Quintus brought his hand up in a very private salute over his heart, to the spot where the talisman had rested practically since he laid his childhood bulla on the household altar. It was gone, and so was the boy who had found it. But the man that boy had grown into could almost feel the bruises it had given him in warning him the many times it saved his life.
True, he had the Eagle, but the tiny bronze had been his private guard and treasure. He would miss it.
Draupadi at his side was warm and real to his touch. He thought, perhaps, he might not miss the talisman quite so much if they both lived. Her hand clasped his. The touch made him feel the way he did when the Eagle seemed to stir. In the darkness, the standard's reassuring light glowed, like a fire in the desert glimpsed from far away by a traveler unsure of his path. Roman and Ch'in alike ringed closely around it, basking in the light.
Draupadi shivered. Quintus offered her the Eagle to carry, but she shook her head.
"They are out there. Do you feel them?" she whispered.
"Who?" he asked. Black Naacals? By now they would have attacked, seeking to destroy the remnants of the Romans' and Ch'ins' failing strength.
"Not them. Hush. Wait."
Quintus obeyed. And after awhile, up in the rocks, pinpoints of light winked into tremulous light, strengthened, and resolved themselves into flames that bobbed as if their bearers walked slowly and reluctantly down to the waiting soldiers.
Then the lights stopped. And waited.
28
METAL RASPED BEHIND Quintus, and the line of men drew up, curved, and moved out to flank and protect him.
"Archers," Ssu-ma Chao ordered. Even shooting into the dark, a volley of arrows might take out a number of... of whatever laired in that forbidding tumble of rock up ahead. To that extent, the Ch'in officer's command made sense.
Arrows whined and buzzed like some ferocious beehive, struck with a spear in midsummer. A man screamed and died, blood running from his mouth. Drona, teacher to warriors and princes, had died thus, Quintus thought—or was it Arjuna, speaking into his memories?
The trouble was, a volley of arrows would kill some but anger and disperse the others. The wisest policy would be to follow them up into the rocks—but not by night.
Quintus shook his head. "Testudo," he ordered. "Make ready. And make sure that you bring the men of Ch'in into it." They were not trained for such close combat order, but they were allies: and he could hope that this new enemy had not seen such a defense before.
Overhead, the Eagle's light gleamed, a brighter, tinier moon: as above, so below. Quintus thought he could see figures moving down from the heights, their eyes wide, their mouths open, their backs stiff almost as if they forced themselves along. Like the Romans, had they learned to fear newcomers?
"Draupadi, you go to the rear," Quintus gave the shoulder he held a gentle pressure.
"You will need..." she began.
Ganesha pushed forward past the Legionaries. "Do not fight," he commanded. "Do not so much as move." So absolute was the authority in his voice, so impressive was he in his wrinkled Naacal's robe, that Quintus's hand fell from his sword. He raised a hand, holding the men in their places before they could raise their shields to form the tortoise defense that would protect them from a flight of arrows.
The old man smoothed out his robe, otherwise untouched by the ever-present hardships and dust of the desert. It bore gold embroidery that shone in the light of moon and Eagle. "Come with me, Draupadi," he said. "We must welcome them."
"Are you mad?" Quintus rounded on the old man with a snarl. One moment, Ganesha had leaned gasping against the rocks; at the next, he was likely to throw lives away.
"Are you? We have tracked the Black Naacals to their lair. These—" he gestured at the rocks with their pinpoint torches, steady now, "—have not attacked us as the Black Naacals surely would have done. Therefore, it is not they, perhaps, who are our enemies—"
"They could be spies—" Ssu-ma Chao suggested.
"Or they could be souls in torment!" Draupadi flared. "At the Stone Tower, you know what you saw. You saw what the Dark Ones do. Terror and suffering are their servants, but they have human slaves as well."
"And what is to stop these men slaying us to please their masters?" Lucilius sneered.
Ganesha shook his head. "What stops any slave from turning on his master? Fear. And what gives a man the strength to turn against the master who abuses him? A greater fear, perhaps; aye, or a vision of courage beyond anything such a man has dared to dream."
There had been a road and lining the road crosses, each bearing the tortured body of a man, his chest heaving or too still, his legs broken, and his face blackened from lack of air. Gladiators. Had they seen Spartacus as a greater fear or the image of a type of courage that they, fighters though they were, had never aspired to?
Fellow feeling with gladiators and revolted slaves? And you call yourself a Roman? It was un-Roman. It was subversive. It was also, probably, completely accurate. Imagine a man from Thrace or some other barbarous spot, taken as a slave, sold to a lanista to win his life back again and again, or to die, dragged by the heels from the arena. It was a vision of Tartarus to match what he had seen at the Stone Tower.
Narrow of eye, Quintus watched the torches moving so slowly toward the Romans. Slaves, perhaps. Fearful slaves. Jupiter Optimus Maximus, let even some of them have the courage of the gladiators who had followed Spartacus and who had all but marched on Rome. What allies they would make!
He must have looked eager because Ganesha spoke quickly, for his ears alone. "You are a man of war," he said. "And if I am wrong, you are leader here and must not be tossed away. I shall go and speak to them."
