The Storm of Heaven (3 page)

"Your son is beautiful, daughter. I see him standing by the fire, light gleaming on his limbs."

The Queen stiffened, feeling the air grow chill. She raised her head sharply, nostrils flaring at the languid voice in the darkness. There was a woman, there in the shadow, just beyond the edge of the light. A rustle of cloth and a flash of white caught the Queen's eye as a hood was drawn back.

"Who...? I know you." The Queen's voice turned brittle and hard. "Why are you here?"

Laughter drifted, dying leaves in the fall, cascading down on chill autumn air. "You need me, Pharaoh, to save your son and your dream."

A hand came out of the darkness, thin and elegant, with long, tapering nails. Their surface winked in the dim firelight, glossy and black. Thin gold bracelets jingled a little as the woman stepped closer. The Queen raised her own hand sharply, though the imperious gesture seemed futile against the presence in the darkness. "I will not give him to you. I did not summon you. Go away."

The figure stopped and paused, and the Queen sensed a lean head turning in the night, considering her. A faint wind began to rise, brushing the Queen's curls and softly fluttering the silk draped around her shoulders. Pale red caught in the eye of the figure, gleaming with the bare echo of one of the bonfires.

"Then he will die, spitted on the blades of your enemies, or strangled in some cold cell. Is this your desire? To see your son placed on a pyre of scented wood? To see the flames leap up around his beautiful face?"

The Queen shuddered, feeling her gown cold as a shroud under her fingers.

"Give him to me," hissed the darkness, "and he will grow strong and powerful. He will learn many arts lost to the race of men... everything that you dreamed for him will come true..."

"No!" The Queen ran. Sand sprayed away from her feet, but the cold breath on her neck gave her feet wings.

Behind her, far from the firelight, a figure moved, gathering its consorts. Silently, on padded feet, they went away in the night. The pale woman turned on the height above the town, looking down upon the dim lights in the windows and the torches burning on the steps of the temples.

"So did old Pelias run," the woman mused, amusement stealing over her. "When his daughters came singing, bearing a cauldron of ruddy, red iron..." She settled her cloak on thin shoulders and turned her face to the stars in the dark sky, smiling.

"This is it! Form up by ranks, you lot!"

Colonna, centurion of the Third Cyrene, wiped his face with a dirty white cloth wound around his helmet. The sun had risen only moments ago, wallowing up huge and pale orange in the eastern sky, but the air was already hot. The Roman tried to spit but his mouth was too dry. Around him, legionaries staggered to their feet, strapping on belts and pulling on rivet-studded helms.

Dust puffed into the sky, forming a slow-moving, yellowish cloud over the stirring army. Orders had come before dawn, and Colonna, at least, had seen his men fed before the chill of night fell away. Thousands of soldiers shuffled into formation on dry grass and stony ground. Mindful of the flags of his
banda
commander, Colonna walked along the line of his men. He kept his face grim and impassive, but in his heart he sighed, seeing painfully young faces squinting out from under metal helmets.

A fresh army;
those were the words that the Imperial Prince Theodore had used when they had first landed at the great port of Caesarea Maritima, down on the Judean coast.
One destined for victory and glory.

"You men, listen close." Colonna stopped, settling a hard glare on his face. He scowled at the legionaries in his squad and paced slowly back down the line. They were fit enough, with kit barely a year old and clean weapons. Their ranks were trim; his hobnailed boot had been on their backsides enough in the last month. The baby fat was gone, burned away in the Syrian sun as the Imperial Army marched endlessly, searching for the enemy.

"This is the day. No more running up hill and down valley, trying to bring these bastards to heel. This is the day they stand and fight."

Colonna half turned, shading watery-blue eyes with a sunburned hand. He looked east, squinting in the glare of the morning sun. The land was open and uneven, marked with tumbled hills of black rock and shallow washes filled with scrawny trees. A slight slope descended from the Imperial camp, down toward a dry watercourse. Beyond that an equally gentle slope rose up, thick with tufted grass and scattered fist-sized stones. There, anchored by a high tor of crumbling black rock on the left, and by the edge of the plateau on the right, massed the enemy. A lone outcropping of dark stone rose up just behind the enemy's right wing.

