"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.
19
SIGNALS AND THE blaze of torches warned the guards posted on the walls of the city of the travelers' approach. Even the fields were guarded by farmers who bore themselves like fighting men, Quintus saw the next day. Only sparse green showed in the dusty soil, somewhat darker near the channels that carried the thin streams of water that made any growth at all possible this close to desolation.
Kashgar, or Su-le as the Ch'in called it, was twice walled: by tall, thin poplars that cast columns of meager shadow on the marching, weary men, and by its actual fortifications—walls as high as forty feet. The walls were whitewashed, and glistened in the sun and they ended in guard platforms and square towers. Quintus could see the poles to which torches or signals could be attached. Knowing how such towers could be stocked, he began to count them. The sum was a city's strength.
A flurry of lights winked from the walls. Scrapings and stampings of feet warned those outside that weapons had been trained on the approaching men. Notwithstanding that soldiers and officers of Su-le—including Li Liang-li—rode with them, the garrison had turned out. Quintus peered past the high, neat walls. He could see piles of wood—a rare treasure in these parts unless you counted brushwood. No doubt it was kept for night signals.
"Fully stocked, I'd wager," Rufus muttered approvingly as they rode toward the gates. The place indeed looked as self-contained as any garrison city in which they had ever been stationed.
"Lucilius is the gambler, not me," the tribune replied. "I wouldn't throw my silver away on a sure thing— assuming we ever see a paymaster again."
That subject touched too close to home. Ch'in was supposed to be the Land of Gold, but they had seen precious little gold, silver, copper, or even brass. Even a Roman slave usually had some coin about him. But prisoners... like slaves, prisoners were property: Their status may have shifted, but not by all that much.
"Rough land to farm," the centurion commented, moving away from the sore subject. They had ridden past fields reclaimed from the waste with painstaking care and backbreaking labor, cultivated by strong men and women whose every move seemed as deliberate as it had been taught on the drill field. Wrest the food from the land, green from the ochre and ashen. Husband the water. Make the land—if it couldn't be made to bloom— feed its people. Preserve it against raiders and enemies and whatever demons now stalked it. Even the eldest of the farmers bore himself like a soldier.
"Not where I'd choose to claim my land and mule," Rufus said. "What about you, sir?"
The haze of the river valley Quintus had called home for too short a time rose in his imagination. Even when his family's fortune was at its lowest, that land had held a wealth of water and soil that the sere fields of Kashgar could never hope to reach. This was poor land, but it was home to the soldierly men and sturdy women who worked it. They had land of their own and a future they could count on—a fortune far beyond the reach of the Romans.
Unless, of course, the Black Naacals conquered.
Hot wind fanned Quintus's face. He started. That had felt as if he stood too close to a fire. He had been expecting the damp, Tuscan breezes. They might bear flux and fever, but at that moment, he would have we
lcomed the dampness against his parched skin and run the risk of illness. The hot winds here ruffled the trappings of his horse and flicked a glint or two from the matted gold of Lucilius's hair, darkened almost to the color of less noble Romans. It was all the gold Lucilius could count on, he often said. Just as well he couldn't gamble it away with older men, or he'd have been bald by now.
Once again, the patrician tribune rode as close as he could to the Ch'in officers. His eyes followed the young underofficer from the capital. Lucilius is a man for women, Quintus reminded himself. That one's another like himself—another noble with his fortune to make by impressing bigger nobles.
He noted that Lucilius's Parthian was improving. He wondered, however, if the young Ch'in aristocrat would risk a chance of impressing Li Liang-li long enough to speak to any of the Romans. Aha! Now Lucilius managed to meet his eye, nodded; but the other man turned his head away. Quintus suppressed a crack-lipped smile: That was as fine a snub as he had seen in all his days of clienthood. Lucilius flushed, that is, he flushed as much as you could tell from the clean patches in the pale mask of dust and grit that was his face.
Let him try again. Let him know what it feels like. And then, please all the gods, let him succeed. The equivalent of a patrician tribune would be a formidable ally, especially if they were sent on eastward to the capital of Ch'ang-an. Some of them, he was sure, would indeed be sent in just the same way as Crassus and the other proconsuls pillaged the eastern provinces for exotic goods and noble hostages. But who would be among them? Lucilius, if he had his way. Arsaces, perhaps: He was useful with beasts and could be serviceable during the march as well as a translator. Himself? He was only commander by default. Perhaps it was time to turn command over to Lucilius, if he could accomplish anything with it. And then, perhaps, Quintus could stay here with those of the Romans who were not sent on ahead. He might even get to work this stubborn land.
In a way, it would be little different from the fates of his brother Legionaries at Merv—save that here, perhaps, they would have at least a chance at a kind of freedom. And land. Certainly, it was dry, but there was water here. Otherwise, there would be no fields and no poplars. What a cohort or so of Romans, working together, might build... aqueducts soaring in the Italian hills flickered in his mind's eye. His head felt as if his brains were boiling under his turban. And beneath his tunic gathered the familiar power of his talisman.
Danger here? Or was it forgetfulness? Folly to dream of land and a future, even as bleak and isolated a one as Su-le, for himself and his followers. Draupadi rode past, and the talisman heated again. Oh gods, she would be sent on, and he could not let her go alone. Not after what he had vowed.
The Ch'in guards closed in around here. A look from Ssu-ma Chao was all the apology he was going to get: the Ch'in officer was a man with two masters to obey now.
The gates of Kashgar opened to engulf them. For an instant, the walls' shadow swallowed them—an instant of blessed coolness and darkness. Then they passed through the stockade into the town itself. Above them on the walls, guards stood prepared.
