Empire of the Eagle

17

Down to Su-le and the garrison at Kashgar they headed, finally—as Arsaces said—into the true desert. It was bleaker than even the wastes Quintus had seen, and likely to be bleaker yet. "Enter here and never emerge." That was the desert's name, they said all along the caravan routes and made signs against ill omen. How Arsaces chuckled when he saw the Romans, from half the world away, making similar signs.

"Enter here and never emerge," was not ill omen at all, Quintus thought, but stark truth. From where he stood, the desert, ringed by mountains whose snowy peaks were but inadequate substitutes for clouds, stretched out like an amphitheatre in which all men entering it were gladiators. It was a wasteland of gravel and dunes, broken by the glint of salt flats, whitened occasionally by bones. Pray all the gods they did not add their own.

A few dead tamarisks jutted from the grit. There were almost no living plants and no living creatures that they could see by daylight. As for the unliving—Draupadi and Ganesha stood watch with the Legionaries; for still the most highly strung of the men screamed in the night, declaring that they felt eyes upon them.

From time to time, Quintus saw Ganesha look about him. Not as if he marveled at him or stood aghast, as any man might, but as if he remembered it in other days.

"A terrible stage," he said finally, "on which the fate of the world and all our lives, past and future, must play themselves out." Those were not words that Quintus, particularly, wanted to hear.

At least, there were no raiders. Wise in the tales of Modun and others of the Hsiung-nu and Yueh-chih from the Ch'in stories (told, Quintus was certain, more to affright than to inform), the Romans were somewhat relieved until their days' marches and their nights' marches made them realize that the waste held no other life at all. After that, they would have welcomed bandits to drive off as evidence that the curse upon this place was not the one that took the caravan by Stone Tower.

Draupadi, mistress of illusions though she was, had no such hopes. She grew pale despite that amber skin of hers. At her request, ultimately, they tied her to the camel with the gentlest gait. She has depopulated your world, you know, whispered the sinister voice that was Quintus's constant tempter. What if she dies? Clearly, she has already run mad—a kindness, perhaps, to kill her swiftly. The people you see now—cherish them, boy, for theirs will be the last faces you see in the world.

Unless, of course, he succumbed. He took a twisted satisfaction in the fact that the voice had given up trying to offer him rewards.

He tried not to listen and failed. Then he tried not to debate and did little better. He would run mad if he allowed himself to listen freely. Or, if he did not run mad, he could wither from inside, a blight of the spirit destroying him just as surely as the Black Naacals had sucked the life from those merchants whose husks he had watched shrivel under his touch. Then they would all die, yes, and their bones would bleach here in the waste, if the demon storms did not splinter them first. And the last man left alive would curse the fate that allowed him to watch his brothers escape.

His brothers.

Something in Quintus stopped at that thought. Used to the discipline of the Legions, though, he did not break stride—for they were walking now, to spare their exhausted beasts. They were all his brothers—the surviving men of Rome, the Ch'in soldiers, who, if not as far from their homes as his Legionaries, shared their exile and fear. Even Lucilius: for they sprang from the same earth.

But Ganesha, for all his wisdom, and Draupadi? How could he claim "brotherhood" with beings that far removed from him and his nation? As he glanced at Ganesha, did the ancient scholar momentarily shift form so that an elephant's head topped his bowed shoulders? A trick of the light, or the heat, or Quintus's own weary mind, no doubt: his eyes dazzled from the sunlight on the salt flats.

And Draupadi—for an instant, Quintus thought of the legend of Tithonus. Beloved of the dawn, Aurora had promised him whatever gift he might ask of her. He had chosen immortality, and it was granted. But granted without a gift of eternal youth. And after a time, Tithonus gummed his bread and his voice rose shrilly into the air; ultimately, when he was transformed from grandsire to grasshopper, his voice rose higher yet, like a string too tightly plucked. She is mistress of illusions. But if illusions fail, you might find yourself kissing a skull.

Birth and rebirth, she had told him. He could either believe that was true—or else the illusions had been spun for so long that they had become real.

So down to Su-le they plodded. Rome's pace. Rome's race. The beasts were rested—at least as rested as they were ever going to be—but they were Romans and they preferred to march.

"As stubborn as one of Marius's mules!" Lucilius called, riding just as Quintus might have expected. He might sound lighthearted, but his lips were as chapped, his body as worn as the rest, and the jeer was softened by the use of the old name. They were all Marius's mules, soldiers of a Rome they would not see again, following a captive Eagle.

