Empire of Dragons

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  ‘You see, Daruma, I think that men turn to prophets and miracle-workers when they become afraid that our swords are no longer capable of safeguarding their lives and their possessions. There is a religion that has been gaining ground rapidly in our land as well. It was founded by a Judaean master called Christ, who they claim is the son of God. This prophet was accused of sedition and executed by one of our governors more than two hundred years ago, and now his word is slowly conquering our empire. Do you know why? He is certainly not capable of guaranteeing the safety of our state, much less of the world, but what he offers the faithful is happiness in the next world, a place that no one has ever visited and from which no one has ever returned. I think that people turn to the gods when they are desperate, when they can’t believe in anything else. And if the old gods no longer inspire faith, they simply find new ones.’

  ‘We have a word for men who think the way you do.’

  ‘So do we,’ interrupted Metellus. ‘We call them sceptics. And even this word comes from a school of philosophy. But remember, Daruma, men like me may not know how to keep up a brilliant conversation, but we have one thing in our favour. We’re accustomed to relying on ourselves, and on other men of the same temperament.’

  ‘You mean them?’ asked Daruma, nodding towards the Roman soldiers who were busy setting up camp.

  ‘Them,’ confirmed Metellus.

  ‘Yet the miraculous leap of Dan Qing impressed you. And it was a real act, achieved by a man of flesh and blood like you.’

  ‘It’s true,’ admitted the Roman, ‘but what good is such ability if he can’t even communicate, if he spends most of his time closed up inside himself? What makes him different from a stone or a tree or, if you prefer, from a philosopher, locked into his own convictions?’

  Daruma turned for an instant to regard Dan Qing sitting on his heels before a little stupa. He answered, ‘It’s difficult to judge a man by how he appears to us. Silence and isolation may be a punishment that a person inflicts upon himself.’

  THEY STARTED marching again the next day. When they had nearly reached the pass, they turned around to consider the long, winding path they had taken; from that height it looked even steeper. They stopped for the night when they found an inn with a pen for their horses and camels. Inside the modest building, constructed of stones and tree trunks, an old man with a thin beard and eyes like Dan Qing’s served his customers a mutton stew accompanied by boiled marsh grain seasoned with the animal’s fat.

  It was certainly not appetizing fare for Metellus’s men, but there was no alternative. In a place so far from the rest of the world, they couldn’t expect much choice.

  At the pass, they transferred their packs on to some Bactrian camels, much more suitable to the terrain, the temperature and the altitude of the mountainous region.

  They set off the next day, descending at first down to a vast high plain and then starting to climb uphill again. After a few days of marching, the men had begun to suffer from stinging eyes and nausea. Metellus advised a remedy for their eyes: a black blindfold with two very narrow slits to allow them to see while protecting them from the intense light. The men chewed on salt that Daruma had distributed to fight off their nausea.

  Dan Qing seemed not to feel the strain of moving in such a hostile environment, perhaps because he was close to his home. As they advanced, people began to resemble him more in a physical way, although those mountain dwellers had deeply wrinkled skin the colour of clay, due to the sun and the harsh dry air. The Romans, on the other hand, realized with every step that they were becoming the oddities, the object of evident, albeit discreet, curiosity on the part of onlookers.

  It was clear that none of the natives had ever seen anyone of their race travelling through those places. The children, inquisitive like in any part of the world, reached out their hands to touch the strange individuals with their bristly faces and round eyes, their arms as hairy as monkeys’. Septimius drew the greatest curiosity with his blue eyes and light blond hair. They got close enough to touch his knees, before they scampered off giggling to hide behind their parents’ legs.

