Andre Norton - Empire of the Eagle

ANDRE NORTON

AND

SUSAN SHWARTZ

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK

NEW YORK

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any

resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

EMPIRE OF THE EAGLE.

Cover art by Peter Goodfellow.

A Tor Book.

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

175 Fifth Avenue.

New York, NY 10010.

Tor is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

ISBN: 0-812-51393-2

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 93-26551

First edition: November 1993

First mass market edition: May 1995

Primed in the United States of America.

098765432

Introduction

by

Andre Norton

It was a soldier of hardly more than peasant birth, but possessing the spark of

military genius and practical knowledge, who forged that steel-hard backbone which

upheld first the Roman republic, and then the Empire— the Legion. Up to the time of

Marius, men had fought hard and well, but the loose formation of an army founded on

what had been a militia of citizens called out in times of national danger was not the

weapon a leader convinced of his own destiny needed—or wanted.

The concept of the professional soldier, whose home was truly the army itself and

whose god was the Eagle of the Legion to which he was oathed, was born. In spite of the

bloodbath ordered by Sulla, jealous of his predecessor's power, the idea of the

Legion—and the Eagle— remained until it was accepted as the only possible answer to

warfare with both barbarians of the borders and the trained armies of any others who

dared to resist the expansion of Rome.

To suffer such defeat as to lose an Eagle was a shame so dark that it could only be

washed out in blood. Probably the most notable of such losses was the massacre of three

of Augustus Caesar's Legions—and the loss of their Eagles—by Quinctilius Varus in the

Teutoberger Wald; Augustus is said to have lamented, "Varus, Varus, give me back my

Legions!"

But an earlier defeat was suffered by the Proconsul Crassus (of the first Triumvirate).

Envious of Julius Caesar and greedy for the fabled treasures of the Middle East, he

marched his army to a bloody defeat at Carrhae in 43 b.c.

It is always wise to explore the footnotes in any history. While gathering material for

the novel Imperial Lady, we found it necessary to read the history of the Han Dynasty—a

remnant from nearly two thousand years ago. And in a translation of those very ancient

pages, there exists a footnote that proved to be an open door for imagination's sweep.

We are told in a very brief paragraph that a portion of the Han Army, which had

poured its might along the Silk Road conquering all that it met, rode into the Middle

East and was present as audience to the defeat of the Legions.

Impressed by the way these Westerners stood up to disaster and death, the

commander of the Han force who had reached that point so far from his homeland

claimed a cohort of these prisoners as a novel gift for his emperor.

So baldly, the paragraph states a fact and mentions nothing more about the Romans'

fate in a land so far away that they had no way of measuring the distance.

What did become of the Romans? Because history does not tell us, perhaps we can try

to guess. A handful out of a Legion, looking to their Eagle for inspiration and

guide—what could chance thereafter?

Andre Norton

December 1992

Introduction

by

Susan Shwartz

I well remember the first time I heard of the Romans who became the protagonists of

Empire of the Eagle. It was in 1964, and I had been spending my lunch hour reading The

Last Planet, by Andre Norton. Those of you who know this book know that it opens with

a description of Romans in Asia, marching east, always marching east, and, unnoticed to

history, forming their last square somewhere in Asia—a perfect prelude to a tale of

decaying empire.

Her Operation Timesearch brought my attention to the Motherland of Mu, the

Atlanteans, and the Uighurs; I was delighted, much later, to discover on the map a real

Uighur Autonomous Republic in western China, on the border of what was formerly the

Soviet Union. Several books later—Silk Roads and Shadows and Imperial Lady (written with

Andre Norton)—I have still not visited this area in any way but research and dreams.

Nevertheless, when the subject was proposed, I found myself ready to return in my

writing to those places, and more than ready to deal with the enigma of Romans,

marching across the Tarim Basin.

How did they get there? With only a few records in Chinese history of people who

might be Romans, we can only conjecture. On one such conjecture we built this book: the

defeat of Crassus and his Legions at Carrhae in 43 b.c. A few things are certain: During

the first century b.c, Rome first became aware of the trade routes now known as the Silk

Roads and the wealth that traveled west along them.

Especially interested was Crassus, already a spectacularly wealthy man. but one who

envied his fellow triumvir Julius Caesar and sought victories of his own by campaigning

in the Near East as a proconsul. Unfortunately, in addition to his greed and ambition,

Crassus was a poor general.

