The Yarmuk Plateau, Southern Syria Coele, 624 A.D.
"This is it! Form up by ranks, you lot!"
Colonna, centurion of the Third Cyrene, wiped his face with a dirty white cloth wound around his helmet. The sun had risen only moments ago, wallowing up huge and pale orange in the eastern sky, but the air was already hot. The Roman tried to spit but his mouth was too dry. Around him, legionaries staggered to their feet, strapping on belts and pulling on rivet-studded helms.
Dust puffed into the sky, forming a slow-moving, yellowish cloud over the stirring army. Orders had come before dawn, and Colonna, at least, had seen his men fed before the chill of night fell away. Thousands of soldiers shuffled into formation on dry grass and stony ground. Mindful of the flags of his banda commander, Colonna walked along the line of his men. He kept his face grim and impassive, but in his heart he sighed, seeing painfully young faces squinting out from under metal helmets.
A fresh army; those were the words that the Imperial Prince Theodore had used when they had first landed at the great port of Caesarea Maritima, down on the Judean coast. One destined for victory and glory.
"You men, listen close." Colonna stopped, settling a hard glare on his face. He scowled at the legionaries in his squad and paced slowly back down the line. They were fit enough, with kit barely a year old and clean weapons. Their ranks were trim; his hobnailed boot had been on their backsides enough in the last month. The baby fat was gone, burned away in the Syrian sun as the Imperial Army marched endlessly, searching for the enemy.
"This is the day. No more running up hill and down valley, trying to bring these bastards to heel. This is the day they stand and fight."
Colonna half turned, shading watery-blue eyes with a sunburned hand. He looked east, squinting in the glare of the morning sun. The land was open and uneven, marked with tumbled hills of black rock and shallow washes filled with scrawny trees. A slight slope descended from the Imperial camp, down toward a dry watercourse. Beyond that an equally gentle slope rose up, thick with tufted grass and scattered fist-sized stones. There, anchored by a high tor of crumbling black rock on the left, and by the edge of the plateau on the right, massed the enemy. A lone outcropping of dark stone rose up just behind the enemy's right wing.
The centurion pointed, one cracked finger stabbing at the foe.
"Look, lads." His voice was soft and some of the men bent forward to hear him. "There they are, this rabble that we have chased about, these bandits that the Prince rails against. Do you see them?"
None of the men turned to look. Colonna had a quick reward for rash action!
"Arrayed in ranks, four divisions, with flags and banners and horns. Half our number, if that… Do you see them? They stand ready for battle. We are still knocking the sleep from our eyes yet they are already in battle line…"
The ouragos sighed, settling the lorica of overlapping iron scales on his shoulders, blunt fingertips brushing over his sword, his bow case, the edge of his layered oaken shield. The scutum's painted leather cover was freshly oiled and he hoped it would not crack in the heat of battle. There would be a struggle today.
A deep note sounded in the air, the drone of a bucina in the hands of one of the signalers.
"Squad, face forward!" Colonna tugged the cheek plates of his helmet down and tightened them snug under his chin in one motion. "Ready at the walk!"
All around the centurion, the Roman army was in motion, shaking out into line of battle, men jogging slowly forward in great square blocks. Cavalry thundered past, raising more dust. The horsemen wore long striped robes and chainmail glinted beneath. Thin lances lay across the shoulders of the horses. Within a moment, the Ghassanid auxiliaries were gone, trotting down the slope, angling towards the left.
Colonna looked sideways, seeing the flags of his banda commander rise and fall. He raised a hand and chopped it towards the enemy. "Forward!"
– |"Lord of the Wasteland, O power that raises the wind and moves the stars in their courses, strength that brings the crop from barren ground, I submit myself to your will. You have spoken from the clear air, and I have listened. Now, our enemy is before us; now our strength will test his. In your hands, I leave victory or defeat. I am your servant, fill me with your desire."
The man bent his seamed forehead to a plain rug laid down on the rocky soil. For a moment he rested there, feeling the peace of early morning. He put from his mind the rising sound of men and horses and metal clattering against metal. He closed his ears to shouted commands and hooves thudding on the ground. In his mind he cradled the silence of the predawn air, when he walked alone among the sleeping men, feeling the wind rising in the east, rushing over the land, fleeing the coming sun.
In a single smooth movement he rose, drawing up the rug with a thick, scarred hand. He blinked, unseeing, and minded only the business of brushing dirt and grass stems from the woven fabric in his hand. When he was done, he smoothed down his beard, ruefully fingering thick tendrils of white creeping among the black. His body still felt young and strong, thick with muscle and hardened by long years of travel on the fringes of the Empire, but his beard was that of an elder, a chieftain…
Fool! he chided himself. You are a chieftain now, a king…
"Lord Mohammed?" The voice was low, but the man smiled at its soft, husky quality and the carrying power hiding within. He turned, raising a bushy eyebrow in question. "Yes, Lady Zoe?"
The young woman matched his gaze, dark brown eyes narrowing in suspicion. For a moment she considered him and he could tell that his good humor had put her on edge. Then she plunged ahead, pushing aside her fear that he was mocking her. "You rise each morning to greet the sun, praying to your god?"
Mohammed nodded, stowing the rug behind the saddle on his flea-bitten gray mare. "I do."
"What do you say?"
Frowning, Mohammed turned and looked around, seeing that a large number of his Tanukh were loitering near, just out of earshot. The men, seeing that he glanced their way, feigned indifference, bending to their tasks. Some were speaking softly with their horses, hands moving slowly on glossy brown necks, or checking over weapons and armor. Nearly all were garbed in long desert robes of white and tan laid over green coats. Some, like the massive Jalal, had wrapped their helmets with twined cloth. They had come a long way from the ragged, hungry band of men fleeing with Mohammed out of dying Palmyra. Strength and purpose were apparent in the surety of their movements, in their quiet voices.
"I say that which is in my heart, Zoe."
The young Palmyrene woman frowned, her patrician nose wrinkling. Unconsciously, she brushed a curling tendril of rich dark hair back from her cheek. Inwardly, Mohammed sighed to see her tuck it back into the folds of cloth cushioning her curving steel helmet. Like his companions, the Sahaba, she was armed with a long, straight cavalry sword and clad in armor of iron rings sewn to a leather backing. Like them, she would fight today, pitting her strength against the enemy.
Such a maiden should not carry anger like a cracked water urn, he thought sadly.
"Does this god hear you?"
"The Lord of the Empty Places hears all things, Zoe. He fills the world."
"Does he…" Zoe paused, her eyes troubled, lips pressed into a line. "Does he answer?"
Mohammed nodded, his rugged face suddenly lighting from within with a smile. Fine white teeth flashed in the thicket of his dark beard and he saw her relax minutely. "He does, my friend."
Mohammed pressed the flat of his hand against the center of Zoe's chest. The thick iron rings were still a little cold from the night air. "Here, in true silence, you can hear the voice from the clear air. Take a little time each day and listen. If you can still your own thoughts, if you can calm your heart and put your fears aside, you will hear it. It sings, calling like a dove…"
Zoe blushed, her fingers darting towards his hand, then away, falling stiff to her side. Mohammed quelled his smile and took his hand away.
"Come, there will be battle today." He strode up the hill, mindful of the loose black rock covering the slope. Tents waited, just beyond the crest, and a banner fluttered above them, a green field marked by a crescent moon and a sword.
– |"It is a strong position," Jalal growled. The stocky Tanukh commander had plaited his hair into four long braids, and two of them hung down nearly to the surface of the map table. His knuckles, glassy with scars, rested on the table like the roots of ancient trees.
"It is a trap," the younger man said, lean and fine-boned like a hunting bird, with a deep-hooded robe of rich cloth thrown back from broad shoulders. "Look at the ground! Bounded on one side by cliffs that plunge a hundred feet or more to the bed of the Wadi Ruqqad. On the other, there is a swath of ground so broken and rough that our camels can barely pass, much less these soft-hooved Roman horses. Behind their camp is another ravine crossed by a single bridge. He has put his neck in a noose!"
"All that means, O most noble Lord Khalid, is that we must confront the enemy head-on, across a frontage he has the men to cover, while we do not."
