The voices subsided to a muttering. Footsteps pounded, moving blessedly in the direction of away.
"Never fear, he'll live if he wants to. He's a countryman. His head's as hard as the rock that breaks your plow."
Long pause while the drums and bells pounded in Quintus's head as he fought to overhear the argument that went on somewhere above him. Other voices entered—too many more. He was tired. He let himself drift.
It was the heat and the thirst. They could strike you as dead as The Surena's arrows or a sword. He was dead, and they couldn't even let him lie in peace. He thought death meant stillness, rest—he had seen his grandfather and his mother laid out before the shrouds covered them up. Their faces had been strained and twisted during the ordeals of their last days, but death had smoothed the lines of care and anguish into the serenity of a country sculptor's tomb carving.
"Well, then you bring your imperial whatever-it-calls-itself over here, and I'll tell him myself! I'm not leaving this man to die. And if you don't like it, you know where you can shove it. Die fast; die slow—it's no difference. They're not giving the men they're sending—Mars watch them—to Merv, honorable retirement, land, and a mule. Or..."
Anger burst out of the voice in a sort of cough.... "Curse this sand to the pit! They're selling them. Selling free-born Romans, men of the Legions, as slaves. Do you really think those merchants—Persian merchants, mind you—are going to waste their time on a man they can't sell fast?"
More mutters. The sound of a language like horns and bells. Footsteps. Hoofbeats. A hand on his head. "Rest easy, lad, I mean, sir. I think Fortuna's going to let me pull this off...."
"I may have found a horse...."A new voice, heavily accented with the tones of Persia. Quintus tensed.
"How much ... never mind ... If you think it's sound enough."
A snort of scorn, a chuckle, broken off.
"Take my pouch.... Lad, the men need you.... Come on back to us."
So easy to drift away. Just leave.
Footsteps—the crunch of nailed boots on grit and sand, the quicker, softer stride of a horseman. He could even hear aging knees creak as someone settled massively by his side.
"Tribune, in the name of all the gods, don't leave me to lead them alone...."
The appeal was unfair; it drew him back to the world. He moaned, fighting its claim upon him.
They had left their wounded and their dead outside Carrhae, unburied, unattended. He had not consented to that decision, had had no choice in it. But it was nefas, and now he too must suffer for it.
Suffer it and what lay after—to lack the coin for Charon and to wander bodiless and moaning, on this side of the river Styx. His grandfather and mother would lack him forever, unless some pious soul dropped earth on him and mimed, at least, the rites of proper burial.
Quintus would wander? He was wandering now. Perhaps his father wandered unburied, too. Perhaps they would meet each other. But would they be able to embrace, there on the bank of the Styx, and take comfort in each other's presence? Or would knowing that the other suffered too add only to their pain? Perhaps they would not recognize each other at all. It would be a lonely eternity without kin, without rest.
Something caught him up, and he protested wildly.
"Quiet! Make me out to be a liar, when I said you just got knocked on the head a little? Good thing you had your helmet on. It'll never be good for anything again. Ought to make you pay for it. That was some fight you put up over his body, the poor old bastard. Funny to call him poor, but what's all his wealth brought him to? Butcher's meat, like the rawest recruit who didn't guard his back. Still, in the end, he fought like a Roman. Guess he had something in him after all."
The "something" that had caught him shifted and resolved itself into arms, awkward in how they bore him.
"Why am I talking to him? He may never hear me, and all that hard work wasted. Dis take them all, this one would have made a soldier, too."
Quintus's eyes rolled open; he caught a glimpse of the sun, spinning, as it seemed, overhead; and he gagged. Immediately, rough hands clasped his head.
"Have a care! That's a man you're lifting, not a sack of meal. Yes, you too, sir. Easy there."
The manhandling stopped. He felt himself bound to a padded surface. Perhaps now, the voices would leave him alone, and he could retreat into the blackness. It lured him.
Yet now he was rocked back and forward, as if he indeed lay on Charon's boat. Huge flies buzzed, and the drums and bells pounded. And thirst, as if he had drunk naphtha en the field of battle, burned him, so that he fought not to moan.
It was shameful to moan. But his throat burned. A sudden jolt at his breast made him cry aloud, forgetting shame, forgetting all but the pain. He thought he screamed to be let alone, to be taken down from the wheel, to be buried.... He screamed till his throat was even more raw than before. His lips cracked, but the blood brought him no relief.
Bitterness touched his lips. He longed for the moisture that underlay the bitterness, but he spat it away.
"He's not drinking." Again the cultured, hateful voice.
"Sometimes after a head wound, they can't. They just spew it back up. Waste it."
After a long pause, "I was thinking. We need all the Romans we can get. Now..." A new note crept into the light, patrician tones—self-conscious cleverness. "I've heard that these people have good physicians...."
"And have them come and knock the tribune on the head again so he doesn't thrash or throw a fit or slow us up? This time, they'll kill him for sure. He makes it out of the dark on his own, or not at all, I'm afraid."
And then, something blessedly cool, like freshly turned earth, overlay his eyes and throbbing brow.
He sobbed once, unashamedly, and felt a hand press his shoulder, a touch he took with him into a darkness that was now restful. The lurching from side to side that had sickened him before now lulled him as if, in truth, he rode Charon's boat toward peace. Gods ... water, rippling through shadows, bringing peace.
Animals screamed and fought while men's voices rose in entreaty and command. Quintus flinched, retreating into the blackness before his eyes until red lights erupted there and cautioned him to go carefully. A hot wind rose. Silence again. Someone had thrown the cake to Cerberus. At least, he hoped so. Already, he had made it farther than he dreamed—across the River. Soon, he would walk on asphodels....
...but there was the judgment. Dreadful names, clamorous as bronze, Minos and Rhadamanthus, and one more. Which one? He must know the third judge, or his spirit would be hurled to the forges of Tartarus. Briefly he struggled from the blackness and found himself restrained.
Condemned already? He forced himself to think. The name of the third judge! He had to know the name!
Aeacus, came a voice. He will not harm you. The voice was gentle, like a hand laid on his brow.
He groaned and to his shamed relief, swooned.
Quintus awoke, if he could call it that, in darkness. He still lay on that warm, rocking surface. He still was bound. But he felt stronger. Carefully, he flexed one arm, then the other. Well enough. He slipped them free of the restraints and slid cautiously onto his feet. Better yet. Something damp slithered from his brow, and he caught it before he could think to flinch from what it might be.