The Dark Lord

'Aiming!' Sextus cried, narrowing his left eye as he sighted against a curved iron brace set above the bolt. Regularly spaced marks were etched in the metal. His right hand tightened on the lever. Frontius and one of the boys assigned to the engine scuttled aside, taking up positions behind and beside each torsion arm, hands light on matching wheels. Another legionnaire was ready at the engineer's shoulder with a second bolt.

The top of the fighting tower clanked into sight through the iron loop. Sextus slammed the lever down. Oiled metal squealed in release and the big triple-corded cable snapped with a sharp thwack against rope-padded stays. The entire ballista rocked violently forward. The bolt flicked away, faster than Sextus' eye could follow. He stayed focused on the Persian siege tower, ignoring the frenzied activity of his crew as they reloaded.

The bolt smashed through a wicker screen and into a Persian soldier's breastplate. The man sprang backward, as if by surprise, jerked by the massive blow. The soldier behind him tried to duck aside, but the bolt tore through the diquan's chest, out through his right shoulder and punched into the second man's mailed chest with a ringing tonk!

'Range one hundred yards!' Sextus barked. 'Three-quarters tension!'

Frontius and the other soldier at the iron wheels immediately began cranking them 'round as fast as they could. Sextus waited, watching the siege tower rumble closer, listening to the thunderous boom of Persian drums, the splintering rattle of arrows hitting the parapet, sweating more from fear now than heat. His eye caught another shining mote speeding through the air towards the tower, leaving a coiling tail of disturbed air behind. He clenched his teeth, willing his bladder to hold firm. The clank-clank-clank of the winch jumping back with each turn of the iron wheels filled his ears.

Somewhere out on the plain, Old Snake's voice raged, summoning hellish powers to ripple the air, draw thunder from a clear sky, sending destruction upon his enemies. Sextus had never seen the face of his enemy— few living Romans had seen any of the Persian magi—but every legionary, from the lowest servant to the Caesar himself, knew the sound of their voices. Every soldier had drawn their own mental picture of the tormenting sorcerers, fueled by the shock of battle and the grudging, exhausted respect earned by both sides. The disaster at Pelusium had nearly broken the Romans, but they had rallied to duty and honor and a bedrock faith in the Eternal Empire.

The brilliant mote slammed into some invisible barrier in the murky air and again Sextus saw the sky twist and deform. Azure tongues of flame lapped out in a twisting cone and the mote blossomed into a blinding flash. A wave of heat rolled over the top of the tower, but the furnace blast was attenuated and weak, barely a fraction of its full power. Again, the unleashed power wicked down into the earth, spilling like molten iron across the face of the old towers.

'Hah!' Sextus raised a fist against the malefic power hidden out in the haze-shrouded fields. 'Rome builds to last, serpent!'

Old Snake was their most implacable foe—a cruel, hateful voice filling the heavens with abominable sounds, sending fire and choking smoke, or crawling death, or simple annihilation in a curdling green blast—but the Crow was little better, a furious apparition, a woman's voice shrieking in hate, her actions shrike-swift. There was no mercy in her, though the legionaries dying in the mud, or fighting hand-to-hand with the Arab and Greek fanatics wearing her colors, swore she was the beauty of the night, rather than the day. There were other lesser lights, the sly Hawk who wrapped the Persians in smoke and mist, hiding their movements from all but the most discerning eyes, and the formidable Jackal, whose blunt, irresistible attack had smashed the Fourth Scythica into oblivion at Heliokonpolis, coming within a hair of seizing the great bridge before the span had plunged, foaming, into the Nile channel.

Sextus could not say why he knew the face of the enemy—save their will was so strong, their awesome presence so widely felt, every man agreed upon their name and number.

'Loaded!' barked the soldier at his side, snapping Sextus' attention back to the moment at hand. A fresh bolt lay in the channel, the twin windlasses drawn back, Frontius shouting at him, stepping aside. Sextus sighted, saw the siege tower eighty yards away, swung the aiming handle a fraction, then slammed the release lever down again.

