The Dark Lord (47 page)

Before the Arabs could react to the apparition towering over them, Zoë had to look away, searching for the enemy. Dahak's will gripped her in steel fingers while she, Odenathus and Arad rushed through the air in a tight triangle. The sensation of flight was dizzying. Around them a dark haze swirled and shifted, a formidable ward radiating out from the jackal. The Lord of the Ten Serpents laughed to see their paltry shield of Athena.

You are my hounds,
his thought crashed into hers.
I will defend, you will attack, bright teeth deep in the Roman neck!

A vast shadow fell across the Roman fortification, mightier than the towers, spilling across the rampart, the fighting step, the crowds of legionaries staring up, eyes wide in fear, faces a sea of white ovals. Ahead, the golden wall shimmered and rippled, sheets of ghostly light falling in a slow wave down the face of the barrier. Zoë recognized the pattern—an interlocking matrix of thaumaturgic will, dozens of layers deep, constantly shifting, in endless motion to deny an enemy purchase—the battle-projection of a Roman thaumaturgic cohort. She felt the serpent's will move the colossal arm of the shadow and Zoë answered, summoning the power in the earth, invoking the flat blue shades of water, the living flame of reeds and trees. There was no stone here, not save the cut blocks of the wall's foundation, but they had been leached of power long ago.

Lightning blossomed, stabbing out from her hand as she moved her fingers in an old, old sign. The sky answered and brilliant blue-white thundered against the golden wall, ripping through gossamer, shattering delicate patterns, a sledge crashing into new-blown glass. Zoë gasped in surprise—she had never thrown such power before! A dark current boiled in her mind, flooding her senses, threatening to burst free of the binding of flesh and will. An enormous pressure crushed against her and Zoë screamed in panic, feeling the might of the Lord of the Ten Serpents flow through her.

Another bolt flashed across the narrowing distance and the golden wall shuddered. Below, in the fight still raging along the wall, men screamed in despair, throwing themselves to the earth. Wooden towers wicked into flame, pitch exploded in its barrels, scattering smoke and living green fire everywhere. Zoë felt the Roman thaumaturges reel back, stunned. Of her own accord, she struck—fist twisting into a pattern to rip the earth, to sunder stone, crack wood.

The shadow arm moved in unison with her will and an ephemeral fist smote the earth.

Khalid, still on his hands and knees, flinched back. A huge, towering figure—
two hundred feet tall,
his mind gibbered—strode out of the desert, skin black as night, face that of an enormous jackal, white fangs a tall man's length, red lips hideous against the ebon flesh, eyes blazing crimson. Lightning flashed, rocking the air with a stupendous
boom
and splintered across the sky, flooding over some invisible wall rising up from the Roman fortifications. A long, ringing
tiiiiing
followed, as if a stupendous crystal shattered. The Arab threw himself down the slope, thorns ripping his flesh, his arm crunching against another stake.

Behind him, the actinic glare of lightning flashed along the wall, driving men back with terrible heat, incinerating those still struggling on the rampart. When Khalid stopped rolling, the entire slope of the earthwork was on fire, wooden stakes and thornbush alike billowing flame and smoke. The titanic jackal wavered, its edges dancing with heat haze. It smashed a fist down into the center of the Roman wall. Khalid flinched and the earth jumped with an enormous
crunch
. A huge blast of dust roared up, logs and clods of earth flying in all directions.

For an instant, Khalid saw the sky distort, burning sparks licking off in jagged paths through the air. Pressure beat against his ears and he gasped for breath. The air itself bent, throwing insane reflections of the sky, the ground, running men. The smoke-jackal bent a vast dark shoulder, pressing at the empty air, an enormous foot grinding across the earthen rampart, splintering wood and crushing soldiers already stunned by the blasts ringing in the air into a crimson smear.

Thunder boomed out of the west and Khalid—still cowering at the base of the slope—saw blue-white lightning leap down from the sky, flaring across the jackal's shoulder and chest. The thing howled, ebon flesh incandescent where the blast had lit, then smote the air with a fist, then again. Tongues of fire slashed out of the west, haloing the monstrous creature's head with smoke. Still the air bent and Khalid realized some kind of invisible barrier was deforming under the jackal's attack. He crawled away from the smoldering brush, then remembered the blade of night lay somewhere behind, lost among the flames.

