Empire of the Eagle

29

Soldiers and slaves alike huddled in a hollow that had surely been part of a palace or temple complex. Their feet scrabbled not just on grit but on stone and jagged tile, cracked from years of small, carefully nourished fires. Two fragments of what had been a high wall remained. Part of a once-splendid frieze adorned one of them—the serpent that was the Naacals' god sign—and marching along the other, robed forms of priests approaching an altar.

Now that the slaves had realized that the newcomers were not Black Naacals, to demand immediate victims, the women among them had ventured forth too. A trick of the light made the priests' faces seem very real—the tall fair sons and daughters of the Motherland itself, the shorter Uighurs with their thin eyes, concealed in merry folds, and the Southerners, so like Ganesha and Draupadi as to be closest kin. Below them were those unfortunate folk of the successor races who had been swept up in the Black Naacals' nets—those of Ch'in, those of Hind, even one or two of the Hsiung-nu or their distant cousins, wrapped in felts or pelts. The Ch'in soldiers stared askance at them, but clearly, they felt themselves to be in their own place—if you could call this ruin anyone's home.

With the air of one daring greatly, Ganesha leaned forward and placed a lock of hair upon the fire. It burned the more brightly, though without scent, and its smoke rose into the night sky.

"Will they not know we are here?" Quintus asked.

"They? How shall they not know anything?" asked a man with coloring like Ganesha. "How not? Some of us they actually begot—or our grandsires. Others ... I thought I would die, my eyes staring straight up at the sun when our last camel died of thirst. But they took me up, me and all of those who otherwise would have perished. At first we thought we had found kindly rescuers and employers. And then...

"How long have you been here?" asked Ganesha. "Valmiki, you have years on you. Do you recall? Look up at the stars and tell me truthfully."

The eldest of the men dwelling in this ruin levered himself up painfully to his feet. Ganesha offered him his arm. "Master, I must not dare."

"Valmiki." The older-seeming man submitted. Adjusting his pace to Valmiki's, Ganesha led him outside to study the patterns of the stars.

"Do you remember the waste?" Draupadi asked a woman with the pure features of the Motherland.

"I remember," she whispered. She was weeping. Her eyes reflected the firelight, but then went opaque with dread. "Oh, do not ask me to say it. The earth trembled. The sun itself seemed to wink out, and we could not see beyond the hill. Kinte's son was born in that hour, and she died of it, without even a sight of the sky. And when we looked out again, the water had drained away, and the ground—which had been seabed—was cracked and already drying."

"Kinte's son?" Draupadi asked. "Is he here?"

"I beg you, do not make me remember!" the woman cried. "They took him!"

Lucilius pushed himself away from the fire. Even now, he was fastidious and hated the reek of burning dung—though he had been glad enough to warm himself. Quintus heard him greet Ganesha outside. For Valmiki he had no word.

"Is he not hungry? ... There will be food...." another of the women said.

Draupadi shrugged, too intent on calming the weeping woman.

"You have been generous past praise already," she said. "Sharing with us. Giving us water."

"Watch him?" suggested one of the Romans. Rufus growled silence. Treacherous or not, he was still one of their tribunes. But that was not all that troubled Rufus. A paterfamilias could decide which of his children might live and which were unfit and must be abandoned. Could. How many did? Clearly, Rufus thought, too many. And the Black Naacals usurped those rights.... Pretty soon, Quintus thought, Rufus was going to want to fight them.

"Like those whoremasters in Carthage," he muttered at the soldiers. One of them made a small, shocked sound: There was nothing worse, nothing more scandalous than a mystery cult turned sour; and the Tophet of Carthage combined the hatred of an enemy with the grisly fascination of such a place, its priests turned savage.

The woman who had begged not to be questioned clung to Draupadi's shoulder. They murmured together, words clearly meant to be kept away from the men.

"She is of the North," Draupadi said. "And she has been here very long, like Valmiki, since the world changed. She is almost my agemate," the priestess added bleakly.

"And the others..." Quintus began. He glanced around. All the peoples of Asia seemed to be represented here, some drawn from a dying caravan, one or two lost in the waste, even a few bought in a bazaar—a cast-off concubine, perhaps, or a wounded horseman or just a traveler too old or weak to withstand a day's journey in the deepest desert. Collected and left here.

In the darkness, eyes glowed. There were always different listeners, as men and women came and went on whatever errands they must do. Did the Black Naacals keep watch or revelry tonight? The Romans feared to ask. How many of these castaways survived? And how many served out of fear, not loyal awe? Quintus would have traded a year of his life to ask those questions, even though he realized that a year of his life here might be no valuable commodity.

"We would have fled. But where would we have gone?" the woman cried. "We had the holy writings. Some of us had the golden vestments—not all. Those few who survived and knew where everything was had purposefully clouded minds, lest they torture us and, in crying out, give away all our secrets." She raised her head with bleak pride.