Khalid shook his head in dismay and made a show of rising from his camp chair. He flicked his robes into order and smoothed dark blue silk down over a fine Persian mail shirt. The young man glanced sidelong at the older Tanukh and stifled a smile. "I wonder, Lord Jalal, why it is, if the Roman position is so strong, that we are the ones outside and they are the ones inside. They outnumber us, conservatively, by four to one. They have better arms and armor and far more cavalry. Their heavy horse, these cataphracts, these mounted armored bowmen, are rightly feared throughout the world. Did they not crush the might of the Persian empire just two years ago?"
Jalal bridled at the sneering tone in Khalid's voice and his eyes narrowed. The young commander grinned back at him, silently daring the older man to violence.
The door to the tent parted and Mohammed entered, with Zoe hard on his heels. Jalal stood back from the table, relieved, and made a sharp nod in greeting. "Lord Mohammed, good morning."
Mohammed ignored the tension in the air and looked idly from man to man. Khalid bowed in greeting and reclaimed his seat. Jalal also stepped away from the folding wooden table, taking his place with the other Tanukh on the opposite side. Mohammed marked the way in which the other men-the lieutenants and chieftains and petty kings-arranged themselves into familiar groups by clan and nation.
"Good morning," he said to the assembled men.
The table was covered with tattered papyrus scrolls. Mohammed leaned over the maps, pushing some aside. Luckily, his travels as a caravan master had taken him along the Roman roads tying the Empire together. He had crossed this highland plain before, coming up from the coast and heading for Damascus. Thick fingers smoothed his beard as he considered the sketch maps Khalid's scouts had devised.
"Al'Walid," he said, after a time, "you count the enemy numbers at forty-five thousand."
Khalid leaned forward, his dark eyes bright. He nodded sharply. "Yes, lord. The better parts of five legions face us, bolstered by auxiliaries and mercenaries of various sorts. My men have been in and out of their camps several times, garbed as their local scouts. I am sure of their strength, down to the count of horses lamed and the men sick from bad water or the sun."
Mohammed nodded and turned back to the papers and the table. After a long pause, he looked up, his gaze searching the faces of the men in the tent. The air was growing hot as the day advanced and the sun mounted into the sky. Soon it would be fierce indeed, particularly on the plain below the hill, where the wind was blocked by the rising land.
"Our number," he said, musing, as if to himself, "is half that. Perhaps a little more… Have any new contingents joined us in the night?"
"No," said a stoutly built man of middle height with a thick, curly black beard ornamented with small glittering jewels. Like many of his fellows, he wore Roman-style armor and carried a legionary's helmet under one arm. Despite his young age, he squinted nearsightedly in the dim light of the tent. "One of the local clans came in last night. Fifty or sixty men with bows and small shields at most."
Mohammed nodded. "Thank you, Lord Zamanes. Our strength is complete, then."
The King of Jerash and Bostra ducked his head and stood back, finding his place amongst the captains of the regiments drawn from the old Hellenic cities of the Decapolis. Zamanes was not comfortable with Mohammed, not since the Tanukh had started talking about the things that they had seen at the Ka'ba, or on the High Place in Petra. Still, the young Prince had thrown his lot in with the southerners. It was far too late to crawl back to his old allegiance now.
Mohammed considered them, these rebels. He was sure of the core of his army; the Sahaba-Jalal and Shadin and the rest of the Tanukh-that had made the haj from Palmyra, his own kinsmen from Mekkah and the lands about the dry city. The Sarid tribesmen had long been his ally, and their chieftain, the rascal Uri, had been his friend from youth. Even the Yemenite fighters with Khalid's captured fleet were familiar to him-the Quraysh and the Bani Hashim had traded with them for centuries.
Too, he knew the Palmyrenes. He understood Zoe. He could feel the furious anger burning in her heart, the overwhelming desire for vengeance that had broken her ties to the Legion. She was an eager hawk, straining against the hood, desperate to fly shrieking at the enemy. Her, he kept close by. Her talent and power had to be guided, or they would bring disaster.
Her cousin, young Odenathus, Mohammed thought he understood him as well. He followed his queen, Zoe, and his loyalty was to the dream that his beloved city might be rebuilt. Like her, he would fight, but the Quraysh lord thought the young Prince could be trusted to keep his head. His men, they would follow their queen. They were a small band, now no more than a few thousand exiles, but Mohammed trusted them near as much as his own Tanukh.
But these city-dwelling Romans that formed the majority of his army… Mohammed studied their faces openly, for he was not given to slyness or guile. Zamanes seemed a solid-enough fellow, but their loyalty had been to the Empire for so long! For centuries Roman rule had held the Levantine coast, the Decapolis and the great cities of Syria in its withered gray hand. Now they had risen up, outraged by the treachery of the Eastern Emperor, Heraclius. Frightened and stunned by the destruction of glorious Palmyra. Angered by the new census and the threat of heavy taxes to repay the cost of the long war against Persia. But would they stand, when the battle reached its pitch and men were dying in droves all around them?
"Khalid, you say that the Romans will come forth?"
"Yes, lord. My spies in their camp brought me news only hours ago… the Imperial Prince Theodore intends to crush us, today, in a single blow."
– |"Tiamat's dugs, you fool, what are you doing?"
The Imperial Prince Theodore, younger brother of the reigning avtokrator of the Eastern Roman Empire, the commander of the Legions currently in Judea and Syria Coele, turned in his saddle. A furious Armenian pulled up in a cloud of dust and gravel at his side. Theodore motioned slightly and one of his servants jogged up to the side of his stallion and whisked yellow-brown grains of sand from the Prince's cloak with a long-handled duster made of hawk-tail feathers. Behind the arrival, a cordon of tall men in red cloaks closed like a lake swallowing a sling-stone.
"General Vahan. You have left your post on the left wing? Is there a problem you could not resolve on your own?"
The Imperial Prince inclined his head, still smiling faintly, watching with amusement as the burly, thick-bodied Armenian princeling sputtered in rage, his weathered face turning red under a heavy black beard. Theodore and his escort of Egyptian body-servants and slaves, red-cloaked Faithful with long blond hair in plaits and axes gleaming in the morning sun, stood at ease across the crest of a low hill near the center of the Roman line. The forest of spears and colorful umbrellas and a windscreen of mauve-dyed linen sewn to iron strakes drew the eye from miles away.
From this low height, the Prince could cast his eyes right, shaded by a shining white parasol of waxed linen, and see rectangular blocks of his legionaries stretching away, two or three miles, to the edge of the plateau. To the left, past where a shallow streambed curved under the shoulder of a hill, there was a sloping open plain filled with slowly moving clouds of dust that marked the presence of Roman and Armenian cataphracts.
The cavalry and the left wing were Vahan's responsibility. The Armenian brought his roan mare up, wither to wither, with Theodore's black, glossy mount. The Prince laid a gentling hand on his horse's shoulder. The presence of the mare was beginning to excite the stallion. Both horses were fitted with barding: the Prince's an elaborately decorated chanfron of heavy felt reinforced with bands of iron, Vahan's of simpler hardened leather, stained by travel and use.
"Lord Prince…" Vahan swallowed another curse and blinked sweat from his eyes. Like his kinsmen on the plain below, he was clad in a heavy woolen doublet under lamellar armor of overlapping iron bands. Sweat seeped from the edges of his armor, turning the heavy leather laces black with moisture. Theodore wondered if the man could fight a full day in such heavy gear and not expire of thirst.
The Prince raised a finger and gestured. One of the servants hurried up. The cream-colored ceramic jug in her hand was beaded with water droplets, forced from the cool interior by the heat of the day. "Drink, Lord Vahan. You are not used to this lowland heat. Please… indulge yourself."
"No," Vahan said abruptly, ignoring the outraged glances of Theodore's aides. "You are sending the infantry ahead too soon. You must have them hold their position on this side of the wadi until my light horse deploys to screen their advance. A swift charge from my cataphracts will shatter the bandits; why spend your legionaries so fruitlessly?"
Theodore turned his attention back to the plain. The blocks of legionaries on the right-hand side of the hill were shaking themselves out into a long line of battle. As each cohort advanced over the uneven ground, they tended to separate and clump, following the path of least resistance. Despite this, Theodore could faintly hear the stentorian bellowing of the centurions, keeping their knock-kneed, imbecile charges in order. The first detachments were jogging up the slope beyond the dry streambed.
