And then there was Draupadi herself. Wrapped in sheepskins and her amber robes, a fold of them pulled up to warm her breath, she made the climb with even less difficulty than the Ch’in or Arsaces, who had survived it before. From time to time, she rested when the rest of the caravan did, but always, her hand was out to support Ganesha (who waved it off with some disdain) or to encourage a man who might falter. Seeing her, a woman and obviously no Amazon, they took renewed heart as they climbed.
Mistress of illusions she might be but she had done nothing to ease the journey. Lucilius had taxed her with that once, and she had glanced away.
“The hardships of the mountains are like pain to the body,” she murmured, feeding the small fire with a niggardly cake of dung. “They are given you as warnings so you do not exceed your strength.”
Or what a madwoman might think that strength to be.
Her eyes met those of Quintus, who had struggled to conceal his fear for her and his admiration of her hardihood. Do you recall how, when the king your brother lost all at dice, we lived in the wilderness?
She had told him that story one night. So vivid was her retelling as the wind whined about them, nosing at the fire they had all but buried in its own pit, that now he didn’t know whether he remembered those years of living wild as if they had really happened or from her account of them.
Once again, memory oppressed him. The air was very thin on the Roof of the World. What air there was tasted like wine in the throat. During the long, cold nights, memories, dreams, and illusions danced in his mind like the tiny bronze figure he still carried against his heart. Since they left the sanctuary, it had not alerted him to any dangers beyond the perils of the journey. And he had seen no signs of wagons or beasts or anything else that might reveal a trace of the Black Naacals.
Ssu-ma Chao came up beside the younger tribune.
“Do you see the Tower?” he asked, pointing down and across the valley.
Incredibly, there were birds flying beneath them. Quintus tore his eyes from that marvel to follow where the Ch’in officer pointed. On the valley floor, what looked like a rock outcropping jutted up, as if it had been an ashlar left behind while the gods were building the Roof of the World. And toward it, tiny figures trudged, file after file, the humans specks where they marched alongside their beasts.
“The Stone Tower,” Ssu-ma Chao explained. “When the Son of Heaven Han Wu-ti—” scarred fingers sketched a gesture that resembled a prostration, “—first sent armies past the Jade Gate and out into the Land of Fire, and they took it on their way to An’Hsi, the men of Han built that.”
Quintus studied the Stone Tower. A legion of engineers, much less armed men so far from his home, could riot have built that tower had they labored on it from the two generations between Wu-ti’s time and this of the current Emperor, Han Yuan-ti. It was half in ruins, assailed repeatedly as it had been by Ch’in and Parthian, Hsiung-nu, Saka, and Yueh-chih. He had seen tombs like that in his own country. His bronze statue—Krishna? however he had come there—had been found in such a place.
“It looks older than that,” was all he said.
Ssu-ma Chao nodded. “We built it on a ruin that we found. We think it must always have been used as a trade site, the last before Su-le.”
Su-le … once again, they were out of Quintus’s reckoning. Ganesha had spoken of the trade town of Kacha. He wondered if it were the same as the Kasia, or Kashgar, mentioned so long ago outside the walls of Carrhae by the most adventurous of the Greeks Quintus had huddled with after the defeat.
His eyes grew used to the distances. Viewed from here, the Stone Tower did not seem that far away. But he knew it might take days to reach it and weeks more to reach this Su-le, or Kashgar, or whatever they called it, on the edge of the true desert.
At the very limits of his vision, the horizon shimmered. Down, down, always down into the waste and then down beyond it into the amphitheatre that was the Land of Fire, a desolation of salt flats and gravel and twisting dunes. Some said that a river wound through its depths to a pool at its heart. Hard to believe, but Quintus thought of the sanctuary that he and his men had received, with wonder lying at heart.
It might be possible once again. And then again, the heart might be rotten, if the Black Naacals reached it first. He reached out, trying to sense any danger. Almost, he laughed. He was a Roman, not a magus, and certainly not this hero-god that Draupadi called him. This Arjuna. Had he been Arjuna, he would not have shared such a woman with his brothers, he thought suddenly.
Then he shook his head. Folly to even think so of her.
He had other problems. Such as what might befall him and his men at the Stone Tower. Or at Su-le.
As if on command, Ssu-ma Chao spoke. “This one regrets…” The formality that had been lost in battle, sandstorm, and mountain pass had returned.
“You regret what?” So it was over, now that they neared the limes, the borders of the Ch’in Empire, and Ssu-ma Chao approached the network of forts, officers, and reports that any nation must have. Compared with that, compared with whatever oaths the Ch’in officer had spoken, what was the deepening partnership between Roman and Ch’in?
Still, might as well make him say it straight out.
“When we reach Su-le … there is a garrison there. And reports go out, to the four Commands of the West and the Commandery at Wu-liang by the Jade Gate.”
Ssu-ma Chao would not wish it known to these personages that he owed his life and the lives of his command to the human tribute they had taken in. An’Hsi from the Parthians. Naturally not. Quintus wondered briefly what was contained in the ink scratching upon narrow wood strips that he had seen, once or twice, as the officer prepared them.
“It is different, so many thousands of li from Ch’ang-an,” said the Ch’in aristocrat. “But as I hope to return to the home of my ancestors…”
They would confiscate the Romans’ weapons once again. And the relationship of equals that had begun to grow between the men of Ch’in and the Legions would fade away.
The gods only knew what would become of them. It might be that they would come to envy the men who had been enslaved at Merv. They were in the hands of Fortune. And they had not yet reached Su-le. Much could happen. Once again, he tried to see ahead, tried to sense what might happen.
Nothing. No sense of impending danger. No sense, even of power. Gods send it that the Black Naacals perished on the heights, he thought, flinching briefly from the deaths he had seen in the mountains.
And knew it for a prayer that would not be granted.
13
“I will be left alone!”
Draupadi had flung aside the sheepskins she had worn in the heights and strode away from the throng of barbarians who troubled her. There were too many people, eyes and voices; they pressed against her awareness after so long in sanctuary, with only Ganesha, the waters, the trees, and the ageless crests of the mountains for companionship.
Ageless, Draupadi? You have seen mountains fall.
A shout—”Don’t go alone!”—had followed her, angering her still further. Not Ganesha: After this long, she knew him well enough to know he wandered back and forth, from the men of gold to the men of the West, practicing these new tongues, making notes for one of his endless histories on their ways, their gear, their looks.
Now, she stood on a ledge, surveying the valley. The caravan had drawn nearer the Stone Tower—but it was still quite a journey away.
Don’t go alone! As if her illusions would not speedily convince a snow leopard or a serpent to turn aside! He should know that! Draupadi stamped a foot. Or if he thought she was so feeble, why did Arjuna not come with her? Even now, even this far from their shared past, his eyes followed her as they had when he won her in tournament and brought her back to be wife to him and his four brothers, one of them a king. And before that… he had been the bravest of them, the most loyal to his duty.
If his duty demanded him to shout “Don’t go alone,” rather than come with her, she would walk alone. She had lived in the wilderness. She had survived war. But now, Draupadi was not sure she cared to be alone. Arjuna’s were not the only eyes that followed her. There was that other officer, the fair-haired one, who bore himself as if he ruled a city. His smiles made her want to wish for a dagger. She was glad that the men she had marked as being the most trustworthy did not trust him at their backs, nobleborn though he claimed to be. His eyes followed her as if she were a pastime to be enjoyed, then tossed aside like a game of dice.