The Shadow of Ararat

by Thomas Harlan

Among the few bright spots in this canker sore of an expedition was the presence of two bands of Ephtathilite Huns, mercenaries hired by the prince of the Eastern city of Balkh. The Huns were the very devil on horseback and made superb scouts. The news that they brought him from the north was disheartening, but he was fairly sure that it was accurate. The army of the Two Emperors was just over a hundred thousand men, about half infantry and half cavalry. Had numbers been the only deciding factor, Baraz would have just pointed north and howled a command to attack. The Persians would have swamped the Romans with sheer numbers.

  Unfortunately, and this was the spear that twisted in Baraz's gut, the enemy was composed of veteran troops, well drilled and disciplined. It seemed unlikely that they would panic in the face of the Persian numbers, and that meant that the King of King's "greatest army" would run right into a meat grinder. His one hope was to pin the enemy with his levies for long enough to bring the Immortals and the bands of heavily armored knights to bear on a flank of the Roman army, bend it back, and crush it.

  He reached Rhazames' banner and found the young nobleman and his coterie of officers shouting in confusion at each other.

  Baraz bulled into the center of their conversation and raised his voice in a bellow. "Shut up! Everyone, quiet. Tell me what has happened so far."

  Rhazames cleared his throat and nervously stroked the long mustaches that spiked out from the sides of his face. He wore an open-faced helmet with an ornamental dragon enameled on its crown. He could not have been older than eighteen. "Lord Baraz! The army is still gathering and the Romans have sent their sorcerers forward. They are sending fire and lightning against the front ranks of the infantry. Many men are already dead or fleeing toward the rear."

  Baraz grimaced at the thought of the peasant infantry stampeding back into the companies of men still trying to reach the battlefield. Things were dicey enough already. "Where are our wizards?"

  Rhazames shrugged, his face a mask of confusion. "I do not know, Great Lord. I thought I saw their wagons some hours ago, by the side of the road, but..."

  Baraz controlled his temper with a supreme effort of will. The boy was very young, and it was quite likely that he had never commanded in battle before. His father had served Baraz in the first campaigns against Syria but had been killed in a duel at Antioch. He spurred his horse through the collection of nobles and officers, finally reaching a low mound where he could see something of the battlefield. He cursed then, for a long time and with great feeling. The entire Roman army was already on the field and in motion. He looked back, past the pale, frightened faces of his commanders, and saw that the roads were still clogged with men and animals. Not even half of his army had reached the area of battle yet. He gestured at the nearest dispatch rider, his hand chopping at the air.

  "You, lad, ride like the wind to the right flank and find the Khagan of the Huns. Tell him to charge the Roman lines and spoil their advance. Then find the Lakhmid light horse I saw loafing around earlier and send them to deploy before our lines. They can drive off these magicians with javelin and lance."

  The courier put spur to horse and pelted off down the hill, dust swirling behind him.

  "You, you and you... get down there into that mess and send the infantry forward and the knights to the wings. I don't care how, just get the road cleared. More men are coming and half of the regiments I see down there are standing around wondering where they're supposed to go."

  More men galloped away from the hilltop, banners bobbing behind them in the breeze.

  "Lord Rhazames, take your household troops and form up in the center of that mob of infantry. One of your men for each five of those peasants. Spread them out and get them facing forward. Any man who has lost his spear, sword or axe, back a rank. They can pick up fallen weapons.

  The young man bowed in the saddle and then was gone in a cloud of clods and dust. His banner men hurried after, pale and frightened. Baraz sighed to see them go. He desperately missed his officers in Syria. This army was too green to stand a full day of battle against professionals unless they were very lucky. A booming sound echoed over the field. Baraz started and peered down the hill. A column of black smoke rose from before the ranks. Blue flashes of lightning rippled up and down the front. He saw men fall, burning like torches.

  He turned and began, "You..." then he stopped, surprised beyond measure. "Salabalgus! What in the Corrupted World are you doing here?"

