some anonymous mutters of protest that anyone was stupid enough to be up and around after all.... The complaints trailed off into snores, which subsided, too.'

Nodding to the perimeter guards, he slipped beyond the camp into the darkness. The water drew him, as it always had. Swiftly, his feet found a trail that led around the lake. He heard ripples that told him he neared some stream or falls. At a boulder that looked as if some enormous hand had sheared it in half, he paused. He did not know the land. He would be wise to wait for his eyes to accustom themselves to seeing only by moon and starlight.

The rushing of the water grew louder. Not just a stream, then, but a small waterfall, or several, he thought. He ought to return to the camp for a torch, he thought. The rocks could be slippery. Asia, he knew, teemed with serpents of a deadliness unknown in Rome, except those who walked on two legs. But he pressed forward, treading carefully. A benediction of mist touched his face and eyelids.

The moon provided enough light for him to see his goal—wide slabs and plinths of rocks, overhung by a huge flat stone from which water cascaded to the right and left. It formed a natural chamber, the "entry" facing him. He peered within, tempted.

Lights sprang up inside the enclosure and even in the still water at the very edge of the pools, reflecting double as if they floated there cased in glass, protected from the spray. Fine scents—cinnamon and fragrant oil— wreathed about him.

Fare forward, traveler, came an ironic voice. He reached down to take out the figure of the dancer. As he had seen once before, lights glimmered upon its tiny, upheld arms, as if, once again, the creature known as Krishna danced to mourn and to rejoice. From overhead came the piping of a flute and the sound of a kind of horn he had never heard before.

Prudence argued that he should return to camp right now. He knew perfectly well what Rufus would object to—and as for his grandfather, he was certain that the old man would say that to go a step further would be to betray Rome and the lares and penates of their old, tarnished line.

I have not survived this far by being prudent, Quintus retorted in his own mind. Besides, perhaps that blow on the head he had taken long ago had spilled his wits; and everything that happened since was a madman's fantasies.

If so, these were the fairest dreams yet.

He pressed forward across the wet rock and into the rocky chamber. It stretched out far beyond what he had expected, turning into a sort of tunnel that led from the falls to a natural enclosure, almost like a theatre. Poplars swayed near high cliffs, surrounding a circular pool that was almost a miniature of the lake as he had first gazed upon it. In the center of the pool, jutting out from the rocky corridor itself, was what might have formed the stage.

Torches flickered at its comers, and tiny lights floated in metal bowls upon the water, dancing in the ripples. The rock was as richly carpeted as any Persian prince or magus could have desired, rug tossed over rug in a wealth of patterns and textures. Sweet smoke trailed up from braziers pierced in intricate patterns: Quintus scented cinnamon and the deeper odors of sandalwood and myrrh. Huge cushions of amber, russet, and deep reds lay upon the carpets. And reclining against a mound of the richest cushions, a figure robed and veiled in saffron...

"Hold!"

The command came in Latin. That, as much as the word itself, halted the tribune. His hand flashed to his swordhilt. If he set his back against the rock, at least no enemies could come upon him from behind.

"Who are you to stop me?" Quintus demanded, his back safely against the stone. "And how do you know my tongue?"

Lights seemed to pool about him, and he saw an old man, his skin burned dark from the sun, his thin hair whitened, a red mark gleaming like a dark jewel above the meeting of his brows. At his feet lay a huge shell, a lotus, a discus, an axe, and a tumbled scroll—but no sword. Arrogant old fool, Quintus thought. But even old fools dared arrogance if they had warriors to back them.

"I know all tongues. And I know a beggar when I see one. No beggars here. Go away!" In the worst days of waiting in noble patrons' anterooms, Quintus had never imagined that type of contempt. The old man looked down his long nose. The light caught him in profile, distorting it in a shadow cast on the rock wall. For an instant, Quintus thought he saw the image of a beast like those massive terrors Hannibal had brought across the mountains into Latium and nearly marched on Rome; in the old man's command, he heard the arrogant trumpeting of an elephant.

"I am not a beggar, but a Roman." Let the saffron-veiled figure turn its head, let it look upon him, so that he might know whether it was his dream made real ... or if all of this was an illusion. A Roman, yes, who owes his life to strangers and must now even depend on them for a sword.

"Ragtag and sword for hire," scoffed the old man. "A thief, perhaps. I may have been born today, but I know a thief when I see one."

"A Roman," Quintus repeated, low-voiced. "Now, will you let me pass?" Bad enough to be challenged and jeered at; the presence of the woman in her silken veils made it intolerable. He might be her servant: best pay him courtesy.

"Be on your way, whoever, whatever you are. I will be accosted by no more appeals."

"Then I shall not," Quintus snapped.

In the instant, his sword showed bright. What am I doing? he demanded of himself and checked that swing. The blow went wild, and the sword rang instead against the rock. Sparks shot from the stone. Much to his humiliation, the blade shattered.

Bad enough: Worse yet was the sudden vision he had of the old man's neck gushing blood and the head, its thinning hair smeared and its eyes wide and glazing, rolling across the rock to splash into the water. For a moment, the light flickered and he even imagined an elephant's head taking the place of the old man's on the plump, rounded shoulders.

Jupiter Optimus Maximus, thought Quintus. What have I done? The lights danced in the water like torches in the hands of a dancing bronze figurine.