The storm of Heaven ooe-3

by Thomas Harlan

  The funeral car had sat for weeks in a Palmyrene warehouse, watched over by the Sahaba. Craftsmen labored over every detail with care, expanding the simple ornamentation added while they had waited in Petra. Plates of gold and silver covered the sides and the canopy was colored with paints made from crushed jewels. Even the coffin within had been replaced with a thin-walled alabaster sarcophagus. Zoe had added her own touches, making the wheels run light and smooth. Khalid donated a pair of glossy black stallions to draw the catafalque.

  It was beautiful and precious and Zoe bit hard on her thumb, watching the dockhands grunt and strain to roll the heavy wagon, inch by inch, up the ramp. As the catafalque moved, slaves walking alongside slid bracing logs behind the wheels so that it could not break free of the ropes and crash back to the dock. On the deck, men waited with hooks that would let the cranes lift it up and lower it into the hold. Creaking, the wheels topped the ramp and rolled onto the deck. A dozen men slowed the wagon, bringing it to rest.

  "Oh, this is too much to watch!" Zoe turned away, trying to push thoughts of disaster out of her mind. She walked along the quay, armor jingling, sword rustling at her side. Despite a general improvement in her humor, she had not set aside the silvered helm or the long knives slung at her waist. The only touch of vanity she allowed herself was freshly trimmed hair and regular baths. The air of the port resounded with the creak and groan of wood and ropes and men loading the last of the equipment and supplies.

  She passed a sleek galley, newly flagged with the green banner of Lord Mohammed. The newly repaired Jibril was a wicked-looking thing, all smooth lines and curving rails. A hooked prow surmounted its foredeck. A line of Arabic script ran along the outboard above the oars: There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet.

  Zoe smiled, for she knew this to be true.

  Walking, her boot touched something and she heard it skitter away, making a jingling sound. Puzzled, she stopped and searched the ground. After a moment she found a single earring caught in a crevice between two heavy flagstones. She squatted, one hand on her knee, and carefully worked it loose.

  A single black Gerrhaenid pearl, set in gold, gleamed between her fingers. She rose and looked around. There was no one else in sight who might have dropped such a bauble. Pursing her lips in annoyance, Zoe turned it over in her hand, wondering what to do. The dark pearls of the Sinus Persicus were extremely valuable, and the setting and workmanship of this one were exceptional. Zoe had not gone unchanged by her time in the court of Zenobia; she had gained a fine awareness of valuable things.

  A horn sounded in the distance, a mournful, wailing sound. It was the signal for the first ships to leave the harbor. She needed to be aboard. Shaking her head at the folly of some women, she put the earring in her right ear, just to keep it safe until she found it a good home. Then she hurried away, her boots jingling on the quay.

  A little distance away, on the rear deck of the Jibril, Khalid al'Walid raised his sun hat with a thin finger and watched the Queen of Palmyra depart. He smiled, teeth white in the tanned darkness of his face.

  "Well," he said to Patik, who was sitting next to him on the deck, carefully oiling a suit of lamellar armor with a rag and an unghent from a small clay bottle, "she has some appreciation of beauty."

  The Persian looked up, his long face calm under his short, curly beard. When Khalid had first made his acquaintance, the mercenary had been clean-shaven, but now he was letting it grow out. It promised to be mighty. "You should not play this game. Leave this to the powerful."

  As always, Khalid was impressed by the rich tones and cultured voice hiding behind that stoic, even mulish face. "Please, Patik, how will I grow great if I do not emulate those who are?"

  The Persian did not respond, turning back to his careful work. Al'Walid wondered if he should have taken the Persian's gifts. Too late now! Setting aside these qualms, Khalid leaned back, letting the hat slide down over his face. The weather promised an easy journey to Constantinople and he intended to make the most of it. There would be little rest once they were at grips with the Romans.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Near Pelusium, Lower Egypt

  His camel groaning, Nicholas topped the crest of a long, striated dune. The sand was soft here, driven by a steady wind off the sea, and the creature's splayed, three-toed feet dug into the loose slope.

