It was one thing to die on a battlefield. To die here, among corpses drained by—Quintus shuddered, remembering childhood nightmares haunted by tales of the Lamia.
"By all the gods, there's riches here," Lucilius muttered. "Play for time, would you? We can't leave yet. Not when—"
In a moment, he would start rummaging in each dead man's robes. It was one thing to search the dead for what might sustain the living, another to strip them for gain, here in this wasteland where extra treasure might mean extra burden to all. Quintus would have bet any coin he happened to have about him that Lucilius had already robbed some of the nearest bodies.
Draupadi drew near and spoke to him since the earth had begun to shake. "You need to see what Ganesha has found."
"I also need to obey that man." Quintus pointed at Ssu-ma Chao. "It is only by his grace we are not slaves." Let him crack, and they might be slaves again, Draupadi with them.
"Arjuna—" she began to protest.
"Will you stop that!" All Quintus's fear, all his anger, and even the sense of self-respect he had gained this day went into that demand. "I am Quintus, only myself; yet you load me with the baggage of five princes, one of them a hero. Don't you understand? I am not he!"
Her eyes grew enormous, hurt, and he hated himself for that hurt—and the pain he caused himself. Let her know the truth. Let her turn from him now, before it grew any harder to lose her. But the sight of her pain grieved him, and he added in a gentler tone, "If I am he, I truly do not know it. I am sorry."
Now the Ch'in soldiers were closing in, encircling their former allies. Some of them were drawing their weapons. If even one Roman drew sword or fingered spear ... perhaps the Ch'in could wipe out their small force. They would have to. Very likely, Ch'in and Roman would be the death of each other.
And with all that, he had to contend with a weeping princess! "Do you truly not know me?" Her hand touched his chest precisely where the bronze statuette of Krishna lay. It warmed under those delicate-seeming, capable fingers. "I thought you did."
"Perhaps," Quintus said. "But perhaps, too, we must take care that this is not illusion."
She nodded sorrowfully. "I wish for only the truth to lie between us. To give you—"
In that moment, he longed to gather her into his arms; and let the Ch'in skewer him.
"But you do not believe..."
"Do you believe it?" he demanded.
"Believe it? I know it. I remember."
"I remember that I have men to get to safety before he—" a gesture at Ssu-ma Chao and his warriors alerted her to their danger, "—attacks."
"You are all... you call it 'Roman' in this life, are you not?" All duty, she meant. All discipline. Damn.
But he nodded as he must. "Aye, Domina."
"That too is like the man who won me." She laughed sadly. "Even at Virata's court, he was intent on the role he played, blind to all else. Perhaps I too have been blind, thinking only of what I see, what I know, not you as you are in this life...."
"I have it!" Ganesha shouted. For an instant his voice rang with the authority of a battle trumpet, summoning Quintus to the head of the column. Light gathered, shimmered over the old man, who moved with a sureness unlike the careful steps of any man his apparent age over the dead land.
Quintus headed toward the old sage. He stumbled, cursed what he tripped over, then recovered. A length of horn and wood conjoined jutted from the sand, and he snatched it up, using it to break his fall, then as a staff to speed him to Ganesha's side.
The old man held a body in his arms, though already it had withered to flaps of drying skin over bone even as he watched it with somber eyes. This one wore the dress of a guard. Quintus forced himself to look at the face. Already, the lips had peeled back from the jaws, revealing not the expressionless faces of the dead man's comrades, but something different. Younger than the others, this face still possessed a measure of individuality. And it wore a look of hate and terror, as if this guard had seen his death coming and fought frenziedly with what pitiful means he had. Last of all, Quintus saw what else Ganesha bore—a bow, broken as if the guard would yield it in no other way to enemy hands.
Ganesha laid the dead guard down in line with the others. The man's hands thudded to the ground, wasted fingers still clamped shut. "Look you," ordered the sage. He had pried one of the bony fists open to display a dark scrap of fabric.
"What is that?" Quintus asked, leaning forward to examine it even as Ganesha shouted rapid-fire Ch'in orders to Ssu-ma Chao.
"Do not touch it! This poor one did, and thus he died. . . ." Carefully, Ganesha bent forward and breathed on the scrap.
"From a Black Naacal's robe?"
"I feel such a one up ahead," said Ganesha. "Waiting for us in the direction that we must go."
We could circle about, Quintus thought of saying. Arsaces knew the stars; he could guide them.
"But it is in that direction," Ssu-ma Chao stated, "that we must go." Some measure of sanity had returned to him, and he looked just as dangerous as he truly was.
"And so we do, Excellency," said the sage, bowing in Ch'in fashion. "But we do not take that road unwarned. I say to you: Beware. Trust no one, nothing, even though it wears the semblance of your eldest brother, until we have proved the truth of it."
"Why?" demanded Ssu-ma Chao.
"They seek weapons, perhaps that very Pasupata that Arjuna sought in the last age. They must not have found it for, if they had, we should be as dead as their victims here—or praying to all our gods or to those of our enemies for release. But they have found something almost as deadly to us—and deadlier still to these poor fools."
"And what is that?"
"Life," Ganesha said simply. "Life and health. Possibly spirit. These men are all drained, not just of life, but of what makes them men and not beast. I would pray peace to their souls and better aspects to their lives the next time the wheel turns, but there will be no next time for them. These men's souls have been consumed."
16
Under the coating of sweat and grime, even the swarthiest of the men still alive on that plain and within hearing went pale. Quintus saw Rufus battle a shudder and win— just. To have nothing left. No body to be entombed, no soul to travel across the river and face the Judgment that he had approached in dreams, yet evaded as it was not yet his time. Whatever his time was.
He had time enough to fare across a waste seemingly the size of Gaea herself. His time, indeed. When would it be his time not to suffer, not to endure, but to act—either as a Roman or this ghostly hero that Ganesha and Draupadi insisted on believing him to be?
Quintus would have been content only to sit and rest in clean air, away from these strange corpses. He would have been very well content to wrest the Eagles from the temples of those who had slain his comrades—the sign of his own Legion as well as those that had been sent to Merv. But it seemed that none of that was to be.
Why not make your life easier? came a voice. You want your gods, your freedom? They can be yours, along with sweet water flowing free over the rock in the shade at noon.... Only...
The bronze talisman over his heart twinged unnecessarily. Quintus tightened his hand on the stick he held, seeking relief from his anger.