by Andre Norton
"Arjuna?" The sibyl's voice was soft and concerned. Sibylla. Now there was a good Latin concept for you. And he wanted badly to be Roman, to be only Quintus, his father's son and his grandsire's heir: not, please gods, this spiritual shuffling, as it seemed, among lives and deaths, all of them violent.
He swerved to tell Draupadi precisely that, but the remnants of her beauty, the dark eyes shadowed not by kohl but by exhaustion, the amber skin parched and dirty, the glorious long hair dried out and straggling, silenced him.
Meeting his eyes, Draupadi's eyes filled, first with anxiety and then with tears. "You always were more than one being," she told him. "When we met, you even swore to share me with your brothers. Yet, Arjuna, I have no complaints... but you have always been many men in one. Just as you are now. You are the heart of all of these men... and the luck of the men from the Realm of Gold."
He shook his head like a man who has staggered up after a beating.
"Too many," he said, thickly. "It is more than I can bear."
"So, you would be only the loyal heir who follows the head of his family, the loyal soldier who follows his commander? My dearest, I wish you had that luxury. Or that I could cease to be Draupadi and sink her, dreams, illusions, and all, in the cares of a soldier's wife."
Their eyes met. Do you understand what I am telling you? each seemed to ask the other.
"Domina, had the fates deemed otherwise..."
"It is not you, not ever," she murmured. "But..." Abruptly, she raised her hand again and smiled ironically, honey with a sting beneath. "You are weary with the cares of duty as well as with the desert. Could you not keep your honor if you consented to ride for a brief time?"
"I must set an example."
"Example—to the cross with it!"
Quintus blinked at her. He had not thought she would have learned that oath, and he was certain he did not approve of her saying it. Between surprise and disapproval, he laughed; he had thought never to laugh again.
He checked the line of march, drawing back to the rear of the column, where the riding animals—horses and camels—and the pack beasts plodded along. The camels' humps were flattening, a sign, he had learned, that even these beasts whose capacity for endurance was legendary in the desert, would soon need water. One of the Ch'in guard, having, as was clear, ideas about the lowliness of any Roman's position in the general order of things, scowled at him; but Arsaces had a grin and a thumbs-up—wherever he had learned that—for him and he gestured him toward the beast likeliest to bear him without either of them suffering more than they must.
Mounted (however reluctantly), he rode past the pack animals. He rode past the column of Romans, inexpressibly proud that they neither faltered nor complained— though the heat and dryness kept them from their usual songs. Rufus saluted him without reproach. Past Draupadi on her camel he rode, and past Lucilius who, as usual, hovered near the Ch'in officers as if seeking to make their power his.
Ssu-ma Chao nodded to Quintus as he pulled into line only slightly behind his captor. He turned the head of his horse—a fine beast from Ferghana, though Quintus could not, for the life of him, make out what was meant by the term "blood-sweating." The beast's stocky neck barely seemed to sweat, much less sweat blood.
"There we are." The Ch'in general rose in his saddle and pointed.
The Roman squinted. Though they were riding away from the light into the east, the glare and the shadows of late afternoon made sight painful. Clouds of dust rose, making matters that much the worse, too.
"Do you see it?" Ssu-ma Chao asked. "The towers of Su-le."
"May I tell my lads?" Quintus asked. They would be glad of a rest. And a meal or so and even a wash, though he knew they could not expect proper Roman baths. He would tell Draupadi, too, and watch her eyes light with pleasure and relief.
A cloud of dust rose between the towers and themselves. Quintus tensed, victim as he had been of battles and double dealings. His hand dropped to the hilt of his sword.
Quietly, imperceptibly, he signaled Rufus; and Rufus took up a posture of defense.
The dust subsided, and he could see Su-le. The town looked preposterously new—a garrison town that paid and treated its soldiers well as a necessity for its survival.
"A strong garrison," Ssu-ma Chao commented, hand on sword. "We know there is mischief afoot in the land. Otherwise, why send the garrison out at all?"
The Ch'in officer stared at Quintus, his eyes narrowing so that he appeared to be regarding the Roman through dark slits. "It is possible, I suppose, that a message might have been sent before the caravan died.... There was light enough for the signaling device to work. But from what we saw, I think the men died too suddenly." The Ch'in's face twisted in revulsion. "Still, I hope they succeeded. But, Roman, you stare at Su-le as if it were one huge trap. What makes you so suspicious?"
"I have been abandoned before," Quintus replied. "And betrayed by garrisons." As you well know. The words were blurted out before he could guard his tongue. In it, all men were brothers and equals—or else mortal enemies; you could readily tell the difference.
Ssu-ma Chao laughed. After a too-nervous moment, so did one or two members of his staff. "This is why I want their cooperation," the officer stated with the air of one repeating a point on which he had been proud to be right.
I like this man, Quintus thought. But the gods only know why.
