this.” She drew back the cloth covering the interior of the crate.
Costas whistled. “That’s some weapon.” Inside was a magnificent socketed halberd-head, dull silver in color with patches of green where it had corroded. On one side was a vicious curved blade extending outward about ten inches, and on the other side a narrower straight blade, the shape of a cut-throat razor.
“I’ve seen one like that in the British Museum,” Jack exclaimed. “Late Warring States, early Western Han period?”
Katya nodded. “The razor-shaped blade is similar in proportions to Han-period swords, which look like Japanese samurai swords.”
“Isn’t this bronze?” Costas said. “Wouldn’t that be too early for us?”
Katya shook her head. “Not necessarily. Iron was introduced in China by the fifth century BC, but the early cast iron was brittle so bronze was still used. And this bronze has been coated with chromium, which would have made it harder, better to hold a sharp edge.”
“And a weapon like this might have been prized, passed down the generations,” Jack murmured, touching the blade. “It could have been made in the early Han period, not long after the time of the First Emperor. But it could have survived in use for two centuries or more, to the period when we think these Romans came here.”
“But what’s a prestigious Chinese weapon doing in this place?” Costas said. “A passing Imperial Chinese warrior dumps it on a Roman grave? I don’t get it.” He gazed at Katya, who stared back at him, her eyes gleaming. “Ah,” Costas said. “That’s uncannily like the look Jack gives me. It means you’ve found something else.”
Katya picked up a small plastic finds tray from beside the crate. “The halberd was in the center of the grave, as if it had been placed on the torso of the body. These two objects were where the head might have been.” There were two coins in the tray, one silver and one corroded green, a disk with a square hole in the center. Jack took the silver coin, holding it up in the fading sunlight. “It’s a silver tetradrachm of Alexander the Great!”
“And it’s uncirculated,” Katya said. “It’s like those Roman coins from south India you were telling me about, uncirculated bullion.”
Jack passed the coin to Costas. They could see the portrait on the obverse, the familiar head of Alexander wearing the mane of a lion, the classical form giving sudden reality to the idea of travelers from the ancient Graeco-Roman world coming this far east, to the very borderlands with China. Costas rotated the coin, peering at the portrait again, and a puzzled look returned to his face. “If my history’s right, Alexander the Great lived in the later fourth century BC. That’s a hundred years before the First Emperor, and three hundred years before our Romans. There must have been old Greek coins that found their way out here, used as bullion, jewelry. But they would have been worn.” He looked dubiously at the Latin inscription on the boulder, then back at the coin. “Does this mean we’re not looking at a Roman here after all, but at a soldier of Alexander the Great?”
“You’ve read the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea?” Katya said.
“The merchant’s guide? First century BC, Egyptian Greek. I’m becoming an expert.”
“Well, it says ancient coins of the Greeks are still to be found in Barygaza, just as you suggest,” Katya said. “Then there are those new lines of the Periplus from Hiebermeyer’s excavation in Egypt, describing Crassus’ legionaries. Jack filled me in about that on the phone. They specifically mention an altar of Alexander, passed as they went east. That would have been in Uzbekistan, close to the cave with that Fifteenth Legion inscription. The Roman soldiers would have heard legends of Alexander’s lost treasure. Once they’d reached that windswept altar in the desert, the mountains of central Asia looming ahead, they’d probably shaken off any pursuers from Merv and could relax a little. So what do they do? They dig around, searching. If Alexander was going to bother building an altar, he would have included offerings, and what better than mint coins with perfect images of himself. The Romans could have found this coin there, and brought it with them.”
Jack took the coin from Costas, turning it over. “And then they place it on an eye of the body as an offering to Charon, the boatman across the river Styx.”
“And the other coin?” Costas said. “On the other eye? That coin looks Chinese to me. Talk me through that one, Katya.”
