The Plain of Mars, Before Constantinople
Wake! You are at the balance of fate.
Mohammed's eyes opened, at first seeing nothing but darkness. Then a glimmer of firelight appeared, illuminating the roof of his tent with orange and gold. He lay still, feeling the warmth of his bed, the heaviness of the horse blanket lying over him. The world outside was cold and dark. Men passed by outside with torches. He felt the motion of the earth and knew the time to rise had come. Throwing back the blanket, Mohammed stood, his head bent to the south.
O Lord of the World, you have guided me to this day in all ways. I have believed and I have been delivered. Give me the strength to throw down your enemies, to free the world, and I will yield up blood, bone and heart in your service.
"There is no god but Allah," he said aloud to the darkness. He was awake and alert. Stepping to the door of the tent, he looked out. Torches and lanterns dimly lighted the tents of the Sahaba, but the men were rising, breath puffing white in the cold air. The two guards in front of his tent were awake and looking up at him.
"Bring something hot to drink," he said. One of the men rose, armor clinking softly, and went off in the direction of the cook tents. Mohammed went back inside. His hand found an oil lamp on the folding table by the head of his bed. A moment's effort with flint and steel had the wick lit and a soft yellow glow filling the tent.
"Zoe, it is time." Mohammed put the back of his hand against the Palmyrene woman's cheek. Her wounds had healed well, leaving only tiny, glassy scars around her ear and the side of her throat. In this soft light, they were almost invisible. Her hair lay across the folded quilt like a glossy black fan. She woke silently, eyes flickering open, then turned towards him. A warm hand emerged from the blankets and covered his, pressing it against her cheek.
"Hello." Her voice was very soft and filled with sleep. "It's cold."
"I've sent for something hot to drink." Mohammed smiled, kneeling on the heavy carpets covering the floor of the tent. "You have to get up. Today is the day."
"Oh." Zoe slid deeper under the blankets, leaving only her dark brown eyes visible. "Is everyone else up?"
"No." Mohammed tried to keep from laughing but failed. "You have to get up now."
"It's cold." Zoe's forehead creased in a frown.
"Yes, it is."
"But I have to get up, even though I can see your breath in the air?"
"Yes."
"Oh, very well." Zoe made a face but sat up, pulling the blankets around her shoulders. Her bare feet poked out from under the covers, then slid hastily back. "It's very cold."
Mohammed was saved from having to answer by a soft whistle at the door. The guard handed the Quraysh two copper flagons. Steam rose from the surface of the liquid they held. Mohammed sniffed it, then wrinkled his nose. "Hot mare's milk with honey."
Zoe took her cup with a wary look. "Who drinks milk? It'll spoil."
"Not in this cold," said Mohammed, draining his flagon. "The Avars make it, I think. Not bad."
Ignoring Zoe's foul look, Mohammed stripped off his sleeping robe. His body was firm and muscular, the benefit of years in the saddle and unstinting physical labor both in war and peace. He had put on some muscle since escaping from Palmyra. The Sahaba ate far better than they had during the siege! Rummaging in one of the soft bags at the foot of his bed, he drew out a pair of woolen pantaloons and tugged them on. A thick tunic followed, then a stained felt vest. By this time, Zoe had managed to finish her drink. She helped him pull a shirt of heavy iron links over his head, his beard tucked out of the way. Her hands clasped a leather belt around his trim waist and drew it snug. The weight of the iron felt good on his shoulders, comfortable and familiar. Thick pads were sewn into the inside of the shirt, protecting his neck and upper chest. He sat on the blankets and began to wrap lengths of fleece around his feet.
Zoe retrieved his boots from near the door and helped him tug them on. They were heavy, with three layers of leather stitched together. Vertical iron slats were fitted between the layers, reinforcing the sides of the boots and protecting the tops of his feet and his shins. Standing again, he wiggled his feet around until they seemed to fit. A dark green surcoat went over the mail shirt. Zoe straightened it in the back, then held up his djellabah. Arms extended behind him, Mohammed stepped into the desert robe. Another belt secured it and he untangled the hood before laying it flat on his shoulders and back.
"Good." Zoe smoothed back his white-shot hair, standing on tiptoe. "You'll frighten the enemy for sure." Mohammed smiled, catching her hands as they withdrew. A helmet and reinforced leather gloves lay beside the bed.
"Thank you," he said, bending towards her. Her eyes met his and she smiled faintly. "Things are much easier with you at my side."
"Hmm." She gave him an arch look. "That's almost a compliment."
"It is." Mohammed turned away, untangling his beard with his thick fingers and arranging it on his chest.
Behind him, Zoe rolled her eyes, then slipped out of her sleeping robe. Beneath it, she was wearing only a thin breast-band crossed behind her neck and a loincloth. Like him, she drew on long woolen Persian-style trousers and a light tunic. Her felt vest was heavier, clean and didn't smell like a camel.
"It's safe to turn around." Zoe sat cross-legged on the bed, hands busy behind her head plaiting the riot of dark hair into a long, snakelike braid. She curled the braid around and tucked in the end to make a cap. Besides making a moderate cushion for her helmet, it would stay out of her eyes. "Help me, please."
With Mohammed's assistance, Zoe wriggled into a very light shirt of mail covering her body and arms down to her wrists. Unlike his heavy disks of flattened iron, hers was a supple gleaming snakeskin of tiny, perfectly fitted rings on a lambskin backing. The shirt had been originally made for her aunt as a girl, and came to Zoe as an heirloom. Even on her, it was getting tight around the shoulders. The Palmyrene breathed in and out, letting the mesh settle across her chest.
Mohammed lifted up a polished steel breastplate, his muscular arms easily taking the weight. The armorers of Palmyra had done a fine job fitting the gleaming metal to her torso. The armor was made in three parts, one solid section running from throat to waist, then two hinged half-pieces in the back that met in a row of clasps and hooks along the spine. Zoe held her arms out in front of her and stepped into the armor. Mohammed folded the backplates in, letting them meet behind her, then hooked each clasp in turn. "Good?"
"Oh yes," she groused, "I feel like a statue now."
"But a safe one." Mohammed strapped curved steel vambraces to each of her forearms. Gloves made of the same fine mail slipped over her hands, padded inside with leather and backed with a solid metal plate. A pleated, Roman-style skirt of heavy leather tongues circled her waist and fell down to her knees. The Quraysh shook his head in dismay, running his hands down her legs. "You should wear something to protect your knees."
"If I do that," she said in a grumpy tone, "I won't be able to walk. Besides, I'm not supposed to be fighting on the front line, am I?"
"No." Mohammed gathered up her djellabah. "You and Odenathus are far more valuable defending us in the hidden world."
"True." A bleak expression suddenly overcame the woman's features. She was thinking of the strength of their enemy. "Will you help?"
Mohammed paused, staring at her. "If the Lord of the World decides to help us, then…"
Zoe sighed and held up her hand. "I understand. You cannot control the power that moves through you. We will suffice, if we must."
"Can you stop him?" Mohammed had not discussed the matter of the Roman firecaster with Zoe, but he could see it weighed upon her. Odenathus had not raised the subject either, keeping to himself or spending his time with Khalid.
"I don't know," Zoe said after a moment. "To win, we must."
– |A great number of torches illuminated the tunnel of the Great Gate. Hundreds of giant men packed into the broad space, helmets gleaming in the ruddy light. Clouds of smoke drifted up, pooling in the arches of the building. Nicholas was fully armored, a conical helm with a T-shaped eye slit tucked under one arm. The Latin officer was trying to keep from losing his temper. "Captain, Vladimir and I and the boy are a team. We've fought together before; we have a system. His body needs to be protected while he's working his power. An arrow or spear could kill him just as easily as you or me!"
Rufio nodded, his face thrown half in shadow by the torchlight. "Centurion, I understand, but I have to leave someone I can trust in the palace. That means either you or me. We have to go forth with both the Hibernian and the standard or we're dog meat. Now, if this works, then Theodore will follow and someone will have to deal with him. That means me. You have to stay in the city."
"I don't like this…" Nicholas felt queasy, but he couldn't refuse an order. He looked sideways at Dwyrin, who was fairly vibrating with eagerness. "Will Vladimir be enough to protect your back?"
"Yes, sir." Dwyrin grinned at Nicholas, white teeth brilliant in the darkness. "We'll be fine. The Emperor is more important anyway."
Nicholas rubbed his face with an armored hand, shaking his head. "This doesn't feel right. Vlad?"
The Walach was draped in heavy iron armor and a huge black cloak. Never a small man, he looked positively enormous in this light, yellow-gold eyes glittering. Vladimir smiled, showing long incisors and strong sharp teeth. A long ax lay over his shoulder. "He'll be safe with me."
"Centurion, I can do this." Dwyrin rubbed his hands together, though he wasn't cold at all. An invisible sphere of warmth surrounded the boy. Nicholas assumed it must be a tiny exercise of the art, but it seemed wrong and out of place in this bitterly cold predawn. "Go back to the palace."
Nicholas looked back at Rufio with a grim expression on his face. "I hope this works."
"It will." The captain's confidence seemed unshakeable. Nicholas saluted, then nodded to Dwyrin and Vladimir. "All right, then. I'll see you tonight."
The Hibernian waved at the retreating back of the northerner. Dwyrin felt good, very good. His sleep had been deep and free of dreams. Rising early, when the first of the Faithful stirred, he had dressed quickly and run down to the massive gate. Vladimir, grumbling and complaining, had followed. Something about the city night did not sit well with the Walach, and he was constantly looking behind him. The Hibernian didn't care-today was the day of days! A subtle tension in the air heralded battle.
From the watchtowers on the Great Gate, Dwyrin could see across the long plain lying before the city. Just before the double ramparts, there was a dry ditch. Then a space of a hundred yards or so and the ragged shape of the Arab circumvallation describing a long arc. Beyond the wall was a long slope dotted with burned-out farmhouses and temples rising up into irregular hills. At some time in the past, there had been orchards, gardens, fields of wheat. All of those things were gone, leaving acres of stumps and tumbled-down walls. Shallow streams ran down from the hills, making spots of marshy ground.
Dwyrin reached the gate before anyone else, so he had a good view of the Faithful assembling, marching out of the darkness with their thick fur cloaks and round helms. Huge round shields hung over their backs, adorned with black figures of crows and ravens on red backgrounds. Each man carried a long single-bladed ax and a heavy straight sword on a baldric slung over one shoulder. Their deep voices carried up to him as he sat on the tower wall. The captain, Rufio, had followed soon after, accompanying a regiment of men carrying something draped in black canvas.
"Well, lad, can you make something glow?" Captain Rufio turned to him, dark eyes glinting under a heavy iron helm.
"Yes, sir!" Dwyrin clenched his fists, concentrating. After a moment, soft white light spilled from between his fingers. "Will this do?"
"It will." A flicker of something-it couldn't be despair, could it?-crossed the captain's face. "But not yet, not yet. When we march out, then I will need your aid. But first, we must watch and wait."
Rufio motioned to a man leaning out of a door high on the side of the tunnel. The man nodded, then ducked into a room inside the wall. Almost immediately there was a deep, grinding sound. Before Dwyrin and Rufio, the outermost of the massive gates of the city began to open, swinging in on huge hinges. A dozen men guided each door, walking alongside. Night yawned before them. The sun was still an hour from peeking over the eastern horizon. A faint light was growing in the east, but in the torchlight spilling out onto the road everything seemed pitch black.
Mist and fog rose from the ground in wisps. A cold gray day was in the offing.
– |The Persian camp sprawled across the Galatan hills in an untidy mass, fitfully lit by torches and lanterns. The muffled sounds of thousands of men moving carried easily in the night air. Mohammed and Zoe watched with interest from a hill just north of the stream feeding into the Golden Horn. Nearly a half-mile of water separated their vantage from the ramparts of the Roman city. Constantinople was invisible behind a wall of fog curling up from the water. Mohammed finished a ripe fig. Zoe had refused to eat any breakfast.
"It will be cold," Mohammed said. Zoe nodded, face wrapped in the tan linen tail of her riding cloak. The Quraysh studied the sky, making out a film over the stars. "It may even rain."
The clip-clop of horses approaching drew Mohammed's attention and he tucked the remains of the fig into his cloak. He turned his flea-bitten mare, leaning forward on the saddle. Around him, arrayed on the hill, were his Sahaba, their camp torn down and packed. Each man was mounted and armored, lance gleaming softly in distant lantern light. The lean shape of Odenathus appeared out of the gloom, with Khalid following. Both men seemed tense, but then, everyone in the army was on edge. Mohammed raised a hand, beckoning the two young men to his side. Shadin moved up, out of the ranks of the qalb lined up on the crown of the hill.
"What news?" Mohammed spoke softly, though anyone with eyes to see from the walls of the city knew that the enemy was on the move. "Are there any changes?"
"No, Lord Mohammed." Khalid's eyes were alight with amusement. Odenathus turned his horse to stand by Zoe and the two cousins exchanged a brief hand clasp. "The Boar is already enraged with the slowness of his men breaking camp. Even the Avars are already crossing the stream." The young man pointed off in the darkness to the northwest.
"Very well. Is the road still clear?"
"Yes, lord." Shadin's voice was gruff but confident. "Our scouts secured the bridge over the stream last night. The Romans have not been seen on the far bank." The hulking swordsman pointed at a dim gleam of light tracing a path down the hill. Lanterns hung from trees or posts.
"Excellent." Mohammed raised his voice so that all of the men and women around him could hear clearly. "As agreed, we have the right flank of the army. We will follow the path laid out for us by the muqadamma. We will need to move swiftly to avoid clogging the road. Beyond the stream there are rising hills to the right. By dawn, if the great and merciful Lord blesses us, we should be in position on those hills, screening the Persian right flank."
Shadin and the others nodded. Mohammed and Zoe had taken them over the plan in detail the previous day. They, and the Persians and Avars, faced difficult ground on both the left and the right of the plain. To the left, there were both the remains of the Arab fortifications and then the ditch before the walls. After some argument, Shahr-Baraz convinced the Avar khagan Bayan the key to the whole battle lay there, under the gray battlements. The nomad chieftain wanted to command the right wing. Shahr-Baraz insisted the Avars take the left. Mohammed kept quiet during this bickering. He did not want his army exposed to bow shot from the city walls, or broken in two by the double ditch-and-wall of the circumvallation.
The Persians would array themselves across the center of the plain, where the ground was best for their heavy horse and masses of spearmen and archers. Mohammed didn't care about the presumed honor, but he was glad to have the right under his command. Low sloping hills covered with old walls and copses of trees broke up the ground, but most of his force was actually the heavy infantry of the Decapolis. They would do well there. He assumed that they would face the main body of the Western legions. His precious band of heavy cavalry, the qalb of mounted Arabs and Palmyrenes, would cover the join between his line and the Persians'.
"Zoe, Odenathus and I will go first," he continued, "with the qalb directly behind us. Then the maisarah and the maimanah will follow with all speed. The heavy horse and the muqadamma will protect the infantry until they are in position."
Everyone nodded, so Mohammed clucked to his horse and she ambled down the hill, following the trail of lanterns. Behind him, tens of thousands of men began to move, armor rattling and clinking in the gloom. A whispered chant filled the air, raising the hackles on the back of his neck.