  After the first pass, they covered another fifteen legs of their journey until they reached the base of another pass even higher than the first. Here they abandoned the Bactrian camels and transferred their packs on to small, strange-looking oxen with very long hair, the only animals, asserted Daruma, capable of enduring the heights that awaited them. They were crossing a landscape of increasingly extraordinary and untamed beauty: the snowy peaks loomed above the caravan like pyramids of ice with bluish reflections. Their narrowing path climbed the mountain slopes, jutting out over precipitous walls, over abysses that took one’s breath away. When a stone was nudged by someone’s foot and fell off the cliff, the sound of sliding gravel was joined by a chorus of stones rebounding off the sides of the precipice, and everyone understood that taking a false step meant certain death.

  They advanced at a slow pace behind the local guides who led the shaggy oxen by their halters. The men became accustomed day by day, nearly hour by hour, to breathing the different air, as they adapted to a light which was ever clearer, an atmosphere ever more transparent.

  As they ascended, the cold became piercing and the walls of the chasm closer, until it was clear that they’d soon have to pass to the other side; to do so, they’d have to cross a wooden rope bridge swaying over the precipice between the two rock walls. The men looked each other in the eyes and Metellus could feel their terror. Inured as they were to any danger or adventure, they were not yet acquainted with the harsh demands of such an extreme world. Only the calm resoluteness of their commander and the example of the centurions gave them the sense of security necessary for acceptance and maintaining discipline.

  ‘You must always look forwards,’ said Metellus, ‘never down. It’s just a few steps, in the end. You’ve been through much worse.’

  The most difficult part was getting the animals across. Balbus went first, accompanied by one of the native guides, carrying a rope to be anchored to the other side; the pack animals were secured to the rope so that they wouldn’t move too far to the left or right during their transit and throw the entire structure off balance. Then it was the men’s turn. Dan Qing crossed without difficulty, ignoring the rope, while Daruma went last, escorted by Lucianus and Rufus, who supported him on either side.

  The weather was worsening before their very eyes. A squall was blowing up, cold gusts sweeping the narrow gorge and making the bridge swing back and forth. Metellus feared that even the slightest delay would make their passage impossible. When Daruma had finally set foot on the other side, they immediately began their descent, although the light was rapidly waning. They trudged along until their surroundings were less harsh and the temperature more endurable, and finally set up camp, exhausted with fatigue and numb with cold.

  They continued to advance the next day and the day after that, and then for many days more, until they reached a fork with another road that came from the east. It cut into the side of the rocky flank, which was riddled with deep ravines. Here they stopped to exchange the woolly oxen for Bactrian camels and a few horses, small in stature and quite shaggy as well, but very hardy.

  Metellus was amazed by this animal-trading system, which reminded him of the horse exchanges that existed in the empire along the cursus publicus, the great network of roads that stretched as far as the most secluded Roman outposts in Africa and Britannia. With the difference that there wasn’t a single state here, regulating the procedures and the exchanges, but only the needs of the wayfarers and the habits of the local communities.

  ‘Further north,’ Daruma told him, ‘there are nomadic tribes who raise the best horses in the world. The Chinese call them the “horses that sweat blood”, and are willing to pay exorbitant prices for them. Several emperors have given their daughters away in marriage to barbarian chieftains just to have a herd of those fantastic animals. When we are in the Empire of Dragons, you will surely see
some.’

  ‘The Empire of Dragons?’ repeated Metellus. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means China,’ replied Daruma. ‘It is another of its many names. The dragon is a common mythological figure in the country, taking on a variety of forms, from demon to protector.’

  Daruma pronounced many words and expressions in Chinese, in order to force his pupil to practise the language, although he had become resigned to the fact that Metellus’s only thought was of getting back home.

  In all that time, Metellus had spoken very little with Dan Qing: only brief phrases of courtesy in Persian at the moment of passing food during their communal meals or upon meeting in the morning or retiring at night. But he had never stopped studying the language with Daruma, every night after dinner or when they paused to rest during the day, and his progress had been constant.

