What would he want in a woman? Before his family’s lands had been lost, he had dreamed, but of very little beside a country girl, perhaps from one of the nearby families who ranked with his, her thick braids bound in a saffron veil. Saffron … he remembered saffron and incense from his dreams.
Dark hair flowing like silk or oil down slender shoulders. Deep pools of eyes, watching him intently. Draupadi.
Omens of a woman? Such omens are for women. He could all but hear his grandfather growl that at him. And not for any women associated with their family, the old man would probably have added.
There had to be another reason, a rational explanation for why these traders looked so familiar. Somewhere before this, he must have seen faces like those of the woman he had dreamed—impossible; who would allow a woman that beautiful to travel these roads?—perhaps in caravans in which journeyed men from Hind, or perhaps those dreams he had known while his wits wandered.
Draupadi … he remembered her as he remembered the genius loci from his farm. The lithe strength of limb, the sidelong glance of eye, the sleekness of hair and sun-darkened skin all reminded Quintus of her. But Draupadi—at least in his dreams—had eyes that almost melted with warmth. These men kept their eyes hooded, except for quick glances upward. Their eyes were dark, true—but flat, as if not fearing those about them as threat or prey. Draupadi’s mouth was generous; these merchants’ mouths were tight, betraying nothing except a will to snatch and to keep. The resemblance was as cruel a deception as the shimmering glints on a desert horizon that tricked thirsty men into believing they saw water.
As if alerted by Quintus’s thoughts, one of the dusky-skinned merchants turned a little in his direction. His glance flicked out, like a spark shooting from charred wood, from beneath lids darkened with kohl. Threat? No threat? Or perhaps, were they sizing up the Romans as lawful prey?
Quintus held himself in check, though that glance made his fingers crook toward the hilt of the missing sword that a captive could not wear. He had seen more sympathetic looks from vipers.
His nostrils twitched. Over his heart came a familiar jabbing. He would have wagered gold he did not own that, if he pulled out the bronze dancing figure he carried there, the torches that it bore would flicker a warning.
Then, the wind blew, and all he smelled was the fire, redolent of dung.
“…So much for Roman pride? That’s a better thing to celebrate than the bedding of the bride!” Quintus could not hear precisely who said that. He suspected it might be one of the men whose nation he could not identify.
A roar of laughter was quickly choked off as some of the men noticed the Romans.
“It’s not good,” muttered Rufus. “Look at the way the Greeks are slinking back.”
Not just the Greeks. The strangers had backed off, leaving the Armenians to answer.
“What do you know about this?” Quintus asked Lucilius in an undertone.
“Let them tell you.” The patrician snapped as if he hated them all, Romans and foreigners alike.
“Ask them,” Quintus waved Arsaces forward. “Say, ‘You are pleased to mention Roma. Now say what you have to say to my face.’ ”
“Is it that blow on your head or the desert sun that makes you run mad this time?” Lucilius asked.
“You wanted us to learn what we can. Why quarrel, then, with the results you get?” Quintus snapped.
He strode forward. “Tell us,” he demanded of the Armenian, pushing close enough to practically rub noses with the other man.
“Great Lords, forgive!” The merchant bowed as if Quintus were the proconsul himself, standing armed with his Legions to back him.
From behind him, out past the camp in the barren lands, came a cry.
“Forgive what?”
The other Romans closed behind Quintus.
“It was the wedding, lords. They were feasting and singing. Some sang poems that our Great King wrote. He is very learned. Then the tables were taken away, and Jason was singing….. Do you know the Bacchae of Euripides?”
Quintus furrowed his brow. Something about a king of Thebes, who opposed the cult of Dionysus and was driven mad, to wander in the hills and be torn apart by kinswomen.
“Bloody songs for a bridal celebration,” he said, since, clearly, he must say something.
The Armenian merchant shook his head. Now that he realized that the Romans were not going to—could not— strike him down, he grew visibly arrogant, as it is a merchant’s custom to be with those who cannot buy his wares.
“He is a fine singer and much applauded. He bowed before the King of Kings and received a rich reward. Then Sillaces entered and prostrated himself. When he was told to rise, he threw what he carried into the company.” The merchant paused, aping the skill of the actors he had praised.
“It was the head of your leader, noble lords.”
“Gods. Gods,” muttered a man behind Quintus.
“Steady there, man,” Rufus muttered.
Crassus had been half-crazed, but he had howled defiance as The Surena claimed his Eagles, and Quintus had rushed in to protect him, felt the proconsul’s severed hand upon his head a moment before the blow came that all but split his own skull.
If he could bear that memory, he could bear this news like a Roman. His father’s son.
“The King of Kings called Sillaces his younger brother and gave him the kiss of kinship. And the men cheered and danced and drank wine. When they fell silent somewhat, Jason came forward. He had found a rod and waved it as a Bacchante in her frenzy would wave a thyrsus.”
It was true that the East bred strong haters who would never forget and never forgive. With something close to joy, the merchant leaned forward to deliver his last lines. “He took up the head and sang Agave’s lines from the play. ‘We’ve hunted down a mighty chase this day and from the mountain bring the noble prey.’ With your master’s head!”
Behind him, a man cleared his throat. Quintus’s eyes stung. He wanted to shout aloud full-voiced, never forgive, swear by all the gods to build a column of heads towering to the sky. Not to mourn Crassus, but to lament the disgrace of Rome.
He could sense the tension straining in Rufus beside him, ready to fight at his officer’s command or to strike with his vinestaff any fool who might have few enough brains to anticipate his leader’s order.
The old bore Livy was right. Vae victis. Woe to the conquered.
“Old moneybags’s last, best role,” came a whisper he knew he must not trace back to its source. Rufus would do that—and did.
Only the memory of Quintus’s grandfather, facing the messenger who had come to tell him of his son’s death, sustained the younger man. A gesture against despair brought his fingers to the pouch he still wore. By some miracle, there were coins left in it, small ones.
“For your news,” he said, tossing the coins to the merchant as he would to a marketplace storyteller. “I will not trouble you for change.” His voice came out more calmly than he would have believed possible. Behind him, a Legionary cleared his throat, and Quintus sensed how his hard-held composure steadied them now.
“You show better than your master!” shouted a man standing half in shadow, who wore his cap well pushed down. One of the Persians, Quintus thought, or—no, the man wore Persian garb in somber hues, but he was one of those newcomers that Quintus could not assign tribe or realm to.
“Tell him the rest! Tell him how Orodes promised Sillaces much gold, then how he paid your leader by pouring molten gold into the mouth of that head because, any other way, he never got enough. You could see the burns, Roman! And you could smell him fry!”
With one outthrust hand, Quintus barred a Legionary who had lunged forward. Start a riot? Certainly they could. And just as certainly, Ssu-ma Chao would order their deaths. They would never have the chance to regain their arms, their Eagle, and their honor, even if, in the next moment, they used them only to die in the desert.
“You fool, he wants you to fight. Go ahead, then. If the Ch’in don’t kill you, by Dis, I will,” he growled. “Stand firm. By all the gods, we’ll show them Romans.”
If the square had held that strongly at Carrhae, they would not now stand here, facing a jeering crowd of merchants, cameldrivers, and horsemen. They would not be forced to display their mettle, like slaves upon the block, for that sneering Ch’in noble. To Quintus’s relief, his men held steady—staring level-eyed at the rabble before them. Gradually, something in their quiet silenced the barbarians baying about them.