ONE
Hot, boiling, shimmering, the sun broke over the rim of the world, sending spears of flaming light across the clear skies of the high steppes. By midday it would be hot enough to cook a brain in its own pan. But for now there was still enough chill left over from the night air to make the breath of the horse and its rider visible in the small clouds of vapor that were whisked away by the freshening morning breeze.
That cool breeze would soon change into a moisture-sucking blast furnace. Before then, the man and his horse would have to find shelter, as had the snakes and lizards. Shelter from the killing rays of the life-giving and- taking sun of high Asia.
To the west, the lifeless, barren, sky-reaching peaks known as the roof of the world, with their eternal caps of ice and gale-swept snow, seemed terribly distant and aloof from the sufferings of those who ventured to cross the desolate wastes of the desert in its shadow.
The rider raised his eyes, red-rimmed and sore from the ever-present grains of sand that invaded every pore and opening of his body, and even the food he ate. He understood now why the men of this region's tribes nearly always had their teeth worn down to stubs before their beards turned gray.
There was sand in everything they ate from the time of their birth to their death. Every day the grit ground their teeth down a little more until there was nothing left but smooth stubs resting against the gums. The thought of it made his own teeth ache.
His horse stumbled, then caught itself on wobbly legs. It scarcely resembled the fine-blooded, pampered animal it had been when Sung mi Hsiung, the commander of the garrison at the Jade Gate, had given it to him. Its rider was scarcely in any better condition. His posture told of the weary, lonely miles they had come. He doubted that if he tried to trade in the animal right now, he could receive even a couple of sick goats in exchange.
But they had come far from the wall that runs forever. He had chosen not to take the Suget pass trail back to the Capital of Kushan on the banks of the Indus. No, this time he followed the silk road, but now was the wrong time for such a crossing. The last two waterholes had been dry; even when he dug down a depth of several feet he could find no trace of moisture.
The rider raised his eyes to the sky, the pale blue of them almost washed out by the gray of the dawn. Deep lines crinkled at the edges of them gave him a slightly Oriental look. From a distance, he could have passed for a nomadic tribesman as the skin that was exposed was as dark as a mongol's.
Nowhere had he heard such silence as that of this region of the great wastes, where it was said, made on the winds was the howling of the lost souls, as dunes of sand were shifted from one spot to another, one grain at a time. For months, that was the only sign of movement until the wind demons came in their full fury. The force of the wind, carrying the sand with it in sky-darkening clouds, would strip the flesh from a man's body in a few minutes and leave nothing but bare bones and rags as silent testimony to the vengeance of the wind demons.
The lands of Chin lay a thousand and more miles behind him. He had lived there longer than he had in any other place in his life and felt as if he were leaving a part of him behind. But his own personal demon was driving him, back to the land of his birth, back to Rome.
For all of his life, he had thought that Rome was the center of the world and the only real barrier against the hordes of barbarism. But in the lands behind the Great Wall, he had found out that in comparison to the culture and refinements of Chin, Rome itself was only a few steps ahead of the barbarians. Still, Rome was the place of his birth and sometimes, no matter how a man may have been treated, he has to go back to his source. He was still Casca Rufio Longinus, a soldier and sometimes even a slave of the Empire.
Ahead of him, he knew, still lay the lands of Sogdiana and Parthia, which he would have to pass through before reaching the first of the Romancominions. Parthia! It still held a bitter taste for him. He had fought there under the Eagles of Avidius Cassius and participated in the sacking of the city of Cestiphon-where forty-five thousand had died in one day.
Pulling his horse to a stop, he dismounted, took the reins, and led the animal to a cluster of tall brush and withered, leafless trees. There he carefully doled out a slim measure of his precious water supply to wipe the muzzle and moisten the delicate membranes of the horse's nostrils to keep them from bleeding. A handful for the horse to taste, and he licked the remaining moisture from his own fingers, careful to waste nothing. Taking what had once been a fine cloak of red silk, he spread it over the branches of the withered trees to make a sheltered spot to protect them from the sun that would soon be over them.
Placing the horse where he could have some benefit from their meager shelter, he stripped down to the skin in order to shake out his tunic and the loose trousers he wore. His body was crisscrossed with uncounted scars of various degrees of severity. Some he had received as a slave in the war galleys of Rome, others came from battles he now found hard to recall.
When he was satisfied that he had shaken out most of the sand that had managed to creep into every seam and wrinkle, he redressed himself, wincing at the raw spots in his groin and armpits. Lying down, he tried to make himself as comfortable as possible moving several rocks from under tender spots. But his leg had an ache in it. A dull, burning throb where a brass arrow head was imbedded deep in the muscles of his left thigh. A souvenir from a Parthian marksman at Cestiphon,
Closing his eyes, he tried to rest, ignoring the labored breathing of his horse. If they didn't come to water soon the horse would die, and that meant he would walk, for Mithra only knew how many miles until he could steal or buy another one. As far as horses dying, that didn't particularly concern him. At least he'd have some fresh meat and the blood would give him strength. The Romans were practical people, not given to an excess of sentiment.
As he slept, the heat of the day grew in intensity. Hot and dry, it sucked the moisture from his skin as fast as it appeared, leaving only traces of his body salts behind to streak his tunic. Flies buzzed in frustration as they tried to beat the sun to the life-giving moisture that came from his pores. Flies, it seemed, were the only creatures in existence that could appear from nowhere, in a hellhole such as this where even the lizards buried themselves in the sand to escape the heat.
Semiconscious, he would sweep them away from his face and eyes, then turn and dream of places and people long dead, faces of those he had loved and of those he had killed. They came in a jumbled torrent until all merged together and he couldn't tell them apart.
His horse hung its head low and tried to sleep also, tail twitching from side to side, shivers running up its flanks. It too tried to shake off the nagging drone of the flies. As these two tossed and squirmed in their restless sleep, others were awake and moving. Two forces of men were converging on a waterhole some twenty miles in front. Each unaware of the other, they followed separate trails. Both parties had the look of hard men about them.
Those from the south were led by a slender warrior with his head shaved bald except for a long scalp-lock. He was the youngest of the warriors in whose bloodlines showed some trace of the west. Several had fair hair and light-colored eyes. The other party coming from the north was made up of short, stocky men whose faces had been seared with red hot irons at the moment of their birth, so that only mustaches grew on their lips and nothing at all on their chins. These riders' legs were twisted and deformed from the years they had spent on horseback. The bows they carried were made of laminated wood and horn, similar to those of the Parthians. One thing they had that was different from those coming from the south: they had not just the look of men who killed, but men who lusted after it. Huns! Those nomadic tribesmen worshipped the primal spirits of the earth and sky and prayed before a naked sword.
They would meet those from the south at the waterhole and when they did, men would die, for the Huns and the men of Kushan were blood enemies and had been so for five hundred years.
Casca, former Baron of Chin, used his saddlebags for a pillow. The fortune in gems, given to him by the Emperor Tzin as a parting gift, gave him small comfort. At that moment he would have traded them all for a full goatskin of rancid swamp water. Moving, he tried to find a more comfortable position as his purse dug into his groin. The irritating object inside the leather pouch was his seal of office. TheChuhou wang of a noble of the court of the Son of Heaven; a solid gold seal, with a rounded knob of tortoise shell. This seal was whathe had needed to gain horses, food, and lodging while in the lands of Chin. But here it was just as useless as the gems in his
