But no blow ever came. From the talisman he wore, warmth flooded out across his chest. Warmth as heady as wine filled him. Quintus saw his enemy's eyes go wide, as those black eyes stared at him. The rising warmth leached away pain and weariness for the Roman, while the broken blade in his hand glowed.
Then the light flooded out from the hilt he still clutched. For an instant, Quintus could see the bones of his hand and arm through his skin. He felt heat, but no burning.
His eyes met those of the thief, dark eyes, almost ophidian with their look of alien hate. Light flashed from the fragment of the blade still clinging to the hilt to engulf his enemy. The man screamed as that point of radiance touched him. Where it touched, his flesh crisped. Still, he held Quintus with that hate-filled, other stare, though his face contorted in mortal agony and even fear. Then the eyes blanked, and held nothing at all.
Behind him, Quintus heard men shouting. The flames spread, to engulf the man's robes and dart over to the Eagle he bore on his back. Its wrappings caught fire, and the bundle fell. As the standard rolled free of the charring cloth, every bronze feather on the Eagle glowed.
The fire had all but consumed the thief. However, for a moment, he stood. He was only bones, but still he stood holding that staff. Then that strange weapon dropped with a clang. Defenseless, the skeleton disintegrated and flaked into ash as if the bones had been of tremendous age.
Quintus dropped the broken blade that had, suddenly, cooled. He staggered over to kneel by the Eagle. It was important, just as it had been at Carrhae, that the Legion's standard not lie on the ground. Struggling to his feet with it held close, he planted it upright and leaned against the staff. He was as tired as if he had suffered through a full battle.
The hot sun of Kashgar beat down upon his head. Where had the turban he had worn since the beginning of this fatal trek gone to? He would need it: the gods knew that he would never find another proper Roman helmet.
Draupadi came to him, the dusty roll in her slender hands. She brushed the dust from it and held it out to him. She showed no fear, no revulsion at having seen one man crushed and another man—or perhaps a Black Naacal or one of their agents—burned. But then, she had been the wife of the greatest warrior of one age. And before that—it was too hard to think of what she had been before that. More than anything, Quintus wished to be clean. A plunge in the Tiber, cold from the spring melts—ahhh, that would be better than Elysium.
Draupadi stepped closer, and Quintus rested his arm across her shoulders, appreciating the strength he had found in her supple frame. For a moment, he stood balanced between his Eagle and the lady, as strength from both seemed to flood into him, restoring his soul, if not his worn body.
Gradually, he became aware, as he stood thus holding a lady he had treasured from the first, that the other Romans and Ch'in were staring. Quintus colored. His father had never shown such caring for his mother in public. Even her epitaph, like her mother's before her: "She stayed at home and tended her wool," reflected her worth as a wife and worker, not woman. But this is my beloved, Quintus said deep within himself as he tightened his arm about her. It was an un-Roman thought: It was far older than Rome. Draupadi knew his mind, and smiled.
A veil of windborne dust, rattled the thirsty poplars and obscured the faces—appalled, afraid, or calculating—that surrounded him. Mouths worked. Gradually, Quintus heard the shouted concerns and questions that might just as well be commands. The thin dust—mixed over with the powdery ash of his dead enemy—briefly filmed their hands. He brushed it from Draupadi's hair, the black of a mountain stream running free at night. But even before he touched that, the long locks gleamed. He glanced down at his hand. It shone too.
Only moments before, he had been smeared with dust, his entire body coated with the white powder of salt and sweat dried on his skin by the desert heat. Now, he was as clean and shining as if he marched in triumph behind a victorious proconsul. Overhead, the Eagle glowed, drawing all eyes.
Draupadi leaned a hand on the staff that upheld the Eagle and the proud motto of Rome's Republic: The Senate and the People of Rome. "It is truly a mighty weapon that you have here," she whispered.
So it was: As much as anything else, it was a sign of Rome and its power. Where the Eagle flew, respect followed, even in this most recent captivity. Draupadi knew his mind, just as she had days before; but she shook her head. "Are you not to seek Pasupata, more powerful than Arjuna's bow? Long and long Arjuna searched in the mountains. He sought out strange teachers. And then he returned. Still, unless a man be fit to wield what weapons he has found, they will turn upon him."
The sun beat down upon the Eagle to cast a sort of glory about them.
Then Li Liang-li approached. Several paces away, he stopped and snapped a few words at his second in command. The young man frowned. Quintus could guess the order he was so reluctant to obey. The garrison commander meant to claim the Eagle. Quintus's Eagle. His Legion's talisman, and the symbol of Rome—just after he had won it back.
Ch'in soldiers circled him, their faces set. Many of those men had journeyed with him. Would they hesitate to kill a man they had fought beside? If they did, Quintus was certain that other men from the garrison would move in. Lucilius too pushed forward, to be brought up short— if respectfully—by Rufus. He gestured furiously at the centurion to let him through.
"You have to give it up again," he hissed at Quintus. "That commander would think nothing of killing us all."
"And are our lives worth so much without our honor?" Quintus asked. The patrician's face was drawn. With fear? Was he asking a favor, actually begging one from a former client of his gens?
