The Storm of Heaven (4 page)

Mohammed nodded and turned back to the papers and the table. After a long pause, he looked up, his gaze searching the faces of the men in the tent. The air was growing hot as the day advanced and the sun mounted into the sky. Soon it would be fierce indeed, particularly on the plain below the hill, where the wind was blocked by the rising land.

"Our number," he said, musing, as if to himself, "is half that. Perhaps a little more... Have any new contingents joined us in the night?"

"No," said a stoutly built man of middle height with a thick, curly black beard ornamented with small glittering jewels. Like many of his fellows, he wore Roman-style armor and carried a legionary's helmet under one arm. Despite his young age, he squinted nearsightedly in the dim light of the tent. "One of the local clans came in last night. Fifty or sixty men with bows and small shields at most."

Mohammed nodded. "Thank you, Lord Zamanes. Our strength is complete, then."

The King of Jerash and Bostra ducked his head and stood back, finding his place amongst the captains of the regiments drawn from the old Hellenic cities of the Decapolis. Zamanes was not comfortable with Mohammed, not since the Tanukh had started talking about the things that they had seen at the Ka'ba, or on the High Place in Petra. Still, the young Prince had thrown his lot in with the southerners. It was far too late to crawl back to his old allegiance now.

Mohammed considered them, these rebels. He was sure of the core of his army; the Sahaba—Jalal and Shadin and the rest of the Tanukh—that had made the haj from Palmyra, his own kinsmen from Mekkah and the lands about the dry city. The Sarid tribesmen had long been his ally, and their chieftain, the rascal Uri, had been his friend from youth. Even the Yemenite fighters with Khalid's captured fleet were familiar to him—the Quraysh and the Bani Hashim had traded with them for centuries.

Too, he knew the Palmyrenes. He understood Zoë. He could feel the furious anger burning in her heart, the overwhelming desire for vengeance that had broken her ties to the Legion. She was an eager hawk, straining against the hood, desperate to fly shrieking at the enemy. Her, he kept close by. Her talent and power had to be guided, or they would bring disaster.

Her cousin, young Odenathus, Mohammed thought he understood him as well. He followed his queen, Zoë, and his loyalty was to the dream that his beloved city might be rebuilt. Like her, he would fight, but the Quraysh lord thought the young Prince could be trusted to keep his head. His men, they would follow their queen. They were a small band, now no more than a few thousand exiles, but Mohammed trusted them near as much as his own Tanukh.

But these city-dwelling Romans that formed the majority of his army... Mohammed studied their faces openly, for he was not given to slyness or guile. Zamanes seemed a solid-enough fellow, but their loyalty had been to the Empire for so long! For centuries Roman rule had held the Levantine coast, the Decapolis and the great cities of Syria in its withered gray hand. Now they had risen up, outraged by the treachery of the Eastern Emperor, Heraclius. Frightened and stunned by the destruction of glorious Palmyra. Angered by the new census and the threat of heavy taxes to repay the cost of the long war against Persia. But would they stand, when the battle reached its pitch and men were dying in droves all around them?

"Khalid, you say that the Romans will come forth?"

"Yes, lord. My spies in their camp brought me news only hours ago... the Imperial Prince Theodore intends to crush us, today, in a single blow."

"Tiamat's dugs, you fool, what are you doing?"

The Imperial Prince Theodore, younger brother of the reigning
avtokrator
of the Eastern Roman Empire, the commander of the Legions currently in Judea and Syria Coele, turned in his saddle. A furious Armenian pulled up in a cloud of dust and gravel at his side. Theodore motioned slightly and one of his servants jogged up to the side of his stallion and whisked yellow-brown grains of sand from the Prince's cloak with a long-handled duster made of hawk-tail feathers. Behind the arrival, a cordon of tall men in red cloaks closed like a lake swallowing a sling-stone.

"General Vahan. You have left your post on the left wing? Is there a problem you could not resolve on your own?"

The Imperial Prince inclined his head, still smiling faintly, watching with amusement as the burly, thick-bodied Armenian princeling sputtered in rage, his weathered face turning red under a heavy black beard. Theodore and his escort of Egyptian body-servants and slaves, red-cloaked Faithful with long blond hair in plaits and axes gleaming in the morning sun, stood at ease across the crest of a low hill near the center of the Roman line. The forest of spears and colorful umbrellas and a windscreen of mauve-dyed linen sewn to iron strakes drew the eye from miles away.

