"If they die, they die as soldiers." He heard his voice, so hoarse it was hard to recognize the words as his lips shaped them. "Rufus, you go back. Manetho, I'm with you. We will catch them in a circle. No one will get out alive."
Least of all ourselves.
But the idea of Romans, their eyes alight with anger and relieved tension, and the bloody drill of their short swords, advancing deliberately on the Black Naacals and cutting them asunder had its own attraction and even carried its own healing. Rufus struggled to his feet. What began as an unsteady walk finished up as a march.
Quintus turned to Manetho. "I know you would rather be with your own men," he said. "But with your help..."
"You must take care. It is you they want!" cried Manetho. "They know who brought in the strangers. You are young, strong.... They may wish to make you one of their number.... Sometimes it happens when one of our sons grows too strong and they have a vacancy in their ranks...."
Now that was damnable—suborning sons as well as killing them. Let a strong man rise, and the slaves would never know if they could rely on him, or if, at the moment of sacrifice, they would look up at the Black Naacal holding the knife and see in his face the man who had once been son or brother or friend.
"They will have to content themselves with the terror they have already wrought," Quintus snapped. He would like to execute Lucilius himself: The patrician had betrayed not only his city and his caste, but all his world.
However, Quintus's first responsibility must be to rescue the Eagle. To wield it, if he could; and if not, to afford Draupadi and Ganesha a clean death before the Black Naacals unleashed their power. Perhaps he would even have time to fall on his own sword.
And the Eagle? If he could not wield it, he must destroy it. Most likely, that would eliminate the need to fall on his sword—or for any of the others to try it.
He had come, he realized, to the end of the skein of time allotted him by the Fates. With that realization came the death of hope—and the end of his fear. His sword gleamed in his hand, but did not quiver.
Abruptly he laughed. "Morituri te salutamus!" he cried, saluting the darkness.
Manetho glared at him. The poor bastard probably feared him almost as much as the Black Naacals. Yet he must lead his men and work with Quintus, whom he clearly found a strange creature if he could face death laughing.
But Manetho was brave. He led. And Quintus followed, his senses keyed up for this final battle.
Again, the banging of gongs and now, the braying of horns and the sound that Quintus feared even more—the blowing of bone flutes, higher and more shrill than the priests' horns. Manetho shuddered. So long a slave, and now he was forcing himself to face worse than death. Quintus opened his mouth to utter the comforting words he himself had heard before his first battle. Again came the clamor of the priests' instruments. Energy thrilled in his blood. He felt stronger, fairly matched, and he no longer needed to place his feet with such care. The fear was gone, all of it. He wanted to share that comfort, for such it was, with Manetho, but the slave was a dark blot up ahead.
Even through the walls, Quintus heard the thunder. Lightning played across the gaps in the walls and danced in the waste, turning salt flats and stone slabs white. A wind blew. Remembering the storms he had endured with Ganesha and Draupadi—and the whirlwinds they had survived—he was not dismayed.
The lightning flashed once more. Now, the very walls themselves seemed to glow. Flames seemed to brush the hands of the figures in the battered friezes. Krishna had danced that way. But Quintus's talisman lay buried in the waste. Quintus decided that the sight was a good omen, if a fearsome one. Fare forward, Krishna had told him so very long ago. Told Arjuna, who faced armies, not a man with the blood of princes in his veins and the soul of a felon. Not Dark Priests. Your battle is harder than mine, came a voice in his head. Arjuna's this time, not the Dark Ones.
Quintus would fare forward, as he had been taught. It was relief. It was rebirth. And it was deadly danger.
31
Manetho turned to Quintus. "They have started," he said, tonelessly. They have taken the Naacals, and now they also have your weapon."
Now Quintus's reluctant guide would have only to shout. Surely, the Dark Ones had stationed guards in these honeycombed walls. Would the Romans face a second betrayal tonight?
The thought chilled Quintus for a moment, until he forced it out of mind. The Black Naacals might have the Eagle, but he somehow doubted that they could use its full powers. Still, since it was an Eagle of Rome, its loss was grievous.
More so was the loss of Draupadi, leaving an ever-growing ache in his heart. All his life, he had loved, only to have what he had loved snatched from him. Now, in losing her, he stood to lose even more than love: The whole world might pay for it.
Not if I can help it, he vowed.
Lightning illuminated Manetho's pale face, showing skin streaked with oily sweat, and eyes rolling from side to side like those of a horse frightened by a raging fire. With this evil ritual begun, Manetho reacted to slaves' fears: Run and hide, perhaps survive until next time— even if he also sensed that, if they did not fight now, there would be no next time.
What do you recommend? It would be cruelty to ask. But it was a question the Roman must have an answer for. Manetho knew this ruin; Quintus did not.
His own people were running out of choices. They might gather what water and supplies they could and retreat into the deep desert—if they could pass the barriers—and trust to Fate and skill to find more water before they went mad, and died. Or they might hide within this complex—assuming Lucilius did not betray them. Even if they hid successfully, there would come a day when their luck would run out.
The Black Naacals wanted him, Quintus, now—sacrifice or apprentice to their foul magic, who could say?
Neither was a choice for a Roman. What then were Roman choices? Quintus could rejoin his men, and they could fall on their swords. Or they could follow their own harsh code: Draw those swords, form a battle line, and attack as long as life was in them.
"Will you turn on us now?" Manetho demanded. Quintus's silence had made him, too, suspect betrayal.
"Put that thing away," Rufus grumbled, coming up to them as he gestured at the ancient blade the slave had drawn. "A man could die poisoned by its dirt before he bled out life from any cut you gave him."
Though terror had given Manetho keen ears, Quintus wagered that he had not heard the centurion pad up behind them. Accustomed to the darkness now, he saw that Rufus had slung his boots about his neck and carried his own blade.
The centurion gave the tribune a strange look. That look—Quintus had seen its like the night the man of the Legions had come to tell his family that his father had died. Hard news, it meant, to be borne as a man bears the dealings of fate.
"Sir," Rufus began, "I felt some better, and I went to scout out the Black Naacals'..." his mouth moved as if he wanted to spit, "...what they'd call a shrine. They're all there, along with those they took for their altar. I had thought if I could, I'd give them a decent death: no luck."
If Rufus had been able to reach Ganesha and Draupadi, would they have welcomed his "decent death"? Could they even die, after so long?
Manetho shifted from foot to foot, and Quintus guessed his wariness: The slave had only the sight and voice of the two Naacals—and terror thereafter. With their knowledge, their wealth of experience, and their study—which had once been the discipline of the Black Naacals before they turned to darkness—how easy it would be for them to adapt to a new form of power. For him, priests were like serpents: There were some whose venom killed after you took one step, and some whose venom killed after you took two steps—but you died just the same.