  During the last legs of their journey through the great mountain chain, the weather took a turn for the worse again and they soon found themselves in the middle of a snowstorm: an event which they were not prepared for and which sorely tested their endurance. The bitterly cold wind cut through them like a blade, penetrating all the way to their bones. No amount of clothing seemed to help. A dense sleet of piercing crystals fell as the wind whistled and moaned through the mountain gorges. Metellus and his men had to call on all their willpower and resolution so as not to succumb to the cold and their fatigue.

  Dan Qing often seemed to be observing them with his oblique glance, and if someone had been able to decipher his expression they would have seen admiration for the perseverance demonstrated by the men of Taqin, for their stubborn determination to overcome the forces of nature.

  Conditions continued to worsen. The cold became even more intense, until it froze their limbs and made it difficult to move at all. As they fought their way through the swirling snow, something darted in front of Dan Qing’s horse after a bend in the path. The animal reared up violently with a whinny of terror.

  The prince was completely taken by surprise and was thrown backwards as the horse fell over, the jaws of a white leopard deep in its flesh.

  Dan Qing was pinned between his horse and the edge of the precipice; if he tried to free himself he would fall headlong below. In the meantime, the leopard had spotted him. Releasing the neck of the horse, which was in the throes of death, it lunged towards its human prey instead, baring bloody fangs and stretching out a clawed forepaw. Publius, who had been closest behind the prince, leapt forward and started waving his cloak in front of the beast’s face. The leopard, made bold by hunger, continued to roar menacingly and to swipe at those it imagined were after its prey. Publius was trying to draw his sword but it had frozen solid and would not budge from its sheath, as Balbus and Antoninus rushed over and managed to pull Dan Qing to safety. The leopard swiftly lashed out at Publius’s arm, sending him right over the side of the precipice.

  ‘Help him!’ yelled Metellus, attracting the beast’s attention to himself. Just as the leopard had turned on him and was about to pounce, Metellus twisted around and grabbed the javelin of Rufus, who was right behind him, then spun back towards the leopard, running the beast through in mid-leap.

  Publius was shouting, ‘Help me! I’m here, help me!’ and, as Metellus was extricating himself from the animal’s inert body, Quadratus, Balbus and Septimius formed a human chain to rescue their comrade, who was clinging to a rock spur.

  Septimius managed to grasp his slipping hand a moment before Publius would have plunged into the abyss, and they hauled him up. Metellus drew the javelin out of the leopard’s body and contemplated the dying beast: clouds of steam puffed from its nostrils and its blood stained the white snow. He had never seen such a magnificent animal in his life: completely white, with only a few dark spots on its coat to distinguish it from the snow.

  Metellus turned around and found Dan Qing standing behind him. Immobile as statues of snow, they stared into each other’s eyes without saying a word, then Metellus went over to Publius, who was still trembling with cold and terror, and he embraced him tightly, like a son who had escaped death. They began their march again in the raging storm and it wasn’t until after dusk that they reached their resting place: a hut made of tree trunks, flanked by a stable. Famished and almost completely dehydrated, the men managed to push the animals under the roof and drag themselves inside the shelter, where a big fire was roaring in a brazier in the centre of the room, below a hole in the ceiling from which the smoke escaped. The contents of a pot on the brazier were bubbling away and a smoking lamp, burning animal fat, hung from the ceiling beams.

  An elderly couple sitting on a sheep’s fleece were holding bowls and seemed to be intent on the pot. Daruma said something to them and the old man gestured for them to join them. Dan Qing entered last and sat in a corner, on his heels.

  The old woman passed out bowls, then took the pot from the fire and poured a ladle of broth with a few pieces of mutton into each bowl. The hot food restored a little life to the exhausted men, but also made them profoundly sluggish. No one felt like talking. As soon as they had finished eating, the Romans were undone by the warm atmosphere inside the hut and collapsed on to the sheepskins, one after another, falling instantly into a deep sleep.

  More by habit than anything else, Metellus went out for a brief inspection. The moon was just appearing from behind a blanket of dense vapours, illuminating the mountains that were still being scourged by the storm with its ghostly light. The horses and pack animals were calmly browsing on the hay in the manger and in the distance the sobbing of a nocturnal bird wafted up from the bottom of the valley. He returned towards the refuge and found Dan Qing waiting.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ asked the prince in Persian.

