"Slowly, slowly," he said, holding up a hand that even now retained some of its former plumpness. "I am a tired old man."
Ancient, he might be. Even now, Quintus hated to consider how old because, if he calculated Ganesha's years, he must also think of Draupadi's. She looked thin and strained; Ganesha was showing his age. His dark eyes in their pouches of flesh were as reddened and strained by their journey as though he belonged to one of the younger races with whom he companied. But they still gleamed with an alertness a scout might have envied and a relentless intelligence honed by the years, however many.
"I feared," Ganesha translated for Ssu-ma Chao. His own voice quavered. So, did even he fear? "And then I resigned power and sought only to flee from a place of the unquiet dead. But I still digress. So now, it seems to me that I must never return to Ch'ang-an and pollute its precincts with my cowardice. Indeed, I must blot it out. In my blood, if need be; in the blood of my kin, if my sins are discovered. But I would prefer to avenge myself in the blood of those who brought me to this pass. I shall go forward."
Ganesha broke off, one hand upraised in the storyteller's graceful demand for attention. But his hand trembled slightly. "He asks me to ask you whether your Eagle can guide us to our enemies."
Draupadi clasped her hands in her lap so tightly that the delicate bones showed white beneath the skin. She looked down at them, and Quintus spied what an effort it took for her not to look at Ganesha. The old man also looked down now, as if unwilling to influence any of the others.
"They're the ones who want to steal it—"
"How do you know—"
Rufus and Lucilius broke into the silence at the same moment. At Lucilius's glare, the centurion broke off, muttering to himself. "The day I agree with ... maybe the sun hasn't ridden or it's made me crazy.... Oh, to the crows with it."
"Ask them!" Lucilius snapped. "How do you know they haven't maneuvered us into just this decision?"
Ssu-ma Chao looked inquiringly at him. Then he retreated into impassivity.
"They want to know," Draupadi spoke slowly in Parthian, "whether you in truth suggest going up against the Black Naacals or whether these are words that Ganesha put into your mouth."
"He wants to know," said the Ch'in officer. "Who would have betrayed us all. Yes, those were my words, not the man who translates for me. Who is to say that other caravans may not fall prey—may not be engulfed by these evil men?" His eyes were frenzied with memory of the Stone Tower.
"Do you truly believe," Draupadi's voice was consciously sweet, "that I would lead you to your deaths, your tribune with you?" She unclasped her hands and held out the one that bore Quintus's ring.
They were desperate, but Rufus took a moment to grin and thump Quintus on the shoulder.
"I believe in my orders," the tribune said. He would have liked to savor that moment, but every moment was precious now. "I believe—or believed!—" he shot that at Lucilius, "—in my elders. And betters, as they insisted they were to me. But now I believe in the Eagle."
Rufus turned again to the young officer. "You are Roma for now, son. You decide what is right to do; I'll do it. Aye, and drive the men to fight past the gods of Hades. Say the word, sir."
Lucilius rose to his feet. His eyes were wild. He all but quivered with anger, not unmixed with a tinge of fear.
And why should he not fear? We are all afraid.
All the Romans feared death, feared the worse-than-death they had seen. And he feared losing what had become precious to him. But Lucilius—he feared making the decision to which he had been pushed and which he could no longer put off.
"Why?" Quintus asked Draupadi and Ganesha.
They fought against the Black Naacals, who had been of their own blood and faith. But why did they require allies, when, surely, they had powers of their own?
Draupadi reached over to touch the Eagle. She could, Quintus thought, and the sight reassured him even before her words.
"We are guests in this age, this Yuga of the world, Quintus," she told him. "It is no longer ours. It falls to you now, to the younger races and nations that sprang up after the Motherland sank beneath the waves. I believe— Ganesha and I believe—that we survive only to finish what we began: the overwhelming of this darkness, so your peoples may attain what fates are destined for them."
And why me? My return home is lost.... He remembered those saddest of Achilles's words. Lost in any case, came a thought—his or his enemy's. He did not know: In either case, it was true.
And so, there remained only one question: What the proper course was for a Roman to take. The Eagle gleamed overhead, the only bright thing in a desert of grays and ochres. Decide. Decide, fool, it seemed to say.
The ground trembled, and a salt smell rose from the desert. Rufus thrust out a large hand as he overbalanced, and Ganesha shook his head. "The island we passed that night, Draupadi.... Do you recollect it?"
"You do not think it was overwhelmed?" she asked as calmly as if discussing a journey made a day ago, a month ago, and not the great expanse of time that, surely, was the truth. "It was so small, but it possessed that peak with a tabernacle...." She-broke off and stared at Ssu-ma Chad.
"There is a story," the Ch'in officer said, "of a fountain of pure water, a shrine in the depths of the waste, found only by people in the most desperate need—and sometimes not even then. I heard the story from a dying man, the last survivor of a caravan. A patrol had turned him up. We took him up and tried to save him, but he died at noon, raving as we thought. Raving," the Ch'in officer added thoughtfully. "We are already off our reckoning."
"Fare forward," Quintus found himself muttering. Arjuna's thought had become his.
"Forward?" Lucilius snapped. "Which way is forward? Can you even tell?" Rufus glared. If Lucilius hadn't been patrician, he would have had a blow for the interruption. It was death to strike an officer. Considering the case they were in, that could hardly make a difference; but it did, for Rufus.
"You'd dare, would you?" Lucilius snarled at the centurion, whose control did not extend to his eyes.
"We must move in any case," Draupadi said. "Better for us to find them than for them to find us at a time of their choosing."
A scream rose from behind them, and they jumped from the shock. One of the soldiers who had collapsed and had lain head down on a camel for the journey yammered in terror, then screamed again, this time in mortal agony. His back arched, and his entire body convulsed until the ropes binding him to the pack- animal broke asunder. Before he fell face down, they could see that his face had swollen and turned dark as if he had been strangled.
"Snakes!" screamed a Roman, looking down as if a veritable legion of serpents had attacked. The hiss and scrape of grit in the desert intensified until even Rufus looked uneasy. If you were exhausted or half-mad—and if someone suggested it to you—perhaps you would mistake it for the sound of immense coils, dragging along the desert floor, waiting, preparing to—
Draupadi flung out a hand and chanted. The hissing subsided.
"I distrust things when they're that easy," Rufus observed.
"Your man was mad already. Being mad, he could be worked on to believe, and his belief killed him. I have removed the illusion for now, but I warn you: When you are weariest and weakest, they will strike again."
"So we have to move," Rufus said. "Sir?" He turned to Quintus for orders.
Lucky Rufus, who could unload the burden of leadership on officers who didn't want it either. Ganesha met Quintus's eyes. Either resign authority or be worthy of it and, perhaps, save all of their lives.