Empire of Dragons

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  ‘Two cylinders, the lift-and-force type,’ said Metellus. ‘Made for the mines, but it works well everywhere. Where did you get it?’

  ‘I want for nothing! It comes from Alexandria but I bought it at Hormusia. Well, then, do you believe me now when I tell you we can’t go west? The monsoon is a constant wind that blows in this direction for six months. No ship can go upstream against the wind, if not by rowing and only for a very short distance. Even someone who isn’t a sailor can understand that. In a few days’ time, a month at the most, we’ll be at the mouth of the Indus. Even if you did decide to go ashore, you’d have to spend the next six months, if not more, rotting in some hole along the coast, amid mosquitoes and mephitic fever, waiting for the wind to change. With no money, no knowledge of the local language and no guarantee that you’ll find passage, since you’re not capable of paying for it. You might be captured and taken as slaves, just to give an example, or end up in some village of the interior, doing a day’s labour in exchange for a handful of rice.’

  ‘What’s rice?’ asked Metellus.

  ‘Marsh grain. You’ll be tasting it soon . . . If, on the other hand, you decide to come with me, you’ll see a phenomenal land. You’ll cross the highest mountain chain in the world, the Indian Caucasus, as Alexander’s historians named it. We call it the Hindu Kush. And when we have accompanied Dan Qing back home, I promise you that I will bring you back myself, as I’ve already said.’

  ‘In six months?’ asked Metellus suspiciously.

  ‘Well, maybe a bit longer, but it will still be well worth your while. If you attempt it alone, you’ll have to stop frequently to earn your passage from one place to the next. Don’t think that you’ll find a ship that will take you straight to Alexandria, lying out on deck, belly up, enjoying the sun. My proposal is a reasonable one, Commander, the only sensible one, believe me . . . What do you say?’

  Metellus sighed. He looked up: the cracks between the planks were pierced by daggers of sunlight. ‘I must consult my men,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you an answer before evening.’

  Daruma went back towards the hatch to return on deck. Metellus followed him and emerged into the light of day. Ragged clouds galloped through the limpid sky and the deck planks were already beginning to dry here and there. The clothing hanging out everywhere gave the impression of bizarre supplementary sails. The sea had settled into a gentle roll, and it glittered with myriad reflections under the sun. The curved backs of dolphins swelled the surface; they would sometimes make spectacular leaps from the Ocean and then dive back into the white spume.

  Metellus thought, ‘I must return to my son. I must return to do what I promised my emperor. But I must return alive.’ He considered Uxal, sleeping on the bottom of the Ocean, and he felt a lump in his throat. He drew a long sigh and approached his men. ‘As you’ve seen, there was nothing we could do. The wind and the storm have dragged us east.’

  ‘Where are we, Commander?’ asked Rufus.

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied Metellus. ‘At a month’s navigation from the mouth of the Indus, I believe.’

  ‘The Indus?’ repeated Quadratus. ‘But that’s at the ends of the earth!’

  ‘Not exactly. I think the world is much bigger than we imagine. You’ve just witnessed the vastness and the power of the Ocean.’

  ‘Well, then, what are we going to do?’ asked Lucianus, in a tone that would have earned him an exemplary punishment under any other circumstances.

  Metellus pretended not to hear and told them what Daruma had proposed. ‘It is not my intention to force anyone,’ he concluded at the end. ‘Each of you is free to do what he wants. When we land in India, you can decide whether you want to remain with us or attempt to return on your own. As far as I’m concerned, I think Daruma’s proposal is reasonable. Actually, it’s our only chance of getting home. Late, but alive.’

  ‘But can you trust Daruma, Commander?’ asked Septimius with a worried expression. ‘We haven’t known him for long. He’s only a merchant, and there’s no one more unprincipled than a merchant, in my book.’