  "Heyup!" Nicholas slapped the camel with a thin cane, making the beast lope down the side of the dune. Weeks of practice kept him in the saddle, though the swaying motion made most of the legionaries ill. Years on the heaving pine deck of a Dansk drakenship had given the barbarian a great tolerance for such things. The motion was oddly comforting. Behind him, in an irregular line, the rest of his small command descended the long sweep of the dune. The ground was rockier below, though ahead he could see a line of palms and the spreading green of a canebrake and mud flats. They had come, at last, to the edge of the great delta.

  Nicholas wheeled the camel, drawing another gronk of outrage, and waited for his companions to join him. Vladimir loped up a moment later. Despite some half-hearted attempts, the Walach had given up on getting the camels to carry him. They shied from his smell and tried to bite or kick. Instead, Vlad's gear rode on one of the pack animals and he jogged alongside the line of march, stripped down to a pair of dark green breeches. His heavy pelt would have been impossibly hot, save for Dwyrin's power.

  The Hibernian rode up, cane rod snapping against the flanks of his camel. The young man looked rested and cheerful in his white kaffiyeh and desert robes.

  "Pelusium should not be far away," the Hibernian called as he switched his camel's ear. The beast had been trying to bite Nicholas' leg. "Then the channels of the delta-we'd make better time on a ship."

  Nicholas nodded. The lad was their Egypt expert. No one else had been there before. "What? Give up these fine friends and their smell and noise and ill-humor?"

  Dwyrin smiled lazily, leaning forward on the saddle pommel. "At least these ones aren't attracting flies."

  Vlad laughed, squatting on the ground and letting his legs rest. The Walach liked to run, but this heavy sand was hard going for him. He didn't have the advantage of four big splayed feet. "I don't miss the flies or the heat, Dwyrin. I think we'd have shriveled up without your help."

  Nicholas knew that was true! Their flight from Aelia Capitolina had veered into rough water once they left the inhabited regions south of the city. A long stretch of barren wasteland separated the southernmost Judean towns from the coast at Gazzah. Beyond the crumbling, half-abandoned port was a worse passage across the top of the Sinai wilderness. There was no water to speak of, and the heat of summer baked the land. By great good luck, the boy recovered from his exertions in the siege before they had ventured out of Berosaba.

  "Just doing my job," Dwyrin said, looking out at the cane fields and the blue line of the sea beyond. Flocks of birds were slowly rising and falling over the mud flats, feasting on dark clouds of insects hazing the air. "I'm glad I figured out how to do it. I hate the heat."

  The rest of the engineers rode up, making a milling crowd of camels, mules and stubby-shouldered horses. Sextus and Frontius cantered up to join Nicholas and his little command group.

  "Ave, centurion!"

  "Gentlemen, I think we've come to the end of our journey. If Dwyrin is right, Pelusium is not far ahead through these palms and cane. By rights, there should be a Legion outpost. Hopefully we'll be able to find someone in charge and report in."

  The surveyor and the engineer nodded, though they looked a little disappointed.

  "We'll be reassigned, then," lamented Sextus. "Parceled out to some other unit."

  "Scattered to the winds," Frontius complained. "Like so much straw on the threshing floor."

  They both sighed. Frontius jerked his head at Dwyrin. "Centurion, can we keep the lad on?"

  "I think not," Nicholas growled. "We're sticking together. It's… ah…" He grinned. "It's cooler."

  Sext
us groaned and put his hands over his eyes. Frontius just shook his head.

  "Centurion!" One of the surveyors was pointing towards the sea. Nicholas turned, shading his eyes. There were riders there, silhouetted against the sparkling blue waters. They seemed to be hurrying towards the palms. As they moved, there was a slow rippling across the mud flats and a great cloud of flamingos rose up, shifting and sparkling in the sun. The birds had been feasting amongst the shellfish in the muddy pools.

  "Oh, that is fine." Nicholas raised his hand to signal the men. "We've been seen and the blind fools are sure to think we're bandits or the whole Arab army! Come on, let's go find the sentry pickets."

  With another chorus of groans and bleats from the camels and some whickering from the horses, the column shook itself out and ambled across the sandy scrubland, heading for the road running beside the sea. They kept away from the coastal road during their long journey, fearing possible Arab patrols. Now they were forced to the coast by the mud and bogs and quicksand that sprawled out from the easternmost arm of the Nile.