She picked up the second coin, with the square hole in the center. “There are three Chinese symbols on it, one to the right of the square hole, two to the left. This is a coin of the Han dynasty, a wushu, which means five grains, equaling four grams, the same weight as a Greek drachma or Roman denarius. Millions of these were produced, and they’re quite common finds in Chinese central Asia.”
“Can you pin down the date?” Costas asked.
“The symbols to the left are those of the reigning emperor, as distinctive to the Chinese as the change of portrait was to a Roman. And just as in Rome, a new emperor would attempt to replace existing coins with his own new ones. Token coins such as these, with no bullion value like silver or gold, would have been worthless with the name of a former emperor, and may even have been dangerous to be seen with. So this coin is unlikely to have been in circulation beyond the reign of that emperor. And he was the Han emperor Cheng, who ruled from about 32 to 5 BC.”
Jack exhaled slowly. “Perfect,” he said softly. “That fits with my own best-guess date for the escape of Crassus’ legionaries, 19 or 18 BC. That’s about a decade into the reign of Augustus, about the time he negotiated peace with the Parthians and saw the return of the lost legions’ eagles.”
“So how do our escaped Romans get hold of a Chinese coin?” Costas asked.
Jack pursed his lips. “They would have been desperate men, trained killers with nothing to lose. Any morality would have been stripped away with the loss of the eagles at Carrhae, and they would have been brutalized by years of torture and hardship under the Parthians. They may have stolen Parthian gold when they escaped, but they still had to eat. Silk Route traders packed everything they needed for the journey. The Romans would have preyed on any caravan they came across, probably killing everyone, maybe taking the odd captive as a guide, gorging themselves on food and drink, looting anything of value they could carry. This coin may have been in the saddlebag of some ill-fated Sogdian trader. But it was of no bullion value, and was something they could afford to leave here to satisfy Charon and ease their comrade’s journey into the afterlife.”
“And the halberd?” Costas said. “That would have been a much bigger sacrifice.”
“A warrior was always buried with his weapon,” Jack murmured. “With their eagles gone, the legionaries only had each other, and they probably cherished a dream that they would once again march alongside their dead comrades, heads held high in the fields of Elysium. Even if it meant reducing their own defenses, they would never have buried a comrade without a weapon for the afterlife. Even a weapon so much at odds with the normal equipment of a legionary.”
“You think they looted that from a trader too?” Costas asked.
“The Romans would have armed themselves with whatever they could find,” Jack replied. “Thrusting swords and spears would have been their favored weapons as legionaries, but anything would do.”
Costas touched his finger on the curved blade. “This seems an unlikely sidearm for a trader.”
“There were others on the Silk Route besides traders,” Katya said quietly. “Mercenaries, employed as caravan guards. Marauding bands of robbers, preying on the caravans like highwaymen. It was like the Wild West out here. Up on the steppes, in the mountains, is the toughest place for an outsider to live, and only the most murderous gangs survived. No mercy was given. And there were others.”
“Warriors from the east.” Jack looked carefully at Katya. “Warriors who bore the tattoo of a tiger.”
Katya shot a glance at Jack, and looked down at the halberd again. “There were murder gangs out here, but there were also raiding parties from China, from the warrior empire itself They were the most feared of all, superbly armed and equipped, on horseback, always accompanied by a drumbeat, rising in a crescendo as they swooped down on their prey. They would have seemed invincible. For the nomads who live out here, for my mother’s people, the sound of a distant drumbeat still sends a shiver through the soul. Even I can sense it, when I let my imagination run free.”
“So the Chinese raided their own traders?” Costas said incredulously.
“To understand why, you have to understand the nature of Chinese society. The empire was a totalitarian state, inward-looking, a universe unto itself Control freaks always need a boundary, between the world they can dominate and the world outside, which is feared, rejected. There’s no hazy middle ground. When you look at the Great Wall of China, remember that psychology. In extreme cases, the boundary acts like a prison wall, and the controller sends out tentacles to draw back anyone who steps beyond. At some periods, that’s what happened with China.”
“So how could Chinese traders operate on the Silk Route?” Costas asked.