"It will take time for the infantry to cross the creek, Vahan. Your horsemen are swift… they can easily make up the difference. You have your task, in any case. Drive off their camelry on the left. I will not send your heavy horsemen up that hill."
Vahan ground a fist into his high-cantled saddle. It was old-fashioned, with four jutting corners and a flimsy-looking belly strap. He gestured, stabbing out with a thick finger. "Lord Prince, you haven't fought these bandits! See, there, before the mass of their army? Lines of horsemen already advance at a trot-those men are javelineers, Lord Prince. They will take great delight in striking down your legionaries from a distance. They will have a height advantage, to give the flight of their javelins greater weight."
Theodore nodded absently, watching with professional interest as the legionaries crossed the streambed, keeping a steady pace, keeping even spacing among the cohorts. Looking down like this, seeing the whole of the battle spread out before him like a map, he felt a fleeting giddiness. Couriers and riders stood close to hand, just behind him on the crest of the hill, fleet horses waiting. His orders could fly on those hooves to any point of the battle line in moments…
"Lord Prince!"
Theodore shook his head slightly and turned back to the Armenian. "Yes?"
"Pray, signal your men to halt their advance until they can be supported!"
"Oh," Theodore said airily, "they are. Watch and you will see." Then he said, crossly, "You should not have left your command. Such things set a poor example for your troops."
– |Mohammed squatted atop a splintered black boulder, hands resting easily on the tops of his thighs. Tan-and-white robes fell around his boots, pooling on the cracked rock. He was very still, letting a sluggish breeze flow over him. The sky was clear, though horses curveting in the valley below him raised clouds of pale yellow dust. Some of it was beginning to hang in the air. In a few hours, a thick pall would lie across the whole battle. There, below, several thousand of his riders were darting towards the slow-moving Roman advance.
"Do they think this is a game?" Zoe's voice growled up from below. She was sitting at the base of the boulder, in a tiny scrap of shade, her sword, sheathed, over her long legs. A white veil draped her face, revealing only dark, brooding eyes. "Seeing how close they can come to the enemy? Flaunting their riding skill with a shot from full gallop, standing in the saddle?"
"Some do," Mohammed said, voice still and quiet. "See how their shot falls amongst the enemy? Like rain falling in the dust."
"Will it become a deluge?" Anticipation sparked in Zoe's voice and Mohammed could hear stiff linen robes rustling on the stones.
"No," Mohammed said, "not yet. Khalid wishes to test their discipline."
"Huh." The sound was filled with grievance. "He is a reckless boy. It is unwise to trust him with such authority."
Mohammed tasted the air, the tip of his tongue appearing briefly between his lips. There was a brittle taste. He continued to watch.
"You are jealous, I think," he said after a moment. "Your cousin is quite taken with our young Eagle-on some days they seem inseparable. Khalid is an… attractive man, in many ways."
Zoe just hissed in disgust, settling back against the crumbling rock. "Men are fools."
– |Colonna avoided a pale gray stone jutting from the slope. His hobnailed sandals slapped on the dry ground, adding more dust to the cloud thickening around him. "Advance! Step left! Advance! Step left!"
The centurion's throat was already hoarse as he shouted over the rattle and din of his men advancing, shields held up before them. He moved, five paces behind the men in the third rank of his detachment. This was slow work, tramping up the long incline, ducking away from arrows whistling out of the sky. Luckily, they were still at long range for the light bows these tribesmen used. The men in the first and second ranks were already slowing, not just from the fatigue of humping sixty pounds of armor, shield and weapon, but from the steady tension caused by the snap of shafts striking the ground around them. Some men had four or five arrows studding their shields.
Colonna, even in the rear rank, was grateful that the enemy hadn't really come at them in force. Not yet. He looked over his shoulder, towards the low hill where the Lord Prince stood. Dust smeared across the sky, making it difficult to see. He could make out swatches of bright color and gleaming metal. The sun, full in the sky, burned on his neck. Soon his armor would be too hot to touch. He guessed, in the pale yellow murk, that most of the army had crossed the streambed.
"Advance! Step left!" He was still shouting, automatically. Shaking his head, he wrenched his attention back to the men. Some of them had drifted to the right, behind the shelter of their fellow's shields. More arrows whistled out of the sky.
"Accursed dogs!" Colonna, groaning a little, picked up his pace and lashed at the backs of the men in front of him with a long stick. "Keep left, keep left!"
An arrow flashed past his face, black fletching only inches away, and the centurion swore bitterly. I don't want to die here, not on some damned rocky hillside in some pox-ridden flea bite of a province…
There was a thundering sound and he raised himself up, looking over the shoulders of his men. The ranks of the bandits had parted, making avenues through their line. Robed horsemen charged down the hillside, helms glittering in the morning sun. The sky darkened with arrows.
– |"Do you feel that?" Mohammed's voice was very faint. "Stand ready."
Zoe looked up, craning her neck to try and catch a glimpse of the Arab on the boulder above her. It was no use and she stood, slinging saber and sheath over her shoulder in one fluid movement. She put a hand, gloved in leather, covered with tightly sewn rings of Damascene steel, on the corroded black stone. The Quraysh was still squatting there, forearms on his knees, but now his eyes were closed.
The back of Zoe's neck started to tingle and she turned slowly, dark brown eyes narrowing to study the valley below. There was something in the air, a familiar-tasting sound and an unheard touch…
The Queen of Palmyra's eyes widened and her fine-boned features, dark with the sun, twisted into a snarl of rage. The sensation trembling in the unseen world was all too familiar.
Sorcery. The Legion thaumaturges are putting forth their strength.
– |Theodore urged his stallion forward, out from under the cool shade of the parasols, and squinted, watching the far slope with interest. Behind him and to one side, Vahan was cursing continuously and with ill-disguised heat. The Prince shook his head in delight, hiding a grin behind his hand. "Vahan, you've fought these desert rats before?"
"Aye, Lord Prince, many times. Your legionnaires won't catch them… they'll take a dreadful punishment from javelins and swift, stabbing attacks by those lancers. When your men rush them, they will gallop away. If your men stand fast, they will swelter in this heat, endlessly, while the bandits pick at them with bows from a dis-"
"Good," the Prince interrupted. "Then I don't need to explain. If we had time and leisure, I would bid you stay, and watch the battle as it unfolds." The Prince's voice changed in timbre, becoming cold and commanding. "But you, sir, are absent from your command. Get yourself back to the left flank and get your lancers and cataphracts sorted out! In a little while, the enemy will be fully engaged along our front, yet our superior numbers will allow us to spill round his left. That is your task, Vahan, get to it!"
Theodore motioned with his head to the nearest of the Faithful and the Armenian found a pair of blond giants at his elbows. They grinned. Vahan swore under his breath and reined his horse around. The Scandians stepped back, long axes across their shoulders.
"They will not stand to face us today, Lord Prince," Vahan barked. "Why should they? The desert is their sanctuary…"
Why indeed? Theodore had pondered the issue for weeks, while his forces mustered on the plateau. He had chosen his camp carefully. There was good water year-round. Below the cliffs to the south ran the main road to Damascus. Other roads converged from the north. Here on the heights above the Sea of Galilee was the turning point of the entire defense of Judea and southern Syria. The Prince was sure he wanted battle, his full strength gathered. Did the bandits? They seem to, having come out in force, in full array, to face me.
"Boleslav, attend me!"
The captain of the Faithful stomped up, a single-bladed ax slung carelessly over one mighty shoulder. The Northman was nearly six and a half feet tall and built like a mountain. Even the steadily growing heat did not seem to touch him. "Ja?"
Theodore leaned from his horse, his mouth close to the Northman's conical helmet. "Have word sent to the thaumaturges. Tell them to begin their working."
Boleslav nodded, thick neck sliding like the gearing of a water mill. "Ja, altjarl."
– |Zoe jogged down the slope, riding boots sliding among the stones and scrub. A single plait of her hair bounced on the back of her armor. The sleeves of her robe were tied up to keep her arms free. Mohammed remained on the boulder, high above the line of battle. Regiments of her clansmen squatted at the base of the hillock, banners furled and kaftans pulled over their faces. The men of Palmyra respected the sun. Water skins passed along the lines of men.