He was profoundly either unwise or unfortunate in his choice of allies, and was

betrayed both by the Nabataean Arabs and the king of Armenia. In addition, he made

several strategic and tactical blunders that doomed his campaign. Goaded by the

Nabataeans, he allowed himself to be convinced to march his Legions at a cavalry pace.

He waited for his son Publius's crack Gallic cavalry. And he fought his Legions under

the hot sun near Carrhae, a garrison town near present-day Haran, without rest or water.

Worse luck, he fought against The Surena, a charismatic, powerful, and skilled Parthian

clan leader, who was later killed by his own king for Caesar's own fault—overmuch

ambition.

Those interested in this time and this part of the world know that the Parthians were

skilled horse archers. Faced with archers, the Romans formed their testudo, or tortoise,

shields over their heads to protect themselves against the arrow barrage and wait for the

Parthians to exhaust their supply of ammunition. However, they had not counted on the

heat, the thirst—or The Surena's bringing up additional supplies. Nor did they count on

Crassus's collapse when his son's head was paraded before him.

The defeat was staggering: Rome lost not only tens of thousands of men, but the

Eagles of their Legions, the sign of their power and their honor. Abandoning the dead

and wounded, Crassus and the remnants of his command holed up in Carrhae and,

ultimately, sought terms.

What happened to the remnants of the Legions—and the captured Eagles? Most

likely, they finished out their days in captivity, the Romans as slaves, the Eagles as

trophies.

That is the story that has intrigued Andre Norton for decades. And that was our

jumping-off point. What if, as they marched east into captivity, they marched straight

into myths? Asia—especially Central Asia—is an incredible nexus for myths; and we

had two extraordinary storehouses of such myths to hand. We had the stories of fabled

Mu, often combined with Atlantis and solar mythology in inimitable

nineteenth-century-type scholarship that seeks to prove survivals of a lost culture and a

lost continent. And we had the ancient Indian epic. The Mahabharata, with its gods,

demigods, and princes striding among mortals in epic battle. I had become fascinated

with it after seeing a performance of Peter Brooks's adaptation at the Brooklyn Academy

of Music, and I was intrigued to learn that the stories of Krishna and of his human allies,

Arjuna the hero and his brothers, their wife, Draupadi, and their wars are still loved,

taught to children, and even form the inspiration of modem comic books.

Certainly, this combination removes Empire of the Eagle firmly from the realm of

historical fiction and into fantasy such as, I like to think, the elephant-headed Ganesha

records in The Mahabharata.

- Imagine him opening his story. It is dark. Men are crouching in a swamp, betrayed,

defeated, unsure of their leaders. And messengers are coming—bringing terms and, for

us and for them, the beginning of a journey across cultures and across time.

Susan Shwartz

December 1992

1

Carrhae's walls had let the survivors of Crassus's Legions slip away as ignominiously

as it had admitted them: ridding the town of one more set of masters unable to

command it. The remnants of the Legion had no pride left—and very little strength.

Blank and indifferent, the outpost might have been as far from them as Rome herself. At

this moment, the tribune Quintus longed for the protection of those walls and wished

the people within heartily to Tartarus. He fully expected to arrive among the damned

sooner or later himself.

Up ahead, his superiors and elders gestured while centurions struck flagging men

into one last formation with their vinestaffs in order to follow their guide into the

marshes.

"You think we can trust him?"

"You want to eat mud, comrade?"

Someone else drew in his cheeks, making a sucking sound. Amazing anyone had

strength and spirit left to raise even so feeble a jest.

"Quiet, you!" Rufus, the senior centurion, reinforced his order with his staff. Quintus

would have expected that tough old man to survive. How he had made it himself,

though, was more of a surprise. Perhaps because he did not wholly want to....

They had learned they could not trust their fellow Romans, let alone some of their

allies: How then could they trust their guide, who cringed when they laid eyes or hand

on him, and glared when their backs were turned? His knowledge gave them a scant

chance, yet he promised a better, if less honorable, fate than the drums and the arrows

they would probably face again at dawn.

The Parthians were horse archers, not ready to battle at night, which risked killing

their prized mounts. If they felt that way about mere men, twenty thousand Romans

would still be alive.

Besides, what need would now press The Surena and his warriors to fight at all? The

legions of Syria were bled out. Roman cavalry was withdrawn, what survived of it. And

the auxiliaries—only a few of them lived or remained loyal to follow the Legionaries

marshward.

Now Prince Surena—The Surena, ruler of one of the noblest of the Parthian clans—had

only to wait for sure-to-be-treacherous guides and the veritable sinks of the marshes to

assure him of complete victory.

