The Storm of Heaven (19 page)

That collection of events meant that the entire Imperial frontier from Damascus to Aelana had collapsed. It was likely that any survivors of Theodore's army would fall back to the north, towards Tyre, or to the sea. Worse, at the center of the Decapolis was the massive Legion camp of Lejjun, which he could only assume had fallen into the hands of the rebels. That meant they had gained arms, armor, siege equipment, supplies, wagons. It meant his position, cut off here in this vile little town on a poky hill, was completely untenable.

Cursing, Nicholas strode out of the room. He would not wait to discuss matters with the town senate, he would root them out of their homes
right now
while there was still a little time.

"Look, the walls are empty. Do you see any watchmen? No."

Uri, Lord of the Sarid clan of Mekkah, pointed with his riding staff at the crumbling yellow walls of the city. He was astride a spirited bronze-colored gelding, his left hand wrapped in the reins. His
kaffiyeh
was cinched around his high forehead with a twisted cord threaded with the colors of his tribe. Like all of the Sahaba, he had a flash of green in his headdress.

Jalal, riding just ahead of Odenathus in the van of the army, grunted. The old soldier's eyes were watching the wall very carefully. His bow, sweeping horn and bone with a half-bent top arm, was laid across his saddle with a flight arrow set to the string. The Tanukh had spent thirty years wandering the fringes of the Roman and Persian empires, taking his pay from any lord needing a strong bow and a stout arm in the line of battle. He had never commanded before Lord Mohammed had placed him over the left wing of the army of the Sahaba. Now he knew why all generals were such bastards! Still, he would not trade the command of the
maimanah
for anything.

"What is this?" Uri was continued to berate the Tanukh captain, his voice sharp. "Why—a scaffold where someone is trying to
repair
the gate! I think, my friend, that you worry too much about this place. It is old and decrepit, barely worth your time."

Odenathus, who had been aware of a quiet watching sensation since the lead elements of the Sahaba had come up onto the ridge that ran down from the city walls and off to the west, nudged his mare with a knee. She ambled out of the line of march, letting him have a clear view of the gate and the walls. It was true they were in poor shape. Some of the embrasures on the battlements were missing, leaving gaps. The gate itself was closed, but scaffolds and piles of cut stone littered the area around it. Odenathus smiled a little, imagining the panic that must have set in among the workers when the first Sahaba lancers had ridden into view.

There was no one on the walls, though, and he had a good idea of what that meant.

"You'd put your head in the noose on a lark?" Jalal's voice was deep and rolled like rocks falling down a hillside. Somehow it fit here, in this desolate country. "You've a hankering to take your men over the wall first, do you?"

Odenathus squinted at the wall. He was sure the defenders were crouched down behind the stone teeth, waiting for the Sahaba to come into range of their bows and slings. He was listening to Jalal and Uri with only half an ear. They had been bickering for so long that it had become part of the background noise. Rubbing his face, he began to concentrate, letting his mind slip through the entrance of Hermes and into the whirling void waiting beyond.

"You think the Ben-Sarid have no stomach for a little blood? Shall we have a wager, then?"

Odenathus let his sight expand, seeing the hidden cracks and shifted foundations under the gate. The land had settled a little, tilting the stones and splintering the plaster off the old Roman brickwork. It would not take much to bring down the whole structure. He put forth a subtle pressure, letting his will infiltrate the stone courses.

Distantly, Jalal barked in laughter, waving for the Sahaba to stop. A cornicen shrilled and the wings of the army began to fold out into the rocky plain before the city. Men and horses moved at an easy trot, kicking up a flat cloud of dust. Off to the left, the ground fell away towards a valley under a hill covered with olive orchards and the humped shapes of tombs. To the right, the ground rose a bit, irregular and cut by walls of piled fieldstone. Small gardens crouched between them. Odenathus concentrated, negotiating the ancient wards and spells that had once protected the gate.

They were very old and fallen into disrepair. Centuries ago they had been violently broken and only poorly repaired. In them, the Palmyrene could suddenly feel a little of the history of the city—a long struggle of capture and recapture, of repeated destruction and slow, painful rebuilding. Blood soaked the stone and brick, but there was dust too and the taste of long neglect.

