The Dark Lord

by Thomas Harlan

  —|—

  "Hold up a moment." Sextus stood, wiping sweat from a suntanned brow. He stared out to sea, across the flat, placid waters of the Great Harbor. The engineer held a large sledge in his hands, but the hammer was forgotten for the moment as he bit his lip in concentration. Frontius paused, sitting up, hands on his knees. Both men had been squatting near the edge of a great arched vault, examining the stonework around a keystone supporting the central section of the massive Heptastation causeway.

  A crowd of local workers—fellaheen in white breechclouts and turbans—watched the two Romans suspiciously. The locals were laden with a profusion of iron bars, hammers, mallets, buckets of water and wooden splitting wedges. A handful of Roman citizens in mismatched armor stood near by, watching both the Legion officers and the fellaheen with jaundiced expressions. The citizens had been drafted from their businesses, homes and offices to provide a city militia. Despite the continuing siege, most of the locals seemed content to let the legionaries fight.

  "Something is happening." Sextus' voice was flat and Frontius started in alarm, then stared out to sea, following the sharp angle of his friend's pointing arm. Almost two thousand feet away, across the open waters of the harbor, he could barely make out the dark smudge of the sea—intermittent flashes of white from crashing waves outlining the long rubble-filled breakwater.

  "I don't see anything..." Frontius stood up as well, squinting ferociously. Off to the left of the breakwater, the towering shape of the Lighthouse—the famous Pharos—made a gleaming white outline against the lead-colored sky. A brilliant disk on the summit of the forty-story building flashed in the dimming sun. The engineer cursed the fickle stars who had burdened him with poor sight. "What is it?"

  "Fog," Sextus said in the same flat voice. The older engineer shook himself, then bent down and began jamming his tools and books into a leather shoulder bag. "Rising fast too, all along the breakwater."

  "It's afternoon," Frontius said in a disbelieving voice. "There's never any..."

  Sextus looked up, eyes narrowed against the afternoon sun glittering from the water. "Sorcery, my friend."

  Frontius blanched. He had seen enough horrors in the last four weeks. Still, he was a legionary and if something was happening on the breakwater. Frontius turned, squinting at the low, green shape of the Pharos island lying at the outer end of the causeway. "You don't suppose—"

  "You men!" Sextus bellowed, startling the citizens and fellaheen alike into wide-eyed attention. "With me, all of you! Double-time!" The engineer began running north along the Heptastadion towards the palace-crowded island. Frontius caught up with him in a moment, wiry legs easily meeting the pace.

  "What do you—" One of the citizens, a baker by trade, was left with his mouth hanging open.

  The other Latins stared after the two engineers, then hurried to pick up their jumble of weapons and tools from the ground. A moment later, they too jogged off into the haze rising from the harbor. Watching the Romans disappear into the fog, the fellaheen looked warily at one another, then turned and scuttled towards the city as fast as they could.

  —|—

  Khalid burst from the avenue at a run, shield snug against his left arm, a dim, mist-veiled sun gleaming in the curving blade of his sword. A guttural roar boomed from his men as they saw the enemy. The road wound out between low buildings and onto a broad causeway flanked by a retaining wall on either side and stout pillars carved with dolphins and cranes. The entrance to the Heptastadion was blocked by overturned carts and building materials. Khalid caught sight of Romans crouched behind the barrier, some in armor, some not. Their faces were only blurs as he ran forward, shouting, "at them!"

  The Sahaba rushed forward, more and more men spilling out of the alleyways and down the street. Khalid leapt forward at an easy run, seeing the barricade loom before him. Then, only ten paces or so away, the Romans stood up and Khalid shouted a warning.

  "Javelins!" He swung up his shield, turning his body away from the flying spears and stones.

  Something heavy smashed into the laminated hide and cedar of his shield. Khalid staggered, startled by the strength in the cast, then rushed ahead again. He leapt over the body of an Arab youth choking on his own blood, a short-hafted spear jutting from his chest. The triangular tip had punched clear through the boy's scaled breastplate, leaving thin streams of crimson crawling across polished metal.

  Khalid felt his shield drag and cursed—a javelin was stuck in the hides, head twisted, wooden shaft banging against his knees—pausing to knock the missile away with his sword. Arabs and Nabateans pushed past, surging against the barricade. Shouts and screams tore the air and the clanging racket of iron on iron beat at Khalid's ears. The javelin clattered to the ground and the young general tried to push forward through the press of sweating, close-packed men.