  The stocky man smiled back at him, most of his face covered by the iron plates of his helmet. He wore a deep-green cloak over a battered shirt of ring mail. A bronze boar's head was pinned at his shoulder. "Greetings, nephew. The Great King's messenger came and ordered a new levy, so I came, bringing the lads from the estate. We're down there, at the bottom of the hill."

  Baraz stared down through the brush and saw, to his horror, that he knew nearly every one of the young men clustered there in their motley armor, antique weapons, and earnest expressions.

  "Oh, Lord of Light," Baraz breathed, turning to his uncle in dismay. "Is there anyone left at home?" Salabalgus shook his head silently.

  Baraz ran nervous fingers through his beard and twisted a curl around his thumb. Nine years ago he had left his highland estates in Bactria with a troop of two thousand men, answering the summons of his King. There were, when last he had counted them, a few hundred left, all officers or sergeants in his Immortals. Behind them, he had been careful to leave a smattering of veterans and all of the youngsters. Someone had to guard the herds and farmland from raiders. Now Salabalgus was here, not at home, and all of those youngsters, grown up, were at the bottom of the hill.

  He looked out across the vast host of men on the field and those still coming up the road. They were all too young or too old. He felt a chill. How many of us has Chrosoes killed in this war? Then he pushed a flurry of seditious thoughts aside. Battle was at hand.

  —|—

  Zoë ran forward through the short grass, her brown legs flashing in laced-up leather boots. Dwyrin and Odenathus ran right behind her, flanking her on either side. Armenians with bows and quivers of arrows ran before them. The grass was burning ahead of them and to the right, sending trails of white smoke across the plain. Arrows whickered overhead in both directions. The Persian lines were only a hundred paces ahead. Zoë stopped, going down on one knee. Dwyrin ran up behind her and halted as well, his breathing heavy with the effort of dashing the two hundred paces from their own ranks. He did not feel tired, only exhilarated.

  "Loose!" the leader of the Armenians cried. The archers stopped in a ragged line and let fly with their stout bows. Their arrows arched high and then fell, flashing, into the tightly packed ranks of the Persian spearmen in front of them. There were cries of pain and a wave of angry shouting. The Armenians reached back over their shoulders for fresh arrows.

  "Loose!" Zoë shouted, her forehead creased in concentration. Dwyrin had already shed the prison of flesh. He clenched his fist and whipped it through the air in front of him. Power built in it, leached from the sky and the hot stones under his feet. Pale-blue flames danced around his fist, and he flung them in a whirling ball at the spearmen. The sphere leapt from his hand like a sling bullet and shrieked across the intervening distance. Persian axemen scrambled to get out of the way, but they were pressed too tightly together. The flames were searingly bright when the sphere smashed into the chest of one of the spearmen.

  The man vanished in a white-hot burst of flame. His companions screamed horribly as their flesh caught fire and the green flames leapt from man to man. Lightning danced from Zoë's hands a moment later and lashed across the front rank like a terrible whip. More men died, their flesh crisped black and their leather armor burning merrily. Odenathus' hand chopped down and the earth shook, toppling their ranks. Spears wavered, tangling with those behind them. Somewhere a horse screamed in pain.

  Dwyrin grimaced for a moment, seeing the wailing men die, falling to the ground. He felt an odd detachment. Here, at a distance, they did
not matter to him. If he had seen Eric die again, he would have felt sick, disgusted, filled with revulsion. Instead, a thrill crept along his skin as his power smashed at them again and again.

  More arrows flew, turning the sky dark. The Armenians emptied their quivers into the Persian lines, then ran back toward the Roman army. Dwyrin sent one last bolt of brilliant orange flame cutting into the Persians, then he too trotted off after Zoë. A vast, angry roar rose from behind them. He looked over his shoulder and saw that the surviving ranks of Persians were beginning to jog forward.

  —|—

  Galen swayed in his saddle as the horse cantered along the length of the Roman lines. He had deployed his legionnaires in a double-depth frontage. The front line, five ranks deep, was comprised of the veteran Third Augusta at the center, with the Second Triana on one side and the Sixth Gemina on the other. Behind them was an interval twenty paces deep and then another line of five ranks. These were the Second Audiatrix on the west, the Imperial Bodyguard in the center, and the Third Gallica on the east. His banner men kept close to the Emperor, riding no more than an arm's length away. Men wearing conical felt caps ran off the field between the armies and down the avenues cleared between each Legion.

