When that, too, had spent itself, she turned to him, and said, with a bit of seriousness. “Antonius, there is something… it is hard to say.”
“Just say it, domina.”
“There will be times, when we can’t do this, not like this. Will you understand when I ask you to wait?”
He propped himself up on his elbow, somewhat concerned. “Why?”
“You don’t want another passenger on this trip. There are times when I can get pregnant, and that would be very bad for me, for all of us, and for our new passenger, too, so please, a few days out of the month?”
“Oh, sure! Sure, I can’t see you going on a forced march carrying a baby!” They both laughed in each other’s arms. In fact, this intimacy was new to him. He knew that women had cycles, and bled once month, but he had never lived with a woman, never had the intimacy with one to deal with it. In fact, the idea that sex led to babies, while not foreign to him - he certainly knew where babies came from, after all - was never of any concern to him in all his past dalliances.
“Maybe, if we get to where we are going, back to Rome, maybe then… if you want one, that is … I will give you a child, I hope a son that will grow up to be like you!”
The thought struck Antonius dumb. Never had he ever considered the idea of a family, now it seemed like the most logical thing in the world to do. After a long moment he said, “Yes, I would like that. Very much. But first we have to get there! I have worked up an appetite, let’s go wake up the others.”
She threw the blankets off her long, well-muscled legs and kicked them off the bed. “I think we already have!”
CHAPTER 58: A MOST SERIOUS WOUND
The next week was a refreshing layover. Galosga was a superb hunter, and went out every morning to bring in small game of a variety of sorts, mostly squirrels, but also rabbits, and once, a small deer. He set up a smoke tent to preserve the meat, as he had done on the Europa after the storm.
Antonius and Marcia became the host couple, preparing meals and fussing about the house, and everyone was amused and pleased with Antonius’ sudden domesticity. The new couple beamed with contagious happiness underneath their sprouting bristlebrush hair.
Everyone’s han-yu had improved to the point where Ibrahim’s daily meetings were mostly conducted in that language, with just infrequent sidebars in the other languages.
On the second day, Gaius addressed his security concerns.
“There are two types of people may stop here. The first type curious, want to know who we are. They must see what expect to see, Dim here meditate. The other type mean trouble, we have to kill, drive off. Preferably kill. If drive off, go get friends, come back. Trouble is, don’t know which when show up.”
Everyone agreed. Antonius had discussed this plan with Gaius, refining it, so at a nod from Gaius, he picked up the discussion. “Here is plan. Ten people here, seven fighters. Si Nuo no experience, Dim choose no fight, Si Huar woman. So company comes, Dim here inside, Si Huar and Si Nuo in cave behind with animals. Hide. If Dim not here, Si Huar and Si Nuo in house, Han couple look for time alone.” Everyone giggled. “I know he brother, just play part!”
He continued. “Rest of us hide outside. Galosga cover road with arrows, you best archer among us. I show good spot in front of house, good cover, arrows reach everywhere. Right side, Ibrahim, Yakov, Aulus, in order. Left side, me, Shmuel, Gaius, in order.”
“Here signal. When company comes house, if no trouble, house person says, ‘Please come in, have tea.’ Loud for all us to hear. Entertain, be nice, everyone else hide till go. All good? Hope that all we ever see.”
“Looks like trouble, say “Sorry, I am busy, go away.’ Also loud. Galosga take out anyone in front. First two each side come around front onto porch, take from rear in two directions . Last one each side come around back, come in back door, get between house person and bad people. Think this will take out any group, unless big group soldiers show up. Anybody need again in own language?”
No one did. Gaius resumed the lead. “Antonius good plan. Practice after meeting, do it every day, bit different each time, so everyone smooth.”
The drills went well, though the first few had some comical moments that provoked Antonius to bawl out his orders like the centurion he was, once even taking on Aulus in Latin, “Galba, hold that god-cursed sword like yer mean ter kill somebody besides yersel’!” The portly senator had lost considerable girth.
