The Shadow of Ararat

by Thomas Harlan

  The falling body, seen by all of the horsemen crowded below, fell for what seemed to be an eternity, and then it was suddenly wrapped in flame and struck the ground with a thudding shock. It shattered, sending burning fragments of the Prince in all directions.

  Zenobia and Ahmet flinched back from the explosion, raising their arms to protect their faces. The Nabatean officers stared up at the cliff, jaws agape, the blood draining from their faces. Ahmet reinforced his shields, dimly perceiving that some vast form had stalked across the battlefield in the hidden world and had reached into the tent to tear the patterns of the priests and the Prince into tiny scraps. Now it raised its head in triumph, bellowing a vast roar of victory. Even in the seen world, the dim echo of it could be heard, rising above the tumult of battle like the shriek of the damned. Ahmet shuddered at the shape that he saw flickering in and out of perception. Tripartite wings flexed on the back of the towering figure and tentacles writhed where arms and hands would be. The thing turned then, and a single burning cat-yellow eye swept the field.

  Ahmet clenched Zenobia tight, his mind gibbering in atavistic fear as that gaze passed over him. Feeling only an incredible sourceless dread, the Queen quailed in his arms, burrowing her head into his chest. But it did not remark them and it strode away, the earth shaking at its invisible passing. Ahmet breathed a little easier, his eyes wide in fear. He stared across the field and for the first time was aware, like a hunted creature is suddenly aware of the stalking cat, of a distant black shape, like a wagon, behind the Persian lines.

  "Oh, my Queen, the enemy is surpassing strong. It must be one of the great ones, the mobehedan-mobad, come against us."

  Zenobia shuddered one more time and then pushed herself away from Ahmet's broad chest and the sanctuary it offered. She wiped her lips and rapped the plump Nabatean sharply on the side of his head with her riding stick.

  "You command now, Obodas. Get these men moving right now, or I'll kill you where you stand." Her fingers rested lightly on the saber she carried slung at the side of her saddle horn. Obodas stared up at her with blank eyes. Then he focused and, after taking a shaky breath, nodded. The Nabatean officers ran to their horses and began saddling up.

  Zenobia turned her horse; she had to get back to the center and see what had happened on the left wing. Ahmet clung to her like a sailor clinging to a spar in a storm-tossed sea. He was shaking and dripping with clammy sweat.

  —|—

  Lord Dahak sagged back into the rough horsehair cushions with a long gasp. His hands trembled and for a moment he could barely focus his eyes on the flickering candles that surrounded him in the perfectly dark confines of the wagon. The muscles in his arms and legs twitched involuntarily, the nerves brutalized by the staggering power that he had channeled through his will only moments before. Wearily he leaned over and fumbled at a copper cup beside the pillows. After two tries he managed to raise it to his lips and drank greedily. Red fluid, almost clotted to a gel, spilled in a trail along his cheek. He shuddered again, but the draft restored some of his strength.

  The sorcerer crawled to the door of the wagon and rapped on the panel. After a moment the door opened a crack and one of the Uze tribesmen peered in, his eyes wide with fear.

  "Drive," Dahak croaked, his throat raw from the effort of forming the words of summoning. "Make for the camp of the Boar. Send one of the men to him with a message."

  —|—

  Baraz scratched his full beard, twirling one of the ringlets around his mailed finger in absent thought. The Uze messenger squatted on the ground, chewing on a grass stem.

  "'This is a matter of men, now.' That is Lord Dahak's message?"

  The Uze spit sideways on the ground and nodded his head.

  Baraz curled his lip, and then shook his head. "Go. Make sure that Lord Dahak reaches the camp safely."

  No matter what the wizard thought he had accomplished, the Boar could hear the tenor in the riot of noise around him changing. The Nabateans on the left flank had finally charged down from the slope under the bluff and the entire Persian left was falling back before their lances. Baraz had thrown the last of his spearmen and archers into the fray, but his entire left wing was now being ground backward. Soon the heavy horses of the knights commanded by the Great Prince Shahin would be driven into the marshy ground along the streambed.

