The Shadow of Ararat

by Thomas Harlan

  The King of Kings swung wildly, his heavy fists bunched like tree roots.

  Thyatis wove between the blows and spun, the back of her boot clipping Chrosoes on the side of his head. The skin ruptured, spewing blood. Hot rage welled up in her, giving her fists lightning speed. Chrosoes fumbled, trying to block her blows, but he was slowing. She hammered at his face and diaphragm again and again.

  The tip of her boot flashed into his groin and he screamed, a high keening sound, and doubled up. Her right elbow cracked on the back of his neck, driving him to the ground. Her fingers clawed into his hair and dragged his head up.

  A slim hand caught her raised fist as she pulled back for a strike to crush his larynx.

  "No! Thyatis... you promised!" The Roman woman turned, the gray tunnel that had focused her entire world down to the bleeding, crushed face of the King falling away. Shirin held her hand. The Princess was muddy, with her hair a rat's nest of dirt and leaves. Her hands, clinging tightly to Thyatis', were streaked with blood and dark bruises where she had sawn the cords away with the water-steel blade. The pale-yellow silk dress was utterly ruined, sopping wet, clinging to her in tatters.

  "Leave him be," Shirin said, pulling Thyatis away from the moaning shape on the ground. "He made his choice."

  Behind the Princess, fire suddenly blossomed from the roof of the palace. Shouts of excited men echoed from the windows. The low clouds were dark and glowing with the red of fires below. Ctesiphon was burning.

  "The gate..." Thyatis whispered, suddenly feeling very weak. Shirin slid under her shoulder, her slim arm wrapped around Thyatis' waist. Shirin started to drag her toward the steps, but Thyatis turned clumsily. Rain had started to fall, slanting through the glow of the flames that were licking around the domes of the palace. "My sword..."

  Shirin cursed and propped Thyatis against the trunk of an apple tree. The Roman woman clung to it, feeling the blinding pain in her ribs and forearms for the first time. The Princess cast about on the grass, swearing like a sailor. The drizzle of rain began to swell, hissing through the tree leaves. Thyatis turned her face up to the sky, letting the falling water sluice across her face, cooling her skin.

  The Princess ran up, soaked to the skin, her long hair plastered to her shoulders and back.

  "Here," she said, pushing the sword into Thyatis' hands. "We must go."

  There was a sound of glass shattering and red light bloomed in the upper terrace. Shirin held Thyatis close and they stumbled down the steps. Thyatis looked back, seeing the palace outlined in roaring flame and steam. More glass shattered as the soldiers looting the chambers of the King began throwing things through the glassed doors. At the bottom of the garden Nikos was waiting, water running down his face, at the little gate. He was grinning fit to burst. He loved the wet.

  Shirin dumped Thyatis into his arms and he ducked under the lintel, carrying her to the boat. The Princess turned back, wiping muddy water out of her eyes. Above her, the domes of the Palace of the Black Swan were blossoms of fire. Flames roared from windows and smoke and steam climbed into the clouds in a great column. Helmeted figures capered on balconies, throwing furniture and rugs into the courtyards below. At the top of the garden, outlined by the bonfire, a heavyset figure staggered. Shouts rang out.

  Shirin wiped water from her face, her shoulders trembling. She turned away, pulling the iron door closed and putting her shoulder into the bar that held it closed from the other side. It was rusty and creaked for a moment before it slid home. With the door closed, the screams and crackle of falling timbers shut off.

  The boat was a long skiff with a covered cabin at one end. Nikos stood in the stern, his bare toes gripping the planks of the deck, a heavy pole in his hands. Two Khazars reached up and helped Shirin into the boat. The Princess stepped gingerly to the little cabin and ducked down to crawl into it. Thunder rumbled in the heavens above. Lightning flickered from cloud to cloud. The Khazars cast off the mooring rope and Nikos dug in with a pole. The stones of the dock backed away, pooling with water in the downpour.

  The boat slipped away into the storm, water pouring down all around it. Nikos, soaked to the bone, began singing a song of his youth as he held the tiller steady. The surface of the Tigris was broad and flat, dimpled with thousands of falling raindrops. Darkness folded around them. The Khazars put their backs into the stroke. The far shore was nearly a mile distant.

