The Dark Lord (82 page)

Somewhere out on the plain, Old Snake's voice raged, summoning hellish powers to ripple the air, draw thunder from a clear sky, sending destruction upon his enemies. Sextus had never seen the face of his enemy—few living Romans had seen
any
of the Persian magi—but every legionary, from the lowest servant to the Caesar himself, knew the sound of their voices. Every soldier had drawn their own mental picture of the tormenting sorcerers, fueled by the shock of battle and the grudging, exhausted respect earned by both sides. The disaster at Pelusium had nearly broken the Romans, but they had rallied to duty and honor and a bedrock faith in the Eternal Empire.

The brilliant mote slammed into some invisible barrier in the murky air and again Sextus saw the sky twist and deform. Azure tongues of flame lapped out in a twisting cone and the mote blossomed into a blinding flash. A wave of heat rolled over the top of the tower, but the furnace blast was attenuated and weak, barely a fraction of its full power. Again, the unleashed power wicked down into the earth, spilling like molten iron across the face of the old towers.

"Hah!" Sextus raised a fist against the malefic power hidden out in the haze-shrouded fields. "Rome builds to last, serpent!"

Old Snake was their most implacable foe—a cruel, hateful voice filling the heavens with abominable sounds, sending fire and choking smoke, or crawling death, or simple annihilation in a curdling green blast—but the Crow was little better, a furious apparition, a woman's voice shrieking in hate, her actions shrike-swift. There was no mercy in her, though the legionaries dying in the mud, or fighting hand-to-hand with the Arab and Greek fanatics wearing her colors, swore she was the beauty of the night, rather than the day. There were other lesser lights, the sly Hawk who wrapped the Persians in smoke and mist, hiding their movements from all but the most discerning eyes, and the formidable Jackal, whose blunt, irresistible attack had smashed the Fourth Scythica into oblivion at Heliokonpolis, coming within a hair of seizing the great bridge before the span had plunged, foaming, into the Nile channel.

Sextus could not say why he knew the face of the enemy—save their will was so strong, their awesome presence so widely felt, every man agreed upon their name and number.

"Loaded!" barked the soldier at his side, snapping Sextus' attention back to the moment at hand. A fresh bolt lay in the channel, the twin windlasses drawn back, Frontius shouting at him, stepping aside. Sextus sighted, saw the siege tower eighty yards away, swung the aiming handle a fraction, then slammed the release lever down again.

The ballista rocked forward, cable slammed into padded rope, another bolt flashed toward the enemy. Frontius leapt back to his wheel, cranking for all he was worth. Tanned muscles worked under a linen tunic and Sextus watched the jerking progress of the windlass bar with eager eyes.

The screams and shouts below the tower changed timbre and the first Persians scrambled up the sloping embankment, weaving their way through a forest of sharpened stakes and tangling brush. Legionaries on the fighting platform began to hurl stones and javelins, or shoot at point-blank range with bows. Turbaned men toppled and fell, sliding on the greasy, soft slope. More scrambled past, their war cry ringing against the heavens.

Allau ak-bar!

The siege tower rumbled on, face studded with arrows. Flames licked among the hides and wicker shields. A corpse fell from the fighting top, limbs loose in death, to plunge into the mass of soldiery crowding forward below. Sextus' hand danced impatiently on the firing lever, waiting for the bolt to slide home.

A third and fourth wave of Persians, Greeks and Arabs swarmed out of the fields, loping forward past the corpses of their fellows, a waving forest of steel spear points and wild, mad faces. A corner of Sextus' mind measured the roaring wall of sound, the mass of the enemy and realized their main weight had fallen here, on the old gate.

Right in the thick of it, aren't we?

"Loaded!" shouted the legionary. Again, Sextus adjusted his aim, squinting, sweat streaming into his eyes. His hand slammed down on the lever.

Caesar Aurelian, his dented, chipped armor streaked with rust, jogged up a log-paved ramp. His Praetorians paced him in a rough square, their gear equally worn, faces blank with fatigue. Hard experience had taught them to set aside their crimson cloaks and distinctive horsetail helmets. Like Aurelian, they wore only the simple armor of a legionary, without signs or flashes of rank. The aquilifer ran alongside, his golden eagle wrapped in cloth and held at his shoulder. No Roman would fight without the sign and sigil of the city behind him, but raising the
aquila
on this battlefield would only invite dangerous attention.

