Empire of the Eagle

15

A final wisp of mist faded, taking with it the incongruous reek of brine. Desert wind tugged Quintus forward. For a moment, he inhaled the scents of this dry place as if they were fine incense: dry stone, salt, and the sweat of fearful men and laboring beasts. Then, as the wind urged him forward, his talisman jolted. No stench of plague or rot, but death was there. Fare forward.

Quintus strode into a field of corpses.

Bells tinkled on the harnesses of dead horses and camels as the wind tugged at saddle cloths and the robes of the dead merchants and guards. For the caravan was dead, the little world made up of Parthians, Syrians, Jews, Persians, men of the Ch'in, and guides from the perimeters of the desert blotted out. The journey had leached color and texture from those robes: Display and finery were for towns. But even beyond the drabness of the old robes that men might wear in the waste, these bodies seemed drained of natural color.

Ssu-ma Chao gestured. "Within bow-shot of the Stone Tower," he muttered.

It would have to be a very long bow-shot, nevertheless.

"That would take quite an archer," Lucilius shot out with a barbed tongue. Predictable that he would be the one to point that out.

A soldier laughed at the retort. Other laughter rose in the ranks. Hysteria of a sort, born of relief, could be as deadly a thing as panic, Quintus knew.

"Quiet!" A crack of Rufus's vinestaff reinforced the order, bringing the laughter to a quick stop.

"That will not work, sir," said Ganesha. He had picked his way over to the man who had laughed.

"You show no respect to the dead, younger brother," he spoke softly. "Or to yourself or your comrades."

"Burial detail, sir?" Rufus asked as crisply as if organizing camp for a night.

However, Quintus truly was not commander here— had the centurion forgotten? It was Ssu-ma Chao who ruled, little as the man looked as if he were in any shape to give orders. The line of march had broken. Men were leading beasts to the rear, lest they panic and bolt with what remained of their supplies.

Reason? Quintus knew his men better than that— hard-headed peasant stock. They did have discipline: they had loyalty; they had customs—customs that had been violated at Carrhae, when the Romans had fled, leaving the dead and wounded untended behind them. But they were Romans, not a rabble, and if they had cheated death once again, well and good. If not, they each owed a death, and it were better to die as Romans.

Grandsire, do you see? Be proud of me. The familiar appeal echoed in Quintus's heart. Always before it had brought him only doubt. This time, the doubt was gone. He might walk a grim path, but he walked it as a Roman and a man of whom his grandsire could be proud.

Rufus sketched a tactful salute to Lucilius, then gestured for the men nearest him to unpack their shovels and start digging. "Come on, lads. Respect the dead. We can at least cover their faces, see they've got coins for the Boatman. You'd want someone to do that for you...."

We may yet need it.

Every impulse in Quintus's body urged him to fly. He looked over at Ssu-ma Chao, who stood motionless. Then he compelled himself to step toward the bodies. He stooped to tug the headcloth of the nearest man decently over his face. He had been a merchant of some standing, judging by the excellent quality of his robes, even if they were battered by rough travel. The leather of his weapons harness was finely tooled, while his ornaments and the hilt of his sword ... no sword? It had been taken.

The merchant did not look as if he had died in pain— but he looked old, far older than any man had a right to be if he chose to take these caravan routes. Old and drained, as if the sun had leached him dry for months, instead of just the time Quintus knew it had taken for the entire caravan to die. At his touch, the corpse seemed to shiver in on itself. Quintus would not have been surprised if it had turned to dust. He shuddered and turned over the next body.

"It does not matter," Arsaces cut in. "Soon enough, the sand will come and bury these men, as it has buried countless caravans and towns." He tried to sound offhand, but one hand fumbled for the blue amulet he wore beneath his robes.

What was this death that left a caravan stark in the sand, stole its weapons, but did not touch its wares—and what was that?

"This one's unarmed!" Quintus shouted. "Check to see if the others..."

"All the weapons are gone. Even broken arrows," Rufus was first to obey.

