Empire of the Eagle

31

Manetho turned to Quintus. "They have started," he said, tonelessly. They have taken the Naacals, and now they also have your weapon."

Now Quintus's reluctant guide would have only to shout. Surely, the Dark Ones had stationed guards in these honeycombed walls. Would the Romans face a second betrayal tonight?

The thought chilled Quintus for a moment, until he forced it out of mind. The Black Naacals might have the Eagle, but he somehow doubted that they could use its full powers. Still, since it was an Eagle of Rome, its loss was grievous.

More so was the loss of Draupadi, leaving an ever-growing ache in his heart. All his life, he had loved, only to have what he had loved snatched from him. Now, in losing her, he stood to lose even more than love: The whole world might pay for it.

Not if I can help it, he vowed.

Lightning illuminated Manetho's pale face, showing skin streaked with oily sweat, and eyes rolling from side to side like those of a horse frightened by a raging fire. With this evil ritual begun, Manetho reacted to slaves' fears: Run and hide, perhaps survive until next time— even if he also sensed that, if they did not fight now, there would be no next time.

What do you recommend? It would be cruelty to ask. But it was a question the Roman must have an answer for. Manetho knew this ruin; Quintus did not.

His own people were running out of choices. They might gather what water and supplies they could and retreat into the deep desert—if they could pass the barriers—and trust to Fate and skill to find more water before they went mad, and died. Or they might hide within this complex—assuming Lucilius did not betray them. Even if they hid successfully, there would come a day when their luck would run out.

The Black Naacals wanted him, Quintus, now—sacrifice or apprentice to their foul magic, who could say?

Neither was a choice for a Roman. What then were Roman choices? Quintus could rejoin his men, and they could fall on their swords. Or they could follow their own harsh code: Draw those swords, form a battle line, and attack as long as life was in them.

"Will you turn on us now?" Manetho demanded. Quintus's silence had made him, too, suspect betrayal.

"Put that thing away," Rufus grumbled, coming up to them as he gestured at the ancient blade the slave had drawn. "A man could die poisoned by its dirt before he bled out life from any cut you gave him."

Though terror had given Manetho keen ears, Quintus wagered that he had not heard the centurion pad up behind them. Accustomed to the darkness now, he saw that Rufus had slung his boots about his neck and carried his own blade.

The centurion gave the tribune a strange look. That look—Quintus had seen its like the night the man of the Legions had come to tell his family that his father had died. Hard news, it meant, to be borne as a man bears the dealings of fate.

"Sir," Rufus began, "I felt some better, and I went to scout out the Black Naacals'..." his mouth moved as if he wanted to spit, "...what they'd call a shrine. They're all there, along with those they took for their altar. I had thought if I could, I'd give them a decent death: no luck."

If Rufus had been able to reach Ganesha and Draupadi, would they have welcomed his "decent death"? Could they even die, after so long?

Manetho shifted from foot to foot, and Quintus guessed his wariness: The slave had only the sight and voice of the two Naacals—and terror thereafter. With their knowledge, their wealth of experience, and their study—which had once been the discipline of the Black Naacals before they turned to darkness—how easy it would be for them to adapt to a new form of power. For him, priests were like serpents: There were some whose venom killed after you took one step, and some whose venom killed after you took two steps—but you died just the same.

"You think they'd—" Ganesha's deep wisdom, Draupadi's supple grace, extinguished in a pool of drying blood, either in sacrifice or by Rufus's rough mercy.

"They wouldn't betray us. Not those two," Rufus said. "It's what I'd want for me. You would too, sir. And even if they're not Romans..."

"Never mind, soldier." In another minute, Rufus would have him wet-eyed—and this was no time for tears. "Anyhow, you did not succeed."

"No, sir," Rufus drew himself up. "It's Carrhae all over again. We have failed."

The boom of a great gong shuddered through the walls, its vibration shaking into them as they huddled against the worn masonry. Just so had they heard the gongs and bells and drums of The Surena's reinforcements and prepared to sell their lives in the bright sun so far away.

"Well," Quintus said, "we have known we were living on borrowed time. So now we pay it back, eh?"

He had well expected that grim laugh from Rufus.

"It's worse than you know, sir. They have set a guard more dangerous than any we might have expected. The lady Draupadi herself."

Quintus whirled to grab the centurion's shoulders, slamming him back against the rock. Chaos was come, if Draupadi could be turned against them. And he had been so sure that she would not.

"It's not like that!" Rufus hissed at him. "You know how worn out she has been. The way Lucilius turned, that seems to have been the last straw. When he brought her in, they talked to her, and she shook her head. That was when they grabbed her. I was going to go after her, but three of the boys held onto me.... I let 'em live.... They forced some drug into her...."

Quintus heard himself moan.

"... and now she seems to have turned inside ... not like a madwoman, but like a sibyl seeing visions. And what she sees, they can use. They can use her."

"How do you know?"

"We saw her sitting there. Just sitting. I was surprised that she wasn't better guarded. So, one of the lads thought he could sneak up and rescue her. One less to worry about, eh? And he knew it would please..."

"Never mind that," Quintus said, holding onto a ragged calm. After hearing that his son was dead, his grand-sire had thanked the messenger and called him "guest." Never mind that he was dying inside. "What happened?"

"They've got her staked out like a lamb for a lion! She pointed at him and chanted something. Sir, he wasn't expecting trouble. He trusted her! And when she chanted, he just marched up and saluted. 'Watch this,' says one of the Black Robes, and slits his throat in front of that runaway from the crows, that traitor...."

"Lucilius just stood there?"

