Subject: Markket Headlines

From: "Matthew Gross" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2006 21:15:51 +0000

Josephine Mendez

"Are you mad?" Quintus rounded on the old man with a snarl. One moment, Ganesha had leaned gasping against the rocks; at the next, he was likely to throw lives away."Even now, they seek to reach you," Draupadi said, looking into his face. "Even now, don't they?"The white robes seemed to shine more brightly. Another of the newcomers hobbled forward. He was an old man, his cheeks sunken, his back bent, and he hobbled, leaning heavily upon a crutch.Narrow of eye, Quintus watched the torches moving so slowly toward the Romans. Slaves, perhaps. Fearful slaves. Jupiter Optimus Maximus, let even some of them have the courage of the gladiators who had followed Spartacus and who had all but marched on Rome. What allies they would make!On the fifth day after the first madman died, a Roman recovered from the stupor into which he had fallen. He recognized his thankful comrades, vowed himself strong enough to march-and disappeared late in the afternoon. The man nearest him had heard his companion shout and run out into the waste, arms outspread in welcome. He had started after the straggler, but two of his fellows had toppled him and sat on him.As the sun sank lower, a trick of the light made Draupadi and Ganesha's forms seem to be a size larger than life. As the soldiers watched, their white robes kindled into pure light. Two white figures glided over the darkening land beyond the arch, leading them.And Krishna danced. Light blossomed on Quintus's palm, and the tiny figure danced its mourning and its joy. Leaping from his hand, it grew in size, leaping and spinning as it danced away from the arch and toward the ruins on the hill."Thank you," he said. "As you have asked, you and Ganesha shall lead."The very stillness of the waste and the soldiers' awe in the presence of those gleaming white robes silenced him for the moment.His ribs felt as if lead weights were laid about them. He could see Draupadi's face, but it was growing smaller and fainter as if he saw it through a mist of blood.... He started to fall but was upheld by the very thing that was attacking him.Quintus's horse screamed and plunged. Desert-bred as they were, even they had a horror of serpents. Did this one sense the illusion serpents? It must be so. A wind began to rise, stirring the sand and grit into swirls that looked like more coils-best not think like that, lest exhaustion and fear and memory of the serpent's coils cause them to manifest once more. Venomous or not, those coils were deadly.So far they had come, so far: If this had been a futile chase, they must now begin to resign themselves to having lost their way. It was too late now to retrace their steps. Perhaps they had all been befooled, betrayed. Perhaps the real Black Naacals marched beside them, a fat man and a slender woman, lithe and careworn, wrapped in tattered veils."Move along," Rufus said for what had to be the fiftieth time that day to Ganesha. Once again, the adept had sunk to his knees, staring raptly at the outline of a fish's skeleton embedded in a rock. That is, Quintus thought it was a fish, though he had never seen one that looked that way. "Wouldn't you rather eat a real one?" he asked.