Near Quintus, someone gagged. Sour sickness rose in his own gullet, triggered by the

fetid marsh stench, nearly as foul as the oaths sputtering from First Centurion Rufus,

like bubbles popping in the muck. The veteran had not stopped swearing since the

orders came to retire. First, they had fought their way from the battlefield, men falling

under the horse-archers' bows. They were forced to abandon the wounded, and so their

rout was complete and shaming. Then, they had slunk out of Carrhae itself like a man

sneaking from the stews, defeated, destroyed. Dead, as soon as their only probable fate

caught up with them.

Under the helm that made Quintus sweat, blood pounded in his temples, seeming as

heavy as the enemies' wardrums and those bronze bells that had clanged deafeningly

during the battle as The Surena had paraded or that had heralded the severed head of

the proconsul's son impaled on a lancepoint before the Roman overlord, whose

arrogance turned to grief and fear, robbing his Legions of such leadership as even

Crassus might give and even of their will to win. Now that dull throb in the young

tribunes head, the rasp of the cooling air he drew into his aching lungs, somehow kept

him going even as the drums of a galley set the measure for sweating rowers. They had

managed not to run. That was all that could be said for them—the shocked remnants of

Crassus's seven Legions.

"Down!" The whisper held a snap.

Quintus flung himself to earth—or mud—by a pool, so scummed over it reflected

neither stars nor moon. The gods have turned their faces from us, he thought. But what more

could they expect after such a defeat as this?

Faintly, his memory sharpened. They had been cursed even as they marched from

Rome. Had not tribune Aetius, not satisfied with arguing that Parthia was a neutral

kingdom and thus not to be attacked, condemned Crassus and his army openly and

sternly? Any sane man would have taken that as an omen and thought twice, thrice on

what he would do. They said Crassus had prattled in company of the feats of Alexander,

and it was rumored that he envied Caesar, his friend and rival. He would have his

victory witnessed by all Rome. And so he had ignored Aetius.

What was that word the Greeks used for going against the gods? Quintus searched

memory again. It was all in a fog.

Hubris. That was right. Well, given his own choice, he himself would have been a

farmer, not a scholar. And certainly not a soldier. So plain words were good enough.

And the blunt commons had a fit word for such arrogance, too. Nefas. Unspeakable evil.

Here all about him was nefas.

Around him, men were sinking to their knees or to their bellies by the fetid water,

shedding their packs. Romans crouched with Romans; the few auxiliaries companioned

one another, by nationality. At night it might be hard to tell auxilia from enemies; but

they must note how the forces were strung out. Some of them had betrayed their oaths.

Still, best not kill the ones who held to their faith.

His ribs ached with every breath he drew. In the battle, something had whined by his

head. By unbelievable fortune, he had swerved at just the right time, only to be struck

with a near-paralyzing but glancing blow.

I'm hit! he had thought. For a moment he was dazed as might be a gladiator waiting

for the final stroke. Sluggishly, he tried to put away memory. Magna Mater, it hadn't been

much of a life!

No home. No sons. No lands.

Time slowed, and he was back in his memories of the battle. He doubled over,

bemused about whether an arrow had hit a lung and how long it might take him to

drown in his own blood.

Quintus rubbed his side as he half sat, half lay by a scummy pool. No arrow wound

had sapped his strength, but he winced from a burn mark. That blow had struck right

above where he stowed the tiny bronze statue that had been his lucky-piece since he

found it as a boy on the farm since stolen from his family.

"Don't drink, fools! Not that muck." The centurion ordered and enforced the command

with a whack of his staff across the back of one impatient man. "No water? You there.

Share with Titus here. And both of you, go easy. There is no likely spring here!"

No man in the Legion was obeyed more quickly than Rufus. Still a mutter, almost a

whine, of protest rose.

"You don't drink standing water. Look at that scum. Smell it. You want the flux or a

fever that would make Tiberside in the summer seem like a garden? Are you stupid

enough to think they'll let us carry you when we move out?"

That, Quintus thought, was what hurt the old veteran worst. On a lost battlefield,

Rome had abandoned her wounded. Men he had known, had ordered, had punished

and praised as if they were his own sons—and they had been left to have their throats

cut (or what more savage ways the Parthians killed those in their power), their screams

concealed beneath the beat of the Parthian drums.

Without knowing it, the Primus Pilus took off his helmet and rubbed his graying hair.

