The Shadow of Ararat (72 page)

Zenobia thrust with the point of her saber. The silver blade danced off of the Persian knight's noseguard and then slid into his eyeslit. His whole body jerked convulsively and the Queen, screaming with delight, whipped the blade out, the first five inches sluicing blood into the air in a spray. Ahmet looked away as the knight toppled off his mount. Zenobia wheeled her horse and galloped out of the fray to the west. Ahmet's white headdress was gone and his long dark hair blew free. His face was spotted with blood. The Queen trotted up the hill toward the road and her command tent. Half of the Bactrians who had ridden with her into the fight rode out again, hurrying to rejoin her. Only two of her messengers remained.

The field was clouded with dust, making it hard to see either end of the battle. Zenobia resettled the winged golden helmet that she had been wearing on her head. One of the wings had been sheared off and it was unbalanced. It still would not sit right, so she pulled it off of her head with a gasp and wrenched the other wing off. The heavy gold struck the ground and stood there, impaled on the wingtip in the broken earth. Zenobia uncurled the braid that she had woven of her hair that morning and let it fall across her back.

"Report!" she rasped to the messengers who had rejoined her. "What is happening?!"

One of the dispatch riders, a Tanukh, bowed his head wearily.

"My Queen," he said, "Lord Mohammed was struck down on the left and has been carried back to the camp. He lives but is sorely wounded. Emir ibn'Adi commands the remainder of the Tanukh, but..." He pointed helplessly off to the west.

A great roar echoed through the dust, and everyone turned to stare in that direction. A heavy crash, like a thousand cast-iron pots thrown into a gravel pit, echoed out of the tan clouds, and then, suddenly, the ground to the west of the road was filled with Palmyrene horsemen, knights and lancers alike, in flight. The silver shapes of Persian heavy horsemen loomed out of the dust in pursuit, their banners fluttering.

Zenobia groaned and crushed her fist into the mane of her horse. Ahmet gripped her shoulder hard, but some sound behind him made him turn.

To the east, downstream, beyond where the Nabateans had advanced to smash the right wing of the Persian army, a column of horsemen had appeared, riding hard up the valley. Their robes were black and their banners were a long snake on a field of sable. Ahmet's eyes twitched left and right. To the right, the bluff where Aretas had planted his tent was abandoned, only a scattering of bodies and the forlorn banners of the Prince of the Rose Red City. To the left, the Nabatean horse and spearmen were still fighting, hacking their way into the right flank of the remaining Persian infantry. There was nothing between the riders in black and the unprotected rear of the Palmyrene army.

"Zenobia," he whispered, "the missing horsemen—the Lakhmids—what color are their banners?"

"A red snake on a field of black," the Queen said, turning, and then she saw them as well. Her pupils dilated for a moment, and then she raised her head. Fire still burned in her eyes, but with it there was a realization of the extent of the disaster she had led her men into. She gestured to the lone remaining trumpeter. She put the mouthpiece of the trumpet to her lips and blew a long single note. Across the field of battle, the weary commanders of the Roman army raised their heads, staring behind them. Some could see the Queen, shining golden amid her officers, others could only hear her.

"Fall back," she cried out, a mournful sound on the suddenly quiet field. "Fall back!"

The night sky over the city was lit with a sickly green glow. Odd lights burned and flickered on the battlements of Tauris. A mile downstream from the city, the Emperor of the West, Martius Galen Atreus, stared north across the swift waters of the Talkeh. The river was running deep here, and the far bank was only dimly visible in the moonlight. Where he stood, on a flat-topped hill overlooking the river, surrounded by his guardsmen bearing torches and lanterns, the wind rustled in the leaves of the sycamores and aspen trees that crowded the bank. At the Emperor's side, one of the Eastern scouts raised a hooded lantern and flipped the stiff leather shutter up and down, then up and down again.

In the darkness on the far bank, there was an answering flare of light: flash—flash—flash. The men around the Emperor murmured softly; no one had expected their allies to be where they had promised to be. Who expected such things of barbarians? Galen raised a hand and the noise stopped.