Behind them, Lucilius edged closer. Hearing laughter, he dared to approach. For Quintus, his ironic presence blunted the mood of only a few moments ago.
"Is that traders," he asked, pointing, "or a welcoming party?"
The sword Quintus again wore by grace of Ssu-ma Chao hung reassuringly against his leg. He signaled the marching column of Romans to alert. Not to attack, please all the gods, no. He did not want to fight the men who had been his allies in the journey overmountain. But if the men from the garrison at Su-le had a mind to attack, they would get more than they wished.
And there was always the chance that he could retrieve the Eagle from wherever they had sent it.
But it took all the discipline he had to sit complacently in the saddle as the shadows lengthened and the dust cloud rising from the garrison's advance party rose in the vast sky. It spewed out before them, then solidified into individual horsemen. And each one of them was not only heavily armed, but bore weapons bared. Bowmen formed a second rank.
Seeing that, Ssu-ma Chao dismounted and walked forward, a posture of submission he maintained as the garrison rode slowly into voice range.
He sank into a deep bow. "This one wishes to ask..."
"You must explain instead why you travel with this excrement of turtles as if they were brothers in arms. And, worse yet, why you have allowed them their weapons!"
Now, how had they discovered that?
The garrison party advanced. It was much larger than either the column of Romans or Ssu-ma Chao's exhausted little force. Quintus let his hand fall away from his sword.
You caused this, you know. It was you who thought of the Roman line as a slave gang. But you could alter that....
Be still! he ordered sharply, the better to concentrate on the outer fear he must now confront.
A hand touched his arm. Draupadi had ridden up beside him. It was not a time to talk with her, not a time to distract himself with thoughts of her. But she could not be denied.
"Already," said Draupadi, "they are different from what they have been. I remember how the earth shivered and swallowed up the water...."
"Is that what you offer me?" Quintus asked. "Memories I do not want?"
Draupadi shook her head. Despite the gesture of negation, her face brightened, youth and life returning. "You know what I offer."
The breeze between them seemed to warm his heart— and the rest of his body. It was not the heat of the sun, reflected from the desert floor, but longing, a longing that possessed him every time he looked at her.
"Not your Eagle or your home," Draupadi surprised him with h
er words. "Not even the power that would restore you to your birthright. But Quintus, just as you are—you are worthy to go on. That is what we offer. The journey. The life. For as long as we live."
A new ache gripped him in that moment—the urge to lift her down from her mount and hold her for as long as he might. He had always hoped that when a marriage was arranged for him (as in the course of time it would have been, had the Fates been kinder), he would feel a kindness for his bride and she would... she would not fear him too badly at first. But this woman, with her powers and her endurance and her memory—this woman claimed to have been his wife in a vanished world. He could not remember. She deserved better than for him simply to trade on that and take her—when the time came, as it surely must—without an oath on his part to match the ritual that, clearly, lived on in her memories.
And if he died in the next hour, at least the words would have been said. She even wore the saffron veil of a Roman bride.
"Where thou art Caia," he began, drawing on the words of the confarreatio, the most solemn and binding rite of marriage, "there am I Caius." His voice thickened, and not from the dust.
He had the ring of his service to Rome. He gave it to her.
18
THE GARRISON FORCES fanned out. Quintus sized them up with the sharpened senses of pure despair. They were fresher than the men he and Ssu-ma Chao led. They had archers—and after Carrhae, archers were a thing he had learned to fear. Would there be time enough for his men to seize their shields and form a testudo? Even if there were, it would leave unprotected the men they had marched beside all these months.
And he suspected Draupadi and Ganesha would not accept its protection, such as it was. The finger that had been encircled so long by his ring felt lighter, strange. No time to think of that.
Then Quintus looked into the face of the garrison commander. His eyes were flat and cold. And dangerous. No, he did not look like a man to whom anyone could explain why he had allowed prisoners to travel armed. Not, at least, if you were one of the erstwhile prisoners.
The commander barked something angry and explosive in the language of Ch'in, and gestured at the Romans. Even before Ssu-ma Chao tried to translate, Quintus knew what the command was.
"You must disarm," the officer said, almost in a tone of apology.
Quintus handed him his sword.
"This one protests, with submission, that it is folly to disarm capable warriors," the Ch'in aristocrat bowed again, as if pleading forgiveness for rebellion. "We just came from the Stone Tower. We passed a caravan that was well-armed, but even so, it had no chance, snuffed out like flies—"
"Report," said the garrison commander (who had not seen fit to supply a name), "was brought of the Stone Tower. A madman was taken up in his last moments of life. He was a man ancient beyond belief who swore that just the morn before, he had been a young apprentice of the Hu-barbarians. Demons wearing black, he said, stole his youth, stole his life, stole his mind! The sun had baked his brains.
"He said he had seen some four demons, but one fell. The other three..." The commander broke off, glaring at Ssu-ma Chao.