She came to a halt, senses filled with a slowly rising hum of sorcery building in the valley. "Do you feel it?"
Odenathus nodded in greeting and acknowledgment. "I do," he said. His long face, darkened like hers by the sun, was pensive. "They're not messing about today."
Zoe shaded her eyes and stared across the swale at the Roman camp. There, among the stunted trees and tamarisk, she could make out the rectangle of a Legion marching camp and, just outside the palisade, a circle of staves and withes marking the tents of the thaumaturges.
"There must be at least twenty battle masters," Odenathus continued, his voice steady. "Plus the usual apprentices and journeymen. Almost double the usual complement to a Legion force of this size." The Palmyrene's face was grim and his hands moved restlessly on the hilt of his sword.
"Yes," Zoe said, distracted, "they must have borrowed from the other legions, maybe the ones in Persia. The Prince wants to make a big show…"
Closing her eyes, Zoe settled her mind, letting the heat and the dry wind and the sound of flies recede. It was difficult. The air was charged with anticipation and fear. Odenathus was worried and she could smell the fear-tang in his sweat. Her own armor was heavy and the bindings bit into her skin. She breathed out slowly, measuring the intake of air to the beat of her heart. She knelt, the pommel of her sword pressed against her forehead. The sensation helped her focus, let her mind block out the sensi constantly flooding her sight, hearing, taste and touch.
Faintly, she felt Odenathus kneel beside her, and the whisper of his thought.
Zoe let the image of a wheel form in her mind. This came of its own accord, from long practice, and with it, as the wheel spun and brightened and grew larger, she felt the last distractions of the physical world fall away. An old friend called this the Entrance of Hermes, and once told her, as they sat beside a high mountain stream, road-weary feet cooling in the chill blue-white water, that he imagined it as the eye of Horus, coming up out of unguessable depths. First, he had said, it was a single bright mote in an abyss of darkness. But then, as it rushed closer, it became larger and brighter. At last, as it came very close, it was enormous, bigger than a house, a burning eye trailing sparks. Once it rushed over you, once it consumed you in cold fire, you had passed the first entrance to the hidden world.
Zoe invoked the image of a wheel of fire, but the effect was the same. When it whirled over her, her mind was freed of the physicality of the senses. Her hidden sight opened and she beheld the valley in its true form.
For a moment, before asserting a pattern of symbolism fitting her waking mind, she beheld a shining void, filled with millions of hurrying lights. The streambed below was a slow blue surge coiling and twisting across a ghostly landscape. Thousands of men moving on the slope were sparkling motes. The horses thudding across the dusty ground, delicate traceries of living fire. Arrayed across the enemy camp was a shining wall of gold. Symbols danced across its surface, forming out of the rainbow shimmer, then disappearing again. Her perception shied away from the abyss of the sky, for the blue vault and thin white clouds were gone, leaving only an infinite depth filled with a haze of burning spheres.
Sweat beaded on her forehead and she summoned up a second image, the first in a swift succession of patterns. This was the second entrance, where the adept, the sorcerer, brought forth from his hidden mind a series of symbols and patterns that allowed the manipulation and perception of the hidden world without going mad.
That raw sky, the unfettered vision of the truth of the world, was too much for the human mind. Even in the brief instant Zoe stared into the abyss of light, she had felt the core of her being begin to dissolve, losing the unique identity that made her Zoe, Queen of Palmyra.
A flower box unfolded before her, expanding into a constantly growing pattern of planes and forms. Each facet gleamed with a single pure color, bright enough to hurt the eye. At the heart, where the wheel of fire spun and hissed, a shining trapezohedron emerged. The people of her city, though they were born and bred of the desert, thought of themselves as Greeks. "The heir of Athens," they called fair Palmyra under the reign of the first Zenobia. Poets and sages, mathematicians and astrologers flocked to her golden court.
Zoe's teachers were mathematicians, geometricists. They instilled their own symbology in her. The trapezohedron tore, then reknit, becoming a dodecahedron. Now her mind settled and familiar reality asserted itself. The hills had shape and solidity; Odenathus, still at her side, now seemed a mortal man, not a thing of fire. But the golden wall remained and the sky was filled with the tracery of power and intent.
"The thaumaturges are attacking?" Zoe was startled. The Eastern Empire prided itself on the strength of its wizards, but their skill had always been turned to defense.
"They have learned from the Western mages," Odenathus rasped. "We must work quickly."
Zoe rose, her mind finding her cousin's thought waiting. They had been trained in a swift, harsh school, under the tutelage of the Legion during the Persian war. Now the circle closed. Zoe extended her will and meshed with Odenathus. Together they turned to face the valley. Power from the rocks and stone, from the air, from water buried deep underground, flowed into them. Their own matrices and hidden shapes began to build.
Here they come, Odenathus thought, and flame boiled out of the golden wall, licking across the ranks of Arab and Decapolis troops. Zoe knew that the men could see nothing, maybe only feel unease, a sour taste in the air. She put forth her strength, lashing out with a deep blue arc of light that hewed into the red fire. The tendril of power recoiled, flickering back into the safety of the shield wavering beyond the streambed.
Thunder grumbled in a clear sky, and the Arab soldiers, still waiting in the hot sun, looked up in surprise.
– |"Allau Akbar!" The sky rang with the massed cry of four thousand throats.
Colonna felt the earth shake as the Arab cavalry hurtled towards the front rank of the legionaries. In the instant before the shock of contact, the centurion bellowed Ground and Lock shields! The first line of soldiers went down on one knee and grounded their rectangular shields. The second rank stepped up, shields held high, spears a thicket of iron. The Arab chargers slewed aside at the last moment, the desert-men turning in their saddles to fling javelins at a dozen paces. The entire charge slid sideways along the Roman front, the riders howling a battle cry as they hurled into the closely packed Romans.
The heavy darts pincushioned the shields, some tearing straight through the heavy laminate. Some of the legionaries in the front ranks fell, their throats pierced, gushing bright red blood onto the ground.
"Loose!" Colonna screamed.
Behind the first four ranks of Romans, two lines of men cocked their shoulders and flung their javelins. The heavy wooden shafts, capped with triangular iron heads, whipped through the air and tore into the ranks of the Arabs as they wheeled away. Dozens of riders fell, light leather and mail armor pierced by the heavy bolts. More horses screamed and bucked, or fell heavily onto the sandy ground.
Colonna hissed in triumph. "Halt fire and re-form!"
"Advance!" The Romans untangled their shields and shook out their line, orderlies dragging the dead and wounded away from the front rank. Men from the second and third ranks stepped up, their shields filling the gaps. The legion advanced a pace at a time.
The Arab horsemen withdrew in a cloud of dust, robes flapping in the wind of their passage. Gravel spattered on the faces of the shields, making a sound like rain on a roof of wooden shingles. The legionaries pressed up the hill at a steady pace. Dust settled out of the air, coating their faces. The swirl of javelineers faded back, while other riders in black robes with green flashing swept in. These men had long bows made from cane. Single arrows snapped through the air. Colonna ducked aside again and cursed, realizing that the screening force was shooting for officers.
– |"O, Lord of the Wasteland, fill me with your strength."
Mohammed ignored the battle spreading up the slope below him. Six months before, he would have been a-horse, riding hard along the line, directing his squadrons and regiments into battle. Clan standards would have fluttered at his shoulder. Messengers would have been rushing up to him, looking for orders, carrying word from the flanks. Today, Khalid and Jalal bore that burden. He could feel the shape of the battle, though, and there was a trill of fear in his heart.
The Romans advanced steadily, hobnailed sandals eating up the long slope a pace at a time. Their numbers overlapped the Arab line, too, and soon the right flank might be overwhelmed. He was not worried about his left wing, anchored against the cliffs lining the edge of the plateau. Horses thundered past, making black pebbles on the top of the boulder quiver and dance. Mohammed pressed his hands against the decaying lava, feeling the strength in the earth.
"We go forth against your enemies. Our faith is strong and we abide by the laws that you have laid down to govern the lives of men."
