The Dark Lord

by Thomas Harlan

  The Sahaba surged around the two captains, stabbing overhand, and were met by massed shields and the grim faces of the legionaries. Again, a brisk play of long cavalry blades, maces, axes and spears sparked on the docks. Khalid hung back a half-step, watching his enemy. The Roman did not abandon the front rank, wielding his hand-and-a-half blade with aplomb. Another Arab was struck down, helmet crushed in, neck severed from behind by a looping, sideways strike.

  Gods, Khalid breathed, what a champion! Even Patik might find his match!

  The Sahaba fell back, leaving a handful of bodies on the pavement. The Roman line stood unshaken. Khalid felt the air change, momentum shifting around him. The panicked crowds had thinned, through the ground still jumped with an enormous, drumming beat. The dead are coming, Khalid realized.

  Someone started shouting behind the Roman lines and Red-beard turned, falling back a step. Khalid cursed as another legionary stepped smoothly into his place. Some kind of courier ran up, gabbling at the general.

  Khalid glanced around at his own men, seeing weary faces, though they were still game for another go. He licked his lips. He'll know he's trapped... the dead will be upon us soon and there's no way out. Perhaps... perhaps he will surrender! The young Arab's heart leapt at the thought, for the honor and unsurpassed bravery of the Roman general touched even him.

  "Roman!" he shouted, stepping out of the wary line of Sahaba. "Roman, listen!"

  Red-beard turned towards him, wiping sweat out of his eyes. "What do you want, rebel?"

  "Your city is lost," Khalid called into sudden, encompassing silence. Everyone fell quiet, the men on both sides staring at him in speculation. A few citizens ran past, faces haunted, but they spared no attention for the two opposing lines of soldiers. The young Arab pointed to the east. "Great Persia enters the city—his armies swollen by the risen dead—and you have no hope but honorable surrender. Yield your swords to me, and I will protect you!"

  The red-beard gave him a considering glance, then leaned down, speaking softly to the messenger. The man nodded sharply, then bolted off down the docks. The Roman smiled, a grim, wintry expression without humor or malice. "Romans do not surrender," he called, voice ringing in the air. "If you wish our swords, you'll take them from the dead, as the ghouls you are!"

  A laughing shout rose from the legionaries and many of the Germans clashed their swords and axes on their shields, raising a drumming, raucous noise. In response, the Sahaba growled and Khalid's face set, graven stone showing no mercy or remorse.

  "Allau ak-bar!" the Sahaba roared, taking a step forward in unison. Fresh reinforcements joined them from the causeway. Khalid caught sight of Jalal and Shadin from the corner of his eye, and felt fresh hope jolt through him. The Romans matched the shout with their own: "The City! The City!"

  A wordless cry ripped from Khalid's lips and he bounded forward. His men followed a breath later and a ringing crash echoed from the buildings and the water. Again, a fierce melee raised a vicious din on the docks, as Roman and Sahaban soldiers grappled, trading blows. Men toppled from the line of battle, slicking the ground with their fresh blood.

  —|—

  A pack of gaatasuun were feeding in the entry hall of the Sema as Dahak entered. The sorcerer's face darkened with rage, pale eyes passing swiftly across the scattered bodies of priests and attendants. The prince's tunic was scorched and riddled with ash-burned holes. His usual poor humor deepened into simmering rage as he took in the carnage filling the tomb hall. There was dark, drying blood everywhere and the floor was slick with greasy-white entrails and offal. One of the corpse-men squatted on the floor, desiccated flesh peeling from a mottled black-and-gray back, as it pounded a newly dismembered head against the tile paving. The skull made a sharp, cracking sound as the blow split open the cranium. The gaatasuun's withered fingers pried aside bone, letting a long black tongue dip into the opening. A thick slurping sound followed.

  Dahak made a sharp motion, no more than the effort of a man brushing aside a fly and the dozen or more corpses feeding in the chamber stiffened—motive force denied—and then crumbled to dust. The skull—suddenly released—clattered across the floor and came to rest at the prince's feet.

