Empire of the Eagle

12

"Surely that's the Alai Valley." The sage who called himself Ganesha pointed at the land that lay far below the rocky point on which they stood, bracing themselves against the wind. He spoke as if he remembered.

"You remember too." Draupadi breathed. "You must remember how you came to the hills, searching for weapons. Searching for Pasupata."

That name struck the tribune's ear like the blast of a horn in battle. The sword—now that was a weapon that Quintus understood. And he had his sword, or he had the blade that, long ago, had been borne by this Arjuna whom Draupadi claimed as one of her five husbands. Arjuna, that very Mars of Hind, had visited the hills as a Greek might go to Delphi, in search of weapons to aid his family in a war that threatened to engulf the world.

Hard to believe that that Draupadi of legend was the same woman who stood here, amber robes concealed beneath heavy sheepskins, sandalwood fragrances obscured by smoke and the womanscent that made him wake at night and station one of the older Legionaries near where she slept. But it was hard to believe that that woman was mad.

If Draupadi spoke truth and not the illusions that were her great skill, Quintus too might face such a war. He had Arjuna's sword. But Arjuna had been a master of the bow; and bows Quintus knew chiefly as a weapon of the Parthians that had already cost him more than he had to give. But, again, if Draupadi and Ganesha spoke truth, the Parthians were no longer his problem, save as the Black Naacals might use them—or any other people—as pawns.

And meanwhile, the rocks themselves could prove enemy enough.

Quintus took a deep breath of the mountain air. Still cold, still sharp; but the knives that had seemed to stab at his chest during the highest part of the climb had long been sheathed. They had made the crossing—up from the stone and water sanctuary to which they had fled in the belly of a sandstorm and into the high hills Arsaces called bam i dunya, the Roof of the World. If, as he said, this route took them merely over the foothills, Quintus had no desire to see the true mountains.

He could never quite remember at what point the narrow path leveled out. At one moment, it seemed as if he had always been climbing, edging precariously past bundles and packs that had been torn away from the drying bones of beasts and men who had fallen behind their caravans and lacked the strength or will to go on.

For worse hills there were—mountains whose very names referred to their peril. There were the Killers of Hindus, named for the countless lives of those they had frozen or cast down or starved when men who looked enough like Draupadi to be her close kin tried to cross them from Hind. Those fortunate enough to survive that crossing ventured then across the desert into what even Romans had heard of as Serica, the lands of silk. And then there were the Heavenly Mountains, which people roundabout called the Onion Mountains. Harmless things, onions—a part of any Legionary's or any farmer's diet as long as fresh supplies came—except that the onions in this part of the world were commonly held to poison travelers. How else to explain the giddiness, the shortness of breath, the suddenness with which some men collapsed and died even below the peaks? Hannibal and his beasts, Quintus thought, would never have dared these heights.

None of Ssu-ma Chao's men had died in the hills and very few had faltered; but then they had made this climb before, when they had come west to Parthia—An'Hsi as they called it—from their own lands. The Romans, well, Marius's mules had trudged along. There had been a small revolt when they had sought to lighten their packs by loading the heaviest items on the beasts. For the worst climbs, Quintus had weighed the breach in discipline with the possibility that more lightly burdened men had a better chance of life—and had chosen for life.

But he still mourned the loss of three Romans. One soldier simply failed to wake up in the pallid mountain dawn. Another fell to his knees in a high pass, then cooled before he could even clasp a friend's hand in farewell. His heart burst, Ganesha said. And one had been dragged off a cliff when the pack animal he was leading panicked, thrashed until he was caught in its harness, and fell before he could cut himself free. A brave man, he had refused to scream as he fell. Even the Ch'in had mourned him.

Of course, Lucilius had thrived. Quintus hated himself for the unworthiness of that thought. The patrician's lips had cracked from the cold. His hands had turned white, then healed and hardened without the blackening and sloughing off of rotten flesh that could kill as surely as a rockfall in these heights. The ladies of the Palatine Hill would never recognize in this wiry, weary man, wrapped in every warm garment he owned or could dice for, the aristocrat in his white toga with the broad purple stripe. Just as well. They were unlikely to see one another, ever again. In a way that was just, as the lady Draupadi had taught him to look upon the just—hadn't Lucilius wanted to journey to the land of silk? He was making the trip—if not in the manner or the company he expected.

And then there was Draupadi herself. Wrapped in sheepskins and her amber robes, a fold of them pulled up to warm her breath, she made the climb with even less difficulty than the Ch'in or Arsaces, who had survived it before. From time to time, she rested when the rest of the caravan did, but always, her hand was out to support Ganesha (who waved it off with some disdain) or to encourage a man who might falter. Seeing her, a woman and obviously no Amazon, they took renewed heart as they climbed.

Mistress of illusions she might be but she had done nothing to ease the journey. Lucilius had taxed her with that once, and she had glanced away.

"The hardships of the mountains are like pain to the body," she murmured, feeding the small fire with a niggardly cake of dung. "They are given you as warnings so you do not exceed your strength."

Or what a madwoman might think that strength to be.

