Empire of Dragons (22 page)

‘The helmsman found the strength of spirit to continue his battle against the elements and he succeeded in ferrying his passenger to the other side. Caesar won the battle against the enemy and became the founder of the empire that extends over all the lands of the Internal Sea, which we call “Mare Nostrum”, and over all the peoples who live in its vicinity. Every schoolboy hears this story told by his teachers . . .’

‘For what purpose?’ asked Dan Qing.

‘To teach our young people that they should never become disheartened, because we build our own destiny. With will-power, determination, courage. Last night you saved my life and I’ve come to thank you. You are safe as well, and with you the destiny of your homeland, perhaps. Like Caesar, that night, when he crossed the storming sea.’

Dan Qing turned. ‘What you say sounds like a good omen,’ he replied, ‘but the road is very long, the threats many and the friends very few. How many men did your leader have waiting for him on the other side of that stormy sea?’

‘Fifty thousand,’ replied Metellus.

‘Not a great number. But not too few either. I am alone.’

Metellus stared into his eyes, trying to decipher his expression. ‘Alone?’

Dan Qing merely nodded.

Instead of asking for his help, as Metellus would have expected, the prince turned his gaze to the sparkling surface of the waves.

That man aroused a strange feeling of reverence, while instilling a sense of detachment that was impossible to ignore. When he spoke his words were measured and seemed to come from a great distance, and yet Metellus was attracted by the extraordinary force that pervaded his body and by the seemingly impossible energy that had permitted the prince to pull him from the waves as he was drowning.

‘Daruma has asked me to escort you, with my men, to your final destination.’

‘Did Daruma explain to you what awaits us?’

‘No. But I can imagine.’

‘And you accepted?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m a soldier. I’m not afraid of such things. And Daruma has promised that he will bring us back. We have no alternative, actually.’

‘That seems a good reason.’

‘May I ask you a question?’

‘You may.’

‘Why did you save me, last night?’

‘Because you command my escort.’

‘An excellent reason,’ replied Metellus, and walked away.

N
AVIGATION PROCEEDED
regularly at a sustained rate and towards evening they saw another boat sailing in the same direction at a distance of perhaps a couple of miles. When night fell, the voyage continued calmly and without obstacles, until around midnight, when the sky clouded over and it began to rain, a downpour that lasted for about half an hour, although the wind never picked up and the Ocean did not rise. The lanterns emitted a dim light and Metellus, lying on a mat on the deck, would open his eyes every now and then and take a look around. Daruma was sleeping below deck, his men above. Quadratus had arranged for a man to stand guard nonetheless; perhaps he didn’t trust the company completely, or perhaps it was just the habit of twenty years of scrupulous, disciplined and watchful service.

When he was awake, Metellus thought of the adventure awaiting him and his men in a vast, unknown land, among peoples he had not even known existed. Sometimes he felt he must have been mad to accept such a proposal, while at other times he felt he had done the right thing, the only sensible thing, given the circumstances. But what anguished him most was the sensation of distancing himself with every instant from his world, his son, his mission. He felt a dizziness that took his breath away. He tried to remedy that anxiety in sleep, letting himself be rocked by the continuous lapping of the waves against the keel and by the warm breeze.

At dawn, he was roused by the shouts of one of the sailors from Taprobane who was at the top of the mast. Daruma scanned the horizon before them, then shouted, ‘Look! It’s blowing, down there!’

They all ran to the bow and saw a spray of steam as tall as the mast of their boat rising from the surface of the sea, and then an enormous curved back and a gigantic two-lobed tail splashing out of the water before sinking down below.

‘Over there!’ shouted Balbus. ‘Another one!’

‘And another down there!’ echoed Antoninus.

Metellus observed that sight in wonder: monsters bigger than the boat they were travelling on, their backs encrusted with scaling and deposits like the hulls of ocean-going vessels, emerging with nearly half of their bodies out of the water before plunging back in with a resounding plop in a spectacular show of foam.

‘What are they, Commander?’ asked Lucianus. ‘Will they attack us?’