"Right before the altar. They've let him keep his sword and gear—haven't issued him a black robe yet. But they don't let him near the Eagle, and they don't treat him with the kind of respect he likes."

Maybe Lucilius had never been much of a tribune, but for him to stand there while priests slit the throat of a Legionary—crucifixion was too good for him.

Having given his report, Rufus stood waiting, as he always had, for orders.

Old war dog, Quintus wanted to say. Tell me what to do. Escape into the desert? Hide, and attack from within the ruins over and over again? Choose to die? But not even the centurion's years of experience had prepared him for this day. And it was not Rufus's duty to order, but to obey. Still, by his own example, Quintus had the advice he sought. Do a Roman thing.

Quintus drew his sword. "I shall not sheathe it again, save in enemy flesh," he said between clenched teeth. Manetho shuddered.

"Steady, man!" Rufus clapped him on the shoulder. "The tribune says we're going in there to fight, so we're going in there to fight. You like living this way? You'd rather die on the altar or like that poor fool who got his throat slit? At least now you can die like a soldier."

There were women, children in the ruins. They would die, too; but they would die in any case, whether the Black Naacals took them or by the half-understood powers they hoped to unleash overwhelmed this oasis. Families had died, too, Quintus knew, in the rising of Spartacus. And Ganesha and Draupadi would die, too. Poor Draupadi, trapped at the end in the illusions she spun so well. Perhaps the drug would wear off, and her mind would be clear at the last to remember he loved her—if that were not the last cruelty of all.

Manetho straightened. "You're going to fight. Even if you have no hope. We have never had any hope. So we will fight at your sides. Perhaps your gods will look more kindly upon us than our own have done."

"Good man," Rufus said, his voice oddly gentle. "Tribune...?"

"Let's go," Quintus duly ordered.

He followed the centurion to a darkened room in which Legionaries crouched, armed and waiting. At the sight of their officer, the Romans lined up, ready to move.

Manetho gestured, and slaves seemed to pour from every crack, every comer of the ruined walls. Moonlight spun a frail light through a broken wall, then faded as clouds scudded across the disk. When the wind blew them past, the moon was darker, as if moving into eclipse. The slaves flinched from the bloody light. It would be good to see the sun again. Quintus did not expect to.

Manetho guided them deeper within the Temple complex, where the great walls rose about them like the broken teeth of a slain Titan, dead in battle. The slaves he led seemed young and thin to Quintus, too young for real battle.

"Pass the word," he told Rufus. "Each of the men is to take one of our friends in charge. Under his shield."

Don't let them die alone in the dark with no decent example to follow, he was going to say, but his throat tightened.

Empty-handed, a man who had served long ago as standard-bearer came to his side. A pity they did not have the Eagle. At the worst, they could have used it to blast this entire place. Now, the best they could hope for was to destroy it too.

There was no one here to see these last of Crassus's Legionaries victorious or once again disgraced—no one except the gods and, maybe, the manes of those who had cared for them. And near them stood their allies, the men of Ch'in, led by Ssu-ma Chao. He nodded at Quintus as the Roman approached. He too preferred to stand by his own forces.

They had Draupadi, poor, drugged girl, set up as a guard. He knew she would give the alarm, and he was equally certain he could not kill her.

As the gong rang out once more, the slaves crept closer. A cloud slid once again across the cracked face of the moon, then vanished, almost as if it had been eaten. Under the tainted moonlight, Manetho's men blended into the Roman ranks. The battle lines shifted to receive them; for a moment, Quintus's heart was gladdened to see how much stronger they looked.

Again and again, gong and drums sounded, until the vibrations could be felt through their sadly worn-out boots. The Dark Ones must know that they were coming. Lucilius would have warned them. If the gods were kind, perhaps Quintus could at least kill him.

The air thickened. For a moment, his consciousness seemed to lurch sideways. By now, Quintus was used to that shock of displaced time. In just such a space apart, he had marched through a tunnel of wind and blowing sand to the oasis where they had found water and, seated by a fountain, Draupadi herself.

The way out from the arch would be closed now— even if they had Draupadi and Ganesha to break through the Black Naacals' magics. If they succeeded now, even if they won, their victory would be like that of Pyrrhus: another such, and they were lost.

The entrance to the shrine gaped wide before them. Once, great doors perhaps two or three spear lengths high must have swung to awe worshippers. Those doors were long gone: broken through and carried away, to be harvested by slaves for their metal over many years.

Despite the terror that seemed to settle from the air above, the battle lines moved steadily. Rome's pace. Rome's race. The standard-bearer stood as firmly as if he still held the Eagle. They would see it once more before they died. Quintus drew a bleak comfort from that.

The inner shrine was shielded by a vast dome. Through narrow lancets torn out of its massive walls, the moonlight poured in. Between each window rose a bronze stand, wrought in the semblance of a great serpent; smoking torches jutted from their fanged jaws. Patches of light and darkness appeared to float in the dome, so high that one sensed rather than saw them clearly. The gong rang out, and the entire space quivered. The darkness seeped out, encompassing the light.

A reddish glow pulsed from about the altar on which a body gleamed pallidly. With a shock of horror, Quintus recognized Ganesha, stripped of his robes.

Fury replaced horror as Quintus recognized Lucilius, standing by the Black Naacals, his harness gleaming as if he stood in attendance on a proconsul. Guarded as carefully as Lucilius himself and placed at some small distance from him gleamed the Eagle.

Again, the clamor of the gong, followed by the thunder of huge drums and the braying of horns carved out of bones the length of a man's thigh. Those patches of light and darkness floating overhead shifted, clouds of illusion to twist the senses. When they cleared away, Quintus saw Draupadi.