He sang to himself, reciting the prayers that had come to him while he had lain exposed on the summit of An'Nour. The voice from the clear air had spoken, showing him the movement of the stars in their courses, revealing the passage of cranes and ravens in the sky. Now it steadied his mind as he opened himself to the shining power that filled the world.
"We submit ourselves to your will, O Lord of the World. Give us strength."
Grains of sand and dust spattered against the back of Mohammed's cloak. Blood seeped from beneath his fingernails as they dug into the ancient, corroded rock.
– |Sweat poured from Zoe's face and neck, soaking the doublet and cotton shirt under her armor. Her mind was far away from her body, struggling in the unseen world. Her eyes stared, sightless, across a broad valley filled with a vast cloud of dust. Fire burned openly in the sky, hidden powers revealed as they strove in the air above the knots of men grappling on the desert floor.
Together, as they had been trained, Zoe and Odenathus invoked a wheel of burning white and sent it, spinning, into the midst of half-seen forms rushing forth from the wall of gold. Lightning rippled into the dust cloud where the powers met, and the two Palmyrenes staggered, their faces flushed with heat, at the impact. Barely a hundred yards away, the lines of the Decapolis infantry were locked in a din of combat with the Legion.
Zoe, risking the loss of her connection to Odenathus, dropped out of their battle-meld.
The rebel city-dwellers were being pushed back, phalanx bulging between their line and the Ben-Sarid tribesmen on the right. A wedge of Roman helmets was in the gap, their swords and spears flashing with blood. The city-dwellers were fighting hard, but they were not professionals. Luckily, the citizens of the Decapolis were blessed with good, heavy armor and new weapons. Zoe wiped sweat from her eyes. She looked around, seeing the block of Palmyrene exiles still holding their position, making a hedge of steel and iron around the two sorcerers.
"Hadad!" It took a moment to summon enough spit to make her voice work. The commander of the Palmyrene swordsmen jerked around, his face pale with worry.
"My lady!" Hadad scurried over to her, his pale, thin face barely visible in the heavy visored iron helmet strapped to his head. Like most of the men gathered on the slope, he was wearing scaled armor under a surcoat of white and gold, and had a long sword at his side and a round shield slung over his shoulder. "I feared to wake you, but the Gerasans are falling back; we should move you to safety!"
"No," Zoe rasped, dark eyes fierce. "Attack now, leave us. Push back the Romans-otherwise the line will break."
Hadad shook his head violently. "No," he said, "Lord Mohammed directed us to protect you. If you fall, it will go poorly indeed."
Zoe spat on the ground, seeing blood in the sputum. She met the man's eyes squarely and he flinched. "Attack now, or I'll cut you down where you stand. The line must not break."
She unclenched her hand, joints throbbing. The day seemed overlaid by a gray haze. Fatigue, she thought dully. Odenathus and I aren't enough to stop them.
Hadad disappeared, and distantly, through the roaring in her ears, she could hear men shouting. She pushed the sound away, descending into the unseen world again. Power flowed to her, rushing to meet her purpose.
– |"Odd…" Theodore was still on his horse, though hours had passed since the sun had risen. His brother, Heraclius, might have the red cloak and boots, but he could no longer match his younger brother for stamina and strength. "They are standing and fighting."
"They are brave men," Boleslav growled. The captain of the Faithful remained on the hilltop, keeping a close eye on his charge throughout the day. Theodore grinned at the big Northman, knowing that the Faithful were growing restless, seeing the day decided by others when their own axes had yet to taste blood. "They fight like cornered wolves."
The other Faithful, hearing a snatch of the conversation, grunted in assent.
"That is what is odd," Theodore mused. "The rabble of the desert are not brave. They are like the wind, like jackals, feckless, coming and going… yet here, on this day, they stand and fight. I do not understand it. Still, if they want to die on our spears, let them!"
Boleslav turned his shaggy blond head to one of his undercaptains and rumbled some command. The other man nodded sharply and jogged off down the hill, leaping lightly from boulder to boulder. Theodore raised a questioning eyebrow.
Boleslav shrugged, saying, "They shout something as they fight. I send Firdik to hear it."
Theodore nodded absently, one gloved hand stroking his short-cropped beard. Like his brother, he was mostly blond, but his beard came in red. He thought that the Faithful counted him as one of their own. He surely bore more resemblance to them than to the dark-complected Greeks and Anatolians Heraclius ruled.
For now, the Lord Prince thought idly. Brother is sick and may not last the year…
"Ah!" Theodore thrust the thought away and stood in the saddle, feet held securely by the Sarmatian-style stirrups that he had adopted for his own troops. The insufferable Western Emperor Galen might be a sanctimonious, overbred fool, but he could pick good mercenaries. Theodore had learned a great deal from watching the Western Legion during the war against Persia. The Lord Prince did not intend to waste his knowledge.
The thin line of Arabic camelry on the far left wing gave way in the face of a massed charge by Vahan's Armenians. The bandits fell back in haste. Some dismounted and shot with their bows from behind their ungainly mounts. All that stood on the enemy's wing was a camp of lashed-together wagons and carts at the base of one of the tumbled lava cones. Theodore smiled, seeing the opportunity open for Vahan to turn and roll up the entire enemy line. "Well done!"
– |Dust plumed from the dry ground and the Armenian general reined in his horse. Around him, his kinsmen crowded with their armored horses, sun glaring from their armor. It was burning hot in the neck-to-toe suits of iron. An arrow spiraled out of the sky and glanced from his breastplate. The cheap iron tip shattered, but the Armenian only grunted. The bandits had scattered before his charge, but they were still lurking about, sniping with their bows.
"Get those bastards away from that camp! Wheel to the right," he shouted, voice booming from the helmet. He chopped his hand towards the slopes of the hill. The legionaries were still grinding forward, toiling up the slope. His bannermen heard him, and their tall flags dipped and swayed, indicating the direction of movement. It would take a bit to rein in all his men. Some had ignored orders and were nosing about the camp, doubtless out for a bit of loot.
Cataphracts milled around, trying to redress their lines. Some of the men unshipped long horse bows and were shooting at the Arabs hiding behind their camels and in the circle of wagons in the pass between the big hill and its lesser cousin. The ground was getting rough, littered with head-sized stones and larger boulders. Crossing the wadi had been difficult, but now the ground was worsening.
"Advance at a walk!" Vahan turned his own horse and lumbered up the slope towards the cone-shaped hill. "In good range, shoot, then close with sword and mace."
The Armenians, still scattered across the swale between the two hills, began to drift to the right, following the wail of their trumpets and the signal flags. Vahan motioned to one of his lieutenants, a cousin, who commanded his light horse.
"Vargir, screen that camp and keep the camelmen off our flank. That bastard Prince will get his victory, I suppose, but it will be hard going up this hill."
The man nodded, pushing a blue-felt cap back on his head. Like the other horsemen in his band, he wore a leather jerkin reinforced with iron rings, and was armed mainly with a horse bow and a stabbing sword. "As you say, lord."
Vahan turned away, ignoring the motion of the scouts as they peeled off from his main force. The ground was worsening, and the Arabs had turned the end of their line. Now they faced him at an angle, with crowds of men with spears and brightly painted shields among the boulders and rocks. He swore, but urged his horse forward. At least he was facing out of the sun.
– |"Run!" Odenathus tugged hard at Zoe's arm, then scooped her up in one motion. Despite her weight and his own burden of armor and fatigue, the young Palmyrene Prince sprinted away from the outcropping of rock. The infantry screening them from the battle had been swallowed up in the racket of steel and iron downslope. Despite the addition of Hadad's fighters, the Decapolis troops had been forced back again. Boys carrying amphorae hurried along the line, bringing water to groups of men that were resting just out of the battle. A constant stream of wounded staggered up the slope from the rear of the rebel line.
The ground was littered with the bodies of those who had failed to flee.
The air over the outcropping convulsed, distorting like heat rising over a campfire. For an instant, the clouds in the sky behind the distortion could be seen reflected a thousand times, faceted like the surface of a jewel. Odenathus threw himself to the ground, covering his cousin's body with his own, and clapped his hands over his ears.
The ground where they had stood spasmed violently and then burst into a whirl of violet fire. Men in the rear ranks of the Decapolis regiments screamed in fear and then burst into flame. A huge boom echoed across the battlefield and splinters of rock rained down on the two Palmyrenes as they cowered on the ground.
