The Shadow of Ararat

by Thomas Harlan

  Men ran, scattering before the charge of the desert horsemen, dropping the long ropes. Mohammed stormed into the thick of the spearmen, who had hastily run around to the back of the tower and were trying to form up into a line. His saber lashed out, cutting at the face of one of the spearmen. Blood fountained and the man fell, clutching at his ruined jaw. The rest of the Tanukh smashed into the engineers, swords flashing in the sun. More men died and then the Persians were running. The Tanukh whooped with delight, their voices raised in a high-pitched yell that echoed across the desert.

  Mohammed spun his horse, checking the sweep of his men. The city was two miles distant, its gold walls rising above the date palms that lined the farmlands around it. The Persian army had established a crude earthwork a hundred yards from the walls. They thought that their engines would be safe here, miles from the city. He rose up in the saddle, shouting at his men. "Sideways! Pull it sideways!"

  The spearmen were dead, scattered across the ground, or fled toward the palms. The other laborers had also scattered. The Tanukh wheeled their horses around the tower, shooting arrows into the fighting platforms inside it. As Mohammed watched, a green-robed Persian engineer toppled from the highest platform, his torso pierced by three arrows. He hit the ground with a sharp slapping sound and bounced once before lying still. The Palmyrenes were tossing torches into the lower chamber of the tower. Mohammed's horse trotted forward, obedient to the pressure of his knees.

  He leaned out of the saddle and scooped up one of the tow ropes. With a deft hand, he wrapped it around the horns of his saddle and waved for the others to do the same. The Palmyrenes, with their heavier, four-cornered saddles, caught on and snared the rest of the ropes. Once they had each acquired a rope, Mohammed slashed his hand down and they moved, as one, to the east.

  The tower trembled as the ropes drew taut, then the Palmyrenes whooped and put their heels to their horses. The beasts strained against the lines, their hooves kicking up dust. The whole tower suddenly groaned and began to tip. Mohammed shouted at two Tanukh who were still staring up at the wall of wooden slats that was bending toward them. The tower creaked and then toppled over, slowly, and smashed suddenly to the ground with a flat booming sound. Dust and sand billowed out from under it. The Palmyrenes cheered and Mohammed grinned at his men.

  "Now the torches," he cried. Some of the Tanukh who had held back darted in, throwing ceramic jars of heavy olive oil and burning sticks into the collapsed tower. A thick black smoke began to rise. Mohammed wheeled his horse away and the whole band followed him, howling like banshees. Clouds of dust marked their passage into the desert waste.

  —|—

  "Enough," Dahak said sharply, his hand cutting off the rambling excuse. "These barbarians come and go as they please from the city. This will stop. Complete the earthwork within the next two days. Lord Khadames, I want every man we have digging. You will work in shifts, day and night, until it is done."

  Khadames bowed stiffly, watching the pale face of the noble who had commanded the siege engines. All three, laboriously constructed over weeks of careful work, had been destroyed in the space of two days. The precious wood that they had scavenged from wagons and farmhouses and from the few suitable trees in the area was gone, wiped away in clouds of dirty smoke. The man was a cousin of the Great Prince Shahin, an honor enough to get him a command, but nothing to protect him from the wizard's icy anger.

  When Baraz had left, he had given orders that Khadames would command the army, with the "able assistance" of Lord Dahak. Shahin had barely waited a day before challenging the lower-born Khadames, and many of the nobles in the army had supported the Great Prince. But Dahak had no patience for such bickering and simply declared that he would command. Against his glittering dark eyes, no one was brave enough to protest the usurpation of authority.

  Since then the siege had pressed ahead at a wearing pace. Dahak was, as far as Khadames could tell, tireless, and he assumed that his followers were equally iron-willed. Baraz had led by example, exhorting his men to greater feats than they had imagined. Dahak commanded with a clear and icy fear. Failure was not tolerated if it sprang from incompetence.

  "Your task was simple, and had you heeded the advice of Lord Khadames, you would have been successful. But you ignored his advice and my command. I will not tolerate this. We press ahead with the attack, though now I will grant another day to see that the circumvallation is complete. And you, Lord Pacorus, have exhausted my patience and mercy."

