The Dark Lord

by Thomas Harlan

  —|—

  The sun was a hot pink spark on the eastern horizon as Vladimir and Nicholas wearily climbed the low hill, pushing their way through prickly scrub. Sand dragged at their feet, making every step an effort. Reaching the hollow, Vladimir collapsed to his knees and laid down, panting. A cold mist rose from the lake, making the air damp and chill. The Walach luxuriated in the temperature, knowing too well the sun would soon be full in the sky, burning away the fog and hammering the land with unrelenting heat.

  "Where..." Nicholas started coughing again, a raw rasping sound. After the spasm passed, he managed to croak, "where is the telecast?"

  "There—" Vladimir rolled over, outflung arm indicating the section of sand where he'd buried the bronze disc. He stopped, staring. "—it is."

  Hastily excavated sand made an untidy pile around an empty hole. Vladimir closed his eyes, feeling the earth tilt under him. When he opened them again the hole remained. Nicholas knelt beside him, face white with fury as he examined the ground.

  "I've not your nose," he muttered, rising to pace through the brush. "But people were here—more than one." The Latin paused, fingers gently working a scrap of beige cloth free from a thorn branch. "Here—does this smell familiar?"

  Vladimir took the scrap of cloth, eyes narrowing, and drank deep of the faint aroma clinging to the loose-weave fabric. The smell was tantalizing, then he remembered and a deep growl issued from the back of his throat. At the same time, the Walach rocked back on his heels, gritting his teeth against a sudden, hollow feeling. Nicholas watched his friend with dead eyes, quick mind having leapt ahead to the same inevitable conclusion.

  "Thyatis," Vladimir said dully, staring at the hole as if the woman were there herself, laughing at their slow, dull minds. His fingernails shredded the fabric, letting the threads drift away in the dawn breeze. "She was here. With the others."

  "Which others? The Persians?" Nicholas squatted down, realizing he was silhouetted against the skyline. His face had grown very still, lips a harsh slash, eyes dark slits in a tanned face. "How many?"

  The Walach did not answer immediately, but crawled slowly around the hole, head low to the ground. Then he crept off into the brush and did not return for some time. When he did, a ghastly expression haunted his face. Nicholas was waiting, Brunhilde across his knees, chin in his hands.

  "What did you find?"

  Vladimir squatted beside the hole, digging his long fingers into the sand. "Betia was here too, and three or four other women. There were camels hidden down there." He pointed at the deserted, quiet village. "They put the telecast on a camel and went away into the desert to the northeast."

  "On the pilgrim road?" Nicholas did not meet his friend's eyes, focusing on rubbing soot from the scabbard with his tunic sleeve.

  "No. There is another trail following the line of ridges."

  Nicholas looked up, pale mauve eyes glittering in reflection of the spreading cloak of dawn. "Our camels and water?"

  Vladimir shook his head. "Gone." The beasts had fled wildly from the ambush on the temple mount and though he'd seen their tracks, they were long gone. "We have nothing," he said, biting his knuckles.

  Nicholas rose into a crouch, fixing the Walach with a furious glance. "Don't be a fool! We are alive and there is water in the oasis pools. These houses will be filled with food, water bags, everything we need."

  Vladimir nodded, but he looked to the north. Flat-topped mesas dotted the horizon, flattened as by the blows of giants, their sides crumbling and rocky with shale and chalk. Beyond them lay the open desert, wind-blown plains of rock and stone, and endless rolling sand beyond. "How..."

  "We walk," Nicholas said, moving down the hill, still keeping low. "First to Praetonium and then a ship to Cyrenaicea or Rome herself."

  Vladimir stared after him for a moment, then shook himself from head to toe, like a wet dog, and followed.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  The Nile Canal Gate, Alexandria

  "It's your turn." Frontius sat with his back against pitted old sandstone, squinting sideways at his friend. Both men were in a scrap of shade thrown by a merlon rising from the tower wall. The sun was a huge, brassy disk in the morning sky, its heat magnified by sodden delta air.

  "I think not!" Sextus replied, between gulps of tepid brown water from a cup. A bucket sat beside him, wedged into the corner of a stone embrasure. Two more buckets filled with river sand completed the fire-brigade station. "Who was cutting the cables on the Heliokonpolis bridge while the Jackal came on at us, thundering like the gods and spitting fire?"

