As they hastened on, it became easier and easier for Quintus to see the path up ahead. Some trick of the light, perhaps? He thought he saw a glow welling from the floor wherever Manetho stepped.
“They are coming,” he said.
Was this to be a full rising of the slaves, then? Quintus’s belly clenched. Was this how the gladiators had felt, turning on their masters, who were vastly more numerous and powerful than they? And yet, they had put Rome in such fear that it would never forget them. Given the Eagle, given its power, how much more could he—
“This used to be a place where the underpriests robed….” Manetho told him.
How long ago? Don’t ask, Quintus. Don’t even think of asking.
His foot brushed something, and he stumbled. What was that?
Something bulky sprawled against the rock. Quintus swerved, but could not avoid it. He went sprawling and fell hard against the wall, the carvings bruising his flesh. And his arm, dropping over what had tripped him, landed hard enough to bring a moan out of the man he had stumbled across.
It was Rufus’s voice.
Jupiter Optimus Maximus and all the lesser gods, Quintus thought, as he knelt beside the centurion, feeling for wounds on the man’s hard skull. Rufus groaned repeatedly. The light rising from the floor showed his eyes, glazed now, with the pupil of one eye larger than that of the other.
“Lad … I mean, sir … by all the gods, didn’t know you had a twin. You’ll need to be Castor and Pollux both to take on … to the crows with that little bastard. His father should have exposed him at birth or thrown him from the Tarpeian rocks, which is what I’d do if I ever got him home…. Damn, my head, my head…”
Rufus gagged, doubling over and retching. Quintus supported his shoulders.
“Come on!” whispered Manetho.
Up ahead, Manetho might fume that they were out of time, but Rufus carried my stretcher. He forbade that I be abandoned on the desert or killed quickly when they thought I could not see. He taught me. And Manetho wasn’t a man to abandon a comrade, either.
“Who?” Quintus asked, his heart sinking to depths he would have judged impossible.
“He came up behind us … the lady and I… Edepol, sir, I’m glad you’re here to take charge….”
“Draupadi?” Quintus asked. “What happened?”
“Poor girl never had a chance. That useless traitor, that Lucilius … I’d like to have the purple stripe off their togas and them nailed up to a cross….”
In the ruined hall, Lucilius had crouched at first with the Legionaries and the slaves, but then gone outside, pleading restlessness and the need to breathe untainted air.
And that was all that was clean about him! Quintus let his hands rest on Rufus’s shoulders, trying to reassure the older man: but there was no reassurance for either of them.
Even as Lucilius had slipped outside, were the voices already eating away at his resolve? He had always been apt for treasons, as long as Quintus had known him. And this was not the first time he had tried to strike a bargain with an enemy.
It had been hard enough for Quintus with his old Roman grandsire and—as Lucilius thought—his ludicrous respect for loyalty to resist the voices that the Black Naacals sent out to tempt those who would stand against them.
What had they promised the patrician? Gold, it went without saying, and perhaps Draupadi, compliant or not.
“He hit me first, sir,” Rufus said. “I went down. And then he grabbed for the Eagle—our Eagle! The lady snatched it away before he could lay his rotten hands on it, and I tried, so help me Minos and Rhadamanthus, I swear I tried to go to her aid. But he grabbed her by one arm and told her that he wouldn’t kill me if she went along without using her magic on him. That was bad enough. And then he kicked me, and I went crashing into the wall, a real tyro’s trick…. Gods, I’ve been a fool, bungled everything. Oh, Dis, to the cross with this head of mine….”
“Steady there,” Quintus muttered absently. “It’s all right.”
It would have been the cross or worse for all of them. The Black Naacals had Ganesha, with his great strength and power. And, while the old man had held out all these lifetimes and while he might well have endured until the final death that he had escaped in the whelming of his home, could he endure seeing a dear friend put to torment? Especially when the friend had been not just a student, but a daughter to him for all that time?
“She has the Eagle, sir,” Rufus said. He stifled a groan—a sign he might recover if he concealed his pain. “I should be flogged, broken … one woman and I could not even protect her….”
“Come on!” snapped Manetho. “They will betray us. Now we must hasten.”
No! Do not think of Ganesha or Draupadi in torment. Do not think of the sacrifices of the Black Naacals. The priestess of the sun had power enough to use the Eagle; he only hoped that she would.
“The longer we stay here, the worse the chance…. Do you know what those priests do to their victims?”
Don’t think of Draupadi’s amber skin dappled with her blood or turned the color of chalk. Don’t think of Ganesha’s towering spirit quenched. And don’t think of them…. They would put their hands on Draupadi. Maybe even Lucilius, who had wanted her and she had rebuffed him.
“First there will be a sacrifice. Then, they will begin,” Manetho spoke, his voice hollow with dread.
Quintus had never expected to return to Rome, much less to return with the Eagle. He had, however dimly, begun to hope for some shreds of a life. Now, though, now, he must take the Eagle and wield it. A whole world hung in the balance.
“If they die, they die as soldiers.” He heard his voice, so hoarse it was hard to recognize the words as his lips shaped them. “Rufus, you go back. Manetho, I’m with you. We will catch them in a circle. No one will get out alive.”
Least of all ourselves.
But the idea of Romans, their eyes alight with anger and relieved tension, and the bloody drill of their short swords, advancing deliberately on the Black Naacals and cutting them asunder had its own attraction and even carried its own healing. Rufus struggled to his feet. What began as an unsteady walk finished up as a march.
Quintus turned to Manetho. “I know you would rather be with your own men,” he said. “But with your help…”
“You must take care. It is you they want!” cried Manetho. “They know who brought in the strangers. You are young, strong…. They may wish to make you one of their number…. Sometimes it happens when one of our sons grows too strong and they have a vacancy in their ranks….”
Now that was damnable—suborning sons as well as killing them. Let a strong man rise, and the slaves would never know if they could rely on him, or if, at the moment of sacrifice, they would look up at the Black Naacal holding the knife and see in his face the man who had once been son or brother or friend.
“They will have to content themselves with the terror they have already wrought,” Quintus snapped. He would like to execute Lucilius himself: The patrician had betrayed not only his city and his caste, but all his world.
However, Quintus’s first responsibility must be to rescue the Eagle. To wield it, if he could; and if not, to afford Draupadi and Ganesha a clean death before the Black Naacals unleashed their power. Perhaps he would even have time to fall on his own sword.
And the Eagle? If he could not wield it, he must destroy it. Most likely, that would eliminate the need to fall on his sword—or for any of the others to try it.
He had come, he realized, to the end of the skein of time allotted him by the Fates. With that realization came the death of hope—and the end of his fear. His sword gleamed in his hand, but did not quiver.
Abruptly he laughed. “Morituri te salutamus!” he cried, saluting the darkness.
Manetho glared at him. The poor bastard probably feared him almost as much as the Black Naacals. Yet he must lead his men and work with Quintus, whom he clearly found a strange creature if he could face death laughing.
But Manetho was brave. He led. And Quintus followed, his senses keyed up for this final battle.
Again, the banging of gongs and now, the braying of horns and the sound that Quintus feared even more—the blowing of bone flutes, higher and more shrill than the priests’ horns. Manetho shuddered. So long a slave, and now he was forcing himself to face worse than death. Quintus opened his mouth to utter the comforting words he himself had heard before his first battle. Again came the clamor of the priests’ instruments. Energy thrilled in his blood. He felt stronger, fairly matched, and he no longer needed to place his feet with such care. The fear was gone, all of it. He wanted to share that comfort, for such it was, with Manetho, but the slave was a dark blot up ahead.