  Khadames flinched from the bleak expression on the face of the sorcerer. A silence fell on the nobles and captains assembled in the tent. Lord Dahak rose from the plain wicker chair that had been Baraz's and stared down at the nobleman, bent before him in the proskynesis usually accorded to royalty. The sorcerer stared around the tent, forcing the men before him to meet his eyes. They were cold and Khadames realized with a shiver that the sorcerer's pupils were vertical and narrow, flecked with gold in green.

  "This is a lesson. Learn it." Dahak's hand clenched into a fist. Dark-red light spilled out of the cracks between his withered fingers. On the ground, Pacorus suddenly moaned and tried to rise. Dahak's boot, a supple black leather with blood-red lacings, crushed down on the back of his neck, pinning him to the carpet. The nobleman began to tremble and his limbs twitched spasmodically. Khadames turned away when Pacorus' skin began to crawl and squirm with something moving under the surface, something like ten thousand worms.

  "We attack at sunset in two days, with the sun at our backs. Understood?"

  Pacorus whined in terrible pain under the dark man's boot, his flesh beginning to flake away from liquid that had once been bone and sinew.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  The Roman Camp, North of the Kerenos River, Albania

  Dwyrin shuffled his feet, his breath puffing white in the chill predawn air. He stood next to Zoë, at the end of the line of their cohort, at parade rest. Quietly he checked his kit, making sure that all the straps were snugged tight and that nothing was hanging loose. The sky was pitch black—he guessed that clouds had come up in the night and covered the stars. Fitful light cast by lanterns and torches illuminated him and the other thaumaturges clustered around him. They stood in four rows, their backs to their tents, grouped by rank. In the front row, the senior thaumaturges stood at ease, surrounded, to Dwyrin's inner eye, by soft patterns that said warm and comfortable.

  In the privacy of his mind, he cursed the priests at the school for neglecting to teach him anything useful like the so-obvious spells for keeping warm on a dark morning like this. Still, he was better off than Odenathus and Zoë, who were tightly bundled in every scrap of cloak or fur they could find. On the other side of the Palmyrene boy, one of the Gaulish wizards was almost grinning, blowing frosty breath up into the air. He didn't think that it was that cold. Zoë he could feel trembling right at his side. For a moment he considered putting an arm around her, but then he thought of the knife at her side and rejected the idea.

  "Soldiers, attention!"

  The tribune, with all four centurions at his back, paced along the front of the assembly. The odd pieces of glass that were suspended in front of his eyes on wire frames glittered in the torchlight. Like the centurions, he was clad in a heavy wool cloak and a doublet of furred leather. It looked warm too.

  "Soon," the tribune said in a carrying voice, "there will be battle. The armies of Persia advance upon us in haste. The weather will turn soon and close the passes to the south. This King of Kings, this Chrosoes, desires to decide the contest between his treacherous Empire and ours now. He hurries toward defeat. Some of you have never been in battle before. I will say this to you! If you follow orders and keep the men of your unit around you, if you obey the commands of your five-leader and your centurion, if you hold your place in the line of battle and do not run, you will live and we shall have victory."

  Dwyrin straightened up a little more, for the tribune and the centurions had come to the end of the line closest to them. Zoë
stared straight ahead, over the heads of the men in front of them. Dwyrin wrenched his eyes aside.

  "Some of you," the tribune continued, walking behind them, "will not be fighting in the line of battle. You will be deployed forward of the main army, to harass and threaten the march and deployment of the enemy. This is a new strategy. It has not been tested in battle. It may fail, but I believe that it will succeed. I believe that we, the thaumaturgic arm of the Legion, will be decisive. Our success in the coming battle, operating in teams, will make all the difference."

  Once more before his men, the tribune turned, surveying them. "The Emperor is watching, and through him, the city and the Senate and the people. Do not disappoint them."

  Dwyrin felt a chill in his mind and throat, but it was not from the air.