"And I." It did not surprise him that Draupadi volunteered.
"If what you say is true, priests enslaved these folk. Would they not fear and hate any priests then?" Quintus asked. "You had far better let me go."
"Not alone," growled Rufus. "Not alone." A gesture from Quintus silenced him.
Draupadi shook her head. Her long black hair whipped about the lustrous cloth of her white robe. "What priests have done that was ill, others must remedy." She stepped close to him and looked into his face. "But, if you will, follow us at several paces' distance and light our way."
Side by side, the way Draupadi and Ganesha had maintained the passage beneath the arch, they walked toward the rocks and the men on them. Quintus followed, holding aloft the Eagle as a standard-bearer might follow his commander. In truth, this was but a paltry thing, this parade of just two priests and one soldier—not all that good at his trade, if it came to that, even after all this time.
The Eagle's light blazed and expanded around them as if, in truth, it spread out mighty, gleaming wings. The Naacals' white robes shone in its light, giving Draupadi and Ganesha additional majesty, like gods appearing before mortals: pristine, austere, white-robed. Impossible to imagine them afraid or weeping or even moving through a land that had been as badly violated as this.
True, there were only two White Naacals here. But as they marched imperturbably forward, Quintus saw what a force they must have been in the fullness of their power—thousands of them in procession, chanting, determined to serve what was not only what was just the law, but what was right. Draupadi and Ganesha might be alone in body, but in spirit, they were part of a host. Now they raised their hands and were singing in a language that Quintus had heard them use once or twice before.
Once again, time and place shifted focus. Incense and the brine of the sea on a fine day wreathed him about as he paced behind priests toward an altar adorned with the Flame itself.
Light welled from the standard he bore, spilling out over the ravaged land, up the rocky slope like a benediction. It was not, he saw now, just a jumble of rocks. Some of that hill—perhaps the greatest part—was a ruin, as if some enormous Temple complex had once stood there, but had fallen in on itself when the land had shifted and drunk the sea dry.
The Naacals' chan
t took on the aspects of a summons. Tears came to Quintus's eyes. How he remembered— evenings by the Tiber, when the mists rose and turned the air a gentle blue, when the echoes softened, and it was time for boys like him to go home, to wash rapidly, and stand behind father and grandsire as they sacrificed to the family gods before whatever dinner might be prepared from their own fields and very little coin. Such a simple, such a safe life: No wonder it seemed almost sacred to him now. No wonder the Naacals thought it might entice the men upslope, brutalized and terrorized as they doubtless were, to come forward.
He blessed Ganesha and Draupadi for reminding him, even on the brink of the greatest danger he had ever faced, of all he had been given. He had regained all, now, that he had ever lost and more besides, for now he understood the full value of everything he had ever had. And he was not alone. Rocks clattered and spun down from the hill. The torches upslope wavered, then moved forward more confidently....
...As Quintus watched, the man in the lead threw down the torch he carried. In the next moment, he had cast himself down at Ganesha's and Draupadi's feet. His shoulders heaved with the force of his sobs. Their song broke off, and the priests diminished into themselves: an aged man and a lovely woman trying to coax up from his humiliation a man who had already suffered much, who had feared and who still feared, but who had seen in them what might be an end to all fear.
Now, from behind him, crept many more men, wary, but making what must surely be the bravest decision of their whole lives: to risk trusting the white-robed priests who called to them.
Having approached, they saw the armed men behind Ganesha and Draupadi, and they froze where they stood or knelt.
Draupadi murmured sorrowfully. She stepped forward, Ganesha following her. Quintus moved as if to accompany them, but she gestured him to remain in place the way he would command one of his Legionaries.
The men—for all here were men—looked like the hungriest dregs of the Subura, who skulked in abandoned buildings, preying on the old, the sick, and the unwary. Only... only there were old men among them too, and they stared at the Naacals with a desperate hope.
The white robes seemed to shine more brightly. Another of the newcomers hobbled forward. He was an old man, his cheeks sunken, his back bent, and he hobbled, leaning heavily upon a crutch.
"How may we help you, my son?" Ganesha asked.
Quintus blinked. What language was he speaking? It was not Ch'in; his Ch'in was not good enough for him to understand. Nor was it Parthian, not exactly. And it surely was not one of the tongues of Hind. Yet, he understood it as if it were the Latin he had learned as a child.
"Are you hungry? Afraid? These our friends will protect you," Ganesha promised.
Ask if they have water!
The old man, his back bent by rotten living and ever-present fear, began to tremble violently. His crutch fell from his now-strengthless arm, and he began to topple. Draupadi was there before he could abase himself. She raised him to his feet and supported him until a much younger but equally ragged man retrieved the crutch and handed it to him.
Draupadi, ignoring his protests, helped him adjust it. A strand of her black hair fell across his face, its dusty length suddenly sparkling as if a tear fell on it. When the old man could stand on his own, she pulled away. The Eagle's light picked out the joy and those tears on the old man's face, which filled the seams that age and fear had graven in his flesh. Worn he looked, and long abused. But beneath' the ragged cloth that bound up his sparse shock of white hair, the man's eyes glowed.