  Dwyrin took up his accustomed place at the middle of the group, lazing in the saddle, attention only partially focused on the camel. The rest of his effort, such as it was, spun slowly in the hidden world, a faint purple disk around the entire group. The hair-thin layer passed heat out and cooler air in. Too, above the column, it diffused the rays of the sun, providing a veneer of shade for the men riding below. The strength to reflect the sun came from the air itself as it calmed and grew cool. Flies and other insects were unable to penetrate the barrier, providing welcome relief from their biting and buzzing.

  The Hibernian was heartened by the speed of his recovery from the effort of the siege. It seemed to him that his core self, that indefinable mote that spun and glowed at his heart, was growing stronger. He could shrug off the illusions and phantasms once tormenting him. A great sense of focus and solidity had come upon him as they crossed the desert. The emptiness let his mind find strength. His skill, though still raw, was growing. Over any kind of heat or flame, he wielded swift and encompassing power. Dwyrin thought of his friends and was glad that he had not killed Odenathus in their struggle.

  The row of palms and waving green cane grew closer.

  – |"Halt! Quo vaditis?"

  Nicholas let his camel amble to a stop, a hand raised in greeting. The line of palms disguised a shallow, meandering channel filled with saltbush and waxy-leafed scrub. Beyond the stream, a high bank of black soil led under more date palms to a crumbling brick building. The road in front of the customhouse was half buried in sand. Nicholas hadn't expected there to be much here, so he wasn't disappointed by the dilapidated buildings.

  The legionaries appearing out of the brush, swords bared, were a different matter. It took Nicholas a moment to realize what was wrong, but by the time that two iron spear points were pressed against his chest, he raised both hands. The grim-faced men in plumed helmets and shining lorica were Western troops, not Eastern. It was disorienting, since Egypt was an Eastern province.

  "Whoa, there, lads! I'm Nicholas of Roskilde, centurion of the Fourth Engineers cohort of the First Minerva… you can put the pointy sticks away."

  Behind Nicholas, the rest of the column came to a halt, surrounded by more soldiers in the brush and among the palms. Despite the tension in the air, none of the men around the column seemed to have noticed the clouds of flies under the palms were suddenly gone, or the steady drop in air temperature. Dwyrin, Sextus and Frontius pushed their way up to the head of the line.

  "The First Minerva?" The Western commander stomped up to Nicholas' camel, glaring suspiciously. The man was sweating heavily. "You're a little lost, I think."

  Sextus doffed his straw hat and clambered down off the horse.

  "We were loaned out to the Easterners," the surveyor said. "Barely got out of Judea alive."

  The Western centurion glowered at the rest of the column, then tugged absently at his chin strap. "You're the first men down this road in weeks. Been mighty quiet."

  "Yes," Nicholas said, leaning forward on his saddle pommel. "The Arab army is in Gazzah, I imagine. No one's going to come down the road except them now."

  "Well," the centurion said, looking sour, "you lot look Roman enough. I've orders to take anyone who comes out of the desert to the legate, so you'd better hop along. I'll get my horse."

  Nicholas sat back and exchanged a bemused glance with the others. The centurion did have a horse, a nag with a mottled face, but it got along well enough and didn't mind the camels. The rest of the Western troops in the scrubby trees disappeared again and the column, after some jostling about, managed to get moving.

  – |For a mile or two past the customhouse the land was thick with stands of green cane and muddy pools. The road was still in disrepair, blown with sand and dangerous with loose paving stones. Slender trees grew thick on the banks of the channels, hiding mottled green logs sleeping in the hot sun. Gleaming white cranes stepped through the water, hunting for frogs. Then, after passing through a belt of tall, willowy trees, the column passed under an ancient archway flanked by huge sandstone statues of men with tapering beards. This was the first time Nicholas had seen the detritus of the ancients. Dwyrin ignored the pharaohs, chewing on a piece of flatbread, but the centurion craned his neck to look up at them as they passed. Even the stone was cracked and chipped, dilapidated, oozing hoary age. Beyond the archway, everything changed.