  "Ready my men," he shouted at the Luristani guardsmen. He smiled, his face creased with a wild grin, at the courtiers who were still held close to him, like bright feathered birds in a cage of steel. "We are needed on the left, so we are going to charge against the junction of the Red Men and the Romans. Their line is weakest there!" He heeled his horse and the entire band of seventy or eighty men surged forward. The courtiers began to weep and scream in fear, but the Luristani troopers crowded them with their horses, driving them forward. He still had no news from the right wing. Last he had seen, the Roman light horse had charged Khadames clibanari behind a volley of arrows.

  —|—

  Mohammed slashed overhand at the Persian knight, feeling his light cavalry saber ring like a bell as it smote the Persian's heavy longsword. The Persian knight hacked at him again, and Mohammed kneed his horse away in time to see the stroke part the air where he had been a moment before. Around him there was a confused swirl of men, horses, and ringing steel. The Tanukh charge had taken the Persians by surprise and had shattered the first two ranks of the Iron Hats. But once that momentum was spent, the heavily armored Persians had waded in, swords flashing. The Tanukh, despite incredible personal bravery, were being butchered.

  Al'Quraysh spurred his horse away, trying to break out of the melee. Another Persian swung his horse around, its armored head butting against his own. The mare whinnied in pain and fear and reared. Mohammed angled her away from the Persian, hacking across her head at the man. His blade rang on the attacker's armored arm and slid away. The Persian hacked at him overhand with an axe, and his shield splintered into fragments as the blade bit through the roundel. Mohammed shoved the ruined shield at the man and slapped his horse hard. It bolted away, carrying him past the knight. Suddenly a lane opened in the fray and he galloped into it.

  A tight knot of his men appeared out of the battle ahead, charging through two Persians in only half-armor. A lance slammed into one of the cataphracts and speared through his lower belly and out his back, slick with gore. The man screamed and toppled off of his horse, taking the lance with him. The Arab whooped and drew a curved longsword from a sheath over his back. Mohammed was among them in an instant.

  "Sound the retreat," he yelled, his voice hoarse from shouting. "We fall back to the main body. Gather the men!" Trumpets began to shrill and the sole remaining bannerman waved his standard in a figure-eight pattern. Mohammed and his men charged uphill, their fleet horses stretching full out. Behind them the other Tanukh struggled to fight free from the mass of Persians, but most were surrounded and hewn down. Al'Quraysh turned his horse as the Tanukh broke free, waving his saber above his head to rally the remaining men.

  An arrow, fired from the Persian footmen screening the edge of their infantry battalions, whickered out of the air and smashed into his side. He staggered and stared down at the broken shaft hanging limply from his armpit. A cold rush of sickening sensation filled his right side. The saber fell from nerveless fingers. Two of his men, one of whom he dimly recognized as ibn'Adi, closed their horses up on either side, supporting him.

  "Fall back on the Queen," he whispered. "She will command us..."

  —|—

  Having fought free of the swarm of desert bandits, Khadames rallied his household men to him. The two blocks of Persian heavy horse were disorganized by the melee, and he began shouting orders to regroup them. The general struggled against a terrible desire to scratch his nose, but that was impossible under the heavy helmet that he wore. His splendid armor, carefully buffed and polished by his servants the night before, was spattered with dark-red gore and dinged from a hundred blows. His arms were incredi
bly weary and he did not think that he could raise his sword one more time. He peered out of the narrow eyeslit and saw that his men were regrouping quickly.

  And still the Palmyrene heavy horse across the field had not charged into them.

  "Form up! Form up!" he shouted, and spurred his horse forward. "Prepare to advance!" He still had the strength to raise his sword high and wave it in the direction of the enemy.

  —|—

  Zenobia, despite her urgent desire to reach the left wing, had only reached the road at the center of the field when there was a roar of men's voices to her right. She wheeled her horse and peered down into the confused mass of struggling men that marked the right wing of the Persian line. Once Obodas and his knights had charged into the fray there, the Persian wing, already pressed almost to collapse by the Nabatean infantry, had given way. Now the Persians were streaming back from the line of battle, heading for the bridge and the crossing over the stream.