  "You," Frontius allowed, closing his weak eye. Sweat oozed in a steady, slow stream down the side of his nose. "And handily done too. But I took the last look-see. It's your turn now."

  Groaning, Sextus peered over the edge of the embrasure, helmet crammed down tight on his head, a sweat-dark leather strap biting into his stubbled chin. The sky growled and rumbled with muted, distant thunder, but there were no clouds on the horizon. Instead, a heavy grayish haze hung over the fields and canals facing the city. The engineer's armor clamped tight against his chest and upper arms, the metal burning with sweat. He blinked a trail of salt out of his eyes, searching the irregular, rumpled landscape for the enemy.

  The irregular wind out of the north fluttered to a stop. A suffocating pressure began to build in the humid air.

  All along the Roman lines, a sloping, packed earthen berm two miles long, faced with slabs of scavenged stone and brick, riddled with sharpened stakes, topped by a fighting platform reinforced with palm logs, mud-brick and irregularly placed towers, the Legions tensed. Every man crouched down, pressing himself into the muddy corduroy walkway. Sextus counted himself lucky, on one hand, for their position stood at the Nile Canal gate—a proper fortification of sandstone and cement, long predating the earthworks—and on the other, he was shivering with fear, for the exposed bastion of the gate towers were sure to draw the full attention of the enemy.

  The engineer had seen the strength of the Persian sorcerers—more than once—and the rush of blood in his veins was loud in his ears. A half-mile of lumpy ground, denuded of vegetation, buildings and every scrap of brick, stone and wood faced the wall. Flocks of white birds pecked among the waving, knee-high grass. Sextus wiped sweat from his eyes, searching for the Persian lines, for the glint of watery sunlight on spears and helms...

  There!

  The air twisted, a monstrous shape winging towards the Roman lines. The heat-haze rippled, bunching and roiling around a swift sparkling mote speeding like Apollo's arrow towards the gate. The birds spurted up from the ground in a panicked cloud of white feathers. Screeching in alarm, they darted away across the bobbing grass.

  "Down!" Sextus screamed, kissing the stone. Every man in the tower did the same, eyes screwed shut against the expected flare of brilliance. A wild rushing sound ripped overhead, then a colossal thwang reverberated through stone and air. Sextus' eyes flew open in surprise, staring up, and his mind—normally quick, even in exhaustion—took a moment to grasp what he saw.

  A furious black spark whirled and sputtered in the air. Curlicues of lightning danced around the edges, illuminating—just for a fraction of a grain—a queer distortion in the air. The shuddering pocket of flame flared, leaping across some invisible surface and the engineer gaped to see the ravening destruction unfold, spilling away from him, lighting the sky, the tower and the rampart for thousands of yards in either direction, but held in the air like a stone distending a taut cloth. A rumbling, deafening crack-crack-crack rocked the engineer, throwing him to his knees, but the hissing, spitting destruction he expected to rip across the top of the tower, incinerating the defenders, cracking stone, scorching their scorpions and ballistae, stalled in the wavering air. Flame roared away, flooding down into the ground, into the foundations of the tower, like water spilling from a millrace.

  In the blink of an eye, the blast was gone, leaving only sizzling earth and clouds of steam boiling up from damp fields.
Sextus shook his head, trying to clear his mind, then he saw the previously empty plain surging with the enemy. The northerly wind resumed, stirring turgid air.

  "Here they come!" The engineers leapt to their ballista. Frontius scrambled up on the far side of the machine, grasping hold of a metal-faced plate set in the firing port of the wall. Sextus took hold of a smooth wooden handle with his left hand, then seized hold of the firing lever with the other. Frontius, ducking, dragged the metal plate aide, revealing the fields and the road below.

  Thousands of Persians and Greeks swarmed forward, shrieking war cries, running across the rumpled field towards the wall. Nearly every man, Sextus saw in the brief instant he spared to survey the attack, bore a shield and they came on in two distinct waves. The first ranks were men with climbing ladders, shields, axes, long spears—then the second were archers, already advancing in staggered line, some men lofting arrows towards the defense, the others drawing shaft to string as they jogged forward. The sky darkened with flights of shafts.

