The Dark Lord

thin-leaved trees.

Away through the mist rising from the wetland, Sextus caught a flash of light, a bright spark cutting through dirty gray haze. The lookout yelped at the same time, pointing, and both boys began making delicate adjustments to the orientation and incline of the disk.

A thudding boom echoed through the air and the engineer spun, heart thudding with fear, staring back to the north. From this southern elevation, even through trailing columns of smoke and dust, he could see both canals receding into the distance, straight as a plumb bob. The placement of the ramparts, their square-walled bastions, the even occurrence of watchtowers, the geometric efficiency of the fortifications was pleasingly regular.

A wave of flame billowed into the air—to Sextus' eye, an expanding sphere of overpressure as clear as the sun itself—blowing back smoke and dust with terrific force. Watchtowers swayed drunkenly in the hot gale, and secondary fires sparked as it passed. He saw something enormous and dark—the god? —stagger, then collapse toward the ground, vanishing like dew.

Within moments, while the boys sweated to adjust the disk, tremendous heat washed over the tower, making Sextus turn away, arm raised to shield his face. The mirror tower trembled, logs groaning, the disk rattling in its frame. Both Egyptians cried out, startled, and threw themselves onto the iron supports, clutching for dear life. The engineer hunkered down, letting the hot wind blow past, then looked again to the north.

Everything was in confusion. Even at this distance he could see tiny, still forms of the dead littering the ground. Sickened, his eyes darted to the breach in the first wall. A mass of Persians—their tan, yellow and brown cloaks clear to see—were forcing their way through the gap.

Oh gods! What do I do now? Sextus looked desperately to Aurelian's command post. The inner bastion was shrouded in smoke. Flames leapt up from hidden fires. Are they dead? Has Caesar fallen?

'Centurion?' One of the Egyptians clutched his arm. Sextus felt the world freeze, time sliding to a sickening halt. The boy's voice was hoarse with fear. 'What message, Centurion? What message?'

—|—

Scorching wind roared against Khalid's face, blinding him. Shocked by the massive plume of light and heat rising over the Roman fortifications, the Arab hastily threw himself to the ground. A long, drawn out, rumbling crack of thunder echoed over the ramparts and canals, finally dying into a mutter over the desert. Cautious, Khalid looked up into silence and saw the smoke and fog gone, cleared away by the rush of wind. Less than twenty yards ahead, the Sahaba cowering in the rubble of the fallen wall stirred. Like Khalid, they had flattened with the explosion. The Roman legionaries peered back at them from the shelter of their shields. Even the Roman archers had fallen quiet and the air was free of whistling shafts.

'Men of Persia! With me!' Khalid bellowed into the silence, beating out the stentorian cry of a dozen Roman centurions by only heartbeats. The young Arab leapt up, shrugging the shield on his left arm into a secure grip, the ebon blade of the city whirling around his head. Hundreds of Persians and fresh Sahaban fighters surged up from the canal with a great shout and together they rushed into the breach. On the jagged ramparts to either side, more Persian diquans scrambled up the slope, a basso roar of 'the Boar! the Boar!' ringing out.

Jalal loped alongside Khalid, his great bow strung. The young Arab stormed into the midst of the melee, where legionaries and Sahaban spearmen grappled in combat. A swift gray arrow, then another, whipped past Khalid as he ran, taking a legionary in the throat and eye only instants before the blade of night sheared through the man's guard and into his upper arm. Khalid shouted with glee, flashing a quick grin of thanks at the giant bowman, then the ebon edge of the sword flicked up, driving away a Roman's thrust.

The legionary overextended, his foot slipping on the broken ground, and Khalid turned sharply, arm lashing out, the keen edge of the sword cracking through a leather gorget and into the man's collarbone. Blood sprayed across the side of the soldier's face, then Khalid kicked him away. The Sahaba and the Persians pressed forward, driving back the stunned Romans. The young Arab saw the legionaries still suffering from the blast, which had struck them from behind, killing many and setting some afire.

