The Storm of Heaven (77 page)

The boy brightened at that and Alexandros clasped his forearm, grinning. The Macedonian may never have held many friends close, but he knew how to ape the manner. More than one man had accounted himself a 'friend'. Alexandros did not laugh, but he was amused to think that every single one of them was dead, and he still lived.

"Come, lad, let's get your army sorted out. You've a short march and I, a long one."

Mohammed leaned close, bristly white beard brushing against Zoë's shoulder. "How do you feel?"

The Palmyrene girl smiled weakly, her face pale and wrapped with bandages. She raised her hand, gently touching the side of his face. The Quraysh smiled, taking her fingers in his own. He was sitting on a stool on the rear deck of the
Jibril
, beneath the big canvas shade. Early morning light fell in long slats across the wooden ship.

"I am well. I feel... drained and sore, like I've ridden a long way on a lame camel."

Mohammed nodded, fingertips brushing across the right side of her head. "Do you remember what happened?"

Zoë shook her head, swallowing. She licked her lips. They were very dry and a little crusty. "Is there something to drink?"

Mohammed tipped a clay jar to her lips and she drank slowly, letting the cool water moisten her face. Then she lay back, still pale, but in the morning light he thought she was regaining some color. Zoë looked around and saw Odenathus leaning on one of the poles supporting the canvas. His lean dark face was filled with worry.

"Cousin." Zoë tried to smile at him but thought it came out as a grimace. "You look poorly."

"He has not slept," Mohammed said, voice lifted by quiet laughter. "He and I and Khalid have taken turns watching by your side. You look better, I think, than we do!"

Odenathus nodded in agreement, then came to her side and squatted on the deck. Zoë frowned at him, seeing worry lines and wrinkles around his eyes. He seemed much older than she remembered. "How long have I been sleeping?"

"Not long," Mohammed said, voice a gentle rumble. "Three or four days. We were only worried at the beginning—you had water in your lungs. Luckily, one of the Palmyrene sea captains knows a trick for getting it out again. Your ear will heal, too, though I fear there will be a scar."

"My ear?" Zoë raised her hand, surprised at the effort it took, and touched the side of her head. Thick linen bandages were tight against her flesh. "What happened to my ear?"

"You don't remember?" Mohammed frowned, sharing a glance with Odenathus. "It was ruined, torn up, bleeding fiercely. There was some kind of metal sting in it, and small red wounds on your neck. Do you remember what happened on the
Archelaos
!"

"No." Zoë's eyes widened and she tried to sit up. The effort was too much and she fell back on the pallet. "Did something happen to the Queen? Is she safe?"

Mohammed sighed to himself and a shadow passed over his face. "The merchant ship sank, holed, and the Queen's funeral car went down with it. Khalid has some divers working in the wreck, I believe. They may recover it."

"Khalid thinks it will be soon." Odenathus leaned close, laying the back of his hand on Zoë's pale, sweaty forehead. "The catafalque may be destroyed by the fire and water, but the Queen will be lying safe in her sarcophagus. They have a barge with a crane. She will see the sun again soon."

Zoë nodded, relieved, and her eyes closed. Within a grain, she was sleeping deeply, her breathing regular and her face slowly resuming a normal color. Mohammed stood, pensive with worry, and motioned for Odenathus to follow him. The Quraysh stepped to the rail, ignoring the shoreline, crowded with houses and temples. They were very close to the city itself.

"There was something on her, some device." It was a statement, not a question. Odenathus nodded in agreement. He did not possess any of the healing art, but there had been remnants of some odd power in the wound. The Palmyrene sorcerer had driven the pattern out. The working had tried to dig deep, perhaps attacking her mind.

"There was an earring she was wearing, a black Gerrhaenid pearl, very rare. She never said where she got it. It was in that ear. Did she bring such a thing from Palmyra?"

"No." Odenathus remembered the jewel as well. The pearls of the Sinus Persicus were renowned the world over, but the black ones, they were a treasure. "It was a Queen's ornament, surely, but I did not see her take such a bauble from the ruins. I thought she found it in the market at Caesarea."

"Perhaps." Mohammed's face grew long, thick hand smoothing his beard. "Or perhaps it was a gift. Gerrhae has long been in the domain of the Persians. Lord Shahr-Baraz might easily possess such a thing."