At the fringe of his vision in the waking world, a troop of the Sarid galloped forward, their lances glittering in the midday sun. Despite his bold words, Uri was not leading them. He looked on, still sitting at Jalal's shoulder, still arguing. They had moved into the shade afforded by an old Roman triumphal gateway that stood, alone, a few hundred yards from the gate of the city.

Odenathus felt something in the air, a change in pressure, a sharp spike in the gradient of power in the land around him. Reflexively his hand ran through the mnemonic to call a pattern into waking memory. In the hidden world, the glittering blue sphere of the Shield of Athena sprang up, surrounding himself and the two arguing captains.

The earth shook, booming like a drum slammed by a heavy hand. The Sarid lancers, who had just come within a spear's throw of the gate, vanished in an eruption of sand, blazing limestone dust and red-orange flame. Burning horses catapulted through the air, their riders enveloped in white fire. Odenathus' mare reared, screaming. The two captains shouted in fear, their arms raised to shield their faces. Within seconds steaming ash, burning skulls and scorched limbs rained out of the air from a spreading black cloud. It drifted away from the gate.

Odenathus tried to rise. The mare had run away, her reins trailing on the dusty ground. The shield remained intact, though it was wavering in time with the thudding of his heart. Both Jalal and Shadin had managed to remain mounted and they were hiding behind the ancient gateway.

"Get away," Odenathus shouted. "It might be trapped."

It seemed the defenders had prepared a hidden ward under the ground, waiting for the Arabs to ride up the road to the gate. His brow furrowed with effort, he put forth his strength again, sending his will forth, probing for the enemy. In the ether the blast area flickered and gleamed with violence, making the patterns around it shimmer and twist like light in a rising pillar of heat.

There was a figure on the rampart, Odenathus could feel him, almost see him like a burning brand. The enemy was strong. Gritting his teeth, for he had never tried to strike at an enemy without Zoë at his side, their minds and powers amplified by the battle-meld, he chopped his hand at the distant wall. The air around him chilled and the nearest statuary on the triumphal gate splintered and cracked. Power leached from the dead ground and the sky and the roiling motion of atoms in the air. A cyan burst flared against the gate.

The enemy sorcerer's shield rippled as the blow struck, radiating heat and light like a rainbow. Odenathus swayed to his feet.

The enemy flexed his strength and Odenathus' shield fractured like a pane of glass struck by a hammer. Crying out, he was blown fifty feet down the road by the shock of contact. The air where he had been standing boiled and burned with a fierce blue-white light. The triumphal gate, licked by the roaring flame, cracked and shattered. Black smoke billowed out of the sandstone. Then half of it crumbled, in a roar of tormented stone and wood, to the ground. Bits of brick and facing pattered down around Odenathus in the sand.

The Arab army streamed away from the city at a full gallop, men shouting in anger and dismay.

The Palmyrene raised his head, feeling the world spin around him. His cloak was on fire, sending up a curl of bitter white smoke. At the last moment, he had managed to invoke a second shield. This had saved him. The enemy was very, very strong. Weakly, Odenathus threw off the smoldering cloth. His face and hands stung from the light.

"Oh," he gasped. "You've grown mighty, old friend."

The fire signature was far too clear, for Odenathus had seen it before, in the training camps and practice fields of the Legion.

Jalal jogged past, on foot, shouting something at the youth lying in the dirt. The burly soldier had Uri slung over one shoulder like a side of beef. The horses were disappearing in a cloud of dust. Odenathus' ears were still ringing and he couldn't hear.

"Pustulating, corrupt, wine-soaked, illegitimate wretches!"

Martina, Empress of the Eastern Empire, walked quickly, her face dark with rage. The corridor she passed through was dark and stained by mold. In the vast sprawl of the Bucoleon, there were areas damaged by earthquake or fire that had never been rebuilt. Each new emperor tended to add a new hall or courtyard rather than refurbishing the old. Her sandals, heeled with wood, made a sharp
clack-clack
on the ancient tiles. In places the tessellated floor had decayed into gravel or even dirt. At the moment, Martina noticed neither that nor the increasing darkness as the hallway tended downwards, following the slope of the hill towards the Military Harbor.

