Empire of Dragons (25 page)

He understood why Alexander had identified the immense chain with the Caucasus and had imagined it as the scene of Prometheus’s eternal punishment. Metellus couldn’t take his eyes away from the sight of those lofty peaks, so tall they made him dizzy, and when he looked at his men he saw that their astonishment was even greater than his.

He heard Antoninus saying, ‘I’ll wager that a person who managed to climb up to the top of one of those mountains could see the confines of the earth on every side, and the current of the Ocean surrounding it.’

‘No one can climb that high. Anyone who has got even close has returned with terrible tales to tell. It is impossible to advance beyond a certain limit, if nothing else because the cold is so intense that it would kill anyone who was exposed to it, even for the briefest time,’ said Daruma, guessing at the possible intent behind Antoninus’s words. ‘But also because the air is so rarefied it becomes unbreathable.’

Their conversation did not last long, because all their energies were consumed by the uphill march, which left them light-headed and panting.

Metellus noticed that the natives were rather short, with very wide chests that must help them breathe more deeply. He also noticed several cube-shaped stone constructions, topped by a dome or sometimes a spire, along their route. They looked very old indeed. When they stopped to rest, he asked Daruma what they were.

‘In our language they’re called
stupa
,’ replied the merchant. ‘The first one was built to preserve the remains of one of our philosophers. He was a prophet, a miracle-worker – I don’t know the word for that in
koinè
. Later they simply became monuments to recall his preaching and his endeavours. His name was Siddhartha, but he has become known as Buddha, which means “the enlightened one”.

‘His word has reached China as well, and you will find his image in many places. Most monuments portray him in meditation, which is the way he achieved enlightenment.’

‘Does Dan Qing’s
tao
have something to do with the teachings of this philosopher?’

‘Yes, in part. The prince’s master is a man who believes profoundly in both philosophies: that of Buddha and that of the Chinese wise men Master Kong Fuzi and Master Lao Tze. You see, Commander, the path of illumination is . . .’

Metellus interrupted him with a sigh of ill-disguised impatience. ‘I fear it won’t be easy for me to follow you on this ground, Daruma. You ask too much of a simple soldier.’

Daruma smiled. ‘Don’t let it worry you. I couldn’t have gone on much further myself. I’m nothing but a merchant.’

‘I’m not so sure of that,’ replied Metellus, ‘but we’ll still have quite some time to get to know each other. As far as philosophers and prophets are concerned, I’ve always avoided them like the plague.’

‘Why?’ asked Daruma. ‘Are you perhaps afraid to measure yourself up against someone whose thoughts have gone far beyond your own?’

‘That could be,’ replied the Roman, ‘but I’m a soldier. Men like me are given the task of creating enough security and enough peace inside a state so that even the philosophers can pursue their calling, so that the judges can administer justice, so that artists and poets can produce their work. To achieve this, we soldiers have to challenge and fight off people who don’t even have enough food to eat, people who don’t know how to build a house or till a field. They are primitive beings, animated by a savage desire to conquer . . . the same desire that animated our own forebears at the origins of the first republic.

‘You see, Daruma, I think that men turn to prophets and miracle-workers when they become afraid that our swords are no longer capable of safeguarding their lives and their possessions. There is a religion that has been gaining ground rapidly in our land as well. It was founded by a Judaean master called Christ, who they claim is the son of God. This prophet was accused of sedition and executed by one of our governors more than two hundred years ago, and now his word is slowly conquering our empire. Do you know why? He is certainly not capable of guaranteeing the safety of our state, much less of the world, but what he offers the faithful is happiness in the next world, a place that no one has ever visited and from which no one has ever returned. I think that people turn to the gods when they are desperate, when they can’t believe in anything else. And if the old gods no longer inspire faith, they simply find new ones.’

‘We have a word for men who think the way you do.’

‘So do we,’ interrupted Metellus. ‘We call them sceptics. And even this word comes from a school of philosophy. But remember, Daruma, men like me may not know how to keep up a brilliant conversation, but we have one thing in our favour. We’re accustomed to relying on ourselves, and on other men of the same temperament.’