  On the road itself, a three-story-high tower rumbled forward on massive wooden wheels. A huge crowd of Persians packed the road behind the siege engine, pushing for all they were worth. On the fighting top, a dozen men in glittering, head-to-toe armor crouched behind wicker and hide shields. Sextus cursed, dragging the heavy ballista up and around. A four-foot-long wooden shaft lay in the aiming groove, tipped by six inches of triangular iron. Wooden slats flared from the butt-end of the bolt.

  "Aiming!" Sextus cried, narrowing his left eye as he sighted against a curved iron brace set above the bolt. Regularly spaced marks were etched in the metal. His right hand tightened on the lever. Frontius and one of the boys assigned to the engine scuttled aside, taking up positions behind and beside each torsion arm, hands light on matching wheels. Another legionnaire was ready at the engineer's shoulder with a second bolt.

  The top of the fighting tower clanked into sight through the iron loop. Sextus slammed the lever down. Oiled metal squealed in release and the big triple-corded cable snapped with a sharp thwack against rope-padded stays. The entire ballista rocked violently forward. The bolt flicked away, faster than Sextus' eye could follow. He stayed focused on the Persian siege tower, ignoring the frenzied activity of his crew as they reloaded.

  The bolt smashed through a wicker screen and into a Persian soldier's breastplate. The man sprang backward, as if by surprise, jerked by the massive blow. The soldier behind him tried to duck aside, but the bolt tore through the diquan's chest, out through his right shoulder and punched into the second man's mailed chest with a ringing tonk!

  "Range one hundred yards!" Sextus barked. "Three-quarters tension!"

  Frontius and the other soldier at the iron wheels immediately began cranking them 'round as fast as they could. Sextus waited, watching the siege tower rumble closer, listening to the thunderous boom of Persian drums, the splintering rattle of arrows hitting the parapet, sweating more from fear now than heat. His eye caught another shining mote speeding through the air towards the tower, leaving a coiling tail of disturbed air behind. He clenched his teeth, willing his bladder to hold firm. The clank-clank-clank of the winch jumping back with each turn of the iron wheels filled his ears.

  Somewhere out on the plain, Old Snake's voice raged, summoning hellish powers to ripple the air, draw thunder from a clear sky, sending destruction upon his enemies. Sextus had never seen the face of his enemy—few living Romans had seen any of the Persian magi—but every legionary, from the lowest servant to the Caesar himself, knew the sound of their voices. Every soldier had drawn their own mental picture of the tormenting sorcerers, fueled by the shock of battle and the grudging, exhausted respect earned by both sides. The disaster at Pelusium had nearly broken the Romans, but they had rallied to duty and honor and a bedrock faith in the Eternal Empire.

  The brilliant mote slammed into some invisible barrier in the murky air and again Sextus saw the sky twist and deform. Azure tongues of flame lapped out in a twisting cone and the mote blossomed into a blinding flash. A wave of heat rolled over the top of the tower, but the furnace blast was attenuated and weak, barely a fraction of its full power. Again, the unleashed power wicked down into the earth, spilling like molten iron across the face of the old towers.

  "Hah!" Sextus raised a fist against the malefic power hidden out in the haze-shrouded fields. "Rome builds to last, serpent!"

  Old Snake was their most implacable foe—a cruel, hateful voice filling the heavens with abominable sounds, sending fire and choking smoke, or crawling death, or simple annihilation in a curdling green blast—but the Crow was little better, a furious apparition, a woman's voice shrieking in hate, her actions shrike-swift. There was no mercy in her, though the legionaries dying in the mud, or fighting hand-to-hand with the Arab and Greek fanatics wearing her colors, swore she was the beauty of the night, rather than the day. There were other lesser lights, the sly Hawk who wrapped the Persians in smoke and mist, hiding their movements from all but the most discerning eyes, and the formidable Jackal, whose blunt, irresistible attack had smashed the Fourth Scythica into oblivion at Heliokonpolis, coming within a hair of seizing the great bridge before the span had plunged, foaming, into the Nile channel.

  Sextus could not say why he knew the face of the enemy—save their will was so strong, their awesome presence so widely felt, every man agreed upon their name and number.