  In the close darkness of the cabin, Shirin wormed herself into the woolen blankets, gathering her sleepy children around her. They murmured but fell asleep again, smelling her perfume in the night. It was warm, and the blankets were soft. The boat rocked gently from side to side with the stroke of the oars. The Princess drowsed, her babies in her arms, Thyatis' exhausted breath soft in her ear, one scarred forearm curled across Shirin's smooth stomach. Tears leaked from Shirin's eyes, even after she had fallen into a deep sleep.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

  Crows Over Palmyra

  Dahak stood in the ruins of the Damascus Gate, fine gray ash puffing up beneath his boots as he paced. Two stonemasons, their faces white with fear, knelt before him, each holding the side of a black sheet of polished basalt. On the face of the stone, in ancient spiky letters, they had carved an inscription. Only Dahak could read the words graven there, but he found them a fine jest drawn from a memory of his youth. His fingers, clawlike and withered, caressed the surface of the stone. Its smoothness was a thing of beauty. The words read:

  I destroyed them, tore down the wall, and burned the town with fire; I caught the survivors and impaled them on stakes in front of their towns... Pillars of skulls I erected in front of the city... I fed their corpses, cut into small pieces, to dogs, pigs, vultures... I slowly tore off his skin... Of some I cut off the hands and limbs; of others the noses, ears and arms; of many soldiers I put out the eyes... I flayed them and covered with their skins the wall of the city...

  Lord Dahak laughed softly to read it and held the hot feeling of revenge close to his heart. It warmed him, he who always felt a chill in his breast. He shuffled back to the steps of his wagon. His men had pulled it out of the ditch, and the loot of the palace adorned it. Plates of beaten gold covered the doors, etched with many symbols. Lord Dahak had placed them there with acid brewed from the blood of living men. His right hand, almost fully fleshed again, grasped the railing and he pulled himself up.

  "Nail it to the wall of the gate, there, above the entrance."

  The stonemasons bowed their heads to the stones of the ramp. They alone of all who had lived in the city before the coming of the Persians survived. Soldiers helped them raise the black stone up. Hammers rang, driving bolts of iron into the sandstone wall.

  Dahak looked about him, seeing his handiwork. He was well pleased. The long walls of the city lay in ruins, torn down by heat and water and splitting bolts. The houses were but empty shells, scooped out by fire. No statue stood whole, no column in that long arcade of columns rested upon its base. The four houses of the gods of the city were shattered piles of cracked stone, brought down by his own hand. Windrows of skulls lay heaped around the gate, empty eyes staring at a brassy sky.

  Atop the remaining fragment of the gate, a body hung, its head pinned back by black spikes, its arms flung wide. In death, Zenobia held no beauty. Arrows and spears had torn her body when she had fallen, a raging whirlwind at the last gate. Thirty men had perished, braving the reach of her sword. Archers had brought her down at last, for no man would face her hand to hand. Her body was dragged through the streets, torn by the kicking boots of the soldiers, to Dahak as he sat in the ruin of the House of the Four Gods. Her head had been struck from her body and paraded before the thousands of moaning captives on a tall pole. Her eyes had been plucked out, leaving only ragged pits filled with clotted blood.

  All this the people of the city had seen before Dahak had walked among them, a dark shape passing for a man, feasting. When he was done, the withered dead lay in their thousands, skin shrunken to their skulls. Fires
had been set, and the soldiers of the army had labored through long nights feeding the bodies to the flames.

  Palmyra had died a long and agonizing death.

  Dahak laughed, a chill sound that echoed off of the walls of the ruined gate.

  "Good-bye, O Mighty Queen," he said, bowing mockingly to the corpse above the gate. The head had been sewn back onto the torso, though it was a poor job, done in haste with thick leather stitches.

  "Fear not for your beloved. He rests easy under my hand."