‘You mean them?’ asked Daruma, nodding towards the Roman soldiers who were busy setting up camp.

‘Them,’ confirmed Metellus.

‘Yet the miraculous leap of Dan Qing impressed you. And it was a real act, achieved by a man of flesh and blood like you.’

‘It’s true,’ admitted the Roman, ‘but what good is such ability if he can’t even communicate, if he spends most of his time closed up inside himself? What makes him different from a stone or a tree or, if you prefer, from a philosopher, locked into his own convictions?’

Daruma turned for an instant to regard Dan Qing sitting on his heels before a little
stupa
. He answered, ‘It’s difficult to judge a man by how he appears to us. Silence and isolation may be a punishment that a person inflicts upon himself.’

T
HEY STARTED
marching again the next day. When they had nearly reached the pass, they turned around to consider the long, winding path they had taken; from that height it looked even steeper. They stopped for the night when they found an inn with a pen for their horses and camels. Inside the modest building, constructed of stones and tree trunks, an old man with a thin beard and eyes like Dan Qing’s served his customers a mutton stew accompanied by boiled marsh grain seasoned with the animal’s fat.

It was certainly not appetizing fare for Metellus’s men, but there was no alternative. In a place so far from the rest of the world, they couldn’t expect much choice.

At the pass, they transferred their packs on to some Bactrian camels, much more suitable to the terrain, the temperature and the altitude of the mountainous region.

They set off the next day, descending at first down to a vast high plain and then starting to climb uphill again. After a few days of marching, the men had begun to suffer from stinging eyes and nausea. Metellus advised a remedy for their eyes: a black blindfold with two very narrow slits to allow them to see while protecting them from the intense light. The men chewed on salt that Daruma had distributed to fight off their nausea.

Dan Qing seemed not to feel the strain of moving in such a hostile environment, perhaps because he was close to his home. As they advanced, people began to resemble him more in a physical way, although those mountain dwellers had deeply wrinkled skin the colour of clay, due to the sun and the harsh dry air. The Romans, on the other hand, realized with every step that they were becoming the oddities, the object of evident, albeit discreet, curiosity on the part of onlookers.

It was clear that none of the natives had ever seen anyone of their race travelling through those places. The children, inquisitive like in any part of the world, reached out their hands to touch the strange individuals with their bristly faces and round eyes, their arms as hairy as monkeys’. Septimius drew the greatest curiosity with his blue eyes and light blond hair. They got close enough to touch his knees, before they scampered off giggling to hide behind their parents’ legs.

After the first pass, they covered another fifteen legs of their journey until they reached the base of another pass even higher than the first. Here they abandoned the Bactrian camels and transferred their packs on to small, strange-looking oxen with very long hair, the only animals, asserted Daruma, capable of enduring the heights that awaited them. They were crossing a landscape of increasingly extraordinary and untamed beauty: the snowy peaks loomed above the caravan like pyramids of ice with bluish reflections. Their narrowing path climbed the mountain slopes, jutting out over precipitous walls, over abysses that took one’s breath away. When a stone was nudged by someone’s foot and fell off the cliff, the sound of sliding gravel was joined by a chorus of stones rebounding off the sides of the precipice, and everyone understood that taking a false step meant certain death.

They advanced at a slow pace behind the local guides who led the shaggy oxen by their halters. The men became accustomed day by day, nearly hour by hour, to breathing the different air, as they adapted to a light which was ever clearer, an atmosphere ever more transparent.

As they ascended, the cold became piercing and the walls of the chasm closer, until it was clear that they’d soon have to pass to the other side; to do so, they’d have to cross a wooden rope bridge swaying over the precipice between the two rock walls. The men looked each other in the eyes and Metellus could feel their terror. Inured as they were to any danger or adventure, they were not yet acquainted with the harsh demands of such an extreme world. Only the calm resoluteness of their commander and the example of the centurions gave them the sense of security necessary for acceptance and maintaining discipline.

‘You must always look forwards,’ said Metellus, ‘never down. It’s just a few steps, in the end. You’ve been through much worse.’

