The Storm of Heaven Read online

  "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 Lor
d 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—"

  "Good," the Prince interrupted. "Then I don't need to explain. If we had time and leisure, I would bid you stay, and watch the battle as it unfolds." The Prince's voice changed in timbre, becoming cold and commanding. "But you, sir, are absent from your command. Get yourself back to the left flank and get your lancers and cataphracts sorted out! In a little while, the enemy will be fully engaged along our front, yet our superior numbers will allow us to spill round his left. That is your task, Vahan, get to it!"

  Theodore motioned with his head to the nearest of the Faithful and the Armenian found a pair of blond giants at his elbows. They grinned. Vahan swore under his breath and reined his horse around. The Scandians stepped back, long axes across their shoulders.

  "They will not stand to face us today, Lord Prince," Vahan barked. "Why should they? The desert is their sanctuary..."

  Why indeed? Theodore had pondered the issue for weeks, while his forces mustered on the plateau. He had chosen his camp carefully. There was good water year-round. Below the cliffs to the south ran the main road to Damascus. Other roads converged from the north. Here on the heights above the Sea of Galilee was the turning point of the entire defense of Judea and southern Syria. The Prince was sure he wanted battle, his full strength gathered. Did the bandits? They seem to, having come out in force, in full array, to face me.

  "Boleslav, attend me!"

  The captain of the Faithful stomped up, a single-bladed ax slung carelessly over one mighty shoulder. The Northman was nearly six and a half feet tall and built like a mountain. Even the steadily growing heat did not seem to touch him. "Ja?"

  Theodore leaned from his horse, his mouth close to the Northman's conical helmet. "Have word sent to the thaumaturges. Tell them to begin their working."

  Boleslav nodded, thick neck sliding like the gearing of a water mill. "Ja, altjarl."

  —|—

  Zoë jogged down the slope, riding boots sliding among the stones and scrub. A single plait of her hair bounced on the back of her armor. The sleeves of her robe were tied up to keep her arms free. Mohammed remained on the boulder, high above the line of battle. Regiments of her clansmen squatted at the base of the hillock, banners furled and kaftans pulled over their faces. The men of Palmyra respected the sun. Water skins passed along the lines of men.

  She came to a halt, senses filled with a slowly rising hum of sorcery building in the valley. "Do you feel it?"

  Odenathus nodded in greeting and acknowledgment. "I do," he said. His long face, darkened like hers by the sun, was pensive. "They're not messing about today."

  Zoë shaded her eyes and stared across the swale at the Roman camp. There, among the stunted trees and tamarisk, she could make out the rectangle of a Legion marching camp and, just outside the palisade, a circle of staves and withes marking the tents of the thaumaturges.

  "There must be at least twenty battle masters," Odenathus continued, his voice steady. "Plus the usual apprentices and journeymen. Almost double the usual complement to a Legion force of this size." The Palmyrene's face was grim and his hands moved restlessly on the hilt of his sword.

  "Yes," Zoë said, distracted, "they must have borrowed from the other legions, maybe the ones in Persia. The Prince wants to make a big show..."

  Closing her eyes, Zoë settled her mind, letting the heat and the dry wind and the sound of flies recede. It was difficult. The air was charged with anticipation and fear. Odenathus was worried and she could smell the fear-tang in his sweat. Her own armor was heavy and the bindings bit into her skin. She breathed out slowly, measuring the intake of air to the beat of her heart. She knelt, the pommel of her sword pressed against her forehead. The sensation helped her focus, let her mind block out the sensi constantly flooding her sight, hearing, taste and touch.

  Faintly, she felt Odenathus kneel beside her, and the whisper of his thought.

  Zoë let the image of a wheel form in her mind. This came of its own accord, from long practice, and with it, as the wheel spun and brightened and grew larger, she felt the last distractions of the physical world fall away. An old friend called this the Entrance of Hermes, and once told her, as they sat beside a high mountain stream, road-weary feet cooling in the chill blue-white water, that he imagined it as the eye of Horus, coming up out of unguessable depths. First, he had said, it was a single bright mote in an abyss of darkness. But then, as it rushed closer, it became larger and brighter. At last, as it came very close, it was enormous, bigger than a house, a burning eye trailing sparks. Once it rushed over you, once it consumed you in cold fire, you had passed the first entrance to the hidden world.

  Zoë invoked the image of a wheel of fire, but the effect was the same. When it whirled over her, her mind was freed of the physicality of the senses. Her hidden sight opened and she beheld the valley in its true form.

  For a moment, before asserting a pattern of symbolism fitting her waking mind, she beheld a shining void, filled with millions of hurrying lights. The streambed below was a slow blue surge coiling and twisting across a ghostly landscape. Thousands of men moving on the slope were sparkling motes. The horses thudding across the dusty ground, delicate traceries of living fire. Arrayed across the enemy camp was a shining wall of gold. Symbols danced across its surface, forming out of the rainbow shimmer, then dis
appearing again. Her perception shied away from the abyss of the sky, for the blue vault and thin white clouds were gone, leaving only an infinite depth filled with a haze of burning spheres.

  Sweat beaded on her forehead and she summoned up a second image, the first in a swift succession of patterns. This was the second entrance, where the adept, the sorcerer, brought forth from his hidden mind a series of symbols and patterns that allowed the manipulation and perception of the hidden world without going mad.

  That raw sky, the unfettered vision of the truth of the world, was too much for the human mind. Even in the brief instant Zoë stared into the abyss of light, she had felt the core of her being begin to dissolve, losing the unique identity that made her Zoë, Queen of Palmyra.

  A flower box unfolded before her, expanding into a constantly growing pattern of planes and forms. Each facet gleamed with a single pure color, bright enough to hurt the eye. At the heart, where the wheel of fire spun and hissed, a shining trapezohedron emerged. The people of her city, though they were born and bred of the desert, thought of themselves as Greeks. "The heir of Athens," they called fair Palmyra under the reign of the first Zenobia. Poets and sages, mathematicians and astrologers flocked to her golden court.

  Zoë's teachers were mathematicians, geometricists. They instilled their own symbology in her. The trapezohedron tore, then reknit, becoming a dodecahedron. Now her mind settled and familiar reality asserted itself. The hills had shape and solidity; Odenathus, still at her side, now seemed a mortal man, not a thing of fire. But the golden wall remained and the sky was filled with the tracery of power and intent.

  "The thaumaturges are attacking?" Zoë was startled. The Eastern Empire prided itself on the strength of its wizards, but their skill had always been turned to defense.