The Dark Lord

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Once more, Patik waited in a cold, gray dawn. The heavy, damp air seemed particularly chill. Glistening clouds of fog filled the twisting, winding streets of Alexandria. The rising sun was still below the eastern horizon, but the sky swelled with pearl-sheened pink and steadily lightening blue. Artabanus crouched at his side, hands tucked into his armpits, gaze fixed on the crumpled leather shape of a sandal on the ground before him. A block away, the civilian port stirred to life, the docks crowded with ships preparing to depart. The big Persian allowed himself faint amusement. The Romans were fleeing the city in droves in anything that floated. He had heard no recent news from the east, but the fear and panic running riot in the city were satisfying enough.

The King of Kings comes, Patik mused smugly, driving the Legions before him with whips of steel and fiery brands. The irony of the thought almost drew a chuckle. Once he had held the boar-mustached Shahr-Baraz in contempt, looking down upon the lower-born man from a height of pride and arrogance. Events had shown him the fallacy of such attitudes. The diquan rubbed his nose, looking back on lost years in his memory. He had flown high, carried by a noble lineage and relentless ambition. Yet now, standing in the shadows of a crumbling temple in the city of the enemy, stripped of titles and lands, he found himself almost content. Here I stand by means of virtue and strength, not the deeds of my ancestors.

Satisfied with the state of the world, the Persian checked over his arms and armor, making sure no straps had come lose and nothing had been forgotten. The portico of the dilapidated temple was a poor place to prepare, but they dared not lose their quarry, not when they were so close.

Artabanus stiffened. 'They move,' he whispered. The sandal made a soft noise as it hopped up and down, mimicking a long, vigorous stride. Patik looked back into the shadows. Two darker blots of night were waiting, endlessly patient and barely distinguishable from the gloom between the columns. A sense of watchful anticipation heightened with the mage's words. Patik turned back to the view of the docks, squinting in the gray light.

'There,' he pointed after a moment. The tall woman was hard to miss standing a head above the shorter, darker Egyptians. The Romans hurried up the gangplank onto a lean two-masted coaster. 'They are going aboard. I think the ship is called Paris.'

A faint hiss answered the observation. Patik raised an eyebrow to Artabanus, but the mage was far too nervous to find any humor in the displeasure of their immediate masters. After a moment, there was a shifting sensation and the shape of one of the Shanzdah—the one who spoke most—emerged from the shadows.

'You will follow by sea,' the creature said, thin, chill voice matching the fog-streaked air. 'We will follow on land.'

The big Persian nodded, gathering up his carry bag. Artabanus rose, clutching the twitching sandal to his chest. The mage had lost weight in the last week and a sunken, wasted look haunted his face. Frowning, Patik turned back. 'How will...'

The shadows within shadows were gone, leaving the temple porch cold and empty.

'They will know,' Artabanus whispered, refusing to look up. 'Their master's reach is long.'

Patik shrugged in agreement, then looked both ways before sauntering down onto the street.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Somewhere in the Nile Delta, West of Bousiris

Horns blew wildly in the dawn, followed by the shouts of men and the wail of bucinas. Aurelian jerked awake, eyes burning with fatigue. Without waiting for his servants, he snatched up a well-worn leather scabbard leaning against his field cot and ducked out into a thin, gray morning. Two of his Praetorians stood tensely outside the tent, armor pitted with rust and scored from a dozen affrays. Their beards were matted and foul—even Aurelian's clung greasily to his face. Both men were wounded, but they stared down the road with glittering eyes, blades drawn and ready. The fighting will of the Roman army might be bent, but it had not yet broken. The prince looked east, seeing the edge of the rising sun shimmering through heavy, mist-streaked air.

Fire bloomed beyond a line of palms and olives, billowing up into the dark morning sky. A flat crump followed; the sharp, explosive sound muddied by the air. Aurelian could see the mist blow back, pressed by an invisible hand. All around the prince, weary legionaries woke from nightmare- haunted sleep. The army lay sprawled across stubbled fields, sleeping in culverts or huddled under dirty, stained tents. Men rose in the low-lying mist, blinking, hands on weapons even before they were fully awake.

