Empire of the Eagle

26

There were ships on glinting blue water, small boats floating like swans or larger ones with oars stroking with the rhythm of the great wings of birds of passage, dipping and turning as the ships glided away from coastlines and spears of rock in which birds nested and from which they too sailed. The flags of the Motherland, brave with their disks of the sun, flew from masts. Below, on deck, sailors ran back and forth, steps as ordered as those of a dance but more urgent.

He stood watching as his ship came about between two rocky peaks of some dark stone that glinted in the sunlight and the light reflected from the changeable sea. But those were not just rocks jutting out from the expanse of the sea or markers indicating that the waters round-about might be treacherous for the uninitiated. Art, science, and craft had labored over them for many years, building piers at their bases and climbing steps up their hard surfaces to platforms that held beacons and gongs to guide ships home and warn off the unwelcome. And, at the rocks' highest crags, engineers had wrought long and skillfully: A triumphal arch joined two of the peaks, with scenes of the Motherland's history sculpted in high relief.

A shadow fell on his face, but his heart lifted and sang as his ship passed beneath the Arch of Memory. For beyond it lay the harbor, and on the hill above the harbor stood the temple where the Naacals studied and where they served the sun. This was home. His home and that of—

Who screamed?

Even before his eyes were open, Quintus's hand flew to his sword—broken now, he must be wary—and he leapt to his feet. Leapt too fast. Careful, man, or you'll fall overboard—no! Where was he? When was he? The sea of blues and green, with the gold of sunlight gilding a sail or the edge of a seabird's wing or striking fire from the crystal glinting in the living rock of the Arch of Memory—they were all gone, long gone. A sullen dawn glared down from the east like a soldier hoping to flee a battle he has no stomach for.

Again, Quintus heard a bubbling scream. He set out for the edge of the camp. One thing was certain. A man couldn't scream over and over like that if his throat were cut. The voice arched up into pure madness, then ended suddenly.

Ssu-ma Chao rose from his knees beside a limp body. "Dead," he said. "Did you catch that last word?"

"The shadow, the shadow," Draupadi repeated it.

Lucilius ran up, short sword in hand, present when trouble turned up as he always was. "Look you!" He gestured.

On the ground beyond the circle of light still cut by the Eagle, even in this harsh dawn, long shadows fell like bats shrilling to each other at the uttermost edge of a man's hearing, more felt than heard. Shadows like unto the flow and sweep of long, black cloaks, darkening still further as the sun rose.

Draupadi clapped her hands. The shadows remained. She raised her voice in a chant. The words faltered and came out hoarsely. The shadows flickered. She drew breath and sang the more strongly, clapped her hands once again, and they finally withdrew. She almost sagged with weariness, but caught herself.

Ganesha came up behind her. She spoke to him quickly in a language Quintus did not know, dismay in her voice.

"Yes," Ganesha answered her in Parthian. "They get stronger. And will continue to do so the closer we come to them."

"Do they think we are children or fools?" Ssu-ma Chao asked.

"Very likely," said the old magician. He laid his hands on Draupadi's shoulders. "They know we are with you. If it were I, I would seek to drain the two of us, leaving this, our army, without protection."

"Army?" Ssu-ma Chao's bark of laughter sounded almost like a sob. "At every dawn, we become fewer and fewer. Come and see."

It was one of the Ch'in soldiers who had collapsed during the time when the earth shook and time past and time present blurred, seeking to blot out mind and body alike. The man's face was set in what would have been a mask for the theatre signifying panic. For if ever that god had laid his grip upon a man to steal sanity and breath, it was now.

Lucilius muttered something along the lines of "loading up," and "the line of march." Ganesha smoothly interposed his bulk between him and the Ch'in officer, lest Lucilius hear.

"We could send men out to scout, see if those Black Cloaks are anywhere in sight. Or smell," Rufus offered, oddly indecisive.

"No!" Quintus and Lucilius shouted it together. They could not afford to lose more men, soul as well as the mind.

"He was only a common soldier," said the Ch'in officer. "But he served faithfully."