"You knew of this?"
The loosening of swords in sheaths was the coldest sound Quintus had ever heard. If no prisoners came to the garrison at Su-le, there would be no prisoners to account for in a report to superiors. The salt flats might swallow their blood, too.
He hoped his men had taken their time in following his move to surrender his weapon.
Behind him, he could hear Rufus swearing, then subsiding to, "So it's slaves again, not allies? If they want our swords, let's make them take them. And why not—"
Mutiny? From the tongue-lashing that the garrison commander clearly was administering to Ssu-ma Chao and the submission with which he listened, mutiny wasn't a possibility. Say, rather, summary execution.
The garrison commander gestured peremptorily. At his command, Ganesha and Draupadi, on their tired, dusty mounts, rode toward the head of the column. Just in time, Quintus stopped himself from flinging out a hand. It was her old nightmare, the one that she remembered and he didn't—that she had been a prisoner among their enemies, and he could not help her.
Let them touch her, something said inside him. His mind and hands itched for the bow with which Draupadi had told him Arjuna had such matchless, deadly familiarity. Had he his skills and his memories, this wasteland would see a second devastation. They would not even need Pasupata.
"What kind of demons are these vagabonds?" Quintus had picked up enough of the language of Ch'in to supply words to that question and to understand Ganesha's reply.
"We are scholars," said the old man. "And alchemists."
The garrison commander actually fell back a pace. "You? Alchemists? You can make the Elixir of Immortality?"
"We grow no older," Ganesha declared. "I myself remember your First Emperor...."
The garrison commander looked almost as if he would prostrate himself before the sage. His men, too, relaxed their threatening stance, but only slightly. Rufus pointed with his chin at where the troops looked weakest. "We could maybe take them...."
Lucilius approached. "Tell him—offer to strike a bargain," he said. Reddened by grit and strain as they were, his eyes brightened. "Our lives, our weapons, even our Eagle..." The wastrel might mention the Eagle only as an afterthought, but he mentioned it all the same.
"This one is Li Liang-li," said the garrison commander. Ssu-ma Chao drew breath in at the magnitude of that concession, then, hastily, began again to translate as the language grew complex and potentially treacherous. "And this one declares that the Son of Heaven must see you, must speak to you."
Maybe we could take them, Quintus thought. Now that they were shocked, a smaller, tougher force might have a chance at, if not escape, a soldier's death.
Ssu-ma Chao jerked his head, knowing well the mettle of the men at his back. "No. No. If this one has done aught to deserve well of you—" he made you allies, not slaves, "—do not disgrace me before my officers, or I shall have to die, and my men too. In great pain, after witnessing your deaths. And then they would send men to slay my family in the Land of Gold, too, down to the meanest servant. And our memory would be disgraced."
His eyes swept over Lucilius and he spat. "You will win more gold by doing as the commander wishes."
"And we, will we get our freedom?" Lucilius retorted.
The garrison commander Li Liang-li barked a few words. No doubt he suspected this interchange. Ssu-ma Chao sagged in on himself.
"These slaves—" a murmur went up in the ranks as Arsaces, damn his eyes, translated, "—are men of Rhum who have served well and helped us win through many hardships to obey you," Ssu-ma Chao told the commander. His abasement wasn't going to be enough, and he knew it—but it was a try. Ssu-ma Chao offered his pride to save them and perhaps even win them some of the gold pieces for which Lucilius hungered.
"Obedience," said the garrison commander in a heavily accented version of the Parthian current along the caravan roads. "You have a problem with that, have you not?"
He turned to a younger man—his second in command?—who bore the same marks of an aristocratic heir sent out to exotic lands that Lucilius had borne so sleekly long, long before Carrhae.
Patrician, Quintus recognized the breed. Just as prejudiced and arrogant as our own can be.
"Younger brother, mark this man and those like him well. And remember when you return to Ch'ang-an and make your bows before the Son of Heaven seated in brightness before the Dragon Throne. This man in the dust is an officer of the border. Men who serve in these distant regions are not necessarily pious sons and obedient grandsons. They have been deported for some offense; this is why you find them serving there on the frontier. As for the barbarians who company with him, look well at them too and regard them as you would wild beasts."
Ssu-ma Chao flushed, with anger or shame at being thus insulted, and before his men.
Rufus threw Quintus a look that would be
imploring in anyone else and was only bloodthirsty in the centurion. Still want us to hold back?
Clearly, he would have to do something or he might have a mutiny on his hands.
He edged up carefully toward Ganesha, showing the garrison troops that he, at least, was unarmed. "Will you translate for me?" he asked. His Parthian was at least as good as this arrogant officer's. But he had seen men like this one—too many times—who drove their soldiers too hard, denying them rest or drink or shade, and whose arrogance and colossal bad judgment could have gotten them killed had his own word—and the words through him, of his men not been pledged to stay their hands.
Ganesha nodded.