camels ahead of him, the dripping heads of Roman dead suspended from axes all around. The Parthians had filled his throat with molten gold in mockery of Crassus, a man who had thought that pay and promises of gold were the only guarantee of a soldier’s loyalty.
But that was not the worst. The worst was to lose the eagle, ripped off its standard and taken away before their eyes. From then on they were ghosts, all of them, the living and the dead.
“Does the trader give us any news of Rome?” Fabius asked quietly. “You’re the only one who can speak Greek. I heard Greek sounds when he was pleading with us.”
“He’s been many times to Barygaza, a place on the Erythraean Sea where traders come from Egypt. That’s where the Sogdian caravan was heading, and that’s where he learned his Greek.” Licinius paused, not sure how Fabius would take it. “There is some news, my friend, about Rome.”
“Ah.” Fabius leaned forward. “Glorious news, I hope.”
“He says the wars are long over. He says there is a new peace.” He put his hand on Fabius’ shoulder. “And he says Rome is now ruled by an emperor.”
“An emperor?” Fabius looked hard at him, his eyes ablaze. “Julius Caesar. Our true general. He’s the only one. It must be him.”
Licinius shook his head. “Caesar is long gone. You and I both know that, in our hearts. And if he’d become emperor, he’d have come looking for us. No, it’s someone new. Rome has changed.”
Fabius looked downcast. “Then I will seek Caesar in Elysium. I will serve no other as emperor. I have seen what emperors do, in Parthia. We are citizen-soldiers.”
Licinius held out his hands again, gnarled, scarred, caked in blood and grime, the ends of two fingers missing. “Citizens,” he said ruefully. “Thirty-five years ago, maybe. Are these still the hands of a sculptor?”
Fabius leaned over on one elbow. “You remember Quintus Varius, who the Parthians made foreman of the southern sector of the walls? First centurion of the third cohort? He’d been a builder on the Bay of Naples before joining up, knew all about concrete. He persuaded the Parthian vizier that the dust that choked us for all those years was the key ingredient of concrete, like the volcanic dust of Naples. Of course it was nothing of the sort. Varius was executed years ago, some trivial thing, but we put that dust with our mortar ever since. Those walls we spent thirty-four years building won’t last another ten. You mark my words. They’ll crumble to dust. That’s a citizen-soldier for you. Brings all his skills as a civilian to bear.”
“And a citizen-soldier can go back to civilian life.”
“What are you thinking?”
“The trader said something else.”
“Spill it, Licinius.”
“He said this emperor has negotiated peace with the Parthians. He said he had seen a new coin, celebrating the peace as a great triumph. He said the eagles have been returned.”
Fabius shook his head angrily. “Impossible. He’s spinning you tales. He knew who we were, knew about our looted Parthian treasure. Word must have spread about us along the caravan route. He was eager to please, and thought a tall tale of an emperor would satisfy us. Well, he was wrong. We should have butchered him along with the others.”
“Then we would never have got here. He guided us through the canyon.”
“We would have died fighting. Death with honor.”
“If the eagles have been returned, then we can return too, with honor.”
Fabius paused. “The eagles would be this emperor’s triumph, not ours. We would be an embarrassment.” He peered at Licinius. “But I know you too well, brother. You are thinking of your son.”
Licinius said nothing, but squinted at the rising orb above the eastern horizon, casting a shimmering orange sparkle on the surface of the lake. His son. A son who would not know him, who had been little more than a babe in arms when he had marched off A son who would have carried on in his father’s trade, as generations had done before. Licinius thought about what Fabius had said. I have seen what emperors do. Emperors did not just enslave and terrorize. They also built palaces, temples. There would be work for a sculptor, in this new Rome.
“Don’t be deluded,” Fabius said. “If what the trader says is true, the world has changed. Rome has forsaken us. We only have ourselves. The band of brothers. Everything else is gone.”
“My son might still be alive.”
“Your son is probably in Elysium by now. He too may have become a citizen-soldier, fought and died with honor. Think of that.”
There was a muffled yell from somewhere beyond the hill. Fabius grabbed his sword handle, but Licinius stayed him. “It’s only the trader. He’s chained up.”
“I thought you’d killed him. That’s what you came up here to do.”
“I wanted to see that he was telling the truth. That the boat wasn’t some kind of wreck.”
“Tell me again what he said. We need to set off now. Dawn is upon us.”
“He said that where the great orb rose, glistening, was Chryse, the land of gold. To get there, you must first cross the lake, then go over a pass, then traverse the desert, a place worse than anything we have yet endured, that sucks men in and swallows them up forever. You follow the camel caravans east, and you come to a great city called Thina. And there the bravest will find the empire of heaven. All the riches of the world await those who can defeat the demons that had stalked the trader, a treasure awaiting us, his new masters.”
The trader had talked too much. He had told them all they needed to hear. He had kept nothing back. That had been his mistake. He had not been used to bargaining with the Fates.
The trader had told Licinius something else, while he was chaining him up. To the south, due south, was another route. Great mountains stood in the way, then the kingdom of Bactria, and beyond that a mighty river, the river Alexander the Great had crossed. And south from there, for untold miles, through jungle and along coast, was a route to a place called Ramaya, where there were Romans. There were untold dangers. Always beware the tiger, he had said. But at this place, like Barygaza, the goods of trade-the riches from Chryse and Thina, the serikon and the precious jewels, the jade and the cassia and the malabathron-would go in ships across the Erythraean Sea, and from there you could make your way to Rome. To Rome.
Licinius grasped Fabius’ hand hard, as hard as he could, their special bond since they had arm-wrestled as young recruits. They both relaxed and embraced, before pushing each other roughly away. Old men, playing like boys. He reached for the bag he had taken from the trader, and gestured at the other one on Fabius’ belt. “Before we go. We don’t have to placate the trader anymore with promises. May as well look at what we stole from him.”
Fabius sprang up, pulling on his belt to ease the weight of the chain mail on his hips. “Time for that later.” He pointed at the foreshore, where the others were sitting at the oars gesturing up at them. “The boat’s ready.”
“The boat to the other side has been waiting for us for a long time, brother.”
“I don’t mean Charon, you fool. I mean our boat. The boat to freedom. The boat to untold wealth. We’re going east, to Chryse.”
“You go on ahead. I have to finish with the trader. His time has come.”
“Ave atque vale, frater. In this world, or the next.”
Licinius stared at Fabius. He knew.
Fabius bounded down the hill without looking back. Licinius got up and went in the other direction, toward the place where he had left the trader. The sky to the west was darkening again, over the pass they had come up, flickering with lightning, and he felt the first drops of rain. The air was eerily still, just as it had been before the maelstrom the night before. They would be caught in it if they did not set off now. He knew that Fabius would not linger, and the others would follow him. He was their centurion. And Fabius knew they had no time to lose. There would be other boats, hidden like the one they had found, left by other travelers. There was the route around the shore. Their enemy had horses, and could move quickly. Licinius looked at the pass again, and saw the jagged ridges of the gorge silhouetted by distant flashes of lightning. The rain was suddenly pelting down, and he slipped down the slope. The boat was obscured by the hill now, and to the south all he could see was the misty foothills of the mountains. He turned into the hollow. The trader was still there, splayed on the ground, his arms chained above his head around a boulder.
Licinius drew the great sword from under the leather loops on his back, put his hand inside the golden gauntlet and grasped the crossbar. He stared at the image of the tiger, then wiped the blade across his forearm. He found a cleft in the rock and pushed the blade into it, then bent it until it snapped, leaving the gauntlet attached to