  Khalid's effort failed. Too many armored backs crowded in front of him. The Romans met the charge with a brisk play of blades and spears on the barrier, throwing the Sahaba back, leaving scattered bodies trapped in the jumble of carts and logs and blocks of stone. Khalid cursed again, this time at himself and wormed his way back towards the rear ranks.

  "Shields!" he screamed, trying to be heard above the din. The Romans were shouting insults now and flinging amphorae into the crowd of Arabs. The crash of breaking pottery and the sting of vinegar filled the air. Khalid's throat was already hoarse and the day's battle was only minutes old. "Form shield wall!"

  He broke free of the crowd and immediately began dragging men back by their belts and helmet straps. "Everyone back! Form a line!"

  More Sahaba pressed toward the barrier, running up out of the confusing maze of tombs and temples covering the island. On their barricade, the Romans were laughing. Some men with bows now shot from between the wagons, knocking down Arabs trapped in the press of the crowd.

  "Everyone back a pace!" Khalid shouted again and now his banner leaders began to repeat his command, beating on their soldiers' helmets and shoulders with the flat of their swords. Slowly, the mass of Arabs, Nabateans and Greeks fell back, letting their shields come into play. More dead littered the ground before the barricade. The dusty ground clotted with blood and wine.

  —|—

  The Jackal stepped forth from the remains of a farmhouse a hundred yards from the Roman rampart. Before him loomed the doubled towers of the Gate of the Sun, a pair of granite and sandstone monsters rising four and five stories above the plain. On either side, the sloping berm of the fortification ran off into cloudy, humid air. The ancient stone was scored with jagged black streaks and glassy, star-shaped craters. Thickets of stakes and tangled brush—most burned and withered from terrible fires—covered the slope on either side of the gate.

  Not a single man could be seen on the wall, for the Romans had finally learned prudence.

  The Jackal's mask had been repaired and repainted, chalky eyes bright, the lolling tongue fresh as blood. Even the shattered ear had been reforged and replaced. His body, twisted with scars and puckered wounds, was filled with new life—strong, muscular, shining with sweat in the dreadful heat. A clean white kilt fell from a belt of dark leather. His bare feet dug into the rich, loamy black soil of the delta.

  The Jackal raised his hand and the sullen green sky rippled with slow waves. Distantly, a long, drawn-out rumble of thunder answered his motion. The presence within the mask felt the air pressure change and shift, saw gradients of power surge in the land—dark blue leaching up from hidden waters—bricks crumbled in the ruined building and grass withered as the Jackal summoned power to his rising hand.

  Fists clenched, then pointed towards the looming wall.

  A week and a day had passed since the failure of the first Persian assault. The Jackal's master had regained his power, gathered his wits, seen the wisdom of the Boar's plan and labored a long time beneath dark and moonless skies among the tombs and fields surrounding the city. Undisturbed by the Roman thaumaturges hiding in the city, the Lord of the Ten Serpe
nts had hidden his foul work with night and distance.

  A dry rustling chattered in the air and the Jackal leapt lightly up onto the top of a broken, splintered brick wall. Immediately, figures shambled forward below him, first one—groping sightlessly forward, eyes black pits, fingers skeletal twigs—then another, and another.

  Within moments, a vast crowd of dry brown shapes crawled and shuffled out of the fields, emerging from the mist, their outlines indistinct in the steadily fading light. A dull green haze advanced in the upper air, roiling across the sky, tendrils rushing forward, then curling around some unseen obstacle before oozing onward again. A clacking murmur began to rise from the host shuffling towards the wall.

  The Jackal turned, looking south. A mile away, at the Nile Gate, a figure in radiant white turned as well and she raised pale cream arms, wrapped tight with gold and silver. The Raven answered his unspoken thought. Their power moved in the hidden world, motivating desiccated limbs to jerking, fumbling motion. The two figures turned to the city, looking out over the advancing host of the uneasy dead.

  On the wall, motion stirred, then feeble sunlight glanced from a helmet. The day grew dark as the oily clouds advanced. Shadows deepened in the ruins and under the eaves of the buildings.