Everyone had to take this deadly seriously. Antonius’ main concern was bounty hunters, if such things existed here. If Hanaean soldiers showed up, they were not likely to fight them all off, and they would be quickly hunted down if they got away. Still, it was a plan.
Antonius made some heavy wooden training swords, crude but about the right balance. Live metal was not only too dangerous with which to train, but everyone would also pull their thrust at the last minute, to avoid hurting the other – exactly what you don’t want to learn to do in a fight. So every day for an hour, the fighters sparred with each other, with Marcus also learning the basics, under the watchful eye of Antonius.
Back in Luoyang, the weiwei was again furious at the Da Qin’s uncanny ability to vanish into thin air. His men had located them at a small temple in Sanmenxia, only a week behind them. It had to be them, six monks and a nun, three westerners dressed as peasants, riding an oxcart. The abbot said their destination was Dunhuang, so they had to go through Chang’an. But they had not, and their shaven heads would be conspicuous in any other disguise. But now their trail was cold again.
The Parthian ambassador followed the search for the Romans through his sources in the weiwei’s office. Cyrus had hoped the weiwei’s men would capture them and put an end to it, but with their second disappearance it seemed prudent to send a letter to his government, alerting Ctesiphon that they would likely be transiting Parthian territory on the way back. They must not, under any circumstances, reach the Roman border alive. Being somewhat of an accomplished artist himself, he included sketches of the five that he thought were surprisingly lifelike, and dispatched this under Hanaean postal orders to his homeland via Bactria, with a separate letter to the Bactrian king.
Musa, after a brief detention in Luoyang two days after the Da Qin escape, had successfully convinced his captors that this was the first he had heard of it, that he had been out of town on the day of the incident, conducting business with a signed and dated contract to prove it. Ibrahim and his party, he also convinced them, had purchased an oxcart to go back by land, since his departure was uncertain, and they felt they would be dragged into the trouble with their Da Qin friends the longer they stayed.
After more questions, they released Musa to return to Tianjin. He was reunited with his wife and son, and set to work filling some profitable contracts for new hulls that would keep him busy for a year.
Demosthenes made another trip into town for supplies, especially vinegar. Antonius had used up his supply, liberally disinfecting all sorts of cuts for the group. So he stopped in to see Mama Biyu.
“Dim, how good to see you! Is all well on the mountain?” Her round face beamed with joy to see him.
“All is well, Mama,” he said, but then she fixed him with a quizzical expression, one eye squeezed almost shut, the other eyebrow sharply lifted.
“Who are your friends up there, Dim?”
His heart fell, and he stammered a bit. She didn’t give him a chance to answer. “I said you remind me of my son. He didn’t lie often, but when he did his face gave him away. You tell Mama what is going on, or I will call the authorities. No one is going to hurt this town!” She was speaking gently but firmly, as to a child.
Yes, Right Speech. That means honesty!
So he sighed, sat down, and related the whole story, about the Da Qin and Ibrahim, the prison escape, and the monk disguise, which caused Mama Biyu to cover her mouth while she tittered in laughter, so improbable it was. He told of the weeks behind an oxcart trekking hundreds of miles on foot to Chang’an, to fi
nd the authorities looking for them there.
At the end, she said, “I wish you had told me this at the beginning, I could have helped you more. But no matter.” She paused, then continued, her voice hard as steel. “Just remember, do not hurt this town!”
As Demosthenes left, heavily laden again with supplies, she sighed and watched him sadly. Her own long-dead son, also Dim, was so like him.
Antonius wandered alone in the woods, pondering Marcia’s discussion about pregnancy. For the first time, he remembered the whore in Taprobane, who had caused so much trouble for them, wondering what happened to her. Aulus had said the king slaughtered most of Galle after they left. Did she survive? If he had gotten her pregnant, she might have already delivered. And what did she do with the child? Did she raise it, or leave it on a trashdump to howl its newborn cries to the sky until it died, to become food for dogs?