"He served you well even in the manner of his dying," Draupadi told the officer. "For whatever reason, he was—how shall we say it—aware? sensitive? vulnerable, " she brought out the word with the air of one struggling to express sophisticated concepts in a language more akin to a child's speech, "to the influence sent among us by the Black Naacals. Who knows what they might have done had he not screamed and waked us? Until the end, he was faithful; in the end, he gave up his life for his fellows. His ancestors can look down upon him and be proud."

Even the Ch'in officer's narrow eyes widened in respect. He heaved himself off his knees and saluted the dead armsman as men wrapped him in his cloak and covered him in a shallow, hastily dug grave.

"And now?" he asked. His eyes went to Quintus. Lucilius glared as he always did when Quintus was deferred to as leader.

But it was Ganesha who answered. "We go forward. Always forward."

He gestured at the Eagle, which glinted in the coppery rays of the risen sun. Light welled out from it. "We will be guided—but the path will not be easy."

Day melted into day, and the dunes through which they passed loomed higher and higher. For some time, as many as possible who could ride, did. Then, as their beasts tired, they walked, leading them.

Rufus muttered, "It's like looking up from the bottom of a well. What sort of pit are we dropping into?"

Of course, no one had any answer for that. Day by day, they were descending, perhaps into what would have been the deepest part of the seabed. Day by day, the shadows ranged alongside them. At first, they paused if you looked at them dead-on. And the higher the sun rose in the sky, the smaller they were, vanishing at noon.

Later on, though, later on, it took Draupadi's or Ganesha's knowledge to disperse them. Closer and closer they ranged, not fading even at noon. Even for these men, the strongest who had set out so many months ago, it was hard to rest at noon when no shadows should mark the trail, and see these shadows, as it seemed, in a midday camp of their own, just watching—or ranging out in the late afternoon when all shadows lengthened. Quintus had a private nightmare that, one day, they would curve around one of the larger dunes and find an army of faceless shadow-soldiers between them and their goal.

On the fifth day after the first madman died, a Roman recovered from the stupor into which he had fallen. He recognized his thankful comrades, vowed himself strong enough to march—and disappeared late in the afternoon. The man nearest him had heard his companion shout and run out into the waste, arms outspread in welcome. He had started after the straggler, but two of his fellows had toppled him and sat on him.

"We grow fewer," Ganesha observed again.

As the water grew scarce, they dreamed shallowly, and always of water. When it seemed as if they could descend no further without losing sight of the night sky, Lucilius woke screaming about a well of water. Thirst had made him slow on his feet, or he too might have fled. He would have to ride, even when others walked, until he recovered from the shock. If he recovered.

"No loss," Rufus muttered, despite Quintus's glare. Every man incapacitated and needing to be carried weakened them even more than a death. Impossible to abandon a brother-in-arms—even if to do so would not put them on the moral level of the ones they fought.

As their throats grew more parched, Quintus had no more dreams of the sea. Odd: He would have thought he would have dreamed more of water, rather than less. His sleep was shallow. Too often, he woke in a cold sweat that wasted water he could ill afford to replace. He dreamt of sliding down the face of immense dunes. He woke shaking. And then he thought of water.

So far they had come, so far: If this had been a futile chase, they must now begin to resign themselves to having lost their way. It was too late now to retrace their steps. Perhaps they had all been befooled, betrayed. Perhaps the real Black Naacals marched beside them, a fat man and a slender woman, lithe and careworn, wrapped in tattered veils.

And that thought was worse than any possible dreams that Quintus might have.

The fifth horse died at noon. It had simply collapsed and refused to rise. Lucilius dispatched it by cutting its throat, surprising tears drying on his cheeks. The copper stench of blood seemed even hotter than the sun.

One of the Legionaries began to unstrap what the horse bore.

"Leave it," Quintus ordered. The man obeyed.

Do you really think, lad, we are going to need what the poor brute carried? The man might have been Quintus's own age, maybe even a bit older: At this point, they were all "lad" to him. Lucky men, who had someone to shoulder the burden of regret for all the lost lives.

Even if it had been gold or jewels, he would have ordered the pack left. Only food, water, and weapons were of value enough to be borne along—and blankets against the chill of the night.

The blowing grit stung their faces until they bled. They wrapped in the felts designed for storms until, from a distance, they might well have seemed to be a straggling column of mummies, bandages peeling, staggering and lurching from their inquiet sleep. "Look at us," Rufus muttered. "Maybe we'll scare those shadows."