  Great plumes of dust rose from a land crawling with men. Suddenly, the road was clear and wide, lined with columns of workers trudging along under bundles of freshly cut stakes. Roman soldiers were everywhere, directing traffic and keeping a close eye on thousands of fellaheen digging under the blazing sun. The Western centurion urged his mount onwards and Nicholas had to swat his camel hard to get it to keep pace. Winding their way through crowds of laborers hauling dirt up out of a dry river channel, Nicholas and his men passed over a great wooden bridge.

  The northerner looked down in awe at the river bottom. It was swarming with workers, digging furiously with mattocks and spades. A dark haze buzzed and drifted over the riverbed-flies and darting shapes of thousands of small brown birds preying upon them. Endless lines of brown men in white loincloths bent under the effort of hauling thick black dirt out of the excavation and up a series of ramps to the western side of the river. Even the bridge, obviously ancient, had been torn down to huge stone plugs on the riverbed. The ancient stone span had been replaced by a wooden road.

  Upstream, past clouds of slowly rising yellow dust, the sloping face of a dam filled the channel.

  "What is happening?"

  The Western centurion looked back, grinning. "The legate likes to dig!"

  They trotted down off the bridge, through another decaying triumphal arch and onto a crowded road. On this side of the dry river, dirt was rising into a sloping berm running in either direction as far as the eye could see. It too swarmed with brown men and soldiers. In some places, the top of the long wall was finished and Nicholas made out stonemasons and carpenters busily erecting a wall of fired mud-brick. Below the parapet, lines of fellaheen worked, pounding stakes into the outer face with mallets. The sky ahead was dark with smoke, rising from hundreds of brick pits.

  An opening in the berm, shored up with massive stone blocks, let them through the barrier. Behind the sloping wall there was a half-mile-wide area stripped clear of brush and trees. The rear face of the berm was sharp and built up with a fighting platform and packed-earth ramps leading up to the walkway. Ahead of them, they saw the edge of a second river channel. Here there was less activity and another wooden bridge. As before, the roadway had been torn down to the pilings, though the water was high, rushing past in a brown flood. Western soldiers manned a pair of towers on the far side. A second wall of packed earth rose up at the water's edge.

  Lines of camels and mules passed through the gates, carrying bundles of wicker, straw and cane. Nicholas and his escort waited for a dozen grains while the car
avan passed by.

  "This channel is wet," Nicholas remarked to the centurion. "Is the work finished here?"

  "Not started yet," the Western officer grumbled. The man made a shooing motion in front of his face, though no flies had bothered him for over an hour. Nicholas assumed the motion had become automatic. At the edge of the invisible barrier riding around Dwyrin, little drifts of dead flies were piling up while Nicholas watched the camels and mules pass. Now the caravan was laden with fresh bricks wrapped in straw.

  "The dam isn't done for this section yet." The centurion pointed off to the south.

  Nicholas shaded his eyes, squinting, and made out-two or three miles away-a low ridge of earth and stone being built across the channel of the river. Like the river bottom they had passed, the levy swarmed with men, visible at this distance only as a rippling motion on the great mound of earth.

  "They need to finish dredging the first channel," the Western officer continued. "Then they'll divert this channel into that one and close this dam. Then everyone will fall back here and finish this wall."

  Nicholas looked north along the line of the berm and saw that it only ran a quarter-mile and then petered out. Obviously the bridge crossing needed to be defended first. "How long has all this taken?"

  The Western officer grinned. "We've only been under way for six weeks. Not bad, eh? That's what you get from His Worship! Swift action. Come on."

  The last of the mules passed and the column wound its way through the gate. A mile ahead, Nicholas could see the outskirts of a town and rising above it, squat and ugly as all sin, a whitewashed brick fortress hard on the sea. Banners and flags flapped in a desultory breeze, but they were obscured by the reek and fume of fires burning in the flat between the last bridge and the town. A huge camp sprawled in all directions. The ground on either side of the road fell away, gouged out for brick pits. Between the bowl-shaped excavations there were wilted fields of corn and onions. Legionaries and fellaheen passed in the opposite direction in a steady stream. Their progress slowed.