  "Mars and Venus!" she whispered, and Ahmet jerked his head up at the strange tone in her voice. A band of gaily attired men had charged out of the Persian rear, led by a giant of a man with a flowing black beard. He was bareheaded, and even from two hundred yards, Ahmet could see that his face was lit by an unholy joy in battle. He swung a long mace with a spiked head. As the Egyptian watched, he and his armored horse plowed through three Nabatean knights and the mace lashed out, smashing the helmet of one of the Petrans into bloody gore. A great shout went up from the Persian lines.

  Zenobia's face had gone utterly pale. "It is the Boar, Shahr-Baraz... I've been tricked!"

  Ahmet seized her arm and shook her. She snapped from her stupefaction.

  "The battle is not done," he hissed at her. "We have the upper hand. You are winning."

  She stared back at him with a lost expression on her face.

  "He has never lost a battle," she whispered. "He has slain his thousands, and his tens of thousands..."

  Before them, down the slope, the giant and the bear like men who formed a wedge behind him were wading through the Nabatean lines like butchers. Many of the red-armored men turned to flee at the sight of the Boar, and the entire Palmyrene advance suddenly stalled.

  "You must rally your men, O Queen. They will believe in you. Your legend is stronger than his!" Ahmet stared into her eyes, his will fully bent upon her.

  She stared back and then fire kindled in her and she turned away, rising in the saddle, her clear high voice ringing over the battlefield. "Palmyra! To me! Palmyra and Zenobia!" The stallion leapt forward as she dug in her heels. A wild scream of rage flew from her and the entire battlefield froze, men staring up in shock as she and her Bactrians hurtled down into the melee like a stroke of lightning.

  —|—

  Baraz whirled around, hearing a great cry go up from the Romans, and he saw a black stallion rushing toward him with a solid block of lancers at its back. A slim figure in golden armor and a winged helm stood in the saddle, a silver sword raised in one hand. The Boar blinked twice and his vision focused enough to see that it was a woman.

  Zenobia! His heart raced with surprise. He had heard rumors that the Queen of Silk was wont to lead her men in battle, but he had not believed it. Around him he felt the tide of battle shift again; the Romans had almost broken when he and the pretty birds had charged, but now they had taken heart again. Arrows fell around him like rain. He spun the heavy charger and pressed back through the struggling horsemen around him.

  "Zenobia and Palmyra!" The shouts of the Romans rang over the clatter of steel and iron, and the screams and moans of the dying. The Romans pressed forward again, their front a bristling thicket of spears and swords. The Persian courtiers and the Luristani guardsmen were overwhelmed and went down fighting, axes and maces biting at the shields of the infantry to the last.

  Beyond the battle Baraz gathered the remains of the horsemen who had been fighting on the left wing. One of them, to his disgust, was the Great Prince Shahin, his magnificent bronze and gold armor dented and muddy. The Great Prince's face was haggard, and blood seeped from a cut on his forehead. The withers of his horse were caked in blood. Baraz counted heads; only fourteen horsemen remained to him. He looked to the right, up the Persian line, and saw to his horror that the fighting in the center had gone worse than before. The infantry had fallen back almost to the bridge and he was close to being cut off.

  "Fall back to the bridge," he shouted over the din. The Persians trotted west as fast as their weary horses could carry them.

  —|—

  The earth shook with the thunder of thirty thousand hooves. Dust billowed up from the rocky ground, rising in a great cloud behind Khadames and his knights as they stormed up the low hill at the western end of the battle. The Palmyrenes who had been sitting for the last hour and a half on the hillock were at last beginning to gather into a wedge to charge, but Khadames screamed in delight, his arm strong again. They were too late. They had waited too long for their reinforcements, and now he had the momentum against them. The sacrifice of the bandits had been for nothing. The Persian commander's face split in a terrible grin. The ground sped by under his charger as eight thousand Persian heavy horse rushed up the hill in a great crescent.