  On the plain below, the dead began to shamble forward, almost at a run, and their dry limbs rubbed and scraped, a forest of winter-bare twigs and branches shaken by an invisible, irresistible wind. The first of the dead began to climb the slope. One drove itself, unthinking, unheeding, upon a sharpened stake. The wood tore through ancient, withered skin, then jabbed from the corpses' back. Black dust puffed from the wound. Undaunted, the shape clawed forward, leathery body tearing in half with a dry, ripping sound. Relentless, the head and torso crawled up the slope. Severed legs beat violently in the dirt.

  A long, wailing cry sounded, ringing back from the towers and ramparts. On a fighting platform atop the wall, a torsion arm snapped against a hide-wrapped wooden bar. With a loud twang, a wicker ball caked with pitch arced into the air, crackling and burning, trailing black smoke. The missile plunged into the vast, jostling crowd advancing across the field. Pale green-and-orange fire blossomed, consuming a dozen, two dozen of the dead. Without a sound, they marched on, dry flesh making ready tinder, puffy white smoke rising to join the dark oily effluvia of naphtha. More corpses staggered, heedless, into the bonfire.

  A brownish-gray tide rose against the wall, scrambling and crawling up the slope. Where one corpse fell, tangled in thorns or pierced by a stake, twenty crawled on, grinding the fallen into dust beneath skeletal feet. A clack-clack-clack of splintering bone rose, swelling into the heavy air.

  Distantly, the Jackal heard men shouting in fear. More scorpions thwanged and more missiles lofted into the afternoon sky. Bombs fell, billowing into flame with a snap and rush of igniting air. Figures on the wall began hurling stones that crashed and bounced among the silent, advancing mob. At the Gate of the Sun, burning oil fell in sheets of flame onto corpses and withered skeletons crowding at the portals themselves. Huge clouds of smoke boiled up and the dry rattling jerked into a cacophony of burning skin and cracking bone.

  Still, the dead continued to swarm across the fields.

  Atop his wall, the Jackal trembled, power rushing through him like water in a mining sluice, eroding his tattered soul. A mile away to the south, the Queen shuddered as well, her still-living body suffering the piercing, red-hot pain of the sorcerer's working. Sweat blinded her, yet she did not fall. Instead, she stood alone atop a half-burned siege tower, a golden diadem shining in her dark hair, plainly visible from the walls.

  This she did by choice, for she would not turn her face from the destruction of such a fair city.

  —|—

  "Loose!" Khalid screamed, trying to make himself heard above the din. His archers perched on the temple roofs shot, bows singing with a flat twang-twang. The Romans on the barricade ducked, black shafts flashing past. The young Eagle glanced left and right, gauging his men—they tensed in the shield wall, eyes glittering beneath shadowed helms—then slashed his saber down. "Charge!"

  Shrieking, the Sahaba stormed forward down the road. More arrows flicked past overhead, and the Roman archers in the jumble of carts and crates loosed as well. Khalid heard something hiss past his ear as he ran forward. He picked up speed, howling a war cry, then sprang up onto the barricade.

  A Roman stabbed at his legs and Khalid blocked the stroke deftly with his shield. Laminated pine splintered with the blow as Khalid hacked down at the man's head. The Roman ducked away and Khalid jumped into the midst of the enemy, saber whirling in a flashing, black streak. One of the militiamen jerked around in surprise, just in time to take the blade across the bridge of his unprotected nose. Bone shattered, a fine spray of blood-and-white fragments splashing across the faces of his fellows. Khalid slammed the shield into the Roman's broken face with a wet crunch. More Sahaba scrambled over the barricade. The Romans stabbed back fiercely with spears and javelins. Men toppled, guts spilling out in shiny coils of gray and white.

  Khalid took two blows on his shield in succession—a legionary in full armor pressed him, short sword flickering like a snake's tongue—then drove the man back with a sharp rush. The black blade keened in the air, cutting at the Roman's elbow. The man, squinting furiously, gave a step. Finding no room to maneuver in such close quarters, Khalid abandoned any pretense at skill, slamming in with his shield. The Roman took the blow with a grunt, then smashed his own rectangular scuta against Khalid's smaller, round buckler. The young Eagle's boot skidded in something wet and he went down with a clatter.

