Empire of Dragons (39 page)

‘And you truly believe that this would win me the people’s approval?’

‘Without a doubt. Seeing the Flying Foxes in action and realizing that men of such incredible ardour and ability have vowed to serve you would leave no doubts about the legitimacy of your power. And there will be no limits to your ascent. One day you will unite the three kingdoms under a single sceptre and go down in history as the saviour of our country.’

‘Do you imagine that I care about any of that?’ asked Wei, an almost absent expression on his face.

The old man bowed his head with a slight sigh and did not reply.

The wind had picked up and a window shutter creaked somewhere. A dog howled in the distance and the flames in the braziers seemed to be dying away.

‘It’s late,’ said Wei all at once. ‘I wish to retire. See to it that their weapons are restored to the warriors of Taqin Guo. Their armour and ornaments as well. They will fight the Flying Foxes in seven days’ time.’

‘I shall do as you say, My Lord. You will not regret it.’

Silence fell again between the two men, sitting on their heels facing one another.

A song passed through the night, or perhaps the sigh of the wind. It was the last sound to be heard before the hush that precedes the dawn.

M
ETELLUS SPENT THE DAYS
of their imprisonment agonizing over what destiny held in store for him and his men. Might help arrive from outside, and if so when? Although he was alone in a cell, he tried to stay in contact with his men by calling out to them or by knocking against the door with his knuckles to let them know he was there and to keep them from giving up. He knew how much his own attitude affected theirs. He had promised that he would bring them home, and he devoted the long hours of solitude to imagining and planning how he would succeed, but the bare walls of his cell, interrupted only by a high window near the ceiling, through which a dim light filtered, seemed to preclude any hope.

There was no situation in the world so bad, he thought, that a worse one could not be found. Compared to this harsh isolation, the atrocious conditions at Aus Daiwa seemed almost preferable. There at least he’d had contact with his comrades, and the chance to give a little assistance and help to those who needed it. He thought of Uxal, of his rough show of friendship, and he wondered what he would have done or said had he found himself in this prison with them.

Every night, before sleeping, he turned his mind to his ancestors and to Clelia, and in the dark he tried to give shape to her face, to her dark, shiny eyes, to her soft, full lips. And her features, recalled by his melancholy, made him think of those of his son – so far away, so lost. Alive, perhaps, or dead, defenceless, a victim of uncontrolled power. And he thought too of Aurelian, his brave and loyal friend, and hoped that he would be a bulwark, both to his homeland and to his son.

At times, among these sensations emerged another, unexpected and disturbing: the feverish eyes and enigmatic gaze of Yun Shan, the girl with whom he’d exchanged a fleeting glance at the monastery before being dragged away along with Dan Qing. The thought of her gave him a strange feeling, a confused sense of fascination and even attraction.

But then he realized that his thoughts could go nowhere in that desolate, silent place, and he tried to keep his mind occupied with other activities – calculations and memory games. He tried to recite the cantos from Virgil’s
Aeneid
by heart, calling upon his youthful studies, or the first chapter of Xenophon’s
Anabasis
in Greek, which he had so often read aloud from his desk in school.

His only contact with the outside world came when food and water were passed through a slot in the door and he could see the face of his jailer for a few moments: an old man, with a long white beard. One day he realized that he’d lost contact with his comrades. They weren’t answering him any more; he inferred that they had been transferred somewhere else, and he was seized by profound despondency. Now he was surrounded only by silence. The whole building seemed to be empty and his voice calling out to them was swallowed immediately in the darkness.

After a few days of this non-living his mind began to waver. He realized that these conditions might last for months, even years, or perhaps forever, and he would not be able to bear it. He tried to imagine what he would do if he were in the place of those holding him prisoner, but every hypothesis seemed unlikely because he could not guess at how their alien mentality worked. He decided that when he could no longer bear that absolute nothingness, he would take his own life, honourably, as a Roman. But up until that time he was resolved to keep his mind sharp and his body fit. The strangest thing about the prison was the relative abundance and variety of food, the excellent quality of the water and even of the amber-coloured infusion that every so often was served along with a meal.

One night, shortly before dawn, he heard noises – doors creaking, bolts being rattled. Then silence fell once again.