The ballista rocked forward, cable slammed into padded rope, another bolt flashed toward the enemy. Frontius leapt back to his wheel, cranking for all he was worth. Tanned muscles worked under a linen tunic and Sextus watched the jerking progress of the windlass bar with eager eyes.

The screams and shouts below the tower changed timbre and the first Persians scrambled up the sloping embankment, weaving their way through a forest of sharpened stakes and tangling brush. Legionaries on the fighting platform began to hurl stones and javelins, or shoot at point-blank range with bows. Turbaned men toppled and fell, sliding on the greasy, soft slope. More scrambled past, their war cry ringing against the heavens.

Allau ak-bar!

The siege tower rumbled on, face studded with arrows. Flames licked among the hides and wicker shields. A corpse fell from the fighting top, limbs loose in death, to plunge into the mass of soldiery crowding forward below. Sextus' hand danced impatiently on the firing lever, waiting for the bolt to slide home.

A third and fourth wave of Persians, Greeks and Arabs swarmed out of the fields, loping forward past the corpses of their fellows, a waving forest of steel spear points and wild, mad faces. A corner of Sextus' mind measured the roaring wall of sound, the mass of the enemy and realized their main weight had fallen here, on the old gate.

Right in the thick of it, aren't we?

'Loaded!' shouted the legionary. Again, Sextus adjusted his aim, squinting, sweat streaming into his eyes. His hand slammed down on the lever.

—|—

Caesar Aurelian, his dented, chipped armor streaked with rust, jogged up a log-paved ramp. His Praetorians paced him in a rough square, their gear equally worn, faces blank with fatigue. Hard experience had taught them to set aside their crimson cloaks and distinctive horsetail helmets. Like Aurelian, they wore only the simple armor of a legionary, without signs or flashes of rank. The aquilifer ran alongside, his golden eagle wrapped in cloth and held at his shoulder. No Roman would fight without the sign and sigil of the city behind him, but raising the aquila on this battlefield would only invite dangerous attention.

The top of the battlement was crowded with armed men, both those struggling on the fighting platform, stabbing or shooting at the Persians swarming up the slope below, and wounded men lying or sitting on the plank road behind. Medical orderlies trotted down the ramp, canvas stretchers in hand. Aurelian forced himself to look away, catching a glimpse of a young man—no more than a boy—being carried past, one hand clutched desperately over the stump of his arm, blood oozing through dirty brown fingers. A wooden dowel was slowly splintering between his teeth.

A ripping sound smote the air and everyone not actually locked in hand-to-hand combat on the wall ducked. Aurelian crouched down, watching with narrowed eyes as the sky quivered and flashed, streaked with carnelian flame. Heavy clouds of smoke drifted across the battlement, making vision difficult. Some of the clouds were tinged yellow or green. As they passed, men choked and fell to their knees. A few died, vomiting black fluid, a steady wind out of the north holding back the latest Persian deviltry.

'It's Old Snake for sure,' one of the Praetorians hissed, rising from the ground. Aurelian nodded.

Shielded on both sides by men with heavy, laminated shields, the Caesar climbed up onto the fighting platform. Two legionaries moved aside automatically as he grasped one of the support poles and squeezed between them. Below, the Praetorians glanced around nervously, sweating with fear at the exposure their commander risked. Aurelian kept his head below the top of the rampart, glancing quickly to the north.

The fortification stretched towards the sea, curving slightly to follow the line of the ancient Ptolemaic wall. Smoke boiled from burning buildings behind the line and he could see men fighting here and there. Arrows slashed through the air in both directions, but in comparison to the conflagration around the Nile Gate towers, the rest of the front was quiet.

To the south, Aurelian saw much the same—the line of the wall studded with smoke and activity, then the glittering waters of Lake Mareotis on their flank. Again, he cursed the Persians and their fleet of river barges. Against another enemy, the lake would be a broad moat protecting the southern side of the city. Now, he was forced to keep nearly an entire Legion back, deployed along the shore to prevent landings behind the main