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 you 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 distastefuclass="underline" 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."