The Storm of Heaven (5 page)

"Good," the Prince interrupted. "Then I don't need to explain. If we had time and leisure, I would bid you stay, and watch the battle as it unfolds." The Prince's voice changed in timbre, becoming cold and commanding. "But you, sir, are absent from your command. Get yourself back to the left flank and get your lancers and
cataphracts
sorted out! In a little while, the enemy will be fully engaged along our front, yet our superior numbers will allow us to spill round his left. That is your task, Vahan, get to it!"

Theodore motioned with his head to the nearest of the Faithful and the Armenian found a pair of blond giants at his elbows. They grinned. Vahan swore under his breath and reined his horse around. The Scandians stepped back, long axes across their shoulders.

"They will not stand to face us today, Lord Prince," Vahan barked. "Why should they? The desert is their sanctuary..."

Why indeed?
Theodore had pondered the issue for weeks, while his forces mustered on the plateau. He had chosen his camp carefully. There was good water year-round. Below the cliffs to the south ran the main road to Damascus. Other roads converged from the north. Here on the heights above the Sea of Galilee was the turning point of the entire defense of Judea and southern Syria. The Prince was sure he wanted battle, his full strength gathered. Did the bandits?
They seem to, having come out in force, in full array, to face me.

"Boleslav, attend me!"

The captain of the Faithful stomped up, a single-bladed ax slung carelessly over one mighty shoulder. The Northman was nearly six and a half feet tall and built like a mountain. Even the steadily growing heat did not seem to touch him.
"Ja?"

Theodore leaned from his horse, his mouth close to the Northman's conical helmet. "Have word sent to the thaumaturges. Tell them to begin their working."

Boleslav nodded, thick neck sliding like the gearing of a water mill.
"Ja, altjarl."

Zoë jogged down the slope, riding boots sliding among the stones and scrub. A single plait of her hair bounced on the back of her armor. The sleeves of her robe were tied up to keep her arms free. Mohammed remained on the boulder, high above the line of battle. Regiments of her clansmen squatted at the base of the hillock, banners furled and kaftans pulled over their faces. The men of Palmyra respected the sun. Water skins passed along the lines of men.

She came to a halt, senses filled with a slowly rising hum of sorcery building in the valley. "Do you feel it?"

Odenathus nodded in greeting and acknowledgment. "I do," he said. His long face, darkened like hers by the sun, was pensive. "They're not messing about today."

Zoë shaded her eyes and stared across the swale at the Roman camp. There, among the stunted trees and tamarisk, she could make out the rectangle of a Legion marching camp and, just outside the palisade, a circle of staves and withes marking the tents of the thaumaturges.

"There must be at least twenty battle masters," Odenathus continued, his voice steady. "Plus the usual apprentices and journeymen. Almost double the usual complement to a Legion force of this size." The Palmyrene's face was grim and his hands moved restlessly on the hilt of his sword.

"Yes," Zoë said, distracted, "they must have borrowed from the other legions, maybe the ones in Persia. The Prince wants to make a big show..."

Closing her eyes, Zoë settled her mind, letting the heat and the dry wind and the sound of flies recede. It was difficult. The air was charged with anticipation and fear. Odenathus was worried and she could smell the fear-tang in his sweat. Her own armor was heavy and the bindings bit into her skin. She breathed out slowly, measuring the intake of air to the beat of her heart. She knelt, the pommel of her sword pressed against her forehead. The sensation helped her focus, let her mind block out the
sensi
constantly flooding her sight, hearing, taste and touch.

Faintly, she felt Odenathus kneel beside her, and the whisper of his thought.

Zoë let the image of a wheel form in her mind. This came of its own accord, from long practice, and with it, as the wheel spun and brightened and grew larger, she felt the last distractions of the physical world fall away. An old friend called this the Entrance of Hermes, and once told her, as they sat beside a high mountain stream, road-weary feet cooling in the chill blue-white water, that he imagined it as the eye of Horus, coming up out of unguessable depths. First, he had said, it was a single bright mote in an abyss of darkness. But then, as it rushed closer, it became larger and brighter. At last, as it came very close, it was enormous, bigger than a house, a burning eye trailing sparks. Once it rushed over you, once it consumed you in cold fire, you had passed the first entrance to the hidden world.

