The Storm of Heaven (35 page)

The tower, stripped down to a skeleton of furiously burning logs, fell apart, pelting the men on the ground with red-hot embers and lengths of flaming wood. In the shelter of the archway, Odenathus staggered up, his right hand twisting in the air as he dragged at the power he had gathered around himself. A flickering electric-blue sphere leapt across the space between him and his enemy. There was a burst of light and a crazy display of reflections as the sphere smashed into the Roman shield. The facets darkened and flexed, then sprang back, burning even brighter.

The Palmyrene cursed, wiping his palms on his tunic. Smoke billowed up out of the ruined tower, blocking his view of the wall. Odenathus could feel the vibration of his enemy. It was far too familiar. He mouthed a curse.

Damn that boy! He gets stronger every time we cross swords... Gods, Dwyrin, I don't want to hurt you!

A sharp boom echoed through the
praetorium
. Nicholas' head jerked up and he looked out the nearest window in surprise. It was narrow and barred with iron, but it showed the rooftops of the city and part of the northern wall. The centurion had been deep in conversation with Sextus Verus, the commander of the Roman engineers. Nicholas had begun to worry about the water supplies in the city. The siege was beginning to drag out and it seemed the "desert bandits" weren't going to leave. It might take months for a relieving Roman army to reach them.

"What was that?" Nicholas squinted out the slit of the window. A huge column of smoke rose from the northern gate, but the sound had been much closer. Sextus Verus was staring out the other window of the corner room.

"Centurion! It's the gate here! They're all over the ramp road!"

Nicholas cursed, interrupted by a second boom that made the pens and cups on the table shake. That one was close! Without looking back, the centurion leapt down the narrow flight of stone steps leading to the main floor. Sextus' boots tattled on the stairs behind him.

At the base of the staircase there was a common room, now filled with surprised-looking men and Vladimir, who was wiping his mouth. The Walach slept late. He spent the night prowling the wall outside the city, looking for unwary bandits and stray sheep. He was hungry most of the time, since all he wanted to eat was meat. Nicholas had put everyone on siege rations the very first day and directly controlled all of the grain in the city. They might be down to rats and dogs by the end, but they would not run out of food any sooner than absolutely necessary.

"Attack on the Joppa gate," Nicholas shouted as he ran across the room. "Signal the reserves!"

The men followed with a cry, snatching up weapons and shields. One of the boys that ran messages for the garrison sprinted back up the stairs, heading for the roof of the citadel. Some of the soldiers paused a moment to cram on a helmet, then the whole lot poured out of the main floor of the citadel and into the square. Other men, citizens, were running towards the gate as well, scrawny hands wrapped around makeshift spears or scythes. Some few had crude round shields and swords.

Aelia Capitolina was cursed with a polyglot population of locals, Syrians, Egyptians, Arabs, Roman settlers and vagrants. Hardly anyone could call it the city of their fathers. Despite fierce proscriptions, a number of odd religious cults remained active in the area, and many of their adherents had fled into the city with the approach of the Arab army. Luckily for Nicholas, a large number of legionaries had been settled here as part of an Imperial effort to "pacify" the province. Those men were old, but they still remembered how to be soldiers.

They and their sons held the northern wall. Many of the other denizens of the old city refused to fight at all, hiding in their homes behind locked and barricaded doors. Nicholas sometimes wished that he had the troops to root them out and expel them from the city, but he dared not fight a civic insurrection as well.

A violent crashing echoed out of the gatehouse as Nicholas skidded to a halt in the gloom under the gate. Sunlight suddenly flooded the dark chamber as the gate splintered open. The centurion cursed violently and slipped
Brunhilde
from her sheath with a singing rasp. The iron head of a large ram crashed through, throwing metal studs and heavy wood to the floor in a clatter. Nicholas caught a brief glimpse of the roadway outside the shattered door. It was thick with green turbans and round shields.

"Form shield wall!" Nicholas kicked debris away with his boots. He spared an instant to praise the Walküre for watching over him this day and reminding him on waking to kit out in full armor. Men surged in from the sunlight, leaping over the scattered wood. The ram retired, hauled back by a dozen brawny arms. Nicholas leapt forward,
Brunhilde's
hilts in both hands, and slashed the tip of her blade across the face of the first men swarming through the opening.