In fact, he could have many children, living or dead, whom he would never know and who would never know him. Suddenly those dalliances seemed like such despicable waste. And the worst unbidden thought was of his very first woman, when he was just a newly recruited legionary bloodied in his first battle… the reason why he enforced his rule, with hickory stick and if necessary the lash, that no man under his command should ever rape a captive. He remembered her eyes, full of fear, anger, mourning, loathing – and resignation. Then at the end, one of the other soldiers had said, “All right, we’re done with you. Pick up your things and go.” Not to the slave gangs, not the killing grounds, just to go. He wondered what became of her. How could a man like him deserve such a beautiful gift as Marcia?
His thoughts were interrupted by a clatter of horsemen going by, five men clad in black. They did not look like soldiers, but they did look dangerous. Antonius ran quietly back to the house a hundred yards away.
The black-clad men had almost passed the house when the man trailing behind caught sight of it and whistled to call the others back. They came back up the hill and milled about the road. A little smoke curling out of the chimney betrayed its occupants. The black-clad men left one man to tend the horses by the road, while the rest strode up the pathway.
It took less than a minute for everyone to be in position, Marcus and Marcia inside as Demosthenes was in town.
The bandits clumped up the stairs and hammered on the door. “We need to stay here!” one said. He was not asking
“You are not welcome here!” Marcus bellowed. Galosga unleashed an arrow that penetrated the throat of the man holding the horses; he went down with a gurgling cry. Too late, Galosga was aware of a sixth horseman thundering down the road. That horseman, guiding his animal with his knees, took up a bow and nocked an arrow, aiming at the men bursting out on the left side of the porch. He let fly at the first man, before stopping an arrow from Galosga that knocked him from his horse.
The bandit’s arrow knocked Antonius down onto his rump. At first, he thought someone had kicked him in the gut, then he saw the shaft protruding from his stomach. “What a hell of a time ter get kilt,” he thought, then his eyes rolled back and he fell backward. His last conscious thought was of Marcia, before the darkness swallowed him.
Shmuel cast not a glance at Antonius as he took charge. The centurion was down, but they had to continue the fight or they would all die. He charged up onto the porch after the four bandits, catching his first man in the side. One down! By this time, Gaius and Aulus had erupted into the back while Marcus and Marcia scuttled toward the cave. It did not take long, perhaps less than a minute, to finish off the three remaining men, taken totally by surprise and surrounded.
Shmuel could see quickly that everyone else seemed unhurt, and yelled for Ibrahim, “Antonius is down! Help me!”
Ibrahim, Aulus and Gaius clustered around the prone Antonius, while Yakov and Galosga checked the fallen bandits. Shmuel rounded up their horses and led them up to the cave.
Ibrahim felt Antonius’ neck for a pulse. “He’s alive, but I don’t know for how long.”
Marcia and Marcus had come around from the cave, and when she saw Antonius on the ground, wounded, she put her fists to her mouth and cried out through her tears, “Antonius! No, no! This can’t be true!”
Gaius put his arm around her and led her back a bit. “Let the men work on him, Marcia. He’s still alive, they’ll do everything for him.” She turned to bury her face in his shoulder, sobbing, and he soothed her back. A tear was trickling down his cheek, too.
Ibrahim said, “We need to get him on a board. The arrow didn’t exit, so the blade is still inside. If we move him carelessly, we’ll lacerate what’s left of his insides.” The men lashed together a make-do litter, put him carefully on it, and carried him into the house.
Meanwhile, Yakov was questioning the one man who remained alive, bleeding copiously from a gashed stomach that exposed his insides. He would not last long. “Who you? Who send you?”
“We were looking for a place to hide. Raid the town … supplies.” He gritted his blood-flecked teeth, and rolled forward over his open belly.
“Where from?”
“Up north… Xiongnu country.” He slumped as unconsciousness took him. Yakov debated hastening his death, but Ibrahim might have more questions if the man came around again. He didn’t look like he would last long.
He quietly made his report to Ibrahim in Aramaic as the Arab was tending to Antonius. Ibrahim shook his head negatively, focused on Antonius’ wound, and Yakov went back outside. He kicked at the wounded man, whose head rolled face-up, its staring eyes indicating that he would not be answering any more questions.
