He had seen that horse collapse in the last rush from the blowing sand. Who else had been lost? Some, wounded, clung to carts, were loaded face-down across pack-animals or tied to their mounts.
“That one won’t last the night,” Arsaces pointed as a driver clung to one of his charges that was too weary to shy away from the blood scent. “At least he’ll have enough water while he dies.”
No one will die.
“What did you say?” Quintus started.
No one has died here for … the voice trailed off.
“Sir are you all right? Your eyes just rolled up….”
“I’m fine.” Quintus waved off the concern with what he hoped could pass for irritation. The Romans owed what freedom they had to Ssu-ma Chao’s belief they brought him fortune: no use frightening everyone else. Or, he thought, with a countryman’s shrewdness, letting the rest of them know.
You are wise, though you are a warrior, not a priest. I have always thought so.
The tattered caravan staggered past him into safe haven. He started to ask if any others had been lost, but his words were lost in the clatter of warped cartwheels on rock. The men of Hind. The Persians. Even the wagons of that fat man who had been so afraid outside Merv, and the man himself, now not nearly so fat and moving the faster for it.
Then, leading their horses, heads down and shuddering, passed the merchants Quintus had seen the night he had emerged from long, long dreams. Seen and distrusted, with their high-bred faces, their hooded eyes, and their tightly held mouths. There had been—how many of them?
More, it was certain, than now passed under his gaze. And there had been women in their numbers, gone now, too. Had part of their train perished under the blades of the Yueh-chih? Or had they decided to take their own escape?
Last of all came the soldiers, limping down the path. Sunlight blazed out overhead, hiding them, for an instant. As the track wound around the spire of dark rock that blocked a full view of the lake below, they paused. Horses and camels balked, but the crack of whips and oaths in a tongue Quintus had never heard (and liked as little as he liked those who spoke it) forced them back up the slope.
“Our beasts … cannot make it downhill,” said one of the merchants, his face still muffled in the wrappings that had protected him from the storm. “We camp here … outside.”
He held up a hand, interrupting the instinctive protests of the soldiers at their charges’ foolishness. “We have supplies.”
If there had been any one group likelier to husband their own goods while all around them went in need, Quintus had yet to see it. Let them thirst in sight of a blue lake. Let their beasts eat stored fodder when fresh green stalks waited to be cropped—though it was a shame to treat honest animals that way.
“And we will pay—in gold—for water to be brought.”
“Wouldn’t you just know it?” Lucilius hissed. “You might as well let them go their own way. They will, anyhow.”
“Merchants!” This time, Rufus did spit as he watched the strangers coil about the lip of the valley.
The eyes of tribune, centurion, and Ch’in officer met in perfect understanding: Tonight and all the nights thereafter, these travelers would be placed under watch.
Now that all the others had descended, they too could head for the water and rest their bodies craved. First, Quintus thought, water. Then, perhaps there would be fish or even waterfowl, feeding near the lake. In that moment, he might even have traded his lost farm for rest—for him and all of the Romans who had lived.
Shadows began to deepen in the valley. The sky turned indigo, as it did in the hills, and a long sunbeam slanted down the track, pointing out the way.
He nodded to Rufus, who raised a battered vinestaff. “Let’s show them how Romans do it, lads,” he rasped.
They formed ranks and marched: Rome’s pace, Rome’s race, down the path toward safety. If the rock slabs underfoot were not the good roads of the Republic, at least they did not shift underfoot.
Another ray from the sun, heading like they themselves to its well-earned rest, struck the rock spire as they passed. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but as it died, Quintus thought he saw etched into the rock a serpent, seven heads crowning its sinuous body. Wherever the light touched it, it was slow to fade.
He waited for whatever voice had guided him into safety or madness—whichever—to offer an explanation. None came. But reassurance seemed to radiate from his bronze talisman.
I know, he told it. Fare forward.
They passed under the shelter of the rock spire and into a circular valley so pure it made his heart ache.
Fire crackled, casting long shadows on the grimy tents that Rufus had insisted the men pitch even here. Quintus shivered. The heat, the twilight wind, cooked food, fresh clothing, the cold water drying in his hair, even the small, familiar camp sounds of men repairing gear and dicing, luxuries he had forgotten.
The last sunlight winked at the horizon like the eye of a sleepy creature, urging all in the valley to rest. Not all could, or would. Some would stand guard, while others would sit up tonight with wounded or dying men and beasts. When Quintus was certain that the last stake that could be pounded, bandage that could be wrapped, or Legionary to be stationed were all in place, he would be free to rest. The other tribune had retired, and even Rufus, yawning ferociously, had threatened him with feeling like grim Orcus himself on the morrow.
So it stood to reason that he could not sleep. Too far gone, he told himself. Let him be less tired, and sleep would come. But the exhaustion that had numbed his mind and body had vanished. He would have been glad, had it been suitable, to trade tales with Arsaces—he would have bet the pay he would never collect that the Persian auxiliary knew more about this place than he would say. But fed, secured, with a proper camp set up and officers near his own rank within earshot, he could not properly do so. Besides, the horseman had gone off after referring to the valley as a “pardesh.” “Garden,” Quintus knew it meant, but it did seem like some paradise of the Golden Age.
He shifted restlessly, hating the need to remain within a tent on a night as fine as this one. As a boy, he had loved to slip out by night and wander in the lands around his house. Sometimes, sleep would come upon him as he rested by the river. Drawing his cloak about him, he rose. Just as he left the tent, he swung back for his sword.
His boots crunched on the trampled long grass and rocks of their campsite, drawing some anonymous mutters of protest that anyone was stupid enough to be up and around after all…. The complaints trailed off into snores, which subsided, too.’
Nodding to the perimeter guards, he slipped beyond the camp into the darkness. The water drew him, as it always had. Swiftly, his feet found a trail that led around the lake. He heard ripples that told him he neared some stream or falls. At a boulder that looked as if some enormous hand had sheared it in half, he paused. He did not know the land. He would be wise to wait for his eyes to accustom themselves to seeing only by moon and starlight.
The rushing of the water grew louder. Not just a stream, then, but a small waterfall, or several, he thought. He ought to return to the camp for a torch, he thought. The rocks could be slippery. Asia, he knew, teemed with serpents of a deadliness unknown in Rome, except those who walked on two legs. But he pressed forward, treading carefully. A benediction of mist touched his face and eyelids.
The moon provided enough light for him to see his goal—wide slabs and plinths of rocks, overhung by a huge flat stone from which water cascaded to the right and left. It formed a natural chamber, the “entry” facing him. He peered within, tempted.
Lights sprang up inside the enclosure and even in the still water at the very edge of the pools, reflecting double as if they floated there cased in glass, protected from the spray. Fine scents—cinnamon and fragrant oil— wreathed about him.
Fare forward, traveler, came an ironic voice. He reached down to take out the figure of the dancer. As he had seen once before, lights glimmered upon its tiny, upheld arms, as if, once again, the creature known as Krishna danced to mourn and to rejoice. From overhead came the piping of a flute and the sound of a kind of horn he had never heard before.