They were blinded for a moment, coming out of the sun and into the close darkness of the gatehouse. Unfortunately for Nicholas, it was a poorly designed structure, allowing the road to run straight into the city without so much as a dogleg or a second, interior gate.

The double-forged tip of the sword, razor sharp, sheared through the faces of the first three men, shattering bone and cartilage, spraying blood along its path in a flat hard arc. All three screamed horribly and toppled back. They fouled the men trying to push through the gate. Nicholas jumped in, ignoring the wounded men, and
Brunhilde
blurred down, shattering the helm of the next man with a ringing
clang
. The northern steel, birthed in Nebelungen forges, cut into the soft hand-forged iron like an adze into wood. The soldier convulsed, blood flooding out of his helmet. Nicholas wrenched the blade away, deforming the helmet and flinging it off into the crowd of men outside the gate.

Spears jabbed and there was suddenly a thicket of shields in front of him. Behind the green-turbaned soldiers, Nicholas caught sight of a thick-shouldered man shouting commands. The spearmen lurched forward as one, pressed by their comrades pouring up the slope outside. Nicholas skipped back, batting aside two spears snaking for his gut.

Then Vladimir was at his side, yowling his high-pitched war cry and swinging a heavy-bladed ax. It bit into the first shield and Nicholas tore his attention away. Another spear glanced from his breastplate and he twisted to one side.
Brunhilde
slashed down, splintering wood and hewing through two spear shafts. Another spear ground into his side and he gasped, feeling the point dig into the center of a mail link. Blood welled out, but Nicholas was past feeling any pain. Vladimir had retreated as well, fending off five or six spearmen with vicious sweeps of the ax.

"Shields, forward!" Sextus Verus' voice rang off the arched ceiling of the gatehouse.

Legionaries pushed past, their rectangular
scutum
covering them from ankle to chest. Nicholas felt them part, letting him fall back through them, and then there was an unholy racket as the Roman soldiers came to grips with the Arabs in the passage. Behind their interlocking wall of shields, the legionaries pushed in close, their short swords flickering in the space between the two lines of men.

More Arabs poured in, hacking overhand with their swords and trying to push forward with their spears. The Romans held in the passage, stabbing swords reaping a bloody harvest in the tight space. A second rank of Romans pushed past Nicholas, who squeezed back, his face slick with blood, to the square. He knew what would happen now. The legionaries would do their butcher's work in the gatehouse until the Arabs tired of dying. The critical moment had passed.

Vladimir was at his side, his bushy black beard thick with gore. The ax head was slick too.

"A nice wakeup." The Walach grinned. Nicholas could feel the eagerness in the man. "To the wall?"

"Yes," Nicholas said, pushing away from the cold stone. He needed to see what was happening in the city. Was this the only attack? There were barely enough Romans in the city to watch the whole length of the wall, much less repel multiple assaults.

Vladimir took the steps to the battlement three at a time, though Nicholas was beginning to shiver from the aftereffects of the fight in the passage. When he got to the top of the stairs, he looked around in surprise. The sun was full in the sky and the white stones were already throwing back a shimmering heat. Cautiously, he peered around one of the merlons on the wall. The road below was swarming with men in desert robes,
kaffiyeh
twined with green cloth, swords and spears shining in the sun like a forest of silver. A sling-stone immediately spalled off the masonry and Nicholas ducked back, cursing.

"Archers!" he shouted down into the square. "Archers!"

A column of men with bows was running into the square even as he called out. Nicholas kept the reserve down at the center of the city, with boys squatting on the domed roof of the tetrapylon to watch for signals from the north gate, the
praetorium
, the temple of Jupiter or the tower at the Dung gate. At a full run, it took the lightly armored men of the reserves ten minutes to reach any portion of wall from the crossroads.

Vladimir howled down at the Arabs below the wall, shaking his ax at them. Someone below shot an arrow and the Walach jumped back, still grinning. "Pity the boy isn't here, he would slaughter them down there."