  "Loaded!" barked the soldier at his side, snapping Sextus' attention back to the moment at hand. A fresh bolt lay in the channel, the twin windlasses drawn back, Frontius shouting at him, stepping aside. Sextus sighted, saw the siege tower eighty yards away, swung the aiming handle a fraction, then slammed the release lever down again.

  The ballista rocked forward, cable slammed into padded rope, another bolt flashed toward the enemy. Frontius leapt back to his wheel, cranking for all he was worth. Tanned muscles worked under a linen tunic and Sextus watched the jerking progress of the windlass bar with eager eyes.

  The screams and shouts below the tower changed timbre and the first Persians scrambled up the sloping embankment, weaving their way through a forest of sharpened stakes and tangling brush. Legionaries on the fighting platform began to hurl stones and javelins, or shoot at point-blank range with bows. Turbaned men toppled and fell, sliding on the greasy, soft slope. More scrambled past, their war cry ringing against the heavens.

  Allau ak-bar!

  The siege tower rumbled on, face studded with arrows. Flames licked among the hides and wicker shields. A corpse fell from the fighting top, limbs loose in death, to plunge into the mass of soldiery crowding forward below. Sextus' hand danced impatiently on the firing lever, waiting for the bolt to slide home.

  A third and fourth wave of Persians, Greeks and Arabs swarmed out of the fields, loping forward past the corpses of their fellows, a waving forest of steel spear points and wild, mad faces. A corner of Sextus' mind measured the roaring wall of sound, the mass of the enemy and realized their main weight had fallen here, on the old gate.

  Right in the thick of it, aren't we?

  "Loaded!" shouted the legionary. Again, Sextus adjusted his aim, squinting, sweat streaming into his eyes. His hand slammed down on the lever.

  —|—

  Caesar Aurelian, his dented, chipped armor streaked with rust, jogged up a log-paved ramp. His Praetorians paced him in a rough square, their gear equally worn, faces blank with fatigue. Hard experience had taught them to set aside their crimson cloaks and distinctive horsetail helmets. Like Aurelian, they wore only the simple armor of a legionary, without signs or flashes of rank. The aquilifer ran alongside, his golden eagle wrapped in cloth and held at his shoulder. No Roman would fight without the sign and sigil of the city behind him, but raising the aquila on this battlefield would only invite dangerous attention.

  The top of the battlement was crowded with armed men, both those struggling on the fighting platform, stabbing or shooting at the Persians swarming up the slope below, and wounded men lying
or sitting on the plank road behind. Medical orderlies trotted down the ramp, canvas stretchers in hand. Aurelian forced himself to look away, catching a glimpse of a young man—no more than a boy—being carried past, one hand clutched desperately over the stump of his arm, blood oozing through dirty brown fingers. A wooden dowel was slowly splintering between his teeth.

  A ripping sound smote the air and everyone not actually locked in hand-to-hand combat on the wall ducked. Aurelian crouched down, watching with narrowed eyes as the sky quivered and flashed, streaked with carnelian flame. Heavy clouds of smoke drifted across the battlement, making vision difficult. Some of the clouds were tinged yellow or green. As they passed, men choked and fell to their knees. A few died, vomiting black fluid, a steady wind out of the north holding back the latest Persian deviltry.

  "It's Old Snake for sure," one of the Praetorians hissed, rising from the ground. Aurelian nodded.

  Shielded on both sides by men with heavy, laminated shields, the Caesar climbed up onto the fighting platform. Two legionaries moved aside automatically as he grasped one of the support poles and squeezed between them. Below, the Praetorians glanced around nervously, sweating with fear at the exposure their commander risked. Aurelian kept his head below the top of the rampart, glancing quickly to the north.

  The fortification stretched towards the sea, curving slightly to follow the line of the ancient Ptolemaic wall. Smoke boiled from burning buildings behind the line and he could see men fighting here and there. Arrows slashed through the air in both directions, but in comparison to the conflagration around the Nile Gate towers, the rest of the front was quiet.

  To the south, Aurelian saw much the same—the line of the wall studded with smoke and activity, then the glittering waters of Lake Mareotis on their flank. Again, he cursed the Persians and their fleet of river barges. Against another enemy, the lake would be a broad moat protecting the southern side of the city. Now, he was forced to keep nearly an entire Legion back, deployed along the shore to prevent landings behind the main wall.