The most difficult part was getting the animals across. Balbus went first, accompanied by one of the native guides, carrying a rope to be anchored to the other side; the pack animals were secured to the rope so that they wouldn’t move too far to the left or right during their transit and throw the entire structure off balance. Then it was the men’s turn. Dan Qing crossed without difficulty, ignoring the rope, while Daruma went last, escorted by Lucianus and Rufus, who supported him on either side.

The weather was worsening before their very eyes. A squall was blowing up, cold gusts sweeping the narrow gorge and making the bridge swing back and forth. Metellus feared that even the slightest delay would make their passage impossible. When Daruma had finally set foot on the other side, they immediately began their descent, although the light was rapidly waning. They trudged along until their surroundings were less harsh and the temperature more endurable, and finally set up camp, exhausted with fatigue and numb with cold.

They continued to advance the next day and the day after that, and then for many days more, until they reached a fork with another road that came from the east. It cut into the side of the rocky flank, which was riddled with deep ravines. Here they stopped to exchange the woolly oxen for Bactrian camels and a few horses, small in stature and quite shaggy as well, but very hardy.

Metellus was amazed by this animal-trading system, which reminded him of the horse exchanges that existed in the empire along the
cursus publicus
, the great network of roads that stretched as far as the most secluded Roman outposts in Africa and Britannia. With the difference that there wasn’t a single state here, regulating the procedures and the exchanges, but only the needs of the wayfarers and the habits of the local communities.

‘Further north,’ Daruma told him, ‘there are nomadic tribes who raise the best horses in the world. The Chinese call them the “horses that sweat blood”, and are willing to pay exorbitant prices for them. Several emperors have given their daughters away in marriage to barbarian chieftains just to have a herd of those fantastic animals. When we are in the Empire of Dragons, you will surely see some.’

‘The Empire of Dragons?’ repeated Metellus. ‘What does that mean?’

‘It means China,’ replied Daruma. ‘It is another of its many names. The dragon is a common mythological figure in the country, taking on a variety of forms, from demon to protector.’

Daruma pronounced many words and expressions in Chinese, in order to force his pupil to practise the language, although he had become resigned to the fact that Metellus’s only thought was of getting back home.

In all that time, Metellus had spoken very little with Dan Qing: only brief phrases of courtesy in Persian at the moment of passing food during their communal meals or upon meeting in the morning or retiring at night. But he had never stopped studying the language with Daruma, every night after dinner or when they paused to rest during the day, and his progress had been constant.

During the last legs of their journey through the great mountain chain, the weather took a turn for the worse again and they soon found themselves in the middle of a snowstorm: an event which they were not prepared for and which sorely tested their endurance. The bitterly cold wind cut through them like a blade, penetrating all the way to their bones. No amount of clothing seemed to help. A dense sleet of piercing crystals fell as the wind whistled and moaned through the mountain gorges. Metellus and his men had to call on all their willpower and resolution so as not to succumb to the cold and their fatigue.

Dan Qing often seemed to be observing them with his oblique glance, and if someone had been able to decipher his expression they would have seen admiration for the perseverance demonstrated by the men of Taqin, for their stubborn determination to overcome the forces of nature.

Conditions continued to worsen. The cold became even more intense, until it froze their limbs and made it difficult to move at all. As they fought their way through the swirling snow, something darted in front of Dan Qing’s horse after a bend in the path. The animal reared up violently with a whinny of terror.

The prince was completely taken by surprise and was thrown backwards as the horse fell over, the jaws of a white leopard deep in its flesh.

Dan Qing was pinned between his horse and the edge of the precipice; if he tried to free himself he would fall headlong below. In the meantime, the leopard had spotted him. Releasing the neck of the horse, which was in the throes of death, it lunged towards its human prey instead, baring bloody fangs and stretching out a clawed forepaw. Publius, who had been closest behind the prince, leapt forward and started waving his cloak in front of the beast’s face. The leopard, made bold by hunger, continued to roar menacingly and to swipe at those it imagined were after its prey. Publius was trying to draw his sword but it had frozen solid and would not budge from its sheath, as Balbus and Antoninus rushed over and managed to pull Dan Qing to safety. The leopard swiftly lashed out at Publius’s arm, sending him right over the side of the precipice.