Come and take it. He did not dare speak the words, but they must have been revealed on his face. Gently, he began to push Draupadi from him. She moved her hand from the Eagle. Some of the warmth filtering through the two of them abated. She nodded, and edged back into the press of onlookers and soldiers. With one fragment of his awareness, Quintus saw her talking to Ganesha as he stood near the men who had come to bear off Arsaces's body. Farewell, old friend. It did not feel strange any more to call the Persian "friend." But calling him "brother" would have hurt, so he did not even try.
If Quintus surrendered the Eagle, it was Carrhae all over again. It was watching The Surena receive the submission of Legionaries and proconsul. Then, Quintus had fought for the Eagles and nearly died of a blow as he tried to save one. Giving back this Eagle he had won would kill him, he thought. He could feel its power working within him. Let them try to take it. They could not do so unless he chose.
Or, unless he died. Death before dishonor, perhaps; but his grandsire had bowed as a client for Quintus's sake and suffered no loss of dishonor in Quintus's eyes. And he—he had men who looked to him, and he had Draupadi. He had given up his dreams of home. Did he have to give up this last token of it?
Fool, and look you what Draupadi and Ganesha have given up!
"Quintus... comrade..." Lucilius, trying again. Don't try too hard, tribune. Your heart may burst with the effort. Why shouldn't it? Mine is breaking right about now.
He snarled at the patrician, who went white under his weathering. Still think you have things to lose? You don't know the half of it.
"Wait."
Ssu-ma Chao stepped forward. "If this humble one may be permitted..." First, he spoke in Ch'in to his commander, then translated it into Parthian. The self-abasement sounded strange in a language suited far better for brittle court intrigues—or caravan oaths.
The garrison commander barked something, and the young city man stepped back, hands at his side, relief writ large on his brow. He returned to his superior and stood waiting. Only the look in his eye boded very ill for Quintus. He would not forget how he had lost face before the rabble and his own commander.
"Comrade," Ssu-ma Chao's use of the word, unlike Lucilius's, did not make Quintus wish his dry mouth would allow him to spit. "I gave you and your men your weapons back. We have fought together. I gave y
ou my word—my ancestors take witness—that I will strive to have you treated well. And I repeat my word to you: You will be treated with all respect. Surely this does not require more blood?"
Oh, but it does, it does. But not this way, Quintus thought. Dying in a fine frenzy, dying with honor—he could understand that. But here was an enemy turned ally, offering him essentially the lives of his men.
Quintus glanced up at the Eagle. Light winked off the wrought bronze of its deadly beak. Then the light faded. The dust-laden wind swept through the square, stinging his eyes.
"Comrade," Quintus said warmly. "You are no servant of the dark. Guard this with all honor. Fortune grant that we may claim again our own."
Gently, he handed over the Eagle to the Ch'in officer, who took it and held it aloft in salute.
20
PITCH FIRES BURNED on Kashgar's walls, casting bloody shadows over their bulk and out into the desert where, under heavy guard, the Romans were camped. All Quintus's submission had been for nothing: He was not trusted as ally and scarcely trusted even as a prisoner— and with him, the rest of the Romans. The fires of the guardposts flickered and the stink of the pitch drifted thickly down to the camp like the fires kindled to bum slums racked by fever.
The garrison commander would not even allow them space inside the walls. Save for the fear that his caution might bring about their deaths, ejection from Kashgar was no great curse. The city seemed fevered, restive, a child crying weakly within a house wherein all others have died; two dogs snapping at a dirty chunk of meat; the acrid spoor of hunting cats; the thick-voiced shouts of men drunk past reason. No, the cleanliness of the desert seemed far preferable. They even had fresh food.
Quintus had seen Li Liang-li's face, though. Even in the brief time he had had to study it, it had aged and grayed, as if the man suffered from a canker not of the body, but of the spirit. He had been sent to push back the Hsiung-nu and keep them in subjection. Yet here he was, facing prisoners unlike any he had seen, and perils he refused to imagine.
Quintus looked at the watchfires as if, at any moment, he might expect to see a pillar of flame rising from one of the braziers placed in the towers, signaling danger. Danger lay in the deserts and the hills alike: Another danger, he was certain, lay within the city, where lurked those newcomers who might become such a formidable enemy. Kashgar was just the farthest outpost of an Empire, but in one way it reminded Quintus of Rome: The stink of factionalism underlay the smoke of three signal beacons.
Two parties of Ch'in soldiers shared the desert with the Romans... the now-unarmed Romans. Guards from the garrison, loyal to its commander, and, almost as carefully watched as the Romans, Ssu-ma Chao and his soldiers. He had returned from Parthia, furnished, as he thought, with the means of triumph, only to find himself under suspicion for his survival.
What was the Eastern officer's promise—and the word of his ancestors—worth, given the decline of his future? Quintus sighed. Choose as he would, he must choose wrong. With the Romans' arms gone again, how could they escape? He himself might turn toward the Ch'in and fling himself upon, say, that sleek young officer from the capital. Death would be sure, if not swift. Or he could wait for whatever stalked desert and city— and which regarded Draupadi, Ganesha, and he himself as its mortal enemies.