From this low height, the Prince could cast his eyes right, shaded by a shining white parasol of waxed linen, and see rectangular blocks of his legionaries stretching away, two or three miles, to the edge of the plateau. To the left, past where a shallow streambed curved under the shoulder of a hill, there was a sloping open plain filled with slowly moving clouds of dust that marked the presence of Roman and Armenian
cataphracts
.

The cavalry and the left wing were Vahan's responsibility. The Armenian brought his roan mare up, wither to wither, with Theodore's black, glossy mount. The Prince laid a gentling hand on his horse's shoulder. The presence of the mare was beginning to excite the stallion. Both horses were fitted with barding: the Prince's an elaborately decorated chanfron of heavy felt reinforced with bands of iron, Vahan's of simpler hardened leather, stained by travel and use.

"Lord Prince..." Vahan swallowed another curse and blinked sweat from his eyes. Like his kinsmen on the plain below, he was clad in a heavy woolen doublet under lamellar armor of overlapping iron bands. Sweat seeped from the edges of his armor, turning the heavy leather laces black with moisture. Theodore wondered if the man could fight a full day in such heavy gear and not expire of thirst.

The Prince raised a finger and gestured. One of the servants hurried up. The cream-colored ceramic jug in her hand was beaded with water droplets, forced from the cool interior by the heat of the day. "Drink, Lord Vahan. You are not used to this lowland heat. Please... indulge yourself."

"No," Vahan said abruptly, ignoring the outraged glances of Theodore's aides. "You are sending the infantry ahead too soon. You must have them hold their position on this side of the wadi until my light horse deploys to screen their advance. A swift charge from my
cataphracts
will shatter the bandits; why spend your legionaries so fruitlessly?"

Theodore turned his attention back to the plain. The blocks of legionaries on the right-hand side of the hill were shaking themselves out into a long line of battle. As each cohort advanced over the uneven ground, they tended to separate and clump, following the path of least resistance. Despite this, Theodore could faintly hear the stentorian bellowing of the centurions, keeping their knock-kneed, imbecile charges in order. The first detachments were jogging up the slope beyond the dry streambed.

"It will take time for the infantry to cross the creek, Vahan. Your horsemen are swift... they can easily make up the difference. You have your task, in any case. Drive off their camelry on the left. I will not send your heavy horsemen up that hill."

Vahan ground a fist into his high-cantled saddle. It was old-fashioned, with four jutting corners and a flimsy-looking belly strap. He gestured, stabbing out with a thick finger. "Lord Prince, you haven't fought these bandits! See, there, before the mass of their army? Lines of horsemen already advance at a trot—those men are javelineers, Lord Prince. They will take great delight in striking down your legionaries from a distance. They will have a height advantage, to give the flight of their javelins greater weight."

Theodore nodded absently, watching with professional interest as the legionaries crossed the streambed, keeping a steady pace, keeping even spacing among the cohorts. Looking down like this, seeing the whole of the battle spread out before him like a map, he felt a fleeting giddiness. Couriers and riders stood close to hand, just behind him on the crest of the hill, fleet horses waiting. His orders could fly on those hooves to any point of the battle line in moments...

"Lord Prince!"

Theodore shook his head slightly and turned back to the Armenian. "Yes?"

"Pray, signal your men to halt their advance until they can be supported!"

"Oh," Theodore said airily, "they are. Watch and you will see." Then he said, crossly, "You should not have left your command. Such things set a poor example for your troops."

Mohammed squatted atop a splintered black boulder, hands resting easily on the tops of his thighs. Tan-and-white robes fell around his boots, pooling on the cracked rock. He was very still, letting a sluggish breeze flow over him. The sky was clear, though horses curveting in the valley below him raised clouds of pale yellow dust. Some of it was beginning to hang in the air. In a few hours, a thick pall would lie across the whole battle. There, below, several thousand of his riders were darting towards the slow-moving Roman advance.

"Do they think this is a game?" Zoë's voice growled up from below. She was sitting at the base of the boulder, in a tiny scrap of shade, her sword, sheathed, over her long legs. A white veil draped her face, revealing only dark, brooding eyes. "Seeing how close they can come to the enemy? Flaunting their riding skill with a shot from full gallop, standing in the saddle?"