Quintus tightened his hands. Secrets of the Naacals— scrolls, tablets, the gods only knew what else—it was a trove that the Black Naacals would kill to possess. Even if it were useless, they would kill to prevent anyone else from possessing it.

Secrets. He could well imagine that these folk would have them. But was this all they could imagine to do with powers more awesome than any he could conceive of—to serve and to fear and to hate? They had consented to pass under the yoke, after all.

In the next moment, his mouth twisted. How much better had he prevailed? And found himself in just the same plight, forced to serve those he hated. But compared with the Black Naacals' mastery, that service seemed like the most loving care.

"I know your thoughts, young lord." The woman's voice was bitter. Draupadi crooned something comforting, but the woman shook her head. "You look at us. You are a warrior and you look at us, and you think, 'Why did they submit? Why did they not all flee?'

"Some of us tried. Hulagu actually made it out of here. He said he was a child of the deep desert: A star had led him to us, and another would whisk him away. He even returned with men of his clan. They had hoped for a fight against the dark. But even they, who made drinking cups out of enemies' skulls, became as we are, the creatures of the Black Naacals."

"After they took Kinte's son—and her poor body for their altars—Rehu and Cho tried. They had all the water we could spare—" The woman held her fingers to her lips. At some point they had been badly broken and poorly set.

"But they came ... they came by night... and they took them and staked them out beyond the arch. And when the sky and sun steadied once more, we saw them again. Or rather their bones. Then the times shifted once again and, when we could look again, nothing was left."

"And you believe what they tell you about the outer world," Rufus mused.

"They broke our world," the woman cried. "I myself saw people fall from the oars to which they tried to cling when the last ships pulled out of harbor. How should we not believe what they say—or dare not to serve them?"

"Lady," Rufus said, "you might have died."

"True, we might. But then, there were the children, and always, always, there was some paltry hope. Hope such as you have," the woman retorted, "or you would have lain down to die too."

Her eyes lit on Draupadi with a terrible surmise. "You, though, you are young. Fair. Perhaps you..."

"Do you see them so often?" Quintus broke in. He had seen very few of the Dark Ones, but their traces left him little desire to see more. Could so few terrify a tribe for generations so that they would live here in submission, content to wait each time till their masters returned?

Hard to believe that there existed greater masters of terror than the Legions of Rome. That double line of rotting bodies on their crosses—such a warning would serve as long as any slaves remained alive to see it. Yet, that was physical fear, not this blight of the spirit that oppressed these castaways, with their numberless years.

A glance went around the circle of castaways, judging, summing up, questioning.

Flickers of time and place had bound them together here for all those years. So well they knew each other that it seemed that they could speak without words—or was that a trick they had learned from the priests they served? And if so, could he truly trust them?

How many of these folk, he wondered, had the power that Draupadi and Ganesha did, untrained within them? He might have wagered on the woman Draupadi questioned, she whose hands were so cruelly twisted—from torture, he was certain. She had served, but not submitted.

But why had she not used any power she had? There were, as she said, the children. And there was something else that might have prevented them. They had hidden their little jewels of learning, their devices of power. They claimed they could not remember what they were. And such secrets ... it would not be hard to forget... a man dead here, a woman in her dotage there: and where are the secrets that they themselves harbored? Just meaningless words and clues. After a few generations of such losses, perhaps, that was all they had left.

And even if they preserved every one of the White Naacals' teachings and had the skill to use them, had they still the will?

For that matter, had Draupadi and Ganesha the fighting will after all these years of hiding and studying the Dark Ones?

They had best be done with waiting now, Quintus thought. What had they been waiting for?

The answer, when it came, made him want to shout out a denial. Surely, they had not waited just for him? Why had they not acted when he was Arjuna, who had been a prince, practically a demigod?

Arjuna might be a prince, but he was no Roman. A Pandava, perhaps. A master of his arts. But Rome—Rome spanned the known world and reached out for more, as had Alexander in his pride. And as had the Motherland.

Best to test them. "So you sit here," Quintus asked. "Like rabbits to be fattened for the table?"

The man called Manetho, who had first approached the Naacals, glared at Quintus. "We have some small protection," he said. "Doubtless you would think our resistance paltry. Let us show you our defenses, our walls, our traps...."

Manetho had sense as well as pride. He would not, Quintus suspected, show the Romans all of them.

"If they want us, they must come and claim us," said the lady. "We hide, and we endure. When they are away, we even contrive to live, a little. So it makes it harder when they return, because we dared in that little space of time to hope. As we did this time. And then," she sighed, "they returned and their coming was worse than before."

"But you are here," blurted one of the younger men. "You have withstood the Black Naacals' anger, and you are masters of arms. You can lead us!"