  ‘I think that Daruma is something more than a merchant. I can’t tell you what, but I feel sure about this. The fact that he took on the responsibility of freeing the prince of Sera Maior and escorting him safely back to his homeland is no small thing. You must understand that Dan Qing is the equivalent of Gallienus, in a much bigger empire than ours. What’s more, Daruma has always held fast to his word and honoured the terms of our agreements.’

  ‘There are ten of us and we’re armed,’ grumbled Publius.

  ‘We were wrecks when he welcomed us into his camp. Our weapons would have counted for little if he had decided to get rid of us. I’m grateful to him for not having done so and I’m willing to trust him. But, I repeat, each one of you is free to make up his own mind. I’m not going to shoulder the responsibility of giving orders this time.

  ‘The only certain thing is that this wind will be blowing constantly east, at the strength we’ve seen, for six months or more. Therefore, the only way we could attempt to get back is by land. But I must remind you that Alexander himself ventured out on the same route five hundred years ago. Twenty thousand of his men were lost in that salty desert, without a blade of grass or a drop of water. And he had an army with pack animals, carts for transporting food and water, native guides. I don’t know what destiny might await a man who decided to venture off on his own in those desolate lands swarming with fierce marauders.

  ‘The alternative would be to wait on the coast until the wind changes, but that is a risk-fraught choice as well. You decide. You have plenty of time to think it over. If you elect to come with me, you’ll see lands that no one has ever explored and you’ll experience an adventure that you’ll be able to tell your grandchildren about one day. You will be the only warriors in the world to have crossed the two greatest empires on earth, to have reached places that not even Alexander the Great could have imagined.’

  A deep silence followed his words. The men had been firmly convinced that they were going home and this option, so unforeseen and unfamiliar, deeply dismayed them. And they were even more dismayed by the option of deciding for themselves, since they had always only received orders from their commander, and carried them out.

  It was Quadratus who broke the silence. ‘If you go, I’m coming with you,’ he said without hesitation.

  ‘So am I,’ confirmed Balbus, the other centurion.

  ‘Me too, Commander,’ piped up Antoninus. ‘Count on me.’

  Lucianus and Septimius consulted each other with a brief glance and communicated their decision. ‘There’s no way we’re waiting until the wind changes. We are the wind! We of the Second Augusta, by Hercules!’

  ‘Yes!’ exclaimed the others.

  Metellus smiled. ‘Then we agree. I’m happy that you’ve decided to come with me.’ He went to catch up with Daruma, but then turned. ‘Ah, I was forgetting. This is the last decision I’m leaving to your discretion. From now on, we’re going back to the old rules: I give the orders, you carry them out.’

  15

  METELLUS APPROACHED THE PRINCE with a light step, stopping at a certain distance. ‘Where I come from, they tell a story,’ he began, ‘that reminds me a little of what happened last night.’

  Dan Qing did not answer but a slight movement of his head let the Roman know he was listening.

  ‘It happened three centuries ago,’ continued Metellus. ‘A great man among our people, a conqueror, the founder of our empire – his name was Caesar – once had to cross a brief stretch of our Internal Sea, at night, in a little boat. But that arm of the sea was patrolled by the powerful fleet of his enemy, who had massed an army on the other side of the straits. Caesar had to reach his own army on the opposite side and guide them to victory, and he decided to attempt the crossing in total darkness and in dangerous waters. When he was halfway across, a storm broke out and his boat was tossed around by the waves like a fragile nutshell. The helmsman was terrified a
nd exhausted, and could not stay on course, but Caesar approached him and said, “Take heart! You are carrying Caesar to his destiny.”

  ‘The helmsman found the strength of spirit to continue his battle against the elements and he succeeded in ferrying his passenger to the other side. Caesar won the battle against the enemy and became the founder of the empire that extends over all the lands of the Internal Sea, which we call “Mare Nostrum”, and over all the peoples who live in its vicinity. Every schoolboy hears this story told by his teachers . . .’

  ‘For what purpose?’ asked Dan Qing.

