Khalid slid down the side of the dry canal, dirt spilling away under his feet. Two dozen of his men crowded around him, shields raised. His boots sank into the soft, muddy soil at the bottom of the watercourse. He was in shadow, but the Roman fortification rising up a hundred feet away was bathed in lucidly clear morning sunlight. Thousands of Sahaba swarmed across the ditch. A huge shout belled out from every throat. Khalid joined them, slipping and sliding in the mud as he tried to run forward. His bodyguards struggled alongside.
Allau ak-bar! The men climbing the far slope struggled through bundles of thorny brush intertwined with sharpened stakes. In some places, the dried thorn was already on fire, belching white smoke into a perfectly clear sky. Arrows hissed past. Khalid heard a thunk and looked over to see the iron point of a Roman shaft sticking through the nearest shield.
"Forward!" he shouted, strong, clear voice ringing out over the canal. "Forward!"
He ran on, cursing the sticky black mud clinging to his boots. Bodies littered the canal, splayed in the surprise of death, feathered with arrows or pinned by javelin bolts. A huge burning stone plunged out of the sky, spitting flame and smoke. It crashed into three of the Sahaba running ahead of Khalid. He threw himself down, shouting in alarm. The stone bounced up, splintering into hissing chunks of green flame and flew past over his head. Khalid threw aside a flame-wrapped cloak and struggled up. Most of the men around him were dead, or afire, screaming.
Gasping, he plowed onward, coated with heavy mud. His shield was gone, lost in the mire, but his right hand still clenched the blade of night in a death grip. The slope loomed above him and he stared up, seeing his men still clawing their way up the incline. More arrows spiraled down out of the sky, but most of the shafts were falling behind him. He looked back, face smeared with mud and spattered with the blood of the dead. The sky was streaked with smoke. Burning stones shrieked past overhead, plunging into the masses of men swarming down the side of the canal.
Sahaban arrows whickered past, lofted up by Arab archers crouched at the edge of the watercourse. Khalid forced himself upright, joining the great shout lifting up from hoarse throats.
Allau ak-bar! He climbed past a sharpened stake, the tip splintered and smeared with blood.
More of his guardsmen climbed behind him. Two scrambled past, spears in hand, shields slung over their backs. Khalid hacked at thornbush, clearing the dry brown thicket out of his path. The Roman fighting wall was only yards away. Men in tan cloaks struggled along the wall, hacking up at legionaries stabbing down with spears and javelins. The young Arab paused, drawing a deep breath.
"Allau ak-bar!" he screamed, sprinting up the last few yards. The words filled him with wild strength. A dying Sahaba fell back past him, throat torn out, blood spreading on his cloak. Khalid leapt onto a cockeyed siege ladder, then swarmed up the rungs, leading with the black-bladed sword. Spears jabbed at him, sliding between his legs. Frantic, he hacked down, the keen edge of the blade shearing through an oaken haft. The Roman soldier shouted in rage, flinging aside his ruined weapon.
Another spear slammed into his side and Khalid grunted as the metal rings of his armor took the blow. More Romans, faces obscured by plain iron helmets and cheek-guards, grabbed hold of the ladder and twisted sharply. Khalid shouted in dismay, then toppled back down the slope, crashing into four of his men climbing up behind him. All of them went down in a tangle, sliding into the thicket. Khalid's head smashed into the base of an angled stake and the world cartwheeled around. Stunned, he slid lower on the slope.
Men struggled above and more Sahaba fell, speared or shot at close range by Roman archers. Khalid blinked sweat and blood out of his eyes. The sun blazed down, blinding him. Nerveless, the young Arab groped for his sword. The blade of night was gone, lost somewhere on the slope. Groaning, Khalid rolled over, staring around wildly.
Hundreds of Arabs streamed back across the canal, their attack broken. Burning stones shrieked down out of the sky, crashing into the mud. Lakes of pitch burned furiously, filling the waterway with poisonous smoke. There were still knots of men fighting along the rampart, but they were dwindling in number. The legionaries concentrated their fire and rushed to shore up threatened parts of the wall.
"No," Khalid choked, barely able to speak. He felt sick, throat filled with bile. "No!"
Someone shouted above him. "There's a live one!"
Khalid froze, shoulder blades itching.
Out of the corner of his eye, something enormous moved in the sky.
—|—
"Hades!" Aurelian looked up in surprise, a wall of Praetorians in gleaming silver armor circling him. The priest Nephet was almost lost among their grim faces and muscle-bound arms, a thin, dry brown hawk in a plain robe. Black lightning flickered in a clear sky, reflecting in the prince's stunned eyes. The air above the forward wall shimmered and rippled with heat, revealing intermittent reflections of the earth below. The bulk of the bastion blocked Aurelian's view, but he could hear the sudden, strident din of battle. "Priest! What is happening?"