He tried to feel his way to the door but he realized that he was no longer in the place where he had always been. He soon found the door on another wall. How could that be? He felt anguished and disoriented. Was he really losing his mind?

He heard the same sounds again. He leaned his ear against the door to hear better and, to his enormous surprise, the door gave way under the pressure and fell open. Metellus found himself in a corridor dimly lit by a bronze oil lamp and started to advance cautiously. The corridor was quite short and led to a large room lined with other cells. There appeared to be no way out. How could he make sense of this absurd situation?

He went to one of the doors and touched the bolt.

A voice in Latin asked, ‘
Quis est?
’

He recognized Martianus’s voice. ‘Is that you?’ he asked.

‘It’s me, Commander! What are you doing out there? And where did you go to? We haven’t heard your voice in days.’

‘I don’t know,’ he answered. ‘My door was open.’ He tried to draw the bolt. And found Martianus standing in front of him, incredulous.

‘What’s happening?’

‘I don’t know,’ answered Metellus. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Hey!’ came the voice of Quadratus. ‘Commander, is that you?’

‘We’re here!’ other voices exclaimed.

Metellus unbolted the doors one by one and liberated his men. They embraced. It seemed impossible that they should find themselves together again after such total, distressing isolation.

Balbus slapped a hand on his shoulder. ‘What a pleasure, Commander. But now what happens? It doesn’t look like we can get out of here.’

‘I think not,’ replied Metellus. ‘But at least something will happen. If they’ve reunited us, there must be a reason.’

Lucianus started to inspect the walls painstakingly, swearing in Greek as he realized that the building was a box of stone without entrances or exits. ‘Does anyone remember how we got in?’ he asked.

Rufus scratched his reddish hair. ‘May I drop dead if I’ve ever seen a single corner of this hole before.’

‘It was dark when they brought us in,’ recalled Septimius.

Publius approached Metellus. ‘Commander, how can you explain this situation? None of us recognizes the place we find ourselves in. No one remembers how we got here and there’s no apparent way to get out. Yet someone left the door of your cell open. Whoever that was must have got in and out somehow.’

Metellus reflected in silence, then said, ‘There’s only one explanation: we’ve been transported to a different place from where we were brought at first.’

‘Commander,’ replied Antoninus, ‘I wake up if a cockroach crawls across the floor.’

‘Not if they’ve narcotized you,’ retorted Metellus. ‘It wouldn’t have been at all difficult for them to put something in our food or water.’

He hadn’t finished speaking when they heard a sound coming from one of the open cells, a kind of squeaking like stone rubbing against stone, and a man appeared dressed in a long green silk tunic. It seemed to all of them that he had materialized before them in that very moment, like an apparition.

‘Which of you is Commander Xiong Ying?’ he asked.

‘I am Xiong Ying,’ said Metellus, stepping forward. ‘How do you know my name in Chinese? Has the prince sent you? Have you come to free us?’

The man in the green tunic did not answer his questions, but motioned for him to follow and went back into the cell he’d come from.

Metellus and the others followed him into the cell where Septimius and Rufus had been locked up and saw that the back wall was open: the entire wall had rotated upon itself on a hinge, like a door, and opened up on to another space beyond it. Having crossed the stone threshold, they stopped short and considered the amazing vision before them. Lined up alongside each other on wooden hangers were their suits of armour, in perfect condition. The red crest and shiny metal of Metellus’s helmet made it stand out from all the rest.

‘What does all this mean?’ asked Metellus in Chinese.

‘That I’m here to offer you your freedom,’ replied the man, saying the words one by one so he was certain to be understood.

‘Explain yourself better,’ Metellus insisted. ‘Do you mean that we’re free to leave?’

‘Freedom is a precious possession,’ replied the man, ‘and must be earned.’

Metellus understood that they could hope for no good to come out of this strange situation.

‘Tomorrow we celebrate our New Year. Our lord, the most honourable Wei, has decided to revive an ancient custom from the first years of the dynasty: foreign prisoners fighting in a contest against our best combatants. If they win, they are granted their freedom. If they lose, they are buried in the cemetery of foreigners with their armour and their weapons.’

Metellus drew a long breath.