"Alert," Rufus commented. "Maybe too much so?"
The Ch'in soldiers did have the too-tense look of men who constantly await attack: from what direction or enemy they do not know. You could see that in Li Liang-li: arrogant, high-handed, still ready to jump at shadows with deadly force. Men did that—from the merest recruit to proconsuls in their glory—when they were afraid. And judging from what Quintus had seen, this was a town, a region, a land that had right to be afraid.
Harness jingled amid the cries of sullen, weary beasts that scented water and an end to toil not far ahead. For the first time in months, the clamor of a town enveloped them. Food that was not dried or seared over a dung fire—Quintus's mouth watered. Best not think of it; after all, prisoners' rations might not bear thinking on. And he had no money. Certainly he had none for extra food. And—a more painful thought—he had no coin for even the type of gift that a client, back in Rome, was able to buy for a woman.
A camel snaked out her neck. The foul-breathed jaws snapped. Quintus recognized that beast, as he would have known what it bore if he had seen it in Hades. The Eagle. Relax, he told himself. You are worn out. The gates are shut, and even if that camel breaks loose, it's not going anywhere.
Clearly, the soldiers on the wall agreed that for now, the threat was past. They relaxed minutely, no longer considering themselves to be under immediate danger of attack. One or two men who seemed to be off-duty pointed and laughed at the angry beast, which was plunging and snapping in a very determined attempt to live down to camels' reputation for terrible dispositions.
Except that in all the time the beast had been part of the caravan, it had never once spit on or lunged at any of its drivers. That was one reason it had been selected to bear the Eagle sent on before. It had even been the subject of some jokes, though its driver had been much envied. Now it moaned, snapped, and tried to break free, lashing out at the men who dodged and attempted to restrain it. One man went sprawling. He rolled fast, seeking to dodge the beast.
"If that were a dog, I'd swear it was mad," Rufus commented. "About time they brought it under control."
Some of the others thought that way, too. Arsaces was a horseman, but even as he approached the maddened camel, hands out, a man in a mottled robe brought a staff down on the Persian's back. A moment later, he rolled beneath the camel's feet. Even in the noise of the square, Quintus heard the snap of bone. Arsaces's face was bloody and scraped. His neck hung twisted at an impossible angle.
My sword! Damn, I knew this was folly!
Where had Arsaces's damned mount gotten itself to? Ah, there! When Quintus swerved to try to seek out the man who had struck the guide down, he had vanished into the crowd. Get the sword, in case he comes back. But a soldier with a drawn sword barred his way.
How did you avenge a comrade on a camel? A Persian, Arsaces was, but he had served the Legions well, with a loyalty exceeding anything they might have expected from a man of the East. Hard to believe that energy was stilled. What folly had prompted Quintus to go unarmed?
Again, the beast plunged and twisted. Its pack started to slip to one side as the girths of its packsaddle weakened. There was that murderer once more! His staff cracked down, this time on the camel's back. Again, the beast lunged. Its saddle jolted farther to the side. Straps snapped, and it fell. So carefully wrapped was the Eagle that Quintus could not hear the clang of metal striking earth. The staff lashed out again, a final blow. With a grunt, as if all the air in its body had been forced from its lungs at once, the beast collapsed on top of Arsaces.
Now the thief and killer in a mottled robe boldly snatched for the roll of fabric that was the Eagle of Rome.
"Get him!"
"Shoot!"
"Kill that thief!"
The man in desert robes had snatched up the pack and hauled it across his back. He swung about, desperately seeking a road of escape. Perhaps he might have made it, had the Romans not been there, had the thing he sought to steal been anything but a Legion's Eagle. But if the Romans' way was blocked, so was his.
The thief's eyes were black, yet they shone strangely in sockets blackened against the sun. His face—Quintus had seen that elegance of feature before, and that supple length of limb—on Draupadi. This ragged, murderous thief looked enough like her to be close kin.
Ssu-ma Chao beckoned his men aside. After all, it wasn't as if the Romans were going anywhere out of town, either. Might as well let them take out the thief. He held his staff out before him.
This murderer had the Eagle, and their way to him was clear!
Quintus hurled himself forward, even as Draupadi cried his name—his or Arjuna's—he no longer cared. All he knew was that no one, no one at all, must be allowed to kill a comrade and steal a pack, least of all when it held the Eagle of the Legion.
He shouted in sheer rage. The man in the shabby robes could escape! Now he was heading toward the gates, but they
were shut, blocked by the Ch'in as well as the Romans. Quintus moved into the thief's path. He raised his staff.
"For all the gods' sake! Give me a sword!" he cried. The idea that he might be perceived as begging the Ch'in for the order they should keep in one of their frontier cities enraged him. "Get him!"
"Men of Ta'Chin!" Ssu-ma Chao shouted. Drawing his own sword, he tossed it at Quintus. It glinted as it flew, catching the flash of the hot sun; the Roman caught it in time to bring it up against the thief's staff.
The staff hit the borrowed blade with a ring of two blades clashing. The force of that clash rocked Quintus. Heat flowed up the sword he held into its hilt, from its hilt up his arm, into his body. Flames shot from the sword, wreathing about his enemy. The man swung his staff so that it whistled with the force that sent it passing through the air. Once more came the ring of metal against metal.
Though that weapon had looked to be wood, surely it was fashioned from something harder by far. From the slight hollowness in the ring as his blade clashed against the staff, Quintus sensed that it was past its breaking point. Sweat glued the hilt to his hand.
Another blow. Quintus felt the shock throughout arm and shoulder. His blade rang and then snapped, leaving him holding the hilt and about a foot of less-than-deadly metal. The next blow of that staff....