"Some do," Mohammed said, voice still and quiet. "See how their shot falls amongst the enemy? Like rain falling in the dust."

"Will it become a deluge?" Anticipation sparked in Zoë's voice and Mohammed could hear stiff linen robes rustling on the stones.

"No," Mohammed said, "not yet. Khalid wishes to test their discipline."

"Huh." The sound was filled with grievance. "He is a reckless boy. It is unwise to trust him with such authority."

Mohammed tasted the air, the tip of his tongue appearing briefly between his lips. There was a brittle taste. He continued to watch.

"You are jealous, I think," he said after a moment. "Your cousin is quite taken with our young Eagle—on some days they seem inseparable. Khalid is an... attractive man, in many ways."

Zoë just hissed in disgust, settling back against the crumbling rock. "Men are fools."

Colonna avoided a pale gray stone jutting from the slope. His hobnailed sandals slapped on the dry ground, adding more dust to the cloud thickening around him. "Advance! Step left! Advance! Step left!"

The centurion's throat was already hoarse as he shouted over the rattle and din of his men advancing, shields held up before them. He moved, five paces behind the men in the third rank of his detachment. This was slow work, tramping up the long incline, ducking away from arrows whistling out of the sky. Luckily, they were still at long range for the light bows these tribesmen used. The men in the first and second ranks were already slowing, not just from the fatigue of humping sixty pounds of armor, shield and weapon, but from the steady tension caused by the snap of shafts striking the ground around them. Some men had four or five arrows studding their shields.

Colonna, even in the rear rank, was grateful that the enemy hadn't really come at them in force. Not yet. He looked over his shoulder, towards the low hill where the Lord Prince stood. Dust smeared across the sky, making it difficult to see. He could make out swatches of bright color and gleaming metal. The sun, full in the sky, burned on his neck. Soon his armor would be too hot to touch. He guessed, in the pale yellow murk, that most of the army had crossed the streambed.

"Advance! Step left!" He was still shouting, automatically. Shaking his head, he wrenched his attention back to the men. Some of them had drifted to the right, behind the shelter of their fellow's shields. More arrows whistled out of the sky.

"Accursed dogs!" Colonna, groaning a little, picked up his pace and lashed at the backs of the men in front of him with a long stick. "Keep left, keep left!"

An arrow flashed past his face, black fletching only inches away, and the centurion swore bitterly.
I don't want to die here, not on some damned rocky hillside in some pox-ridden flea bite of a province...

There was a thundering sound and he raised himself up, looking over the shoulders of his men. The ranks of the bandits had parted, making avenues through their line. Robed horsemen charged down the hillside, helms glittering in the morning sun. The sky darkened with arrows.

"Do you feel that?" Mohammed's voice was very faint. "Stand ready."

Zoë looked up, craning her neck to try and catch a glimpse of the Arab on the boulder above her. It was no use and she stood, slinging saber and sheath over her shoulder in one fluid movement. She put a hand, gloved in leather, covered with tightly sewn rings of Damascene steel, on the corroded black stone. The Quraysh was still squatting there, forearms on his knees, but now his eyes were closed.

The back of Zoë's neck started to tingle and she turned slowly, dark brown eyes narrowing to study the valley below. There was something in the air, a familiar-tasting sound and an unheard touch...

The Queen of Palmyra's eyes widened and her fine-boned features, dark with the sun, twisted into a snarl of rage. The sensation trembling in the unseen world was all too familiar.

Sorcery. The Legion thaumaturges are putting forth their strength.

Theodore urged his stallion forward, out from under the cool shade of the parasols, and squinted, watching the far slope with interest. Behind him and to one side, Vahan was cursing continuously and with ill-disguised heat. The Prince shook his head in delight, hiding a grin behind his hand. "Vahan, you've fought these desert rats before?"

"Aye, Lord Prince, many times. Your legionnaires won't catch them... they'll take a dreadful punishment from javelins and swift, stabbing attacks by those lancers. When your men rush them, they will gallop away. If your men stand fast, they will swelter in this heat, endlessly, while the bandits pick at them with bows from a dis—"