"Praise be to God, Lord of the Universe,
the compassionate, the merciful,
sovereign of the day of judgment!
You alone we worship, and to you alone
we turn for help.
Guide us to the straight path,
the path of those whom you have favored,
not of those who have incurred your wrath,
nor of those who have gone astray."
– |Dawn was starting to break in the east, shedding a gray light. Dwyrin and Rufio stood in the shadow of the Great Gate, looking out across the plain. Drifts of mist and fog clung to the ground. The Hibernian could hear, though. The tramp of booted feet and the rattle of hooves on the stone road carried across the fields. Rufio laid a hand on his shoulder. "Can you see them? The legions marching?"
"Yes." Dwyrin blinked and the mist faded away from his sight. "They are coming down the road in long columns, shields shining in the light of their torches."
"Yes…" Rufio squinted into the gloom. Long lines of lights appeared, winding down out of the hills. Some branched off like rivers of fire flowing into the east. "All right, lad, time to make our standard burn like the sun."
Dwyrin smirked, cracking his knuckles. Directly behind him, filling the gate, was the tall icon of the Emperor. The black canvas had been removed and an especially sturdy troop of the Faithful were waiting for orders. Rufio called out, voice sharp in the cold air. "Raise the standard!"
The Faithful were quick to heft the platform to their shoulders. The visage of the Emperor rose up, rocked back and forth for a moment, then steadied. Dwyrin opened his hand, thoughts far away. The background of gold and pearl began to shine, glowing like the rising sun. The Emperor's portrait lit with carefully applied colors, the pigments as fresh as the day they were first applied.
Rufio smiled, then paced out onto the road. With a measured stomp, the Faithful advanced behind him, the Emperor riding high on their shoulders. Light spilled out from the icon, lighting up the road, the ditch half filled with debris, the broken teeth of the Arab wall. Dwyrin walked alongside, one hand on the platform. Vladimir paced him, keeping between the boy and the misty plain.
Where the light fell, gray mist fled and within a few grains, as the procession walked west, more and more of the plain was revealed. The golden radiance lit even the grim towers flanking the gate. In the city, bells began to ring, pealing in the cold air. All along the vast wall, men stirred themselves from sleep and stared out in wonder.
"The Emperor goes forth!" rang the massed voices of the Faithful. "The Emperor goes to battle!"
At the head of the procession, Rufio smiled grimly, hand ever on the hilt of his sword. Before him, the mist parted and was driven back by the golden light. Soon the helmets and spears of the Western troops hurrying down the road would appear.
– |White fog drifted between the trees, leaving them shining and dark with moisture. Jusuf urged his horse forward, letting it find its way across the stubbled field. High grass stood in clumps, the long stems bent down by heavy dew. On either side of the Khazar, columns of riders moved slowly forward, feeling their way through the mist. A line of trees rose up out of the gloom and Jusuf ducked under a branch.
"Hold up," he called to the men on either side. The ground descended. The trees made a windbreak at the top of the hill. A slope covered with low bushes fell away below his feet. He whistled, the fluting call of a marsh gant. "Dahvos?"
The brushy ground swallowed the noise of horses' hooves, making the khagan and his escorts appear as suddenly as phantoms. Dahvos was fully armored, with a conical steel helm sporting a horsetail plume. His guardsmen wore solid-iron masks, worked with geometric designs, and heavy mail fell in a swath around their shoulders and necks. Much like the Roman knights, they wore vambraces and greaves of spliced metal strips. Just behind the Prince, a rider held the banner of the house of Asena socketed into his stirrup. The flag was barely visible in the poor light, hanging limp, but the green field and red horse were plain.
"Order both columns to halt on this ridge," the khagan's voice snapped with authority, carrying easily, even in the heavy air. "Send scouts forward and to the wings. Particularly the right-find the Roman Legion there; it should be the Tenth Fretensis. We must close up with them."
Couriers peeled off from the escort, cantering off through the mist. Dahvos turned to his brother, blue eyes intent. "What do you think?"
Jusuf shook his head, lips pursed. "We should slow up and make sure we're in line with the Roman advance. There must be a swale between these hills, probably marshy ground down there. Shall I take a party forward?"
"No." Dahvos had grown into his duties during their long ride around the fringe of the Sea of Darkness. Though he would often consult with Jusuf, the younger man knew his own mind. Jusuf was pleased by his half-brother's maturity-he would make a good khagan for the people. "The Western cohorts must travel farther, on foot, than we. We will wait and let this fog lift and make sure that our flanks are secure." The khagan turned in his saddle, gesturing for another courier to come up to him. One of the young men, not yet warriors, rode up, his face eager.
"Zachar, go along the crest of this ridge and make sure that everyone has come up and stopped. No one is to go down the valley without my command. Only the scouts are to advance." Dahvos turned back, peering forward into the murk. "Is this a foggy country? How long will this last?"
"Not long," Jusuf said, shifting the hilt of his sword forward in its scabbard. "This is some freak of the weather-it's high summer here! I think it will burn off soon, though the day may be cold."
"Good. When the air clears a little, I want you to take command of the far left. I am going to shift the heavy horse to the right, more towards the Romans, and I don't want any surprises behind me."
"I understand." Jusuf raised an eyebrow. "Remember-the ground in this swale will be soft; a charge might founder."
"I know." Dahvos grinned. "The Western troops are nearly all infantry, though. The Persians are sure to try and turn their flank with their own clibanarii. When that happens, I'd like to be able to strike as they turn."
Jusuf was about to answer, but a rider came spurring up the hill, his horse's mane flying. Both men turned, watching as the scout made the last length up to the crest. "My lords!" The man heeled his horse around, pointing out into the fog. "The valley is shallow and only a half-mile or so across. The hills on the other side are low, but there are many men there."
"Persians?" Dahvos' expression sharpened, becoming predatory. "Or Avars?"
"Neither, lord! These are men I've never seen before! Their skin is dark and they ride under a green and white banner-a sword and letters I cannot read."
Jusuf rubbed his chin, feeling the oily curls. "These must be the Arabs from the desert."
Dahvos nodded in agreement. "How are they armed? How is the ground?"
"All afoot," the scout said, "but they stand in close ranks, like the Romans, with bows, square shields and longish spears. Some horsemen chased us off-a few arrows, though they do not seem to be great shots. There is a shallow stream and the ground is soft and muddy."
"They do have some lancers," Jusuf interjected crisply. "But they come from Roman cities, these rebels, so they will fight like the Legion. Triple lines of infantry in a shield wall, with archers and javelins in support."
"Where are the Avars, then?" Dahvos mused, tapping the helmet with the back of his hand. "Not in the center, certainly; they must hold the far right flank of the enemy line."
"Do we advance?" Jusuf's fingers were busy, testing straps and buckles, making sure nothing was loose or frayed. "Or wait?"
"We wait. No sense in charging across soft ground and then up a hill. Let these townsmen come down into the flat, then we'll see what they're made of."
Dahvos nodded to the scout and the man trotted away down the hill. Jusuf unhooked a wineskin from his belt and took a long drink. Even in this cold air, the armor encasing him was hot. If he was right, it would just get hotter as the day progressed.
– |"Here they come. At last!" Shahr-Baraz felt a great weight lift from his shoulders. The King of Kings stood at the center of the Persian line, a hundred yards behind a huge sprawling block of spearmen. He sat astride a high wooden seat, formed of precut timbers, draped with cloth of gold and silk cushions. His engineers assembled the watchtower in darkness, guided by torches and markings cut into the logs. There were no protective shields or hides, but it offered him a huge advantage-he could see clearly from the hills on the right to the walls of the city on the left. Armored gloves shaded his eyes, and he saw, across the plain, long lines of soldiers pouring out of the city. "He is coming out!"
Forward of the tower, a great mass of archers and slingers and javelineers stood at ease, some sitting on the dew-soaked ground, others counting their arrows or sling-stones. A space of a dozen paces separated them from the backs of the spearmen, who waited silently in uneven rows, wicker shields facing front, in five deep ranks. Armored diquans paced between masses of lightly armored infantry, helmets glowing in the diffuse light. Groups of men in heavier armor, armed with maces and long, straight swords, were interspersed amongst the militia spearmen. The mass of the Persian infantry needed some stiffening to face the Roman legionary one-on-one.
Behind the tower, standing beside their horses, talking in low tones, were the Immortals, the pushtigbahn, Shahr-Baraz's reserve. Each of the noblemen were armored from head to toe in overlapping mail coats, and armed with heavy spiked maces, lances, long swords, and the heavy recurved horse bow they had inherited from their Parthian predecessors. Nearly six thousand of the finest fighting men in the world. Shahr-Baraz could name only three other nations that fielded so professional and skilled a force.
Of course, all three of those powers faced him across the field. The King of Kings was not concerned. He didn't need to win this battle, only fight to a bloody draw. That would be enough. The mere fact the Eastern Legions issued forth from their city made him giddy with relief. Everything depended on Heraclius coming out to give battle. Shahr-Baraz saw the battle emblem of the Eastern Emperor glowing and flickering like a star in the mist. The Eastern troops were having trouble negotiating the Arab fortifications.
"Bless you, Lord Mohammed. Your men built well!" Shahr-Baraz turned to the west, raising a hand in salute to the Arab forces arrayed on the hills. In any other battle, he would have been forced to deploy Khadames and his clibanarii to cover the right, greatly extending his frontage. Today, however, he was pleased to let the Arabs protect his flank. He had never before met a man, much less a king, who was as honest and honorable as this Mohammed. Shahr-Baraz was certain, from the top of his gilded helm to the iron spikes on the toes of his boots, that the Arab chieftain would stand firm at his right, through fire and storm and even defeat.
Shahr-Baraz sighed, leaning on his armored thighs. If only I could make this man my friend. Then all would be well in the world. His honor is unimpeachable! Our alliance would doom Rome and leave Persia the master of the world. But such a thing was impossible. The Boar felt a little guilty-he had not revealed the whole plan to seize Constantinople. If Mohammed knew what was to come, he would be an enemy rather than a friend. Thus the Arabs were safely tucked away on the right. Shahr-Baraz owed Mohammed this much, for destroying the Roman fleet.
But the Avar khagan, now, he will gladly pay my price!
The Boar smiled, teeth glinting behind tusklike mustaches. Off to his left, the Avar Slav infantry were swarming forward in a great undisciplined horde. They spilled around the earthworks of the old Arab forts like oil, spears, axes and swords glinting, blue-painted bodies and bright-checked trousers merging into a great colorful mass. The barrier of the ditches had already broken the Avar force into two distinct groups-one group of nearly eight thousand on foot on the Persian side, then beyond the circumvallation another mass of infantry backed up by the khagan's mounted nobles. The horsetail banners and dragon flags of the Avars were snapping in the morning breeze.
The Avars would be attacking straight into the teeth of the Eastern Legions, but if they broke through to the Perinthus road, the bulk of the Roman army would be separated from the city itself, unable to fall back into the massive fortifications. That would be an excellent outcome…
Horns winded across the plain, where the morning fog was blowing back in streaming tatters. In places, the pale white mist still clung to the ground, but the Boar could see his enemy advancing on a broad front, their ranks perfect, with good separation between each column. The old general's heart lifted to see such precision on the field of battle.
Ah! A thing of beauty! My spearmen should look so good after an hour's effort in the melee.
That was part of an old problem-the Persians could march as well as the Romans, engineer as well, fight a-horse far better, but the Romans could fight all day and not lose their damnable order and efficiency.
Four Western Legions advanced across the plain at a walk, lines undulating with the uneven ground. Shahr-Baraz watched them carefully, seeing that they were moving slowly, centurions walking backwards ahead of each cohort. A thin line of archers and skirmishers ran ahead, slings and bows at the ready. Behind the ranks of the legionaries were two blocks of reserves, but even with the height advantage of the tower it was impossible to see what kind of troops they were.
Mercenary horse, he thought, or auxiliaries of some kind.
"Signal flag!" The Boar's voice cut through the murmur of the pushtigbahn like a cleaver. "Prepare to advance!"
Down on the ground, four men hoisted colored flags in a prearranged pattern, letting them snap in the breeze. At the same time, trumpeters raised long bronze horns to their lips. The blat of sound carried well. Shahr-Baraz raised his head, watching the western hill. Flags responded. The Boar was pleased to see Mohammed had deployed his infantry in a stout line just below the crest, behind a screen of light horse. He could not see the opposing soldiers, hidden by the last scraps of mist clinging to the hills.
The Boar swung down from the tower, muscular arms easily taking the weight of his armor and gear. Two boys ran up with his horse, all covered in quilted armor sewn with metal plates, as he lighted on the ground. "Immortals! Mount up!"
Ten thousand Immortals scrambled onto their horses, raising a huge clatter and noise. Shahr-Baraz felt his blood quicken. Soon… victory would come closer with each Roman corpse. One of the boys placed a stool on the ground, easing his climb onto the horse. He felt gloriously alive, the mighty beast solid under his thighs, armor clinging to him like a second skin. A mailed hand swung down his face plate, clicking it into place.
"Hey-yup!" The Boar spurred his horse off to the left. He intended to throw his main effort against the Eastern troops around the gleaming icon of the Emperor. As the Arab wall split the Avar advance, so it divided the Eastern Legions. But under the eye of their Emperor, they would stand and fight. With a little luck, he could press them back into the broken ground and drive them from the road in disarray. The great weakness of the Roman formations was susceptibility to a sharp cavalry charge if they were disordered and their line ragged.
– |Dwyrin climbed up the blackened slope of the Arab rampart, sooty ground falling away under his boots. Vladimir and two of the Faithful followed close behind, fur cloaks flapping in the cold wind. At the top of the slope were jagged burned stumps and the remains of a fighting platform. The Hibernian stopped, looking out in delight upon the plain before him. Just to his left, thousands of Eastern legionaries were marching at double-time through the breach made in the Arab walls.
Cohorts of iron-clad cataphracts were already through the opening and wheeling on the open plain from left to right. Their lances were tipped with snapping guidons, making a brave show as they trotted past. A hundred yards ahead, to the right, the icon of the Emperor continued to glow and shine. A great red-cloaked block of the Faithful Guard was arrayed around the standard. Cohorts of Eastern legionaries swarmed past. At least four thousand men formed up into battle ranks between the icon and the Persian lines. Dwyrin laughed, then flipped back his hood. Rain seemed unlikely today, now that the fog was gone. The sky was showing clear and blue, the sun a perfect white disk in the eastern sky.
"Take good care of me, Vlad." Dwyrin settled onto the ground, crossing his legs. He pressed his fingers into the loamy soil, feeling cold dampness in the ground. The first stanzas of the chant to calm his mind and bring forth the opening of Hermes was poised on his tongue.
"We will," the Walach grunted, squatting down between the boy and the enemy. From this height, Vladimir could see both swarms of Slavic spearmen advancing upon their right on the desolate ground between the Arab wall and the city ditch, and Persians off to the left. The Walach unslung his shield and grounded it, making a barrier in front of the lad. The two Faithful also parked themselves at his side, squatting behind their shields. There was more danger of stray arrows than anything else.
