Ssu-ma Chao turned away, as if expressing—what? Laughter? Gods, he had spirit. He should have been a Roman.
There was one problem, Quintus thought. If Ssu-ma Chao assented, he would be on the cross before he clasped arms with him like a brother.
"Have you any idea of where we are?"
Help me, Quintus wished of Ganesha and Draupadi with all his might.
"Before the stars changed," Ganesha said promptly, "all this basin was a great Inland Sea. I have seen the charts. In it were islands at which ships might land and..."he allowed himself to look wistful. "They had springs of sweet water, trees bearing fruit. They cannot all have perished wholly; for they were at the very heart of the sea. We might well find water at such a place. But we would need to go into the very bowels of the desert. Have you the courage for it?"
"Say we reach this water. What then?"
"We will have the strength," Quintus said, "to try again for Miran. Or send out a fast scouting party—as we should have done." Had you been a true officer instead of a wastrel and a traitor. He fixed his eyes on Lucilius, willing the patrician tribune to shift his loyalties.
"We have no better choice." Lucilius forced the words out as if under torture. As perhaps he was: He suffered more from the heat than some of the others.
Wang Tou-fan stood irresolute. Clearly, he was afraid; clearly he was thinking rapidly as threat, fear, and exhaustion worked in him. Cunning flashed across his features. Try again. Betray the men who helped you. All of them, especially that stiff-necked oaf who rules an outpost and gives himself the airs of the Son of Heaven. It might not even be necessary to share with the traitor—after all, are they not all barbarians, and the men of the western deserts only slightly better?
"Done!" he said, forgetting nobility and sounding like one of the merchants who had predicted nothing but destruction for this caravan.
Trying not to let his hands shake with eagerness; Quintus nodded gravely, and held out his arms to receive the Eagle.
And, although the sky looked as if not enough water to form even the tiniest of clouds had ever touched it, thunder rumbled and lightning danced across the horizon.
22
THE STANDARD eased into Quintus's hand, and the sun swooped down upon it, picking out each detail of the bird's bronze plumage. It felt right in his hand, fitting like the hilt of a veteran's sword. He shut his eyes against the dazzle of the sun on the Eagle's wings and his own tears.
The first time he had held it, only for a moment, in The Surena's camp, it had been before a blow to his head had nearly driven wits and life from him. He remembered, how he remembered, the reek of blood, sweat, and metal that had been one of the last things he had sensed. But with the fear and the pain had come the realization that he had come, at last, to the right place and done the right thing.
Perhaps he had defended a leader not worthy of his service, but Crassus had been a proconsul of Rome; and that was worth, he thought, any price he might pay. And here, far from Rome, was its very sign. Whether or not any word of his life and service ever reached the patres conscripti who were as much an object of his grandsire's veneration as the family altar, or that turbulent, brawling people who had transformed the lands around the Tiber, once again, he had that sense of purpose.
Grounding the standard, as he had in that enemy city not so far in the past, Quintus surveyed the shrunken force. His own renewal of spirit had inspired the others— and it had been a long, long time since he had thought of them as "his men." In the presence of their Eagle, they stood ready, falling perhaps by instinct into the familiar pattern.
Quintus felt himself aglow with a light that did not fade. It fed upon him, yet it returned a new strength in exchange. Using him as a focus, that inner strength reached out to his men, uniting them into not just a fighting force but one spirit.
That dazzle was gone, leaving Quintus with the sense that something profound had been accomplished—but just what, he couldn't find a name for.
Draupadi approached, eyeing the Eagle warily. "That is no less your weapon," she said, "than the sword you bear."
The sword he bore had been Arjuna's. Quintus stared upward—would that proud bronze bird now take wing?
In his grasp, the standard quivered as if the Eagle surmounting it indeed mantled its wings, ready for flight. But that was only the way of eagles in the heights. Aloft in their own place, they swooped down, arcing, and circling, borne by the winds from the peaks. Here were no mountains.
A glow from the Eagle reached to gild the sky. There, the color was deepening and turning sullen. Quintus tore his eyes from the Eagle to look to Ssu-ma Chao. Before any of the buran, the great desert storms, the sky turned brazen. Then, as the storm struck, it darkened with wind, thickened and made visible with grit and sand.
A prudent traveler—and Ssu-ma Chao was the best they had—would be alert to such changes and would order out the protective felts in time. Thus, Ssu-ma Chao opened his mouth to shout, scrabbling for his own protective coverings. And then the Easterner paused, as if at a loss. All along the line of march, the camels stood motionless, not complaining the way they did when sensing a storm.
Yet that sky, like a brass bowl overturned above them, was now the color that heralded the worst of storms. Only there was no wind, no stir of sand. The very air itself might now be as dead as the land.
The camels began to crowd together, as if in rebellion against a too-weighty burden. There was a heaviness pressing down upon all until Quintus was certain that even the long dunes would be flattened—even without a wind.
Draupadi whirled about, scanned the horizon, then turned to Ganesha.
"All about us—we are ringed in."
The old man turned to face outward as if confronting a still-invisible enemy.
It was Lucilius who launched into action, breaking the spell. His green eyes wide with fear, he edged closer to the standard, step by heavy step. He might have been struggling against a swollen river current.
"The Eagle," he mouthed. "Give..."
Quintus swung the standard out of reach.
"Give it to him," ordered Wang Tou-fan.
"Let him take it," Quintus retorted. He spoke without any regard for rank. Surely it must be clear to all that the Eagle chose—men obeyed.
"Let him try, that is," the tribune added.
About Quintus, the decimated Roman force came slowly alive. Some moved forward to stand between Quintus and the Ch'in soldiers. One or two moved in as if to guard Draupadi and Ganesha. The rest, without being commanded, fell into their familiar ranks.
Again, Lucilius grabbed for the Eagle.
"No." Quintus jerked it out of his reach.
Then the sand began to hum. Singing sand, some wayfarers called it. However, this was no howl, but like the flaps of some appalling insect's wings, enticing lesser creatures to come and be devoured.
Beneath their blistered feet, the ground trembled. Thunder drummed, then rumbled again, as if summoning full force. A faint blue spark flew from man to man in the ranks. The sky darkened toward twilight. Now the air seemed to cool. The bedraggled crests on the Romans' helms rose. Quintus sensed energies building up the way the tension builds in a catapult.
"Iron," muttered Ganesha. "There is iron here, and they know it...."
"Quick!" Draupadi cried. "The metal you wear—off with it for your lives' sake!"
Long ago, most of the Romans had stowed their armor on packbeasts. The Ch'in mainly wore harnesses of leather. But still, there were iron nails in the Legions' boots.... The matted hair on the back of Quintus's neck stirred. Shed belts, weapons, tools, yes, but to go barefoot in this realm of sharp rocks was a sentence of slow death, and he had a sudden nightmare image of Black Naacals tracking them by sniffing along bloody footprints.