But not, please all the gods, before he achieved forgetfulness. I am a Roman, his pace said. Left, right; left, right; boots pounding the grit into fine dust. It was all salt here, and he could almost believe in Ganesha's sea stories. Never mind his tales of a sea. You will never see the Middle Sea again. Believe in what lets you march on, he told himself. Left, right.
He was seeking to achieve forgetfulness—but to forget Rome? He had given up family, land, hope of return, even his honor. Now, when he had offered sword to his enemies, must he give up even his patria?
His solution, as Draupadi told him, lay in himself.
But not in Quintus: rather, in the man she named Arjuna, this ancient warrior-prince whose soul, as the wizard priests of Egypt taught, had transmigrated into stubborn Roman flesh. Mule-stubborn. Mule-strong. Left, right; left, right. The sun's hammer clanged down upon his skull—far more drum than he needed.
Forget.
Remember.
The air shimmered. His mind spun. He was Quintus—no, he bore a bow; he had a chariot to drive, and a dancing god to drive him; he was ... a man fell out along the line of march and was packed onto a camel by men too weak to waste their strength on swearing.
The air hurt his chest, and he put his hand up to ease it. His fingers caught as the talisman beneath his garments grew warm again.
Out he drew the tiny image of dancing Krishna, a god old before some artisan who had lived in Italy before his own people made this to be laid in some tomb. How the coins of light had flashed out from it before they flew upward, dazzling man and horse so that the direction finder was lost?
Krishna himself—he had danced with light, mourning and rejoicing with the same movements. Quintus— no, Arjuna—now he remembered that. The god had danced with torches. The one he had been had bent and touched Krishna's feet and asked for the god himself, not his armies. And Krishna had made a pact to drive him.
The one he had been possessed a great weapon. He had sat in a ring of fire to trap power. Now, trapped in another life, he remembered the ultimate weapon he had thus won. But what had it been? That he could not remember, not if he marched until the bones of his feet rubbed away into powder as white as the salt flats on which he stood.
It was net power that he had to seek. It was life. He had sought life before, at the ruin by the pool.
Ah yes. His feet moved now without direct control of his body. He was on the right track. Think of a pool. Think of a river. Draupadi's retreat; his river valley. So far away now—but there had been a tale once, a tale he had heard once under an outcropping of the Roof of the World, where men had huddled together: that in the heart of the desert, found only by men at the extremity of need, there bubbled a spring of clear, pure water. But where it was, no man could say for certain.
An oasis, such as they had in Egypt or Judaea or Syria, perhaps? Or was it something more.
They were lost. They could not be more lost or more desperate. All was failing. Perhaps...?
He had heard of such places, so sacred that animals who were each other's mortal enemies might crouch beside each other and fill their throats with pure water, rather than one another's life blood.
Did that water truce apply to Black Naacals as well? Somehow Quintus doubted that. No, that was not his thought; that had to have been the thought of Arjuna ... he was far from the discipline he had learned at home. Left, right; left, right.
He was not aware that he had quickened his pace, that gradually he outstripped the other Romans, and was drawing even with the Ch'in. Some still rode, masking mouths and noses against the dust. Some were slung across their saddles. Some marched poorly.
Does the Eagle know? Will it see us? It must. Arjuna's thinking again, perhaps? But one didn't have to be a warrior prince, but just a farm lad to know that birds always knew where there was water. A pity there were no birds in the Takla Makan.
Now he pulled level with the Ch'in soldiers. Ssu-ma Chao, judging the temper of some of his allies, had guards posted to prevent someone from killing Wang Tou-fan.
A pack camel stumbled, then stood swaying. Then, it collapsed; the men and beasts behind it swerved just in time to keep from walking into it.
Quintus too halted. It took an act of genuine will to keep himself out of the line of march.
Up ahead, Ssu-ma Chao signaled orders to unload the dead beast's packs. Odd. Why not leave them where they lay? It hardly seemed as if they could use its burden themselves. Then Quintus's bleary eyes flamed.
The beast had borne the Eagle. Even as he watched, Wang Tou-fan and Ssu-ma Chao came forward. Both men jockeyed for position, worn as they were. Finally, with two or three imperious words and gestures, Wang Tou-fan won the skirmish. He was in command of this. He was. No one else. And he reinforced that by a hand on his sword, waving away even Lucilius, who eyed the Eagle with some of the same longing that the other Romans—those who had stayed faithful—displayed.
There was no point, good common sense told Quintus, in edging forward. He would not get even so much of a glimpse of the Eagle, and his presence might just make a bad situation worse. Still, he found himself heading toward the standard, his feet kicking up clouds of fine grit. It rose, coating him. When he licked his lips, he tasted salt; and he had not had so much water that his body could sweat that much.
As Quintus reached the dead camel, Wang Tou-fan had laid a hand upon the Eagle. He himself, he declared in words Quintus could not understand—and gestures that he could—would strap the prize to his own pack-saddle.
Quintus gestured to Ganesha. Interpret. Please.
"Well enough," Quintus said, Ganesha repeating his words in the language of Ch'in. "Why not take it out and set it up? Let it shine over the place where we lie down to die."
The man glared at Quintus. "You are leading us to death," the Roman spoke, finding words somewhere. "To die is nothing to us. We all owe Rome a death: time we were paying it. But you—have you not a life and a future?"
Lucilius's head came up, sensing a bargain.
"You do not order this one," Wang Tou-fan said through the interpreter.
"No," said Quintus. "But what about them?" Suddenly, he remembered how, in another life, his brother the king had wagered all and lost all. Having nothing, though, he had nothing to lose. Except his life; and he had reckoned that as a dead loss for years.
"Perhaps you can lead," he conceded. "But can you endure? We can teach you that. And they—perhaps they can guide you."
"And what would you demand for this service?" Too wise, despite Ganesha's earlier attempt to soften the sting of Wang Tou-fan's lies.
"The Eagle," Quintus said bluntly. "Then, if we die, we die in possession of our standard." He shrugged. "You may yet outlast us, and then it would be your possession once more." Much against his better judgment, he glared at Lucilius. "As it is now."
The patrician glared in return but said nothing.
"Well?" Bluff. Pretend you are in a position of strength. It hardly seemed, he realized, like the Roman Quintus, sober, dull, who was about to gamble with life and honor both. He warned himself not to look weak. For the strong do as they will, while the weak suffer what they must. He had been weak for too long.
"And," he added craftily, "a garrison may come and put paid to our agreement after all. What have you to lose?"