  The Lord of the Ten Serpents bent down, face twisted in a grimace—half amused, half irritated. Black fingernails bit into bone and he lifted the skull. Once, a man with a neatly trimmed beard and a powerful nose had worn this ragged, bloody scrap of flesh and glistening white. There was a gelatinous sloshing sound as the head rolled between Dahak's fingers.

  "Where is the Sarcophagus?" A snap of command, echoing with a trembling hum, filled the prince's voice. His high brow creased in mild concentration.

  The skull stiffened in his hands, a leprous white glow sparking in empty eye sockets—no more than red-rimmed holes, where dusty fingers had lately gouged—and the jaw twitched and spasmed. The tongue, at least, remained whole and a gargling sound issued from the broken head. Dahak grunted, finding the words unintelligible.

  "Speak clearly!" the prince commanded, and sinews crawled like worms under torn flesh, muscle knitting to bone, arteries swelling with a thick, dark gray humor—not blood, no, but close enough to serve. Watery charcoal-colored fluid spilled from the mouth and Dahak held the thing at arm's reach, so as to keep his long pantaloons free of such offal. "Where is the body?"

  "Not..." croaked the priest's dead tongue. "...here... taken."

  "What?" A hiss of rage followed and black talons squeaked through fibrous bone. "Who has taken the Pretender's body? When?"

  "Persia..." The head sighed, more fluid spilling from the mouth and staining the prince's hands. "Shapur the Young took him... away."

  "Shapur?" Dahak stared at the leaking head in dismay. "Shapur the Manichean?"

  The head tried to nod, but could not. The leprous radiance dimmed in the eye sockets and Dahak's face contorted into unbridled rage. His fist closed with a convulsive jerk and the skull shattered into fragments. Spitting furiously, the prince cast the bits and pieces away. As they flew, black flame enveloped them and only dust sifted to the ground.

  "Curse him, curse the child and all his debased house!" Dahak turned slowly, blazing eyes sweeping across the dumb stone faces of ancient kings and gods. They did not amuse him, these stiff Ptolemies and weak-faced animals grafted to human bodies. The prince stalked among the rumpled shapes of the dead priests, searching for another whose cranium was intact enough to question.

  After a moment, he sighed in despair. The gaatasuun had been swift to satisfy their hunger.

  "All this effort, for nothing..." Dahak leaned against a wall, suddenly weary. The vast effort of revivifying the tomb-lost dead and drawing them forth from the ground, sending them in crashing, endless waves against the Roman walls, imbuing each dead husk with enough of a spark to motivate hands and legs, began to tell. The prince stared around, feeling defeat leech the strength from his body. "We have taken an empty coffin—only dust and worms and vermin hiding in the walls."

  He pressed a hand across his eyes. They burned with fatigue and even the thin, greenish sunlight slanting down from high, close-set windows hurt. So much time wasted. The Sema empty and my agents will have to search the length and breadth of Persia for the Pretender... An old, half-heard voice emerged from black, turgid memory. Shapur raised a great edifice at Taq-I-Bustam—perhaps he hid the body there—I will send the Shanzdah to shatter mountains and cast down cliffs to find out!

  Dahak rose, face set, the moment of weariness past. His will asserted itself, banishing weariness and despair alike. Eyes narrowing to burning slits, he turned his attention outward, sending his thoughts winging across the leagues to the west.

  Where are my faithful ones, he asked the void. Have they found our other prize?

  Faintly, the Shanzdah replied, feeling his will searching for them. We are here, they called.

  Dahak frowned again. He caught a sense of limitless emptiness, of heat, of fist-sized black stones lining a narrow track winding
between desolate hills. The first of the Shanzdah was walking, leather boots sliding in fine sand. Where are you? Where is the duradarshan? Where is Lord Shahin?

  We failed, came the cold reply. Dahak snarled silently, feeling nothing but truth reaching across the leagues to him. The Romans were here—and the witches helped them—they stole the device. This shape... A sensation of chill humor echoed... was almost destroyed.

  "Enough!" Dahak released the connection violently, mocking laughter ringing in his thoughts. The prince stared around the old temple with a sick, conflicted expression. "Lost in the desert... witches interfering again! Why didn't I crush them all long ago..." He realized he was muttering and closed his mouth with a snap. Fixing his attention on the nearest wall, Dahak breathed slowly until his racing heart slowed to a walk. The wall was painted with scenes of men giving sacrifice to the sun, whose golden disc encompassed them in beneficent rays, carrying Amon's blessing. All the races of the earth were represented, from the pale hair of the northmen to the shining blue-black of the southern tribes.