  Dahak caressed the sarcophagus that was strapped to the back of the wagon. It was heavy gray slate, carved long ago by stonemasons in honor of one of the great nobles of the city. Now its occupant was scattered across the desert, and the body of the Egyptian priest, wrapped in burial shrouds and packed in salt, was closed up inside. A seal of lead and gold filled the cracks between the cover and the base. Dahak climbed over the top of the wagon, his long robes trailing after him.

  "Hey-yup!" He flicked the reins and the twenty mules that had been hitched to the wagon twitched their ears and ambled forward. Dahak settled back into the hard-backed wooden seat. In the depths of his cowl, his flesh crept and crawled, pulling his lips into a semblance of a smile. Troops of horsemen trotted out to join the wagon as it rolled west on the long road to cultivated lands. As it passed down the road and through the funereal towers, regiments of spearmen picked up packs heavy with loot and fell in behind. Wagons rumbled onto the road. The Persian army was leaving the city in the desert.

  Dahak surveyed his army—for it was his army now, broken to his will by fear and compliance in dreadful acts—and was pleased. His debt had ended with the death of the King of Kings, felt even across many long miles. Now he had no need to restrain himself.

  The barren land lay quiet under a dim sun. Crows circled over the city.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE

  Ctesiphon

  The city had burned for three days and three nights before the rain quenched the last flames. Now the stones hissed and popped, still cooling, as Galen walked amid the ruins of the great palace that had stood by the river. His Germans walked a fair distance away, a rough circle that traveled where he traveled. It was a gray day, both in the sky, where clouds heavy with rain jostled one another over the river, and below, where a fine coating of ash lay over everything. The Northerners were still chortling with glee over the vast sums of booty they had received from looting the city and its palaces. Each man was nearly choked by chains of gold, and rings bulged on every finger. Every man in the army of either Emperor was going home laden with as much booty as he could carry.

  Galen frowned as he climbed a broad staircase littered with cracked pillars and burned timbers. The precincts of the imperial residences were coated with a thick slurry of mud made from ash and rainwater. The city was in ruins, its people fled. From the height, he turned and looked back up the river, seeing the broad gray-green surface surging up against the dykes and retaining walls that the farmers and the citizens of the city had labored for generations to build and maintain. The water curled against the top of the earthen ramparts. Soon, if the rains held, it might spill over the top.

  The Emperor shook his head, thinking, There's no one left to repair the earthworks.

  —|—

  Heraclius stood in the center of what had once been a great room. His staff officers were a crowd of red cloaks, muddy boots, and silk behind him, his own bodyguards scattered through the ruins around the platform. The walls were tumbled down, the bricks cracked open by tremendous heat. Great soaring arches had once enclosed the space, and a domed roof had covered it. The dome was gone; only its rocky skeleton remained. A very light rain, no more than a mist, settled down through the gaping holes. The Eastern Emperor was gazing down at an enormous shattered disk of mosaic tile. Galen walked up to him, feeling his bodyguards fade back to the edge of his vision.

  "Greetings, brother," he said to Heraclius.

  The Eastern Emperor looked up, his eyes bright. His red beard bristled.

  "A pity this was destroyed," he said, gesturing to the scattered remains of the world map that had covered the disk. "But a Roman one would be more accurate, I think."

  Galen's left eyelid twitched in surprise, but he ignored the comment.

  "A pity the entire city has been destroyed," he replied. "It was rich and filled with fabricae and merchants."

  Heraclius laughed, standing back from the mosaic and spreading his arms wide. "We will build a new city here, even greater, more glorious, but it will be a Roman city! The capital of a Roman Persia..."

  A faraway look crept into Heraclius' eyes and he took Galen by the shoulder. Together they walked toward the open side of the chamber, where a series of arches had once stood, looking out over a luxurious garden. The rest of the officers and nobles drifted slowly along behind them.

  "Persia lies at our feet, prostrate, smashed to rubble. Their army is scattered, the Khazars rampage through the highlands, looting and pillaging. It will be decades before a King rises to rebuild this empire." Heraclius stopped and turned to Galen, his face creased by a broad smile.

  "This is our chance, brother, to end the centuries of struggle between east and west. The Eastern frontier will stretch all the way to India!"