Dwyrin closed his eyes and the world of the unseen unfolded before him. A great shining eye swept out of the abyssal dark and over him, shedding radiance and warmth. When Uraeus had passed, he looked out upon the field of war. The shapes of soldiers hurrying forward writhed, filled with living flame, merging as they ran into a river of fire. The cold earth itself was dull and without light, but the massed ranks of the Persians and their allies were a brilliant beacon. The air distorted between Dwyrin and the distant enemy, subtly twisted by the patterns of defense summoned by the magi.
Be careful! Dwyrin thought to himself, struggling a little to keep the power hissing and sparking in his heart from bursting out in an uncontrolled flare. He had learned enough to keep from being overwhelmed, to guide the strength to strike at his command. The little tricks, like keeping himself warm or cool, or making the portrait of the Emperor blaze with light, were valuable tools. They bled off the strength and kept him aware and centered. The chants and symbolic patterns of the Roman wizards approached this understanding of the hidden world, but they did not get into the heart of the thing. Dwyrin knew, watching the Roman thaumaturges raise their wards and spheres of defense around the marching Legions, that he had-somehow-stepped past their limited wisdom. The foundation patterns of the world around him were so clear and obvious.
But that did not mean that he was invincible. The mobehedan of Persia were the last descendants of the ancient Chaldeans, the first men to harness the power of the hidden world. The priests in the temple of Pthames spoke of them in awe, for in legend the priests of lost Ur and Sanilurfa surpassed all others. Even now, as Dwyrin watched, he saw their skill was far beyond that of the Romans. In strength, each side seemed to draw even.
But Rome has me, he thought, letting perception expand. The Legions advanced at a walk, in a steady, measured tread, and the mustered will of the soldiers was influencing the hidden world. Their Legion standards carried power, invested by centuries of battle and worship. Ghosts of the Legion dead drifted around the signifer, calling in pale voices to the living men for blood and sacrifice. Even the lead javelins each man carried disturbed the forms and patterns around them, making dead spots in the bright firmament. This will be my day, Dwyrin thought, turning his attention inward. I will prove myself worthy of my Legion.
Whirling and hissing, shedding heat and light from myriad interlocking spheres, the core of fire within him sang with a clear voice. Dwyrin let the fire spring forth, dancing in the air around him. Swiftly he raised a sphere of defense, much as he had in the dawn attack. An orange glow spilled away from him, flooding over broken timbers and muddy ditches. Three, four and five layers he conjured up, setting the words of the ancient gods upon them, each moving in opposition to the layer without. Conscious of the violent effects his work engendered, he restrained the power in the shields from spilling over into physicality.
He began to sweat, his body feeling the strain of channeling such raw energies.
Across the field, behind a glittering shield of violet and blue, he felt perception shift. Someone looked upon him and thus, as such things were, he looked upon the other. A white-bearded elder peered across the distance, shape and will distorted behind a dozen wards. Dwyrin let the man see him, then struck out, the fire singing like a crystal glass.
The shock of his blow boomed through the patterns, a virulent burst of white leaving a jagged afterimage in the air. Darkness flashed, washing across the Persian wards like a stain of ink. The wards buckled, then shifted and held. Dwyrin laughed, seeing the wide-eyed surprise in the elder's face. Now we will test each other.
His fist clenched, drawing a blazing shape of lightning from the air. He cast, shouting a wild cry. Again the Persian shields flared and rippled, throwing thousands of distorted images of men and horses. The fire was in him now, hot as the sun, and he let it rush forth. A pitiful wailing rose up from the Roman mages, but he ignored their cries.
A Persian ward ruptured, shattering like crushed glass, smoke wicking away in all directions, though there was now no wind. Dwyrin pressed the attack, hammering at the enemy with blow after blow. A few weak bursts of yellow lightning leapt from behind the Persian lines, but too much of their strength was bent against his will, trying to deflect his attack.
A jagged white flare leapt from his hands, spinning out like a great wheel, flashing above the unknowing, unseeing heads of the Persian spearmen, who advanced across the grassy fields. Some of the soldiers ducked, though nothing visible made them flinch away from the sky. The Persian magi scrambled to match the wheel, throwing up a hazy blue wall of rotating dodecahedrons. The wheel smashed into the barrier, crumpling the twelve-sided structures like faceted eggshells. Dwyrin felt some of the Persian will falter, then suddenly go out. The blue wall splintered, each facet spinning away into smoke. Now he was at grips with the mobehedan.
The Hibernian's face was wreathed in a hot orange glow, but he grinned like a wolf, hurling bolt after bolt into the enemy.
– |Vladimir pressed his face into the ground, feeling the air around him shake. A thunderous boom had rocked the field only grains before, followed by a burst of light in the air over the Persian lines. Now something like ash was raining down out of a clear sky. At the same time, the enemy advancing between the two ditches-just to Vladimir's right-had raised a huge howl and charged into the mass of Eastern legionaries that were deployed across the devastated field. A storm of arrows accompanied their frenzied attack, lofting from a mass of mounted men a hundred feet behind the mob of spear and swordsmen.
Black-fletched arrows plunged into the ground around the two Faithful guards and the Walach. One shaft struck the ground a foot from Dwyrin's body, which lay on the packed earth of the walkway along the top of the rampart. The wooden shaft fell over, then burst suddenly into flame. Vladimir raised his head and flinched, seeing a virulent orange glow slowly spreading through the air towards him. Frozen in horror, he watched as the glow spilled out of the boy like heavy almost liquid smoke. Strange letters and glyphs appeared in the air, then disappeared again. More arrows rained down, one striking Vladimir's shield and springing back. The enemy was loosing at extreme range, but the Walach swung the shield between himself and the Avars.
Just below him, the screaming, blue-painted horde of men-barely armored, most only with riveted iron caps and woolen tunics-smashed into the Eastern troops. Within a grain, the ground below the earthworks was filled with knots of struggling men. Arrows continued to rain down, killing Roman and Slav alike. The weight of the Slav rush bore the Romans back, but more legionaries rushed up from the rear and then the shield-wall locked. Spears and swords flashed and a great growling clashing sound filled the air. Vladimir groped for his axe, seeing the Slavs scrambling up the side of the earthworks, trying to flank the Roman line.
The two Faithful were already in motion, darting forward along the walkway, long swords bare in their hands. Vladimir shouted in outrage. "Come back!" But they were already trading swordstrokes with the first of the Slavic warriors. One of the Slavs pitched back, his head half cloven from his neck. The Faithful were powerful men, with arms like tree-trunks and in heavy armor. Against them, the lightly armored Slavs were terribly outmatched.
Much the same carnage was occurring below, where the well-protected legionaries were wreaking a bloody slaughter with their heavy stabbing swords upon the Slavic spearmen. The Roman shield wall had reformed, now in two steady ranks, and was beginning to advance. More and more Slavs poured in, though, now sprinkled with Avar nobles in full armor. Arrows continued to rain down as well, spiking darkly from the earth or pinning men, screaming, into the bloody ground.
A Slav rushed up the slope of rampart at Vladimir, his eyes wild, his beard matted with sweat and mud. The Walach rose up, swinging his heavy laminated shield around. The man stabbed with a crude spear which ground across the painted linen face of his scutum, then Vladimir struck with his axe. The tempered iron head plowed through the man's flimsy pine shield, splintering it, and sunk deep into his chest. The Slav staggered, falling to his knees. Blood flooded from his mouth. Vladimir kicked him away with a boot, wrenching the axe from his chest.
Pity Nicholas isn't here, he thought, crouching down again, one eye on Dwyrin. That lich-sword of his would drink deep today. The roar of battle below him continued to mount as more Romans, Slavs and Avars poured into the melee.
– |Shahr-Baraz rode swiftly, pleased with the smooth, even gait of his warhorse. The pushtigbahn kept pace. The earth under their hooves trembled with motion. Shahr-Baraz lifted the visor of his helmet and craned his neck, looking to the right. His formation was moving swiftly at a diagonal behind the huge mass of his spearmen and archers.
A constant snapping sound filled the air, the effect of five thousand archers and slingers firing into the oncoming ranks of the Roman Legions. The Boar watched with a critical eye, seeing a dark cloud hissing into the morning sky. The archers-men in long woolen shirts, dark trousers and round leather caps, wooden quivers slung over their backs, long-staved bows in hand-were trying to keep up a steady rate of fire. Instead, clumps of arrows lofted skyward and fell in patchy rain, rather than a constant storm upon the enemy.
"Bah!" the King of Kings rumbled. He hoped they weren't hitting their own troops. Long lines of spearmen and some dismounted diquans in heavy armor fronted the archers. Ahead of the Boar, the left wing of the spearmen advanced slowly, urged forward by the horse archers anchoring the Persian left. While the Romans advanced across the whole length of the field in line, the Persians were only swinging their left out to meet them, making a long diagonal.
The Boar didn't know if the Romans would match his maneuver, but if they did, their far left flank would be exposed to the heavy Arab cavalry hidden on the hill, behind ranks of infantry and archers. Shahr-Baraz doubted if the Romans would be so rash. Of course, this left their right flank exposed to the weight of his attack.
He cantered forward, seeing bands of spearmen part before him. A clump of banners and flags lay ahead where a band of armored knights milled about on the field. Shahr-Baraz urged his mount forward and was quickly among them.
"Shahanshah!" General Khadames turned his horse towards Shahr-Baraz, gray beard jutting from his helmet. The older man looked grim, his face pinched. "We're moving, lord, but slowly."
The Boar nodded, raising his hand to signal halt to the Immortals trotting up behind. Off to his right, where Khadames' captains were driving the spearmen and archers forward, the body of a great host of clibanarii was waiting on muddy, churned ground. The diquans were moving restlessly, their horses eager, curved bows laid over their saddles, arrows already fitted to the string. "How long?"
"Only moments." Khadames shaded his eyes, rising up in his stirrups. "Here they come."
Shahr-Baraz nodded. He could see the Romans coming in great blocks, square shields forward, making a moving, solid wall. "Stand ready to loose arrows!" The deep-throated roar of trumpets and the flash of signal flags echoed his voice.
Ahead of the Boar, a space opened in the Persian line as it swung to his right. Only a mob of Slavic infantry were in the way, crowding towards the city, to his left, swarming up over the Arab ditch and rampart like dark blue ants. A trampled field of wheat stubble lay open before his Immortals, scattered with arrows, dropped weapons or shields and even a few corpses. A hundred yards away, a block of Romans advanced, standards and flags fluttering in the breeze. They were thickly packed in ranks, the bronze metal bosses on their painted shields catching the sun.
The Boar chopped his hand forward, a motion echoed by his bannermen, and the front ranks of the Immortals began to trot forward. Khadames and his horse archers peeled away to the right, but they did not go far. Shahr-Baraz and his officers remained behind while the pushtigbahn flowed past in an armored stream of leather, iron and steel. As the lines of pushtigbahn trotted forward, the men unlimbered their long stabbing spears. Shahr-Baraz felt the earth tremble as six thousand men began to gallop, plunging towards the Roman line.
The King of Kings turned his horse, spurring back towards the center of his army. Though his heart yearned to rush forward, horse thundering over the grass, mighty sword in hand, to lose himself in the hot shock of combat, hewing down his enemies, duty commanded that he remain aloof from battle. Grains spilled away, and he watched the cloud of dust rising from the rushing mass of horses and men.
A dozen yards away, Khadames raised his hand and thousands of clibanarii arrayed around him lifted their bows as one. The old general waited a beat of his heart, then slashed his hand down. Eight thousand men loosed as one, the rippling thwack of strings on leather arm guards sharp in the air. A hissing moan rose up as a vast cloud of arrows leapt into the sky. Shahr-Baraz was pleased, seeing a second volley loosed within two grains of the first. The initial arrows had not even struck their targets.
The Shahanshah wheeled his horse, waving at Khadames. "Close up behind the Immortals," he called. "Strike hard!" Then he galloped away, back along the long line of archers and spearmen holding the center of the field.
– |Cursing violently, Rufio crouched behind a heavy scutum, holding the shield at an angle. The sky darkened and a storm of arrows flashed down with a chilling hiss. Yard-long shafts ripped through the formation of Faithful, though the men stood rock solid, heavy round shields angled towards the sky. He staggered suddenly, one of the arrows crunching into the surface of the shield. The triangular iron head ripped through three layers of pine laminate and cracked out of the hide backing. Another shaft splintered violently on the metal boss. Rufio cursed again, shoulder sore from the impact. Only feet away, one of the burly Scandians holding up the Emperor's icon staggered, a gray-fletched shaft jutting from his upper chest. The man swayed, then caught himself, though blood leaked from the wound. He did not drop the pole gripped in his scarred hands.
Fifty feet away, Rufio saw the mass of Eastern legionaries stagger as well. The rain of arrows was fiercest there, in the rear ranks of the Twelfth Asiatica. Rufio knew most of the men were veterans, but they had been recently constituted from the remains of three other legions shattered at Yarmuk. Theodore's failure in Syria weighed heavily on the Eastern army.
A rumbling in the ground resolved itself into an onrushing mass of horsemen. Everyone tensed. The Persian cavalry slammed into the front ranks of the Twelfth with a huge clang! Rufio couldn't see the front rank, not through the black haze of falling arrows, but he saw the legionaries surge backwards. Their centurions and tribunes were screaming, trying to keep the men in ranks.
Suddenly, the armored heads of Persian diquans loomed up among the legionaries, laying about them in a frenzy with spears and heavy maces. Rufio leapt up, ignoring the arrows sleeting out of the sky. The shock of the Persian charge carried them deep into the lines of the Twelfth. The arrow storm slackened and the captain of the Faithful Guard turned, shouting in a bullhorn voice to his men, "Forward! The Guard, forward!"
With a great shout, the Scandians unlimbered axes and swords and charged forward, fur cloaks flying. The Persians drove hard, splitting the Legion line in two. A dozen of the diquans spurred their armored warhorses out of the melee, aiming for the Emperor's standard. Rufio hoisted his shield, running forward, a throwing spear gripped in his right hand. Around him, the Faithful swarmed forward in a forest of red beards and tall conical helms. Rufio hurled his pilum into the shield of one of the horsemen. The breach was sealed by the Faithful, axes blurring red in the air, forcing the diquans back. The pilum's lead point snagged in the Persian's shield, dangling, dragging the man's arm down. Enraged, the Persian shook his arm, trying to free the spear. One of the Faithful, bellowing a war cry, hacked at the diquan while he was distracted. The tempered edge of the ax bit into the man's neck, crunching through a chainmail gorget, spewing blood. The Persian struck across his body with his sword, the blow ringing off the Scandian's helmet. Then another of the Faithful rushed up and two axes hewed into the diquan's legs, splintering his laminate armor. Blood gouted, and the knight fell from his horse, disappearing into the violent melee.
Rufio shouted, screaming at the legionaries from the Twelfth. They fell back all around the Emperor's standard in panic. The charge of the diquans shattered their first three ranks and threw the rest into confusion. Only the Faithful seemed to be holding, a thin line of red cloaks between the Persians and the icon.
"The Emperor! The Emperor! Stand and fight, you dogs!" Rufio bellowed.
Some of the legionaries rallied, taking heart from the towering, glowing image of Heraclius, but more fled past. A clump of men carrying the banners of the Twelfth stopped, seeing him. Their signifier and aquilifer stood out sharply against the midday sky. Rufio clenched his teeth and drew his gladius, running up to join the four men. Seeing their battle standards halt, more legionaries began to gather, shaken but regaining their nerve. The sun rose higher into the sky. It was getting hot. Rufio wondered if he would see Martina again. At least the Persian archery had stopped.