  His reptilian face twisting in despair, Dahak pressed his fingers against the fresco, slowly tracing yellow-painted lines, a round solar disk flanked by spreading hawk wings, rich fields of corn and wheat. A strange sound echoed in the chamber, throbbing among the roof arches. Dahak started, staring around, one hand raised in the beginnings of a pattern sign.

  There was no one in the funerary temple. He was alone.

  What was that? The prince's eyes slid closed, one transparent lid sliding over another. Even in the hidden world, there was nothing around him, no invisible adversary, no spy, no secret watcher. Was that someone crying?

  The prince looked back to the painting and his jaw tightened. The sun in the middle of the composition mocked him, so perfectly round, fulfilling and sustaining the world of men. Dahak turned his face toward the ceiling, letting his sight peel away the stone arches, the tiled roof, then a sea of air, the thin white clouds so far above the curve of the earth, then an abyss of distant fire and the cold, dead moon.

  I do not need to see this, Dahak thought, wrenching his attention away from the void. The Hyades have not risen and Al-Debaran still hides behind the world. There is still time. His hand, still resting upon the wall, convulsed, iron-hard nails digging through plaster into the stone below. But not much, no... not much. Not even as men measure the hours.

  —|—

  "Row!" A Praetorian, long blond hair wild around his head, screamed at a dozen soldiers. The men shied away from the barbarian, but their hands already wrapped around the long, polished pine handle of a huge oar. Sextus caught a glimpse of the men straining, faces red with effort, as he staggered up the gangway. Frontius flopped on his back like a marlin, drooling vomit on his shoulder. The wounded engineer was not doing well.

  Two legionaries at the top of the gangway seized both of them with rough hands and threw them bodily onto the boarding deck of the grain hauler. Moments later, axes thudded into hawsers and the entire wooden ramp plunged into dirty brown water. Sextus rolled over, groaning, his hip twinging with sharp, stabbing pain. "What..."

  Four enormous oars bit into the water and the grain hauler—despite her mass—jerked away from the dockside. Her holds were empty, making her surprisingly light on the water. The engineer bounded up, panic driving away the throbbing in his hip. "What are you doing?" Sextus threw himself to the railing, staring down at the dock. The two legionaries were busy lashing a wooden panel across the opening, closing off the space where the gangplank had laid.

  Two men splashed in the water below, hands groping against the smooth marble facing of the harbor wall. A crowd pressed against a stone balustrade above them, staring at the ship with wild, wide eyes. Everyone ignored the men—stonemasons by the colored cords twisted into their tunics—as they struggled helplessly in the water. A guttural moan of despair rose from the mob, though no single person seemed to have raised their voice in a shout.

  Sextus grabbed the nearest legionary's shoulder. "We can't leave," he hissed, pointing down the harborside. The crowd was beginning to mill, disturbed by some commotion. Light flashed on metal, though the sun had grown very dim, shrinking to a pale disc hidden in heavy viridian clouds. "There are still Romans trapped ashore!"

  "Get away from me." The legionary turned on Sextus, shoving his hand away. He looked sick, face sallow behind a stiff black beard. He clutched the axe with both hands, knuckles white against the close-grained wood.

  "Those are our tent mates," Sextus said, voice rising in horror. "We don't leave them behind!"

  "Get away!" The man shouted, pushing Sextus back with the axe handle.

  On the deck, Frontius stared up, lips nearly white with pain. "Sextus..."

  "Look at them," the engineer shouted, turning on the other soldiers standing by the railing. He waved at a band of men in armor pushing through the mob. Other men pursued, swords and spears hacking and stabbing, striking down men and women packed so closely together they could not flee. "They need us! Stop rowing! Turn the ship!"

  The sweeps continued to dip into the harbor and the massive ship inched away from the dock a yard at a time. A good twenty feet of open water now separated the hull from the marble facing. One of the stonemasons had vanished under the slowly roiling brown surface. The other managed to dig his fingers into a mossy crevice between two stones. He was shouting weakly, begging for help.