I was a farmer! Quintus thought, who wanted no more than to settle down with my acres and a mule and as many children with amber skin as Juno Lucina might have granted Draupadi and me—even though the idea of all that elegance and wisdom in a robust farmer's wife was enough, even now, to make him smile.

"Let us show you what we have."

"Lead us."

"Let them show you," said Draupadi. "It will ease their hearts, if nothing else. And who knows...?"

With him out of her way, perhaps she could learn even more.

Quintus rose, hand-signaled several of the Legionaries to accompany him, and gestured to Rufus. "Take command until I return."

Rufus looked up. "Trouble again?"

Quintus shrugged. Lucilius probably had slipped away long enough to fill his lungs with clean air. Since they were, strictly speaking, equals, Quintus had forborne to set a watch on him: It was better, besides, if he felt himself unguarded to work such treacheries as he had. "If the tribune returns soon, let him think he commands, but..."

Rufus nodded. Quintus reached for the standard.

"Lord," said Manetho. "That is a thing of power. Here, the walls of the old shrine shield it. In the stillness of the night, though, its presence will shine up like a pillar of fire."

Leave behind the standard that had cost so much in blood and lives and spirit? That was the weapon that he and the White Naacals had sought? Eyes watched him, and murmurs rose from the circle around the fire. The murmurs deepened to a buzzing in all of the tongues spoken here—but so rapid that he could not understand it.

If they were trapped here, he would have to eat these people's food, drink their water, and trust them, if they were to trust him in return. If he wished to learn the secrets of any power they had, he must share his own.

He placed the staff in Rufus's hands, certain it would accept him. He was right. "On the manes of your forefathers," he told him. "And on your oath."

Rufus saluted. "On my soul," swore the centurion.

Quintus followed Manetho outside, slipping past Valmiki and Ganesha, still gazing up at the stars and shaking their heads. They had passed beyond patterns, he realized, to specific stars—talk for adepts or priests, not warriors.

He and Manetho dodged around a rock outcropping that might once have been outer walls. Within that jumble of rocks lay a path that looked very precarious, a tower that looked dangerously ready to collapse. Yet it was along this way that Quintus was guided.

"Follow in my steps," said Manetho.

Quintus followed along a passageway cunningly concealed in the very wreckage of the walls and bearing evidence of some use.

"From here," whispered Manetho, "our youngest men and even girls watch for traces of caravans ... or..." he had not finished the sentence. "And when we see such, we wonder if we can dare contact them. To warn them away from what our life has become."

Quintus bent his head. "You did not warn us."

The man scuffled at a broken tile. It glittered for an instant, then dropped beneath a larger stone. "We saw what you bore and sensed the power in it. And you marched right up to the arch, as if you knew what to expect and how to fight it. The Light defend us—we saw the Naacals and we dared to hope. And now, if things go ill and we do not win and some of us do not die, you will have ages in which to hate us."

"These Naacals do not hate," Quintus said.

The path down which Manetho led him wound outward, to the very ramparts of what had once been an immense wall, suitable for processions or defense. What had this palace or temple looked like in its prime, when it rose proudly from the hill that crowned the island on which it had then stood? If he shut his eyes, he thought it might be imprinted there, someplace on his inner eyelid as well as in his deepest memories, memories so old that even the years he had spent living Arjuna's life seemed recent in comparison. The fortress shone in his mind: massive sloping walls between pylons, encircling a core of towers facing the harbor and the great arch that adorned it, reflecting up from the blue water.

The night wind blew. For an instant the smells of salt sweat and salt water mingled—ancient memories of a lost sea.

The night was black here, and the blackness had as much to do with the feel of this place as the hour. Once light, life, and power had radiated from the crest of the hill—gone now, replaced by the menace and a hunger responsible for that darkness of spirit.

He stiffened. So often, when he had felt that oppression, it had come companied by the hissing of great serpents. He stiffened, and Manetho guessed his thoughts.

"There are no serpents," his guide assured him. "The Black Naacals will not let us suffer from the creatures of the desert: They reserve their cattle for themselves."

He looked shrewdly at Quintus in the starlight. "This is not, the Light knows, a fate you would have chosen or a site for a battle. But we have taken these ruins and made them into our fortress, our redoubt..."

And now, yours too. The thought came very clearly, but Manetho did not put it into words. "You have the look," he said instead, "of a man who has lost his home. I am sorry."

"The walls are sound." Quintus made himself reply to at least some of the other man's words. And indeed, he thought a Legion's engineers could work prodigies with them. But his thoughts were on more than fortifications.

Had Quintus pitied himself for his loss? For having to bow and scrape before fools like Lucilius? This man and the people he led had suffered far, far worse. They had endured a slavery more long-lasting and harder than the rulers who had lined the roads of Rome with crucified rebels.