Down the line, Arsaces rummaged in the beasts' packs. One toppled, spilling wrappings of cloth. The Persian recoiled. Running from pack animal to pack animal, he tore open the saddlebags reserved for the costliest goods, spilling spices and glass onto the sands as he went. A waste: They dared not burden themselves with such luxuries.

"By the flame, nothing's been touched!" the Persian exclaimed. His voice shook. Not to loot when there was a chance...

"This one isn't armed either!" Lucilius shouted, which reassured Quintus not at all. The tribune turned from one prone figure to another, who had died, seemingly, when his horse fell and now lay half-hidden beneath it. A caravan was a small army. Merchants needed men able and willing to fight. Edepol, had this been a caravan of old men?

"They might carry gems on their persons," Arsaces's battered boots cracked through the salt crust upon the grit. He seemed as reluctant as Quintus felt to investigate. "An entire caravan struck dead, no signs of plague or bandits or even blood and—Mithras aid us!"

As Arsaces spoke, the tribune knelt by the dead merchant's body. Be a man. Battlefield loot—no, this was no true battlefield, and these were not the enemy. He compelled himself to touch the body but not to rob. Under his fingers the corpse seemed to collapse in on itself, like a wineskin that has been drained, but has retained its fullness until a careless hand brushes it.

Oaths and prayers rose as others of the Romans and the Ch'in made the same gruesome discovery almost all at once. This caravan of the dead seemed to be a caravan in which all had died at once—seemingly of old age. Even the bodies dressed as young men dress—apprentices, guards, slim forms that might have been favored sons making their first desert crossings—looked as ancient as some mummy cast up out of a dune.

And when they were touched, they crumpled.

From behind the Romans rose commands screamed out in Ch'in. Ssu-ma Chao's voice cracked up toward hysteria. Arsaces laid a hand on Quintus's arm.

"He wants us to leave now. It is a day's march to the Stone Tower and..."

Quintus squinted toward the sun. Already it had sunk low in the direction that he dearly wished to go, as if a fire barred the Romans from their home. So, was this the prelude to Carrhae all over again—the brutal forced march to a field of slaughter, followed by other, equally harsh demands?

The Ch'in commander's voice rose to a scream. The best thing for that one, Quintus thought, would be silence. For him; for the Ch'in soldiers; and for the Romans especially. Ssu-ma Chao had eased the terms of the Romans' captivity. He had ordered their arms returned. They owed him—more than somewhat. But they still had the Eagle to regain if they could. What he gave with one hand, he could take back with the other—aye, and their lives with their privileges, should he meet up with others of his race.

It was one thing to die on a battlefield. To die here, among corpses drained by—Quintus shuddered, remembering childhood nightmares haunted by tales of the Lamia.

"By all the gods, there's riches here," Lucilius muttered. "Play for time, would you? We can't leave yet. Not when—"

In a moment, he would start rummaging in each dead man's robes. It was one thing to search the dead for what might sustain the living, another to strip them for gain, here in this wasteland where extra treasure might mean extra burden to all. Quintus would have bet any coin he happened to have about him that Lucilius had already robbed some of the nearest bodies.

Draupadi drew near and spoke to him since the earth had begun to shake. "You need to see what Ganesha has found."

"I also need to obey that man." Quintus pointed at Ssu-ma Chao. "It is only by his grace we are not slaves." Let him crack, and they might be slaves again, Draupadi with them.

"Arjuna—" she began to protest.

"Will you stop that!" All Quintus's fear, all his anger, and even the sense of self-respect he had gained this day went into that demand. "I am Quintus, only myself; yet you load me with the baggage of five princes, one of them a hero. Don't you understand? I am not he!"

Her eyes grew enormous, hurt, and he hated himself for that hurt—and the pain he caused himself. Let her know the truth. Let her turn from him now, before it grew any harder to lose her. But the sight of her pain grieved him, and he added in a gentler tone, "If I am he, I truly do not know it. I am sorry."

