Subject: This Week's Target Stock

From: "Lilly Cantrell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2006 12:26:16 -0500

Tabatha Bourgeois

And as he climbed, even as he struggled to keep his mind on the immediate problems, Quintus's thoughts wandered. They had been wrong, his father, his grand-sire, even the Vestals and the entire college of priests, all the way up to the Pontifex Maximus. It was not the Fates that guided a man's life and wove the thread of it. That was just a pretty story. It was the "if's" that determined within any age of the world whether a man would or would not go on living or whether he would achieve what had been set down-by whomever-for him.And then the sun set. They had entered the arch in daylight and emerged in night. The wind blew around the peaks, striking eerie sounds from the rocks it had hollowed over the centuries, like invisible owls.She held up her hand on which the ring he had given her shone. "This has power in it, the power of your pledge. I could not wear it if I were false."The men-for all here were men-looked like the hungriest dregs of the Subura, who skulked in abandoned buildings, preying on the old, the sick, and the unwary. Only ... only there were old men among them too, and they stared at the Naacals with a desperate hope.True, he had the Eagle, but the tiny bronze had been his private guard and treasure. He would miss it.Even before his eyes were open, Quintus's hand flew to his sword-broken now, he must be wary-and he leapt to his feet. Leapt too fast. Careful, man, or you'll fall overboard-no! Where was he? When was he? The sea of blues and green, with the gold of sunlight gilding a sail or the edge of a seabird's wing or striking fire from the crystal glinting in the living rock of the Arch of Memory-they were all gone, long gone. A sullen dawn glared down from the east like a soldier hoping to flee a battle he has no stomach for."Do they think we are children or fools?" Ssu-ma Chao asked.No, he said again in his mind, more firmly than before. If I die, and I do mean if, let me do it in the open, fighting. Or marching east under the Eagle."We have a path," Quintus said. Try not to hurt at this most recent death, he told himself. He held aloft the Eagle as he would hold a torch up as he entered a cave. The signum's brightness gleamed as if it were molten metal, a beacon not just of power, of the might, of the Senate and the Roman people, but a sign or a promise that here at least, in the wild where madness stalked behind the noonday sun, the Eagle's wings spread out over all who cared to shelter beneath them.She grasped it, and the standard flared up with the same fierce joy that shone in her eyes. Quintus's hand went to his breast as if in salute, but instead he found the tiny bronze figure that had been his guard.He brought up the Eagle. Rufus gave the command to march. Rome's pace, Rome's race. Left, right; left, right. You have marched beneath an arch. This is your triumph. Now, get on with you."Are you? We have tracked the Black Naacals to their lair. These-" he gestured at the rocks with their pinpoint torches, steady now, "-have not attacked us as the Black Naacals surely would have done. Therefore, it is not they, perhaps, who are our enemies-"Of course, no one had any answer for that. Day by day, they were descending, perhaps into what would have been the deepest part of the seabed. Day by day, the shadows ranged alongside them. At first, they paused if you looked at them dead-on. And the higher the sun rose in the sky, the smaller they were, vanishing at noon."You heard him!" Quintus told Draupadi. She stared at him with a kind of frantic grief. "Go on!""Closer to where we need to be," she murmured. "Give me your hand."