Rufus no longer: The red hair that had given him that name had long since faded. He

had grown old in the Legions. Only the needs of men who feared this battle without him

to bully them had stopped him from storming into Crassus's tent and choosing the

moment of his death rather than waiting for the Parthians. His men. The only sons he

would ever have. He had watched these sons of his die for pride and treachery, shot full

of Parthian arrows and now he would watch them die in the marshes outside Carrhae,

and no sword or shield of his could be raised in bloody answer.

Unless his heart broke first. Dully, Quintus watched the older man, gathering strength

himself from the way the centurion went about his rounds, soldiering as usual. The old

man's heart was tougher than the Legions had proved themselves to be. He would live

as long as anyone needed him to live. Even when dying was easier.

"Good thing you made it," Rufus came to a halt beside Quintus. They had seen each

other after the flight to Carrhae, but not spoken. "I saw you miss the spear..."

What spear?

"... then take that arrow hit. Thought it was a waste, after you'd escaped such a close

shave. And I wondered if I'd wasted the time I had put in on you."

Quintus shrugged. His ribs twinged, then subsided. "I am ready to move when orders

come." He tried to match some of Rufus's matter-of-fact tone.

Exhaustion forced the men into obedience. Rufus moved among them where they lay,

inspecting, and ordering the distribution of what food and safe water remained. Quintus

got up to follow nearly blindly. Somehow, the younger man could hear his grandfather's

voice: Watch well, boy. This is one of the real soldiers.

Death lay outside the marsh—Parthians and arrows. And the muck about them was

full of its own noises—a maddening buzz of insects that worked their way under clothes

and armor. Everywhere rose the rot of dying plants, the stink of frightened men and of

blood of those wounded lightly enough so they could flee, not like ... not like the

Romans they were. No one had killed himself for the dishonor as they would have in the

old tales. None of these leaders here and now would have understood the gesture or

deserved it.

At least the night's darkness had brought relief from the glare of the Syrian sun on

bare land or brown water. However, Quintus's headache worsened—lights seemed to

shoot red and white behind his eyelids. Even keeping on his helmet was some kind of

small victory. Others, he knew, had hurled theirs away as useless weight, discarding all

to stampede like beasts. Shame—the proconsul had made sure they already had their fill

of that, if nothing else.

"May as well rest, young one ... I mean, sir." Rufus's voice was slurred with

exhaustion.

Obedient, Quintus dropped once more, covering his face with his hands as he shut

his smarting eyes.

After a moment, he was ashamed. Even a most junior tribune who owed his sword to

place-seeking and fool luck should set the men a better example. Nearby knelt one of

the signifers. The standard-bearer had grounded the butt of his Eagle in the mud, and the

bronze bird high overhead looked as dispirited as the man who had borne it. At least

that had not fallen or been or lost. Not yet. Not like so many of the others. Eagles of

Rome's Legions had fallen into enemy hands. That was worse, even more than

abandoning their wounded. For the Eagles, most who marched behind them believed,

were the very spirit of the Legions as the genius loci was the spirit of a place.

Quintus raised his head, startled as he might be at a familiar scent or voice. Best not

think of that part of the past unless he wanted to run mad and gibber like one of the

Asiatics afflicted with the religious mania that passed among them for faith. Hard to

believe it, but under the influences of their religions, they would cut at themselves or

anyone else. He shuddered, and for once, hoped it was fever, not the beginnings of

madness. He was a Roman. Prophecy and spirit voices were for lesser peoples.

At least the drums, these damned throbbing drums of The Surena's victorious

Parthians were stilled. Quintus was no soldier, not in the way centurions like Rufus

were—bred and wed to the Legions—but his few years as a tribune had taught him a

little. The drums were a bad omen: All the omens had been bad since Marcus Licinius

Crassus had marched his seven Legions, the auxilia, and his gods-be-damned haughty

cavalry east of the Euphrates.

Wait for the cavalry, proconsul Crassus had said. Thousands of crack riders from

Gaul, led by his son. Wait for them. Then, keep pace with the riders until your lungs

ached and you nearly choked with the dust of the plains, and some of the older men

were limping while you hoped their hearts didn't burst. Well, all those horsemen had

been slaughtered, Publius Crassus with them; and the rest fled, avoiding the panic of the

common rout.