  ‘To teach our young people that they should never become disheartened, because we build our own destiny. With will-power, determination, courage. Last night you saved my life and I’ve come to thank you. You are safe as well, and with you the destiny of your homeland, perhaps. Like Caesar, that night, when he crossed the storming sea.’

  Dan Qing turned. ‘What you say sounds like a good omen,’ he replied, ‘but the road is very long, the threats many and the friends very few. How many men did your leader have waiting for him on the other side of that stormy sea?’

  ‘Fifty thousand,’ replied Metellus.

  ‘Not a great number. But not too few either. I am alone.’

  Metellus stared into his eyes, trying to decipher his expression. ‘Alone?’

  Dan Qing merely nodded.

  Instead of asking for his help, as Metellus would have expected, the prince turned his gaze to the sparkling surface of the waves.

  That man aroused a strange feeling of reverence, while instilling a sense of detachment that was impossible to ignore. When he spoke his words were measured and seemed to come from a great distance, and yet Metellus was attracted by the extraordinary force that pervaded his body and by the seemingly impossible energy that had permitted the prince to pull him from the waves as he was drowning.

  ‘Daruma has asked me to escort you, with my men, to your final destination.’

  ‘Did Daruma explain to you what awaits us?’

  ‘No. But I can imagine.’

  ‘And you accepted?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m a soldier. I’m not afraid of such things. And Daruma has promised that he will bring us back. We have no alternative, actually.’

  ‘That seems a good reason.’

  ‘May I ask you a question?’

  ‘You may.’

  ‘Why did you save me, last night?’

  ‘Because you command my escort.’

  ‘An excellent reason,’ replied Metellus, and walked away.

  NAVIGATION PROCEEDED regularly at a sustained rate and towards evening they saw another boat sailing in the same direction at a distance of perhaps a couple of miles. When night fell, the voyage continued calmly and without obstacles, until around midnight, when the sky clouded over and it began to rain, a downpour that lasted for about half an hour, although the wind never picked up and the Ocean did not rise. The lanterns emitted a dim light and Metellus, lying on a mat on the deck, would open his eyes every now and then and take a look around. Daruma was sleeping below deck, his men above. Quadratus had arranged for a man to stand guard nonetheless; perhaps he didn’t trust the company completely, or perhaps it was just the habit of twenty years of scrupulous, disciplined and watchful service.

  When he was awake, Metellus thought of the adventure awaiting him and his men in a vast, unknown land, among peoples he had not even known existed. Sometimes he felt he must have been mad to accept such a proposal, while at other times he felt he had done the right thing, the only sensible thing, given the circumstances. But what anguished him most was the sensation of distancing himself with every instant from his world, his son, his mission. He felt a dizziness that took his breath away. He tried to remedy that anxiety in sleep, letting himself be rocked by the continuous lapping of the waves against the keel and by the warm breeze.

  At dawn, he was roused by the shouts of one of the sailors from Taprobane who was at the top of the mast. Daruma scanned the horizon before them, then shouted, ‘Look! It’s blowing, down there!’

  They all ran to the bow and saw a spray of steam as tall as the mast of their boat rising from the surface of the sea, and then an enormous curved back and a gigantic two-lobed tail splashing out of the water before sinking down below.

  ‘Over there!’ shouted Balbus. ‘Another one!’

  ‘And another down there!’ echoed Antoninus.

  Metellus observed that sight in wonder: monsters bigger than the boat they were travelling on, their backs encrusted with scaling and deposits like the hulls of ocean-going vessels, emerging with nearly half of their bodies out of the water before plunging back in with a resounding plop in a spectacular show of foam.

  ‘What are they, Commander?’ asked Lucianus. ‘Will they attack us?’

  ‘They are whales,’ responded Daruma’s voice from behind him. ‘Creatures as huge as they are inoffensive. They’re playing like little fish do, and grazing. They open their mouths and devour whole shoals of sardines.’

  ‘I’ve read about them in the work of Onesicritus,’ spoke up Metellus, ‘Alexander’s admiral and pilot of the royal navy, who returned from India all the way to the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates. But I never thought I would see them.’