Now the Ch'in soldiers were closing in, encircling their former allies. Some of them were drawing their weapons. If even one Roman drew sword or fingered spear ... perhaps the Ch'in could wipe out their small force. They would have to. Very likely, Ch'in and Roman would be the death of each other.

And with all that, he had to contend with a weeping princess! "Do you truly not know me?" Her hand touched his chest precisely where the bronze statuette of Krishna lay. It warmed under those delicate-seeming, capable fingers. "I thought you did."

"Perhaps," Quintus said. "But perhaps, too, we must take care that this is not illusion."

She nodded sorrowfully. "I wish for only the truth to lie between us. To give you—"

In that moment, he longed to gather her into his arms; and let the Ch'in skewer him.

"But you do not believe..."

"Do you believe it?" he demanded.

"Believe it? I know it. I remember."

"I remember that I have men to get to safety before he—" a gesture at Ssu-ma Chao and his warriors alerted her to their danger, "—attacks."

"You are all... you call it 'Roman' in this life, are you not?" All duty, she meant. All discipline. Damn.

But he nodded as he must. "Aye, Domina."

"That too is like the man who won me." She laughed sadly. "Even at Virata's court, he was intent on the role he played, blind to all else. Perhaps I too have been blind, thinking only of what I see, what I know, not you as you are in this life...."

"I have it!" Ganesha shouted. For an instant his voice rang with the authority of a battle trumpet, summoning Quintus to the head of the column. Light gathered, shimmered over the old man, who moved with a sureness unlike the careful steps of any man his apparent age over the dead land.

Quintus headed toward the old sage. He stumbled, cursed what he tripped over, then recovered. A length of horn and wood conjoined jutted from the sand, and he snatched it up, using it to break his fall, then as a staff to speed him to Ganesha's side.

The old man held a body in his arms, though already it had withered to flaps of drying skin over bone even as he watched it with somber eyes. This one wore the dress of a guard. Quintus forced himself to look at the face. Already, the lips had peeled back from the jaws, revealing not the expressionless faces of the dead man's comrades, but something different. Younger than the others, this face still possessed a measure of individuality. And it wore a look of hate and terror, as if this guard had seen his death coming and fought frenziedly with what pitiful means he had. Last of all, Quintus saw what else Ganesha bore—a bow, broken as if the guard would yield it in no other way to enemy hands.

Ganesha laid the dead guard down in line with the others. The man's hands thudded to the ground, wasted fingers still clamped shut. "Look you," ordered the sage. He had pried one of the bony fists open to display a dark scrap of fabric.

"What is that?" Quintus asked, leaning forward to examine it even as Ganesha shouted rapid-fire Ch'in orders to Ssu-ma Chao.

"Do not touch it! This poor one did, and thus he died. . . ." Carefully, Ganesha bent forward and breathed on the scrap.

"From a Black Naacal's robe?"

"I feel such a one up ahead," said Ganesha. "Waiting for us in the direction that we must go."

We could circle about, Quintus thought of saying. Arsaces knew the stars; he could guide them.

"But it is in that direction," Ssu-ma Chao stated, "that we must go." Some measure of sanity had returned to him, and he looked just as dangerous as he truly was.

"And so we do, Excellency," said the sage, bowing in Ch'in fashion. "But we do not take that road unwarned. I say to you: Beware. Trust no one, nothing, even though it wears the semblance of your eldest brother, until we have proved the truth of it."

"Why?" demanded Ssu-ma Chao.

"They seek weapons, perhaps that very Pasupata that Arjuna sought in the last age. They must not have found it for, if they had, we should be as dead as their victims here—or praying to all our gods or to those of our enemies for release. But they have found something almost as deadly to us—and deadlier still to these poor fools."

"And what is that?"

"Life," Ganesha said simply. "Life and health. Possibly spirit. These men are all drained, not just of life, but of what makes them men and not beast. I would pray peace to their souls and better aspects to their lives the next time the wheel turns, but there will be no next time for them. These men's souls have been consumed."