The Eagle and the Dragon, a Novel of Rome and China

by Lewis F. McIntyre

  “My thoughts also, but I wanted to hear you say it. Yes, Armenia it is. King Vima said that the XII Ful is back in Baku covering the border, and after checking his maps, the shortest and easiest way is through Hyrcania along the Caspian Sea, well away from both Ecbatana and Ctesiphon. We may be traveling under some protection, but I don’t want to get too close to the centers of Parthian power. Does anyone have any other ideas?”

  Ibrahim offered a suggestion. “I’ll send Yakov and Shmuel into Aria with the caravan’s arrival group to check on the situation there.”

  “And if it’s not good?” asked Gaius.

  “We don’t go putting our heads on the chopping block by showing up. We hold off on the Bactrian side of the border while we figure out another way home.”

  Everyone agreed with the plan. More wine was poured and stories told, before one by one, they each went into their bedrolls.

  Hasdubal enjoyed his new calling as master of the caravan in Aria. When he left Hormirzad a few years ago, he had connected with an east-bound caravan. The caravan leader Dariosh had found the urbane and well-educated Hasdrubal a welcome companion, and they had spent many nights discussing the intricacies of running the operation, so remarkably similar to running ships. When they got to Aria, Hasdrubal found himself working with Dariosh in the caravan office. A year later, Dariosh died of an illness, with the help of a very inconspicuous poison procured by Hasdrubal. Dariosh’s son would have inherited the business, but had little skill or interest in it, and Hasdrubal offered the grief-stricken son a considerable amount of money from his ill-gotten stash. It had been a good business for the sailing master from Tyre, and he seemed secure for the rest of his life.

  So he felt a moment of shock, when, from his office inside the caravansary, he could hear a man talking to his staff outside. The man’s Nabataean accent seemed familiar. Hasdrubal craned his neck to catch a glimpse of the man’s thin face and pointed mustache. He scratched his head, wondering why the face and voice should raise such alarm bells in his head, when he remembered from three years ago… Yakov, Ibrahim’s weasel-faced henchman. This could not be possible! What in the name of all the gods could that scum be doing here, how might he have gotten here?

  Hasdrubal listened intently to the conversation. The man was trying to line up passenger accommodations with his staff to wait for a caravan to Armenia. No. This is a coincidence. Then he heard the name ‘Yakov’ and a shiver went down his spine. I must scrutinize this passenger list!

  “We are quite full right now,” Hasdrubal said, from within his cubby hole office, interrupting the conversation. I don’t want him to see me, if it is him. “Bring me the list and I’ll see what I can do. No, just you,” he said, indicating his servant. “He can remain outside.” The man brought in the list of names.

  Hasdrubal’s gut wrenched as he read the familiar names. Aulus Aemilius Galba, Gaius Lucullus, Antonius Aristides…some Jew and a female Roman name that he didn’t recognize…Yakov and Ibrahim! How the bloody hell they might have wound up here, in my office, of all places? One word by them to the authorities and he would be as good as dead. “No, too many, we are full.”

  “But, sir, the entire second floor…” argued his servant.

  “We are full! Do you understand, for them we are full.” He said softly, picking up the little dagger he always kept handy on his desk. “Full!”

  “Yes, sir!” The servant scuttled back out to convey the bad news to Yakov and his companion, whom Hasdrubal vaguely remembered as a deckhand on one of the ships.

  “Have them let us know where they are camping when they arrive, something may come available between now and then,” Hasdrubal offered politely from his office.

  Yakov and Shmuel rejoined the caravan a day later with the news. Thankfully, there seemed to be no alert for Aulus and his party among the Parthian border guards. Yakov had accosted several in various taverns around Aria and they admitted to no unusual alerts, even after his plying them with generous amounts of beer and wine. The group would most likely have to camp alone outside the caravansary, but the yurt would be fine, if they could engage the bathing facilities there.

  They arrived two days later. As instructed, Yakov walked in to inform them of their location a few hundred yards out, while everyone else headed toward the baths and the markets. That night, after several flagons of the good local wine, everyone collapsed into a sound sleep, the banked fire casting flickering shadows among the goods and baggage carefully organized inside.