Zoë invoked the image of a wheel of fire, but the effect was the same. When it whirled over her, her mind was freed of the physicality of the senses. Her hidden sight opened and she beheld the valley in its true form.

For a moment, before asserting a pattern of symbolism fitting her waking mind, she beheld a shining void, filled with millions of hurrying lights. The streambed below was a slow blue surge coiling and twisting across a ghostly landscape. Thousands of men moving on the slope were sparkling motes. The horses thudding across the dusty ground, delicate traceries of living fire. Arrayed across the enemy camp was a shining wall of gold. Symbols danced across its surface, forming out of the rainbow shimmer, then disappearing again. Her perception shied away from the abyss of the sky, for the blue vault and thin white clouds were gone, leaving only an infinite depth filled with a haze of burning spheres.

Sweat beaded on her forehead and she summoned up a second image, the first in a swift succession of patterns. This was the second entrance, where the adept, the sorcerer, brought forth from his hidden mind a series of symbols and patterns that allowed the manipulation and perception of the hidden world without going mad.

That raw sky, the unfettered vision of the truth of the world, was too much for the human mind. Even in the brief instant Zoë stared into the abyss of light, she had felt the core of her being begin to dissolve, losing the unique identity that made her Zoë, Queen of Palmyra.

A flower box unfolded before her, expanding into a constantly growing pattern of planes and forms. Each facet gleamed with a single pure color, bright enough to hurt the eye. At the heart, where the wheel of fire spun and hissed, a shining trapezohedron emerged. The people of her city, though they were born and bred of the desert, thought of themselves as Greeks. "The heir of Athens," they called fair Palmyra under the reign of the first Zenobia. Poets and sages, mathematicians and astrologers flocked to her golden court.

Zoë's teachers were mathematicians, geometricists. They instilled their own symbology in her. The trapezohedron tore, then reknit, becoming a dodecahedron. Now her mind settled and familiar reality asserted itself. The hills had shape and solidity; Odenathus, still at her side, now seemed a mortal man, not a thing of fire. But the golden wall remained and the sky was filled with the tracery of power and intent.

"The thaumaturges are attacking?" Zoë was startled. The Eastern Empire prided itself on the strength of its wizards, but their skill had always been turned to defense.

"They have learned from the Western mages," Odenathus rasped. "We must work quickly."

Zoë rose, her mind finding her cousin's thought waiting. They had been trained in a swift, harsh school, under the tutelage of the Legion during the Persian war. Now the circle closed. Zoë extended her will and meshed with Odenathus. Together they turned to face the valley. Power from the rocks and stone, from the air, from water buried deep underground, flowed into them. Their own matrices and hidden shapes began to build.

Here they come,
Odenathus thought, and flame boiled out of the golden wall, licking across the ranks of Arab and Decapolis troops. Zoë knew that the men could see nothing, maybe only feel unease, a sour taste in the air. She put forth her strength, lashing out with a deep blue arc of light that hewed into the red fire. The tendril of power recoiled, flickering back into the safety of the shield wavering beyond the streambed.

Thunder grumbled in a clear sky, and the Arab soldiers, still waiting in the hot sun, looked up in surprise.

"Allau Akbar!"
The sky rang with the massed cry of four thousand throats.

Colonna felt the earth shake as the Arab cavalry hurtled towards the front rank of the legionaries. In the instant before the shock of contact, the centurion bellowed
Ground
and
Lock shields!
The first line of soldiers went down on one knee and grounded their rectangular shields. The second rank stepped up, shields held high, spears a thicket of iron. The Arab chargers slewed aside at the last moment, the desert-men turning in their saddles to fling javelins at a dozen paces. The entire charge slid sideways along the Roman front, the riders howling a battle cry as they hurled into the closely packed Romans.

The heavy darts pincushioned the shields, some tearing straight through the heavy laminate. Some of the legionaries in the front ranks fell, their throats pierced, gushing bright red blood onto the ground.

"Loose!" Colonna screamed.

