Empire of the Eagle

24

The sun never rose in the desert sky—only that faint, diffused glow that continued to pool into glory when it rested on the Eagle showed the difference between night and day, if not between morning and noon. For that, they had only the heat as their guide. When the sun made even the strongest of their camels droop as if they inched along the fiery banks of Acheron, Quintus guessed that it was noon and called a halt. Not even the evident desire of some of the Ch'in to flee across the desert until, please their ancestors, they encountered another caravan kept the Romans from obeying orders and enforcing an obedience of their own on would-be stragglers.

Quintus's eyes ached as if hot gold had been poured into them. Still, when they made camp, he forced himself to make a circuit of the paltry space with the Eagle.

Think of green. Think of water. Think of home. But his memories of his Tiber valley were long faded now.

Halfway about the camp, he greeted Ssu-ma Chao. "Your men?" he asked.

"Two still must be tended like babies," the officer reported. "This one implores that they not be abandoned...."

Quintus felt rage at the suggestion leap from his eyes.

"We leave no one alive in this place," the Roman answered. "If it were possible I would bear even our dead along, lest the Black Naacals work mischief with their corpses."

Ssu-ma Chao nodded. His face was sallow, not the burnished gold it had been in Parthia, which now seemed like a world of safety and comfort away. "This one should not dare to seek to live, for he has fled a battlefield...." He looked as if he might drop to his knees or, worse yet, his belly.

"It is no shame to retreat," Quintus attempted to rally the other officer's courage. "Or even to be vanquished." That sounded hollow, and he knew it.

"You say that now," Ssu-ma Chao gestured at the standard. "When I saw you at..."

"It would have been enough to die. As you see, we live. I live, and I had taken such injuries that I might well have slipped away." He had had the choice, he remembered; and he had chosen to return to life and defeat rather than leave his men without a leader, even into exile.

"You live, and now you..." Abruptly, Ssu-ma Chao let out a gust of laughter that brought men's heads up all over the camp. "You prosper? How can you say that anything prospers in this waste?"

Bless Ssu-ma Chao for that laugh. The entire camp was the better for it. He could hear Rufus remarking to someone, "Laughs at misfortune, does he? I'm not saying that that is a Roman thing to do, but it takes a Roman will to look at the Fates and laugh."

Ssu-ma Chao nodded at the centurion. "He knows no fear."

"No," Quintus said. "None. He fears only for his honor; and he is perfect in that."

"Honor—this one's honor is fled. This one would redeem his wretched self." He struggled with the idea, then replaced it with another. "Without the direction finder, we have only your Eagle to guide us. Is that not so?"

Sunlight on bronze—if you called that guidance.

"We do not know that it will bring us out along the caravan routes again. We are in the hands of Fortune," Quintus answered with the truth as he saw it.

"But surely your god..."

"It is not a god."

"Can you deny, Roman, that it is a thing of power? Could it not discern other power?"

"You begin to interest me extremely," Quintus said. "Come to my camp, brother, and sit down."

The Ch'in officer's head went up at a word he might once have rejected, and he followed Quintus to the flaps of felt set in the shadow of a reclining camel that Quintus called his camp. They had come down a great way in the world from the meticulous castra of his training—but he was grateful for the rest and the shade, and even more grateful for the presence of Draupadi, who greeted him with water and a gentle touch to his shoulder.

She would have withdrawn, but Quintus forestalled her. This was no time for her to mimic a Ch'in lady's manners. She and Ganesha had been scholars alongside the Black Naacals before the world changed: They would best know how their enemies used their power.

Gradually, others joined them: Rufus, Lucilius (there was no keeping him away), Ganesha—the men Quintus most trusted and the man against whom he had most reason to guard himself.

"Speak for this humble one," Ssu-ma Chao appealed to Ganesha. That much the Roman could follow. Then his voice broke, and the spate of rapid-fire Ch'in that followed made even Ganesha blink.

"Slowly, slowly," he said, holding up a hand that even now retained some of its former plumpness. "I am a tired old man."

Ancient, he might be. Even now, Quintus hated to consider how old because, if he calculated Ganesha's years, he must also think of Draupadi's. She looked thin and strained; Ganesha was showing his age. His dark eyes in their pouches of flesh were as reddened and strained by their journey as though he belonged to one of the younger races with whom he companied. But they still gleamed with an alertness a scout might have envied and a relentless intelligence honed by the years, however many.