  Galen completed his circuit and surveyed the field. The Persian army had filled the far side of the plain with a solid mass of men and was beginning to move forward. He could not tell if it was an ordered advance or the simple pressure of more reinforcements entering the field. He saw that the Armenian skirmishers and the thaumaturges he had sent forward had finished retiring behind the stolid lines of legionnaires.

  He looked to the west and saw that two huge wedges of Eastern knights had fanned out at the end of his line. The sun sparkled from twenty thousand lances, blinding the eye. Red Imperial banners fluttered at the center of the mass of men and horses. To the east, the Khazars had swung out in a long curved line, stretching from his anchoring cohorts to the tree line at the edge of the field. They were in constant movement, bands of horsemen galloping here and there in apparent confusion. Within the swirling screen of horse archers, Galen picked out Ziebil and his heavily armored lancers, a tight knot of fifteen thousand men.

  Trumpets blared in the Roman ranks, and bucinas shrilled. The Legions advanced at walk, their great rectangular shields angled in front of them, each man carrying a javelin at the ready in his hand. The Western Emperor rode through the ranks, angling for the block of red cloaks that marked his bodyguard and the hulking shapes of the Varangians. As he passed, the men raised a cheer and he smiled and picked up the pace, his right arm thrust out in salute. Eight thousand voices rose up around him, a great booming shout:

  "Ave Caesar! Ave! Roma Victrix!"

  Galen smiled, his blood afire with the prospect of battle. The roar of eager men filled his ears.

  —|—

  "Ahriman's three-pronged lingam!" Baraz was beside himself in fear and rage.

  The front ranks of the mass of spearmen and swordsmen at the center of the rough line he and his officers had barely managed to form had suddenly broken into a run toward the Roman lines. The rest were wavering, some pushing forward, still pressed by men behind them, others trying to move back. Snarling, he glanced up and down the rest of the line. The blocks of horsemen on the right and left wings were still sorting themselves out by banner and clan. The unexpected advance of the infantry in the middle was unsupported. Hunnic horse archers scattered out of the way as sixty thousand men stormed forward, heedless of the slowly advancing lines of Romans to their front. Baraz felt sick. He wondered if the untrained peasants in front of him even knew what they were doing.

  "Dispatch!" One of the lads spurred up to ride along side him.

  "To Salabalgus and Doronas on the right; tell them to wait for the mob in front of us to lock with the Roman lines and then charge if the Khazars attempt to take them in the flank."

  His uncle and the other Eastern lord had all of his heavy cavalry—the clibanari, or oven men, so named for their body-length metal armor—under some vague sort of control. If the Khazars on the Roman right wing took the opportunity of the exposed Persian infantry to charge, his countercharge could demolish the entire Roman right.

  The boy galloped away. Baraz chewed on his thumb, watching the center of his army rush headlong into waiting, steady, disaster.

  —|—

  Khagan Ziebil, khan of the Khazars and overlord of the Bulgar tribes, sat easily on his horse. It had been awhile since he had been in the saddle, and he found that his body remembered better than his mind did. He rubbed his stubbly beard and peered with watery blue eyes off to the right, where the lean-faced Roman king, Galen, was advancing his men at a walk into the teeth of a vast black mob of screaming Persians. Unlike the Persians, who were rushing forward in clumps and without the slightest possibility of organization, the Romans were moving forward in step, their front rank a gleaming wall of interlocking shields.

  With barely fifty paces between the two armies, the Romans came to a halt, closing up the interval between their lines. The front of the line rippled as men brought javelins to their cheek and then, at the hoarse shout of bull-voiced centurions, let fly. The air was filled with a cloud of silver-tipped darts, and the running Persians suddenly staggered as the rain of iron slashed at them. Ziebil smiled, seeing the leading edge of the Persian line disintegrate into a red welter of dying men.