A huge wedge of Shahr-Baraz's pushtigbahn crashed into the Romans along the northern roadway, their lamellar foot-to-crown iron armor proof against the legionary spears and swords. The Immortals chanted in unison, a hoarse, booming roar like the storm-tossed sea against a rocky shore. Khalid grinned again—the pushtigbahn swept the disordered legionaries back, capturing another hundred feet of roadway and rampart. On his side of the breach, the Sahaba—now reinforced by Jalal and the more heavily armed and armored soldiers of the qalb—also gained ground.

With the smoke and fog blown back, Khalid could see across the second canal. The bastion whose siege engines had been hurling stones, burning pitch and iron bolts into their attack was afire. The jackal-god was gone, leaving a huge, blackened scar on the earthen rampart. The Roman mangonels and scorpions were burning, their watchtowers wrapped in flame. New smoke billowed up into the sky. Confusion, it seemed, reigned along the second line of defense as well.

He looked down, gauging the distance across the dry canal—another fifty feet of soft earth, spotted with muddy pools and wandering triangular fences of sharpened stakes—with a grimace. The Romans had planned well. He could lead his men across the canal, slopping through heavy mud and break down the obstructing fences, but this would take time. He squinted at the bastion and rampart opposite, then froze in alarm.

Roman troops appeared along the wall, looking about in stunned surprise, the sun glinting from their helmets. Already, men were working in the huge scar, piling up earth and broken beams, hastily building a barricade of ashy brick and wagons. Below them, below their archers and sharp-eyed centurions, a pair of figures lay on the slope, unmoving, unnoticed.

Zoe! Khalid thought, feeling his gut turn over with nausea, and Odenathus. Are they dead?

—|—

'Great Mars, how poorly we've served you today...' Aurelian wiped soot from his eyes, hands black with ash. A small, bewildered group of Praetorians clustered around him, long cavalry swords drawn, faces and armor dusted dark gray. They were nervous—no Roman soldier was pleased to face magic and no one had never faced anything like this. Aurelian felt ill himself, off-balance and out of his depth. Watching the life drain from the priest of Horus had been wrenching. The hawk-faced man had seemed solid as old granite before the jackal stormed over the rampart, all smoke and fire and its single burning eye. 'Runners! Where are my runners?'

One of the Praetorians turned, face white, his mouth tight with fear. 'Dead, my lord.'

Aurelian cursed, then took a breath to steady himself and scrambled up onto the remains of the fighting step running around the bastion. The explosion in the sky—whatever had struck down the jackal—had been devastating in the enclosed space below. Aurelian guessed he lived only due to luck and stout armor, but the crews on the siege engines, his couriers, and the priests had been without protection. Many now lay dead in heaps across the smoking, cracked earth.

Worse, the slope before him was stripped bare of stakes and entangling brush and a huge crevice split open the earthwork. The core of brick and wood had collapsed, the packed dirt falling away. Huge sections were fused into brittle, yellow-green glass. The fighting wall on the summit of the rampart was either on fire or blown down. Cautiously, Aurelian peered around the shoulder of a broken timber. Persian soldiers scrambled down into the dry canal, tan robes bright against the dark, muddy earth. The fighting in the breach on the first wall was dying down—the Persians driving back the legionaries on either side and pouring through the gap in a huge crowd.

'You'll have to do then,' Aurelian barked, sliding back down the fighting step. 'Manius, run to the seventh and eighth cohorts, they're waiting in reserve on the old road—get them here now. The enemy will try and rush the bastion, try to break through the broken section of the wall. Gnaeus, there are reserves on the first wall...' The prince pointed north, across the canal. The nearest forward bastion was already under attack from the inner road, robed figures climbing the sloping sides under a flitting cloud of arrows and javelins. '...in each strong point. Tell each bastion commander to detach one cohort and rush them to the breach. Titus—you go south of the attack—tell those commanders the same.'

The three guardsmen sprinted off without a word. The other Praetorians leaned close, faces grim. The prince felt a strange disassociation between his thoughts—a swift torrent of considerations and decisions, his mind leaping ahead across hours, days, weeks—and the smoky air, the screams of the wounded, the peculiar brittle quality in the sky. He glanced over his shoulder again—the Persians were toiling across the canal in a mob. 'The