  ‘I’m paid to do it,’ replied Metellus, and, without waiting for an answer, went in.

  The next day, the world around them was completely transformed. The dawning sun tinged the snowy peaks pink and made the green fields covering the lower slopes of the mountains glimmer. The wind had dropped and an eagle was soaring through the sky in expansive, solemn flight. Quadratus was the first to rise. He stretched his stiff limbs and walked over to a drinking trough. He broke the ice and washed his face with the freezing water. Little by little, the others came out, last of all Dan Qing followed by Daruma. The drivers prepared the animals and the old couple distributed cups of warm milk. Daruma paid with Indian coins and the caravan set off again. They travelled all that day and all the next until they came to a vast area of level ground where they began to meet other caravans, smaller or larger than their own, proceeding in the opposite direction and loaded down with wares. Almost everyone they met up with resembled Dan Qing and Metellus realized that their destination must be not too far off. Calculating the time it had taken to get to where they were from the mouth of the Indus, he felt that it would be more or less another month to reach the point of arrival, after which they’d be able to undertake their journey home.

  They advanced another twenty days, covering about twelve miles a day. They crossed a steppe and then an arid desert, which would have been impossible to negotiate without the local guides, who knew the trails and the location of the wells from which the men and animals could drink.

  Now Metellus was certain that they were crossing lands that not even Alexander had encountered during his long march eastward; they had gone far beyond Maracanda and far beyond the last Alexandria. He was sure that they had passed the lands that Herodotus had attributed to the most remote populations, the Issedonians and the Hippomolgians. The very look of the sky and its constellations seemed to have changed. He remembered that Antoninus had served as a land surveyor in the army and wondered whether he might be able to draw a map of their route, but then he realized that they had no instruments, no reference points, no material for writing or drawing. Perhaps when they had arrived at their destination, they would be able to make a measuring instrument, a groma, and find the material they’d need to draw a map on their return journey. Such a ma
p would be invaluable: the description of an unknown region, unwinding day by day under the patient, constant steps of his soldiers.

  The sensation that dominated his spirit and that of his men was of crossing an endless region, of seeing their own world grow smaller and smaller as they moved away from it, like the sensation one had when looking at people and objects from the top of a high tower or the edge of a precipice.

  The immensity of Asia took their breath away: the vastness of the deserts, the flat expanse of the steppe, limited only by the horizon, a land dominated by immeasurable silence or the repeated, monotonous cries of mysterious, hidden creatures. Sunset came abruptly, casting bloody streaks on the golden sands, then immediately yielded to a multitude of stars trembling in the infinite celestial vault. Sometimes, in the dead of night, they would abruptly hear a nearly silent beating of wings like flocks of winged ghosts passing over their heads in the darkness, traversing invisible paths. The moon rose like a great silver shield to illuminate the spectral landscape, awakening the prolonged lament of the jackals. At times, its thin crescent skimmed the wavy profile of the dunes, and when it finally set, the morning star alone remained to guard the threshold of the aurora.

  They met other men, other convoys, crossing that vast land in one direction or the other, mostly caravans of camels that advanced with their peculiar swaying gait. Metellus often wondered why they were never attacked. Were there no brigands eager to seize their belongings? He concluded that it must be in everyone’s interest for the goods to reach their final destination; the profits to be had were too great for their journey to be disturbed.

  During this interminable crossing, relations between Dan Qing and Metellus remained what they had always been, except for those first few days on Daruma’s boat. At first, Metellus had tried to make sense of the prince’s attitude, and he had come to the conclusion that the man was simply too different: his mentality and his manners were too dissimilar for the two of them to be able to understand each other. The distance between them seemed to become more marked instead of decreasing, and it appeared that not even Daruma was interested in changing the way things were.