That raised a laugh from the men that would have brought tears of pride to Quintus's eyes if they weren't so dry—and if the men didn't waste breath by laughing.

Then, late one afternoon, he looked up. An immense slide was beginning along the slope of a dune not all that far ahead. His heart sank: He had dreamed of an attack, but usually it took the form of the Black Naacals' shades arrayed in a triplex acies against them.

Nevertheless, he told himself. Nevertheless, we fight.

He grasped the Eagle firmly. "Let me go first." He had heard sweeter tones from a crow. There were no crows here: too dry.

The shadow marched ahead of him. The Eagle showed no soldiers waiting for him, and the tiny bronze dancing Krishna he bore still rested quiescent against his heart.

Something marched alongside his shadow. He chuckled hoarsely, and it all but turned into a sob. The shadow he watched and feared so had been his own—his and the Eagle's. They had reached the depths and were climbing once more.

The grit that crunched underfoot gradually yielded to spurs of rock, then a rocky floor covered with drifts, and worn in patterns that even now showed the smoothing of water upon rock very long ago. They seemed to be marching through the foothills of some mountain range below the surface of the world.

"Move along," Rufus said for what had to be the fiftieth time that day to Ganesha. Once again, the adept had sunk to his knees, staring raptly at the outline of a fish's skeleton embedded in a rock. That is, Quintus thought it was a fish, though he had never seen one that looked that way. "Wouldn't you rather eat a real one?" he asked.

"I would rather be at peace," Ganesha replied. "I am very old, and I would be glad to rest. But the tale is not over yet; and as long as it goes on, I must be part of it—to undo what I did. And what my brothers and sisters, the Flame forgive them, still do."

Rufus shook his head. They looked at each other, senex and senex. Two old men, old from the desert as well as in years; too old for much more than tending land and handing on their wisdom. Quintus's throat ached. Ganesha should be basking in a temple courtyard someplace— Juno grant—talking to a child who looked like Draupadi or like himself. And Rufus—he should have little more on his mind than showing a child that might have been his grandson how best to tie up vines or, for the hundredth time, allowing him to see his sword, or even hold it, as a very special reward.

Long wrinkles angled down from the corner of Rufus's eyes, squinting shut as always in the desert glare. He looked older than Ganesha and, in the harness he stubbornly refused to lay aside, far more frightening.

Yet, Ganesha was the elder by far and possessed of powers far more fearsome—those of the White Naacals. Despite the heat, Quintus shuddered. The Naacals' power harnessed the virtue of the sun: Misused by the Black, such power had cracked the land through which they now struggled and a great sea had vanished into the depths.

Better not think of all that water. A drop of sweat ran down Quintus's back. Momentary relief: Now that was a delicious thought, like the time after harvest when he was a boy, his chores over, and free to slip off his tunic and plunge into fresh water. He could dive as deep as he could and emerge, spluttering and laughing on the other side of the arch.

Arch? What arch?

The ebb and flow, the lapping and splashing of water seemed very real in that moment. The arch? Any fool knew the Arch of Memory. And so did he. He had dreamed it long ago: the gateway that welcomed those who served the sun to the island that was one of their schools and fastnesses. Statues had ornamented that arch, statues of ancient heroes and wise men and women, depicted with beasts out of legends that Quintus did not know, all surrounding the great, many-headed serpent that meant wisdom and power—the illumination of the sun.

He did not even need to close his eyes to see that arch. A moment of vertigo came. Place and time flickered in and out of focus. Once again, he could hear seabirds and the splash of oars, the shout of pilot to the guardians of the shore, hailing them from the gateway. And he knew the price of that gate to the unwary. Those who were not expert in the passage were swept onto a rock shore.

Quintus fought not to think of the image of the arch that thrust itself so insistently into his consciousness. Draupadi would tell him that this was illusion, the sort that thrust a man from his wits and off the nearest cliff— or that left him prey to the Black Naacals. The Eagle's staff warmed in his hands, a warmth that ran up from his hand to his shoulder and down into his spine. For a madman, he felt surprisingly well.