The top of the battlement was crowded with armed men, both those struggling on the fighting platform, stabbing or shooting at the Persians swarming up the slope below, and wounded men lying or sitting on the plank road behind. Medical orderlies trotted down the ramp, canvas stretchers in hand. Aurelian forced himself to look away, catching a glimpse of a young man—no more than a boy—being carried past, one hand clutched desperately over the stump of his arm, blood oozing through dirty brown fingers. A wooden dowel was slowly splintering between his teeth.

A ripping sound smote the air and everyone not actually locked in hand-to-hand combat on the wall ducked. Aurelian crouched down, watching with narrowed eyes as the sky quivered and flashed, streaked with carnelian flame. Heavy clouds of smoke drifted across the battlement, making vision difficult. Some of the clouds were tinged yellow or green. As they passed, men choked and fell to their knees. A few died, vomiting black fluid, a steady wind out of the north holding back the latest Persian deviltry.

"It's Old Snake for sure," one of the Praetorians hissed, rising from the ground. Aurelian nodded.

Shielded on both sides by men with heavy, laminated shields, the Caesar climbed up onto the fighting platform. Two legionaries moved aside automatically as he grasped one of the support poles and squeezed between them. Below, the Praetorians glanced around nervously, sweating with fear at the exposure their commander risked. Aurelian kept his head below the top of the rampart, glancing quickly to the north.

The fortification stretched towards the sea, curving slightly to follow the line of the ancient Ptolemaic wall. Smoke boiled from burning buildings behind the line and he could see men fighting here and there. Arrows slashed through the air in both directions, but in comparison to the conflagration around the Nile Gate towers, the rest of the front was quiet.

To the south, Aurelian saw much the same—the line of the wall studded with smoke and activity, then the glittering waters of Lake Mareotis on their flank. Again, he cursed the Persians and their fleet of river barges. Against another enemy, the lake would be a broad moat protecting the southern side of the city. Now, he was forced to keep nearly an entire Legion back, deployed along the shore to prevent landings behind the main wall.

A brilliant flare of light cracked overhead and men screamed in fear. Aurelian's head whipped around and he saw a section of the nearer tower burning furiously. Some kind of clinging flame dripped down battered, scored stone, heavy black smoke rolling up in oily waves. A siege catapult atop the tower burned as well. A man, wrapped in flame, plunged from the height, mouth open in a soundless, flame-encompassed scream. The prince blanched, eyes swinging to the sky, but then he realized the catapult itself had broken a torsion arm, spilling naphtha across the stone platform.

Bless the gods,
the prince thought wildly,
it was only a fire arrow!

A frail shield protected the legionaries fighting on the battlements and towers. A thin, gossamer veil standing in the hidden world between mortal men and the full might of the Persian sorcerers. Those few remaining Roman thaumaturges were cloistered back in the heart of the city, sweating with effort to sustain the pattern of wards and defenses lining the rampart. By sheer luck, Aurelian had made two critical, seemingly unrelated decisions regarding the defense of the city.

First, he had ordered his new fortifications built atop the foundation of an ancient wall. Unbeknownst to him, the intricate patterns of defense laid down during the time of Ptolemy the Savior, the first Macedonian king of Egypt, remained intact, though weakened by the theft of the wall stones themselves. Still, like begat like, and the new Roman wall inherited a measure of the ancient strength.

Second, the disaster at Pelusium had laid low so many thaumaturges and priests, Aurelian had shipped them all back to convalesce in Alexandria. The horrendous retreat across the delta, despite the horrific casualties suffered by his legionaries, had not cost him a single thaumaturge. Stunned by the strength of their enemy at Pelusium, the priests had labored furiously to strengthen the ancient ward line ringing the city.

Still holding,
Aurelian prayed, watching the queer distortion in the sky.

A basso roar of anticipation boomed beyond the wall as the Persians reacted. Aurelian popped his head up, face grim. The old highway was littered with wreckage. Two siege towers had come within a dozen paces of the walls and both were still burning furiously. Thousands of Persians swarmed below, sending up flight after flight of arrows. As Aurelian watched, one of the burning towers toppled away from the road, pushed by a forest of hands. In its place, a heavy ram rolled forward on a wooden frame, pushed by lines of men in full armor, silver battle masks down.