– |Heedless of arrows snapping past in the dusty air, Dagobert spurred his horse forward, plunging into the confused mass of Eastern light infantry. Men scattered away as he rode into their midst, followed by a wedge of his own household troops. The Western legate was furious. The Eastern troops, mostly archers and slingers, watched him pass, faces filled with puzzlement. They seemed directionless, standing about in disordered cohorts and maniples. Persian arrows flicked out the sky. One of Dagobert's aides suddenly cried out, then slumped forward over his saddle, a black-fletched shaft jutting from his neck.
"Turn and shoot back!" Dagobert cried, forcing his horse through a band of Eastern spearmen, long ashwood weapons waving about him like reeds. "Form a line!"
The Western commander had been pacing the Eastern troops' advance with his own reserve, a force of some six thousand Sarmatian lancers, following behind the veteran Third Augusta, which anchored the right wing of the Western line. He had seen the Persian heavy cavalry burst out from behind a screen of horse archers and crash into the main body of the Eastern troops. Despite a hurried search, he had not found Prince Theodore and his staff. Dagobert was sure the man was here somewhere but with the Eastern formations breaking apart in the face of the Persian attack, he had to do something.
The Sarmatians followed in two columns, pressing forward through the scattered Eastern infantry. Now the Western dux had a clear view of the melee. Persian diquans in their full armor, including even their horses, had shattered the Eastern infantry and had pressed them back into the side of the old Arab fortification. The glowing portrait of Heraclius still rose above the battle, now surrounded by dozens of other banners and standards and a ring of men in red cloaks, though they were hard-pressed, fighting on foot against the Persian horse.
"Columns! Deploy! Prepare to advance!" Dagobert pointed with his ivory baton and the Sarmatians spilled out from behind him, their heavily built chargers neighing and whinnying as they spread out into a line three deep. Between the Western troops and the Persians, the ground cleared as those few remaining Eastern spearmen and legionaries scattered to the south.
"Dux!" Dagobert turned, even as the Sarmatians formed up, their long, heavy lances swinging down into position to charge. "You must fall back!"
Dagobert scowled at his aide, one of the Latins in his service, rather than the Franks who were already drawing their weapons-long-hafted axes or heavy hand-and-a-half swords. The Roman officer was pointing back over his shoulder, at the main body of the Western army. The four legions arrayed across that front were continuing their steady advance, though the Third Augusta had begun to shift, refusing its right, so that the Persians did not turn its flank.
"Sergius, we have to break this Persian attack. Prince Theodore is nowhere to be seen. One swift charge will restore this position!"
"I know, dux, but these Sarmatians will do that. You are in command of the whole army!" Sergius leaned close, his whole posture intent on Dagobert. "You are responsible for everyone, not just this little battle. We must return to the center."
Dagobert almost struck the young man, but then restrained himself with an effort of will. His father and grandfather would not have paused for an instant before throwing themselves into the thick of battle. Their worth as men depended on courage and bravery and their public expression. Part of the Frank yearned for violent release, but he was more Roman now than barbarian. "Very well. Merovech! Take command of these Sarmatians and strike! The rest of us will return to the center and see about these other Persians."
Turning his face from Sergius, Dagobert wheeled his horse, then galloped off, back behind the Roman lines. The other Franks glared at the Latin officer, but they followed. Merovech spurred his horse forward, waving his sword, and the Sarmatians began to trot towards the Persians, slowly picking up speed.
– |"Ready!" Khadames raised his hand again, feeling the weight of the heavy laminated armor on his arm. Once he had born it without qualm or effort, but the last two years had leached his body of its old strength. The cold mornings in this rainy land pained him. Even now he felt a remnant of that chill in his bones. His horse was walking forward, guided by the pressure of his knees. His clibanarii had spread out a little as they advanced in the wake of the Immortals. Now they were four lines of men, rather than a thick block nine deep. Grass, mud and the bodies of dead Romans and Persians passed by, littering the ground. "Draw!"
The pushtigbahn had torn a huge hole in the Roman line, helped by a withering arrow storm laid down by Khadames' horse archers. But their advance seemed to have stalled, swirling in a roar of battle around the glowing shape of a man standing on a low hill. Now a great force of Roman auxillia-Huns or Sarmatians by the looks of their armor and horse barding-was preparing to countercharge into the Immortals' flank. Khadames and his forces had begun the day hiding behind a screen of massed spearmen; now they were partly obscured by the dust kicked up from the melee. Too, they were the reserve behind the Immortals, hanging back, keeping out of the battle.
Two hundred yards away, the Roman horse began to wheel out, speeding up to a trot, their lances glittering in the sun. Khadames drew his own sword, a Damawand-forged blade that curved towards the tip, with a thick back and a single cutting edge. There was just enough time…
"Loose!" Eight thousand men released as one, their bows singing, and a black cloud leapt up, hung for a long, still moment in the air, and then plunged into the Sarmatians as they swept forward on the attack. Hundreds of men were knocked from their horses, the beasts pierced, screaming, thrashing on the ground. The momentum of the attack staggered, but then picked up to a gallop. "Loose!"
Shafts raked the flank of the charging Romans, pitching more men down. Khadames waved his sword in the air, letting it catch the sun. "Advance!" The Persian clibanarii stowed their bows in a smooth motion, sliding them down into the gorytos, then their horses were cantering forward, picking up speed. Khadames was in their midst, his horse rushing forward over the lumpy ground. Ahead, between the lurching bodies of his men, he could see the Sarmatians swinging out, away from the Immortals, to meet him. Their numbers were visibly depleted by the flights of arrows. Their lances dipped towards him, but the Persian charge was already at full speed, thundering across the field.
Khadames angled his sword forward, aiming at the enemy. On his left arm, a small round shield jogged as the horse picked up speed. A great cry suddenly sprang from the lips of the clibanarii. "Persia! Persia! Persia!" Then the diquans plowed into the Sarmatians with a ringing clang and everything dissolved into a furious swirling melee of men hacking and stabbing at one another. Khadames forced his horse forward, then jerked aside. The twelve-inch steel tip of a Sarmatian kontos cracked against his shield. Khadames hacked overhand, the weighted tip of his sword biting into the hard wooden shaft of the lance. The Sarmatian whipped it back, his horse ramming into the side of Khadames' mount. The Persian ducked and thrust, the tip of his sword ringing off the barbarian's scaled corselet.
Shouting, the Sarmatian discarded the broken lance. Grunting, Khadames forced his horse wither to wither with the barbarian's, hacking viciously at the man's head. Twice the Sarmatian's shield blocked the strokes, splintering, then Khadames powered through his guard. The sword bit into the man's neck, shearing through his gorget of boiled leather and then the man was falling away, blood sluicing from the blade in a thin stream.
The melee got bigger, spreading out from the impact of the charge as more Persians piled in, grinding the Sarmatians back. Khadames looked around for his bannermen, then caught sight of them a hundred feet away, swept away from him by the eddies and currents in the fight. He spurred his horse that way, fending off the spear-thrust of a Roman on foot. Everything was mixed up now. The general passed a single Persian soldier, his face bleeding from a cut, standing alone by his horse. No one was attacking the man, who was binding a length of cloth over his forehead, trying to keep the blood out of his eyes.
Khadames wheezed, exhausted. He wondered briefly if all of the time spent in the smoke and fumes of Damawand had stolen his breath.
– |Shining figures stormed across the glittering field, rising as they ran forward until they towered higher than the ramparts of the city. Dwyrin was vaguely aware of the giants, though his concentration was focused on shattering the last of the matrices that protected the Persian magi. The Eastern savants were fighting hard, their wills compressed to diamond brilliance as they struggled against the Hibernian. Fantastic creatures boiled up out of the earth-titans and dragons and horned men-hurling themselves against Dwyrin, battering at his orange-red shields, stooping over the heads of the mortal men struggling and fighting on the broad field.
The phantasms might have distracted Dwyrin a month ago, but now he could see through them, though they were marvelously complex. Far below the earth, stone and rock groaned and shifted, yielding slow mottled power to him. Despite the fierce eagerness flowing through him, Dwyrin was tiring. His physical body suffered as the strength in the spark of fire rushed out. The mental effort of giving so much power, shape, purpose and form was terribly wearing.
Luckily, there seemed to be only a few Persian savants arrayed against him, and those whose wills battled his seemed to lack skill. Briefly, he wondered what had happened to their great mobeds and mobehedan. Where are the priests of their eternal fire? Dead, he supposed, already stricken down in this endless war. Azure lightning raged against his shields, splintering the first shell of defense. Dwyrin mentally shook himself, returning his attention to the struggle.
The Persians tried to attack on multiple levels at once; some sent phantoms against his mind, others tried to bull their way through his ethereal defense, still more were working a pattern that would cut him off from the power inherent in the earth and the air. For an instant, he let them come, ceasing his attacks. They raged against him, brilliant lightning bursting around him, the patterns of earth and air and stone ruptured in their fury. Giants assailed him, lashing down with enormous spiked clubs; fanged mouths opened in the earth-all these things were seen only by his eyes. The mobeds were not wasting their strength by assailing him in the physical world.
His strength gathered, Dwyrin's will rode stealthily along the backwash of their lightning and bolts of fire. The violence of their attack distorted the hidden world, making perception difficult. He was sweating now, his body strained to the breaking point. A particularly vicious pattern smashed against his rotating spheres, sending glowing orange fragments in all directions. A bloody cut suddenly opened on his cheek, leaking clear fluid. Dwyrin flinched but did not let it distract him. Just a moment more…
Heartened by the rupture of his defense, the magi redoubled their assault, lashing him with waves of carnelian and abyssal darkness. Another sphere shattered, leaving golden glyphs hanging in the air, then they were swept away. Dwyrin bent his head, enduring the attack. Each time that the Persians sent their power against him, a tenuous, flickering pattern linked him and they for the tiniest of instants. Each blow echoed back in a swirling infinitesimal cloud of reaction. His will flashed along the path, following the burning paths cut in the air.
Suddenly, like the sun breaking from behind a dark cloud heavy with rain, he was within the Persian ward, standing in their camp, looking down upon them, a dozen boys and beardless men shuddering and sweating in the shade of their tents. Persian soldiers in long coats of mail watched over them, bared swords in their hands.
Why, he thought, looking upon them in horror, they're only children!
Behind him, the pattern of their defense sparkled like wet pearl, but it had been rendered useless. Dwyrin said a prayer, calling upon Badb Catha, the black crow, to carry their souls to the western islands, where these children might drink deep of green mead and sing in joy, sitting among the ancient heroes. Then his hands struck, palm to palm, and the air rumbled and shook. On the ground, the bodies of the twelve Persians stiffened, a single thin cry escaped one throat, and then they were dead.
Dwyrin leapt back, shuddering, to find himself in his body, eyes open, staring up at the sun, tears streaming down his face. The bearded faces of Vladimir and the Faithful loomed over him, enormous and dark against the radiance of the sun.
"Lad!" Vladimir was shaking his shoulders. "You're alive?"
"Yes," Dwyrin croaked, terribly thirsty. "Is there any water?"
– |Trumpets pealed, cutting the dusty air with their bright metallic sound. Dagobert scowled furiously, urging his warhorse forward through the serried ranks of Eastern cataphracts. The horsemen astride their thick-bodied chargers waited at ease, helmets riding on their saddle bows, short beards gleaming with sweat. The Eastern troops parted before the Western dux, letting him and his staff thunder past. Much like their Persian adversaries, the Eastern horsemen were armored from toe to crown in overlapping lozenges of iron, with heavy curved bows slotted behind their four-cornered saddles. Long spears rode close to each hand, joined by a profusion of maces and heavy swords. On his left, the easterners bore dark blue shields, tabards and banners worked with gryphons. To his right, a flame-vermilion predominated and bore a rampant dragon.
"Prince Theodore! What are you doing?" Dagobert's calm had frayed enough to let long-held anger spill out. He did not wait for the Eastern lord to reply before stabbing his armored finger sharply back at the clangor and din of battle that raged along the Arab wall. "Your men are hard pressed!"
"My men?" Theodore's eyes narrowed at the sharp words, his face cold. "My men are here, obeying my command. Those legionaries there-I do not know who they serve, but I am not responsible for them."
"What? Are you mad?" Dagobert nudged his horse alongside the Eastern Prince's, reining over hard when the Frankish charger tried to nip the Eastern stallion. Despite the dustiness of the day, Theodore had managed to keep the glossy black hide of his mount sparkling clean. Further, the Prince and his staff were sitting a-horse, at ease, under a huge silk pavilion held up on five tall poles carried by servants. The opaque red silk allowed them to stay cool despite the sun high in the sky. "Your Twelfth Asiatica is getting ground to bits!"
Theodore shrugged, his gilded armor clinking gently at the movement. "As I said, barbarian, I do not command the Twelfth. Those men are mutinous, having marched out of the city without either my leave or command, following some trinket, some magicked-up picture of my esteemed noble brother. In fact, I am sure that he did not order them forth from the city, either!"
Dagobert shook his head, amazed and repulsed at the same time. "You'll not help them, then?"
"Why should I?" Bitter anger seeped into Theodore's words. "Their centurions swore to abide by my command not more than two days ago! Now they show themselves to be baseless, dishonorable men. Let them drink deep of treachery's wine… No. I shall wait and see their punishment; then-perhaps-I will take a hand in this, to save you from your folly."
"Will you?" Dagobert felt uncontrollable fury mounting in him, but he sagely suppressed the urge to strike the Eastern lord. "You would take the field of battle, then stand aside while your countrymen, your fellow soldiers, were slaughtered before you? Take care, Prince, for your actions verge on cowardice and treachery!"
Theodore laughed, surprising the Frank, then leaned close, dropping his voice. "Barbarian, you struck a poor bargain. Your army is committed to battle, your allies weak, your enemies strong. I know that you have been conniving with that black-eyed whore son, but I do not hold it against you. Your plan was clever, bringing forth the Emperor's standard. You knew I would have to come forth out of the city or lose the confidence of my men-but hear this, I do not have to fight."
Dagobert ground his fist against his armored thigh, metal squeaking on metal. "We are Romans, we must stand together, fight together, or the Persians will brush us aside like gnats. The city will be besieged! What will you have then? Nothing."
Theodore smoothed his close-clipped beard down, smiling. "I will be rid of many traitors, barbarian. The Persians are the gnats buzzing about the walls of my city. They have tried twice before to take Constantinople and they have failed. This will be the third time. I say, let them come and bleed themselves to death on her walls."
"Fool!" Dagobert's temper snapped. "They have a fleet, you will be blockaded and starved out! We must defeat them in the field, then smash the remnants and drive off their ships. You must order your men into battle, restoring this flank and turning the Persian right wing."
"Must I?" Theodore rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. "Persuade me."
Dagobert heard a great rushing sound in his ears. He cast around, staring wildly at the long rows of Eastern cataphracts, at the small band of his own men, at the battle raging along the Arab wall. A great pall of dust spiraled up from the melee, broken by gusts of arrows flickering through the air. The Romans were falling back, fighting hard, anchored on the tight knot of red-cloaked guardsmen and the gleaming icon of the Emperor. The portrait was riddled with arrows, some of which were burning, adding trails of white smoke to the fume in the air. The Frank turned back to the Eastern Prince, who was watching him and grinning.