"So much," Odenathus croaked, wiping blood out of his eyes, "for our battle sorcery."
He could barely move. His limbs cramped painfully. The two of them had held the Roman thaumaturges at bay for almost five hours. Despite the agony in his muscles, he hooked his cousin's arm in his and began dragging himself across the ground, away from the outcropping.
– |"We are Your servants, O most mighty and merciful Lord. Your will is our will."
Mohammed stood, cloak flapping in a stiff breeze blowing up from the east. His face was grim and set, for he saw now, having opened his eyes at last, that his army had been ground back against the base of the hill. The right flank had been bent back perpendicular to the main line of battle. Where the camelry had been driven back, the last of the Decapolis reserves had shored up the line, fighting amongst jagged black boulders. The slope there was getting steep, which let the infantry gain an advantage over the Roman cavalry for the moment. Even from this distance, he could pick out individual men fighting, struggling in the mass of melee, their shields and swords streaked with blood. A steady stream of the wounded spilled away from the back of the line. The Romans were pressing hard against their foe.
But still, the Arabs fought on, falling back slowly. Their spears and swords were still sharp and the ground where the battle passed was littered with the dead and wounded, with shattered armor and broken shields. Beyond the fighting, the Arab encampment was surrounded by a swirl of Roman auxiliaries exchanging bow shot with defenders crouched behind wagons and carts. Most of those in the camp would be women or servants or older men who could no longer stand in the main line of battle.
A woman of the people, Mohammed thought, who knows the drawing of a bow, is blessed.
The sun was beginning to fall to the west, but the full heat of midday was strong on the land. The sky had faded from blue to dusty white. The heat shimmer from the valley floor was thick, distorting sight and confusing distance.
Too, forces worked in the air. Green flame stabbed out of the sky, lighting amongst a troop of Arab cavalry rushing to shore up the right wing of his army. Horses screamed and men died, wrapped in a fire that burned flesh and armor alike. Mohammed snarled in rage, seeing the power of his enemies at play among his troops, unfettered.
He squinted, but could not make out the banners of the Palmyrene regiment that he had set to defend Queen Zoe and her cousin. If they are dead… He halted the thought. Khadijah was dead, too, and his family left far behind. There was a power that called to him, that directed his thoughts and his actions. There was no need to wail at fate.
His hand came to rest on the hilt of his saber. The men and women of his city forged this blade. He could feel their faith trembling under his hand. The sword carried the sense of the black stone resting in the shrine of the Ka'ba, in the most holy place of his people. When he touched the ebon metal, he felt the presence that dwelt in the empty places.
"O Lord of the Heavens, most gracious and most merciful, put forth Your strength…"
Sunlight winked on armor and lance tips, there behind the conical hill rising behind the embattled camp off to the north. Green and white pennons snapped in the rising wind.
– |Cornicens blew, ringing clear in the air. Colonna ignored them, though they sounded the call to stand down and re-form the line. The man in front of him, a man in half-armor and a sharp conical helmet wrapped in white linen, was busy hewing at his shield. The man's curved sword bit into the edge of the big rectangular scutum and Colonna felt the blow slam against his arm. Other men were struggling all around them. The Roman line had splintered on the rough slope, losing cohesion. Luckily, the enemy was exhausted and unable to exploit the opportunity. He stabbed, hard, with his gladius and the Arab skipped aside.
The sword whipped around again and Colonna managed to drag the shield into the stroke. Splinters flaked from the back of the panel, stabbing at his eye. He cursed, hacking blindly at the enemy. Suddenly there was a gurgling cry and a clatter as the saber fell to the stones. Colonna blinked, seeing another legionnaire wrenching his sword from the Arab's side.
"My thanks," the centurion rasped. The legionary, his face gaunt with weariness, nodded dully. Dried gore caked the man's hauberk and his arms were seeping blood from a dozen cuts.
The cornicens blew again and Colonna shook his head, wiping blood out of his eyes. Sweat leaked from his armor, mixing with the dust caking his legs. I've got to get the lads back in line.
"Form up! Fourth of the Sixth of the Third, form on me!"
Other legionaries stumbled towards him. The Third had suffered today, going uphill against these bandits. Unexpectedly, the enemy had been better armed and armored than the Romans. Too many of the new lads were lacking quality gear. They had been mustered too quickly. Their own cavalry trotted past and Colonna stared at them in surprise. These men were fresh, with their tunics clean and weapons dry. Upslope, the Arabs were falling back again, their lines tattered and disjointed, but they still stood firm amongst the black rocks. A column of fresh infantry came marching up the hill and Colonna ordered his men to stand aside. That bastard of a Prince isn't going to let up, is he? Good for him!
– |Theodore took a moment to dismount and refresh himself in the shade of one of the pavilions. One of the servants brought him a porcelain bowl of water to lave his face and a clean towel. Things were well in hand on the field below. It might be time to deliver the final stroke.
"Lord Prince?"
Theodore turned at the voice, grinning, for he owed much to the tired-sounding man standing beside the tent. He finished drying his hands and then gestured for a chair to be brought immediately. Servants scurried off to find something suitable. "Master Demosthenes! You are most welcome! Please, sit."
The thaumaturge slumped into a camp chair. Theodore motioned for wine and something to eat. Demosthenes was exhausted, his long face graven with weariness. His beard, usually neatly trimmed and brushed, was tangled with sweat and dust. Dark smudges colored his eyes and there was the mark of bruising and a burn on his right hand.
Wine arrived, in a silver ewer, and Theodore poured it himself. The thaumaturge put the cup to his lips and drank greedily, though his hands were shaking. "That was hard work, today." Demosthenes' voice was a harsh whisper. Theodore leaned close to hear him. "Their sorcerers were young and strong. Well trained in the art."
"How many were there?" Theodore had begged, borrowed and stolen every thaumaturge he could lay his hands on for this campaign, stripping the entire eastern half of the Empire, including the garrisons in upper Mesopotamia. It might be traditional for the thaumaturges to be parceled out, one or two to each legion for siege work and to block the sendings of the enemy, but Theodore had bigger plans in mind. He had seen the power the Western Empire brought to bear with a massed group of mages. The powers of the Persian priests were legendary… why not match them, strength for strength?
"Not many," the thaumaturge said, some strength returning to his voice, "but they stood only on defense, while we must make do with attack. It is draining work, trying to twist the world that way. Still, we overcame them…" He paused, and Theodore could see that the man was sifting memory, trying to find a pattern in the day's chaos.
"Why," Demosthenes said, surprise in his voice, "I believe there were only two! But skilled, my lord, and well used to one another… perhaps brother and sister. Great strength can be had that way, if the minds can find a common join."
The Lord Prince stood, grinning from ear to ear. "But not enough to carry the day, master wizard!"
Not enough. The Prince swung around, his step light. He looked west, checking the sun. There were still hours of light left. Enough time to smash the Arab army into the dust.
"Send word to the mages' encampment," he called to a courier rider that was standing close by; "tell them their work is done for the day. Tell them to rest, to recover their strength."
– |"All day we wait, sitting and getting fat." The Tanukh's voice was low, but it carried to where Khalid was sitting on his horse, half shaded, half covered by the overhanging branches of a thorn tree. The young commander feigned deafness, brilliant eyes focused on the clouds of dust rising beyond the pass and the two dark hills.
"The city men, they are being heaped with glory. Soon they will rest in soft paradise, their every whim catered to by white-limbed maidens with long, rich hair…" Shadin had been dwelling overmuch on this topic throughout the long, endless day. "…each a virgin and willing, even eager, to learn from a man's hand. Soft-spoken, too, and demure, with downcast eyes."
Khalid ignored him. The big Persian, Patik, waited quietly behind him, squatting in the shade of a thorn tree. The rest of the men were resting in whatever shade they could find, or moving quietly among the horses.
Beyond the little pass, the battle had moved away to the left, though there was still some fighting around the encampment. Khalid ignored that. The wagons were empty, the carts overturned. The camp followers were within, it was true, along with some men wounded earlier in the campaign. The Romans were more interested in the mass of Arab and Decapolis troops now fighting on the shoulders of the hill where Mohammed's banner and tents stood. He squinted, watching a singular figure, dressed in white and brown, standing on the height.
