The Dark Lord

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Somewhere in the Nile Delta, West of Bousiris

Horns blew wildly in the dawn, followed by the shouts of men and the wail of bucinas. Aurelian jerked awake, eyes burning with fatigue. Without waiting for his servants, he snatched up a well-worn leather scabbard leaning against his field cot and ducked out into a thin, gray morning. Two of his Praetorians stood tensely outside the tent, armor pitted with rust and scored from a dozen affrays. Their beards were matted and foul-even Aurelian's clung greasily to his face. Both men were wounded, but they stared down the road with glittering eyes, blades drawn and ready. The fighting will of the Roman army might be bent, but it had not yet broken. The prince looked east, seeing the edge of the rising sun shimmering through heavy, mist-streaked air.

Fire bloomed beyond a line of palms and olives, billowing up into the dark morning sky. A flat crump followed; the sharp, explosive sound muddied by the air. Aurelian could see the mist blow back, pressed by an invisible hand. All around the prince, weary legionaries woke from nightmare-haunted sleep. The army lay sprawled across stubbled fields, sleeping in culverts or huddled under dirty, stained tents. Men rose in the low-lying mist, blinking, hands on weapons even before they were fully awake.

"They're attacking at the main crossing," one of the Praetorians said, shading his eyes against the pink glare of the rising sun. The man slapped the side of his face, crushing a dozen feathery mosquitoes drinking along the edge of a half-healed scar. A bright smear of blood trailed into his beard as he wiped the dead insects away.

"Stand ready!" Aurelian called to bannermen and signalers still rubbing sleep from their eyes. He took care to speak clearly. His voice had been reduced to a hoarse rasp. The usual crowd of aides, messengers, standard-bearers and aquilifer-men had dwindled to two or three walking wounded. The rest were dead, missing or detached to other cohorts as replacements. "Signal the ready reserve to move up on the far left."

Aurelian's servants emerged from the tent, carrying his baggage and armor. Without orders, they began breaking down the pavilion. The army would retreat again today and they wasted no time in packing up and moving west along the rutted farm road. The prince held his arms out, letting his remaining aide slide a grimy, rust-stained cuirass over his tunic. He buckled the straps himself, listening to the slowly mounting sound of battle in the east. Another sharp boom rippled across the fields, coupled with a column of flame and oily black smoke.

"Bring something I can stand on," he called, the armor tight across his chest. The last servant handed him a dented cavalry helmet and he pulled the strap snug under his chin. By now the dozen Praetorians and guardsmen remaining in the camp stood nearby, bundles of carefully hoarded javelins over their shoulders. The servants were gone, trudging west under heavy loads.

Two of the Germans grunted, pushing a farm cart up the track, boots slipping in thin, silty mud. Aurelian climbed aboard, then onto a rickety, worm-eaten wooden seat. He peered east, bleary eyes searching the sky for the telltale ripple of a thaumaturgic blow. For the moment, though roiling columns of flame and smoke obscured the view, he saw nothing out of the ordinary. No phantoms, no colossal beasts spitting fire.

Through the trees, he could make out the edge of the river. The water was beginning to shine as the sun rose. Persians-recognizable at this distance by their sunflower banners and tall helmets-advanced in a loose line towards the edge of the orchard. Aurelian could see legionaries crouched among the trees, waiting for the enemy to come into javelin range. Beyond them, the prince saw the barricade at the old bridge crossing burning furiously.

Just like yesterday and the day before yesterday, he thought grimly, shifting his attention to the left. The Persians had developed a frustratingly efficient means of advancing against the Legion opposition. Aurelian's troops would deploy behind a natural barrier-in these swampy lowlands a canal, tributary arm of the Nile or marsh-and dig in with spade and mattock, throwing up a rampart faced with stakes. The Persians would advance, encounter the barrier, then fell back. The next day, or perhaps the day after, the excrement-faced mobehedan sorcerers would savage the Roman fortifications with fire and lightning and ghastly phantoms. While the legionaries suffered and died, unable to strike back, a heavy flanking attack would be launched to the left or right, wherever the ground was more suitable. After a sharp engagement, the Romans would be forced to retreat.