"I feared," Ganesha translated for Ssu-ma Chao. His own voice quavered. So, did even he fear? "And then I resigned power and sought only to flee from a place of the unquiet dead. But I still digress. So now, it seems to me that I must never return to Ch'ang-an and pollute its precincts with my cowardice. Indeed, I must blot it out. In my blood, if need be; in the blood of my kin, if my sins are discovered. But I would prefer to avenge myself in the blood of those who brought me to this pass. I shall go forward."

Ganesha broke off, one hand upraised in the storyteller's graceful demand for attention. But his hand trembled slightly. "He asks me to ask you whether your Eagle can guide us to our enemies."

Draupadi clasped her hands in her lap so tightly that the delicate bones showed white beneath the skin. She looked down at them, and Quintus spied what an effort it took for her not to look at Ganesha. The old man also looked down now, as if unwilling to influence any of the others.

"They're the ones who want to steal it—"

"How do you know—"

Rufus and Lucilius broke into the silence at the same moment. At Lucilius's glare, the centurion broke off, muttering to himself. "The day I agree with ... maybe the sun hasn't ridden or it's made me crazy.... Oh, to the crows with it."

"Ask them!" Lucilius snapped. "How do you know they haven't maneuvered us into just this decision?"

Ssu-ma Chao looked inquiringly at him. Then he retreated into impassivity.

"They want to know," Draupadi spoke slowly in Parthian, "whether you in truth suggest going up against the Black Naacals or whether these are words that Ganesha put into your mouth."

"He wants to know," said the Ch'in officer. "Who would have betrayed us all. Yes, those were my words, not the man who translates for me. Who is to say that other caravans may not fall prey—may not be engulfed by these evil men?" His eyes were frenzied with memory of the Stone Tower.

"Do you truly believe," Draupadi's voice was consciously sweet, "that I would lead you to your deaths, your tribune with you?" She unclasped her hands and held out the one that bore Quintus's ring.

They were desperate, but Rufus took a moment to grin and thump Quintus on the shoulder.

"I believe in my orders," the tribune said. He would have liked to savor that moment, but every moment was precious now. "I believe—or believed!—" he shot that at Lucilius, "—in my elders. And betters, as they insisted they were to me. But now I believe in the Eagle."

Rufus turned again to the young officer. "You are Roma for now, son. You decide what is right to do; I'll do it. Aye, and drive the men to fight past the gods of Hades. Say the word, sir."

Lucilius rose to his feet. His eyes were wild. He all but quivered with anger, not unmixed with a tinge of fear.

And why should he not fear? We are all afraid.

All the Romans feared death, feared the worse-than-death they had seen. And he feared losing what had become precious to him. But Lucilius—he feared making the decision to which he had been pushed and which he could no longer put off.

"Why?" Quintus asked Draupadi and Ganesha.

They fought against the Black Naacals, who had been of their own blood and faith. But why did they require allies, when, surely, they had powers of their own?

Draupadi reached over to touch the Eagle. She could, Quintus thought, and the sight reassured him even before her words.

"We are guests in this age, this Yuga of the world, Quintus," she told him. "It is no longer ours. It falls to you now, to the younger races and nations that sprang up after the Motherland sank beneath the waves. I believe— Ganesha and I believe—that we survive only to finish what we began: the overwhelming of this darkness, so your peoples may attain what fates are destined for them."

And why me? My return home is lost.... He remembered those saddest of Achilles's words. Lost in any case, came a thought—his or his enemy's. He did not know: In either case, it was true.

And so, there remained only one question: What the proper course was for a Roman to take. The Eagle gleamed overhead, the only bright thing in a desert of grays and ochres. Decide. Decide, fool, it seemed to say.

The ground trembled, and a salt smell rose from the desert. Rufus thrust out a large hand as he overbalanced, and Ganesha shook his head. "The island we passed that night, Draupadi.... Do you recollect it?"

"You do not think it was overwhelmed?" she asked as calmly as if discussing a journey made a day ago, a month ago, and not the great expanse of time that, surely, was the truth. "It was so small, but it possessed that peak with a tabernacle...." She-broke off and stared at Ssu-ma Chad.

"There is a story," the Ch'in officer said, "of a fountain of pure water, a shrine in the depths of the waste, found only by people in the most desperate need—and sometimes not even then. I heard the story from a dying man, the last survivor of a caravan. A patrol had turned him up. We took him up and tried to save him, but he died at noon, raving as we thought. Raving," the Ch'in officer added thoughtfully. "We are already off our reckoning."