"Two Children of the Sun," he whispered. He broke into a sob of incredulous joy. "At long last, and against all hope, they have come. To shield us from the dark!"
29
SOLDIERS AND SLAVES alike huddled in a hollow that had surely been part of a palace or temple complex. Their feet scrabbled not just on grit but on stone and jagged tile, cracked from years of small, carefully nourished fires. Two fragments of what had been a high wall remained. Part of a once-splendid frieze adorned one of them—the serpent that was the Naacals' god sign—and marching along the other, robed forms of priests approaching an altar.
Now that the slaves had realized that the newcomers were not Black Naacals, to demand immediate victims, the women among them had ventured forth too. A trick of the light made the priests' faces seem very real—the tall fair sons and daughters of the Motherland itself, the shorter Uighurs with their thin eyes, concealed in merry folds, and the Southerners, so like Ganesha and Draupadi as to be closest kin. Below them were those unfortunate folk of the successor races who had been swept up in the Black Naacals' nets—those of Ch'in, those of Hind, even one or two of the Hsiung-nu or their distant cousins, wrapped in felts or pelts. The Ch'in soldiers stared askance at them, but clearly, they felt themselves to be in their own place—if you could call this ruin anyone's home.
With the air of one daring greatly, Ganesha leaned forward and placed a lock of hair upon the fire. It burned the more brightly, though without scent, and its smoke rose into the night sky.
"Will they not know we are here?" Quintus asked.
"They? How shall they not know anything?" asked a man with coloring like Ganesha. "How not? Some of us they actually begot—or our grandsires. Others... I thought I would die, my eyes staring straight up at the sun when our last camel died of thirst. But they took me up, me and all of those who otherwise would have perished. At first we thought we had found kindly rescuers and employers. And then...
"How long have you been here?" asked Ganesha. "Valmiki, you have years on you. Do you recall? Look up at the stars and tell me truthfully."
The eldest of the men dwelling in this ruin levered himself up painfully to his feet. Ganesha offered him his arm. "Master, I must not dare."
"Valmiki." The older-seeming man submitted. Adjusting his pace to Valmiki's, Ganesha led him outside to study the patterns of the stars.
"Do you remember the waste?" Draupadi asked a woman with the pure features of the Motherland.
"I remember," she whispered. She was weeping. Her eyes reflected the firelight, but then went opaque with dread. "Oh, do not ask me to say it. The earth trembled. The sun itself seemed to wink out, and we could not see beyond the hill. Kinte's son was born in that hour, and she died of it, without even a sight of the sky. And when we looked out again, the water had drained away, and the ground—which had been seabed—was cracked and already drying."
"Kinte's son?" Draupadi asked. "Is he here?"
"I beg you, do not make me remember!" the woman cried. "They took him!"
Lucilius pushed himself away from the fire. Even now, he was fastidious and hated the reek of burning dung—though he had been glad enough to warm himself. Quintus heard him greet Ganesha outside. For Valmiki he had no word.
"Is he not hungry?... There will be food...." another of the women said.
Draupadi shrugged, too intent on calming the weeping woman.
"You have been generous past praise already," she said. "Sharing with us. Giving us water."
"Watch him?" suggested one of the Romans. Rufus growled silence. Treacherous or not, he was still one of their tribunes. But that was not all that troubled Rufus. A paterfamilias could decide which of his children might live and which were unfit and must be abandoned. Could. How many did? Clearly, Rufus thought, too many. And the Black Naacals usurped those rights.... Pretty soon, Quintus thought, Rufus was going to want to fight them.
"Like those whoremasters in Carthage," he muttered at the soldiers. One of them made a small, shocked sound: There was nothing worse, nothing more scandalous than a mystery cult turned sour; and the Tophet of Carthage combined the hatred of an enemy with the grisly fascination of such a place, its priests turned savage.
The woman who had begged not to be questioned clung to Draupadi's shoulder. They murmured together, words clearly meant to be kept away from the men.
"She is of the North," Draupadi said. "And she has been here very long, like Valmiki, since the world change
d. She is almost my agemate," the priestess added bleakly.
"And the others..." Quintus began. He glanced around. All the peoples of Asia seemed to be represented here, some drawn from a dying caravan, one or two lost in the waste, even a few bought in a bazaar—a cast-off concubine, perhaps, or a wounded horseman or just a traveler too old or weak to withstand a day's journey in the deepest desert. Collected and left here.
In the darkness, eyes glowed. There were always different listeners, as men and women came and went on whatever errands they must do. Did the Black Naacals keep watch or revelry tonight? The Romans feared to ask. How many of these castaways survived? And how many served out of fear, not loyal awe? Quintus would have traded a year of his life to ask those questions, even though he realized that a year of his life here might be no valuable commodity.
"We would have fled. But where would we have gone?" the woman cried. "We had the holy writings. Some of us had the golden vestments—not all. Those few who survived and knew where everything was had purposefully clouded minds, lest they torture us and, in crying out, give away all our secrets." She raised her head with bleak pride.