The centurion pointed, one cracked finger stabbing at the foe.

"Look, lads." His voice was soft and some of the men bent forward to hear him. "There they are, this
rabble
that we have chased about, these
bandits
that the Prince rails against. Do you see them?"

None of the men turned to look. Colonna had a quick reward for rash action!

"Arrayed in ranks, four divisions, with flags and banners and horns. Half our number, if that... Do you see them? They stand ready for battle. We are still knocking the sleep from our eyes yet they are already in battle line..."

The
ouragos
sighed, settling the
lorica
of overlapping iron scales on his shoulders, blunt fingertips brushing over his sword, his bow case, the edge of his layered oaken shield. The
scutum's
painted leather cover was freshly oiled and he hoped it would not crack in the heat of battle. There would be a struggle today.

A deep note sounded in the air, the drone of a bucina in the hands of one of the signalers.

"Squad, face forward!" Colonna tugged the cheek plates of his helmet down and tightened them snug under his chin in one motion. "Ready at the walk!"

All around the centurion, the Roman army was in motion, shaking out into line of battle, men jogging slowly forward in great square blocks. Cavalry thundered past, raising more dust. The horsemen wore long striped robes and chainmail glinted beneath. Thin lances lay across the shoulders of the horses. Within a moment, the Ghassanid auxiliaries were gone, trotting down the slope, angling towards the left.

Colonna looked sideways, seeing the flags of his
banda
commander rise and fall. He raised a hand and chopped it towards the enemy. "Forward!"

"Lord of the Wasteland, O power that raises the wind and moves the stars in their courses, strength that brings the crop from barren ground, I submit myself to your will. You have spoken from the clear air, and I have listened. Now, our enemy is before us; now our strength will test his. In your hands, I leave victory or defeat. I am your servant, fill me with your desire."

The man bent his seamed forehead to a plain rug laid down on the rocky soil. For a moment he rested there, feeling the peace of early morning. He put from his mind the rising sound of men and horses and metal clattering against metal. He closed his ears to shouted commands and hooves thudding on the ground. In his mind he cradled the silence of the predawn air, when he walked alone among the sleeping men, feeling the wind rising in the east, rushing over the land, fleeing the coming sun.

In a single smooth movement he rose, drawing up the rug with a thick, scarred hand. He blinked, unseeing, and minded only the business of brushing dirt and grass stems from the woven fabric in his hand. When he was done, he smoothed down his beard, ruefully fingering thick tendrils of white creeping among the black. His body still felt young and strong, thick with muscle and hardened by long years of travel on the fringes of the Empire, but his beard was that of an elder, a chieftain...

Fool!
he chided himself.
You
are
a chieftain now, a king...

"Lord Mohammed?" The voice was low, but the man smiled at its soft, husky quality and the carrying power hiding within. He turned, raising a bushy eyebrow in question. "Yes, Lady Zoë?"

The young woman matched his gaze, dark brown eyes narrowing in suspicion. For a moment she considered him and he could tell that his good humor had put her on edge. Then she plunged ahead, pushing aside her fear that he was mocking her. "You rise each morning to greet the sun, praying to your god?"

Mohammed nodded, stowing the rug behind the saddle on his flea-bitten gray mare. "I do."

"What do you say?"

Frowning, Mohammed turned and looked around, seeing that a large number of his Tanukh were loitering near, just out of earshot. The men, seeing that he glanced their way, feigned indifference, bending to their tasks. Some were speaking softly with their horses, hands moving slowly on glossy brown necks, or checking over weapons and armor. Nearly all were garbed in long desert robes of white and tan laid over green coats. Some, like the massive Jalal, had wrapped their helmets with twined cloth. They had come a long way from the ragged, hungry band of men fleeing with Mohammed out of dying Palmyra. Strength and purpose were apparent in the surety of their movements, in their quiet voices.

"I say that which is in my heart, Zoë."

The young Palmyrene woman frowned, her patrician nose wrinkling. Unconsciously, she brushed a curling tendril of rich dark hair back from her cheek. Inwardly, Mohammed sighed to see her tuck it back into the folds of cloth cushioning her curving steel helmet. Like his companions, the Sahaba, she was armed with a long, straight cavalry sword and clad in armor of iron rings sewn to a leather backing. Like them, she would fight today, pitting her strength against the enemy.