"Fare forward," Quintus found himself muttering. Arjuna's thought had become his.

"Forward?" Lucilius snapped. "Which way is forward? Can you even tell?" Rufus glared. If Lucilius hadn't been patrician, he would have had a blow for the interruption. It was death to strike an officer. Considering the case they were in, that could hardly make a difference; but it did, for Rufus.

"You'd dare, would you?" Lucilius snarled at the centurion, whose control did not extend to his eyes.

"We must move in any case," Draupadi said. "Better for us to find them than for them to find us at a time of their choosing."

A scream rose from behind them, and they jumped from the shock. One of the soldiers who had collapsed and had lain head down on a camel for the journey yammered in terror, then screamed again, this time in mortal agony. His back arched, and his entire body convulsed until the ropes binding him to the pack- animal broke asunder. Before he fell face down, they could see that his face had swollen and turned dark as if he had been strangled.

"Snakes!" screamed a Roman, looking down as if a veritable legion of serpents had attacked. The hiss and scrape of grit in the desert intensified until even Rufus looked uneasy. If you were exhausted or half-mad—and if someone suggested it to you—perhaps you would mistake it for the sound of immense coils, dragging along the desert floor, waiting, preparing to—

Draupadi flung out a hand and chanted. The hissing subsided.

"I distrust things when they're that easy," Rufus observed.

"Your man was mad already. Being mad, he could be worked on to believe, and his belief killed him. I have removed the illusion for now, but I warn you: When you are weariest and weakest, they will strike again."

"So we have to move," Rufus said. "Sir?" He turned to Quintus for orders.

Lucky Rufus, who could unload the burden of leadership on officers who didn't want it either. Ganesha met Quintus's eyes. Either resign authority or be worthy of it and, perhaps, save all of their lives.

But Ganesha was more fit by far to lead!

It is not our world, not our time, he recalled Ganesha's words. After seeing the means the Black Naacals would use to achieve dominion, Quintus knew that Ganesha feared what he might do if he himself seized great power: Perhaps he would be a benevolent tyrant, but, ultimately, a tyrant nonetheless. It would be hard to go against a beloved tyrant, but Quintus would have to, being Roman. Or, if not he, other Romans.

"Draupadi!" Ganesha snapped, a guard alerting other warriors.

She chanted once more, as the bronze talisman Quintus bore heated. Another of the men who had collapsed during the flight after the earthquake screamed and began to writhe. This one gasped, his face purpling, and Quintus heard the crack and snap as his bones broke.

Draupadi ran to him, as he writhed and twisted, moaning weakly. She stretched out her hands, laid them on the air above the man's chest, and began to tug. Her voice rose strongly. The soldier slumped back, blood dripping from his mouth. It might be that his death was a mercy.

Draupadi's arms stiffened as if she fought to hold off fangs and the coils of an immense, unseen body that sought now to crush her.

"Do you see anything?" Ganesha demanded of Quintus.

He tightened his hand upon the Eagle. Was that a ghost of scales, of green and bronze that he saw? He had heard travelers' tales of serpents so vast that they could -swallow cattle—and Draupadi was so much smaller.

Quintus drew his sword and hacked at the shadow. The blade snapped. Draupadi reeled and fell, as if she had been tossed aside. Then it was the Roman's turn to gasp and fight off encircling coils of an astonishing strength, rising up his legs so he couldn't move the few steps necessary to grasp the Eagle, and rising, always rising. He heard Draupadi's voice rise, chanting again, rising almost to a shriek.

I must help her, Quintus thought, but he lacked the breath to tell her he was coming. If he could get to the Eagle, he would have a weapon better than any sword, but he had laid it aside.

His ribs felt as if lead weights were laid about them. He could see Draupadi's face, but it was growing smaller and fainter as if he saw it through a mist of blood.... He started to fall but was upheld by the very thing that was attacking him.

Draupadi stepped forward, a tiny knife in her hand. A stab at the serpent's "middle" and the pain in his chest eased. The creature seemed to fall as if poisoned, and Quintus had hard work not to collapse, too.

Dust swirled up from the desert floor, as if some immense creature lashed it up with its tail in its death throes.

Fire seemed to burn in Quintus's chest. The talisman's heat subsided; now the fire was his fight to draw in enough air so he could breathe without gasping.

They would send more serpents, Quintus knew. Sooner or later, everyone would see them, and Draupadi could not fight them all off.