"What… do… you… want?" Dagobert could barely make himself say the words. He felt dizzy, unable to grasp the incredible arrogance of the man. Who bartered for pigs on the battlefield? Where was this Eastern whelp's honor?
"My brother is very sick." Theodore straightened up, a sad look on his face. "He is not well enough to rule. His son, young Constantius, would make a fine emperor. Of course, he is not quite of his majority yet. He will need a regent."
Dagobert stared at the man's face, seeing the smile, the gleaming white teeth, the feral amusement dancing in his eyes. "That is monstrous."
"It is necessary!" Theodore snapped in a commanding voice. "The state is crippled. I will take command of these legions and crush the Persian wing. You and your master, the oh-so-noble Galen, Emperor of the West, will support me in placing Constantius on the throne under my regency for the next two years. Once this battle is done, you will also follow my command while we kennel these Persians and their Arab dogs."
"And your brother? What of him?" Dagobert felt a sickening gulf open under him.
"Our traditions hold," Theodore said in an offhand way, "a crippled man cannot be emperor. I am sure, after such a long sickness-my poor brother has lost a hand, a nose, some vital parts-he will be retired and can live out the rest of his unfortunately disease-ridden life on some quiet island, with his wife."
The Frank recoiled from the undisguised venom in the Prince's voice. What do I do? Dagobert cocked an ear, hearing the roar and clash of arms behind him. The Persians were pressing very hard against the Romans. Without the support of Theodore's heavy cavalry, the line might break, forcing the Romans away from the city and opening their right flank.
"Very well," Dagobert said, his heart sick. His face contorted, then settled into a frigid mask. "Constantius will be Emperor, and you his regent."
"Very wise." Theodore smiled genially. Then he raised his hand. For a hundred yards in every direction, thousands of armored men lifted their heads, seeing the signal flags rise up, echoing the Prince's motion. "Advance!"
Dagobert wheeled his horse away, cutting across the line of march. The Eastern cataphracts surged past, the earth rumbling with the trot of their horses. The Frank felt ill, but he had his own business to attend to.
– |Jusuf shaded his brown eyes with a hand, perplexed. "What are they doing now?"
Out on the plain, the regular blocks of the Roman line were shifting. The four Western Legions had advanced abreast across the irregular fields, then stopped. The main body of the Persians had matched their motion, leaving the two armies only a hundred feet or so apart. Clouds of arrows, sling-stones and javelins arched back and forth. Now-much to Jusuf's consternation-the Romans were angling away from the Khazar position, falling back on their right.
Dahvos, sitting astride his horse a few yards away, shrugged his shoulders, making his armor creak. "Their right wing must be falling back. Messenger!"
One of the courier riders scrambled up onto the crest of the hill. Both Khazars, as well as the coterie of staff and guardsmen that followed them, were standing on the eastern end of a low hill. The Khazar lines stretched off to their left, mostly arrayed across the slope and in the shallow valley between the Roman lines and the Arab position on the hill opposite. Down in the valley, there was a darting, swirling engagement between the Khazar light horse and their Arab counterparts. The main bodies of both armies remained in reserve, crouched on their respective hills. The Arabs seemed to have fielded a large army of heavily armored infantry, which stood in four deep ranks on the opposing slope, amid old fieldstone walls and abandoned vineyards. Their archers and slingers were busy sniping at the Khazar horse in the valley, or exchanging shots with the Khazar archers at the base of the hill.
"Lad, go find the Roman legate in command of the Tenth down there and find out what is going on." The courier dashed off, though he was not the first to speed between the two allied forces. Communication between the allies was poor. How many Romans spoke Turkish? How many Khazars could hold forth in Latin?
Dahvos bit his lip, eyeing the battle slowly unfolding before him. From this height, the scene took on a surreal quality, as if he were looking down from the heavens. Men were dying in droves down there, but here-in the slightly cooler breeze, among the softly rustling olive trees-there was a sensation of peace. "The Persians must be hammering the right, trying to break through to the road."
Jusuf nodded. "We shouldn't be here."
Dahvos sighed in agreement. Initially, putting the Khazar army on the left-all horsemen-had seemed like an excellent idea. Put that down to bad scouting, he thought ruefully. The Arabs crouched on the opposite hill had shown the fallacy of that. Dahvos was not willing to send his men across the soft ground in the shallow valley, then up a hill against massed infantry. "Truth. This is an infantry position. We're not going to be turning this flank."
"Your orders, khagan?" Jusuf smiled gently at his half-brother. "Do you want to try pushing the Arabs off their hill?"
"No!" Dahvos shook his head violently, pointing with his chin. "Not with half their line behind a stone wall and uphill, I won't."
"We could dismount our heavy horse, then strike down this slope on foot and into the Persian flank. The rest of the umens could cover the advance with archery." Jusuf motioned down the rolling slope below them. There were low walls here, too, the remains of old farms and houses, then the flats and the Roman line. Dahvos tapped his teeth with a thumb.
"No, we won't do that either. If we leave the hill our flank is exposed and we lose mobility. Jusuf, take all of the heavy horse back through the orchards, onto the road, and swing behind the Tenth Fretensis. Then the Legion can cover your flanks and you can get to grips with the Persians."
Startled, the older man shook his head in dismay. "Dahvos, are you sure? We'd have to back eight thousand men off this hill, march through those narrow lanes and hedgerows to get to the road. Let me take the heavy lancers straight ahead-our horse archers and light horse can cover the wing."
Jusuf half turned in his saddle, motioning with a gloved hand at the plain. "Look, the Persians have drawn off all their cavalry to the far end of their line. There's nothing down there but spearmen backed by archers and slingers! We can crack right through them!"
"And the Arab horse?" Dahvos slapped a hand against his thigh with a crack. "They have a reserve, too, though we've not seen it. They must be hiding back behind their infantry, just like ours are hidden in these trees. They will countercharge into you and you'll be exposed and afoot. Get the lancers back off the hill and follow my orders!"
Jusuf met his brother's eyes, feeling a tension in the air between them. There was a fierce light in the younger man's blue eyes. Jusuf ran a hand back through his hair, feeling his scalp slick with sweat. He is khagan, thought the Khazar, and he is probably right.
"Yes, khagan," Jusuf barked, raising an arm in salute. "As you command."
He turned the horse and trotted off through the ragged lane of olive trees. He felt anxious, hurried, eager to be done with this thing. Jusuf shook his head as he rode, regretting the harsh tone in his parting words. But there is no time to lose in argument or apology.
"Tarkhans, attend me!" he shouted as he rode through the orchard, drawing the attention of his banner leaders. "Leave your men who are exposed on the crest; everyone else reverse and follow me. We're back to the road!"
Nearly seven thousand Khazar lancers swarmed onto their horses, slapping helmets on their heads, stowing waterskins. The orchard quickly filled with dust and a deafening racket as the tumens mounted up and then turned in place. Jusuf was quickly hoarse from shouting, trying to bully the men into order again and get them moving back down the hill. Thousands of men did not reverse direction easily.
Oh, he thought in disgust, watching a pall of white dust drift up above the trees, this is secret, all right.
– |A thicket of spears crashed into the shield wall. Rufio, standing shoulder to shoulder with the Faithful, felt the blow on his shoulder and hip. A wild screaming filled the air as the Slavs and their Avar masters stormed in again, slipping and sliding on ground thick with a slurry of blood, mud and entrails. Three times the Avars and their levies had rushed the Faithful, trying to break through the Roman line, and three times the staunch defense had thrown them back in bloody ruin. Bodies were heaped up on all sides, limbs hewn off, faces cut open, heads lolling at impossible angles. Rufio twisted his shield, slipping a spear point, though it ripped across the painted linen. The Greek stabbed out, his gladius licking against the arm of a Slav.
The black-bearded man shrieked like a harpy, stabbing wildly overhand, trying to strike Rufio's head or neck. He barely noticed the tempered steel of the sword sink into his bicep and then rip out again. Nerveless fingers slipped from the haft of the spear and it clattered away, disappearing among the sweaty, straining men on all sides. Rufio smashed out with his shield, cracking the iron-bound rim against the man's face. The Slav gasped, blood spattering from a ruined nose, then shuddered as Rufio's blade plunged into his armpit. He fell away.
The Greek had no respite. Two heavily armored Avars, their scale mail gleaming under fur cloaks and yellow-and-brown surcoats, pressed in behind the dying Slav. Both barbarians were fighting afoot, though Rufio glimpsed they were wearing the long split iron "skirt" favored by the Eastern nomads. A straight sword jabbed at the Greek's face, ringing off his helmet guard as he ducked aside at the last moment. Desperate, for both men were obviously veterans, Rufio jammed his scutum up, catching their swords as they lunged and knocking them away. Shouting for the Faithful on either side to follow, he rushed forward, slamming into the body of the first Avar.
The man's high-cheekboned face disappeared behind the heavy shield with a ringing crack as the wood hit his riveted helmet. Rufio slashed sideways at the other horseman, but the point of the gladius grated across the iron lozenges of his armor, then stuck between two of the palm-sized plates. The Avar's sword snapped back, biting into the edge of Rufio's shield. The soft iron squeaked as Eastern steel bit into it. Rufio kicked out, catching the man on his hip. The Avar grunted, then both rushed forward. The Greek's shield took the blow and he was knocked down, sliding back through the grayish-red slurry.
Rufio twisted, trying to rise, but the first Avar leapt in hacking and the long, straight blade rang off the shoulder plate of the Greek's lorica. Stunned, Rufio was thrown down again. Feet and legs flashed past his face, then the sun was blocked out. A great roaring sound erupted around the captain. The Faithful stormed forward over his body, their long axes hacking and spinning in the sunlight. One of the Avars fell, his shield cloven in half by a huge blow, arm shattered. Rufio staggered up, clutching at Olaf's arm. The old Scandian stood over the captain, protecting him with his body.
"Form shield wall!" He barely managed to gasp out the words, but the Faithful were already pressing forward, in a tight knot, shoulder to shoulder, their massive shields making a solid wall across the front. Arrows hissed past in the air. A dozen more Slav and Avar bodies lay crumpled on the ground. Rufio seated his helmet again, tightening the strap under his chin. The air seemed enormously hot and he was sweating rivers under his heavy armor, but he pushed up into the line of battle.
The hundred-and-twenty-yard front between the barrier of the Arab wall on the left and the ditch in front of the city wall was tightly compressed, but both Avar and Eastern troops continued to pour into the fray, fueling the ferocious struggle with more and more bodies.
Off to the west, beyond the ruined wall, Rufio was vaguely aware of a mounting roar of men and iron and the thunder of hooves shaking the earth.
– |"Cousin." Zoe held out her left hand, gloved in gleaming mail. Odenathus was astride his horse, close by, and the glossy brown mare stepped delicately forward, bringing her rider leg to leg with Zoe's. The young Palmyrene, his long, lean face filled with worry, reached out and clasped fingers with his cousin. "Are you ready?"
"I am." Odenathus' liquid brown eyes met hers, steady and unflinching. "Do you remember when he couldn't even keep a wagon wheel in the air?"
"Yes." A terrible sadness gripped Zoe, though she knew that Dwyrin had done nothing to bring about this day. He, of all their little five, had remained true to his oaths and sworn allegiance. Everyone else had lost faith, from emperors to queens. "I remember. But he is not a lost child anymore. We must be swift in action, relentless, like a striking hawk."
Odenathus nodded, but she could see her own despair mirrored in his expression. Even through his heavy glove and her armor, she could feel the heat in his hand.
"Meet my mind," she commanded, closing her eyes.
Zoe and Odenathus bent towards each other, putting away all thought of the horses under their thighs, the hot wind in their hair, the distant thunder of battle. Zoe felt the shell of her self slough away and she raised her eyes, looking out across the storm of light and shadow and fire that marked the battle. Men struggled and died, their tiny flames sputtering out, leaving a horde of ghosts raging in the air over the plain. The brittle patterns of the Roman thaumaturges remained as well, distorting the air over the battle lines of the Legions. But there on the ruined wall was a burning light like a sun rising through fog.
Dwyrin. Zoe flinched away from the glowing star, realizing that he could feel her touch, even through the storm of hate and fear and rage that billowed up from the battle, fouling the air and twisting the patterns of the world. A vision of his face-such a familiar, freckled, grinning face-all slick with sweat and haggard, drained, lingered with her.
There is no margin for friendship, she growled at herself, raising her arms. Odenathus moved with her, his thought entwined in hers, making them more than a single mage. With a full five in tandem, like a swift, skilled racing team, they could exert tremendous pressure upon the pattern of the world. Now, with only two of them, they would have to trade speed for power.
Zoe's will leapt across the embattled plain. Odenathus was with her, his strength hers, his will anchoring her like a mountain. Dwyrin's wards rose up, a burning sphere a hundred feet across, enclosing the boy and the frightful icon that blazed with such ferocity at the heart of the Roman army.
The Palmyrene Queen ignored the looming shape of the Emperor, his head wreathed in storm clouds, thunder on his brow, lightning leaping from gauntleted hands. The men fighting among the shadows of his feet might feel their hearts lifted, weary limbs given strength, fear banished, but she knew only a terrible burning hatred for the Empire that had betrayed her.
"The city and the Queen!" She punched at the wavering figure of the boy, hidden behind his swirling, inchoate shield of disks and signs. Lightning leapt at her touch, raging against the wards. Sigils burst into brilliant light, touched by her power. The whole sphere de-formed, spidering with cracks, as it shook from the blow.
Behind the ward, Dwyrin staggered as well, stunned by the fury in the stroke.
"The city!" Lightning burned, flooding the plain with an actinic white glare. The Hibernian was thrown down on the ground, his spirit form stunned. The outer surface of the ward splintered, shedding smoking flakes of orange light, then shattered along one of the cardinal points. Zoe's entire mind was engaged, letting the hate and fury that she had carried from the ruin of Palmyra flood forth. Her spirit arm slashed down again, wringing dark lightning from the sky.
The oblate sphere flattened, then cracked through. Dwyrin screamed, the side of his face burning with ultraviolet flames. His hand rose up, will rallying. The flames eating at his skin died. Power flooded from the sky and the earth to him, leaping like a wadi in storm flood, and a skein of light sprang up around him. Zoe staggered back, feeling the echo of that strength. Lightning leapt from her fingers again, playing across the glittering shield, but arced away uselessly.
Dwyrin's will turned upon her, focused like a Syracusian mirror, and he clenched his fists, then slammed them down. The earth buckled and shook, and a blast of flame leapt up, slashing across her. Zoe leapt to the side, feeling the heat of the bolt hiss past. Inwardly, she quailed, seeing his power rising like the sun, growing stronger and stronger.
O Dusarra, aid me! She dug deep into the earth, groping for strength in rock and stone and deeply hidden water, but there was nothing there. The land was already stripped bare, the mana in its heart swallowed up in this conflagration. A bare blue flicker of the Shield of Athena sprang up around her and she rushed through a mnemonic to reinforce theA pure white bolt exploded from Dwyrin's open hand, bursting through her shield with a hammer blow. Zoe screamed, her spirit shattering, burning blue shards ripping across her. Everything whirled down toward darkness, though she clung to consciousness with a grim effort. She fled, leaping across the field, rushing for the safety of physicality. Glowing white shapes rushed around her, snatching at her with burning teeth.