‘What is he saying?’ asked Rufus.

‘He’s saying that we’ll have to fight against their best warriors if we want to regain our freedom. In a kind of gladiatorial battle.’

‘Tell him we’re ready,’ said Quadratus. ‘We’re not afraid of anybody.’

‘That’s right. Better the quick blow of a sword than rotting away in this hole,’ confirmed Publius.

All the others nodded.

‘We’re ready,’ said Metellus. ‘What are the rules?’

‘No rules,’ replied the man in the green tunic. ‘It’s a fight to the death. There will be no interruptions until the last of you, or the last of your adversaries, is dead.’

Metellus translated these words and looked into the eyes of his men, one by one, the best men he’d ever had under his command. He studied them as if he were inspecting them for the first time: the senior centurion, Aelius Quadratus, centurion Sergius Balbus,
optio
Antoninus Salustius, legionaries Martianus, Publius, Septimius, Lucianus, Rufus and Severus, good with their swords and with their javelins, fine marchers, undaunted by hardship, lovers of wine and women, tough-skinned and tough-souled. Soldiers.

He had no doubts when he turned to the man in green and answered, ‘We accept.’

The man nodded in acknowledgement of his decision and left. A massive bronze door opened at the end of the room and he disappeared through it.

‘That’s why they were feeding us so well,’ said Martianus. ‘I don’t know whether the rest of you have noticed, but we’ve been given a fighter’s diet: marsh grain, meat, vegetables, fish, eggs.’

‘I noticed that it was all good, but that had me worried. A man condemned to die can usually expect a good meal,’ commented Rufus.

‘What shall we do, then?’ asked Severus.

‘We’ll prepare for combat,’ replied Metellus. ‘Don’t be deceived. They’re going to put their best up against us, and you’ve already had a taste of how indomitable they are.’

‘Are you talking about the Flying Foxes, Commander?’ asked Balbus.

‘I’m afraid so,’ replied Metellus. ‘Listen, the only reason they’ll have us fight is because they are sure we won’t win. They may very well pitch us against a superior force. We may be outnumbered, or their martial skills may be far better than ours, or perhaps both things together. But we’re soldiers and we’re not afraid of death. Refusing to do battle would certainly not save us, while we can’t rule out the possibility of surviving the fight and regaining our freedom. Our only option is to fight with courage and tenacity. The worst that can happen is that we’ll sell our lives dear and have been granted a soldier’s death. The best that can happen, as I’ve said, is that we walk away from the battle free men. Does anyone have anything to say?’

Balbus and Quadratus looked at their men and replied, ‘I think we all agree with you, Commander.’

‘Fine. Then you centurions will prepare your men for battle.’

Quadratus nodded and turned to his comrades. ‘First of all, each man must inspect his armour, his sword, his long arms. Everything. We can’t exclude some hidden trick on their part. Then we’ll have to establish a battle plan. I fear that the most difficult test of our lives awaits us.’

Severus and Antoninus, the two
fabri
, picked up the shields and examined them.

‘Good,’ said Severus. ‘It seems they haven’t noticed anything.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Metellus.

‘We told you we had a surprise for you when we rebuilt our weapons in the caravanserai at the border. Here it is: a little improvement that we finished when we were at the prince’s village. See this small lever behind the straps?’ he asked, turning to the other soldiers. ‘Well, all you have to do is pull it and eight steel spikes poke through the leather exterior and stud the whole surface. Our enemies won’t know what to expect because they’ve never seen us in action, and this will really take them by surprise.’

Balbus was about to pull the lever but Antoninus stopped him. ‘Don’t do that now, Centurion. It’s a spring mechanism that can only be used once. When the leather is pierced, you can see the hidden spikes and then, “Goodbye, surprise.” At that point we’d have to take the shields apart and replace the leather. All we can do is hope that our trick will work when it’s time to use it.’

‘I see.’ Balbus nodded. ‘All right, men, as soon as you’ve inspected your arms, we begin training. We’ll form two units and fight each other. We must prepare for the incredible speed of our adversaries. Our defence must be impenetrable. Remember the words of the poet, whose name I can’t remember just now: “A fox has many tricks. The porcupine just one, but a good one.” ’