“Too many,” he said, thickly. “It is more than I can bear.”
“So, you would be only the loyal heir who follows the head of his family, the loyal soldier who follows his commander? My dearest, I wish you had that luxury. Or that I could cease to be Draupadi and sink her, dreams, illusions, and all, in the cares of a soldier’s wife.”
Their eyes met. Do you understand what I am telling you? each seemed to ask the other.
“Domina, had the fates deemed otherwise…”
“It is not you, not ever,” she murmured. “But…” Abruptly, she raised her hand again and smiled ironically, honey with a sting beneath. “You are weary with the cares of duty as well as with the desert. Could you not keep your honor if you consented to ride for a brief time?”
“I must set an example.”
“Example—to the cross with it!”
Quintus blinked at her. He had not thought she would have learned that oath, and he was certain he did not approve of her saying it. Between surprise and disapproval, he laughed; he had thought never to laugh again.
He checked the line of march, drawing back to the rear of the column, where the riding animals—horses and camels—and the pack beasts plodded along. The camels’ humps were flattening, a sign, he had learned, that even these beasts whose capacity for endurance was legendary in the desert, would soon need water. One of the Ch’in guard, having, as was clear, ideas about the lowliness of any Roman’s position in the general order of things, scowled at him; but Arsaces had a grin and a thumbs-up—wherever he had learned that—for him and he gestured him toward the beast likeliest to bear him without either of them suffering more than they must.
Mounted (however reluctantly), he rode past the pack animals. He rode past the column of Romans, inexpressibly proud that they neither faltered nor complained— though the heat and dryness kept them from their usual songs. Rufus saluted him without reproach. Past Draupadi on her camel he rode, and past Lucilius who, as usual, hovered near the Ch’in officers as if seeking to make their power his.
Ssu-ma Chao nodded to Quintus as he pulled into line only slightly behind his captor. He turned the head of his horse—a fine beast from Ferghana, though Quintus could not, for the life of him, make out what was meant by the term “blood-sweating.” The beast’s stocky neck barely seemed to sweat, much less sweat blood.
“There we are.” The Ch’in general rose in his saddle and pointed.
The Roman squinted. Though they were riding away from the light into the east, the glare and the shadows of late afternoon made sight painful. Clouds of dust rose, making matters that much the worse, too.
“Do you see it?” Ssu-ma Chao asked. “The towers of Su-le.”
“May I tell my lads?” Quintus asked. They would be glad of a rest. And a meal or so and even a wash, though he knew they could not expect proper Roman baths. He would tell Draupadi, too, and watch her eyes light with pleasure and relief.
A cloud of dust rose between the towers and themselves. Quintus tensed, victim as he had been of battles and double dealings. His hand dropped to the hilt of his sword.
Quietly, imperceptibly, he signaled Rufus; and Rufus took up a posture of defense.
The dust subsided, and he could see Su-le. The town looked preposterously new—a garrison town that paid and treated its soldiers well as a necessity for its survival.
“A strong garrison,” Ssu-ma Chao commented, hand on sword. “We know there is mischief afoot in the land. Otherwise, why send the garrison out at all?”
The Ch’in officer stared at Quintus, his eyes narrowing so that he appeared to be regarding the Roman through dark slits. “It is possible, I suppose, that a message might have been sent before the caravan died…. There was light enough for the signaling device to work. But from what we saw, I think the men died too suddenly.” The Ch’in’s face twisted in revulsion. “Still, I hope they succeeded. But, Roman, you stare at Su-le as if it were one huge trap. What makes you so suspicious?”
“I have been abandoned before,” Quintus replied. “And betrayed by garrisons.” As you well know. The words were blurted out before he could guard his tongue. In it, all men were brothers and equals—or else mortal enemies; you could readily tell the difference.
Ssu-ma Chao laughed. After a too-nervous moment, so did one or two members of his staff. “This is why I want their cooperation,” the officer stated with the air of one repeating a point on which he had been proud to be right.
I like this man, Quintus thought. But the gods only know why.
Behind them, Lucilius edged closer. Hearing laughter, he dared to approach. For Quintus, his ironic presence blunted the mood of only a few moments ago.
“Is that traders,” he asked, pointing, “or a welcoming party?”
The sword Quintus again wore by grace of Ssu-ma Chao hung reassuringly against his leg. He signaled the marching column of Romans to alert. Not to attack, please all the gods, no. He did not want to fight the men who had been his allies in the journey overmountain. But if the men from the garrison at Su-le had a mind to attack, they would get more than they wished.
And there was always the chance that he could retrieve the Eagle from wherever they had sent it.
But it took all the discipline he had to sit complacently in the saddle as the shadows lengthened and the dust cloud rising from the garrison’s advance party rose in the vast sky. It spewed out before them, then solidified into individual horsemen. And each one of them was not only heavily armed, but bore weapons bared. Bowmen formed a second rank.
Seeing that, Ssu-ma Chao dismounted and walked forward, a posture of submission he maintained as the garrison rode slowly into voice range.
He sank into a deep bow. “This one wishes to ask…”
“You must explain instead why you travel with this excrement of turtles as if they were brothers in arms. And, worse yet, why you have allowed them their weapons!”
Now, how had they discovered that?
The garrison party advanced. It was much larger than either the column of Romans or Ssu-ma Chao’s exhausted little force. Quintus let his hand fall away from his sword.
You caused this, you know. It was you who thought of the Roman line as a slave gang. But you could alter that….
Be still! he ordered sharply, the better to concentrate on the outer fear he must now confront.
A hand touched his arm. Draupadi had ridden up beside him. It was not a time to talk with her, not a time to distract himself with thoughts of her. But she could not be denied.
“Already,” said Draupadi, “they are different from what they have been. I remember how the earth shivered and swallowed up the water….”
“Is that what you offer me?” Quintus asked. “Memories I do not want?”
Draupadi shook her head. Despite the gesture of negation, her face brightened, youth and life returning. “You know what I offer.”
The breeze between them seemed to warm his heart— and the rest of his body. It was not the heat of the sun, reflected from the desert floor, but longing, a longing that possessed him every time he looked at her.
“Not your Eagle or your home,” Draupadi surprised him with her words. “Not even the power that would restore you to your birthright. But Quintus, just as you are—you are worthy to go on. That is what we offer. The journey. The life. For as long as we live.”
A new ache gripped him in that moment—the urge to lift her down from her mount and hold her for as long as he might. He had always hoped that when a marriage was arranged for him (as in the course of time it would have been, had the Fates been kinder), he would feel a kindness for his bride and she would … she would not fear him too badly at first. But this woman, with her powers and her endurance and her memory—this woman claimed to have been his wife in a vanished world. He could not remember. She deserved better than for him simply to trade on that and take her—when the time came, as it surely must—without an oath on his part to match the ritual that, clearly, lived on in her memories.
And if he died in the next hour, at least the words would have been said. She even wore the saffron veil of a Roman bride.
“Where thou art Caia,” he began, drawing on the words of the confarreatio, the most solemn and binding rite of marriage, “there am I Caius.” His voice thickened, and not from the dust.