  "Do you think there will be battle tomorrow?" Dwyrin's voice was soft in the darkness. With Eric gone, they had taken to sleeping in one tent, even though it was crowded. The nights were cool enough that the warmth of the three of them filled the hide walls. Even by morning it was not unpleasant—at least until you had to go outside. He knew that Zoë was awake—he could feel her moving under the woolen blanket. She was thinking, as he was, wondering what would happen the next day.

  "No," she said, turning over to face him. Even in the very dim light filtering through the small opening in the front of the shelter, he could make out the planes of her face, the darkness of her eyes. Dwyrin wondered if Odenathus were awake. Probably not, he thought, he sleeps like a stone. He struggled in his own bedding and managed to free a hand to scratch his nose.

  "The scouts," she continued, "are still coming and going from the command tents. When the enemy is close enough, we will march. Then we will know that battle is close."

  "Have you been in a battle before—one like this, not like the city?"

  "No."

  Dwyrin stopped rubbing his nose. It seemed that Zoë was unsure—a strange emotion for her. They had worked together for weeks now, practicing together, learning to fight as one. Eric's death had wrecked their original plan to fight as two pairs. Now they were learning, again, to fight as a three. In some ways it was much easier this way. Both Zoë and Odenathus were quite skilled, though they lacked the raw power that Dwyrin could summon. They could bind a shield of defense far faster than he could, but while they covered him, he could bring fire or cast it with blurring speed. Colonna, watching them train, had commented that they reminded him of the old Thebans, who would fight in pairs, each with a different, specialized weapon.

  "I have never seen a great battle." She paused. "Before Tauris, I had never seen battle at all. No struggle to the death, no corpses piled up like sheaves of wheat beside the road. No friends die." Something caught in her throat and she turned her face away from him. Dwyrin felt a rush of pain too, thinking of what it meant to lose their friend.

  "Zoë," he said, touching her hair, "I miss Eric too. It was just bad luck that he was thrown into the river."

  She mumbled something, but he could not hear what it was, her face was still turned away. He stared up at the ceiling of the tent, feeling his own tears well up in his chest, clenching at his heart. But, like her, he did not cry out loud, letting them trickle down his cheeks instead. Finally he slept, his fingers still touching her hair.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  Near Dastagird, The Lower Euphrates Plain

  A cold wind blew out of the north, driving sheets of dust before it. Nikos and Anagathios huddled in the lee of a tumbled mud-brick building. Their horses clustered in front of them, tied to stakes driven into the loose sandy soil. The sky was dark, the sun only a dim circle through the howling wind and dust of the storm. The yellow-brown grit got into everything, even when they were, as now, bundled up tight in their robes with scarves over their faces. They sat, not bothering to speak, waiting for the storm to pass. The wind hissed and wailed around the building.

  A figure appeared momentarily in the dust, between flying sheets of sand. The figure was wrapped up too and leaned forward into the wind howling out of the north. Nikos made to rise, but Anagathios grabbed his arm and sat him back down. The approaching figure continued to battle against the wind, but finally reached the poor shelter of the wall and sat down heavily next to them. Nikos and Anagathios leaned close, straining to hear.

  "...a city of... there." The figure pointed off into the brown murk.

  Nikos shook his head—he couldn't make it out over the sound of the storm. The figure shouted again but was still unintelligible. Finally the other gave up and settled back against the wall. The horses continued to stand, heads down, and the sand began to pile up around the feet of the three waiting travelers.

  —|—

  The storm passed and the stars came out in a deep blue velvet sky. The sun had begun to set while the trailing edge of the sandstorm had passed. The travelers shook the dust from their cloaks in clear red-gold light. There was still a high cloud of thick dirty brown and the rays of the sun slanted in under it, painting the desert with rich full colors. Jusuf, Nikos, and Thyatis stood at the edge of a canal a hundred yards from the tumbled-down wall. Across the gurgling water in the canal, beyond a belt of date palms and greenery, a great city rose around a broad, flat hill. It had no walls, only a gate that they could see. A huge building rose at the center of the city, a stepped pyramid a hundred feet above the flat roofs of the houses. Sand had invaded its precincts, burying the streets and agora. Pillars thrust from the dunes, leaning at odd angles. The windows of city were dark, the only light a dull orange flame coming from the top of the ziggurat.

