It was Lucilius who launched into action, breaking the spell. His green eyes wide with fear, he edged closer to the standard, step by heavy step. He might have been struggling against a swollen river current.
“The Eagle,” he mouthed. “Give…”
Quintus swung the standard out of reach.
“Give it to him,” ordered Wang Tou-fan.
“Let him take it,” Quintus retorted. He spoke without any regard for rank. Surely it must be clear to all that the Eagle chose—men obeyed.
“Let him try, that is,” the tribune added.
About Quintus, the decimated Roman force came slowly alive. Some moved forward to stand between Quintus and the Ch’in soldiers. One or two moved in as if to guard Draupadi and Ganesha. The rest, without being commanded, fell into their familiar ranks.
Again, Lucilius grabbed for the Eagle.
“No.” Quintus jerked it out of his reach.
Then the sand began to hum. Singing sand, some wayfarers called it. However, this was no howl, but like the flaps of some appalling insect’s wings, enticing lesser creatures to come and be devoured.
Beneath their blistered feet, the ground trembled. Thunder drummed, then rumbled again, as if summoning full force. A faint blue spark flew from man to man in the ranks. The sky darkened toward twilight. Now the air seemed to cool. The bedraggled crests on the Romans’ helms rose. Quintus sensed energies building up the way the tension builds in a catapult.
“Iron,” muttered Ganesha. “There is iron here, and they know it….”
“Quick!” Draupadi cried. “The metal you wear—off with it for your lives’ sake!”
Long ago, most of the Romans had stowed their armor on packbeasts. The Ch’in mainly wore harnesses of leather. But still, there were iron nails in the Legions’ boots…. The matted hair on the back of Quintus’s neck stirred. Shed belts, weapons, tools, yes, but to go barefoot in this realm of sharp rocks was a sentence of slow death, and he had a sudden nightmare image of Black Naacals tracking them by sniffing along bloody footprints.
However, it was Draupadi who had warned them. And she knew what might follow. “Off with boots—all iron!” he commanded.
What of his own footcoverings? He could stoop to shed them, but he would have to drop the Eagle to do so. Better to stand, to feel this immensity of power as it built up. Was this what Arjuna had found when he discovered Pasupata and learned to wield it? Was this the ultimate warrior’s test? He wished he could remember.
Tension continued to build. Quintus’s hands quivered as the metal of the Eagle vibrated, and that movement fed down the staff. He could almost hear the bronze hum.
A savage crack split heaven and earth, blinding Quintus. The bolt of white, tinged with purple, was the last thing he saw. Caught in the darkness, he felt the rumble of the thunder even through his feet, oversetting his balance. He toppled to his knees.
Exhausted as they were, the pack animals plunged and screamed. Someone shrieked, a terrible sound, annihilated by the thunder and the stink of burning. Now the wind did blow, and Quintus scented garlic and approaching rain, incongruous in this waste. His eyes watered, as tears forced themselves out beneath his eyelids.
Voices nearby:
“Jupiter Optimus Maximus, did you see Sextus?”
“Burnt like a pig … gods!”
Had he been so frightened, then, that he must weep as he had not done even at his mother’s funeral? No: Tears were warm, and the moisture now running down his face was cool. A wind continued—not the Vulcan’s forge of the deep desert, but a true breeze, heavy with water and salt.
Rain came in that basin of salt and grit, dried before the stars altered the pattern of their going. In Quintus’s hand the standard tingled. A tremendous wave of well-being rushed through him, worn as he was.
Rain was falling with increasing strength, cool on parched skin. The darkness of the sky was now water, released from the clouds that had suddenly gathered. Quintus’s talisman pulsed, and the power he had sensed before built up again, seeking discharge.
“Get down and hold!” he shouted. No need for any man to be the tallest thing on this plain. Please all the gods that his men had shed their metal gear. There might be another lightning strike among them.
I must order burial detail for Sextus, he thought.
The energies vibrating in the Eagle built up nearly past endurance, and he tensed, waiting for the strike.
This time the crack of lightning drew a response from the earth itself, which rumbled accompaniment to the thunder. Far and near, the crash echoed and re-echoed all over the desert basin. Men and horses toppled and fell, rolling upon the wet grit. Even the camels panicked and tried to plunge away. Some of the men rose and staggered after them, unsure of their footing on ground that was suddenly more slick, or higher or lower than it had been moments ago.
The smell of a salt sea intensified as the rain fell. Quintus opened his mouth and gulped a mouthful of water. Such bounty made him drunk. Proconsuls were fools to drink Falernian, he thought giddily, if they could have water like this. Someone cheered, and Rufus silenced him fast.
Another lightning bolt, searing purple-white even despite the barrier of Quintus’s eyelids. When the explosion dissipated, he dared to test his sight, to seek sight of the company….
He found himself gazing in dumb amazement over a vast split in the earth, or in the seabed dead so many years, but stirring in its long death with deadly strength.
Draupadi gasped, while Ganesha chanted in a tongue unknown to the Romans and the Ch’in.
“Stay back!” Quintus ordered, but he himself edged forward over the unsteady ground, holding the standard high as if he headed a proud marching Legion.
Behind him, Rufus shouted to men to catch the rainwater in any container they could find.
Did Quintus indeed carry a weapon stronger than any he had dreamed might exist? Had the Eagle not drawn down the lightnings, aye, and shielded him from that raw force? May Charon ferry Sextus swiftly; he took a bolt I fear was meant for me, he thought. And was the standard not the source of the new strength flowing into his body?
He had sought and found weapons—Arjuna’s sword, for one, and that length of wood and horn that passed for a bow. Now, he thought, he had sought and found the weapon of supreme destruction for this time and place. He could have laughed at the irony of the gods, who decreed that the very weapon he had sought for so long was the Eagle, the loss of which had meant his disgrace.
In what guise did Pasupata come to you, Arjuna? he asked the voice inside his mind. He was not surprised when the Delphic, aggravating voice did not answer.
Whatever form its power took, for this age, Pasupata had now manifested itself in the Eagle. And Quintus was both its master and its servant. His eyes met Draupadi’s, and she smiled at him. How beautiful she was with the rain draping the curves of her form. No illusions there. Even during the lightning, she had not removed the ring he had given her.
“Hold firm!” Ganesha cried out in a voice stronger than any Quintus had ever heard him use.
The land quivered with aftershocks. Now even the horizon appeared to their dazed eyes as if it were dancing. Another crack came, again followed by thunder above and below them. Quintus sprawled this time, but fought his way back to his feet, using the standard as lever. Pasupata might for the moment be a lame man’s staff. Leaning on that support, Quintus wavered forward.
He came to a halt on the very lip of the chasm that the lightning and earthquakes had opened in the desert. The Ch’in were wailing to their gods, their ancestors, or any other powers that might award them a moment’s thought at all. From the Romans came muttered oaths and prayers, all equally useful.
Quintus paused at the edge of the pit, two aftershocks made him reel, back and forth. Only the standard, stabbed deeply into the ground, kept him from falling into the dark depths of the pit that had opened.
All this land had been under water once—an inland lake of such a size, perhaps, to rival the Middle Sea. Nor had that forgotten sea been any more unknown in its time than the one serving Roman ships. Ships had also sailed it—and creatures had dwelt in its depths.
Quintus’s talisman heated—a warning but not with a real alarm, as he dropped, to creep forward on his belly. Beneath him, as if the seabed had swallowed it at the critical moment, lay a ship of a design unknown to him. Ganesha might have sailed on such a craft, he thought.