The Romans can see him, too, Khalid mused, his thoughts disguised behind a carefully bland face. But will they know what they see? Can they feel him, their sorcerers?
"These men of the city, they are dying with the word of god on their lips. They will find Paradise." Shadin was still holding forth to the men of his squad, most of whom were trying to sleep, upon the world that awaited them after death. "They will find two cool gardens planted with shady trees, each watered by a flowing spring. Every tree, for I have heard it from his lips myself, will bear every kind of fruit, each in pairs."
Distantly, horns blew and Khalid sat up a little straighter. His eyes swerved to the hilltop. The lone figure remained, standing on the dark boulder, wind blowing its robes out like a flag. The young man looked back to the pass, eyes narrowing. He could see a great flock of banners and pennons moving, as if a mass of mounted men were coming up out of the streambed.
Khalid hissed in delight. Behind him, Patik's cold gray eyes flickered open and the Persian diquan stood. His lamellar armor of overlapping iron plates rippled like a snakeskin. Gentling his horse, the easterner mounted. The other men, roused by the movement, looked to their own horses. Shadin, interrupted in the middle of a long and detailed description of the "dark-eyed houris," scrambled to his feet.
Khalid ignored them all, his full attention focused on the hilltop. He ignored the sky darkening behind them.
Light flashed there, from metal turning across the path of the sun, across the mile or more of scrub and twisted thornbush. Khalid felt something like a physical shock as the tiny figure on the boulder turned and looked at him.
"Mount up!" Khalid's voice carried, strong and clear, across the rocky hillside. Hundreds of men scrambled for their horses, armor jingling in the hot afternoon air. Ahead of them, scouts raised their heads, preparing to rise and run alongside. "Paradise is waiting!"
– |"This is the last act," Theodore said to the cluster of courier riders waiting beside his pavilion. They were very young, these scions of the great houses. For many, this was their first campaign. As had generations before them, they would run errands and messages for the cataphracts, for the nobles who commanded the armies of the Eastern Empire, even-as now-for the Lord Prince himself. Someday these boys would carry the lance, bow and sword of the cataphract themselves.
Theodore smiled genially, seeing their tense, determined faces. "We have held back our full strength throughout the day, waiting for the enemy to weaken. Now he has been driven back onto his camps, or onto that hillock yonder, where his tents lie. Go down into the valley and carry word to the centurions that the exhausted men are to fall back, while fresh troops take their place."
He clapped his hands sharply in dismissal and turned away. The boys scrambled for their ponies. "Boleslav!"
"Ja, altjarl?"
"We move, too. Have the servants break camp. I wish to see the end of this myself."
There was laughter amongst the Faithful, for their axes were hungry. It was boring, sitting on the hilltop. Red cloaks moved swiftly as Theodore swung into the saddle of his stallion. By the time he spurred the horse onto the trail leading down to the valley floor, a cordon of great-thewed Northmen surrounded him. The Prince laughed as he walked the stallion down the slope, the Northmen running at his stirrups. The wind of his passage dispelled a little of the day's heat. It was good to feel the air on his face.
– |Colonna stepped off the roadway, motioning for the men behind him to do the same. He had wrapped a cloth around his face to keep the dust off. The road they followed was barely a track. It meandered down from between the two dark hills and crossed a deep ravine lying behind the Roman camp. A rider had found Colonna and his detachment sitting in the shade of some stunted trees lining the little streambed. The boy directed them back to the main camp, beyond the hill and beyond the ravine. The centurion shrugged and rousted his men.
Now the road was crowded with wounded men as they approached the bridge.
It wasn't much to look at, this bridge, only a single arch of stone over the narrow slot of the ravine, but it was still standing. Men and horses and wagons carrying those too wounded to walk were backed up on the near side of the crossing. There was only room enough for a single wagon to cross at a time. The ravine, steep sided and choked with brush, was impossible to cross.
"Make way! Make way!" A rider on a well-lathered horse trotted up behind Colonna and his men. A troop of men in heavy armor, their helmets held on their saddlebows, followed. They looked weary and hot and Colonna could see from the make of their armor and saddles that they were not regular Legion troopers.
Only the Eastern Empire maintained a predominately cavalry Legion with their noble cataphracts. These men must be mercenaries, thought Colonna, probably Armenians by the look of their beaded tack and bridle. He heard they were brave fighters, but touchy.
"You, centurion!" One of the men, blessed with a thick dark beard, was pointing a stubby finger at Colonna. "Your men are wounded?"
"No," Colonna said, rising to his feet. It felt good just to sit for a moment, but officers rarely thought about things like that, leastways not when centurions were lolling about. "We're fit. A rider from the Lord Prince told us and our mates to fall back and let the reserves take over."
"Good," the man barked, and Colonna saw the rider's breastplate had been gilded before someone tried to stave it in with a mace. "You've charge of the bridge crossing. Get this herd of addled sheep sorted out and the road open!"
Colonna started to salute, but the black-bearded man had already curveted his horse around in a half-circle and ridden off, his escort in tow. Some of the legionaries were coughing and waving their hands to dispel the dust.
"Let's go," Colonna growled, wedging the helmet back on his head. "Now we're vigiles."
"You there," he shouted at the first of the drovers crowding the road with a wagon. "Get that rattletrap off the road!"
Behind him, the rest of his detachment fanned out, spears in hand, trying to get the walking wounded and stray farmers all onto one side of the roadway.
– |Theodore let the stallion take its head and pick up to a run as they approached the dry streambed lying between his day camp and the battle. The horse leapt the sandy wash with ease and the Lord Prince laughed, feeling the power coursing in the magnificent beast. The Faithful had fallen behind, crashing through the thickets lining the dead stream. Theodore reined around to let them catch up.
Boleslav jogged up, his thick, trunklike legs seemingly tireless.
Theodore opened his mouth to speak, but stopped, hearing a great shout rise up behind him.
Allau Akbar!
The Prince turned in the saddle, staring up the slope, as the Faithful reestablished their cordon around him. There, under the eaves of the rocky hill, was sudden, violent motion. The Prince raised an eyebrow, seeing the massed ranks of his army stagger back as the Arab bandits, trapped on the higher ground, suddenly charged pell-mell down the slope.
Allau Akbar!
The sound echoed from the hills, raising a chill on Theodore's arms. It seemed the cry of tens of thousands of men, not the bare handful struggling with the front ranks of his own army. The sun was beginning to fall behind the hills and Theodore shaded his eyes with a hand.
"Boleslav, where are my couriers and runners?"
The north-man grunted, his own deep gray eyes searching the slope for any foes that might have broken through the main line of battle. "None have yet returned, altjarl. Soon they will, I think."
Theodore grunted in disgust. The din of battle was rising sharply. These bandits had acquired unexpected fervor. "Then we shall have to find them. Forward!"
– |Mohammed stood, though the wind picked up again, plucking at his robes with sharp fingers. Thistles bounced past, driven by the gusts. Under his feet, on the slope below the outcropping, the men of the Decapolis, stiffened by the Ben-Sarid and the Yemenites, had thrown themselves into the Roman lines with terrible energy. The enemy, still forming up for a second round of battle, had been taken off-guard. Two wedges of Decapolis heavy infantry had hacked their way into the Legion ranks. Behind them the Yemenis were filling the air with arrows, firing up at an angle to let the shafts plunge into the Romans massed downslope.
They have proven themselves, Mohammed thought. The city men had paid a terrible price throughout the long day, taking the brunt of the Roman attack on their shoulders. Now they should be on their last legs, exhausted and bled white by the struggle. Despite this, they attacked ferociously, regardless of their casualties. The storm of their war cry echoed up around the boulder like the beat of a drum. Twenty thousand throats, crying out to the heavens.
"Now His strength comes," Mohammed whispered, leaning into the wind. Sand and gravel whipped at him, but he ignored the cuts on his hands and the dull roar that had been building out of the east in the last hour. "Now, you men that lay your hearts down before Him, who take His guidance and law into your own houses, know that He will succor you. He, the Compassionate and Merciful One, will hold you in the palm of His hand."