Nephet's thin old face grew grim, his eyes half-lidded. "The Persian magi, my lord, they are attacking the outer barrier." He leaned on his staff, attention far away. The prince saw the old man's arteries throb at the side of his throat. "Something is coming!"
Nephet's eyes flickered open, blazing with alarm. The hidden world was in upheaval, a vast, dark shape rushing towards him from the east. "To arms, my lord! The enemy is here!"
—|—
Zoë swept through the air, a hundred feet above the canal. Below her feet, she caught a glimpse of archers arrayed in ranks on the hard-packed earth. The Arabs were plucking arrows—thrust point-first into the sand—and fitting them to the bow. In the brief moment she perceived them, a thousand men fit fletching to thumb, lifted their bowstaves, then loosed. Iron-tipped, gray-fletched shafts snapped out across the canal, lofting high into the smoky, dust-filled air.
Before the Arabs could react to the apparition towering over them, Zoë had to look away, searching for the enemy. Dahak's will gripped her in steel fingers while she, Odenathus and Arad rushed through the air in a tight triangle. The sensation of flight was dizzying. Around them a dark haze swirled and shifted, a formidable ward radiating out from the jackal. The Lord of the Ten Serpents laughed to see their paltry shield of Athena.
You are my hounds, his thought crashed into hers. I will defend, you will attack, bright teeth deep in the Roman neck!
A vast shadow fell across the Roman fortification, mightier than the towers, spilling across the rampart, the fighting step, the crowds of legionaries staring up, eyes wide in fear, faces a sea of white ovals. Ahead, the golden wall shimmered and rippled, sheets of ghostly light falling in a slow wave down the face of the barrier. Zoë recognized the pattern—an interlocking matrix of thaumaturgic will, dozens of layers deep, constantly shifting, in endless motion to deny an enemy purchase—the battle-projection of a Roman thaumaturgic cohort. She felt the serpent's will move the colossal arm of the shadow and Zoë answered, summoning the power in the earth, invoking the flat blue shades of water, the living flame of reeds and trees. There was no stone here, not save the cut blocks of the wall's foundation, but they had been leached of power long ago.
Lightning blossomed, stabbing out from her hand as she moved her fingers in an old, old sign. The sky answered and brilliant blue-white thundered against the golden wall, ripping through gossamer, shattering delicate patterns, a sledge crashing into new-blown glass. Zoë gasped in surprise—she had never thrown such power before! A dark current boiled in her mind, flooding her senses, threatening to burst free of the binding of flesh and will. An enormous pressure crushed against her and Zoë screamed in panic, feeling the might of the Lord of the Ten Serpents flow through her.
Another bolt flashed across the narrowing distance and the golden wall shuddered. Below, in the fight still raging along the wall, men screamed in despair, throwing themselves to the earth. Wooden towers wicked into flame, pitch exploded in its barrels, scattering smoke and living green fire everywhere. Zoë felt the Roman thaumaturges reel back, stunned. Of her own accord, she struck—fist twisting into a pattern to rip the earth, to sunder stone, crack wood.
The shadow arm moved in unison with her will and an ephemeral fist smote the earth.
—|—
Khalid, still on his hands and knees, flinched back. A huge, towering figure—two hundred feet tall, his mind gibbered—strode out of the desert, skin black as night, face that of an enormous jackal, white fangs a tall man's length, red lips hideous against the ebon flesh, eyes blazing crimson. Lightning flashed, rocking the air with a stupendous boom and splintered across the sky, flooding over some invisible wall rising up from the Roman fortifications. A long, ringing tiiiiing followed, as if a stupendous crystal shattered. The Arab threw himself down the slope, thorns ripping his flesh, his arm crunching against another stake.
Behind him, the actinic glare of lightning flashed along the wall, driving men back with terrible heat, incinerating those still struggling on the rampart. When Khalid stopped rolling, the entire slope of the earthwork was on fire, wooden stakes and thornbush alike billowing flame and smoke. The titanic jackal wavered, its edges dancing with heat haze. It smashed a fist down into the center of the Roman wall. Khalid flinched and the earth jumped with an enormous crunch. A huge blast of dust roared up, logs and clods of earth flying in all directions.
For an instant, Khalid saw the sky distort, burning sparks licking off in jagged paths through the air. Pressure beat against his ears and he gasped for breath. The air itself bent, throwing insane reflections of the sky, the ground, running men. The smoke-jackal bent a vast dark shoulder, pressing at the empty air, an enormous foot grinding across the earthen rampart, splintering wood and crushing soldiers already stunned by the blasts ringing in the air into a crimson smear.