'They're attacking at the main crossing,' one of the Praetorians said, shading his eyes against the pink glare of the rising sun. The man slapped the side of his face, crushing a dozen feathery mosquitoes drinking along the edge of a half-healed scar. A bright smear of blood trailed into his beard as he wiped the dead insects away.

'Stand ready!' Aurelian called to bannermen and signalers still rubbing sleep from their eyes. He took care to speak clearly. His voice had been reduced to a hoarse rasp. The usual crowd of aides, messengers, standard- bearers and aquilifer-men had dwindled to two or three walking wounded. The rest were dead, missing or detached to other cohorts as replacements. 'Signal the ready reserve to move up on the far left.'

Aurelian's servants emerged from the tent, carrying his baggage and armor. Without orders, they began breaking down the pavilion. The army would retreat again today and they wasted no time in packing up and moving west along the rutted farm road. The prince held his arms out, letting his remaining aide slide a grimy, rust-stained cuirass over his tunic. He buckled the straps himself, listening to the slowly mounting sound of battle in the east. Another sharp boom rippled across the fields, coupled with a column of flame and oily black smoke.

'Bring something I can stand on,' he called, the armor tight across his chest. The last servant handed him a dented cavalry helmet and he pulled the strap snug under his chin. By now the dozen Praetorians and guardsmen remaining in the camp stood nearby, bundles of carefully hoarded javelins over their shoulders. The servants were gone, trudging west under heavy loads.

Two of the Germans grunted, pushing a farm cart up the track, boots slipping in thin, silty mud. Aurelian climbed aboard, then onto a rickety, worm-eaten wooden seat. He peered east, bleary eyes searching the sky for the telltale ripple of a thaumaturgic blow. For the moment, though roiling columns of flame and smoke obscured the view, he saw nothing out of the ordinary. No phantoms, no colossal beasts spitting fire.

Through the trees, he could make out the edge of the river. The water was beginning to shine as the sun rose. Persians—recognizable at this distance by their sunflower banners and tall helmets—advanced in a loose line towards the edge of the orchard. Aurelian could see legionaries crouched among the trees, waiting for the enemy to come into javelin range. Beyond them, the prince saw the barricade at the old bridge crossing burning furiously.

Just like yesterday and the day before yesterday, he thought grimly, shifting his attention to the left. The Persians had developed a frustratingly efficient means of advancing against the Legion opposition. Aurelian's troops would deploy behind a natural barrier—in these swampy lowlands a canal, tributary arm of the Nile or marsh—and dig in with spade and mattock, throwing up a rampart faced with stakes. The Persians would advance, encounter the barrier, then fell back. The next day, or perhaps the day after, the excrement-faced mobehedan sorcerers would savage the Roman fortifications with fire and lightning and ghastly phantoms. While the legionaries suffered and died, unable to strike back, a heavy flanking attack would be launched to the left or right, wherever the ground was more suitable. After a sharp engagement, the Romans would be forced to retreat.

Aurelian could count the number of Legion thaumaturges still alive on the fingers of both hands. The levies from the Egyptian temples had been slaughtered in the debacle at Pelusium. Those priests still living had been sent back to Alexandria a week ago, most of them wounded, in mule-drawn carts. The prince fought this hellish, vermin-infested delaying action without sorcerous support. He'd never seen such casualties. Those burned by the foul green flame were the worst—many lived through the blow, but there was no way the Legion healers could tend to them all. More than once, Aurelian had ordered the wounded slain as a mercy. In this dank air, filled with swarming clouds of gnats and flies, men's wounds suppurated in a day and gangrene set in within two.

Choking back rising nausea, Aurelian tried to focus on the line of battle. There, where the orchard ended and some open fields ran alongside the shallow river, a sharp melee raged across the open ground. Two cohorts of Romans, fighting shoulder to shoulder, mixed it up with a crowd of men in brown-and-tan robes. A shrill wailing touched the prince's ears. Arabs, he thought glumly. Fanatics. The desert tribesmen expressed no fear of death, hurling themselves into the fray with reckless abandon. Aurelian had no idea where