ANDRE NORTON
AND
SUSAN SHWARTZ
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.
EMPIRE OF THE EAGLE.
by Andre Norton and Susan Shwartz.
Introduction
by
Andre Norton
It was a soldier of hardly more than peasant birth, but possessing the spark of military genius and practical knowledge, who forged that steel-hard backbone which upheld first the Roman republic, and then the Empire— the Legion. Up to the time of Marius, men had fought hard and well, but the loose formation of an army founded on what had been a militia of citizens called out in times of national danger was not the weapon a leader convinced of his own destiny needed—or wanted.
The concept of the professional soldier, whose home was truly the army itself and whose god was the Eagle of the Legion to which he was oathed, was born. In spite of the bloodbath ordered by Sulla, jealous of his predecessor’s power, the idea of the Legion—and the Eagle— remained until it was accepted as the only possible answer to warfare with both barbarians of the borders and the trained armies of any others who dared to resist the expansion of Rome.
To suffer such defeat as to lose an Eagle was a shame so dark that it could only be washed out in blood. Probably the most notable of such losses was the massacre of three of Augustus Caesar’s Legions—and the loss of their Eagles—by Quinctilius Varus in the Teutoberger Wald; Augustus is said to have lamented, “Varus, Varus, give me back my Legions!”
But an earlier defeat was suffered by the Proconsul Crassus (of the first Triumvirate). Envious of Julius Caesar and greedy for the fabled treasures of the Middle East, he marched his army to a bloody defeat at Carrhae in 43 b.c.
It is always wise to explore the footnotes in any history. While gathering material for the novel Imperial Lady, we found it necessary to read the history of the Han Dynasty—a remnant from nearly two thousand years ago. And in a translation of those very ancient pages, there exists a footnote that proved to be an open door for imagination’s sweep.
We are told in a very brief paragraph that a portion of the Han Army, which had poured its might along the Silk Road conquering all that it met, rode into the Middle East and was present as audience to the defeat of the Legions.
Impressed by the way these Westerners stood up to disaster and death, the commander of the Han force who had reached that point so far from his homeland claimed a cohort of these prisoners as a novel gift for his emperor.
So baldly, the paragraph states a fact and mentions nothing more about the Romans’ fate in a land so far away that they had no way of measuring the distance.
What did become of the Romans? Because history does not tell us, perhaps we can try to guess. A handful out of a Legion, looking to their Eagle for inspiration and guide—what could chance thereafter?
Andre Norton
December 1992
Introduction
by
Susan Shwartz
I well remember the first time I heard of the Romans who became the protagonists of Empire of the Eagle. It was in 1964, and I had been spending my lunch hour reading The Last Planet, by Andre Norton. Those of you who know this book know that it opens with a description of Romans in Asia, marching east, always marching east, and, unnoticed to history, forming their last square somewhere in Asia—a perfect prelude to a tale of decaying empire.
Her Operation Timesearch brought my attention to the Motherland of Mu, the Atlanteans, and the Uighurs; I was delighted, much later, to discover on the map a real Uighur Autonomous Republic in western China, on the border of what was formerly the Soviet Union. Several books later—Silk Roads and Shadows and Imperial Lady (written with Andre Norton)—I have still not visited this area in any way but research and dreams. Nevertheless, when the subject was proposed, I found myself ready to return in my writing to those places, and more than ready to deal with the enigma of Romans, marching across the Tarim Basin.
How did they get there? With only a few records in Chinese history of people who might be Romans, we can only conjecture. On one such conjecture we built this book: the defeat of Crassus and his Legions at Carrhae in 43 b.c. A few things are certain: During the first century b.c, Rome first became aware of the trade routes now known as the Silk Roads and the wealth that traveled west along them.
Especially interested was Crassus, already a spectacularly wealthy man. but one who envied his fellow triumvir Julius Caesar and sought victories of his own by campaigning in the Near East as a proconsul. Unfortunately, in addition to his greed and ambition, Crassus was a poor general.
He was profoundly either unwise or unfortunate in his choice of allies, and was betrayed both by the Nabataean Arabs and the king of Armenia. In addition, he made several strategic and tactical blunders that doomed his campaign. Goaded by the Nabataeans, he allowed himself to be convinced to march his Legions at a cavalry pace. He waited for his son Publius’s crack Gallic cavalry. And he fought his Legions under the hot sun near Carrhae, a garrison town near present-day Haran, without rest or water. Worse luck, he fought against The Surena, a charismatic, powerful, and skilled Parthian clan leader, who was later killed by his own king for Caesar’s own fault—overmuch ambition.
Those interested in this time and this part of the world know that the Parthians were skilled horse archers. Faced with archers, the Romans formed their testudo, or tortoise, shields over their heads to protect themselves against the arrow barrage and wait for the Parthians to exhaust their supply of ammunition. However, they had not counted on the heat, the thirst—or The Surena’s bringing up additional supplies. Nor did they count on Crassus’s collapse when his son’s head was paraded before him.
The defeat was staggering: Rome lost not only tens of thousands of men, but the Eagles of their Legions, the sign of their power and their honor. Abandoning the dead and wounded, Crassus and the remnants of his command holed up in Carrhae and, ultimately, sought terms.
What happened to the remnants of the Legions—and the captured Eagles? Most likely, they finished out their days in captivity, the Romans as slaves, the Eagles as trophies.
That is the story that has intrigued Andre Norton for decades. And that was our jumping-off point. What if, as they marched east into captivity, they marched straight into myths? Asia—especially Central Asia—is an incredible nexus for myths; and we had two extraordinary storehouses of such myths to hand. We had the stories of fabled Mu, often combined with Atlantis and solar mythology in inimitable nineteenth-century-type scholarship that seeks to prove survivals of a lost culture and a lost continent. And we had the ancient Indian epic. The Mahabharata, with its gods, demigods, and princes striding among mortals in epic battle. I had become fascinated with it after seeing a performance of Peter Brooks’s adaptation at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and I was intrigued to learn that the stories of Krishna and of his human allies, Arjuna the hero and his brothers, their wife, Draupadi, and their wars are still loved, taught to children, and even form the inspiration of modem comic books.
Certainly, this combination removes Empire of the Eagle firmly from the realm of historical fiction and into fantasy such as, I like to think, the elephant-headed Ganesha records in The Mahabharata.
– Imagine him opening his story. It is dark. Men are crouching in a swamp, betrayed, defeated, unsure of their leaders. And messengers are coming—bringing terms and, for us and for them, the beginning of a journey across cultures and across time.
Susan Shwartz
December 1992
1
Carrhae’s walls had let the survivors of Crassus’s Legions slip away as ignominiously as it had admitted them: ridding the town of one more set of masters unable to command it. The remnants of the Legion had no pride left—and very little strength. Blank and indifferent, the outpost might have been as far from them as Rome herself. At this moment, the tribune Quintus longed for the protection of those walls and wished the people within heartily to Tartarus. He fully expected to arrive among the damned sooner or later himself.
Up ahead, his superiors and elders gestured while centurions struck flagging men into one last formation with their vinestaffs in order to follow their guide into the marshes.
“You think we can trust him?”
“You want to eat mud, comrade?”
Someone else drew in his cheeks, making a sucking sound. Amazing anyone had strength and spirit left to raise even so feeble a jest.