Nicholas waved the first archers coming up the stairs to the arrow ports. "There's only one of him, Vlad, and they attacked here after they fixed his position at the northern gate. You heard his thunder, just like I did."

Nicholas felt very tired. How long could they get by with this piecemeal defense?

The archers, mostly local kids with hunting bows and shepherds with slings, began shooting down into the press on the road. A cloud of arrows came hissing back, but the defenders had some advantage. A horn blew, clear and strong, and there were stentorian shouts from below. Nicholas risked another look over the wall. The Arabs were scrambling down the slope in a tan-and-green wave. A rear guard of men with shields backed away from the gate. Nicholas' eyes narrowed, seeing the thick-shouldered man in their midst, still shouting orders. They were withdrawing in good order, and swiftly too.

There's a commander,
he thought,
mayhap even a general.

The road below the walls emptied quickly and Nicholas spit a long series of curses when he saw they left it barren. No bodies, no fallen swords or spears. That was disheartening, since the citizens in the city were desperately short of armor and any kind of edged weapon. The loot from the abortive attack on the north gate had let him equip a good twenty men. There were forges inside the walls, and men skilled in making arms, but almost no iron stock to work from.

"Ah, Vlad... this is a real army. Where in Hel did it come from? Sextus! Where is that man?"

The centurion in charge of the engineers' cohort came up the steps. He was sweating. It didn't look like he had seen any combat, which was good because Nicholas had ordered him to stay out of any fighting. His technical skills were what they needed, not his sword arm.

"Yes, sir?"

Nicholas pointed with his chin to the gatehouse. "Fill in the gateway. Levy the locals for workers, but get it done today."

The engineer raised an eyebrow, though the skeptical expression was mostly lost in the ragged bangs of his hair. "Entirely?"

Nicholas nodded.

"Will a facing wall with dirt behind it be enough, or should we try and brick the whole thing in?"

"Whatever you can get done today," Nicholas said, watching the enemy flit through the orchards in the valley below. "Then do the same thing for the northern gate. Block it all up. We're not going to be sallying forth in brave panoply anytime soon."

Sextus sighed and turned away, shoulders slumped with weariness. His work crews had already been stretched to the limit by the effort to get the wall itself in order. And now this?

No rest for the wicked,
thought the engineer glumly.

Jalal strode through the Sahaba camp, face black with rage. Night was falling and the western sky was a sheet of plum and pale pink, striated with thin clouds. The campfires threw long shadows over rows of wounded men. Entire detachments had been wiped out today. A moaning, sobbing sound rose in cacophony around the general. At the entrance to the command tent, there was a cluster of guardsmen. Jalal seized the captain of the guard by his cloak and dragged him out into the twilight.

"See these men?" The guard captain, half choked, managed to nod. His hands clawed futilely at the bowman's thick wrists. "Take your men and cut the throat of every man badly burned. Now!"

Jalal threw the man to the ground, his face transfixed with rage. The guard captain stared up at him in horror. "Kill... kill them?"

"Yes," Jalal snarled, kicking the man in the side. "Unless you've a caravan of healer priests in tow, they will all die out here, slowly and in terrible pain. They have fallen in the service of Lord Mohammed and by all accounts they will make a swift passage to paradise. So, go!"

The man scrambled up, holding his throat. Jalal stared at him, terrible fury plain in his face, until the guard captain turned away, drawing his sword. Then the general entered the command tent. At one point the tent—acquired from the defeated Romans—had boasted a saffron-yellow awning. That had been cut into regular lengths and traded for fodder and grain for the pack animals that dragged the army wagons. Jalal did not believe in luxury as an end in itself.

At the center of the tent was a portable wooden table inlaid with an ivory mosaic showing the towns and cities of the Eastern Empire. Jalal had kept this particular piece of booty. Some expensive things were tools rather than distractions. Uri Ben-Sarid, head low in exhaustion, armor and clothing caked with dust and blood, was standing on one side of the table. Most of his hair had been burned away and bandages swathed the side of his face. Opposite him, seated on a camp stool with his head in his hands, was the Palmyrene youth Odenathus.