"Degenerate freaks, wombed from some diseased whore! Lower than the scum on the sewers, they are..."

Her fists clenched in time with her words, and blood seeped from the cuts that her fingernails made in her palms. The Empress negotiated a series of decaying marble steps without incident. Her feet knew the path she followed, even if her mind was wholly involved in a violent fantasy in which she choked the breath from certain men with her own hands.

Her morning had been, as most were in this unsettled time, filled with a slow procession of those seeking her favor. She had been in her salon, seated, with servants around her to bring a cool drink or a fan, if she desired. Lady Penneos had been by her side, discussing some matter involving her grandson. Many of the nobles in the city reviled the Empress in secret, or whispered behind their hands if she appeared at the theater, but still more sought advantage for their children or their children's children. The woman hoped that Martina could find a position for her grandson in the palace. It was a tedious business, this bartering of favors and implied gifts.

Martina was quite on edge already, dealing with the irritating woman, wishing she could return to her books and scrolls in the workroom. She had begun doodling a history of the great Constantine the Founder when she had first arrived in the capital. It was far more interesting to chronicle his heroic efforts than to listen to Lady Penneos.

Then Rufio had entered, unexpected and uninvited, his face a cold mask. Martina had frozen herself, flooded with fear, seeing him in his dark armor in the airy, light space of her salon.

"Most noble and gracious lady, some humble servants beg your illustrious presence."

Martina had risen, her eyes searching his face, finding nothing. Rufio's eyes, which of late had seemed sympathetic and even warm, were like chips of flint. Out of the corner of her vision, she suddenly realized that more guardsmen were waiting outside the archway that led into her rooms.

She had bent her head towards Rufio, her voice low and tight with distress.

"My husband?"

He had shaken his head minutely. The tightness in her chest and stomach eased.

"Please, most noble lady, come with me. The
logothetes
of the ministries seek your guidance."

Her feet, unerring, led her down a broad ramp of stairs puddled with slowly dripping water. Walls of brick loomed over her head in heavy barrel vaults. There were small, high windows, but years of dust and soot from the cookfires of the city had obscured them, cutting off even that source of light. The long hallway echoed with the sound of her shoes. Bats and birds, disturbed by her passage, fluttered near the ceiling. The Empress, ignoring the mud clinging to her slippers, marched down the hall, her voice ringing back from the peeling frescoes.

"Oh, to gouge their eyes out! To feel their fat, doughy flesh under my hand... to tear out their lying, duplicitous, soft tongues! Lowest of the low, schemers, wretched connivers, peddlers, mountebanks, fools with overbred hands and feet!"

She came to a door, half ajar and shrouded with cobwebs and the trailing bits of a tapestry that had long ago fallen into mildewed fragments. It was an unremarkable door, save that candlelight spilled around it, lighting up a pale stretch of blocky tile. Given the depth of her anger, however, Martina did not notice the illumination. Furious, both with herself, with the
logothetes
and the ministers, with Rufio and with the gods themselves, she slammed the door open. It made a terrible screech and then bounced on its hinges.

"Cursed, vile worms! Things that gnaw in the earth, disturbing the cursed dead! Oh! I would... excuse me. I didn't know anyone was here."

As it had always been, the room was dark and filled with shadows. The tall racks of scroll cases, the shelving bent with heavy leather-bound books, the familiar musty odor of decaying paper were all as they had been. Even the archaic-style oil lamps that hung down from long brass chains still protruded out of the gloom. In place of the long wooden table, however, there was now a... well, a
thing
and a startled-looking young man.

A priest, actually. Barely more than a boy. Perhaps only sixteen years old.

Martina smiled, a sort of sickly smile. She unclenched her fists and gently closed the door.

The boy was staring at her with wide eyes in a round, moon-shaped face. He was also hiding, half behind the table, with a heavy ivory scroll case in his hands raised in protection.

"My name is Martina," she snapped, then paused, collecting herself. "Who are you?"