  Marcia stirred against Antonius, his body warm through her cotton shift, her body still damp from the quiet but intense lovemaking of a few hours ago. This long trip, this long, hateful, exhausting trip, was nearly at an end, and she could see the end, a house with Antonius, children, the little duties of being a wife and mother… she dreamily thought of what that house and life might be like.

  A little noise outside brought her to momentary wakefulness. She lay still, listening… an animal stirring outside, perhaps, as she relaxed blissfully against her husband, his buttocks firm against her thighs. So soon, that peaceful life!

  The door to the yurt was ripped open, the glare of a torch filled the interior, the patter of men bursting in, angry words hissed in the dim light. A hard hand grasped her wrist away from Antonius, jerking her unceremoniously to her feet. Another man put his sword to Antonius’ throat and ordered him up. She heard him growl acquiescence as he rose to join the others, all with swords directed at them. She counted seven men, one for each of them.

  She shifted her shoulders, feeling the weight of her dagger between them. Antonius had teased her endlessly about sleeping with it when they were on the road. Right now, it was their only weapon against the gang.

  An eighth man stepped into the tent with a commanding air. In Greek, he said, “Welcome to Parthia, Ibrahim and Aulus! And all your friends. It has been a long time.” The voice was vaguely familiar to Marcia.

  No one said anything for a minute. Then Aulus spoke up, “I see you have taken to camels, Hasdrubal. Fitting companions for you. Smelly and full of fleas.”

  “Now my good senator, let’s not make the last few minutes of your life unpleasant.” Hasdrubal walked up in front of him, looked him in the eye, spat in his face, and delivered a ringing slap across Aulus’s face that would have knocked him down two years ago. Aulus recovered, glaring at the man, a trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth in the torchlight.

  “I am going to kill you all tonight, but not here. It would be messy, so near my new business. He walked over to where Ibrahim stood. “And Ibrahim, my old friend, I have a special treat for you. You will beg me to kill you.” He likewise slapped Ibrahim hard across the face.

  Then Hasdrubal addressed his accomplices in Aramaic. “Take them to the place you prepared, and keep them under the sword the whole way, no escapes. The Hanaean girl is yours after we are done with the others, but then she dies too. No witnesses. Frisk them for weapons, then put out this fire. We can come back for their animals and belongings when we are done.”

  Marcia had learned just a smattering of Aramaic and Greek, not enough to follow everything that Hasdrubal said, but enough to understand.

  The thugs searched everyone for weapons, easy enough since they were all in night clothes, but did not search Marcia. Deep breath, girl! We have a chance. They didn’t take the woman seriously either. Eight against one, but it is a chance.

  They filed out of the tent in single file, one man behind each captive, sword at their backs. Marcia brought up the rear as they stepped off into the darkness, their eyes not yet adjusted to the night, blinded by the flaring torch the lead man carried.

  It’s not eight to one. The man behind me is the last in line, so it’s one on one against just him. I take him, and the man in front of me covering Antonius, that’s just two to one. Then Antonius and I each have swords, against six. I need to let them know what’s up.

  Marcia mentally prepared herself to become hysterical. First she began sobbing un
controllably. Then, in han-yu, she began screaming, but not so loudly they might restrain her, “Oh, they think they’re going to kill us all! But we’re not going to die!”

  “Shut up, bitch!” The man behind her said, heavily accented but close enough for her to understand. He prodded the small of her back with his sword.