Dwyrin had grown huge, like a god himself, dwarfing even the figure of the spirit-emperor. His hand reached out for her, a ghostly shade lit from within by lightning. Zoe turned on the hilltop, her ghostly shape crouched over her own pale, sweating body. A ring of lightning blazed up around her, tearing the hounds of light into fragments. Her slim hand clutched at the sky, dragging down the thin power in the wind, then stabbed out at Dwyrin.
The Hibernian shrugged off the blow, though his shape dwindled. He was rocked, staggered by the blast. Zoe smiled grimly, catching lightning in her fingers, twisting it into a new pattern of attack. Now his orange ward sprang up again, though it was patchy and weak. The enormous strength that had filled him only moments before was fading. She could feel his weariness.
Dwyrin! Her words leapt across the dark void between them and his head snapped up, blue eyes burning, a word forming on his lips.
Odenathus struck, bursting from hiding amongst the struggling shapes of men, green fire blazing from his brow, leaping from his striking hand. The bolt raged across Dwyrin, crumpling the pale orange shell around him. He cried out, stricken, and fell. Black flames licked up around him, and Odenathus struck again, his pattern grim and frightful, driving a blazing viridian spear into the boy's heart.
Zoe cried out, feeling an overwhelming burst of pain leap across the remnants of their old battle-meld. She staggered, clutching her chest. Breath failed in her throat.
– |Khadames, grunting with effort, parried the overhand blow of a Roman cataphract. His sword rang like a bell, then the old Persian went hilt to hilt with the Eastern soldier. Their horses jostled, each biting viciously at the other. Khadames punched the man in the face with his fist, the reinforced metal gauntlets cutting the Roman's cheek. Grappling, they struggled for a moment, but then another Persian clibanarus thrust a spear into the Roman's side. Metal links snapped and parted under the blow and then a trickle of blood appeared under the man's helmet.
Sweating and gasping for breath, Khadames pushed the dying Roman away, spurring at his horse, trying to break out of the press of men and horses all around him. The Sarmatian attack had broken on the Persian diquans, unable to build up the momentum to use their kontos effectively. In these close quarters the Persians' armored horses lent them the advantage. Most of the nomads were falling back, trying to break away from the clibanarii.
"Form diamond! Form diamond!" Khadames rode among his men, shouting and gesturing with his sword. Off to his left, towards the ruined Arab fortification, the Immortals were vigorously engaged in slaughtering the remainder of the Roman infantry holding them back from the road. Some of the pushtigbahn were already fighting on the metaled, stone surface of the highway. Two of the Roman Legion standards had fallen, hacked to bits by the Persians. The legionaries, disordered, were unable to hold back the heavily armored horsemen. "Bows! Ready bows!"
The old general pushed up his visor, letting a blessedly cool breeze wash over his face. His men were riding or running back towards his banners, forming up again. There was very little time. Another great mass of Romans-their heavy horse, the cataphractoi-were already surging forward, brushing the remnants of the Sarmatians aside. Like his own clibanarii, they were armed with horse bows and armored from head to toe. Khadames rose up in his stirrups, glancing left and right, gauging the order of his troops. Many men had lost their horses and were now fighting on foot.
"Bows!" he screamed, his voice thin and hoarse, but enough of his captains heard the call to pass the order on through the swelling ranks. Each regiment was clustering around their own banners, making a patchwork line three ranks deep. Across the field, now littered with dead and dying horses and men, the Romans were beginning to trot, gathering speed. Khadames watched them come, each grain passing with agonizing slowness, as his own men snatched bows from their gorytos, strung them in quick, assured motions, then drew arrows to the notch. The Romans were sweeping forward now, swords, maces and long spears in hand, rushing ahead.
"Loose!" Khadames slashed his sword down, feeling the air ripple with the singing thwack of massed bows firing. At this range, barely a hundred feet, the shafts flicked across the distance in a heartbeat. "Loose!" The second rank of Persians shot through gaps in the first rank. The Roman charge staggered, slammed by a storm of arrows. Despite hundreds of men being hit, dark fletched shafts hanging from armor and shields, the Romans came on.
A thunder of hooves rolled before them and dust mounted into the sky behind. Khadames shook his head, surprised that their commander had ordered such a hasty charge. The old Persian would have chosen to rake the mass of the enemy with his archery first. "Loose!"
The third rank of Persians shot high, lofting their arrows over the heads of the first two lines of horse. Those diquans had stowed their bows and closed up, forming a solid mass, bared long swords, lances and maces in hand. These Romans would not find a disordered foe! Khadames spurred his horse forward, galloping down the line of battle. Everywhere he saw his men standing firm and resolute. Now, he thought, they could advance again into the maw of battle. The stain of the defeat at Kerenos River was black on the honor of Persia. Khadames grinned wildly, seeing brave honor etched on the faces of his kinsmen.
"Advance!" Trumpets and horns echoed his call, and all three ranks of horsemen began to move forward. Better to be moving, when mass collided with mass!
Then, over the heads of his knights, Khadames saw the Romans burst forth from the cloud of dust, charging full speed into his line. At their center, three ranks back, also rushing forward, he saw a tall man in gleaming golden armor, surrounded by many cataphracts in silvered mail. The old general's eyes widened in surprise. What fool wore such gaudy armor in the middle of a battle? The Emperor? Impossible!
"Archers! Archers to me!" Khadames curveted his horse. Three men in the rear ranks of the nearest regiment turned towards him, black beards bristling from their helmets.
"Lord General! We are archers!" Their voices boomed with the accents of Balkh, that ancient Eastern city on the green waters of the Oxus. The middle one, a tall fellow with mighty arms, spurred his horse forward. A bow was already in his hands, wrapped on the upper stave with a length of black silk. "What is your command?"
"There, do you see the man in gold?" Khadames pointed urgently out over the field. The Romans were only an instant from collision with his forces rushing forward.
"I do!" shouted the archer, flipping up his visor. He was young but well made, with clear dark eyes and a classic Persian nose. "Like a king or a god!"
"Kill him," snapped Khadames, "kill him, and the Shahanshah will give you great honor!"
"I do not want honor," shouted the man, bending his bow, a long gray-fletched arrow already on the notch. "I'd have his daughter's hand instead!"
Khadames laughed, for now he knew the man, Piruz of Balkh, Prince of the North. "Then shoot well, Prince, and you will have your heart's desire!"
Forty feet away, the charging Romans slammed into the trotting Persian line in a huge crash of metal on metal and the screaming of horses. Immediately, the front line was embroiled in a vicious hand-to-hand struggle. Though the Roman horses refused to charge pell-mell into the solid wall of Persians, the momentum of their attack staggered the diquans. Khadames almost immediately found himself surrounded by struggling, fighting men. His own blade licked out, clanging off an upraised Roman sword. The heat returned, descending upon him like a burning cloak.
– |Piruz, sweat running down his neck and into the felt undercoat of his armor, sighted across the field, seeing his enemy shouting commands, rising up above his men in a waving sanguine forest of swords and lances. The Prince breathed, letting his heart settle. The bow stave flexed away from him as his left hand pressed against the bone-covered back. Goose feathers tickled his brow as he raised the bow up, a hiss of air passing his clenched teeth. The roar of battle receded from his thoughts. Everything was silent.
The man in gold turned to face him, his face a graven-steel mask. Piruz saw, in that frozen moment, that the Roman armor lapped over his enemy's shoulders and arms in fitted bands of iron. Ribbons hung down from the peaked helm and a maroon tabard lay over his shoulders. The golden king's voice boomed, urging his men onward. Piruz did not know this Western tongue, but he saw a powerful man in the thick of battle.
This is an honorable death, thought the Persian and he loosed, the arrow singing away from the stave, arcing up into the air, only one of many that flashed across the sky. The stillness remained, his breathing slow, the long moment passing so slowly… Piruz's hand moved of its own accord, drawing another arrow from the wooden quiver, the smooth ashwood sliding against the curve of the bow stave.
The arrow fell, spiraling down out of the sky. The golden man was looking away, his arm waving, gleaming in the sun. The triangular iron head of the arrow struck his gorget of flattened iron links, shattering on the metal plates. Piruz could not hear the sound it made, but he could see sparks leap from the armor.
Again the Persian raised his bow, his movement effortless, the wind catching the black silk and ruffling it back and forth. He knew that a mighty tumult was all around him, a roaring and a clashing of arms, a titanic noise, but he heard nothing but the wind singing against the horsehair string of his bow. He drew, sighted, loosed, all in one breath.
Amid a roil of color and iron and banners and bloody steel, the golden man was slumping into the arms of his fellows, his hand rising up to clutch at the sky. Crimson welled from beneath the gorget, spilling across the golden breastplate. One of the other Romans unclasped the visor from his helmet, letting cool wind kiss the man's golden hair. Piruz saw the distant face turn up to the sun, to the blue bowl of the sky.
The second arrow fell from the sun, glittering, and plunged into the man's eye. A violent convulsion wracked his body, his guardsmen crying out, closing about him, their swords bare. Piruz lost sight of the golden armor and the dying man it held.
Sound and motion returned, washing over the Persian in a huge billowing roar. He blinked, then shouted in alarm, seeing three Romans spurring towards him.
"Balkh! Balkh and Purandokht!" he screamed, hastily stowing the bow in its fleece-lined case. His hand closed around the haft of a mace and Piruz turned his horse, shield rising between him and the first attacker. His household troops rushed towards him like hawks, coming at his call. "The Empress! The Empress!"
– |The air trembled, slow-rising pillars of dust twisting in the wind off the Propontis. Mohammed rode under a green banner, held high at his shoulder by that young scamp Khalid. Under the hooves of his flea-bitten mare, high grass bent and swayed in the wind. The qalb of the Sahaba rode on all sides, trotting down the long grassy slope of the hill. A gently waving forest of lances and helmets was opening out into a great wedge as they moved.
In his heart, Mohammed felt a great relief. Khalid's scouts had passed on word that the Emperor had come forth, battling alongside his Legions. My journey is almost complete, he thought. The Quraysh clucked at the horse and she pricked her ears up, then began to canter, moving faster and faster as they swept down the hill. The drumming of hooves rumbling all around him, the qalb began to pick up speed.
Khalid shouted in joy, raising the green banner, letting it stream in the wind of their passage. Mohammed grinned back, feeling a great and encompassing sense of camaraderie with the young captain, for the Sahaba who flowed so swiftly over the ground, for all of the men who had chosen to follow him. Heavily armored guardsmen rode around him in a constantly moving circle. Mohammed knew they were Khalid's men, carefully chosen to protect him in this brazen charge. For a moment, the Quraysh regretted that his own Tanukh had become scattered through the army, serving as captains, as banner leaders, even generals.
Where is Shadin now? he wondered. Has he seen the green banks of the Nile?
A great rolling shout suddenly erupted from the throats of the Sahaba, thundering across the fields. Ahead of them, across a wide swale of stumps and broken walls, the massed ranks of the Legion grew larger with each stride of the horses. Mohammed reached down and half drew the blade of night, letting the sun gleam in its inky depths, feeling a fierce joy rush up in him.
"Allau Akbar!" roared his men, spreading out, galloping forward, their lances dipping down, shining in the sun, the wind whipping their banners and plumes back. "Allau Akbar!"
Mohammed rose up in his stirrups, the black saber singing over his head, and his own voice joined the rolling, enormous shout. Madness filled the men, he could hear it hissing in his own blood, a reckless passion for battle. "Allau Akbar!"
Ahead of them, the Roman legionaries were grounding their shields, shifting into a tortoiselike formation, their golden and red standards waving at the center of each line. The rear ranks would be readying their javelins, waiting for their centurions' basso shout, waiting, waiting, watching the enemy hurtle closer.
Mohammed slashed down with the blade, feeling an electric shock run up his arm. The saber trembled in his hand like a live thing, eager for battle, straining to leap into the throats of his enemies. Everything was narrowing down to a hazy gray tunnel, focused solely on the faces of the Romans, sweating and pale, who stood before him.
"Allau Akbar!"
The Arab charge swept down into the shallow stream, water leaping up in white plumes from the hooves of the horses. In an instant they were past the barrier, surging up in an unending stream of leather and steel and screaming men, and crashed into the Roman ranks. Kontos, leveled in the charge, speared into the Roman shields, the horses, mad, shouldering into the mass of legionaries. Twelve-foot lances punched through armor and laminated wood alike, crushing the first rank of swordsmen with a rippling, unending crash.
"Allau Akbar!"
Mohammed slashed down, the edge of the black saber cleaving through the Roman soldier's shield, his arm and the leather straps that held the wooden scuta to his bicep. The young man shrieked in agony, feeling his arm tear away. The Quraysh was already past the beardless boy, his blade whipping around, splintering through the helmet of another Roman. Gray and red spurted from the side of the man's head and he too was down.
The Quraysh surged forward, slashing his way through two and then three ranks of Romans. The legionaries seemed stunned and filled with fear. The Arab charge, heedless and unstoppable, tore through their ranks. Legionaries fell on all sides, hewn down by the ferocity of the Arabs. A brief flurry of javelins arched up, falling into the ranks of the Sahaba. Horses screamed, their flanks pierced, but the faithful, gripped by blood fury, did not pause. Did not the faithful ascend to Paradise upon death, to sit at the right hand of the Lord of the World? Against such a reward, a brave death was little payment.
"Allau Akbar!"
Mohammed whirled the mare around in a half-circle, his powerful arm slashing the black saber down again and again. At his side, the massive guardsman that followed Khalid was also laying to with a will, a mace in either hand. The Romans began to break, faltering, some running, a few-older men, centurions-standing fast, stabbing at the horsemen around them with remorseless efficiency. Mohammed rushed one of them, a gray-bearded veteran crouching behind the square shelter of his shield. The fierce madness that howled in the Sahaba filled his sword arm with irresistible strength.
The Roman's gladius slashed at the red mare's face, but she danced aside, her hooves light on the ground. Mohammed let her take the lead, then leaned over, his right arm whipping down. The point of the black saber cracked through the shield like a lightning bolt, shattering wood and linen and hide. The centurion cried out in fear, then the sound was cut short by a harsh gargling. Mohammed wrenched the blade free, seeing it slide out of the shield slick with blood.
"Sahaba! Sahaba to me! On! On!"
A bellow answered him, the faithful swarming up on all sides, their armor streaked with blood, their horses' fetlocks red with gore. The Romans were running, some casting their swords and shields away, others wandering, stunned, on the field.
"Allau Akbar!"
– |Dwyrin gasped, his heart splintered by a blazing green dagger plunged into his chest. Above him, wreathed in smoke, silhouetted by the abyssal vastness of a black sky, Odenathus towered like a giant. The Palmyrene's face was contorted with rage and hate, his hands twisting the spirit weapon in the Hibernian's heart. Dwyrin felt the edges of his self shudder and dissolve, his essential being flaking away from the raging viridian fire.
Only the whirling interlocking spheres at his heart remained steadfast. Dwyrin gasped, his mind nearly paralyzed by agony. He knew that his physical body was contorted, thrashing on the cold ground, fingernails digging into the loamy earth. Dissolution beckoned, offering release from the waves of searing pain that swept through him, tearing at his concentration.