"Send a man across with a rope," he said to the centurion standing next to him. The twenty-year man turned and muttered gruffly into the darkness. A moment later two men climbed up the hill, stripped to the waist, with heavy leather belts. The men were well built, with thick chests and arms like wrestlers. Their dark hair was cut very short and their skin gleamed in the torchlight. Galen looked them over and nodded.

The centurion growled at the two. "There's a band of horseflies on the far bank. They have an emissary to speak to the Emperor. Take a line across and bring the fellow back." While he spoke, other legionnaires had snapped a waxed line of heavy cordage onto hooks built into the backs of the leather belts. The two legionnaires saluted and scrambled down through the reeds that lined the water.

"Batavians," the centurion rasped, "swim like eels." His breath puffed white in the cold air. Galen nodded, drawing a heavy wool cloak around his shoulders. Winter was coming. There was a quiet splash, like a frog jumping into the water. The rope began to spool out from the hands of the legionnaires that were holding it.

The Emperor waited patiently in the darkness.

Galen rubbed his eyes wearily. It was late and he had been up since before dawn. Luckily, he sat in a chair a pace back from the heavy goldplated monster of a throne that Heraclius' servants had been lugging over mountain and valley for the last six weeks, and could indulge himself with a yawn. The great tent, fully the size of a villa, was warm too, with hundreds of beeswax candles to light the audience chamber at its heart. The Eastern interpreter was listening intently to the words of a wizened old man in a bright blue shirt with heavy stitching around the collar and embroidery at the cuffs. The old man, with a wisp of white hair around his head and pale-yellow pantaloons, reminded the Western Emperor of a mummer in a traveling show. He smiled a little and turned his attention back to the notes that his secretary had given him of the numbers of wagons that were still sound, of the number of bushels of wheat and barley that remained in stores.

Long ago, when Galen had first opened discussions with the new Emperor of the East, they had struck upon an arrangement by which precedence could be resolved when one of them was in the lands of the other. By Imperial fiat, each had declared the other his
magister militatum
, an old title reserved for the official in charge of the armies of the state. Each Emperor had then agreed to the appointment of a
strategos
who actually performed those functions when the
magister
was absent from his post. Now, with both of them on campaign, Galen found that Heraclius had been serious about his fellow Emperor fulfilling his duties. In truth, it worked well, for Heraclius spent nearly all of his time unraveling political difficulties among his warlords and the local tribesmen, leaving Galen to tend to the army.

The little old man stopped speaking, and the interpreter turned to the Eastern Emperor, who was beginning to fidget on his golden throne.

"
Avtokrator
," said the interpreter, a nobleman from Tarsus that had joined the army at the behest of Prince Theodore, in heavily accented Greek. "The headman blesses your house and your sons and welcomes you to the land of the Armenes. He says, too, that the Persians have many men, many thousands of men in the city. But he knows that the arms of the Rhomanoi are the strongest and that all the land will soon be free of the blight of the Iron Hats."

Heraclius nodded and smoothed his beard. He was weary; the day had been very long. "Tell him, good Proculus, that the Emperor is pleased to receive his friendship. Tell him that he and the other headmen hereabouts will receive many fine gifts from my hand if they are good friends to us. Ask him if he knows who commands the defense of the city across the river, and—more to the point—if there are any other bridges across the river than the one at the city."

The Tarsian nobleman related this in turn to the old Armenian and then the two dickered back and forth for a time, until Heraclius raised an eyebrow at Proculus and the noble bowed deeply to him in apology.

"Great Lord, pardon me. The headman says that it is said that the Persian general known as the Boar commands the defense of the city, and that the men who stand upon its walls wear coats of red and gold. By this I take it that they are Immortals."