  “We’re not going to die!” she screamed. “Be ready to fight!” She wailed, she was wringing her hair, fully hysterical now. She heard the man behind her laugh in amusement. She kept up the act until her guard was completely at ease with a helpless, hysterical woman. Then she pivoted on her right foot, spun clockwise in the darkness as she released her hair to recover her dagger with her left hand. As she came around, she buried it in the man’s kidney. Taken totally by surprise, he let out no more than a “woof!” at the impact. Marcia kept him impaled, twisting her dagger inside him, then reached for the hilt of his sword, prizing it easily from his unresisting fingers. She jammed the point of his sword into the hollow of his throat. A jet of blood, black in the darkness, erupted and he went down to his knees, gurgling. She withdrew both blades, and turned to face Antonius’ guard, who was just now turning to see what was going on behind him. She delivered a slashing blow with the sword to his left side below the ribs. He went down thrashing, as she recovered his sword and passed it to Antonius. She then took up a position against Antonius’ back. A third man charged her, and he too went down.

  The whole melee was over in a minute. The guards were thugs, only moderately competent with a sword, and taken completely by surprise. Antonius clapped the bloodstained Marcia across her shoulders. “We owe you, domina! I hope none of that blood on you is yours!”

  “I don’t think so! Nothing hurts!” She smiled, breathing heavily.

  “Check yourself. In a fight, you might not notice.”

  The fight was all over, except for Hasdrubal and Ibrahim, squared off around the guttering light of a dropped torch. Ibrahim had a sword, Hasdrubal only a dagger, so the group gathered to watch the inevitable conclusion. It was obvious that Hasdrubal was not familiar with fighting, his slashes clumsy and his parries weak. Ibrahim was toying with him. Suddenly Hasdrubal lunged in desperation, grunted as he impaled himself on Ibrahim’s waiting sword point, and went down.

  Ibrahim withdrew his sword from Hasdrubal’s abdomen, put his hand to his own chest where a spot of darkness had blossomed, and went down on his knees to sit on his haunches, gasping. In his final act of desperation, Hasdrubal had stabbed Ibrahim in the chest. Someone dragged away the thrashing Hasdrubal, then everyone gathered around Ibrahim. Antonius lifted Ibrahim’s tunic over his head and laid him down to check on him. The wound in his chest just below his left nipple was not bleeding profusely, but it hissed and bubbled with each intake of breath. Antonius put his hand directly over the wound, which seemed to help Ibrahim’s labored breathing. “You’re going to be fine, Ibrahim. You’re too much of a scoundrel to die yet,” Antonius said.

  “You’re a liar and you know it, Antonius my friend. That is a sucking chest wound and you can hear it. But keep your hand there for a minute, so I can say some things. Yakov?”

  “Yes, father,” answered the slender man.

  “You have to get these people, our friends, through Parthia. I’ve taught you everything, so take care of them, please. I am proud of you, my son.”

  “Yes, father,” he answered huskily, trying not to let his voice break, tears trickling down his cheeks.

  “Gaius, Aulus, Antonius. I told you all a long time ago that I wanted, someday before I died, to find true friends, people who would die for me, for whom I could die.” He stopped to make a gagging cough, bringing up a gout of blood. “I have found my friends, and I go to my death satisfied. I look forward to the afterlife Paul promised me. If it exists, I will watch over you from there, my friends.” He paused for another coughing bout. “Antonius, you can take your hand off my wound now, I am ready.”

  “No, wait, my friend,” answered Antonius. “I can patch you up.” Antonius’ voice choked up, and tears were running down his face.

  “No, you can’t, and you know it. I love you, I love you all. So take your hand away and let me go to what awaits me.”

  Ibrahim took Antonius’ hand and gently lifted it away, and the sputtering hiss from his wound resumed with each intake of breath. He gasped, unable to talk, but smiled, waiting patiently with everyone watching silently, while he inexorably suffocated. At the end, his eyes grew wide, he smiled, and with one last rasp, took his final breath. Antonius gently closed Ibrahim’s staring eyes.

  Marcia sat down beside the man, taking his lifeless hand in hers. Tears burned her eyes and rolled silently down her cheeks. She didn’t try to wipe them away. The idea that this man, their father figure, the mastermind of this trip, would no longer be there to cheer them on with an unlikely joke, to listen to their stories and tell one of his own, confident, great yet always humble. This could not be, but it was. He seemed asleep, she wanted to shove him, tell him to quit playing games and wake up… but his chest neither rose nor fell. He would not be getting up ever again, and she prayed to the strange god he had so recently adopted that He would accept Ibrahim into the afterlife he had so reluctantly come to believe in.