Odenathus made a face at the thought. "She would not take such a thing from him!"

"No, but another might give her a gift, not saying who had sent it."

"Who?" Odenathus looked around in suspicion. Mohammed was being circuitous and the young man's mind turned to treachery. "You think there are Persian agents among us?"

"I am sure of it!" Mohammed laughed, but it was not a merry, joyful sound. "The Boar is not a fool. I am sure there are many agents among our men. Persia is well known for having an extensive network of informers in the Roman East, where the majority of our troops have come from. One of them, however, has made the acquaintance of Lady Zoë. She came close to death from this. We will have to be careful."

"And watchful!" Odenathus felt a heavy weight settle upon him. Soon the struggle would begin in dire earnest and this only added to his burden. "I will keep an eye on her."

"Good." Mohammed looked away, out across the waters, at the rich countryside. This land was thickly settled, with gyres and barns and vineyards in endless array. Streams spilled down out of the fields into the waters of the strait. Even from here, he could hear cattle lowing on the shore. He was sad, but he kept the feeling to himself. The desert was so much cleaner, more open, the sky and the horizon visible. There was no thickness to the air, no clinging heat and dampness. In this place, a hawk might spiral in the sky, invisible, the sight of one's eye muddied by the heavy air. "Our cause is too poor to afford treachery."

Smoke billowed out of a burning house, swirling in eddies across the road. Despite the rain spattering down, the farmhouse was burning fiercely. Corpses lay strewn across the farmyard—peasants by their tattered clothing. Khalid al'Walid sprinted from the gatepost to the side of the barn, his long hair slicked down on his neck. Water was in his eye, curling under the visor of his helmet. He cursed, blinking. Two of the Sahaba lay in the yard, arrows jutting from their still bodies. Shouting came through the smoke and rain. There was fighting out on the main road, too.

"Patik! Where is that damned Persian?"

Khalid peered around the side of the barn. The shutters of the farmhouse were hanging open, leaving black squares in the fieldstone wall of the building. Someone inside, sheltered from the rain, had shot his men. The burning building threw an intermittent red light on the door. The young Arab cursed himself for leading his men into this town. It was a trap, set by the suddenly resurgent Roman army.

Men ran past, just outside the gateway of the farmhouse. Khalid almost called out to them, then realized that they were Eastern soldiers in chainmail and rectangular
scuta
. Only the absence of the tribal helmet markings adopted by the Sahaba warned him. He gulped, cursing himself for not realizing it would be hard to tell friend from foe in bad light like this.

A stone rattled behind him and he spun, long cavalry sword nipping out. Patik, moving along the wall towards him, frowned and pushed the point away with his gauntlet.

"You were shouting, captain?"

"Yes," growled Khalid in a low voice. "Let's get out of here. Those were Roman troops."

Patik nodded. He had seen them too. "This way."

Together, they scrambled over the low wall and into a garden, wheat and yams lying in trampled rows. Patik hunched down low and scrambled along the side of the yard. They passed a wall of wooden slats and Khalid, following, could hear men speaking behind it in Latin. The sound gave him a queasy feeling. Past that, they were in another lane. It was filling with mud as the rain got heavier. Some men in armor were huddled under a sagging porch on the opposite side.

"Captain!" They hissed at Khalid and he and Patik splashed across the lane to join them.

"Where's everyone else?" Khalid bit out the words, knowing that
he
should know. The Sahaba, looking rather damp, shook their heads in puzzlement as well.

"Don't know, sir. We got separated when the Romans started at us."

Near dark, the clouds parted. A violent golden sunset covered the land, sending down shining beams through the remaining clouds. On the deck of the
Jibril
, Mohammed was heartened, seeing the rose and violet wash the sky. It had not rained much on the ships, the scudding clouds keeping to the land as sheep to the flock.

"It is very beautiful." Zoë's voice was weak, but she could walk unaided.

"Yes, almost like home." Mohammed pulled over a wicker chair, one draped with his cloak. "Sit. There is news."

"I could feel it," Zoë said, dark eyes smiling up at him. "This ship is too small for secrets. Everyone started to act busy and 'on important business.' What happened?"