  "That place has an odd feel to it," Jusuf said, scratching at his beard, which had finally recovered something of its usual fullness. "There should be lights, noise, something."

  "And walls," Nikos added, peering through the night, trying to see if anything was moving in the silent city. "The Arabian desert is not far off—there might be raiders."

  Thyatis felt something too, a prickling at the back of her neck. She looked up and down the canal. The water was a black pit holding the stars, wavering, in its heart. There seemed to be no bridge or crossing.

  "Some things," she said softly, not wanting to draw attention to herself, "do not bear investigation. Get the men mounted up—we press on down this canal. We need a bridge if we're to get to the Tigris..."

  —|—

  Dawn was close when the dark engine descended out of the sky. A wailing high-pitched roar and the rush of flames shattered the quiet of the night. Ruddy light scattered over the dunes as it touched down, limbs flexing as they settled into the sand. Flames hissed and then died, leaving the desert quiet again. Molten sand bubbled and popped where the talons of the engine had touched. A door, hinged at the top rather than the side, swung open and pale-yellow light spilled out onto the dunes. Figures climbed out, stretching and groaning after the long flight from the north.

  One, taller than the rest, strode to the top of the nearest dune. Two shorter figures followed, one on either side. Beyond the dunes, across rippling white ridges, the shape of a buried city rose, dark and desolate. Behind them other figures were busy unloading supplies and tents from the belly of the engine.

  "So," the first figure said in a conversational tone, "this is the city of the magi."

  "Yes, great lord," the shortest figure said, a tremulous note in its voice, "the forbidden place. Dastagird of the Kings of old. Once it was the residence of the King of Kings—a city of marble palaces and beautiful gardens—but the priests coveted it and made it their own. Now the gardens are buried in the sand and the palaces are filled with shadows."

  The Prince pulled the cowl of his robe back and shook his shoulders out. He was nervous, but there was little to fear. He had powers on his side too, strong powers.

  "Gaius?" He turned to the other figure. The old Roman stood at ease, his hands clasped behind his back. "Suggestions?"

  The dead man nodded, his leathery face creased with the smallest of smiles. "First we take a look around
and see what there is to see, Lord Prince. Then we show ourselves. With your permission, the Walach and I will go out tonight and find the lay of the land."

  Maxian nodded sharply, then turned around and descended the dune. The others were still unloading crates. He was tired and hoped to find sleep soon. Behind him the little Persian took one last look at the darkened city and then hurried after him. Gaius Julius took his time, watching the silent buildings and the empty steps of the great ziggurat for a long time. Two other figures joined him, squatting in the sand at his back. When at last he turned back to the engine, he found both of them waiting for him. The dead man smiled, looking upon his little army. "Alais. Khiron. Are we ready?"

  "Yes, lord," they whispered. "We are ready."

  "Good." He checked the shortsword at his hip and the fit of the bracelets on his arms. "We go."

  —|—

  Dust blew in the street, and steppe thistle bounced past out of an alleyway. Gaius Julius strode down the middle of the pavement, feeling the edges of the bricks under his sandals. The sun had just risen when he and his companions entered the city through the eastern gateway. Pale-pink light fell on dark bricks and stone and was swallowed. Beside the wind and his shadow, sprawled out before him on the street, nothing moved. Alais paced him on the right, shrouded in a voluminous black cloak and cowl. Even her face was hidden in the depths of the cloak, only a pale-white shadow peeping out. The creature, Khiron, was on his left, garbed in dark-brown wool and a thin desert robe over that. Khiron's face, too, was hidden; he had wound his kaffieh around his head, hiding everything but his eyes.

  Gaius alone showed his face. He wore only a simple tunic and kilt, with his thick leather belt cinched tight and his sword slung over his shoulder. His leathery brown face was set and his nearly bald head gleamed in the sun. The buildings narrowed, hanging over the street, but then fell away to either side. At the center of the city, a plaza was open to the sky. On the western side of the square, before them, the ziggurat rose up in mighty steps. Gaius Julius halted, the thin fringe of white hair around his head ruffled by the hot breeze. The city was quiet, but Gaius felt that its tenor had changed since they had come into its heart.