  He gestured to one of his banner men, who dipped the long black dragon banner once, then twice.

  His own long line of men, lances pointed to the sky over the distant Persian cavalry, rippled with movement, and they moved forward at a slow walk. The Khazar light cavalry commanded by Prince Dahvos had already driven off the Huns and Sacagatani archers who had been harassing them.

  At the center of the field, the Romans in the first rank drew their shortswords as one, the sound of four thousand blades scraping from scabbards cutting across the tumult of the field. The second rank let fly with their javelins as more Persians rushed over the bodies of their first wave. Then the third rank let fly. The Persian infantry slowed, tangling with men trying to run back from the edge of battle and clambering over the bodies of the dead. The Romans stood firm.

  The main mass of the Persians slammed into the Roman lines with a dull crash of metal. The Roman ranks staggered back three steps and then stopped. Ziebil could hear a chorus of screams rising above the din. Thousands of iron swords flashed as the legionnaires waded into the press of spearmen who had surged against them. The Khagan smiled, thinking of the bloody brawl at close quarters that unfolded along the long lines of Romans. At arm's reach, the short stabbing swords of the Romans would have no lack of targets for their thirst. More Persians swarmed into the fray, heedless of their fellows dying in droves in front of them.

  Ziebil motioned again and two flags dipped and rose. The horsemen on the right-hand side of his wedge trotted forward toward the flank of the battle. As the front of the Persian lines ground against the Romans, the men running up behind began to spill around the edges of the Roman formation. The Khazars galloped in, rising up in their stirrups, bows at the ready. Two quivers were slung on the side of each saddle, packed to bursting with triangle-headed arrows. The lead Khazars, their horses thundering across the field, drew and let fly into the flank of the Persian formations. The air clouded with black arrows. Men began falling, pierced by the long shafts.

  —|—

  Salabalgus could barely see out of the narrow eyeslit of his helmet, but he could see enough. The right flank of the infantry was melting away under the rain of Khazar arrows. His commanders were shouting at him, urging him to charge into the midst of the wheeling Khazar archers and drive them off. He ignored them, watching the hilltop where the banner of the King of Kings fluttered in the air. The elderly man had fought beside Baraz for as long as the boy had been able to lift a sword. His nephew had excellent instincts for battle. Salabalgus was in no hurry to die today. He waited.

  —|—

  Th
ousands more Persian infantry poured into the center of the field. The front ranks, locked in melee with the Romans, could not bring their bows to bear, and the ranks behind could not see the enemy. The Roman legionnaires continued to slaughter them methodically, but now they were getting weary and the center of the Roman line began to bend inward.

  On his hilltop, Baraz's quick eye caught the flex in the enemy lines and saw too that the enemy right wing had continued its slow advance, leaving it only two or three hundred yards from his own right wing and the heavy cavalry there.

  "Signal Salabalgus," he shouted at his banner men. They raised the lurid green banner of the House of Lord Rhazates and waved it in a figure eight. He looked to the left where the Roman equites and lanciarii were still sitting patiently, waiting for the outcome of the infantry melee in the middle of the field.

  Heraclius must be there, he thought. Being unusually patient too.

  He waved a dispatch rider over. He leaned close to the boy. "Message to Lord Gundarnasp on the left. Tell him to send his Lakhmids and Huns forward against the Roman horsemen. When they are distracted, he is to charge in behind the archers."

  Baraz looked back to the right. Salabalgus' formations were aswarm with activity as they shook out in preparation to charge. The Boar smiled, long teeth flashing in the midday sun.

  —|—

  Khan Ziebil saw the waving banner too, and his eyes caught the movement among the Persian clibanari. He whistled; a piercing sound that cut the air like a knife, then pointed forward and chopped his hand down. Fifteen thousand Khazar lancers put spur to horse and leapt forward as one. The earth shook as they charged forward, their horses lengthening stride to keep up. As the charge sprinted forward, it folded out into three wedges, each one led off by a tightly packed band of heavily armored men. The ground flew past under the hooves of the horses.