He forced himself to move, then doubled over, almost retching from the pain as if he had run a race and must now collapse. Chairete, nikomen, he remembered after Marathon. Rejoice, we have conquered, said the runner. And collapsed and died. You can't die yet. You haven't conquered, he admonished himself. No Lethe for you.

Ganesha's eyes begged him. Choose. Choose now. He could see the old man fighting his own battle—to urge rather than to coerce. Perhaps that was a battle he knew. Perhaps he had seen the Black Naacals fight it and lose it too.

Perhaps that was even how it started, a desire to do good, to protect, to lead—and then the desire grew to overpower all opposition, even to the wrecking of the world.

Ganesha was an ally. Quintus must aid him, just as he had aided Draupadi.

They were out of their reckoning? Well, Ssu-ma Chao's fountain of pure water was as good a goal in this world of illusion as any.

"We ride!" he ordered. He didn't see who came up to lead—or carry—him to his horse because his eyes were fixed on Lucilius. Once again, the patrician had started toward the Eagle.

"No need to trouble yourself with that," Quintus rasped at Lucilius. "Get me over there," he ordered his bearer. He picked up the Eagle before the other man could try.

Quintus's horse screamed and plunged. Desert-bred as they were, even they had a horror of serpents. Did this one sense the illusion serpents? It must be so. A wind began to rise, stirring the sand and grit into swirls that looked like more coils—best not think like that, lest exhaustion and fear and memory of the serpent's coils cause them to manifest once more. Venomous or not, those coils were deadly.

Rufus had bent over, was sprinkling dust over the faces of the two men who had died. Draupadi mounted, chanting as she moved.

"Mount up and take her reins!" Quintus shouted at Rufus. She would need both hands for her work.

"Forward!" he shouted. He had not meant to gesture with the standard as if it were a sword—it had been Arjuna's blade, but that had snapped. However, the Eagle felt right in his hands, like a sweetly balanced weapon. Once again, light flared from the proudly held bird's head into a crown of glory, lighting sky and ground alike.

Once more he heard hissing, this time in front of them. If they turned to flee, he would wager all that the serpents' hiss would sound again.

Gods help us, he thought. The image of dancing Krishna seemed to stir against his chest.

Again, Quintus raised the Eagle. As the light struck the ground ahead of him and the wind blew, a figure gleaming like the Eagle seemed to gather itself up from the desert floor and leap to its feet. It moved forward, dancing as it went; light gleamed off its raised hands, as if it held torches.

Light from Eagle and dancer intensified until they filled Quintus's consciousness. Tears ran down his face, and he had to look aside. Tears were a waste; he would need that moisture as they rode deeper into the desert.

When the brightness subsided enough to allow him and the others to open their eyes, sand and sky were as they always had been. They stood in a basin in the greater depression. It was only a waste now, not the' abode of monsters. It was a marvel to stand thus and look about the cloudless sky, realizing that what looked like clouds were actually far-off mountains to the north and east: a marvel indeed to have north and east again.

Confidence touched Quintus, as it had every time the Eagle manifested its power. No doubt they might cut across a caravan route and reach a town before they consumed the last of their supplies.

They might well, indeed. But instead of counting on that, he turned his mount's head and guided his people deeper into the waste, following a dancing figure that flickered and gleamed ahead of him like sparks from a fire at harvest time.

The sparks brightened and spread out, solidifying into a track of light upon the eternal drabness of the desert. On and on it stretched, inviting them to travel along it.

Some of the men turned away. One screamed, then fell, lying with his face against the grit.

"We have a path," Quintus said. Try not to hurt at this most recent death, he told himself. He held aloft the Eagle as he would hold a torch up as he entered a cave. The signum's brightness gleamed as if it were molten metal, a beacon not just of power, of the might, of the Senate and the Roman people, but a sign or a promise that here at least, in the wild where madness stalked behind the noonday sun, the Eagle's wings spread out over all who cared to shelter beneath them.

It might not protect them: Romans and Ch'in alike, they were soldiers who must go where they were ordered and, perhaps, die there.

But this was a chance; and more than that, it was uniquely theirs, a memory of governance, land, and homes that existed, even if they never saw them again. Judging by the light in Ssu-ma Chao's eyes, Quintus thought that the Eagle—or as he called it, the Phoenix, meant much the same for him: authority, guidance, loyalty—his ancestors themselves, looking down on him and nodding approval.

Quintus led the Romans and the Ch'in out onto the blazing track.