  ‘You will not regret making this voyage, Roman. You will finally understand what the world is, and how small the pool you’ve built your empire around is compared to the immensity of the Oceans that surround the endless vastness of the earth. And I’m sure that this will teach you something, because you seem like a man who is eager to learn.’

  Metellus did not reply, and remained in silence watching the dance of those giants of the sea, their gleaming backs, their gigantic tails lashing the waves, the spraying steam that they launched to the sky. One of the monsters emerged at a very short distance from the boat and he could see its tiny eye near the corner of its mouth. A grey, inexpressive bulb that seemed to stare at him for a moment before disappearing beneath the water.

  ‘All those stories about marine monsters that break apart ships and devour the sailors who fall into the water are nothing but legends, then,’ observed Metellus when the whales had passed from sight.

  ‘Legends?’ replied Daruma. ‘Jaibal!’ he shouted to one of his Taprobanes. A dark-skinned, half-naked sailor approached. Daruma took something hanging from his neck and showed it to Metellus. ‘Does this look like a legend to you?’

  ‘Gods! What is it?’

  ‘A tooth. The tooth of a monster thirty feet long with three rows of these things. Incredibly fast and voracious, an insatiable hunter, seizing anything that moves . . . Turn around, Jaibal,’ he said to the sailor.

  The sailor turned to show an enormous scar that went from his buttocks to the joint behind his knee.

  ‘This is a memento from that tiger of the sea. Jaibal was lucky. Others are torn to pieces and devoured. Pearl divers run the greatest risk – the waters they dive into are rife with these beasts. And you complain that pearls are expensive! If you found yourself in front of a brute like that at forty feet under, you certainly would not think so.’

  ‘Pearls . . .’ mused Metellus. ‘I only ever bought one, for my wife, when my son was born on the fifth anniversary of our wedding.’

  Jaibal returned to his work and Daruma was served an infusion of herbs, which he offered to Metellus as well.

  ‘I saw you speaking to Dan Qing.’

  ‘I thanked him for saving my life the other night.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because he is a Chinese prince. He is the son of an emperor who is revered as the Son of the Heavens. A man of his rank customarily speaks to no one who has not been introduced to him through a complex protocol. Remember when he landed on the boat? Nothing was said, he merely nodded to me as a gesture of respect. You should have asked me to request permission for you to speak to him.’

  ‘Well, yo
u could have warned me.’

  ‘That’s true, but all things told, perhaps it’s better this way. If he answered you, that means protocol has lost its meaning for him in this situation.’

  Metellus glanced over at Dan Qing. He was sitting on his heels and, as usual, seemed absorbed in his thoughts.

  ‘But . . . what’s he doing when he sits for hours in such an uncomfortable position? It would break anyone else’s knees.’

  ‘He’s meditating.’

  ‘Meditating? About what?’

  ‘His meditation does not have a specific object. He seeks tao – that is, the way.’

  ‘The way to where?’

  ‘There is no “where”.’

  ‘So he’s meditating about nothing and searching for a road that leads no place?’

  ‘More or less, although it’s not that simple. It’s by virtue of this meditation that he succeeded in leaping from his horse and landing on my boat without faltering. And it’s by virtue of this meditation that he can stay in that position for hours, as though his body were weightless. Tao is a complex philosophical concept, developed by one of their greatest masters, a man named Kong Fuzi. According to his theories, nature has neither purpose nor intention, but it is invaded by an intrinsic force that governs and informs nature of itself. Tao is this universal soul that suffuses the cosmos, the earth and the nature of the human race as well. A man who perceives tao and makes it his vehicle and his bearer will forgo trying to bend the flow of events forcibly and abandon himself to its essence, allowing it to pervade his being.’

  Metellus smiled. ‘We have a saying: “Faber quisque est suae fortunae.” Do you know what it means?’

  Daruma sipped his infusion of dried leaves. ‘My Latin is not very good, but even I know that much: “Every man is the architect of his own destiny.” ’