"Curse it!" he growled, hurriedly wrapping the tail of his kaftan around his face, leaving only a slit for his eyes. The fires were still sputtering, flames licking up here and there, curling bitter white smoke from the ashy ground. The young Arab scrambled up the slope, casting about wildly, desperate to find the sword of the city. His skin flushed with sweat.
Where are my people?

Together!
roared Dahak and Zoë's mind submerged in a rushing black flood. The hidden world convulsed with stabbing white bolts of power. The Roman thaumaturges were weighing in, furious in their assault, bending the earth and sky to crush the shadow creature mired against the golden wall. Zoë felt the serpent curse in rage, then she, Arad and Odenathus moved as one, colossal arm swinging back as they bent their power against the tattered, deformed pattern. Dimly, though the helices of fire slamming into their own wards, she perceived a huge group of desperate minds—sixty? seventy?—hurling flame, lightning, every scrap of power against them.

The shadow's vast hands tore into gossamer gold, fingers wrapped in lightning, blazing with ultraviolet, and Dahak spoke a
word
. The sound reverberated in the smallest stone. Men fell dead for miles around, though others staggered and lived. The shining wall froze—constant motion stilled—and Zoë saw a vast overlapping matrix of geometric forms congeal from hurrying, inconstant, undefined motion. Dahak bellowed, forcing his strength through the shuddering form of Arad, and the golden ice shattered violently, breaking away in dizzying fragments from a pinpoint blast of will.

The opposing minds vanished from Zoë's perception, blown aside like leaves ripped from the trees by a titanic gale. The golden wall crumpled, breaking into brilliant shards, each one splintering into smoke, then nothing. The jackal strode forward, shadow long upon the land.

Khalid clung to the earth, feeling mud and brick buck under him like a wild horse. A log fell past, rolling down the slope. A huge ripping sound split the sky, then a shattering boom, followed by rushing, forge-hot wind. Khalid cowered, digging into the loose earth. A colossal footstep slammed down, followed by the screams of men. The Arab looked up and saw, not more than a yard away, a bronze-bound hilt gleaming in the wreckage.

"At last!" he croaked, crawling forward to seize the hilt with both hands. The blade of night sighed free from the earth and Khalid felt his heart soar with relief. The blade was unharmed! He rose to his feet, staring to the north. The head and shoulders of the jackal loomed up, wrapped in billowing smoke and dust. The thing's face was lit with flames. Stone splintered under its tread and Khalid saw a huge section of the Roman fortification was gone, cast down, only rubble and corpses remaining.

"Forward!" he screamed, pointing with the sword. "To me, Sahaba! To me!"

In the canal bottom, those men who still lived picked themselves up, caked with mud, streaked with crimson. Khalid ran along the slope, dodging fallen timbers, leaping across the dead. His men saw him, recognized the shining ebon blade in his hand, and they raised a tumultuous shout.

"The Eagle!" they cried, running forward, spears raised, catching the sun cutting down through the dust. "The Eagle!" Thousands of the Sahaba, shaking free of surprise and fear, flooded forward into the breach.

"That's torn it!" Sextus picked himself up from the road. An earth tremor had rippled the length of the wall and the military road, shaking open huge cracks in the earthwork, jumbling the logs laid down to provide a mud-resistant roadway. "Are you hurt?"

Frontius rolled over, unable to stand. His face was a tight mask of pain, gnarled hands wrapped around his ankle. "
Aiii...
I think it's broken." The engineer gasped. Sextus knelt down, fingers tugging at his friend's boot. Frontius turned a funny color, lips going white. "Don't..."

Sextus stopped messing with the laces, then slipped a knife from his belt. The heavy military leather resisted for a moment, then parted with a scraping sound. Sextus worked the remains of the hobnailed boot free, jaw clenching as he saw a purplish-black bruise around Frontius' ankle and shin. "It's bad," he bit out.

The earth quivered again and now a rolling series of crashing sounds, interspersed with thunderclaps, shook the air. Grunting, Sextus got a shoulder under Frontius, then staggered to his feet. The other engineer, hanging upside-down, croaked in alarm, then convulsed, vomiting. Sextus ignored the slick wet feeling on the back of his bare legs. He cast a look behind him, over his shoulder.

Smoke obscured the center of the Roman line. Black smoke billowed up from burning, damp wood. Clouds of dust were interspersed with the smoke and leaping flames intermittently lit the haze. Sextus blinked, unsure of his own eyes. Lightning jagged and ripped through the smoke, briefly illuminating something huge moving at the center of the conflagration. The engineer cursed, suddenly realizing what he was looking at. The distortion of scale was too vast to easily comprehend.