Tears came to his eyes. He squeezed his eyelids shut on them and thinned his lips. So much Manetho and his people had endured, and now Manetho apologized to him? Had he, in truth, pitied himself? He must stand a little straighter now.

He had, he knew, lamented the deaths of the Legions at Carrhae, and he had mourned each one of his men who had fallen every day since then. At least, however, he had been free to work out his own fate, seek to retrieve the fortunes of his house or the honor of his Legion. The gladiators who had rebelled had no such choices. They were trained as beasts to kill other beasts in the sand of the arena and if they knew a month's respite from the armor or net and trident it was a great deal. They had remembered, though, that they were men, had rebelled, and had died.

These castaways in time and place, shut away from the world in the heart of a desert so harsh that it made Trachonitis seem like Elysium, endured a slavery that jeopardized not just their bodies in the sands of an arena, but their souls on profaned altars.

Surely, the thought must have touched their minds many times during the hideous years. How easy it would be: agree, bow to the altars; grow stronger; escape. Canny slaves had agreed and had won comfort, perhaps even freedom, thus since the dawn of time. Yet Spartacus who might well have been one of the gladiators to survive to be freed had not done so.

"Why?" he asked.

"Why have we not surrendered? Sir, you have seen the handiwork of the Black Naacals, but we have lived with it. When they come to claim one of us for their ... their rites, their expressions were—how shall I say it? Hungry. As if they cannot be content to snatch us away alive, but they must also drain dry all our fear, all our horror. Not just at that moment, but all that night.

"The air ... the air grows thick, and we hear terrible thunder. We long for a storm's fury to fill this basin; we even long for another great wave such as that which swamped our Motherland, to fill this basin, wash up and sweep over this place until the rock is clean once more; but it never happens. The air turns thicker and more foul; breathing it, you feel as if your lungs are coated with blood. I have seen an old man die of that alone. I think I must first have sensed that fear, that foulness, while still in my mother's womb, on the night the Naacals snatched up my father."

Quintus glanced away. "I too have lost a father. In battle, too."

"Your father's death was clean," Manetho said. "Mine ... I tell myself that death puts you beyond pain, beyond a world where you cannot go to sleep and be certain of waking up able to call your spirit your own. But do not think of us as stainless servants of the Light, not all of us. We have had our spies and traitors squatting among us, and we dared not even kill them. Always, they are someone's son, someone's mother, someone we have lived with, wept with, perhaps even loved. And besides, if we killed the spies we knew of, who knows whether we would lose more? So we turn our backs and, after a time, they die, too." Manetho sighed. "It used to be our custom for closest kin to catch a dying man's last breath in their own mouths: These spies' breath is foul, and we no longer have that custom."

Quintus shook his head. It would no longer be enough to escape, he and his people. Somehow, he must think of a way to save these castaways.

"You, at least," said Manetho, "might have died. Fallen on that blade, or turned your face to the wall and starved. We ... we could not. Not as long as we had a chance."

Think, man, came Arjuna's memories into his mind. If you believe you are reborn according to how you have lived, think of what these people fear they would be reborn as?

It was like the Eagle, Quintus thought. Even when it had been only the standard of his Legion, it could not be abandoned as a prisoner among barbarians, not as long as there was a Roman able to risk his life to retrieve it. And, once he realized that the Eagle was far more than just a standard, just as he had learned that his talisman was not just a funeral bronze found in an old tomb, some things became more important than death with honor. Like keeping such things safe. Or, at the worst, making sure that they did not fall into the possession of enemies who would use them to destroy soul and body, both.

"If we had died," said Manetho, "the Dark Ones would only have found another fortress and other folk to be their slaves. We could not allow another people to endure our lives." He looked out over the deep desert. "When this life is over, I shall pray to be reborn as the fattest and richest of merchants in a city by the sea. I shall have earned it."

Quintus wanted to salute the other man as if he were a consul. The honor would have gone unseen: Manetho was staring far out into the desert. The moon had risen and, in its pale light, a whirl of sand danced about, then subsided. At the horizon, faint lights played: heat lightning. He listened for the thunder.

Thunder! What was it that Manetho had warned him about the thunder? Now it rumbled out sullenly, hollowly. The night wind blew, then ceased. And again, the thunder growled, closer this time. The air thickened. Quintus felt the urge to rip at his tunic, to hurl his heavy harness from him, to gasp for breath. He shuddered until he could get enough air to fill his chest.

A third time, the thunder grumbled out.

"Does it rain?" he asked, to forestall words that might have been fearful or hot with the anger born of fear.

"Blood, maybe," said Manetho. "Never pure rain. We must get back, fast. I have felt this weight at heart before. It means that the Black Naacals have come among us."