"Don't look," he whispered. "Don't feel. All about you—it's all lies. Look to the light. Look only to the light."
"The light," Rufus whispered hoarsely. And then, with a shout of strength, "I see flame!"
He grabbed the next man's hand and pulled him along. "See that light, look at it! What are you afraid of? I'll give you something to be afraid of," he shouted.
Someone laughed, which should have gotten him at least one blow—but for the present, Quintus and the big centurion were only too happy to hear it. Laughter, like light, pushed back fear and darkness.
Draupadi laughed and joined hands to link a Ch'in armsman to a Legionary. Hand in hand, the Romans and the Ch'in scrambled past the arch and upslope. If the ragged line lacked the dignity of a parade, it was at least on its feet and refusing to despair. It followed the figure of Krishna, no longer trapped in immobile bronze.
"You too, lad!" Rufus reached for Lucilius's hand. The tribune jerked it away. He had always been distrustful of closeness, but this looked like real revulsion.
They couldn't let him be lost, though. Quintus grimaced.
Having struck off Rufus's hand, Lucilius reeled, his eyes rolling up in his head as if driven nigh-mindless by what his mind—or voices within it—told him he saw. Sweat poured down his face, as he started after his fellows. Each footstep—what did he think he was setting feet to? The very idea made Quintus shudder—was a battle won against deadly illusion, but he made it past the barrage.
"Drive the beasts along!" Ssu-ma Chao shouted. Camels and horses, eyes rolling, came along, many blindfolded.
One man suddenly cried out and pulled free of the handholds. Not having Lucilius's strength—or stubbornness—he screamed. They heard his body hit the ground.
"His fear devoured him," Draupadi said. "Let us go. Hurry!"
"Go on ahead," Ganesha wheezed. He leaned against the rock. "I'll follow you. No, go on. I promised."
"You heard him!" Quintus told Draupadi. She stared at him with a kind of frantic grief. "Go on!"
He turned to Ganesha. The old adept's face was gray. "Come on, old man. Take my arm. You may not be able to dance, but you can stagger. And you will!"
The magician sagged, but Quintus bore him up and forced him upslope. The hallucinations weakened and failed, and they found themselves standing in the clean night air with all the other men—except the one who had fallen—and their beasts waiting.
Draupadi knelt to one side, her hand reaching for something that lay on the ground.
"Look," she said sadly, holding up what had served them so faithfully. The figure of Krishna was a bronze statuette again. But now its arms drooped as if weary after too-long dancing. First one, then the other broke off. It seemed to shrink in upon itself and turn to dust in her palm. "Your talisman has danced its last dance," she said. She laid down the tiny handful of dust and covered it with a flat stone.
Quintus brought his hand up in a very private salute over his heart, to the spot where the talisman had rested practically since he laid his childhood bulla on the household altar. It was gone, and so was the boy who had found it. But the man that boy had grown into could almost feel the bruises it had given him in warning him the many times it saved his life.
True, he had the Eagle, but the tiny bronze had been his private guard and treasure. He would miss it.
Draupadi at his side was warm and real to his touch. He thought, perhaps, he might not miss the talisman quite so much if they both lived. Her hand clasped his. The touch made him feel the way he did when the Eagle seemed to stir. In the darkness, the standard's reassuring light glowed, like a fire in the desert glimpsed from far away by a traveler unsure of his path. Roman and Ch'in alike ringed closely around it, basking in the light.
Draupadi shivered. Quintus offered her the Eagle to carry, but she shook her head.
"They are out there. Do you feel them?" she whispered.
"Who?" he asked. Black Naacals? By now they would have attacked, seeking to destroy the remnants of the Romans' and Ch'ins' failing strength.
"Not them. Hush. Wait."
Quintus obeyed. And after awhile, up in the rocks, pinpoints of light winked into tremulous light, strengthened, and resolved themselves into flames that bobbed as if their bearers walked slowly and reluctantly down to the waiting soldiers.
Then the lights stopped. And waited.
28
Metal rasped behind Quintus, and the line of men drew up, curved, and moved out to flank and protect him.
"Archers," Ssu-ma Chao ordered. Even shooting into the dark, a volley of arrows might take out a number of... of whatever laired in that forbidding tumble of rock up ahead. To that extent, the Ch'in officer's command made sense.
Arrows whined and buzzed like some ferocious beehive, struck with a spear in midsummer. A man screamed and died, blood running from his mouth. Drona, teacher to warriors and princes, had died thus, Quintus thought—or was it Arjuna, speaking into his memories?
The trouble was, a volley of arrows would kill some but anger and disperse the others. The wisest policy would be to follow them up into the rocks—but not by night.
Quintus shook his head. "Testudo," he ordered. "Make ready. And make sure that you bring the men of Ch'in into it." They were not trained for such close combat order, but they were allies: and he could hope that this new enemy had not seen such a defense before.
Overhead, the Eagle's light gleamed, a brighter, tinier moon: as above, so below. Quintus thought he could see figures moving down from the heights, their eyes wide, their mouths open, their backs stiff almost as if they forced themselves along. Like the Romans, had they learned to fear newcomers?
"Draupadi, you go to the rear," Quintus gave the shoulder he held a gentle pressure.
"You will need..." she began.
Ganesha pushed forward past the Legionaries. "Do not fight," he commanded. "Do not so much as move." So absolute was the authority in his voice, so impressive was he in his wrinkled Naacal's robe, that Quintus's hand fell from his sword. He raised a hand, holding the men in their places before they could raise their shields to form the tortoise defense that would protect them from a flight of arrows.
The old man smoothed out his robe, otherwise untouched by the ever-present hardships and dust of the desert. It bore gold embroidery that shone in the light of moon and Eagle. "Come with me, Draupadi," he said. "We must welcome them."
"Are you mad?" Quintus rounded on the old man with a snarl. One moment, Ganesha had leaned gasping against the rocks; at the next, he was likely to throw lives away.
"Are you? We have tracked the Black Naacals to their lair. These—" he gestured at the rocks with their pinpoint torches, steady now, "—have not attacked us as the Black Naacals surely would have done. Therefore, it is not they, perhaps, who are our enemies—"
"They could be spies—" Ssu-ma Chao suggested.
"Or they could be souls in torment!" Draupadi flared. "At the Stone Tower, you know what you saw. You saw what the Dark Ones do. Terror and suffering are their servants, but they have human slaves as well."
"And what is to stop these men slaying us to please their masters?" Lucilius sneered.
Ganesha shook his head. "What stops any slave from turning on his master? Fear. And what gives a man the strength to turn against the master who abuses him? A greater fear, perhaps; aye, or a vision of courage beyond anything such a man has dared to dream."
There had been a road and lining the road crosses, each bearing the tortured body of a man, his chest heaving or too still, his legs broken, and his face blackened from lack of air. Gladiators. Had they seen Spartacus as a greater fear or the image of a type of courage that they, fighters though they were, had never aspired to?