A colossal figure a hundred yards high plowed out of the smoke. Mangonel stones smashed against its chest, bursting with green fire. Clouds of arrows leapt up from the ground, clattering away from ebon-hued skin. A vast jackal head appeared from the smoke. Fire burst upon it like spring flowers—blossoming in a hundred radiant hues, then vanishing again. The
thing
chopped an enormous hand down and the earth shook. Sextus staggered, shifting his balance. A flare of unnamable color burst from the moving fist and siege engines blew apart in blue-black flame.

"Set is upon us," Sextus breathed, stunned. "The gods walk the earth!"

He turned, settling an unconscious Frontius upon his shoulders and staggered off down the road. The shape of the southern mirror tower loomed up ahead, only a half-mile away. It seemed intact, the morning sun gleaming on the polished shape of the disk in its cradle. Grim-faced Roman legionaries ran past, heading for the sound of battle.

Nephet groaned, pushing weakly at a smoking, charred timber pinning him among the dead. The old Egyptian's face was streaked with blood, his nose bleeding, thin fringe of hair plastered against a skull shining with sweat. His thin arm strained, then the square-cut timber lifted and clattered to the ground. Surprised, the priest looked up to see a powerful figure crouched over him.

"Lord Caesar!" Nephet turned his head and spit blood on the dusty ground.

"Get up," Aurelian growled, lifting the frail old man up with both hands. The Roman's eyes were narrow slits against bitter white smoke drifting through the ruins of the bastion. His armor was dented and scored with black streaks, his beard fouled with mud. "Can you stand? Can you fight?"

Nephet coughed, catching a fringe of the smoke hanging in the air. A sizzling
crack-crack-crack
roared overhead. The priest ducked, flinching away from the noise. Aurelian's fingers dug into his shoulders.

"Can you fight?" The Roman shook Nephet roughly. Memories flooded back, chilling the old priest's blood. He and the prince had rushed forward to the bastion, alarmed at the enormous noise and the flare of light. The old Egyptian had barely reached the wall in time to watch a conflagration unfold, then the earth heaved and something had smashed him to the ground.

"Yes." Nephet turned, leaning heavily on his staff. The side of one hand pressed against his brow. The skin felt hot, but touch served to focus his mind enough to descend once more into the maelstrom of the hidden world.
My brothers! To me!
The old priest sketched a glyph in the air, the mnemonic guiding his thought and will into the desired pattern. A pale, feeble radiance flickered into being around him—an incomplete, weak sphere of defense. Nephet reached out, his will winging across the battlefield, searching desperately for his fellow priests.
Sons of Horus, heed my call!

Destruction lay all around, echoing between the physical and the ghost shapes of the hidden.

A hundred-foot-wide section of the forward rampart was gone, reduced to jagged heaps of brick and ash. The remains of an ancient triumphal arch listed drunkenly to one side—the old gate had been completely filled in, making a strong point in the wall. Now the sandstone slabs were cracked and splintered, scattered over a sixty-foot-wide swath from the gate. The bastion opposite, where Nephet had been standing, was cloaked with smoke, watchtowers burning fiercely, a massive gouge torn out of the sloping earthen berm. Glassy slag puddled, shimmering with heat, among the wreckage. The tents inside were blown down and dead and wounded men lay scattered like grain discarded on a threshing floor.

Hurrying lights—the shapes of men—poured through the breach, surging forward into battle with struggling knots of legionaries, regrouping after the blast. Nephet struggled to think—the wound on the side of his head burned with cold fire—and took some heart to see the Roman soldiers rallying around their Legion standards. Furious ghosts and vengeful spirits clustered thick around the ancient banners, driving back the whiplash of fear and despair radiating out from the enemy. The thin cries of the newly dead bolstered the hearts of the living. Older, stronger shades crowded around the legionaries fighting in the wreckage, turning aside burning motes of misfortune flooding the hidden world.

As Nephet watched, one young centurion—fighting alone against three robed Persians—blocked a stroke, then ducked nimbly aside, warned by the spirit-shape of another, older, stronger centurion—perhaps centuries dead—who shadowed his every movement. Other ghosts flickered in the air, knocking aside Arab arrows and sling stones falling from the sky.