Her eyes met those of Quintus, who had struggled to conceal his fear for her and his admiration of her hardihood. Do you recall how, when the king your brother lost all at dice, we lived in the wilderness?

She had told him that story one night. So vivid was her retelling as the wind whined about them, nosing at the fire they had all but buried in its own pit, that now he didn't know whether he remembered those years of living wild as if they had really happened or from her account of them.

Once again, memory oppressed him. The air was very thin on the Roof of the World. What air there was tasted like wine in the throat. During the long, cold nights, memories, dreams, and illusions danced in his mind like the tiny bronze figure he still carried against his heart. Since they left the sanctuary, it had not alerted him to any dangers beyond the perils of the journey. And he had seen no signs of wagons or beasts or anything else that might reveal a trace of the Black Naacals.

Ssu-ma Chao came up beside the younger tribune.

"Do you see the Tower?" he asked, pointing down and across the valley.

Incredibly, there were birds flying beneath them. Quintus tore his eyes from that marvel to follow where the Ch'in officer pointed. On the valley floor, what looked like a rock outcropping jutted up, as if it had been an ashlar left behind while the gods were building the Roof of the World. And toward it, tiny figures trudged, file after file, the humans specks where they marched alongside their beasts.

"The Stone Tower," Ssu-ma Chao explained. "When the Son of Heaven Han Wu-ti—" scarred fingers sketched a gesture that resembled a prostration, "—first sent armies past the Jade Gate and out into the Land of Fire, and they took it on their way to An'Hsi, the men of Han built that."

Quintus studied the Stone Tower. A legion of engineers, much less armed men so far from his home, could riot have built that tower had they labored on it from the two generations between Wu-ti's time and this of the current Emperor, Han Yuan-ti. It was half in ruins, assailed repeatedly as it had been by Ch'in and Parthian, Hsiung-nu, Saka, and Yueh-chih. He had seen tombs like that in his own country. His bronze statue—Krishna? however he had come there—had been found in such a place.

"It looks older than that," was all he said.

Ssu-ma Chao nodded. "We built it on a ruin that we found. We think it must always have been used as a trade site, the last before Su-le."

Su-le ... once again, they were out of Quintus's reckoning. Ganesha had spoken of the trade town of Kacha. He wondered if it were the same as the Kasia, or Kashgar, mentioned so long ago outside the walls of Carrhae by the most adventurous of the Greeks Quintus had huddled with after the defeat.

His eyes grew used to the distances. Viewed from here, the Stone Tower did not seem that far away. But he knew it might take days to reach it and weeks more to reach this Su-le, or Kashgar, or whatever they called it, on the edge of the true desert.

At the very limits of his vision, the horizon shimmered. Down, down, always down into the waste and then down beyond it into the amphitheatre that was the Land of Fire, a desolation of salt flats and gravel and twisting dunes. Some said that a river wound through its depths to a pool at its heart. Hard to believe, but Quintus thought of the sanctuary that he and his men had received, with wonder lying at heart.

It might be possible once again. And then again, the heart might be rotten, if the Black Naacals reached it first. He reached out, trying to sense any danger. Almost, he laughed. He was a Roman, not a magus, and certainly not this hero-god that Draupadi called him. This Arjuna. Had he been Arjuna, he would not have shared such a woman with his brothers, he thought suddenly.

Then he shook his head. Folly to even think so of her.

He had other problems. Such as what might befall him and his men at the Stone Tower. Or at Su-le.

As if on command, Ssu-ma Chao spoke. "This one regrets..." The formality that had been lost in battle, sandstorm, and mountain pass had returned.

"You regret what?" So it was over, now that they neared the limes, the borders of the Ch'in Empire, and Ssu-ma Chao approached the network of forts, officers, and reports that any nation must have. Compared with that, compared with whatever oaths the Ch'in officer had spoken, what was the deepening partnership between Roman and Ch'in?

Still, might as well make him say it straight out.

"When we reach Su-le ... there is a garrison there. And reports go out, to the four Commands of the West and the Commandery at Wu-liang by the Jade Gate."

Ssu-ma Chao would not wish it known to these personages that he owed his life and the lives of his command to the human tribute they had taken in. An'Hsi from the Parthians. Naturally not. Quintus wondered briefly what was contained in the ink scratching upon narrow wood strips that he had seen, once or twice, as the officer prepared them.

"It is different, so many thousands of li from Ch'ang-an," said the Ch'in aristocrat. "But as I hope to return to the home of my ancestors..."

They would confiscate the Romans' weapons once again. And the relationship of equals that had begun to grow between the men of Ch'in and the Legions would fade away.

The gods only knew what would become of them. It might be that they would come to envy the men who had been enslaved at Merv. They were in the hands of Fortune. And they had not yet reached Su-le. Much could happen. Once again, he tried to see ahead, tried to sense what might happen.

Nothing. No sense of impending danger. No sense, even of power. Gods send it that the Black Naacals perished on the heights, he thought, flinching briefly from the deaths he had seen in the mountains.

And knew it for a prayer that would not be granted.