‘They are whales,’ responded Daruma’s voice from behind him. ‘Creatures as huge as they are inoffensive. They’re playing like little fish do, and grazing. They open their mouths and devour whole shoals of sardines.’

‘I’ve read about them in the work of Onesicritus,’ spoke up Metellus, ‘Alexander’s admiral and pilot of the royal navy, who returned from India all the way to the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates. But I never thought I would see them.’

‘You will not regret making this voyage, Roman. You will finally understand what the world is, and how small the pool you’ve built your empire around is compared to the immensity of the Oceans that surround the endless vastness of the earth. And I’m sure that this will teach you something, because you seem like a man who is eager to learn.’

Metellus did not reply, and remained in silence watching the dance of those giants of the sea, their gleaming backs, their gigantic tails lashing the waves, the spraying steam that they launched to the sky. One of the monsters emerged at a very short distance from the boat and he could see its tiny eye near the corner of its mouth. A grey, inexpressive bulb that seemed to stare at him for a moment before disappearing beneath the water.

‘All those stories about marine monsters that break apart ships and devour the sailors who fall into the water are nothing but legends, then,’ observed Metellus when the whales had passed from sight.

‘Legends?’ replied Daruma. ‘Jaibal!’ he shouted to one of his Taprobanes. A dark-skinned, half-naked sailor approached. Daruma took something hanging from his neck and showed it to Metellus. ‘Does this look like a legend to you?’

‘Gods! What is it?’

‘A tooth. The tooth of a monster thirty feet long with three rows of these things. Incredibly fast and voracious, an insatiable hunter, seizing anything that moves . . . Turn around, Jaibal,’ he said to the sailor.

The sailor turned to show an enormous scar that went from his buttocks to the joint behind his knee.

‘This is a memento from that tiger of the sea. Jaibal was lucky. Others are torn to pieces and devoured. Pearl divers run the greatest risk – the waters they dive into are rife with these beasts. And you complain that pearls are expensive! If you found yourself in front of a brute like that at forty feet under, you certainly would not think so.’

‘Pearls . . .’ mused Metellus. ‘I only ever bought one, for my wife, when my son was born on the fifth anniversary of our wedding.’

Jaibal returned to his work and Daruma was served an infusion of herbs, which he offered to Metellus as well.

‘I saw you speaking to Dan Qing.’

‘I thanked him for saving my life the other night.’

‘You shouldn’t have.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because he is a Chinese prince. He is the son of an emperor who is revered as the Son of the Heavens. A man of his rank customarily speaks to no one who has not been introduced to him through a complex protocol. Remember when he landed on the boat? Nothing was said, he merely nodded to me as a gesture of respect. You should have asked me to request permission for you to speak to him.’

‘Well, you could have warned me.’

‘That’s true, but all things told, perhaps it’s better this way. If he answered you, that means protocol has lost its meaning for him in this situation.’

Metellus glanced over at Dan Qing. He was sitting on his heels and, as usual, seemed absorbed in his thoughts.

‘But . . . what’s he doing when he sits for hours in such an uncomfortable position? It would break anyone else’s knees.’

‘He’s meditating.’

‘Meditating? About what?’

‘His meditation does not have a specific object. He seeks
tao
– that is, the way.’

‘The way to where?’

‘There is no “where”.’

‘So he’s meditating about nothing and searching for a road that leads no place?’

‘More or less, although it’s not that simple. It’s by virtue of this meditation that he succeeded in leaping from his horse and landing on my boat without faltering. And it’s by virtue of this meditation that he can stay in that position for hours, as though his body were weightless.
Tao
is a complex philosophical concept, developed by one of their greatest masters, a man named Kong Fuzi. According to his theories, nature has neither purpose nor intention, but it is invaded by an intrinsic force that governs and informs nature of itself.
Tao
is this universal soul that suffuses the cosmos, the earth and the nature of the human race as well. A man who perceives
tao
and makes it his vehicle and his bearer will forgo trying to bend the flow of events forcibly and abandon himself to its essence, allowing it to pervade his being.’

Metellus smiled. ‘We have a saying: “
Faber quisque est suae fortunae
.” Do you know what it means?’