Mohammed's eyes closed, shutting out the vision of men dying, sliding in their own blood, their bodies pierced by the short-hafted spears of the Romans, on the slope below. The attack faltered as the Romans re-formed their lines, and now it was failing as the flanks of the wedges were attacked by hundreds of legionaries.
A voice came from the clear air and it rolled like thunder.
– |Khalid rose up in his stirrups, sword held high and forward, gleaming as the polished blade caught the westering sun. He howled, and his men howled behind him, a thousand riders on fleet-footed horses. The drumming of their hooves made the ground jump. Rabbits and birds fled before them, startled from their day nests.
Allau Akbar!
The ring of wagons swelled in Khalid's vision and the ground flashed past under the hooves of his mare. Before them, he saw the Ghassanid archers break away, fleeing before the weight of his charge. Behind him, and on either side, a flowing line of charging horses unfolded, filling the shallow pass. Some of the men, the Bedu, raised their voices in a long, ululating scream, and Khalid joined them. He and his personal guard, Patik among them, galloped past the wagons. No one tried to stop them, though the women and old men among the wagons cheered as they hurtled past.
Khalid flashed them a brilliant smile but then turned his attention to the roadway he could make out down the slope. It was crowded with men walking, and more wagons, and beyond all that, there was the dark slash of a ravine cutting across the plateau and a bridge.
– |The rest of the Arab reserve flowed past the wagons on the uphill side, with Shadin in the lead, his thick hand gripping the hilt of a long, hand-and-a-half sword. The drumming of hooves almost drowned out the war cries of the Tanukh and the Palmyrene knights, but those men raised their voices all the more. Shadin's thoughts flickered, momentarily, to his sword-brother Jalal, who had held the command of the center of the Arab line at dawn. Do you still live, my brother?
It didn't matter now, for the lead edge of the Arab charge, six thousand men strong, was about to slam into the rear cohorts of the Roman left wing. Shadin raised his voice in a scream of rage that echoed back from the empty sky. Allau Akbar!
– |Theodore and his bodyguards reached the standards of the tribune commanding the left wing of the Roman force as the sky began to darken. The Lord Prince was hurrying the man through the usual pleasantries, trying to find out where Vahan had gone, when Boleslav suddenly shouted in fear. Theodore's head snapped up in alarm; he had never heard such a cry from one of the Faithful.
The eastern half of the sky was gone, swallowed into a towering wall of darkness. The sky above turned a sickly yellow, boiling and seething with angry motion. Sodium-yellow lightning rippled through the depths of the black cloud, illuminating a rushing storm front from within. For an instant, the Lord Prince was aware that a terrible silence had settled on the field of battle. Men all around him looked up in awe and terror, seeing only the outline of the outcropping and a single white figure that stood on the summit, hands raised. There was no wind, no sound, not even the rattle of metal on stone.
"All-father, receive our souls on bright wings."
The Faithful broke the silence with their song, raised in a hundred basso throats. Theodore stared around wildly, seeing that the Northmen had raised their axes in defiance to the dreadful sky rushing towards them.
"All-father, hear us, send your winged messengers to bind our wounds, to lift us up from the field of battle. Valhalla is waiting, the golden hall on a green hill. All-father, hear us!"
Then the song was drowned by the awesome roar of the wind and the world vanished in a howling storm of blinding sand and grit and Theodore's horse bucked in fear and he was falling.
– |Zoe cowered in the lee of a slab of cracked blackish rock. Odenathus crowded in beside her, his cloak stretched over both of them. The sky screamed and raged and she could hear, somehow, through the tumult the sound of Mohammed's voice tolling like a temple bell. Sand lashed at their shelter, spilling through the cracks between the stone and the cloak. The fabric was stretched taut by the pressure of the wind. Her cousin moaned in fear, feeling the power that was unleashed in the sky above them.
I knew he was strong, Zoe wailed to herself, palms pressed over her ears, trying to shut out the hammering noise. It was useless; the roaring sound was in the ground as well as the sky. It filled the hidden world. I didn't know what that meant!
The earth shook under her and she screamed in fear.
– |Mohammed stood on the boulder, staring down into the valley. The wind died around him, leaving a quiet space in the maelstrom. Not more than a dozen yards away, the storm raged, tearing out brush by its roots, whirling away tents and wagons. Eddies of dust and sand and grit curled around an invisible sphere, rushing past like the current of a river. Here, where he stood, listening to the sky, there was only a quiet whisper of movement in the air. Tiny grains of sand pattered down where the storm met the quiet, making little cones on the ground.
You must act, O man, but I will guide you.
A voice was speaking from the clear air, here in the heart of the storm. Outside, beyond this sanctuary, the wind ripped and howled, shifting the stones of the hill in their foundations. Darkness covered more than the sky now as the sandstorm flowed across the desert, cracking trees and lashing men as they lay huddled on the ground.
Some men still moved in the storm. Khalid and his riders were galloping down the road towards the bridge across the Wadi Ruqqad. Mohammed could see them, in the queer yellow-green light filling the quiet sphere. He knew that they would reach the span and seize it from the Romans, stunned by the storm. On the slope below him, where the men of the Decapolis had watered the ground with their blood throughout the long day, his followers could stand in the wind. The Roman army had already splintered, in fear and surprise, and Shadin and Jalal were meeting amid the carnage, their faces striped with blood.
You must strike to the sea. Swiftly. Swiftly.
Mohammed nodded. The voice from the clear air rarely gave him counsel, but in this thing he was already determined. He fingered a medallion hanging around his neck. It had come to him by a messenger's hand, while he and his men had been encamped at the old Nabatean capital of Petra. It was from his wife's sister. It was an old coin, struck in the mint of Mekkah in his father's time. On the obverse was stamped the image of a ship.
Mohammed stared out, into the storm, at the ruin below him. Across the valley, between curtains of hurtling dust, he could see lightning stabbing in the murk. The Quraysh shook his head slowly, feeling the ripple of power even at this distance. The Roman thaumaturges could feel the will in the storm and sought to meet it with their own.
Foolish.
Mohammed knew the strength of the Lord of the Empty Places, of the Wasteland. Was it not the strength of the whole world itself? Of all that existed, or had ever existed?
How can men seek to overturn that?
The lightning faded and died, muted and swallowed by the roiling yellow-brown sky. Intermittent red and viridian flashes continued for a little while, but then they too ceased.
The Quraysh turned away, pulling a scarf over his face. This work was done.
– |Wind shrieked and hissed, lashing Colonna with a stinging hail of sand and gravel. Bits of wood, splintered from the leaning trees, flew through the air like tiny javelins. The centurion was crouched in the lee of a wagon, close by the bridge abutment. Some of his men had climbed down the steep sides of the ravine, seeking shelter from the storm.
What a fine day, the centurion thought, head bent to his knees, hiding his face from the gale threatening to rip the flesh from his bones. All our work undone by a freakish storm, a khamsin, out of the deep desert.
Most of the men trying to cross the bridge had gone to ground when the thundering black wall had come roaring out of the east, but Colonna's detachment had tried to keep order on the span itself, shoving the remaining wagons across with main strength. Then the storm had hit, smashing them to the ground, tearing shields from men's backs. Carrying young Domus Aureus shrieking in fear, right off the bridge itself to fling him into the ravine.
The color of the air changed, deepening from a sickly yellow to a darker, more ominous shade. Colonna felt the wind shift too, and then suddenly it slacked off. Shaking dust and sand from his shaven head, the centurion staggered up and lurched out onto the road.
"Form up!" he started to call out to his men, then felt the echo of hooves on the ground.
Colonna turned sharply, his gladius sticking as it rasped out of a sheath clogged with red grit.
A horseman loomed out of the darkness, robes billowing in a following wind. Colonna started to shout, started to bring up his sword to block the lance tip flickering in the air.
Too late, he thought, feeling the point punch through his shoulder. The metal scales of his armor rang, screeching as they crumpled under the impact. Colonna gasped, feeling his arm go numb. Blood spattered across his vision and then he was lying, arms and legs askew, in the spiny brush by the side of the road. A river of horsemen rushed past, their faces covered with scarves, their long robes flying around them.
More screams filtered through the air. The storm continued.
A fine rain of sand began to fall out of the air. Colonna blinked, trying to keep it out of his eyes. It was very dark.