Again came one of those flickers between then and now. One of the madmen tied to a camel whimpered and giggled, then fell silent. Now Quintus saw the arch as it was in this time and place. No longer a matter of pride for artisans and engineers in its construction or its ornament, it looked like a skull, most of the teeth rotted out and one temple battered in. The span of the arch was weakened from the many rocks levered out of it by tremors, perhaps, or eroded by countless desert storms.

Most of the gleaming stone was gone, and many of the carvings. The heroes' faces had been blotted out, hammered into nothingness like the tomb of a disgraced ruler. A few statues still raised weapons in defense against ancient enemies. And the great serpent still occupied the space below the keystone. But how changed it was. It was no longer a symbol of light, but of illumination wasted, power turned in on itself, fueled by a hunger that grew from age to age because there was not enough, not ever enough in all the world to feed it. It would devour the world in a rage that it had not even more to eat.

Draupadi caught her breath in a faint sob. "And to think how fair this all was once."

The usual trick of the light in the desert made the despoiled arch seem much closer to them than it really was. The approach actually took them many hours of hard climbing up an immense hill toward what had once been an island. That rock ahead—was it a cliff or a fortress? Or, all the gods help them, was it the temple that had once graced the height?

They would do well, Quintus thought, to rest and to let their beasts rest and to attempt the gate by full light.

He ached. And he knew that if he suffered, the men behind him had suffered worse and the beasts worse yet. And Draupadi—he ought not to think of her as gentler than he, weaker than he, but he did—until he saw her face, which hardships had refined, instilling dignity and power into already-great beauty.

A flicker of memory lit his consciousness: In the wilderness, when his brother had lost kingdom, crown, freedom, and wife by his gambling, Draupadi had only screamed once—when they had tried to take her. And then she had vowed to wash her hair in the blood of the man who had dared—and kept that vow, as he recalled.

No, it was folly to fear she was too frail for this.

Behind him a horse screamed, and rocks clattered down the slope. Oaths rose, followed by Rufus's rasping shout for quiet. The coppery tang of blood touched the air. One of the dazed men laughed, then sobbed, muffling his face in his hands. Hurry, fool, he told himself, or you'll have no one left at your back but corpses and madmen. The two magicians. Rufus, until that great heart of his burst. And probably Lucilius, yoked together as they seemed forever to be.

But it was only another pack animal fallen. It might be best to leave all of the beasts here and go on, though what the beasts would do if no one returned.... Gods, he was his troop, man and beast: Every loss hurt as if it had been carved out of his own flesh and bone, even after so many deaths. The Eagle's standard felt comforting in his hand. And it made a fine staff as they climbed up toward the crumbling arch.

Ssu-ma Chao caught his eye, and Quintus was all attention. He would never forget that he had lived and kept his weapons only by the Ch'in officer's goodwill. He gestured for Quintus to go on ahead. Rufus leaned against the rocks, waiting for the weakest men and beasts to pass. (He would straighten up when they came in sight, of course, lest they see him doing anything that looked like easing up.) The column was, in fact, as carefully guarded as he could make it. The gods only send that it survive to reach what lay beyond the arch. One rockfall, for example ... gods avert.

And then what? This journey was all "if's." If they survived. If this place in the center of a desert more fearsome than Tartarus proved to hold the spring of sweet water that travelers' tales had spoken of. If they met the Black Naacals and were not blasted into the kind of glossy black stone that littered the sides of a mountain that spat up rock and fire. And finally if they were able to retrace their path and be granted safe return out of this desolation.

Keep your head down, he reminded himself. Watch your footing. Watch the rocks up above for what might crawl out from beneath one of them, or come hurtling down. He dug the butt of the standard into the grit and gravel. It bit strongly, and he started up the slope.

And as he climbed, even as he struggled to keep his mind on the immediate problems, Quintus's thoughts wandered. They had been wrong, his father, his grand-sire, even the Vestals and the entire college of priests, all the way up to the Pontifex Maximus. It was not the Fates that guided a man's life and wove the thread of it. That was just a pretty story. It was the "if's" that determined within any age of the world whether a man would or would not go on living or whether he would achieve what had been set down—by whomever—for him.

So why try? The question struck with the force of lightning, blinding force followed by darkness. He blinked and looked up. No storms anywhere around. No thunder. No lightning. He shook his head to clear it. He had been warned to expect attacks.