Thunder boomed out of the west and Khalid—still cowering at the base of the slope—saw blue-white lightning leap down from the sky, flaring across the jackal's shoulder and chest. The thing howled, ebon flesh incandescent where the blast had lit, then smote the air with a fist, then again. Tongues of fire slashed out of the west, haloing the monstrous creature's head with smoke. Still the air bent and Khalid realized some kind of invisible barrier was deforming under the jackal's attack. He crawled away from the smoldering brush, then remembered the blade of night lay somewhere behind, lost among the flames.
"Curse it!" he growled, hurriedly wrapping the tail of his kaftan around his face, leaving only a slit for his eyes. The fires were still sputtering, flames licking up here and there, curling bitter white smoke from the ashy ground. The young Arab scrambled up the slope, casting about wildly, desperate to find the sword of the city. His skin flushed with sweat. Where are my people?
—|—
Together! roared Dahak and Zoë's mind submerged in a rushing black flood. The hidden world convulsed with stabbing white bolts of power. The Roman thaumaturges were weighing in, furious in their assault, bending the earth and sky to crush the shadow creature mired against the golden wall. Zoë felt the serpent curse in rage, then she, Arad and Odenathus moved as one, colossal arm swinging back as they bent their power against the tattered, deformed pattern. Dimly, though the helices of fire slamming into their own wards, she perceived a huge group of desperate minds—sixty? seventy?—hurling flame, lightning, every scrap of power against them.
The shadow's vast hands tore into gossamer gold, fingers wrapped in lightning, blazing with ultraviolet, and Dahak spoke a word. The sound reverberated in the smallest stone. Men fell dead for miles around, though others staggered and lived. The shining wall froze—constant motion stilled—and Zoë saw a vast overlapping matrix of geometric forms congeal from hurrying, inconstant, undefined motion. Dahak bellowed, forcing his strength through the shuddering form of Arad, and the golden ice shattered violently, breaking away in dizzying fragments from a pinpoint blast of will.
The opposing minds vanished from Zoë's perception, blown aside like leaves ripped from the trees by a titanic gale. The golden wall crumpled, breaking into brilliant shards, each one splintering into smoke, then nothing. The jackal strode forward, shadow long upon the land.
—|—
Khalid clung to the earth, feeling mud and brick buck under him like a wild horse. A log fell past, rolling down the slope. A huge ripping sound split the sky, then a shattering boom, followed by rushing, forge-hot wind. Khalid cowered, digging into the loose earth. A colossal footstep slammed down, followed by the screams of men. The Arab looked up and saw, not more than a yard away, a bronze-bound hilt gleaming in the wreckage.
"At last!" he croaked, crawling forward to seize the hilt with both hands. The blade of night sighed free from the earth and Khalid felt his heart soar with relief. The blade was unharmed! He rose to his feet, staring to the north. The head and shoulders of the jackal loomed up, wrapped in billowing smoke and dust. The thing's face was lit with flames. Stone splintered under its tread and Khalid saw a huge section of the Roman fortification was gone, cast down, only rubble and corpses remaining.
"Forward!" he screamed, pointing with the sword. "To me, Sahaba! To me!"
In the canal bottom, those men who still lived picked themselves up, caked with mud, streaked with crimson. Khalid ran along the slope, dodging fallen timbers, leaping across the dead. His men saw him, recognized the shining ebon blade in his hand, and they raised a tumultuous shout.
"The Eagle!" they cried, running forward, spears raised, catching the sun cutting down through the dust. "The Eagle!" Thousands of the Sahaba, shaking free of surprise and fear, flooded forward into the breach.
—|—
"That's torn it!" Sextus picked himself up from the road. An earth tremor had rippled the length of the wall and the military road, shaking open huge cracks in the earthwork, jumbling the logs laid down to provide a mud-resistant roadway. "Are you hurt?"
Frontius rolled over, unable to stand. His face was a tight mask of pain, gnarled hands wrapped around his ankle. "Aiii... I think it's broken." The engineer gasped. Sextus knelt down, fingers tugging at his friend's boot. Frontius turned a funny color, lips going white. "Don't..."
Sextus stopped messing with the laces, then slipped a knife from his belt. The heavy military leather resisted for a moment, then parted with a scraping sound. Sextus worked the remains of the hobnailed boot free, jaw clenching as he saw a purplish-black bruise around Frontius' ankle and shin. "It's bad," he bit out.
The earth quivered again and now a rolling series of crashing sounds, interspersed with thunderclaps, shook the air. Grunting, Sextus got a shoulder under Frontius, then staggered to his feet. The other engineer, hanging upside-down, croaked in alarm, then convulsed, vomiting. Sextus ignored the slick wet feeling on the back of his bare legs. He cast a look behind him, over his shoulder.