by Andre Norton
His arms swung just as they might have done if he formed part of a column marching down a paved road somewhere in Italy. It was, he thought, much like a galley, its oars beating in unison at the commands of the hortator. But what beat the rhythm here in his mind was not a great drum but the pounding of the blood in temples and heart. Rome had discovered what rhythms would spare mind and heart as long as possible: Pound too long, too fast, or too hard, and the man died.
But not, please all the gods, before he achieved forgetfulness. I am a Roman, his pace said. Left, right; left, right; boots pounding the grit into fine dust. It was all salt here, and he could almost believe in Ganesha's sea stories. Never mind his tales of a sea. You will never see the Middle Sea again. Believe in what lets you march on, he told himself. Left, right.
He was seeking to achieve forgetfulness—but to forget Rome? He had given up family, land, hope of return, even his honor. Now, when he had offered sword to his enemies, must he give up even his patria?
His solution, as Draupadi told him, lay in himself.
But not in Quintus: rather, in the man she named Arjuna, this ancient warrior-prince whose soul, as the wizard priests of Egypt taught, had transmigrated into stubborn Roman flesh. Mule-stubborn. Mule-strong. Left, right; left, right. The sun's hammer clanged down upon his skull—far more drum than he needed.
Forget.
Remember.
The air shimmered. His mind spun. He was Quintus—no, he bore a bow; he had a chariot to drive, and a dancing god to drive him; he was... a man fell out along the line of march and was packed onto a camel by men too weak to waste their strength on swearing.
The air hurt his chest, and he put his hand up to ease it. His fingers caught as the talisman beneath his garments grew warm again.
Out he drew the tiny image of dancing Krishna, a god old before some artisan who had lived in Italy before his own people made this to be laid in some tomb. How the coins of light had flashed out from it before they flew upward, dazzling man and horse so that the direction finder was lost?
Krishna himself—he had danced with light, mourning and rejoicing with the same movements. Quintus— no, Arjuna—now he remembered that. The god had danced with torches. The one he had been had bent and touched Krishna's feet and asked for the god himself, not his armies. And Krishna had made a pact to drive him.
The one he had been possessed a great weapon. He had sat in a ring of fire to trap power. Now, trapped in another life, he remembered the ultimate weapon he had thus won. But what had it been? That he could not remember, not if he marched until the bones of his feet rubbed away into powder as white as the salt flats on which he stood.
It was net power that he had to seek. It was life. He had sought life before, at the ruin by the pool.
Ah yes. His feet moved now without direct control of his body. He was on the right track. Think of a pool. Think of a river. Draupadi's retreat; his river valley. So far away now—but there had been a tale once, a tale he had heard once under an outcropping of the Roof of the World, where men had huddled together: that in the heart of the desert, found only by men at the extremity of need, there bubbled a spring of clear, pure water. But where it was, no man could say for certain.
An oasis, such as they had in Egypt or Judaea or Syria, perhaps? Or was it something more.
They were lost. They could not be more lost or more desperate. All was failing. Perhaps...?
He had heard of such places, so sacred that animals who were each other's mortal enemies might crouch beside each other and fill their throats with pure water, rather than one another's life blood.
Did that water truce apply to Black Naacals as well? Somehow Quintus doubted that. No, that was not his thought; that had to have been the thought of Arjuna... he was far from the discipline he had learned at home. Left, right; left, right.
He was not aware that he had quickened his pace, that gradually he outstripped the other Romans, and was drawing even with the Ch'in. Some still rode, masking mouths and noses against the dust. Some were slung across their saddles. Some marched poorly.
Does the Eagle know? Will it see us? It must. Arjuna's thinking again, perhaps? But one didn't have to be a warrior prince, but just a farm lad to know that birds always knew where there was water. A pity there were no birds in the Takla Makan.
Now he pulled level with the Ch'in soldiers. Ssu-ma Chao, judging the temper of some of his allies, had guards posted to prevent someone from killing Wang Tou-fan.
A pack camel stumbled, then stood swaying. Then, it collapsed; the men and beasts behind it swerved just in time to keep from walking into it.
Quintus too halted. It took an act of genuine will to keep himself out of the line of march.
Up ahead, Ssu-ma Chao signaled orders to unload the dead beast's packs. Odd. Why not leave them where they lay? It hardly seemed as if they could use its burden themselves. Then Quintus's bleary eyes flamed.
The beast had borne the Eagle. Even as he watched, Wang Tou-fan and Ssu-ma Chao came forward. Both men jockeyed for position, worn as they were. Finally, with two or three imperious words and gestures, Wang Tou-fan won the skirmish. He was in command of this. He was. No one else. And he reinforced that by a hand on his sword, waving away even Lucilius, who eyed the Eagle with some of the same longing that the other Romans—those who had stayed faithful—displayed.
There was no point, good common sense told Quintus, in edging forward. He would not get even so much of a glimpse of the Eagle, and his presence might just make a bad situation worse. Still, he found himself heading toward the standard, his feet kicking up clouds of fine grit. It rose, coating him. When he licked his lips, he tasted salt; and he had not had so much water that his body could sweat that much.