Mohammed pointed at the shore with his chin. The Arab fleet was pacing the advance of the Sahaban army on land. Now they were anchored in shallow water off the harbor of Perinthus, the second largest city on the Propontis. It was a strongly defended city on a peninsula, flanked by steep-sided banks above a narrow beach. A tall wall cut off the base of the headland, protecting the city.

"The city fathers will not surrender, and we are pressed for time. We need this harborage. Khalid and Jalal have been arguing over assaulting the port. Odenathus has gone ashore to see if he can do anything."

Zoë raised a sharp black eyebrow. "Such a place will have old, old wards and patterns. They will be difficult to break."

"I know. A sticky point. We cannot get mired in a siege, not when a greater one lies just ahead. Jalal also sends word his scouts have reached the belt of open ground around Constantinople itself."

"Has there been fighting?"

Mohammed nodded. "Some. Our patrols have clashed with theirs for the past several days, but they have not come out in force. They are certain we cannot get into their city if they keep the gates closed. They can be patient."

"What about the Persians?"

Mohammed tilted his head in the other direction, to the southeast. "I have had some correspondence with the King of King's messengers. A swift-riding force of horsemen has taken possession of the southern shore—I believe they are Hunnic mercenaries, if you can believe that—and are waiting for Shahr-Baraz and his main army to arrive."

"Well!" Zoë smoothed back her hair, which had been washed while she slept.

Still weak, she had not bothered to don her armor, content to hobble about in a thick white shirt and baggy pants. "Everyone is gathering for a party... but when does it start?"

"Soon." Mohammed curled his fingers over the hilt of his black sword. "A courier galley arrived only an hour ago—that was the trouble you heard—Roman ships, in numbers, have been sighted in the Hellespont."

"Riding up on us," Zoë growled, looking over her shoulder at the dying sun in the west. "Are we trapped?"

"Yes." Mohammed seemed pleased by this. "We cannot go back, not without fighting our way out of the narrow strait. The enemy, however, will not be able to get
in
unless I withdraw the fleet from Sestus. Or, if we give battle and they defeat us."

"What are we going to do?" The Palmyrene woman's attitude shifted subtly, and Mohammed knew that he was speaking to a fellow ruler now, not a dear friend. "I do not think the Roman emperor is going to come out and fight you, hand to hand, on the field of honor."

Sighing, Mohammed unclenched his hand from the sword hilt. "I fear you are right. If the Persian army can be shipped across the strait, we can attack the city with a great army. Perhaps it will be enough to break the gates. But, more to the point, we don't have enough shipping to ferry the Persians about
and
blockade the city
and
hold the Hellespont closed. I have already sent a ship back with orders for the galleys at Sestus to join us. We will let the enemy in behind us."

Zoë smiled, thinking of flexing her power in the hidden world. Ships seemed particularly vulnerable to sorcery. "Two dogs in a pit, with no easy way out."

"Exactly." Mohammed's face was very grim, forbidding. "Only one of us will leave alive."

"This is a villa?" Betia did not bother to hide her disgust. Anastasia did not respond, climbing down from her litter and being careful not to step in anything. The Duchess was dressed very simply—her humor had not improved enough to indulge in her usual extravagant dress—and she was on a business visit, so it seemed proper to dress like a revered matron. "It's so...
small
."

Anastasia waved the litter bearers away and they trotted off down the lane, all husky backs and stout legs. Raising a carefully plucked eyebrow at her servant, she ducked under a trellised archway and into the garden. A high wall of mud-red bricks surrounded the lot, faced with a simple wooden gate on the country road. A house—well, more of an ambitious shed—sat at the back of the property.

The owner was squatting on the ground behind rows of feeble-looking grapevines. Anastasia stepped carefully along the path and stopped. "Hello, Narses."

The master of the Ludus Magnus, the greatest gladiatorial school in the city of Rome, indeed, in the Empire, looked up from under a sun hat of badly woven straw.

"Why," he said, squinting into the afternoon sun, "you must be the Duchess of Parma."

"You know who I am." Anastasia was determined to be blunt and open. In her peripheral experience with the man, nothing else seemed to work. They had never met face-to-face before. "I've come to make you an offer. I want to purchase one of your fighters."