He, Shmuel and Galosga were policing up the dead when Demosthenes arrived from town, stunned at the carnage. “You miss it,” said Yakov with a smile. “All over now.”
“What happened?” asked Demosthenes, trying hard not to stare at the man with the opened belly. Flies were already buzzing around the bloody wounds in the July heat, finding an easy meal.
“Bandits. An-dun plan work very good, but he bad hurt. Inside.”
Demosthenes left his load at the foot of the stairs and ran up inside. Ibrahim, Gaius, and Aulus were clustered around Antonius on his bed. Marcus and Marcia were standing by the entrance to the bedroom, Marcia sobbing, choking, trying to contain her terror that he might die.
“Demosthenes!” called Ibrahim. “I hope you brought the vinegar Antonius sent you to town for! We are going to need it.”
Without acknowledging, Demosthenes scrambled down the stairs, and returned with a big bottle. “Can I help? I have had some medical training a while back when I was in the Bactrian army.” In Greek; he was going to need medical terms.
“We need all the help we can get. Come here.”
“Someone get me Antonius’ capsula.” Demosthenes looked at the arrow wound and gently touched the arrow. “No exit wound, so it must have hit bone, from this angle, a rib. Yes, I can feel the tip, I think embedded a bit.” He pulled back on the arrow, no more than a quarter inch. “I think it’s free, I can feel it vibrate a bit as it scrapes along the bone. All right, there, I think I found the space between the ribs.”
He picked up the vinegar, liberally washed his hands and the shaft of the arrow. Antonius’ breathing was slow and regular. “Does he have some opium in his medical kit?”
Gaius unrolled the capsula contents, and located a bottle. “Poppy juice, here.”
Demosthenes got several swallows of the juice down Antonius’ throat. “He’s not deeply unconscious, mostly in shock. I don’t want him waking and thrashing for what we are going to do next, so give this a few minutes to work.”
“And what is it you intend to do, Demosthenes?” asked Gaius.
“We are going to push the arrow through his back, break the arrowhead off, clean it up, and pull it back out.”
“Have you done this before?”
“Once.” He didn’t feel like mentioning that the patient died of massive fever afterward.
Antonius’ breathing seemed to slow. Demosthenes ch
ecked his pulse, and then said “I think we are ready. Roll him gently on his right side. Very gently, keep him straight. Are we ready?” Everyone nodded.
Demosthenes applied a little pressure to the arrow. “Gaius, tell me if you see it start to dimple where the head is going to come out.”
“Yes, there it is.”
“All right, Aulus, Ibrahim, hold his shoulders, here it goes!” He pushed hard, the skin stretched and then the sharp head tore through. The unconscious Antonius grunted, then was silent again. Demosthenes kept pushing until about six inches of shaft was exposed.
“All right, the hard part is done. Gaius, take your knife and cut off the head, make sure there are no splinters dangling that could come off inside of him. How is the bleeding?”
“About what you would expect from a skin tear.” Gaius knew what he was asking, to find out if there was massive internal bleeding that would follow the arrow out. There was none.
When the arrow was ready, Gaius doused the headless shaft with vinegar, and Demosthenes withdrew it in one smooth motion. Everyone gave a sigh of relief. Gaius handed Demosthenes the arrowhead. He sniffed it. “Good, it smells like blood and meat. I don’t smell any shit, so we may be lucky if nothing important inside was damaged.”
They cleaned the wounds thoroughly and sutured him up, bandaged the wounds, and rolled him on his back. Demosthenes looked at Marcia, and said, “I think he has a chance. But I will be honest, this is a very serious wound.”
Marcia swallowed hard and blinked back her tears. “Thank you, Dim. If you give him a chance, he and I both will fight for it. I am not going to lose him.” She paused and continued, “Where did you learn to do that?”
“Like Antonius, I was a medic once.” He turned to the group and continued, “All right, let him rest, nothing but water for the next day or so until any inside injuries have had a chance to heal. Let him sleep and pray for no fever. I am going into town for more medical supplies.”
The Eagle and the Dragon, a Novel of Rome and China Page 43