  The crowd ignored him, staring at the grain hauler. Aboard, the legionaries at the railing stared back. No one spoke, and the oars dipped again, opening the distance another yard.

  "Ho, the ship!"

  A strong, familiar voice rang out. A tall man with a singular red beard shoved through the crowd to the retaining wall. Barely a half-dozen men still fought at his side, several of them sorely wounded. Only yards away, through the mob, Sextus saw the Arabs pressing, blades rising and falling in fierce, brutal cuts. People were screaming now and the entire mob seemed to wake with a start. It moved, a herd surging, spooked by summer thunder. Twenty or thirty people—those jammed closest to the water—were shoved into the harbor with a mighty splash. Sextus jerked as if struck with a whip.

  "Throw them ropes," he shouted, turning again to the other legionaries. They stared back, faces blank. "Fools!" the engineer snarled at them, then ran along the railing. He found a heavy rope knotted at intervals and snatched up the coil. He ran back, screaming curses at the other men on the ship.

  He reached the gangway and knelt, hands quick as they wound the rope into a heavy bolt stapled to the deck. Sextus braced his foot, standing, and hurled the coil into the water. On the dock, the legionaries turned at bay, forming a too-small circle with their shields. The engineer leaned out, screaming at the top of his lungs—"Here! Here! Swim to the ship!"

  The red-bearded man looked back over his shoulder, a spatha bare in his hand. Sextus recognized him at last. "Lord Aurelian! Here, Lord Prince, here!"

  Shrieking, the mob parted, men and women trampling those too slow to flee. The Arabs pushed through behind a thicket of spears. The legionaries on the wharf locked shields and the ring and clatter of steel on steel drifted across the water. Sextus bit his thumb, silently begging the prince to leap into the water. Instead, his powerful head was clearly visible among the others, his long blade flashing, driving back the first rush of the enemy.

  Oars rose, shedding brown, silty water, and the ship crabbed out into the harbor. Two burly legionaries bent to the steering oars on the rear deck, trying to turn the grain hauler to catch the wind. The sails—huge squares of stitched canvas—luffed as the ship turned. For a moment, forward motion ceased, though all four oars dug deep into brown water, the crews on the sweeps groaning with effort.

  "Here, my lord," Sextus screamed again, beckoning.

  A towering Arab clashed with the prince and the two men—each head and shoulders above his companions—exchanged a fierce series of cuts and slashes. The ringing clang of blade on blade was clear even on shipboard. The princ
e held his own, then advanced, whirling the spatha in a driving attack. The Arabs fell back, stabbing at his feet and head with their spears. A clear space emerged, though in the brief interlude, two more of the legionaries—already wounded—had been stricken down.

  More green turbans pushed through the crowd and the engineer realized the avenues leading down to the docks were now filling with a rustling, shuffling mob far different from the panicked citizens who had first rushed down to the shore.

  "My lord," Sextus wailed, hand hanging in the air. "Please!"

  The Arabs rushed forward, shouting a sharp, high cry. Aurelian met their attack head-on, smashing one man to the ground, then slashing his blade back, catching another behind the head. The Arab toppled, helmet smashed down over his eyes, spine bared white to the sky. The others jostled, trying to get at the prince. Spinning, Aurelian took two, long racing steps and leapt over the retaining wall. His trim, powerful body speared into the water with a sharp splash.

  Sextus shouted in relief, leaning over the side to grasp the knotted rope, flipping it out towards the shore. The Arabs rushed forward, the last legionnaire slumping back against the marble wall, four or five spears grinding into his chest, his neck, his armpit. Blood splashed across white stone. A young man with a sharp face and neat, coal-black beard leapt atop the wall.

  The engineer threw the rope again, though he could not see Aurelian beneath the turgid surface, not yet.

  A forest of green-and-tan crowded at the wall. The young Arab shouted, pointing. Aurelian's head burst from the waters, more than halfway between the ship and shore. He took his bearings, then struck out for the hull, swimming strongly. Sextus felt a chill, realizing the prince was still in full armor. The strength of ten! his mind gibbered, calculating the weight of metal and leather. "Here, a rope!"