The sharp
twang
of a ballista bolt cut through the din, firing from the remaining tower. A Persian pushing the ram toppled, struck through. Stones and burning pitch rained down in sheets of flame. The dead carpeted the ground and the wounded crawled among corpses, desperate to escape the rain of destruction. Persian orderlies dragged away those who might live, or cut the throats of men wounded beyond succor.

Aurelian ducked back down, then slid from the fighting step. "They've a ram," he barked to his guardsmen. He waved sharply for his aide. "Phranes, get down from here and find the tribune commanding those two cohorts of the First on reserve in this sector. Get him up and into the gatehouse immediately. You lot, with me!"

Ignoring the anxious expressions of his guardsmen, Aurelian jogged along the rampart, heading for the rising iron-kettle din of battle around the smoke-shrouded towers. As he ran, the prince loosened the
spatha
bouncing at his waist and settled the grip on his shield. It was clear to him the Persians were throwing their full weight at the gate and by the gods, he intended to stand with his men, not hide in some tomb down in the city. Left behind, Phranes cursed wearily, long face twisted into a grimace and then ran off down the ramp past a constant stream of wounded descending towards the hospital.

The sky groaned, tormented by hidden forces, rising columns of smoke splintering into mirror fragments.

The
Paris
pitched up a long, rolling swell, sails taut with a quartering wind. The courier ship scudded northwest from the merchant harbor of Alexandria, the long low island of the Pharos falling away to starboard. Thin sheets of smoke hung over the water, fragments of an enormous black cloud building over the port. On the foredeck, Thyatis leaned against a guyline, hip pressed against the railing, staring back at the embattled city.

Night was falling, a warm orange glow lingering in the western sky and only the distant light of burning buildings illuminated her face. Footsteps padded on the deck, soft and faint, but Thyatis heard and turned. Shirin approached, her oval face framed by a dark cloak, smudges of fatigue darkening her glorious eyes.

"There's food," Shirin said, sitting on the deck. Her legs dangled over the lip of the rowing gallery. Below her, the off-watch crew was already asleep, curled up among the benches in an untidy mass of blankets and pillow rolls. The Khazar woman unwrapped a loaf—fresh this morning from a bakery near the port—and broke it in half. Thyatis settled in next to her, the meal between them on the deck. Shirin moved her leg, sliding her bare foot over Thyatis' toes.

"Thank you." Thyatis cut a hunk of bread from the heavy oval. She smeared oil and garlic paste and soft cheese across the spongy surface.

They ate in silence for a few grains, listening to the creak of the rigging and water hissing past under the bow, watching the southern horizon flicker and blaze with fire. Occasionally, bright sparks lofted above the city, then guttered out. Thunder rolled continuously, though the sound grew faint as they drew steadily away. Thyatis felt grainy, drained, her thoughts—if not harshly driven back on course—turning always to the city and the Legions fighting there. A tiny voice muttered in the back of her mind, urging her to return, to take up sword, spear, bow and climb the walls to fight beside her brothers.

"I want to ask you a question," Shirin said in a low voice. Thyatis looked over. The Khazar woman was methodically paring slivers of cheese from the round with her knife. They made a little pile on the deck. "Once you promised to stand beside me, to share my life. Do you still?"

"I do." Thyatis moved to take Shirin's hand, but stopped, the gesture quelled by a fierce expression on the Khazar woman's face.

"Do not take me lightly, Roman," Shirin warned sharply. "I am of the house of Asena, and my fathers ruled from distant Chin to the Roman border, from the ice to the mountains of Persia. Our numbers are like the grass, limitless, and our hearts stronger than your steel." She paused, full lips drawn in a tight line. "You say this Prince Maxian caused the eruption that destroyed Baiae? Which laid waste to so many towns and villages? Which strangled my children while they slept, burning the flesh from their bones, wrapping their skeletons in ash?"

Thyatis nodded grimly, understanding the venom in Shirin's voice all too well.

"Then I give you leave to separate yourself from our hand-fasting." The Khazar dug a hand into her gown and drew out a thumb-sized jewel on a heavy chain. The cabochon blazed as it emerged from hiding, catching the last gleam of the fires raging around Alexandria. Thyatis' lips pursed in surprise and she shook her head automatically.