No, he said.

One of the madmen whimpered. The camel bearing him twitched, then plodded onward. Limping. They would have to check all the camels' feet for cuts—a real pleasure to anticipate. When this was over, the kindest thing they could probably do for the wretched creatures— camels and madmen—would be to slit their throats. Then they could fall on their own swords.

No, he said again in his mind, more firmly than before. If I die, and I do mean if, let me do it in the open, fighting. Or marching east under the Eagle.

That sense of oppressive blackness pressing down on his mind. The sky was clear, but the smell of salt filled his nostrils. Salt, not sweat. Abruptly—not again! he moaned inwardly—sky and land flickered. A shadow loomed up before him. Entering it created an instant of blessed coolness. The gate shone in that moment, its statues intact and magnificent.

Did Chronos blink again? Are we adrift? A madman's sobbing confirmed his suspicions. After a while, even wonders grew tedious, and this one was a nuisance.

"Ought to knock him on the head," Rufus muttered. "No! You don't have to hit him that hard. Did you kill him? No thanks to you. if you didn't."

In and out of focus the arch wavered. He blinked hard, not wanting to be blinded when he emerged from its shadow. He rested his hand on his sword, painstakingly sharpened once more. Gods save them if they had to fight even as time and place wavered about them.

"Quintus..." Draupadi moved to his side. He flinched as a particularly strong tremor made the entire arch waver and even vanish for a dizzying instant.

"Please tell me," he began, despising himself for what was almost a plea in his voice, "that it gets worse this close to the gate."

She laid a hand on his shoulder. Some of the vertigo and fear drained from him. "I hoped you would not feel it so strongly."

Quintus moved his shoulder out from under her hand. He loved her touch, but to be reassured by it, while his men struggled with their fear? That was not right.

She nodded, knowing his mind. "Quintus, do not concern yourself to stay hidden. They know we have come. Otherwise, you would not feel under attack once more." She raised her hand like a sailor, sniffing the air. "They will surely have greater magics prepared. Let Ganesha and I face them first."

An old man and a woman—to lead Romans into battle? Impossible! he started to say.

"We are weapons in your hands," she cut into his objections. "Who knows better than we what they might do, and how to fight them? They destroyed our home! They destroyed our world! We have a right, Quintus!"

Draupadi's eyes grew huge and dark. A man could fall into them. And how many fools has she beguiled? A man could be bespelled, besotted.... She will pass beyond the gate with that old man of hers, and then be gone. And you will die here.

She has never tricked me and never will! he retorted to the treacherous voice that insinuated itself into his thoughts.

She and Ganesha served the Flame. They were Naacals. White against Black. They had as much right to oppose the Black Naacals as he had had to seek the Eagle.

"Even now, they seek to reach you," Draupadi said, looking into his face. "Even now, don't they?"

His thoughts were more traitorous than any trick of Lucilius. He loved her. He must trust her. He shook his head. Hard enough to fight. Worse, if he had to reassure her.

She held up her hand on which the ring he had given her shone. "This has power in it, the power of your pledge. I could not wear it if I were false."

Those eyes of hers ... he could see a tiny version of himself, watching her, watching a slender, tired woman as if she were about to launch an attack he could not withstand. Was he always so solemn? The idea forced a chuckle from him, then a real laugh. "A throw of the dice," he said. "Trust you or lose all."

Gods send it wasn't "trust you and lose all."

Draupadi nodded. "Let this sign of yours, this weapon, blast me if I lie." She reached out and laid a hand on the staff that upheld the Eagle.

Thunder rumbled overhead. For a moment, Quintus forgot to breathe. If she were struck down, he would not survive to mourn long, he vowed. But a wave of good feeling flowed up his arm.

"You see?" Draupadi whispered in triumph. "You see I am not false?"

A beam of sunlight seemed to shoot beneath the arch and strike the Eagle. How it glowed! He almost believed that it would wake, mantle, and call out.

"Thank you," he said. "As you have asked, you and Ganesha shall lead."

Mercifully, the madmen were silent, sinking back into unquiet sleep. The Naacals moved to the front of the column and led it out from beneath the Arch of Memory into what had, in years beyond memory, been their refuge.