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.
“You think they’d—” Ganesha’s deep wisdom, Draupadi’s supple grace, extinguished in a pool of drying blood, either in sacrifice or by Rufus’s rough mercy.
“They wouldn’t betray us. Not those two,” Rufus said. “It’s what I’d want for me. You would too, sir. And even if they’re not Romans…”
“Never mind, soldier.” In another minute, Rufus would have him wet-eyed—and this was no time for tears. “Anyhow, you did not succeed.”
“No, sir,” Rufus drew himself up. “It’s Carrhae all over again. We have failed.”
The boom of a great gong shuddered through the walls, its vibration shaking into them as they huddled against the worn masonry. Just so had they heard the gongs and bells and drums of The Surena’s reinforcements and prepared to sell their lives in the bright sun so far away.
“Well,” Quintus said, “we have known we were living on borrowed time. So now we pay it back, eh?”
He had well expected that grim laugh from Rufus.
“It’s worse than you know, sir. They have set a guard more dangerous than any we might have expected. The lady Draupadi herself.”
Quintus whirled to grab the centurion’s shoulders, slamming him back against the rock. Chaos was come, if Draupadi could be turned against them. And he had been so sure that she would not.
“It’s not like that!” Rufus hissed at him. “You know how worn out she has been. The way Lucilius turned, that seems to have been the last straw. When he brought her in, they talked to her, and she shook her head. That was when they grabbed her. I was going to go after her, but three of the boys held onto me…. I let ’em live…. They forced some drug into her….”
Quintus heard himself moan.
“… and now she seems to have turned inside … not like a madwoman, but like a sibyl seeing visions. And what she sees, they can use. They can use her.”
“How do you know?”
“We saw her sitting there. Just sitting. I was surprised that she wasn’t better guarded. So, one of the lads thought he could sneak up and rescue her. One less to worry about, eh? And he knew it would please…”
“Never mind that,” Quintus said, holding onto a ragged calm. After hearing that his son was dead, his grand-sire had thanked the messenger and called him “guest.” Never mind that he was dying inside. “What happened?”
“They’ve got her staked out like a lamb for a lion! She pointed at him and chanted something. Sir, he wasn’t expecting trouble. He trusted her! And when she chanted, he just marched up and saluted. ‘Watch this,’ says one of the Black Robes, and slits his throat in front of that runaway from the crows, that traitor….”
“Lucilius just stood there?”
“Right before the altar. They’ve let him keep his sword and gear—haven’t issued him a black robe yet. But they don’t let him near the Eagle, and they don’t treat him with the kind of respect he likes.”
Maybe Lucilius had never been much of a tribune, but for him to stand there while priests slit the throat of a Legionary—crucifixion was too good for him.
Having given his report, Rufus stood waiting, as he always had, for orders.
Old war dog, Quintus wanted to say. Tell me what to do. Escape into the desert? Hide, and attack from within the ruins over and over again? Choose to die? But not even the centurion’s years of experience had prepared him for this day. And it was not Rufus’s duty to order, but to obey. Still, by his own example, Quintus had the advice he sought. Do a Roman thing.
Quintus drew his sword. “I shall not sheathe it again, save in enemy flesh,” he said between clenched teeth. Manetho shuddered.