Behind the first four ranks of Romans, two lines of men cocked their shoulders and flung their javelins. The heavy wooden shafts, capped with triangular iron heads, whipped through the air and tore into the ranks of the Arabs as they wheeled away. Dozens of riders fell, light leather and mail armor pierced by the heavy bolts. More horses screamed and bucked, or fell heavily onto the sandy ground.

Colonna hissed in triumph. "Halt fire and re-form!"

"Advance!" The Romans untangled their shields and shook out their line, orderlies dragging the dead and wounded away from the front rank. Men from the second and third ranks stepped up, their shields filling the gaps. The legion advanced a pace at a time.

The Arab horsemen withdrew in a cloud of dust, robes flapping in the wind of their passage. Gravel spattered on the faces of the shields, making a sound like rain on a roof of wooden shingles. The legionaries pressed up the hill at a steady pace. Dust settled out of the air, coating their faces. The swirl of javelineers faded back, while other riders in black robes with green flashing swept in. These men had long bows made from cane. Single arrows snapped through the air. Colonna ducked aside again and cursed, realizing that the screening force was shooting for officers.

"O, Lord of the Wasteland, fill me with your strength."

Mohammed ignored the battle spreading up the slope below him. Six months before, he would have been a-horse, riding hard along the line, directing his squadrons and regiments into battle. Clan standards would have fluttered at his shoulder. Messengers would have been rushing up to him, looking for orders, carrying word from the flanks. Today, Khalid and Jalal bore that burden. He could feel the shape of the battle, though, and there was a trill of fear in his heart.

The Romans advanced steadily, hobnailed sandals eating up the long slope a pace at a time. Their numbers overlapped the Arab line, too, and soon the right flank might be overwhelmed. He was not worried about his left wing, anchored against the cliffs lining the edge of the plateau. Horses thundered past, making black pebbles on the top of the boulder quiver and dance. Mohammed pressed his hands against the decaying lava, feeling the strength in the earth.

"We go forth against your enemies. Our faith is strong and we abide by the laws that you have laid down to govern the lives of men."

He sang to himself, reciting the prayers that had come to him while he had lain exposed on the summit of An'Nour. The voice from the clear air had spoken, showing him the movement of the stars in their courses, revealing the passage of cranes and ravens in the sky. Now it steadied his mind as he opened himself to the shining power that filled the world.

"We submit ourselves to your will, O Lord of the World. Give us strength."

Grains of sand and dust spattered against the back of Mohammed's cloak. Blood seeped from beneath his fingernails as they dug into the ancient, corroded rock.

Sweat poured from Zoë's face and neck, soaking the doublet and cotton shirt under her armor. Her mind was far away from her body, struggling in the unseen world. Her eyes stared, sightless, across a broad valley filled with a vast cloud of dust. Fire burned openly in the sky, hidden powers revealed as they strove in the air above the knots of men grappling on the desert floor.

Together, as they had been trained, Zoë and Odenathus invoked a wheel of burning white and sent it, spinning, into the midst of half-seen forms rushing forth from the wall of gold. Lightning rippled into the dust cloud where the powers met, and the two Palmyrenes staggered, their faces flushed with heat, at the impact. Barely a hundred yards away, the lines of the Decapolis infantry were locked in a din of combat with the Legion.

Zoë, risking the loss of her connection to Odenathus, dropped out of their battle-meld.

The rebel city-dwellers were being pushed back, phalanx bulging between their line and the Ben-Sarid tribesmen on the right. A wedge of Roman helmets was in the gap, their swords and spears flashing with blood. The city-dwellers were fighting hard, but they were not professionals. Luckily, the citizens of the Decapolis were blessed with good, heavy armor and new weapons. Zoë wiped sweat from her eyes. She looked around, seeing the block of Palmyrene exiles still holding their position, making a hedge of steel and iron around the two sorcerers.

"Hadad!" It took a moment to summon enough spit to make her voice work. The commander of the Palmyrene swordsmen jerked around, his face pale with worry.

"My lady!" Hadad scurried over to her, his pale, thin face barely visible in the heavy visored iron helmet strapped to his head. Like most of the men gathered on the slope, he was wearing scaled armor under a surcoat of white and gold, and had a long sword at his side and a round shield slung over his shoulder. "I feared to wake you, but the Gerasans are falling back; we should move you to safety!"