Footsteps came up beside him; the heavy, weary tread of Ganesha—and how weary he must be after these many, many years—and the delicate pace of Draupadi. He almost thought he could hear the tinkle of tiny bells, copper and gold and silver, accompanying her. As she had done that day, she came to his side and he laid his arm over her shoulders without hesitation.
Ganesha smiled. "That is the one thing," he said, "that is going right. The two of you..."
He looked at the woman, wrapped in the saffron that was the color of a Roman bride's veil. Where I am Caius, be thou Caia, he repeated the words he had said to her in his mind, savoring them.
She glanced up at him. Here was fire; if there were no doorposts to anoint with fat, no nuts to scatter before a cheering, singing crowd, there was indeed a priest present. And here, on her finger, was the ring of his service, resting above the vena amoris that ran all the way up to her heart.
He reached over and touched it. She smiled.
But Ganesha held up a peremptory hand.
The three of them froze where they stood. Ganesha jerked his head, and Draupadi nodded. A moment later, she began to chant softly, up and down on notes that should have lulled Quintus to sleep, but they did not. If she did not wish them to be seen, they would not be.
Lucilius and Wang Tou-fan, the young officer from Ch'ang-an, paced beyond them as if they were not there—never mind the fact that the hilt of the young officer's sword almost brushed Draupadi's robes.
How did Lucilius, who had always been quick to jeer at any evidence of rusticity, enjoy being talked down to as an untutored barbarian?
"You saw it," said the Imperial soldier. "Saw how it blazed. Like the Phoenix, which builds its own pyre, then rises from the ashes, reborn."
"That's Latin!" Had Draupadi's spell not held, his incredulous cry would have betrayed them right away. Where had Wang Tou-fan learned their language? The familiar, beloved syllables sounded odd in the aristocrat's mouth. Odd and distasteful: Quintus would have liked to smash them from his lips.
"Strange," murmured Quintus, "I should not have thought they had anything at all in common except pride in their bloodlines. Least of all, a common language."
"They, "said Ganesha, "do not. But others might, others for whom the learning of a strange tongue is as easy as the shifting of one robe for another."
"It is not only robes that can be shifted," he added darkly.
"We have no Phoenix, as you call it, but an Eagle," said Lucilius. "Our Legions follow them. If you listened to Ssu-ma Chao..."
"A provincial of no particular family—what has such as he to tell me? He brought you here; he brought the Eagle, as you call it. You saw how it blazed, even for him. What could it not do for... for us?"
"What of it? A trick of the sunlight, nothing more," Lucilius drawled.
The Ch'in hissed. Quintus pondered Ganesha's words. As easy to shift from one robe to another... as the Naacals had done. The man whom fire had consumed had died without a scream. But a deathscream had come from behind Quintus.
It was mad. It was pure lunacy beyond any wild fantasy that any man had ever had. What if two men in addition to poor Arsaces had died in Kashgar—the one man's body burnt by the power of the Eagle, and the spirit of the other destroyed when the first man's ego conquered and occupied his body. Madness, true. But how else to explain that scream or how an arrogant young officer now spoke polished Latin?
"It is no matter," Lucilius said, sullen. "This Eagle— oh, very well—the Phoenix lies in your power. Or in your commander's. And you and he are, as I observed, on the best of terms."
"It is no matter," said Wang Tou-fan or that which wore his flesh. "He will not permit you to remain here. He said as much while he was... tired men drink too deeply, let us say. And, when they are tired and their guard is down... I have had my piece of good fortune out of this: I am to return to Ch'ang-an with you. Bearing with us the Eagle."
Lucilius shrugged. Quintus did not even need to see his face to know that the patrician was wearing his "and what do I gain from this?" look. Dice, defeat, forced marches: They were all the same. Even this far from home. Lucilius might spy a future and the power he thought he had lost.
"How did he make the Eagle light?" demanded the Ch'in.
Quintus could have laughed at the baffled arrogance in Lucilius's voice. "I don't know. I never saw that happen before. I tell you, there is a strangeness... I will be glad when we go to a place where family is respected and a man can be civilized."
"Mud huts and upstarts!" spat the Ch'in noble. Jupiter Optimus Maximus, he was speaking of his own capital! Or of the capital of the young man whose body had been usurped. Then he recovered self-control.
/> "The man who could teach me the secret of the Eagle's fire—the secret of the Phoenix itself—might find himself honored as if he were a prince, almost as the Son of Heaven himself."
Lucilius almost purred. "You begin to interest me."
"You, not—"
"That peasant? He would not listen to you. But it was. he for whom the Eagle lit. I must think...."
"I must see it," said Wang Tou-fan.
"And if you touch it? It may consume you as it consumed... how shall we call your former... yes, yes, I know. I am all discretion, not that I believe you. Will you risk the chance that the thing has bonded so to him that it will turn on all others?"
"It allowed Ssu-ma Chao to touch it."
"The risk, as I said, is yours."
"He has the place," said Wang Tou-fan, "that should be yours. That can be yours, with far more added to it. That choice, as I said, is yours. Remove him, and perhaps the Eagle will turn to you. And then you and I can talk again."