  "And Chrosoes?" Galen said, his voice wry. "What of him?"

  "Here," Heraclius said, his smile that of a cat in cream. He kicked a bundle on the ground, something heavy, wrapped in canvas. "Sviod! Show the Western Emperor what you found."

  The Varangian, a mountain of a man with a smashed-in nose and a bald head like a boiled egg, gripped the edge of the canvas and unrolled it. Something slopped out, something black and bloated, crawling with worms and ants. Galen stared down at it in undisguised revulsion. The hand of the thing flopped at his feet, the skin of the fingers stretched tight over rotted flesh like overstuffed gray sausages. The Varangian smiled, showing gaps in his teeth. The Western Emperor held a cloth over his mouth and nose. The stench was tremendous.

  "You see," Heraclius said, apparently unaffected by the smell, "the King of Kings is otherwise disposed."

  "Where... did you find him? Are you sure that this is the King of Kings?" Galen fought to keep from gagging.

  Heraclius motioned for the Varangian to roll the canvas back up. He turned away and paced slowly back to the knot of officers by the broken map.

  "Some of your men, all unknowing, speared him like a fish the first night. Apparently he was already badly wounded, even bleeding. His body lay in the garden of one of the palaces for two days before one of the surviving Persians found him. I rewarded that servant well, for it was a precious gift he brought me."

  The Eastern officers looked up, smiling, at the approach of Heraclius and Galen. One of them was the Eastern Emperor's brother, Theodore. He had his arm around the shoulder of a slightly built young man with a despondent face. Galen arched an eyebrow—the boy was almost pretty, though there was an odd look about him. His clothing, skin and hair were those of a Persian, but his eyes and nose, even his mouth, reminded the Western Emperor of someone...

  "Ah, my friend," Heraclius said, bowing to the boy. "Theodore, let him stand on his own." The Eastern Prince pushed the young Persian forward. The boy looked up sullenly, his mouth trembling. Galen put his hands on his waist.

  "And this?" he said, looking steadily at Heraclius. The Eastern Emperor smiled and ran a finger over his mustaches. He looked back over his shoulder at the bundle of canvas that the Varangians were dragging down into the garden. One of the Scandians had a shovel over his shoulder. The Eastern officers nudged each other and smiled at some secret jest.

  "Am I satisfied?" Heraclius said, seemingly to himself. "A nation with which a treaty obtains assails my state. The armies of my enemy plunder my cities, enslave my citizens, loot my farms. I send embassies of peace to this nation, and severed heads, pickled in brine, are returned to me. I send letters, seeking the nature of the grievance against me, and I am called a vile and insensate sl
ave in return. I learn, by other means, of the nature of the quarrel between my house and that of Chrosoes. I send the very head of the murderer of the friend of the Persian Emperor as a token of peace!"

  Galen looked around the circle of faces. The Eastern officers were grinning, their faces flushed with some secret hunger. The Persian had stopped trembling and his head had come up. The Western Emperor frowned to himself again; this boy seemed terribly familiar!

  "I seek to protect myself and the citizens of my state, and armies are sent against me. Tens of thousands die, and more cities are set to the torch. Yet, in all this, though the people of my city beg me to remain in the safety of my capital, I persevere. I come forth, with the aid of by brother Emperor, and assert my authority."

  Now Heraclius, at last, met the eyes of the Persian boy. Behind the fellow, Theodore and two of his cavalry officers moved in close. Galen took a step back, feeling the ugly mood running through the young officers with their neatly clipped beards and red cloaks. He signaled his guardsmen. The Germans perked up their ears and sidled closer, brawny hands creeping to the hilts of their weapons.

  "I bring ruin and thunder. I break armies. I shatter cities. I stand above the body of my enemy!" Heraclius was shouting, his face red, pressed close to the face of the Persian boy. "Am I satisfied? Am I satisfied? No! I am not. There is blood between your house and mine, Kavadh-Siroes, blood that still obtains between us!"

  The Persian boy did not flinch, though now Galen's eyes widened in understanding.

  Ah, the Western Emperor thought sadly, then I did not win the throw.