  —|—

  Zenobia thrust with the point of her saber. The silver blade danced off of the Persian knight's noseguard and then slid into his eyeslit. His whole body jerked convulsively and the Queen, screaming with delight, whipped the blade out, the first five inches sluicing blood into the air in a spray. Ahmet looked away as the knight toppled off his mount. Zenobia wheeled her horse and galloped out of the fray to the west. Ahmet's white headdress was gone and his long dark hair blew free. His face was spotted with blood. The Queen trotted up the hill toward the road and her command tent. Half of the Bactrians who had ridden with her into the fight rode out again, hurrying to rejoin her. Only two of her messengers remained.

  The field was clouded with dust, making it hard to see either end of the battle. Zenobia resettled the winged golden helmet that she had been wearing on her head. One of the wings had been sheared off and it was unbalanced. It still would not sit right, so she pulled it off of her head with a gasp and wrenched the other wing off. The heavy gold struck the ground and stood there, impaled on the wingtip in the broken earth. Zenobia uncurled the braid that she had woven of her hair that morning and let it fall across her back.

  "Report!" she rasped to the messengers who had rejoined her. "What is happening?!"

  One of the dispatch riders, a Tanukh, bowed his head wearily.

  "My Queen," he said, "Lord Mohammed was struck down on the left and has been carried back to the camp. He lives but is sorely wounded. Emir ibn'Adi commands the remainder of the Tanukh, but..." He pointed helplessly off to the west.

  A great roar echoed through the dust, and everyone turned to stare in that direction. A heavy crash, like a thousand cast-iron pots thrown into a gravel pit, echoed out of the tan clouds, and then, suddenly, the ground to the west of the road was filled with Palmyrene horsemen, knights and lancers alike, in flight. The silver shapes of Persian heavy horsemen loomed out of the dust in pursuit, their banners fluttering.

  Zenobia groaned and crushed her fist into the mane of her horse. Ahmet gripped her shoulder hard, but some sound behind him made him turn.

  To the east, downstream, beyond where the Nabateans had advanced to smash the right wing of the Persian army, a column of horsemen had appeared, riding hard up the valley. Their robes were black and their banners were a long snake on a field of sable. Ahmet's eyes twitched left and right. To the right, the bluff where Aretas had planted his tent was abandoned, only a scattering of bodies and the forlorn banners of the Prince of the Rose Red City. To the left, the Nabatean horse and spearmen were still fighting, hacking their way into the right flank of the remaining Persian infantry. There was nothing between the riders in black and the unprotected rear of the Palmyrene army.

  "Zenobia," he whispered, "the missing horsemen—the Lakhmids
—what color are their banners?"

  "A red snake on a field of black," the Queen said, turning, and then she saw them as well. Her pupils dilated for a moment, and then she raised her head. Fire still burned in her eyes, but with it there was a realization of the extent of the disaster she had led her men into. She gestured to the lone remaining trumpeter. She put the mouthpiece of the trumpet to her lips and blew a long single note. Across the field of battle, the weary commanders of the Roman army raised their heads, staring behind them. Some could see the Queen, shining golden amid her officers, others could only hear her.

  "Fall back," she cried out, a mournful sound on the suddenly quiet field. "Fall back!"

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  The Gates of Tauris

  The night sky over the city was lit with a sickly green glow. Odd lights burned and flickered on the battlements of Tauris. A mile downstream from the city, the Emperor of the West, Martius Galen Atreus, stared north across the swift waters of the Talkeh. The river was running deep here, and the far bank was only dimly visible in the moonlight. Where he stood, on a flat-topped hill overlooking the river, surrounded by his guardsmen bearing torches and lanterns, the wind rustled in the leaves of the sycamores and aspen trees that crowded the bank. At the Emperor's side, one of the Eastern scouts raised a hooded lantern and flipped the stiff leather shutter up and down, then up and down again.