  Everyone else either stood or sat silently, thinking their own thoughts for several minutes until Yakov took charge, remembering his father’s orders. He coughed silently and wiped the tears from his eyes. “Goodbye, my beloved father. Now, all of you, he would not want us all to be killed, standing around mourning for him. Shmuel, Hasdrubal said something about taking us somewhere prepared. There may graves or a pit ahead prepared in advance that will accept their bodies as well as it would have ours. Go see if you can find it, take the torch. Antonius, get us some more torches and a shovel. I’ll bury my father here.”

  People starting moving. They checked, there were no horses. Hasdrubal and his men had come on foot, nothing to get rid of but their bodies.

  Shmuel returned a few minutes later. “There’s a shallow grave, six feet wide and twenty feet long. The dirt’s all piled up, even had shovels there. They saved us some trouble.”

  “Good, Antonius, go help Shmuel with the bodies. Everyone else, I need some help with my father’s grave,” said Yakov.

  After a few hours, they had disposed of the bodies, and laid Ibrahim in a deep pit, wrapped in a white shroud. They all gathered around him. Shmuel offered the final words. “I share the same god, and many of the same beliefs he came to have. So I will pray for him as my people pray: Yit'gadal v'yit'kadash sh'mei raba. May His great Name grow exalted and sanctified in the world that He created as He willed. May He give reign to His kingship in your lifetimes and in your days, and in the lifetimes of the entire Family of Israel swiftly and soon,” the mourning prayer of the Jewish people from whom Ibrahim’s new faith had sprung.

  Yakov, as his son, picked up a handful of dirt and cast it into the pit, then lost his composure and sank to his knees, sobbing. Marcia comforted him, hugging him to her, while everyone else grabbed a shovel and filled in the grave. They stacked a layer of rocks over it as a kind of monument.

  Gaius also cried, hard choking sobs, for in the past two years, he had come to regard this wise and gentle man as his father as well.

  By now, the first streaks of gray were beginning to appear in the east. Yakov had recovered, and was once again taking charge of his father’s unlikely crew. “We need to be moving. Hasdrubal had some position with the caravansary, I thought I recognized his voice last week, and he will be missed. We want to be well on our way when they find the graves, and well off the road. So break camp and quickly!”

  They mounted up before sunrise with the supply wagon lumbering along behind them, following a smuggler’s trail a few hundred yards off the road, rather than risk border guards.

  After several days and no pursuit, everyone seemed to relax a bit. The trail followed a ridge line that offered fair passage to the wagon and a good view of the road below so they
could find their way. After a few more days and still no pursuit, Yakov decided they could risk limited time on the road. He periodically deployed two or three riders for directions and supplies from the village markets as needed. There were quite a few Aramaic and Greek speakers here, and with difficulty, they could also exchange information in Bactrian, similar enough for some mutual understanding.

  Late in the afternoon, Antonius rode ahead to scout out a spot for the night’s camp, when out of the side of his eye he caught a flash of color in a ravine. He looked, but did not quite see it again; was it a person on the move? The wind stirred and he saw it again, some sort of banner. He rode down carefully, dismounted and stepped into the ravine to investigate.

  It was a faded yellow banner, the vertical feather-shaped ones used by the Hanaeans, with Hanaean characters, cocked upright against a tree. Several other banners lay strewn about on the ground. They looked like they had been there for a very long time, as had the bones strewn about them. Obviously, animals had been in amongst the remains. Few skeletons were intact, but he counted twenty skulls. Also swords, some still in their scabbards; they had been taken by surprise. Helmets and other items, no wagons. A good-sized party of Hanaeans met with some foul play here.

  Antonius rode back to break the news. “You’re not going to believe what lies ahead!” he told Aulus and Yakov from horseback. “Looks like a band of Hanaeans were ambushed a few years ago just a few hundred yards ahead.” He pointed in the direction from where he had just come.