Aurelian could count the number of Legion thaumaturges still alive on the fingers of both hands. The levies from the Egyptian temples had been slaughtered in the debacle at Pelusium. Those priests still living had been sent back to Alexandria a week ago, most of them wounded, in mule-drawn carts. The prince fought this hellish, vermin-infested delaying action without sorcerous support. He'd never seen such casualties. Those burned by the foul green flame were the worst-many lived through the blow, but there was no way the Legion healers could tend to them all. More than once, Aurelian had ordered the wounded slain as a mercy. In this dank air, filled with swarming clouds of gnats and flies, men's wounds suppurated in a day and gangrene set in within two.

Choking back rising nausea, Aurelian tried to focus on the line of battle. There, where the orchard ended and some open fields ran alongside the shallow river, a sharp melee raged across the open ground. Two cohorts of Romans, fighting shoulder to shoulder, mixed it up with a crowd of men in brown-and-tan robes. A shrill wailing touched the prince's ears. Arabs, he thought glumly. Fanatics. The desert tribesmen expressed no fear of death, hurling themselves into the fray with reckless abandon. Aurelian had no idea where the rebellious Greek city-states had found the mercenaries, but he doubted they were being paid in any mortal coin. Luckily, not many of the religious zealots seemed to be with this wing of the Persian army.

After breaking through at Pelusium, the Persians had split their army into two columns. One advanced along the northerly axis of the Boutikos canal, a waterway running across the Nile delta from east to west. This force, as far as Aurelian had seen, seemed to be composed mostly of the Persians and the infantry contingents of their allies. A second force-the main body of the Greek rebels and the Persian horse-had swung south, taking the Roman military road sweeping along the southern edge of the delta. The hard-surfaced road was the long way 'round, but passable for cavalry. Both canal and highway led, inevitably, to the gates of Alexandria.

"Runner!" Aurelian called, swinging down from the wagon. A legionary turned toward him, bare head swathed in bandages. One eye watched the prince, the other obscured by a ruined flap of skin. The prince looked him over, feeling the constant sick churning in his stomach spike. He recognized the man-one of the young patricians who had joined his expedition to learn how to be an officer.

"Caius, get over to the left and tell whoever's in charge to disperse his men." Bitter anger was plain in the prince's voice. This campaign forced a harsh new reality even on the tradition-bound legionaries. Standing in steady lines, shoulder to shoulder, was sure death if one of the Persian sorcerers was nearby. "When the reserves come up, they must advance in loose order! No bunching up!"

The legionary jogged off, disappearing into a stand of willows. Aurelian waved his bodyguards and aides over. "Where's the next place we can dig in?"

"Fifteen miles west, lord Caesar," grunted Scortius, his head of engineers, waving toward the water. "This canal we've been falling back along crosses the Bolbinitis channel beyond the town of Bouto." Aurelian saw a flash of despair in the older man's expression.

"How far to Alexandria from there?" the prince asked softly.

"Less than fifty miles." Scortius looked lost, his craggy old face slack with exhaustion. Only decades of strictly-held Legion discipline kept the veteran from weeping. The prince clenched his own jaw, measuring distances in his mind. Scortius took a breath and continued. "From the crossing over the Bolbinitis, the canal runs straight southwest into the Kanobikos channel at Hierakonpolis and meets up with the military highway from the south. That's the next place to make a stand." Scortius swallowed. "Unless Fourth Scythia has been flanked down south… then the pus-eating Persians could be behind us already."

Aurelian put his hand on the upright of the wagon to keep from swaying. His stomach turned over again, a hot coal of pain burning down in his gut. Nothing impressed Aurelian about the Persian preparations for this campaign more than their provision of shallow-draft boats. Poled by skilled river men-from Mesopotamia, doubtless-the King of King's river flotilla let the invaders use any canal or arm of the Nile as a swift means of advance. Aurelian and his officers struggled to keep from thinking of water as a defensive barrier. Against this enemy, a river was a broad road. "Can we block the canal?"