Daruma sipped his infusion of dried leaves. ‘My Latin is not very good, but even I know that much: “
Every man is the architect of his own destiny
.” ’

‘Precisely. The exact negation of what you were just saying.’

‘It doesn’t mean that you don’t make decisions. Think of that leap. If he had jumped an instant sooner, he would have fallen into the water. If he had jumped an instant later he would have died, run through by a great number of arrows. He flew through the air at the exact moment in which he felt an opening between opposing destinies. At that instant, a small amount of exertion was sufficient to achieve an incredible result. You Westerners, on the other hand, always seem to be rowing counter-current, with the wind against you.’

Daruma was sweating with the effort of explaining such arduous concepts in a language that was not his own. He spoke in Persian, sometimes in
koinè
, and his listener tried to meet him halfway by suggesting appropriate terms himself.

‘I wonder how we Romans have managed to build an empire and maintain it for centuries,’ replied Metellus sarcastically. ‘And how we – a measly crew of emaciated prisoners – managed to survive the insults of fate and the cruelty of our enemies, managed to triumph over crushingly superior forces, managed to cover tens and tens of miles in the dark, eating only what we could find, tormented by thirst and cramps of hunger.’

‘I must admit that all this is quite remarkable,’ agreed Daruma, ‘but it doesn’t change the reality of things. The waste of energy is insane, the price paid in terms of suffering exorbitant, and the end result depends on chance alone. But, returning to Dan Qing, it’s obvious that he has formed an excellent opinion of you. He would never have risked his life for just anybody, especially for someone he’d known for such a short time.’

‘Not so short. I’m almost sure that he remembers first seeing me at Edessa.’

‘And what did he see?’ asked Daruma, while a galley boy poured more of the infusion into his bowl.

Metellus drank some as well. It tasted slightly bitter, in a pleasant way, and was quite fragrant. ‘He saw me in combat, I think. Fighting to defend my emperor. To the death.’

‘That explains many things . . .’ said Daruma with a deep nod.

Metellus tasted the beverage again, and found that he was beginning to like the curious flavour of those aromatic leaves. ‘What was he doing in Edessa with Shapur? And what were you doing at the oasis of Khaboras?’ he asked, staring Daruma straight in the eye. ‘If destiny has led me to remain with you, it’s only right that I should know.’

Cries came from the stern and they turned. The crew had thrown out nets and were starting to draw them in. Metellus’s comrades joined in to lend a hand and, as a net was pulled slowly on board, the deck filled with darting fish that were gathered and put into baskets to be cleaned and prepared for dinner.

Daruma drew a deep breath, like a man readying himself for a difficult undertaking, then began to tell his story. ‘China is a very ancient empire, perhaps the oldest that exists on this earth, but for decades now it has been afflicted by continuous tumult. The pressure of barbarians from the north, and its own internal strife, have divided that gigantic land into three kingdoms: one in the north, one in the centre and one in the south. Each is governed by a military chief who has proclaimed himself
wang
– that is, sovereign. Each of the three is convinced he has the right and the duty to unify the empire and therefore to kill the other two. This has resulted in an unceasing state of war that has depopulated the once-prosperous countryside, destroyed flourishing cities, reduced trade to less than half of what it had been. The armies are dwindling, due to the impoverishment of the farmers and the fall in population, and so the nomadic barbarians from the steppe, the Xiong Nu, have been enlisted to defend the long wall in the north, and given land in return for their services.

‘In this atmosphere of great confusion and decadence, the Kingdom of the North – the biggest and most powerful – has remained perhaps the only point of reference. The capital is grandiose still, and boasts of the biggest library of the country, with twenty thousand students applying themselves to the most diverse studies.’

Metellus was surprised by the many incredible coincidences with the empire of Rome: the pressure of barbarians from the north, the necessity of allowing foreign tribes to settle within the wall of defence, the progressive barbarization of the army and the endemic civil wars ravaging the state.

Daruma continued his story. ‘One of the plagues which most greatly afflicted the Kingdom of the North was that excessive power had fallen into the hands of the palace eunuchs . . .’