One foot before the other, the nails of his sadly worn boots rasping in the grit. March. Sunlight flashed and glared off the grit and gypsum that formed the desert here: gravel and salt flat. Ganesha had seen all this when it was seabed. Seabed. Hard to believe this had all been an inland sea like the Middle Sea itself. So much water, Quintus thought. His mind reeled at the thought of such luxury; already, he found it hard enough to imagine the hidden pool by which he had found Draupadi so long ago, seated in the luxury of silken cushions, sandalwood, and amber lights. There was, she had told him, another such place, deep in the desert's heart. If such a desert could be said to have a heart. If they could survive, heart and sinew and soul, long enough to reach it ... and if their allies did not kill them first.

One foot before the other, steady, firmly planted. March, Roman. He heard his grandsire's voice now, strong as it had been in Quintus's boyhood, urging him forward. At first he had protested, but had been shamed into carrying on. Later, he had learned to persevere, even if the old man's demands outstripped his body's strength. Now, as he marched, he remembered the tough, fierce old face, and he blessed it.

Now the bronze talisman he bore near his heart neither heated nor jabbed his flesh. It was as if, somehow, it had achieved a truce with the genius loci of this place.

That thought staggered him for a moment. Keep marching. For a heartbeat longer, the marching stride, men coughing at the parched dust cast up by feet and hooves, and the cloudless sky stretching from overhead to an unreachable horizon made him reel. They were not a company, he thought of his men and his allies, but a coffle of slaves. He reeled again and flung out a hand.

"Careful, sir," came a mutter. There was a grin and a good-natured attempt to steady him on his feet. His hand touched the hide of a pack animal. It was dry, scaly: The sun had leached all the sweat from it as soon as it formed.

"Arjuna?" The sibyl's voice was soft and concerned. Sibylla. Now there was a good Latin concept for you. And he wanted badly to be Roman, to be only Quintus, his father's son and his grandsire's heir: not, please gods, this spiritual shuffling, as it seemed, among lives and deaths, all of them violent.

He swerved to tell Draupadi precisely that, but the remnants of her beauty, the dark eyes shadowed not by kohl but by exhaustion, the amber skin parched and dirty, the glorious long hair dried out and straggling, silenced him.

Meeting his eyes, Draupadi's eyes filled, first with anxiety and then with tears. "You always were more than one being," she told him. "When we met, you even swore to share me with your brothers. Yet, Arjuna, I have no complaints ... but you have always been many men in one. Just as you are now. You are the heart of all of these men ... and the luck of the men from the Realm of Gold."

He shook his head like a man who has staggered up after a beating.

"Too many," he said, thickly. "It is more than I can bear."

"So, you would be only the loyal heir who follows the head of his family, the loyal soldier who follows his commander? My dearest, I wish you had that luxury. Or that I could cease to be Draupadi and sink her, dreams, illusions, and all, in the cares of a soldier's wife."

Their eyes met. Do you understand what I am telling you? each seemed to ask the other.

"Domina, had the fates deemed otherwise..."

"It is not you, not ever," she murmured. "But..." Abruptly, she raised her hand again and smiled ironically, honey with a sting beneath. "You are weary with the cares of duty as well as with the desert. Could you not keep your honor if you consented to ride for a brief time?"

"I must set an example."

"Example—to the cross with it!"

Quintus blinked at her. He had not thought she would have learned that oath, and he was certain he did not approve of her saying it. Between surprise and disapproval, he laughed; he had thought never to laugh again.

He checked the line of march, drawing back to the rear of the column, where the riding animals—horses and camels—and the pack beasts plodded along. The camels' humps were flattening, a sign, he had learned, that even these beasts whose capacity for endurance was legendary in the desert, would soon need water. One of the Ch'in guard, having, as was clear, ideas about the lowliness of any Roman's position in the general order of things, scowled at him; but Arsaces had a grin and a thumbs-up—wherever he had learned that—for him and he gestured him toward the beast likeliest to bear him without either of them suffering more than they must.

Mounted (however reluctantly), he rode past the pack animals. He rode past the column of Romans, inexpressibly proud that they neither faltered nor complained— though the heat and dryness kept them from their usual songs. Rufus saluted him without reproach. Past Draupadi on her camel he rode, and past Lucilius who, as usual, hovered near the Ch'in officers as if seeking to make their power his.

Ssu-ma Chao nodded to Quintus as he pulled into line only slightly behind his captor. He turned the head of his horse—a fine beast from Ferghana, though Quintus could not, for the life of him, make out what was meant by the term "blood-sweating." The beast's stocky neck barely seemed to sweat, much less sweat blood.

"There we are." The Ch'in general rose in his saddle and pointed.

The Roman squinted. Though they were riding away from the light into the east, the glare and the shadows of late afternoon made sight painful. Clouds of dust rose, making matters that much the worse, too.

"Do you see it?" Ssu-ma Chao asked. "The towers of Su-le."

