Empire of the Eagle

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.

"Say then ... to the ... use whatever courtesies you think are the best..."he had no better idea of it, "... for him if he needs to have his pride satisfied that, changeable as we of Rome may be, when we pledge our word, that is as fixed as the North Star. And our word is pledged to the officer who treated us with the honor he accords to his own—and expects to have accorded to himself."

Ganesha's sly, warm eyes lit. "Wit, I see, is another bow you can draw. You have hit in the gold this time— right upon the thoughts of one of the Realm of Gold's most honored sages. I shall tell this Li Liang-li that your people do as they would hope to be done by."

Ganesha's voice rose in the rapid tonal babble of the Realm of Gold. So long it took, Quintus thought, to say in his tongue what would be only a few brief words in good, plain Latin. The aristocratic younger officer reacted with an indignant rush of breath and a lift of elegantly slanted brows. "Rung Fu Tse," he exclaimed. His superior officer seemed barely to listen, yet the stiffness of his posture relaxed somewhat.

"Do you want their swords?" Quintus strode forward. Spears leveled at his breast, and he ignored them. It was right, what he did: challenge this arrogant man by his own codes to deal with them justly. He could even defend the word of Ssu-ma Chao, who had treated them almost as if he were himself a Roman, and who had been disgraced for it before his soldiers.

Lucilius shot him a look that clearly indicated he had been out in the desert too long with his head uncovered: Yet, still, he held out his sword, defying the garrison commander to take it and thus confess fear not only of the Romans but of the Ch'in soldiers who had campaigned with them.

A gesture of rejection would have been useful. A word of respect should have been his—and would have been, were Quintus dealing with honorable Romans; but he was used enough to less. Li Liang-li simply turned his shoulder. He spoke to Ssu-ma Chao. "The Son of Heaven can be merciful. He has commanded his generals to be lenient to most faults, as long as general discipline is maintained." A dismissive hand gesture showed what he thought of that mercy.

Ssu-ma Chao handed Quintus's sword to a soldier, who took it to the tribune. He received it with as close to a Ch'in bow as he could muster. Again, under a patron's yoke? Quintus had sworn never to bend his back like a client again—but he had his men to think of. He must be hostage to them. He might regret this, but he sheathed it in the instant before the officer turned back toward him.

"The Emperor, my master, has ordered all the people of the south to show their obedience. The heads of the disobedient are exposed at Ch'ang-an, in the sight of all the world. You—you must acknowledge him as sovereign."

"He's pressing his luck," Lucilius muttered. To Quintus's astonishment, he saw the young patrician and the Ch'in aristocrat exchange what could almost have been a wink. Quintus supposed, though, that he should be glad that he had Lucilius's support for at least this much—but he could have done without that wink.

So, it was further exile and what might yet prove to be slavery? He thought of his days as a client as having been hard. He realized now that he had not even begun to test the meaning of the word "hardship" or of his own endurance. He had thought himself bereft to have lost father and grandsire and estates: Now, he had seen Legions raised for the majesty of Rome thrown away by noble fools. And he had survived that much. He had found farmwork and a warrior's training arduous: Now, he had endured heights and deserts that could freeze the blood or make it boil, if demons did not drain it first.

Now, he foresaw his task would be to march even further east into the realms of a gold he would never partake of. We will show these strangers Romans! he wanted to shout to his men, to hear them cheer, to see them salute. Here, in Kashgar, or at the throne of the tyrant that ruled all Asia. Armed, or in chains. He would show these people Romans. He gestured for Rufus to dress the column. The Legionaries' bodies cast long shadows. A fine drift of grit lined his face; dust, like a saffron veil, skimmed before his eyes, scouring the moisture from them even as it made him want to rub them clean.

The garrison commander shouted more commands. His riders formed up, some riding as exceedingly watchful guards behind the column of Romans. Down the last of the great rocks into the grit the combined forces marched, up the steep ridges of immense, winding dunes, not stopping even long enough for food. It was a deliberate test of their heart and their strength. Watch, you arrogant barbarian. These are Romans. Wherever the Eagle was stowed, they would march as proudly as if under its shadow.

The reddening sunlight glinted off the salt flats until they resembled the plain of Carrhae the sunset after the battle had been lost.

As they marched behind the garrison forces, torches sparked up, either to alert guards posted along the line of march or to signify from guardpost to guardpost that troops were approaching Kashgar.