As Quintus reached the dead camel, Wang Tou-fan had laid a hand upon the Eagle. He himself, he declared in words Quintus could not understand—and gestures that he could—would strap the prize to his own pack-saddle.
Quintus gestured to Ganesha. Interpret. Please.
"Well enough," Quintus said, Ganesha repeating his words in the language of Ch'in. "Why not take it out and set it up? Let it shine over the place where we lie down to die."
The man glared at Quintus. "You are leading us to death," the Roman spoke, finding words somewhere. "To die is nothing to us. We all owe Rome a death: time we were paying it. But you—have you not a life and a future?"
Lucilius's head came up, sensing a bargain.
"You do not order this one," Wang Tou-fan said through the interpreter.
"No," said Quintus. "But what about them?" Suddenly, he remembered how, in another life, his brother the king had wagered all and lost all. Having nothing, though, he had nothing to lose. Except his life; and he had reckoned that as a dead loss for years.
"Perhaps you can lead," he conceded. "But can you endure? We can teach you that. And they—perhaps they can guide you."
"And what would you demand for this service?" Too wise, despite Ganesha's earlier attempt to soften the sting of Wang Tou-fan's lies.
"The Eagle," Quintus said bluntly. "Then, if we die, we die in possession of our standard." He shrugged. "You may yet outlast us, and then it would be your possession once more." Much against his better judgment, he glared at Lucilius. "As it is now."
The patrician glared in return but said nothing.
"Well?" Bluff. Pretend you are in a position of strength. It hardly seemed, he realized, like the Roman Quintus, sober, dull, who was about to gamble with life and honor both. He warned himself not to look weak. For the strong do as they will, while the weak suffer what they must. He had been weak for too long.
"And," he added craftily, "a garrison may come and put paid to our agreement after all. What have you to lose?"
Ssu-ma Chao turned away, as if expressing—what? Laughter? Gods, he had spirit. He should have been a Roman.
There was one problem, Quintus thought. If Ssu-ma Chao assented, he would be on the cross before he clasped arms with him like
a brother.
"Have you any idea of where we are?"
Help me, Quintus wished of Ganesha and Draupadi with all his might.
"Before the stars changed," Ganesha said promptly, "all this basin was a great Inland Sea. I have seen the charts. In it were islands at which ships might land and..."he allowed himself to look wistful. "They had springs of sweet water, trees bearing fruit. They cannot all have perished wholly; for they were at the very heart of the sea. We might well find water at such a place. But we would need to go into the very bowels of the desert. Have you the courage for it?"
"Say we reach this water. What then?"
"We will have the strength," Quintus said, "to try again for Miran. Or send out a fast scouting party—as we should have done." Had you been a true officer instead of a wastrel and a traitor. He fixed his eyes on Lucilius, willing the patrician tribune to shift his loyalties.
"We have no better choice." Lucilius forced the words out as if under torture. As perhaps he was: He suffered more from the heat than some of the others.
Wang Tou-fan stood irresolute. Clearly, he was afraid; clearly he was thinking rapidly as threat, fear, and exhaustion worked in him. Cunning flashed across his features. Try again. Betray the men who helped you. All of them, especially that stiff-necked oaf who rules an outpost and gives himself the airs of the Son of Heaven. It might not even be necessary to share with the traitor—after all, are they not all barbarians, and the men of the western deserts only slightly better?
"Done!" he said, forgetting nobility and sounding like one of the merchants who had predicted nothing but destruction for this caravan.
Trying not to let his hands shake with eagerness; Quintus nodded gravely, and held out his arms to receive the Eagle.
And, although the sky looked as if not enough water to form even the tiniest of clouds had ever touched it, thunder rumbled and lightning danced across the horizon.
22
THE STANDARD EASED into Quintus's hand, and the sun swooped down upon it, picking out each detail of the bird's bronze plumage. It felt right in his hand, fitting like the hilt of a veteran's sword. He shut his eyes against the dazzle of the sun on the Eagle's wings and his own tears.
The first time he had held it, only for a moment, in The Surena's camp, it had been before a blow to his head had nearly driven wits and life from him. He remembered, how he remembered, the reek of blood, sweat, and metal that had been one of the last things he had sensed. But with the fear and the pain had come the realization that he had come, at last, to the right place and done the right thing.
Perhaps he had defended a leader not worthy of his service, but Crassus had been a proconsul of Rome; and that was worth, he thought, any price he might pay. And here, far from Rome, was its very sign. Whether or not any word of his life and service ever reached the patres conscripti who were as much an object of his grandsire's veneration as the family altar, or that turbulent, brawling people who had transformed the lands around the Tiber, once again, he had that sense of purpose.
Grounding the standard, as he had in that enemy city not so far in the past, Quintus surveyed the shrunken force. His own renewal of spirit had inspired the others— and it had been a long, long time since he had thought of them as "his men." In the presence of their Eagle, they stood ready, falling perhaps by instinct into the familiar pattern.
