Empire of the Eagle by Andre Norton and Susan Schwartz

Quintus is a Roman Centurion who marched under Crassus. Crassus was defeated and lost his Legions and their Eagles. Quintus and his men are sold to the Chin, or Chinese, and are marched through the desert to the Chin homeland. But along the way, Quintus is slowly awakened to his previous life as Arjuna, the Indian hero who won his love, Draupadi, and ended up sharing her with his four brothers.

He lost Draupadi when one of his brothers gambled her away. But his spirit, and those of his brothers, were reborn in him. Quintus, whose name means "Five". But when he meets Draupadi again, along with her mentor, Ganesha, who have fled from MU and are trying to make new lives among the new Empires of Man, can he win her again and keep her safe from the other, darker members of her race who want nothing more than to sacrifice her for the power that she and her mentor have?

This time he will not only have to keep her safe from the foes that want all of them dead, but from Lucillus, another Roman of the noble class that rejected Quintus when his family lost its farm and became Clients of Lucillus' family. Lucillus believes that as a noble, he deserves what women come Quintus's way, and he might even ally himself with the Black Naacals who would bring death to all of them, simply to have Draupadi for himself.

Can Quintus recall Lucillus to what it really means to be a Roman, and can he get back the Eagle and the honor that Crassus lost that day on the battlefield for himself as a Roman, and for his men? Can they find their acre and a mule, not in Rome, but in the Unapproachable East, where treachery and enemies hide behind every rock, and every dune in the desert? More, can Quintus awaken to the valor and deeds of his former life, and win again the battles to be fought? Or will he only find a lonely grave among the sands, forever split from his people and his family?

Empire of the Eagle combines the best of Andre Norton who does great stories about past lives and spirits turning up in new bodies, with Susan Shwartz, who does excellent historical writing. Quintus, at the start of the book, is a staunch Roman, who views his defeat as bad, but his commander's losing of the Roman Eagle as something very much worse than that. All he wants is to regain the Eagle and the honor he has lost.

But from when he first put off the Bulla of childhood and became a man in Roman society, something else has hovered around him, and he finds a bronze statuette that seems to guide him when he has no hope. He later finds that the bronze statuette is a link to his former life as Arjuna, whose charioteer was Lord Krishna. The statuette is of Krishna as a dancer.

I first read this story when it came out, almost 16 years ago. I liked it then, and I still like it now. The story seems utterly realistic, even with the magic and mystical things that happen. Rather, it seems realistic in that while you are reading it, you believe it could have happened, and that's what I love about the work of both writers, of fixing you so firmly in a time and place that it seems real. Very highly recommended.