"May I tell my lads?" Quintus asked. They would be glad of a rest. And a meal or so and even a wash, though he knew they could not expect proper Roman baths. He would tell Draupadi, too, and watch her eyes light with pleasure and relief.

A cloud of dust rose between the towers and themselves. Quintus tensed, victim as he had been of battles and double dealings. His hand dropped to the hilt of his sword.

Quietly, imperceptibly, he signaled Rufus; and Rufus took up a posture of defense.

The dust subsided, and he could see Su-le. The town looked preposterously new—a garrison town that paid and treated its soldiers well as a necessity for its survival.

"A strong garrison," Ssu-ma Chao commented, hand on sword. "We know there is mischief afoot in the land. Otherwise, why send the garrison out at all?"

The Ch'in officer stared at Quintus, his eyes narrowing so that he appeared to be regarding the Roman through dark slits. "It is possible, I suppose, that a message might have been sent before the caravan died.... There was light enough for the signaling device to work. But from what we saw, I think the men died too suddenly." The Ch'in's face twisted in revulsion. "Still, I hope they succeeded. But, Roman, you stare at Su-le as if it were one huge trap. What makes you so suspicious?"

"I have been abandoned before," Quintus replied. "And betrayed by garrisons." As you well know. The words were blurted out before he could guard his tongue. In it, all men were brothers and equals—or else mortal enemies; you could readily tell the difference.

Ssu-ma Chao laughed. After a too-nervous moment, so did one or two members of his staff. "This is why I want their cooperation," the officer stated with the air of one repeating a point on which he had been proud to be right.

I like this man, Quintus thought. But the gods only know why.

Behind them, Lucilius edged closer. Hearing laughter, he dared to approach. For Quintus, his ironic presence blunted the mood of only a few moments ago.

"Is that traders," he asked, pointing, "or a welcoming party?"

The sword Quintus again wore by grace of Ssu-ma Chao hung reassuringly against his leg. He signaled the marching column of Romans to alert. Not to attack, please all the gods, no. He did not want to fight the men who had been his allies in the journey overmountain. But if the men from the garrison at Su-le had a mind to attack, they would get more than they wished.

And there was always the chance that he could retrieve the Eagle from wherever they had sent it.

But it took all the discipline he had to sit complacently in the saddle as the shadows lengthened and the dust cloud rising from the garrison's advance party rose in the vast sky. It spewed out before them, then solidified into individual horsemen. And each one of them was not only heavily armed, but bore weapons bared. Bowmen formed a second rank.

Seeing that, Ssu-ma Chao dismounted and walked forward, a posture of submission he maintained as the garrison rode slowly into voice range.

He sank into a deep bow. "This one wishes to ask..."

"You must explain instead why you travel with this excrement of turtles as if they were brothers in arms. And, worse yet, why you have allowed them their weapons!"

Now, how had they discovered that?

The garrison party advanced. It was much larger than either the column of Romans or Ssu-ma Chao's exhausted little force. Quintus let his hand fall away from his sword.

You caused this, you know. It was you who thought of the Roman line as a slave gang. But you could alter that....

Be still! he ordered sharply, the better to concentrate on the outer fear he must now confront.

A hand touched his arm. Draupadi had ridden up beside him. It was not a time to talk with her, not a time to distract himself with thoughts of her. But she could not be denied.

"Already," said Draupadi, "they are different from what they have been. I remember how the earth shivered and swallowed up the water...."

"Is that what you offer me?" Quintus asked. "Memories I do not want?"

Draupadi shook her head. Despite the gesture of negation, her face brightened, youth and life returning. "You know what I offer."

The breeze between them seemed to warm his heart— and the rest of his body. It was not the heat of the sun, reflected from the desert floor, but longing, a longing that possessed him every time he looked at her.

"Not your Eagle or your home," Draupadi surprised him with her words. "Not even the power that would restore you to your birthright. But Quintus, just as you are—you are worthy to go on. That is what we offer. The journey. The life. For as long as we live."

A new ache gripped him in that moment—the urge to lift her down from her mount and hold her for as long as he might. He had always hoped that when a marriage was arranged for him (as in the course of time it would have been, had the Fates been kinder), he would feel a kindness for his bride and she would ... she would not fear him too badly at first. But this woman, with her powers and her endurance and her memory—this woman claimed to have been his wife in a vanished world. He could not remember. She deserved better than for him simply to trade on that and take her—when the time came, as it surely must—without an oath on his part to match the ritual that, clearly, lived on in her memories.

And if he died in the next hour, at least the words would have been said. She even wore the saffron veil of a Roman bride.

"Where thou art Caia," he began, drawing on the words of the confarreatio, the most solemn and binding rite of marriage, "there am I Caius." His voice thickened, and not from the dust.

He had the ring of his service to Rome. He gave it to her.