There is the spear of fire, which cannot be quenched by man, or undone, but lights the world.
A voice called to him from a great distance, speaking in an unknown tongue. Dwyrin heard it, blood leaking from his mouth, and resolve flooded into him, steeling his will. All these things-the fire, the burning dagger, pain-were illusion. On the bleak ground, his fist clenched and his eyes opened; he was free of pain.
Odenathus met his gaze, furious, then the rage and hatred cleared and Dwyrin saw his friend looking back at him. Tears were leaking from the corners of the Palmyrene's eyes.
They were sitting in the darkness, listening to men singing in the night, sharing an amphora of wine. They were tired from a long day of effort, moving the Legion carruca across a wooden bridge and into the great camp. Dwyrin had never felt such a weary, comfortable peace before. His heart was content, smelling the smoke of the cookfires, feeling the cool air of night on his face.
Dwyrin slashed his hand up, letting the power curling and smoking in his heart burst free. There was agonizing pain again, ripping through his brutalized, overextended body, but the blow shattered Odenathus' spirit form. A high-pitched wail grated against Dwyrin's nerves, but the Palmyrene youth's looming figure was suddenly and violently gone. The Hibernian surged up, the hissing point of light flooding his will and intellect with strength. He looked upon the distant hillside, covered with short brown grass, and saw his old companions slumped astride their horses. Zoe's spirit was dancing, weaving a pattern in the air, her fingers blurring in frantic motion.
Dwyrin leapt forward, his fists burning with power. With a swift motion, he drew a fist to his heart, then flashed it out, palm forward. A burning black mote snapped out from his hand, shrieking through the air. Millions of tiny burning sparks-the air itself in all its ceaseless motion-corkscrewed around the track of the black mote, which swelled enormously as it rushed forward.
Zoe's eyes widened and Dwyrin could feel her fear rush up like a whale breaching in the slate-gray sea off some Hibernian shore. Then the mote-swollen to an enormous black disk-struck her azure lattice and shattered it, a hammer plowing through a glass cup. Zoe screamed, a hopeless wail, and her spirit form dissolved. The mote exploded, blasting away the lattice and the scattered patterns still drifting around the crown of the hill.
Dwyrin sagged to his knees, the hill growing distant, shrouded by the haze of battle. Weariness washed up again, stronger than before, and he could barely concentrate. His will slipped, evaporating, and he was in his body again, drenched with sweat, still lying on the parapet of the old Arab fortification. The golden glow that had emanated from the Emperor's portrait was gone, leaving only clouds of dust drifting over Dwyrin's body. All around him, the roar of battle continued unabated. Vladimir had disappeared, leaving him alone.
The boy wept with exhaustion and grief, his face turned to the dusty white sky.
– |A rattle of drums echoed back from the towering walls of Constantinople. Rufio, leaning on his sword, exhausted, his face bleeding from a bad cut, raised his head. The Avars were falling back, their fourth attack on the battle line of the Faithful a corpse-laden failure. Fewer than five hundred of the original two thousand Scandians were still able to fight. Mismatched cohorts from the Sixth Ferrata and the Fourth Parthica formed most of the line. Their ranks were very thin. A wide swath of Avar and Slav bodies carpeted the ground in front of the shield wall. Flies were beginning to gather, drifting in huge clouds over the dead.
"Hold your positions!" Rufio barked, stilling a movement by the Faithful to advance. "Find your centurions and maniples, regroup!"
The Scandians milled about, their faces red and slick with sweat. Their shields were nicked and splintered. Some men had been fighting wounded and now they were culled from the front ranks by their centurions. Rufio climbed the side of the Arab rampart, Olaf and some of his kinsmen at his back. The golden glow from the Emperor's standard had died out. The captain of the Faithful was concerned. The effort of holding the Avar attack had consumed all of his attention, and it had left him on the city side of the Arab fortifications. A whole other battle was still raging out on the open plain.
When he reached the top of the wall, he cursed, seeing that the cohort of Faithful protecting the icon of the Emperor had been forced back through the double rampart and ditch and were engaged in a sharp melee with a group of Persian diquans. Rufio spun, then shouted down at the men on the city side of the rampart.
"Reserves, up here on the double! Fourth Parthica, forward!"
The cataphracts of the Fourth wheeled their horses around as soon as they heard his call and galloped up the road that cut through the ramparts. Rufio waved them on, then slid down the bank of loose earth himself. Nearly a hundred of the Faithful sprinted after him, a bellow of rage on their lips. No Scandian would fight alone today! Legionaries from the Sixth also scrambled up the rampart and began sliding down the inner slope.
Rufio ran forward, the soft ground yielding under his boots. Faced with Roman reinforcements, the Persians were beginning to fall back. Half of their number began shooting from horseback, black-feathered arrows winging over Rufio's head. He turned his shield and angled it towards them. The Emperor's icon was smoking from fire arrows that had been shot into it. Luckily, the heavy glass and gold was not flammable. Horns blew, summoning the Persian horsemen back beyond the outer rampart.
Reaching the side of the men holding up the icon, Rufio gasped for breath. "What has happened? Why did you fall back?"
The nearest of the men, his face running with blood, the stump of an arrow jutting from his shoulder, turned towards him. "Captain, the iron men broke, driven back onto the road. We barely escaped through the wall. Some men were shouting that Prince Theodore is dead."
"Dead?" Rufio's face split with a snarl. "The worthless bastard!"
A mounted cataphract of the Fourth rode up, his helmet plumes indicating that he was a cohort commander, or ekatontarch. He leaned down. "Captain, the Persians have fallen back, but I see fighting on the road ahead. What do we do?"
"Attack up the highway immediately," Rufio snapped, wishing he had a horse. He couldn't see very far from down on the ground. "We must not let the Persians break through. I will send the rest of the Parthica up to support you, and as many of the Sixth Ferrata as we can spare."
The ekatontarch sketched a salute, then galloped off. A column of his men hurried after, blowing their signal horns. Rufio turned back to the standard bearers. "You men," he shouted, pointing at the Faithful who had followed him over the wall, "take this icon. All these men are wounded, they must go back to the city immediately."
Grunting with effort, the Greek took the edge of the heavy platform himself, letting the Scandian with the bloody face fall to his knees. "Come on," Rufio shouted, "take up this burden." At his feet, the wounded man coughed blood, making a bright patch on the dark soil. Dozens of the Faithful crowded around, thick hands grasping the platform and helping their companions away. As soon as the icon was secure, Rufio let go.
"Take the standard to the top of that wall, so that all might see the Emperor still stands!" The Faithful, voices raised in a marching chant, began to move away towards the inner wall of the fortification. Rufio, after taking a deep breath, ran in the other direction, towards the roar and clatter of battle on the other side of the outer rampart. Olaf and his kinsmen followed, though within moments one of them staggered, struck by a Persian arrow, and fell onto the loamy ground.
– |"Stand! Stand and fight!" Dagobert's throat was raw, burning with thirst. Despite the weakness in his left arm-badly bruised by a Persian mace-he urged his stallion forward through the ranks of the Third Augusta. Arrows whipped past him in both directions. The Western troops were faltering, trapped between the main body of the Persian army to their front, and now the Persian knights on their right. The remains of the Sarmatian lancers were fighting shoulder to shoulder with the Frankish dux and his household fyrdmen. Another Persian arrow smashed into his shield, the point burying itself in the thick wood. Dagobert felt sick.
His only consolation was the thought that no one would ever know of his foul bargain with Theodore. News of the death of the Prince, stricken by a stray arrow, flashed through the ranks of the Eastern Legions, reaching Dagobert only minutes after the man had gasped out his last breath in the mud. A great groan of fear went up from the Eastern troops, inspiring the Persians to redouble their attack.
The Persian clibanarii had broken through to the highway, but Dagobert and his Sarmatians had managed to stem the collapse of the Western right flank. The Easterners had flooded away, fleeing towards the city, but even that panicked motion seemed to have halted.
Perhaps we can still re-form our line… A wild blowing of bucinas and cornicens off to his left interrupted Dagobert's train of thought. The Frank wheeled his horse towards the sound, peering across the gleaming helmets of his troops. Far off to the left, where the Western line joined the Khazars on their hill, he could see a roil of dust and the signs of battle.
"Follow me!" Dagobert spurred his horse forward, swinging out of the melee. His mouth was dry with fear. The fighting was far in back of where the Roman front should have been. Darkness hung in the air over the ranks of men. The Sarmatians galloped after him, their lances swinging up. The Frank whipped his horse, sending it bolting forward. He was behind the Roman line now, racing past groups of wounded men trudging back towards the camp in the hills. They stared up at him as he thundered past.
Ahead, a sudden crash shook the air and the afternoon brightened with the flicker of lightning in the clear air. Dagobert felt his fear grow, clawing at his throat.
Boom! Fire leapt up on the plain and a roiling cloud of black smoke began to climb into the sky. More lightning flashed. Dagobert could see men running, throwing down their helmets and shields. Clouds of dark gray smoke drifted among the ranks.
– |Dwyrin's head jerked up, eyes smudged with fatigue. Something was moving in the hidden world: a shape, a presence like a mountain, a glowing, brilliant white star. He blinked furiously, trying to see. What he could hear, though, was a great moan of fear rising from the ranks of the Roman army. Dwyrin scrambled to his feet, head averted from the blinding light.
"Gods of my fathers…" Vladimir stood on the rampart, mouth open, a look of utter fear upon his face. Dwyrin grasped his shoulder, hiding his head behind the solid bulk of the Walach. The effort was fruitless; the sinew and bone of the Walach were translucent, incapable of shutting out the burning radiance.
"Vlad, what do you see?"
"A pillar of fire striding across the plain." Vladimir choked out the words. "It walks like a giant! Our men are running. They are being struck down by the lightning!"
Dwyrin's fingers dug into the Walach's fur cloak. He was so tired he could barely stand up. Both legs were trembling. "Vlad, you must take care of my body. I am going to… stop that thing. My spirit may not come back, but don't leave my body behind!"
"I understand." Vladimir couldn't tear his eyes away from the storm of lightning and roiling smoke darkening the plain, but his powerful arms hoisted the boy up onto his back, holding him as if he were a cub being carried across a rushing stream. "I won't leave you."
Dwyrin closed his eyes again, veins in his forehead throbbing, breath quick and shallow. Fire beckoned, the flame that burned at his heart.
– |Mohammed raised his hand, a booming roar of thunder echoing his motion. His eyes rolled up, spittle drooled from the side of his mouth. Lightning leapt from his fingers, ripping across the panicked mob of Roman legionaries. Hundreds of men were dying in the motion, shrieking in fear, their cloaks bursting into flame, skin charring. Arcs of violent purple light leapt from sword to cuirass to spear, setting cloth and leather afire. The sky darkened with swirling clouds, and fires raged across the plain, sending up pillars of white smoke. The sun faded, shrouded in fumes.
Under him, the mare trembled and shook from the tips of her ears to the end of her tail, unable to move. Thunder cracked and rolled in a constant shattering roar overhead. The Roman thaumaturges were stricken down in the first moment of the attack. Now the Western legionaries fled before him. The entire Legion facing the charge of the Arab qalb had been slammed aside by the weight of their arms, then scattered by this sudden apparition.
Bow down, idolaters! Bow down before the true God!
The voice from the clear air made the earth shake, collapsing those few buildings still standing in the old suburbs of the city. Mohammed seemed to be at a great height, striding over the field, seeing the running men as tiny ants fleeing his shadow. He raised his other hand and winds lashed the plain, springing from boiling black clouds. Lightning stabbed down, leaving burning trails in the air, tearing great fiery craters in the ground.
Here is the wrath that was promised to the unbeliever!
Mohammed was distantly aware the horse under him was dying, her brave old heart suddenly failing. His physical self toppled to the ground, but he had no need of such a thing anymore. The power that spoke from the mountaintop, the Lord of the Wasteland, had entered him. He had no need of anything.
If you do not follow the righteous path, then the fires of Hell await…
A blast of fire rocked Mohammed back. Orange and red flames raged around him, enveloping his towering body, fire eating away at his phantasmal limbs. In an instant he was no longer a giant figure of smoke and lightning, but a man lying on the ground, staring at the sky in a daze. Khalid and his guardsmen were huddled around him, trying to burrow into the earth. Mohammed staggered up, head ringing with the echo of that titanic voice.
"What… what was that?" He stared around, gaze suddenly settling on a point of brilliant orange light to the southeast, near the gates of the city. Great drifts of dark smoke blew across the field, driven by eddying winds. Everywhere before him there was the litter of war: spears, arrows sticking up from the ground, twisted bodies, the corpses of horses, smashed helmets, discarded shields and bits of armor. The Romans seemed to have disappeared, though scattered fires plumed up puffy white smoke, obscuring everything. "What happened?"
Something moved in the air, rushing towards him. Mohammed grasped for his sword, but the ebon blade was gone, lost among the tufted grass and wheat stubble. Shouting defiantly, he flung up his hand.
The air boomed like a great gong struck in the nave of some colossal temple. The clear air rippled and shook, wavering like the heat above a forge. Flame bloomed out of nothing, darting to the left and right. Mohammed stared in surprise, seeing the grass leap into flame in a half-circle before him. There was a power set against the Quraysh, something on the far hill. Steeds of flame rushed across the sky towards him, burning figures on their backs, hurling spears of light.
The air shook again as glowing bolts crashed into the invisible barrier around him. Mohammed staggered back, stunned, hands grasping at the air. He cried out, distraught, "Where is the blade of night?"
The sound fell flat on his ears. Khalid grasped his boot, shouting up at him. Mohammed could hear nothing. He was deaf. Flame washed over the clear dome and he could feel tremendous heat beating against his face.
"No," Mohammed said, stepping forward. The fire failed and died as he advanced, snuffed out by some invisible power radiating from him. "I will not yield to you."
The burning mote on the hill flashed again, and again. The air convulsed between them and Mohammed shouted in defiance, striking with his fist at the air. A thunderous crack answered his motion and black clouds swept forward across the sky. This time, he could feel the power in the air and the earth, he could feel the strength of the Merciful and Compassionate One in him, guiding his thoughts, bending its will upon this enemy.
The sky lit from horizon to horizon with a blast of light. Lightning jagged down from a dark and boiling sky. At Mohammed's feet, Khalid still clutched at his boot in desperation, stunned by a shattering sound rocking the world. Patik was clinging to the other boot, weeping mindlessly.
– |A burning indigo bolt leapt across the sky, high over Rufio's head. The Greek flinched and looked away, though the boom that followed nearly threw him to the ground. The searing afterimage of dark lightning etched across his vision, but he regained his feet.
"Fall back," he screamed into the howling wind. He turned, sword bare in his hand, and gestured violently at the Faithful. The Emperor's icon gleamed, reflecting odd lights and fires burning on the plain. "Fall back into the city!"
Rufio ran ahead, pushing and shoving at the men on the road, clearing a path for the standard. Thousands of men and horses blocked his way, stunned and paralyzed by the conflagration in the sky. The Greek pushed through them as fast as he could, fleeing the battle between gods.