Scortius shook his head, gray hair hanging lank beside his face. "We can fill the canal with mud or bricks or block it with sunken boats-but they've the men to clear most any obstruction we can put in. And if we're forced back to the main channel of the Nile? The river's a quarter-mile wide! We don't have the men, material or time to make a dam."

"Very well," Aurelian replied, forcing confidence into his voice. Can't spook the men with my own fear. "We fall back to the Bolbinitis as we've done the past week, cohorts alternating. All wounded into boats and back to Alexandria at best speed. Scortius, get your engineers back to Hierakonpolis as fast as you can. If the gods smile even a little bit, the Fourth Scythia has kept the Arabs at bay and they won't be blocking our retreat."

The engineer nodded wearily, knuckling sweat from his eyes.

"At Hierakonpolis…" the prince continued, trying to marshal fatigue-addled memories, "the military highway comes up from the south, goes over the Boutikos canal, then makes a turn west and vaults the Nile channel. Both crossings are arched bridges. Use the stone-I remember enormous granite pilings and a heavy roadbed-to block the canal. We'll make a stand at Hiera on the eastern bank. If we have to retreat again, we'll use the Nile bridge, then destroy the main span." Aurelian summoned up a feeble grin. "That should make a fair barrier for their damned boats."

"Yes, my lord." Scortius nodded. "We'll do what we can."

A column of legionaries tramped past, heads bent in exhaustion, the setting sun throwing a hot glare in their faces. The air was so muggy their passage didn't even raise a pall of dust from the road. Instead, their hobnailed sandals squelched wetly in a slurry of watery mud. Aurelian squatted in the shade of a farmhouse gate, a courier's pouch opened on the ground in front of him. His guardsmen were sound asleep under the eaves of an abandoned stable, their boots lying out on a bricked patio, drying in the last remnant of the day.

The prince brushed flies away from face, reading the dispatches with a steadily sinking heart. The governor of Lower Egypt was in a panic, urgently requesting troops from Aurelian to police the port and streets of Alexandria. So many citizens had fled, crowding any ship sailing west or north, that refugees flooding in from the countryside had begun looting the abandoned shops and houses. Squatting and larceny was the order of the day. Civil order, in the opinion of the governor, was close to collapse. Crushing the papyrus sheet into a crumpled ball, Aurelian pitched the letter aside. There will be order aplenty, when we're forced back to the city, he thought savagely. I'll deal with this fool of a governor then, if he's still there. And any looters.

The other dispatches revealed more by their lack than their words-no fresh Legions to bolster his shrinking, battered army. The Imperial fleet was nowhere to be found. Civilian shipping left the Portus Magnus in a constant stream but did not return. He rubbed his face, looking at the straw pallets with longing. There was only one dispatch left-a crumpled, stained packet bound with red twine. He picked it up with thumb and forefinger, feeling a chill steal over him.

A letter from my brother, he realized. What now? Aurelian leaned back against the wall and cut the binding away with a sharp slash of his hand knife. Despite the poor condition of the missive, the wax seal was intact and the prince doubted anyone had dared read the contents. Unfolding the parchment, he frowned-this wasn't his brother's neat, economical printing. Instead, the letter was penned in a graceful, flowing hand, though there were abrupt amendments and several struck-out words.

"Why did Helena write this?" he grumbled, scanning the closely set lines. As he read, his frown deepened. The letter, rambling and obviously dictated in haste, contained no orders, no privy news, in fact nothing of a military nature. Aurelian flicked a green-blue bottle fly away from his nose, puzzled. This read like the correspondence of two patrician landowners with absolutely nothing to say to one another. Even the opening was odd-beginning with their boyhood nickname rather than a formal salutation. Horse, he read, starting over. The weather is very fine, with rains and sun and clear… A strikeout interrupted the sentence.

A wagon rumbled past-portions of the farm road were footed with brick, making them passable even during the wet season. The prince looked up, raising a hand in salute to the latest detachment of soldiers passing by. These men were covered with mud, spades canted over their shoulders. They stumbled past, barely raising their heads to greet the prince. At the end of the column, two weary figures trailed behind a huge-wheeled wagon, dozens of empty dirt hods hanging from leather straps on a pole between them. One of the men squinted at Aurelian as he passed.

The prince saluted the two engineers, but his mind was so dulled he couldn't muster the breath to speak their names aloud. Neither Frontius nor Sextus answered, though they did nod in response. Aurelian looked back to the paper. Something-a memory? A clear thought? — was trying to force its way into his consciousness. Thoughts of sleep and a hot bath battled for his attention, but there was no chance of rest, or leisure, not while the Persians harried his army so closely.

Tomorrow, there would be another-not a battle, but a running skirmish-as the Persian vanguard tried to overwhelm his rear guard. The easterners were tenacious and their generals were taking far too much delight in the slow, methodical destruction of the Roman army. Like boys torturing a fly, or a spider caught in a loft, or a lame dog that couldn't run away.

The elusive memory surfaced, buoyed up by a brief vision of a very young Galen painstakingly writing out a school lesson, sitting at the big, wide table in their mother's kitchen. Aurelian picked up the letter again, feeling the warmth of fond memory fade away. Hawk made a secret language for us, the prince remembered. The first letter of each word making a new word. A strikeout or correction making a space between…

He squinted at the page, trying to formulate the hidden sentence in his mind. After a moment, he gave up and began scratching the translation in the dirt of the farmyard. Grains dribbled past and Aurelian found himself staring at the ground, a dead sense of despair rising from his brother's terse, hasty message: Eque, tres menses mihi eme. Nullus post te est. Accipiter.

"'Horse,'" he read aloud, "'buy me three months. There is no one behind you. Hawk.'"

Aurelian put his head in his hands, closing his eyes. The stabbing pain in his stomach grew worse and he thought he would throw up. Helena, in her meticulous way, had dated the letter. A month had passed between the packet leaving Rome and reaching him here, in this abandoned farmyard. Two months… we'll be forced back into the city in another week, or no more than two. And no reinforcements.

The prince considered the effort he had invested in the massive, expensive fortifications at Pelusium and across the peninsula holding Alexandria. Sixty thousand men had moved heaven and earth to erect the barriers-the greatest set of fieldworks the Roman army had ever created. A harsh laugh escaped Aurelian, driven from his gut. Caesar himself could not have done better, he thought bitterly. All useless. The Persians have changed the geometry of war.

Dreadful experience had taught him how to survive where sorcerers rained death upon from the sky, or shattered stone and brick and wood with a thought. Hide. Maneuver constantly. Fight in loose order. Close quickly with the enemy, to deny their magi a clear target. Ambush them in confined spaces. Counterattack whenever possible. Aurelian realized all too well his own penchant for monuments and clever engineering had thrown away those advantages, leaving his soldiers to bear the result of his folly. I let them scout and prepare unhindered and then stood up and took the axe in the neck, just like a Roman pig… Two months! How can I hold Alexandria for two more months?

He needed thaumaturges far more powerful than Rome had ever produced to meet the Persian and Arab priests on even terms. I need the gods, or ancient heroes, at my side. But I will get nothing.

The prince looked around. There were no gods in evidence, only a rambling farmhouse filled with men sleeping like the dead, worn down past endurance by an endless succession of losing battles. His mind was still grappling with the enormity of his brother's decision. Aurelian had never expected Galen to make the "Emperor's choice" with his life! The roiling pain in his stomach faded, overshadowed by a vast emptiness in his chest.

"Two months, then." Aurelian pushed himself upright. He felt dizzy. The road was empty, the last of the First Minerva's cohorts having marched past to take up positions down the road. "Sixty days."

His mouth was dry, but Aurelian went looking for the cooks to see if they'd managed to get a fire going in the kitchen grate. The prospect of hot food-even only barley gruel-was enough to keep him awake and moving and alive.