Gods, he just wanted to lie down and die in his armor, his already-rusting armor. In

the breathless days before his final treachery, that Arab dog Ariamnes had jeered at the

Romans' pace. Fine for him: He went mounted, he and his six thousand men that he had

promised would fight beside the Romans. He had fawned like the vilest client before the

very men he betrayed. Traitors, all of them. Gods, Quintus threw back his head a little to

try to see the sky. He wished he were back by the Tiber, on the land no longer his.

The panic of their retreat to the marshes was behind them, he could hear from the

mincing voice of that prancing Lucilius.

"Seeing his son's head fly-bit on the spear was what did it. The proconsul gave one

stare and screamed like a woman in childbirth," Lucilius reported. "Wept. Offered to fall

on his sword, though his hand was shaking the way it does after a three-day drunk. I

can't imagine how he could have held any sword steady long enough to fall on it."

Naturally, the young aristocrat had been in Crassus's tent—as Quintus had not—for a

very select staff meeting the night Crassus had finally been forced to make any decision

at all, let alone the one to abandon the wounded and retreat to Carrhae. Quintus should

have known that Lucilius would have joined the other patricians, deciding arbitrarily

whose lives would be spared and whose sacrificed.

Now, he was laughing as lightly as if he traded gossip in the baths at home. "I swear,

he screamed and shook and nigh-on soiled himself."

Quintus had no love for Crassus, who had tossed the farm his own family had held

for generations to a client about as casually as Quintus might toss a coin to a beggar.

Still, that a general and a proconsul of Rome could abandon his men on a lost

battlefield—best that grandfather had died before this day. The old man had died twice

already, once with the loss of his lands, a second time when Quintus had held him for

his last breath two years ago. This would have given him a third death.

Lucilius's eyes glinted with that gambler's fervor that had forced him out to Syria, one

jump ahead of the creditors he had lived off since putting on the toga virilis. This flight

too was a kind of gamble, one Lucilius was sure he would win even now. Why not?

Hadn't his luck always come around before?

"So who leads?"

"Cassius. Pushing from behind."

Crassus had looked enough like a leader to keep heart in the men. Now, this staff

officer stepped into his boots. Quintus had never trusted the lean, saturnine elder

tribune, but at that moment he would have followed him as his own grandfather

followed Marius to destruction. Cassius was a politician. He might be a tribune—the

same rank that Quintus held, however inadequately—but the older man had survived

the ambushes of Roman politics, and Quintus reckoned he might survive this, too.

Another of Lucilius's friends, sleek even now after a rout and hours in a marsh, bared his

teeth in a grin.

"Pro di," Lucilius added, "it was almost worth losing the battle to watch that Cassius

slap old moneybags back into decency."

Even in the dark now, Quintus saw Legionaries making gestures to avert evil. Their

eyes were wide as the eyes of stalled horses who smelled wildfire. Even Romans had to

reckon with defeat, but to learn that their leader had lost his courage...

"Keep a decent tongue in your head!" Quintus hissed. Lucilius had powerful friends

who could snatch the armor off Quintus's back and blight his last hopes of ever

regaining his family's land—if the Parthians didn't stick them all full of thrice-damned

arrows first.

"Our senex there. We'll all turn old and gray," the young aristocrat mocked. "If we live

that long."

But the centurion turned his head and glared, and Lucilius's voice softened to a

whisper and a too-hectic laugh. Many of the men had not drunk all day. Despite Rufus's

oaths, Quintus knew some of them were stealthily lapping up the thick water. There

would be fever in the marsh before dawn.

Behind him, some of the younger tribunes diced. Fortunes could rise and fall on the

throw of the dice, even in the Legions. That was one of the ways Lucilius had gotten

himself into trouble. Quintus had never had any money to play. Callous to play now, he

thought—not that it mattered. Still, if one of Crassus's staff happened by, the gamers

would regret it in the short time they probably had left.

But they were undoubtedly privileged, as usual. Cassius and his troops were likelier

to stay with the proconsul, enjoying whatever comforts he had been able to wrest from

the wreck of his armies. Rufus's deep rumble set about disposing the men as

comfortably as might be until dawn, when they must break free of the swamp or die.

Quintus heard himself repeat orders—to his surprise, he spoke the right ones—as if in a

waking dream that differed totally from the memories he had brushed against.

"Why don't they come after us?" a young Legionary whispered in the darkness, then

fell silent when someone chuckled.

"Why should they? Got us pinned here, haven't they? They can just wait and pick us

off, unless they get bored and want to go hunting. They'll wait till dawn for anything. Or

offer us terms. But that's a hope I wouldn't count on, son. However, they just might want

Andre Norton - Empire of the Eagle

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