Quintus felt himself aglow with a light that did not fade. It fed upon him, yet it returned a new strength in exchange. Using him as a focus, that inner strength reached out to his men, uniting them into not just a fighting force but one spirit.
That dazzle was gone, leaving Quintus with the sense that something profound had been accomplished—but just what, he couldn't find a name for.
Draupadi approached, eyeing the Eagle warily. "That is no less your weapon," she said, "than the sword you bear."
The sword he bore had been Arjuna's. Quintus stared upward—would that proud bronze bird now take wing?
In his grasp, the standard quivered as if the Eagle surmounting it indeed mantled its wings, ready for flight. But that was only the way of eagles in the heights. Aloft in their own place, they swooped down, arcing, and circling, borne by the winds from the peaks. Here were no mountains.
A glow from the Eagle reached to gild the sky. There, the color was deepening and turning sullen. Quintus tore his eyes from the Eagle to look to Ssu-ma Chao. Before any of the buran, the great desert storms, the sky turned brazen. Then, as the storm struck, it darkened with wind, thickened and made visible with grit and sand.
A prudent traveler—and Ssu-ma Chao was the best they had—would be alert to such changes and would order out the protective felts in time. Thus, Ssu-ma Chao opened his mouth to shout, scrabbling for his own protective coverings. And then the Easterner paused, as if at a loss. All along the line of march, the camels stood motionless, not complaining the way they did when sensing a storm.
Yet that sky, like a brass bowl overturned above them, was now the color that heralded the worst of storms. Only there was no wind, no stir of sand. The very air itself might now be as dead as the land.
The camels began to crowd together, as if in rebellion against a too-weighty burden. There was a heaviness pressing down upon all until Quintus was certain that even the long dunes would be flattened—even without a wind.
Draupadi whirled about, scanned the horizon, then turned to Ganesha.
"All about us—we are ringed in."
The old man turned to face outward as if confronting a still-invisible enemy.
It was Lucilius who launched into action, breaking the spell. His green eyes wide with fear, he edged closer to the standard, step by heavy step. He might have been struggling against a swollen river current.
"The Eagle," he mouthed. "Give..."
Quintus swung the standard out of reach.
"Give it to him," ordered Wang Tou-fan.
"Let him take it," Quintus retorted. He spoke without any regard for rank. Surely it must be clear to all that the Eagle chose—men obeyed.
"Let him try, that is," the tribune added.
About Quintus, the decimated Roman force came slowly alive. Some moved forward to stand between Quintus and the Ch'in soldiers. One or two moved in as if to guard Draupadi and Ganesha. The rest, without being commanded, fell into their familiar ranks.
Again, Lucilius grabbed for the Eagle.
"No." Quintus jerked it out of his reach.
Then the sand began to hum. Singing sand, some wayfarers called it. However, this was no howl, but like the flaps of some appalling insect's wings, enticing lesser creatures to come and be devoured.
Beneath their blistered feet, the ground trembled. Thunder drummed, then rumbled again, as if summoning full force. A faint blue spark flew from man to man in the ranks. The sky darkened toward twilight. Now the air seemed to cool. The bedraggled crests on the Romans' helms rose. Quintus sensed energies building up the way the tension builds in a catapult.
"Iron," muttered Ganesha. "There is iron here, and they know it...."
"Quick!" Draupadi cried. "The metal you wear—off with it for your lives' sake!"
Long ago, most of the Romans had stowed their armor on packbeasts. The Ch'in mainly wore harnesses of leather. But still, there were iron nails in the Legions' boots.... The matted hair on the back of Quintus's neck stirred. Shed belts, weapons, tools, yes, but to go barefoot in this realm of sharp rocks was a sentence of slow death, and he had a sudden nightmare image of Black Naacals tracking them by sniffing along bloody footprints.
However, it was Draupadi who had warned them. And she knew what might follow. "Off with boots—all iron!" he commanded.
What of his own footcoverings? He could stoop to shed them, but he would have to drop the Eagle to do so. Better to stand, to feel this immensity of power as it built up. Was this what Arjuna had found when he discovered Pasupata and learned to wield it? Was this the ultimate warrior's test? He wished he could remember.
Tension con
tinued to build. Quintus's hands quivered as the metal of the Eagle vibrated, and that movement fed down the staff. He could almost hear the bronze hum.
A savage crack split heaven and earth, blinding Quintus. The bolt of white, tinged with purple, was the last thing he saw. Caught in the darkness, he felt the rumble of the thunder even through his feet, oversetting his balance. He toppled to his knees.
Exhausted as they were, the pack animals plunged and screamed. Someone shrieked, a terrible sound, annihilated by the thunder and the stink of burning. Now the wind did blow, and Quintus scented garlic and approaching rain, incongruous in this waste. His eyes watered, as tears forced themselves out beneath his eyelids.
Voices nearby: