Shadow of Ararat

SOUTH OF THE KERENOS RIVER, ALBANIA

H

The boy ran through the forest, blood trailing from a cut on his scalp. He gasped for breath and ran crookedly, his right leg moving in jerks. The ground rose, becoming thick with low brush and saplings. He crashed through the bushes and fell to his knees. Without the breath to swear, he scrabbled at the ground, finally finding purchase and rising again.

Behind him there was a whistling sound and the shouts of men. Hooves thudded on the loamy earth, growing closer. The boy staggered up the side of the hill, bent nearly double, trying to keep the brush and trees between himself and his pursuers. Near the crest, his right leg gave out and he tumbled to the ground, rolling back down the slope. Blood oozed out of a deep cut on the outside of his right leg and he lay there, wheezing, unable to move.

The hunters began climbing the hill, their voices quite close. He could hear the horses blowing and the rattle of armor. Through the canopy of trees above him, the boy could see blue sky streaked with high white clouds. He rolled over, biting down on a cracked lip to keep from crying out. On his hands and knees, he crawled along the side of the hill, away from the crest. The ground was rough-rocky and covered with small stones. There was little grass, for these hills were dry and covered with stunted trees with sharp thorns.

He came to a rock outcropping and hauled himself up onto a shelf. Leaning heavily on the stones, he managed to limp around the corner of the rocks. For a moment, as he swung around the side of the boulder, he was silhouetted against the sky.

The boy spun around, losing his grip on the crumbly granite. A black-fletched arrow stabbed out from his shoulder, blood welling around the exit wound. For a moment he stared at the sky and the slope below him on the backside of the hill. Then his knees became terribly weak and he slid down to the ground. His body rolled off the. ledge and bounced, arms and legs flailing, down the slope.

Gordius Falco, equites scout of the Third Augusta Fre-tensis, stared in shock as the body of a young man in dirty tattered clothing bounced down the slope above him in a spray of gravel and smacked into the bole of a thick juniper tree. He kneed his horse to turn it around, halting his slow trot up the hill. Gordius stared around, his eyes wide, but he saw no one. He walked the horse forward to the boy and leaned down to shake his shoulder with a meaty hand.

The boy’s eyelids fluttered and he turned his head a little. There seemed to be some dim recognition in them. Gordius probed the arrow wound gently, but blood was spilling out of the boy’s back and puddling on the ground under the tree. The boy tried to say something, but his lips moved and there was no sound. Gordius leaned closer, feeling the faint flutter of a pulse at the boy’s throat.

“The Iron Hats…” was all he heard. Gordius looked up sharply, scanning the ridge above him. Off to the right, where a dip in the line of hills made a saddle, his eye caught on movement. He squinted and saw, there in a clearing of tufted grass and scattered rocks, five men on stout bay-colored horses with colorful peaked caps and long coats over their armor. Curved bows were slung over their backs and longswords hung from their saddles.

“Mithras,” Gordius breathed, pushing away from the tree and the dead boy. “Time to be going!”

He turned the horse again and calmly rode away down the hill, being sure to keep trees between himself and the dip in the ridge. After a mile of walking the horse, he kneed it to a trot and hurried north, hoping to run into the rest of his patrol.

Heraclius was standing on a log platform, looking out on a field south of the Roman camp, when one of his dispatch riders scrambled up the ladder behind him. The Emperor turned at the sound of the boy huffing and puffing for breath.

Theodore laughed, catching the boy by the shoulder before he pitched off of the platform. “Hold, lad, before you break your neck!”

The dispatch rider fell to one knee before the Emperor, having caught his breath. “A patrol has come in, Great Lord! Persian horsemen have been sighted seven or eight miles south of the river, moving north. The centurion in charge sent a man ahead to warn the camp.”

Heraclius traded a glance with Galen, who had ordered the patrols south, and with the third King on the platform, Ziebil of the Khazar khanate. The Western Emperor was tired looking, but this news did not please him either and he met it with a frown. The Khazar, a short, broad-shouldered man with sandy hair streaked with gray and a very short beard, shrugged and returned Heraclius’ look with a bored expression. Ziebil spoke seldom, preferring to listen and watch. Heraclius had heard that he was a very demon in battle, though he seemed almost unnaturally calm in the short time they had seen each other face to face.

“Is this what you expected?” Heraclius had turned back to Galen, who shook his head sharply.

“Winter is close,” the Western Emperor said. “They must have sent men north to keep us from sneaking over into the highlands before the passes are closed by snow. Shall we drive them off?“

Heraclius nodded, his mind made up. It was time to see how well his Khazar allies performed in the field. “Great Khan? Would you care to do the honors?”

Ziebil pursed his lips and idly pulled a thick-hafted knife from his belt. He tossed it from one hand to the other, then slid it quickly back into its sheath. He nodded, and there was a flicker of a grim smile on his face. He leaned over the side of the platform and whistled, a piercing sound. Out on the field, two bands of horsemen detached themselves from the crowd of men maneuvering about and galloped over to the platform.

Ziebil turned and gestured to the dispatch rider. “Boy, take these men to find the patrol.” He pointed south and shouted down to his men, “Iron Hats!”

There was a fierce cheer. The Khazars had been late reaching Tauris and had not blooded themselves on the walls or in the fighting in the streets. They were eager for battle. The dispatch rider climbed down and swung up on his own horse. Together they trotted off to the south, the Khazars whooping and yelling as they passed through the picket lines around the camp.

Heraclius snorted and turned back to his compatriots. Galen was still worried about something but had volunteered nothing save a desire to have the lands around the camp thoroughly patrolled. Heraclius put the worry away, doubtless it was nothing more than a runaway slave or nerves. l@QHQM(M)M()HQWOWOWQM(M)HOHOW()W(M)M(M)MOMOM()H()HQl THE HILLS ABOVE PALMYRA

H

Darkness crawled across the rocks, fanged and red-eyed. Skeletal wings fluttered on its back. Moonlight fell across the sandstone. It stopped, hissing at the sight of the moon, its head raised. Dull red fire leaked from its eyes. A long black tongue darted, tasting the air. The creature was afraid, and it slunk across the stones on its belly.

Taloned fingers flashed and seized the thing by its scrawny neck, dragging it out into the moonlight. The winged creature hissed and scrabbled at the air with its claws, but it found no purchase. The fingers, stronger than iron, squeezed, and the thing gave a mournful bleat and hung limply in the withered hand. The Lord Dahak drew a bag from within his robes and stuffed his captive into it. After throwing the bag over his shoulder, he limped down the hill. The moon gleamed on a vast tumult of boulders, stretching in every direction. The sorcerer vanished into deep shadow between two monoliths.

Baraz dreamed. He dreamed that he was walking on a battlefield, littered with heaps of corpses. Only he remained alive, his sword coated with gore, his legs splashed with blood. Tens of thousands of dead carpeted the field, rotting and covered with ants. The horizon was a wall of snowcapped mountains, blue in the distance. A sun hung overhead, a pale disk of white. Banners hung limply, askew and tattered. The air was still and quiet, though he was sure that, a short time before, it had been filled with a stunning noise. He was alive, amid all the dead, and his heart was filled with a fierce joy at his survival. He raised his arms to the sky, shouting, his voice echoing across that dreadful valley.

Something touched his shoulder and he was awake, one thick fist wrapped around the hilt of a thinTbladed dagger. His tent was dark, but he could feel the chill presence of someone standing by his cot. The general sniffed the air and then cursed. “Lord of light, Dahak, can’t you let me sleep?”

Baraz fumbled for the lantern by the bed and, after a moment of work with a flint, lit the wick. Dim light spilled out, showing the sorcerer sitting at one of the stools next to the planning table.

Baraz squinted at him. “What is it? They trying something in the city?”

Dahak laughed mirthlessly.

“No,” the sorcerer said, his long, lean, face slashed with shadows. “A message has come.”

Baraz sat up, his thick chest and massive legs painted with warm light from the lantern. A thick black pelt of tiny curls covered his chest and stomach, though his arms and legs were shaven bare. He reached under the cot and dragged out his riding boots. Absently he turned them upside down and knocked them against the side of this cot. A translucent scorpion fell out of one, tiny and pale yellow. It bounced, then flipped itself upright and scuttled off into a dark corner of the tent.

“What does it say?” Baraz pulled a tunic on over his head and closed a thick leather belt around his narrow waist.

Dahak reached into the folds of his robe and pulled out an ivory cylinder, no more than three inches long.

“It is for you,” he said in a raspy voice. He was slow in recovering from the wounds he had taken in the fight on the plain of towers. “I have not opened it.”

Baraz frowned and took the cylinder. He grimaced, feeling the stickiness clinging to it. He put it on the table and raised the lantern up to better light the tent. The ivory was coated with partially dried blood.

The general made a face. “Isn’t there some other way to deliver these things-clean, perhaps?”

Dahak said nothing, sitting quietly, a pool of shadow at the side of the room. Baraz shook his head in amusement and unscrewed the cap on the end of the cylinder. There was a rolled-up piece of parchment inside, which he teased out with his finger and uncurled. It was covered with slanted letters in a strong hand.

Baraz looked up, meeting Dahak’s glittering eyes. “It is from Chrosoes. Gundarnasp’s army has cornered the Romans in the valley of the Kerenos, in Albania. The King of Kings bids you send me there, that I might command our armies in victory over the Two Emperors. He bids me make haste.”

Dahak sighed, a thready sound, wind among gravestones. He seemed very tired. “Does he… As the king commands, I obey. That fop Shahin will command here, as we will be gone?”

Baraz raised an eyebrow at the bitter tone in the sorcerer’s voice. “He would have the rank for it, though Khad-ames would be a better choice. Yet if I leave them both here, without you or me to keep Shahin in check, it will go poorly.”

Dahak steepled his fingers, his eyes glowing the light of the lantern.

“I could send you by yourself…” he mused. “Such a thing can be done, if you’ve the stomach for it. I could remain and see that this business here is finished.”

Baraz caught the eagerness in the sorcerer’s voice and smiled. “You want the Egyptian, don’t you? You think that he is still alive, in the city.”

Dahak snarled, a low animal sound. “No one showed me his corpse. He still lives. I will have him. He owes me a great deal of pain. I will collect upon the debt.”

The general turned the scrap of parchment over and smoothed it out on the table. There was a brush and a block of ink close to hand. He wrote quickly on the paper, then blew on it gently. Finally he sprinkled fine sand over it and rolled a blotting stone across the paper.

“Here, I have told the King of Kings that I will be with Gundarnasp presently and that the siege here will continue. Make your preparations. Need I do anything to ready myself?”

Dahak rose, the cylinder in clawlike fingers. “No, only keep a brave heart.”

Mohammed stood in an arched doorway, his face grave. He was dressed in heavy armor, like that favored by the Persians. A long shirt of scales fell to below his knees and a long sword hung from his belt. A heavy helm was under his arm, dented and scored. A cotton tabard hung over the mail, bearing the crest of Palmyra. He had grown thiriner in the face and had trimmed his beard back to his chin. His eyes were filled with a slow anger.

In the room, Zenobia was curled on a bed with cedar posts. Heavy quilts and blankets covered it, and a thin silk drape hung from the posts, making a tent. The Queen lay close to the body of the Egyptian, Ahmet, her white arms clutching his bronzed body to her. A low murmur of chanting filled the room, interrupted only by Ahmet’s irregular breathing. Each day Mohammed came to the room, buried deep in the palace, and looked upon his friend. Each day the priest was the same, comatose and close to death. The Queen rarely left the chamber.

Mohammed turned away and walked down the hallway. His boots rang softly on the blue and green mosaic tiles. As he mounted the stairs, he pulled the helmet on, closing out all the world save the narrow slit before his eyes. There would be battle today, as there was nearly every day now. The Persians pressed hard against the city.

Cold stone pressed into Baraz’s back. He lay on a great slab of sandstone that formed the rough peak of one of the hills humped along the western edge of the plain that held Palmyra. The Lord Dahak crouched at his feet, hands held between his knees, muttering. Baraz looked up, seeing the dark vault of heaven wheeling slowly above him. Cool wind blew out of the desert, ruffling his curly hair. The moon had just risen in the east, still huge and red-orange over the endless plain of sand dunes that stretched behind the city. Dahak’s dark shape moved, and his long head bent back, staring at the dark gulf that held the stars.

Baraz shivered. He was dressed only in a cotton kilt and shirt. His feet were bare and there were no metal fittings or items anywhere upon his body. Even the pins that held back the mane of his hair had been pulled out by the wizard and tucked away in a bag. His forehead itched where Dahak had incised some unknown sign with a small silver knife. The general lay still.

Dahak’s voice became almost audible, a low guttural growling that rose and fell to no rhythm that Baraz could identify. Finally the dark man rose up to stand with his legs straddling Baraz’s feet. His hands flashed white in the darkness, reaching for the dark sky opposite the moon. He shouted something unintelligible. Then he squatted again, crossing his legs under him. He took a thin silver pipe out of one of the pockets in his robes and, with a breath, began to trill on it.

The sound made Baraz’s skin crawl and he felt unaccustomed fear creeping into his blood like acid. The silver pipe chirped and tittered. The wind picked up and Baraz closed his eyes to keep blown dust from them. The sound of the pipe rose and rose, until Baraz almost screamed from the deafening noise. Then it stopped and there was silence.

Almost silence. A noise came, a slurping noise that seemed to come from all around. A chitinous rustling, the sound of a million crickets squirming in a great vat of stone. The air became very cold. Baraz screwed his eyes shut and dared not open them for fear of what he might see, looming over him, enormous, blocking out the sky and the moon.

Dahak’s voice came, or something that sounded like the dark man’s voice. Low and indistinct, but filled with power. Then, startling, recognizable words filtered through the rustling and slurping sound.

“Sleep now, mighty general, and when you wake, should you wake, you will be in the north, where battle waits for you. Sleep now, and dare not dream.”

A dark cloth settled over the general and he twitched violently at the touch. But then he slept and did not dream, though he rose up, carried in ten thousand faint translucent tentacles across the sky, under an unseeing moon.

Mohammed spurred his horse hard, goosing it up the side of the wadi. Gravel and sand spurted from under the red mare’s hooves and she flew up the slope. At his back, thirty of the Tanukh and an equal number of men from the city, swaddled in dust-brown robes and pale-tan kaffieh, surged after him. Al’Quraysh galloped across the sandy flat, his sword sliding out of its sheath in a flash. Ahead of him, Persian soldiers stared up in horror. The slab-sided shape of a thirty-foot-high siege tower loomed behind the Persians. Many of them were stripped to the waist, hauling on the ropes that dragged the wooden behemoth. Others had been trotting alongside, shields in front and spears over their shoulders. Now they were shouting and pointing at Mohammed as his horse flew across the hardpan.

Men ran, scattering before the charge of the desert horsemen, dropping the long ropes. Mohammed stormed into the thick of the spear men, who had hastily run around to the back of the tower and were trying to form up into a line. His saber lashed out, cutting at the face of one of the spear men. Blood fountained and the man fell, clutching at his ruined jaw. The rest of the Tanukh smashed into the engineers, swords flashing in the sun. More men died and then the Persians were running. The Tanukh whooped with delight, their voices raised in a high-pitched yell that echoed across the desert.

Mohammed spun his horse, checking the sweep of his men. The city was two miles distant, its gold walls rising above the date palms that lined the farmlands around it. The Persian army had established a crude earthwork a hundred yards from the walls. They thought that their engines would be safe here, miles from the city. He rose up in the saddle, shouting at his men. “Sideways! Pull it sideways!”

The spearmen were dead, scattered across the ground, or fled toward the palms. The other laborers had also scattered. The Tanukh wheeled their horses around the tower, shooting arrows into the fighting platforms inside it. As Mohammed watched, a green-robed Persian engineer toppled from the highest platform, his torso pierced by three arrows. He hit the ground with a sharp slapping sound and bounced once before lying still. The Palmyrenes were tossing torches into the lower chamber of the tower. Mohammed’s horse trotted forward, obedient to the pressure of his knees.

He leaned out of the saddle and scooped up one of the* tow ropes. With a deft hand, he wrapped it around the horns of his saddle and waved for the others to do the same. The Palmyrenes, with their heavier, four-cornered, saddles, caught on and snared the rest of the ropes. Once they had each acquired a rope, Mohammed slashed his hand down and they moved, as one, to the east.

The tower trembled as the ropes drew taut, then the Palmyrenes whooped and put their heels to their horses. The beasts strained against the lines, their hooves kicking up dust. The whole tower suddenly groaned and began to tip. Mohammed shouted at two Tanukh who were still staring up at the wall of wooden slats that was bending toward them. The tower creaked and then toppled over, slowly, and smashed suddenly to the ground with a flat booming sound. Dust and sand billowed out from under it. The Palmyrenes cheered and Mohammed grinned at his men.

“Now the torches,” he cried. Some of the Tanukh who had held back darted in, throwing ceramic jars of heavy olive oil and burning sticks into the collapsed tower. A thick black smoke began to rise. Mohammed wheeled his horse away and the whole band followed him, howling like banshees. Clouds of dust marked their passage into the desert waste.

“Enough,” Dahak said sharply, his hand cutting off the rambling excuse. “These barbarians come and go as they please from the city. This will stop. Complete the earthwork within the next two days. Lord Khadames, I want every man we have digging. You will work in shifts, day and night, until it is done.”

Khadames bowed stiffly, watching the pale face of the noble who had commanded the siege engines. All three, laboriously constructed over weeks of careful work, had been destroyed in the space of two days. The precious wood that they had scavenged from wagons and farmhouses and from the few suitable trees in the area was gone, wiped away in clouds of dirty smoke. The man was a cousin of the Great Prince Shahin, an honor enough to get him a command, but nothing to protect him from the wizard’s icy anger.

When Baraz had left, he had given orders that Khadames would command the army, with the “able assistance” of the Lord Dahak. Shahin had barely waited a day before challenging the lower-born Khadames, and many of the nobles in the army had supported the Great Prince. But Dahak had no patience for such bickering and simply declared that he would command. Against his glittering dark eyes, no one was brave enough to protest the usurpation of authority.

Since then the siege had pressed ahead at a wearing pace. Dahak was, as far as Khadames could tell, tireless, and he assumed that his followers were equally iron-willed. Baraz had led by example, exhorting his men to greater feats than they had imagined. Dahak commanded with a clear and icy fear. Failure was not tolerated if it sprang from incompetence.

“Your task was simple, and had you heeded the advice of the Lord Khadames, you would have been successful. But you ignored his advice and my command. I will not tolerate this. We press ahead with the attack, though now I will grant another day to see that the circumvallation is complete. And you, Lord Pacorus, have exhausted my patience and mercy.”

Khadames flinched from the bleak expression on the face of the sorcerer. A silence fell on the nobles and captains assembled in the tent. The Lord Dahak rose from the plain wicker chair that had been Baraz’s and stared down at the nobleman, bent before him in the proskynesis usually accorded to royalty. The sorcerer stared around the tent, forcing the men before him to meet his eyes. They were cold and Khadames realized with a shiver that the sorcerer’s pupils were vertical and narrow, flecked with gold in green.

“This is a lesson. Learn it.” Dahak’s hand clenched into a fist. Dark-red light spilled out of the cracks between his withered fingers. On the ground, Pacorus suddenly moaned and tried to rise. Dahak’s boot, a supple black leather with blood-red lacings, crushed down on the back of his neck, pinning him to the carpet. The nobleman began to tremble and his limbs twitched spasmodically. Khadames turned away when Pacorus’ skin began to crawl and squirm with something moving under the surface, something like ten thousand worms.

“We attack at sunset in two days, with the sun at our backs. Understood?”

Pacorus whined in terrible pain under the dark man’s boot, his flesh beginning to flake away from liquid that had once been bone and sinew.