Such a maiden should not carry anger like a cracked water urn,
he thought sadly.

"Does this god hear you?"

"The Lord of the Empty Places hears all things, Zoë. He fills the world."

"Does he..." Zoë paused, her eyes troubled, lips pressed into a line. "Does he answer?"

Mohammed nodded, his rugged face suddenly lighting from within with a smile. Fine white teeth flashed in the thicket of his dark beard and he saw her relax minutely. "He does, my friend."

Mohammed pressed the flat of his hand against the center of Zoë's chest. The thick iron rings were still a little cold from the night air. "Here, in true silence, you can hear the voice from the clear air. Take a little time each day and listen. If you can still your own thoughts, if you can calm your heart and put your fears aside, you will hear it. It sings, calling like a dove..."

Zoë blushed, her fingers darting towards his hand, then away, falling stiff to her side. Mohammed quelled his smile and took his hand away.

"Come, there will be battle today." He strode up the hill, mindful of the loose black rock covering the slope. Tents waited, just beyond the crest, and a banner fluttered above them, a green field marked by a crescent moon and a sword.

"It is a strong position," Jalal growled. The stocky Tanukh commander had plaited his hair into four long braids, and two of them hung down nearly to the surface of the map table. His knuckles, glassy with scars, rested on the table like the roots of ancient trees.

"It is a trap," the younger man said, lean and fine-boned like a hunting bird, with a deep-hooded robe of rich cloth thrown back from broad shoulders. "Look at the ground! Bounded on one side by cliffs that plunge a hundred feet or more to the bed of the Wadi Ruqqad. On the other, there is a swath of ground so broken and rough that our camels can barely pass, much less these soft-hooved Roman horses. Behind their camp is
another
ravine crossed by a single bridge. He has put his neck in a noose!"

"All that means, O most noble Lord Khalid, is that we must confront the enemy head-on, across a frontage
he
has the men to cover, while we do not."

Khalid shook his head in dismay and made a show of rising from his camp chair. He flicked his robes into order and smoothed dark blue silk down over a fine Persian mail shirt. The young man glanced sidelong at the older Tanukh and stifled a smile. "I wonder, Lord Jalal, why it is, if the Roman position is so strong, that we are the ones outside and they are the ones inside. They outnumber us, conservatively, by four to one. They have better arms and armor and far more cavalry. Their heavy horse, these
cataphracts
, these mounted armored bowmen, are rightly feared throughout the world. Did they not crush the might of the Persian empire just two years ago?"

Jalal bridled at the sneering tone in Khalid's voice and his eyes narrowed. The young commander grinned back at him, silently daring the older man to violence.

The door to the tent parted and Mohammed entered, with Zoë hard on his heels. Jalal stood back from the table, relieved, and made a sharp nod in greeting. "Lord Mohammed, good morning."

Mohammed ignored the tension in the air and looked idly from man to man. Khalid bowed in greeting and reclaimed his seat. Jalal also stepped away from the folding wooden table, taking his place with the other Tanukh on the opposite side. Mohammed marked the way in which the other men—the lieutenants and chieftains and petty kings—arranged themselves into familiar groups by clan and nation.

"Good morning," he said to the assembled men.

The table was covered with tattered papyrus scrolls. Mohammed leaned over the maps, pushing some aside. Luckily, his travels as a caravan master had taken him along the Roman roads tying the Empire together. He had crossed this highland plain before, coming up from the coast and heading for Damascus. Thick fingers smoothed his beard as he considered the sketch maps Khalid's scouts had devised.

"Al'Walid," he said, after a time, "you count the enemy numbers at forty-five thousand."

Khalid leaned forward, his dark eyes bright. He nodded sharply. "Yes, lord. The better parts of five legions face us, bolstered by auxiliaries and mercenaries of various sorts. My men have been in and out of their camps several times, garbed as their local scouts. I am sure of their strength, down to the count of horses lamed and the men sick from bad water or the sun."