He was bending over her, had a knee between her legs. She cried out and struggled furiously. Nails scratched and gritted in the rocky ground, the hobnails of the footgear that Quintus/Arjuna wore in this guise.
“Don’t we have enough trouble, Lucilius, without you trying to hurt one of our guides? With the Ch’in watching. They already think we’re barbarians.”
“Native women, ploughboy. They don’t know their place.”
“Draupadi’s no camp follower, tribune. It’s not your place to teach her anything.”
Behind Quintus she could hear other footsteps. She wanted to shout with embarrassment. She should have foreseen this. And Quintus had told her not to go by herself: Had he foreseen?
“You don’t order me, ploughboy. Why don’t you bow? Scrape for me like the client you are. Call me ‘Dominus’—as you called my uncle when you licked his feet on the Palatine!”
The dark-haired tribune pushed Lucilius away from Draupadi, gave him one shrewd shove; the lighter man went sprawling. There was satisfaction on Quintus’s face as he faced a man who had been his enemy for years.
Lucilius sprang to his feet in a fighting crouch.
Draupadi saw Quintus begin to lurch forward—she had seen Arjuna throw his brothers in practice thus a thousand times. But this was not practice. Their people were strangers here. That they were not prisoners was only by the grace of the Ch’in, who guarded them. Let them fight, and they would lose all that they had gained.
And so would she and Ganesha, who required their aid.
“Sir, sirs! Stop it! Break it up!”
It was the older one, the one with hair like burning coals, angry red frosted with gray. He seized Quintus/Arjuna and held him.
“You want them to see the two of you brawling?” he warned. “What do you think they’ll do if they see you at each other’s throats? Might as well—both of you fools— turn in your weapons now to the yellow-skins. Go ahead. Yes, I know. You’re tribunes. I’m just a centurion. Spent my life in the Legions. Call out the men. Tell them to get ready. Go ahead and punish me.”
He looked upslope. The Ch’in commander had come out, drawn by the shouts and the scuffle. Shaking his head no danger, Quintus reassured the man.
Did he lie, though?
The three men glared at each other. Let them all fight, and they all would lose everything. Draupadi shook her head, remembering the last time. She had run to Bhima, burliest and fiercest of the brothers. Working, incongruously, as a cook. He had scented and silked himself and taken her place in the General’s bed. When Kitchaka attempted to embrace what he thought was a frightened woman, Bhima had taken him in a wrestler’s hold and squeezed until only a ball of flesh, wrapped in sagging, gaudy, and ruined silks, was left.
How shocked Virata’s court had been. And how she had laughed!
Once again, Draupadi laughed. She scrambled to her feet and gestured—and the crushed ball that had been her assailant materialized before Lucilius’s eyes.
“Is that what you want?” she demanded. “It was the fate of the last man who touched me.”
Lucilius backed up a step, but only one: She would give him credit for that.
But for nothing else.
“You do not want me. You want power to enforce your will. And you take power as you see it—like this!”
Another gesture, and her hands filled with gold … ringing metal rounds that she hurled at the Roman aristocrat’s feet. He was scrabbling in the dust for them when she clapped her hands; the coins changed from cold hard metal into chips of scarce-dried dung.
The tribune flung the chips from him, his mouth twisting in revulsion. Rufus roared with laughter. Quintus took the opportunity to break loose from his grasp. His mouth worked, and then he too laughed. A moment later, the Ch’in soldiers had neared. Draupadi heard Ganesha speaking to them in their own language—some version of the truth, she assumed. They too laughed, and the echoes spread out across the horizon until it seemed that they would reverberate off the Stone Tower far below.
She herself, however, kept face and voice severe. “I am not some follower of camp and soldiers, to be taken up, used, and cast away. Do you need another lesson?” she demanded.
Quintus smiled at her. “Lady, you need no man’s protection.”
Then he turned to Lucilius. “Maybe we can’t roll you into a ball, but I promise you, if you ever again approach Draupadi or any woman in this caravan, I will try. Is that clear?”
Cleaning his hands, his face scarlet at the laughter that welled up around him, echoing, as it seemed, almost as far as the Stone Tower, Lucilius nodded, then left. Though he took care to keep his back straight and his steps measured, almost as if he marched, it had the impact of a rout.
“There will be consequences of this action, daughter,” Ganesha told Draupadi. Bending laboriously, he picked up something from the ground. It was a gold coin.
“As always now,” Ganesha added, “you wrought better than you knew.”
She had meant those coins as illusions, shifting form and aspect for the sake of confusing her enemy. She had wrought better than she knew. The young girl who had been a scholar woke in her once more. She lifted her hand to take the coin…
…and from down in the valley, as if borne in response to their laughter, came the chanting of a mantra. Each tone in the incantation quivered with menace. And replying to it came a wail of pure fear.
14
Mists rose as if upborne by the force of mantra chanting and screams—mists in a land so seldom touched by moisture that even the white glint of salt mimicked natural rock. The coils of thickened moisture filled the valley, concealing the Stone Tower. Lazily, they wafted upward, licking at the higher rocks. Though they cloaked now what lay below, they did not deaden the clatter of falling stones, first singly, then in a cascade. The ground trembled in a dreadful warning.
“We have to get down!”
Romans and Ch’in soldiers alike grabbed for handholds. Then, they fought to harness frightened, plunging beasts, to snatch up baggage….
“You cannot reach them in time!” Quintus shouted at Ssu-ma Chao in Parthian.
“Those are our people down there! We have to try!”
Quintus surveyed the mists. He had survived demon storms, but this was no such thing. Not sand, but vapor rose to engulf them. In his boyhood, he had seen such mists rise from the Tiber, bearing fevers with them. Almost he thought that he could smell water—not a river, but a sea: wet, cold, alien in this land of deserts.
Again, the earth shuddered underfoot. Now came the wild screams of panicking animals. The Romans, blessed—or cursed—with pride, cloaked their fear with curses as they fought to pack (but a few prayers rose with the oaths). The Ch’in pleas for protection were as shrill as the cries of the beasts.
Like his men, Quintus swore. Damn all cumbersome Ch’in armies to the cross or the fires of Acheron! So much easier with Marius’s mules, to pack up and—ahhhhh, there went Rufus, taking a much-needed part in making those crying barbarians move!
“Load up, you mules! Do Marius proud—who knows, maybe he’s watching you! We’re getting out of here.” Legionaries bore their kit, too much lightened now, but still a burden, on their backs. It let them break camp quickly and move without the complex impediment of baggage trains (unless, gods look kindly on him, you were Crassus) such as these easterners had dragged across mountains and desert. It would not help, Quintus thought, if the mountainside peeled away and they were sent hurtling. He had a sudden, nightmare vision of a Roman lying broken on his back in the shattered frame of his pack, kicking feebly, briefly, like a beetle before sandals crushed the life from it.
No time for that, man. Take Draupadi, be sure of her safety—if he could. He grabbed her by the elbow, pushed her roughly toward Ganesha. “You two! Join the others. Keep up and keep safe!”
A foolish command, and he knew it.
The woman clung to the old” sage, her eyes wide, but not with fear. Why should she fear? After all, hadn’t she lived through worse … many times, if he could believe the tales she told? To his astonishment, he realized what shone in her eyes was courage and reassurance for him. He wanted—gods, he wanted—to promise her she would never again face such an ordeal, to hold her and touch her face.
Once again, the earth shuddered. Not far from where they were working their way down, a chunk fell off the ledge.
“Get back! Now!”
Quintus ran with the others. And as his breath sobbed and stabbed in his chest, memory overtook him.