"Retreat! Retreat!" Tears streamed down his face, lit by the staccato flare of lightning. "Fall back!" Around him, slowly at first, the Eastern troops began to move. Within moments a huge mob was pouring through the broken teeth of the Arab wall, flooding down the road leading to the massive shape of the Great Gate.
Among them, the red cloaks of the Faithful stood out like clots of blood in the darkness.
– |Near the middle of the plain, a half-mile from the conflagration of smoke and lightning and burning fields, Shahr-Baraz stood, helmet under one arm, the wind eddying around him. Bursts of light washed over him, throwing his hooked nose in sharp relief, shadowing his eyes. Black clouds blotted out the sun, throwing everything into a supernal gloom, but he remained, witness to the fury of the gods. His mailed hand slowly smoothed one jutting mustache, twisting the end to a point, then the other.
His army cowered, lines of spearmen and archers hugging the earth, wailing and weeping. Only a few of the officers even dared to crouch, staring up at the mammoth half-seen figures battling in the murky air. The clibanarii were already fleeing back to the north, their horses uncontrollable. Many of the diquans had been thrown to the ground and limped or crawled in search of some kind of safety. Even the King of Kings' officers were huddled in the lee of his blowing cloak, clutching the ground, their eyes averted from the dreadful sky.
But the Boar did not look away, though the air before him burned and curdled, distorted by the powers struggling in the ether. Fires reflected in his eyes, leaping up from the shattered land. He watched and waited, idly wondering who would triumph. Shahr-Baraz thought it very amusing his victory did not hinge on the success of either power.
– |Fire licked across the sky, silhouetting the clouds with a pulsing red glow. Mohammed flinched, taking a step back. None of the furious barrage of flame, smoke and shining bolts had broken through the clear shield protecting him. He felt the unseen power that shifted the tides in their courses moving in tandem, a strange partner in this struggle. Effortless strength seemed to fill his limbs, making his eyesight and hearing keen. Testing this power, Mohammed grasped at the sky, feeling storm and wind move at his command.
Thunder boomed in the clouds, presaging a brilliant crack of lightning leaping from earth to sky. Distantly, the Quraysh felt his enemy shudder, stricken by the blow. A flare of orange light lit up the walls of the city and the circumvallation. Mohammed smiled, feeling a giddy rush of pleasure. He could move his hand just so and…
Rain roared down out of the sky, mixed with hail and howling wind. The grassy fields flattened down before the gusts. Heavy droplets spattered on the broken walls of the old farmhouses. Mohammed stabbed out a hand, shouting. Lightning flickered, arcing from cloud to cloud, lighting them with a sullen yellow glow. A mammoth cyan bolt stabbed from the ground, enveloping the wavering orange sphere on the distant wall. Mohammed felt his enemies' defense crack, weakening. He could feel the terror of the Roman soldiers, struggling through the torrential downpour, the ground turning to queasy black mud with every step.
Rain fell around him, too, but here within the circle of this invisible protection it was a gentle cooling mist. The Quraysh laughed in delight, thinking of the summer storms of his homeland. "You are weakening, my enemy. I think you are nearly spent."
He clenched his fist, will pressing on the sky, the clouds, the earth. A rolling series of blasts shook the ground, a howling cauldron of fire and lightning and hail converging on the sphere of orange light. Abruptly, like a wick being pinched, the light went out. Across the distance, Mohammed could feel the struggling, fierce will that opposed him suddenly fail. There was a wink of orange flame and then only rain and darkness. The fires burning across the field sizzled down to smoke and ash, drenched by the towering thunderheads sweeping across the sky.
You are finished! Mohammed thought. I will crush the last breath…
Distantly, his physicality heard the words "Now! He's done it!"
Then a blinding crack of pain burst behind his eyes and Mohammed, Lord of the Quraysh, Master of the Sahaba, crumpled to the ground, blood seeping from a fierce purplish bruise behind his left ear. As he fell, there was a curious sensation of distance between his body and his mind. His spirit turned, looking down from a great height, and saw his body sprawled on the grass, the powerful figure of the man Patik looming over his body. Khalid was crouched over Mohammed, hands upon his face.
An arrow? Mohammed was confused. He reached out for his body, seeking to rise and stand and see the desolation of his enemies. There was nothing there. Darkness suddenly flooded from the ground, covering the earth. Mohammed cried out, reaching into the void.
O Lord of the World, where are you? Have you…
Then oblivion.
– |Khalid rolled back the white-bearded man's eyelid. Rain drummed down out of a black sky, coupled with gusts of wind blowing heavy drops at right angles to the ground. The young man grinned, his teeth white in the darkness.
"I could not have planned it better myself!" He stood, back to the wind, and gestured to Patik. His guardsmen rose, making a solid circle of bodies around them. "Quickly, now, before the Sahaba notice."
The Persian nodded, pulling a length of gleaming silk from his belt. Patik unfolded the cloth, then unfolded it again and then again. With each iteration, the size doubled until it easily covered the body lying sprawled on the ground. Deftly, Patik laid the silk on the ground, then rolled Mohammed's body onto the cloth.
"Hurry!" Khalid hissed, digging into a bag that he carried at his belt. "Faster!"
The stoic Persian ignored the younger man's command, making sure he tucked the Arab's hands and feet gently onto the rectangle. Once the body was suitably arranged, he folded half of the cloth over, completely covering Mohammed from head to toe. Then, working with precise, ordered motions, Patik folded the long length of silk over, then over again. In an instant, the cloth was once again a small square in his hand. This he put into the pouch at his belt. He was sweating heavily, though the driving rain washed the salt from his face and arms.
Khalid knelt on the muddy grass, his hands busy with a length of dark red twine coiled around a wooden spool. With one hand he drove the spool into the soft ground near where Mohammed's head had been. With the twine fixed, he spun off a long length of the cord and swiftly arranged the twine on the ground in the outline of a man. Bending close over the muddy grass, he blinked rain out of his eyes and twitched sections of the twine into a more accurate shape.
Patik stood over him, shielding Khalid from the worst of the rain and hail sputtering out of the dark clouds. Visibility across the plain was poor, now reduced to only a few hundred feet. Khalid rose up, still on his knees, and fumbled a stoppered steel bottle from his belt. Turning his head away and gritting his teeth, the young man sprinkled black dust on the muddy ground within the shape described by the twine.
Vapor boiled up out of the ground, writhing like a forest of snakes. An ominous groaning sound issued from the earth and Khalid backed away, making a sign of warning. The mud heaved, cracking open, fumes and smoke issuing forth. The young Arab made a horrible face at the foul odor. Then the clots of mud and broken earth and rainwater began to slide gelatinously together. Within the space of one or two grains, the mud and grass had congealed into the shape of a man. A tall man, broad shouldered, with a long white beard lying across his chest.
Tendrils of grass crawled across the face, slithering into eyes, nose and ears. Rain sluiced across the naked body, washing away the mud and dirt. Fumes and smoke settled on the cold dead flesh, seeping into the pores and crevices of the body. Blood congealed out of the air, marking a wound on the muscular chest.
Khalid stood, looking down, silhouetted against the storm-wracked sky. His face was impassive, shadowed against the darkness. "So are the Makzhum revenged upon the Quraysh. Put a cloak on him, then lift him up." The young Arab thought that he could feel his father and his grandfather looking over his shoulder, pleased.
Patik and the others crowded around the body, fitting boots on its feet, a tunic, lifting the cold heavy arms to slide on a cloak. Khalid saw his horse had fled in the face of the storm. Casting about in the grass, he found Mohammed's sword and gingerly lifted the weapon by the hilt, sliding the blade into his own sheath. He walked somberly forward, head bent in thought or grief. His men hoisted the body on their shoulders and followed, their passage lit by the rumble and crack of lightning in the clouds and gusts of rain. The day grew cold.
Khalid saw some of the Sahaba approaching, moving cautiously forward through the rain.
"Oh, my friends," he called to them, raising his hand, face a mask of grief. "I have sad tidings for you."
The Sahaba, seeing Patik and the others carrying a body on a bier of spears, stopped dead in their tracks. Their eyes grew huge, seeing the pain on Khalid's face.
"Who has been struck down?" one of them cried out in alarm, pushing forward through his fellows.
"God has fixed the length of Mohammed's life," Khalid answered. "Today was the last day."
The man who had spoken staggered as if struck by a heavy blow. "Mohammed, our teacher, is dead?"
"No!" Khalid shouted, voice rising above the rain and growling thunder. More Sahaba approached through the rain, drawn by the commotion. "He is not dead. He has gone to god, to the power speaking from the clear air, which sets the moon in its course, which directs the tides."
Some of the Sahaba fell to their knees, weeping, clutching their spears. Khalid looked out over their faces and saw desolation entering every heart. He did not intend to say more, but a great voice suddenly issued from behind him.
"You men," Patik boomed, head raised into the driving rain. "If anyone here worships Mohammed, let those men know Mohammed is dead. But if anyone worships Allah, let him know Allah is alive and immortal forever." The Persian paused, noble gaze passing over the great host of men gathering around him. He met every eye fiercely, and there was no sound on the field of war save the drumming of rain on the ground. "Mohammed," he said, powerful baritone rolling out, "is only a messenger, and all those messengers who came before him have also died. Now that your teacher has fallen, would you turn away from his path? Whoever turns back will do no injury to Allah, but Allah will reward those who are steadfast and follow the righteous and straight way."
Then even the Persian fell silent, though his companions stared at him in surprise, for they had never heard so many words from him at one time. Khalid stared hard at the man, but Patik ignored him and slowly, with measured steps, the litter bearers turned to the north, towards their camp and the black-hulled ships. The Sahaba turned as well, their heads bent against the cold wind and rain blowing into their faces, and followed, all in silence, each man alone with his grief.
– |Jusuf tilted back his broad leather hat, letting water pooling around the brim spill off onto the flagstones of the Roman highway. He and his lancers were arrayed on either side of the road, spears and swords laid across their saddles, bows carefully stowed in their wooden cases. Ahead of them, scattered across the edge of the plain, were perhaps a thousand Khazars on foot, a thin sentry line to watch for the enemy. Jusuf did not think the enemy was coming, though. Not today, not in this weather.
Long lines of Western legionaries trudged past, heads bent, many carrying wounded comrades, the standards and banners of each cohort hanging limply against their gilded poles. Even the faces of the men were gray. Jusuf watched grimly as they marched past. This was a defeated army.
As he had feared, his tumens had taken too long-almost two hours-to wind their way out of the orchards and off the hill. By the time he had come up on the rear ranks of the Eighth Gallica, the sky shook with awesome thunder and the tumult of wind spirits in combat. In the face of that raging storm and dreadful lightning, the horses refused to advance. The Khazars bided their time in the shelter of the hill. Now the best they could do was provide a safe haven for the retreating Western troops.
"Lord Jusuf!" One of the men on picket duty jogged up the road, long hair plastered against his head by the rain. "A band of horsemen are approaching!"
"Stand ready!" Jusuf waved at his tarkhans, drawing their attention. A ripple ran down the lines of horsemen as men shifted shields around and stirred themselves, ready for action. The Khazar lord nudged his horse forward. A last bedraggled cohort of Romans splashed past, the men leaning against one another. At their rear, a grizzled-looking centurion was walking backwards, shield still at the ready, a gladius bare in his hand. Jusuf nodded to the man as he passed. The Western officer said nothing, his eyes focused on the rain.
The mare clattered up onto the road, tossing her head, and Jusuf reined in, waiting in the middle of the road. After a moment, shapes appeared out of the rain, horsemen in scaled mail and conical helms. Rain-soaked plumes lay against their shoulders. Jusuf saw that they bore red shields blazoned with rampant dragons.
"Ho!" he called through the steady drumbeat of rain. "Who is your commander?"
A tall man in their midst looked up, then wiped water from his eyes. Jusuf spurred his horse forward, seeing that it was the Frankish legate, Dagobert. "My lord! Are there more men coming?"
Dagobert shook his head, eyes desolate. Jusuf caught his reins, halting the man's horse. The Khazar bent close, eyes intent on the face of the Roman officer. "What happened?"
"We are beaten." Dagobert's voice was barely audible. He leaned heavily on his saddle. "These are all the Sarmatians that escaped… the Third Augusta is gone, the Tenth Fretensis shattered. Did any man leave that terrible field alive?"
Jusuf leaned back, seeing that the Frank's will was broken. He had seen this before, where a strong man tasted defeat for the first time. His mind would be filled with terrors and doubt. "Many men have left the field, hale, unwounded." The Khazar projected certainty and confidence in his voice. The Frank only looked away, long blond hair lying in streaks across his noble brow and strong chin. "Your army remains, my lord."
"But so many are dead…" Dagobert's voice died away. Jusuf turned his horse, clucking at the mare to walk. Together, the two men clopped up the road. In the mist around them, the Khazars, still alert, folded in behind the Sarmatians. The Khazar pickets loped in, long-tailed caps bouncing on their shoulders. They stopped to help the wounded and then faded into the gloom.
– |Torches guttered, hissing in the rain, throwing a fitful light on the walls of the Great Gate. A remnant of the Faithful Guard stood in the passage, one great iron-bound door already closed, the other pulled halfway shut. Their cloaks were stained and torn, heavy with clinging mud. Armor was twisted and bent, links missing, shields hacked and split. Most of the men leaned wearily against the stone walls, eyes bloodshot and heavy with fatigue.
Only one man showed any motion, a stocky, thick-built Greek pacing back and forth in front of the gate, just out of the rain. The moat running before the prochtisma sparkled with rain and hail pelting down out of the sky. The clouds overhead pressed close to the earth, heavy and dark, blotting out the sun. A gloom like twilight was upon the fields, even though Rufio guessed it was late afternoon.
He worried, staring out into the rain. He could barely make out the graveyards lining the highway. The long siege had destroyed all the trees within sight of the walls, but broken pillars still marked the fringe of the old burial places.
"My lord?" The ekatontarch in charge of the gate garrison approached. "We must close the gate. The army has entered…"
"Not all of them!" Rufio turned on the man, livid with anger. "There is still one more soldier out there."
The Greek officer did not back away, his face rigid. "My lord, we must close the gate."
Rufio's eyes glinted, fury mounting. But the man was right. Emotion was clouding his judgment. The captain of the Faithful felt a familiar chill. He had seen so many men die. They would just be two more…
"Captain! Look…" The Faithful were pointing out into the darkness. "It's the Walach."
Rufio turned and saw a hunched figure stumbling down the road, half bent under some burden. The Faithful came forth from the gate, weapons ready, exhausted but still wary and game for one more struggle. Rufio walked forward, black eyes flitting from side to side, watching for an ambush. In this weather, a thousand Persians might be just out of sight, hidden in the gloom. The figure came closer, and Rufio saw it was Vladimir carrying a limp body on his back.
"I have him," the Walach gasped as he stumbled up. "I have him."
Rufio put his hand on the boy's face. His cloak and tunic were sodden with rain and Dwyrin's flesh was cold to the touch. "Inside! Everyone inside! Prepare to close the gate!"
Men crowded around them, taking Vladimir's burden. Dwyrin was lofted on their hands, his head lolling back, and they carried him into the gate on a bed of stout shoulders and brawny arms. Rufio was the last to enter the tunnel, still watching the rain-swept darkness.
Then the gate ground closed with a deep boom and the fitful light on the road went out.