Galen looked up at this; he had been listening with half an ear while he made notes for his lieutenants to deploy the men and begin building a fortified camp. The other Eastern officers had stiffened at the mention of the Boar. Pursing his lips, Galen wracked his brain and then remembered: The Boar was the nickname of the foremost Persian general, Shahr-Baraz, a giant of a man who was rumored to have never lost a battle or a fight. The Roman remembered, too, that Heraclius had sent three great armies against the Persians when Chrosoes had begun this war and that the Boar had smashed each in turn. Galen rubbed his jaw, feeling sandpapery stubble under his fingers.
How do these Easterners manage with those beards?
he wondered. The name of the Boar was something to conjure with for the Easterners: the enemy who had never been defeated by their arms.

"Ask the headman," Heraclius said, "if any new men have come to the city of late or have left. Ask him if he has seen General Baraz or if he has only
heard
that he commands here."

Another long session of muttering went back and forth, then Proculus said: "Great Lord, the headman says that three seven-days ago, many of the horsemen left for the south in haste, but that the Boar was not with them. He says that the Boar has been seen often, stalking the battlements of the city with his banner men. He says that he has seen this with his own eyes. No other men have left the city, save for strong bands of the Iron Hats to punish the villages around the city."

Galen looked over at Heraclius at this last. The Eastern Emperor stopped drumming his fingers on the armrest of the throne. "Punish the villages? What occurred that they had to be punished?"

Proculus spread his hands in dismay. "The headman does not know, only that two seven-days ago there was a great clamor in the city. The next morning the Iron Hats rode out in strong companies and raided all of the villages in the valley. Many of the villagers had fled already, hearing strange rumors from their kinsmen in the city, but those who remained were taken hostage and their dwellings burned."

Heraclius raised an eyebrow at this and glanced over at Galen, who shook his head a little.

"Since that time the Iron Hats make a foray each day and take prisoner any of those who are foolish enough to be caught in the open. The headman says that nearly all of the villagers have fled into the hills. No word comes from the gates of Tauris."

Galen frowned and scratched off a line on his wax tablet that read:
native laborers?

The Emperor of the East listened for a little while longer and then dismissed the headman, though the old man was given many gifts of cloth and jewels. Heraclius stood, groaning, and divested himself of the heavy jeweled robe and crown. His servants took these things away.

"What do you think?" Heraclius asked.

Galen looked up and then put his tablets and notes to one side. "I think that my engineers can put a bridge across the river in five or six days, one strong enough to carry horses and wagons. If we're lucky, there's a solid footing well away from the city walls, outside the shot of a heavy engine. The Khazars can cross the river and we can ignore the city."

Heraclius rubbed his nose and frowned at the suggestion. "That would leave a Persian garrison right on top of our line of retreat. They would play Hades with our communications back to Constantinople."

Galen nodded.

"If we have to take the city, brother," he said, "we'll have to build a bridge anyway, to move the army to the other side of the river so that we can invest the walls and begin siege works. That will take even more time, and as you've doubtless noticed, the nights are beginning to chill."

Heraclius sighed and pursed his lips in thought. He signaled to one of his servants for wine.

"The Persians," he said slowly, "built a fine stone bridge across the river, with a bed of bricks and mortar."

The Western Emperor scowled at the Eastern Emperor. Heraclius gratefully accepted a brass cup filled with dusky red wine.

"A fine stone bridge," Galen said, "that runs into a double towered gate at the center of a city occupied by several thousand veteran men as well as militia, and perhaps—just perhaps—this general who has taken down your breeches and given you a whipping three times before. If—if, mind you—we were to try to take the bridge and the gates by assault, it would be my men who would bleed for it."

Heraclius nodded somberly and drained his cup.

"You've the heavy infantry," he said, raising the empty cup in salute, "and the experience. How soon can we make the attempt?"

Galen settled back in his chair and thought. Heraclius downed another cup. The Western Emperor sat forward again and began making notes on his tablets. "I'll need six days to prepare. Then we'll see. I shall need all the men you can give me, or find, for the preparations."

There was a note in his voice that made Heraclius look at him quizzically. Galen arched an eyebrow, but said nothing. A predatory look had entered his eyes. He had the beginnings of a plan. He pulled one of the tablets over to him and made a quick notation,
grease
.