  Stunned, Khalid tried to scramble up. Someone stepped on his chest, pinning him under a heavy wet boot. Robes billowed around his face, blinding him. Frantic, Khalid slammed the pommel of his sword into an obscuring leg, heard a bellow of fear, then the offending Sahaba toppled aside, one eye a bloody ruin. The squinting Roman's gladius whipped back, streaked with blood.

  Shouting in fury, Khalid scrambled up, leading with the point of his blade. He thrust, catching the Roman on the shoulder-plate. The saber bent on impact, skittering across curving iron. Shouting in alarm, the legionary blocked sideways with his short sword. The point of the Arab blade bounced away, leaving a deep scratch in the metal. Khalid recovered, whipping his sword into a figure-eight parry. For an instant, he locked furious gazes with the Roman, then the entire enemy line of battle was retreating.

  Somewhere, a horn blew wildly amid the drone of deep-throated tubas. The Romans—legionaries and militia alike—fell back onto the causeway. Khalid caught his breath, slumping to his knees. Droplets of crimson oozed from the edge of his blade, joining a thick paste of urine, feces and blood on the ground.

  "Press on!" Khalid croaked, fighting for breath. He was winded. Two of his men grasped his shoulders and dragged him to his feet. The young Eagle called for his standard bearer, seeing the man a dozen yards away, a stained cloth against the side of his face. "Bannerman! We must move—"

  A deep whump! caused Khalid to swing round. The Romans, falling back along the causeway, had set fire to a wagonload of oil. The wooden cart spilled sideways as Khalid watched, lips thinning in dismay. Hundreds of amphorae cascaded to the ground, already wreathed in pale yellow flame. A huge cloud of heavy black smoke surged up into the hazy air. Sheets of fire rushed forward on the paving stones.

  "Spears!" Khalid shouted, skipping back. The vanguard of the Sahaba fell back, shields and cloaks raised to protect their faces from the roaring flames. "Sand and wagons and spears!"

  Some of his men ran off to gather tools. The young Eagle looked away, terrific heat beating against his lean face. Both harbors were nearly empty. Off to his right, the only ship in sight was a huge Roman grain hauler near the merchant docks. Khalid fingered his beard, keen eyes trying to pierce the haze between himself and the distant vessel. Another daring ploy, he thought, but did it gain us anything? Has Usama seized the warehouse district? Or does he lie dead?
<
br />   Men returned with long poles torn from the ornamental facade of a funeral temple. Khalid roused himself, wiping sweat from his face. The qalb filled the causeway from railing to railing, every man's face eager to press ahead.

  "There," the young Arab pointed, "push the wagon away!"

  With a cadenced shout, a hundred men advanced, long poles held by five or six men each. In an instant, the pikes plunged across the roaring flames, thumping against the charring wood of the cart. The soldiers strained, digging in their feet. The cart creaked and groaned, spilling oil onto the ground. Fresh flames jetted up. Amphorae shattered in the heat, consumed by flame, flinging red-hot fragments of pottery into the faces of the Arabs. Everyone ducked, still pushing for all they were worth.

  "Heave!" Khalid shouted. His men answered with a basso roar. "Ho!"

  The cart squealed aside, crunching into the low stone wall lining the edge of the causeway. Boys ran forward with heavy baskets, flinging sand onto the pools of burning oil.

  "Heave!" Khalid shouted. The men on the poles, faces glowing with effort, sweat streaming into their armor, gave a groan of effort. The cart tipped, boards shattering. One of the wheels spun away across the causeway. "Heave!" Another massive effort and the cart teetered on the wall, then plunged over the side in a billowing rush of smoke. A great splash fountained up. Oil and smoke spread on the waters.

  An arrow fluttered down out of the sky, shattering on the paving stones near Khalid.

  "Archers, forward!" The young Eagle pointed with his saber. Nabateans ran up, their long bows taut, shafts to the string. More men handed baskets of sand and dirt from hand to hand, and the oil began to flicker and die, smothered by the advancing fire crew. Arab bows began to sing, flinging arrows into the half-seen line of the Romans beyond the roiling smoke.

  "Qalb-men to me!" Khalid strode forward. Fighters appeared out of the band of soldiers on the causeway, each man in heavy armor, with longer, oval shields. These men were armed with maces, heavy swords, stabbing spears. "Prepare to rush!"