Zenobia and Ahmet flinched back from the explosion, raising their arms to protect their faces. The Nabatean officers stared up at the cliff, jaws agape, the blood draining from their faces. Ahmet reinforced his shields, dimly perceiving that some vast form had stalked across the battlefield in the hidden world and had reached into the tent to tear the patterns of the priests and the Prince into tiny scraps. Now it raised its head in triumph, bellowing a vast roar of victory. Even in the seen world, the dim echo of it could be heard, rising above the tumult of battle like the shriek of the damned. Ahmet shuddered at the shape that he saw flickering in and out of perception. Tripartite wings flexed 6n the back of the towering figure and tentacles writhed where arms and hands would be. The thing turned then, and a single burning cat-yellow eye swept the field.
Ahmet clenched Zenobia tight, his mind gibbering in atavistic fear as that gaze passed over him. Feeling only an incredible sourceless dread, the Queen quailed tn his arms, burrowing her head into his chest. But it did not remark them and it strode away, the earth shaking at its invisible passing. Ahmet breathed a little easier, his eyes wide in fear. He stared across the field and for the first time was aware, like a hunted creature is suddenly aware of the stalking cat, of a distant black shape, like a wagon, behind the Persian lines.
“Oh, my Queen, the enemy is surpassing strong. It must be one of the great ones, the mobehedan mobad, come against us.”
Zenobia shuddered one more time and then pushed herself away from Ahmet’s broad chest and the sanctuary it offered. She wiped her lips and rapped the plump Nabatean sharply on the side of his head with her riding stick,.
“You command now, Obodas. Get these men moving right now, or I’ll kill you where‘ you stand.” Her fingers rested lightly on the saber she carried slung at the side Of her saddle horn. Obodas stared up at her with blank eyes. Then he focused and, after taking a shaky breath, nodded. The Nabatean officers ran to their horses and began saddling up.
Zenobia turned her horse; she had to get back to the center and see what had happened on the left wing. Ahmet clung to her like a sailor clinging to a spar in a storm-tossed sea. He was shaking and dripping with clammy sweat.
The Lord Dahak sagged back into the rough horsehair cushions with a long gasp. His hands trembled and for a moment he could barely focus his eyes on the flickering candles that surrounded him in the perfectly dark confines of the wagon. The muscles in his arms and legs twitched involuntarily, the nerves brutalized by the staggering power that he had channeled through his will only moments before. Wearily he leaned over and fumbled at a copper cup beside the pillows. After two tries he managed to raise it to his lips and drank greedily. Red fluid, almost clotted to a gel, spilled in a trail along his cheek. He shuddered again, but the draft restored some of his strength.
The sorcerer crawled to the door of the wagon and rapped on the panel. After a moment the door opened a crack and one of the Uze tribesmen peered in, his eyes wide with fear.
“Drive,” Dahak croaked, his throat raw from the effort of forming the words of summoning. “Make for the camp of the Boar. Send one of the men to him with a message.”
Baraz scratched his full beard, twirling one of the ringlets around his mailed finger in absent thought. The Uze messenger squatted on the ground, chewing on a grass stem.
“ ‘This is a matter of men, now.’ That is the Lord Dahak’s message?”
The Uze spit sideways on the ground and nodded his head.
Baraz curled his lip, and then shook his head. “Go. Make sure that the Lord Dahak reaches the camp safely.”
No matter what the wizard thought he had accomplished, the Boar could hear the tenor in the riot of noise around him changing. The Nabateans on the left flank had finally charged down from the slope under the bluff and the entire Persian left was falling back before their lances. Baraz had thrown the last of his spearmen and archers into the fray, but his entire left wing was now being ground backward. Soon the heavy horses of the knights commanded by the Great Prince Shahin would be driven into the marshy ground along the streambed.
“Ready my men,” he shouted at the Luristani guardsmen. He smiled, his face creased with a wild grin, at the courtiers who were still held close to him, like bright feathered birds in a cage of steel. “We are needed on the left, so we are going to charge against the junction of the Red Men and the Romans. Their line is weakest there!” He heeled his horse and the entire band of seventy or eighty men surged forward. The courtiers began to weep and scream in fear, but the Luristani troopers crowded them with their horses, driving them forward. He still had no news from the right wing. Last he had seen, the Roman light horse had charged Khadames clibanari behind a volley of arrows.
Mohammed slashed overhand at the Persian knight, feeling his light cavalry saber ring like a bell as it smote the Persian’s heavy longsword. The Persian knight hacked at him again, and Mohammed kneed his horse away in time to see the stroke part the air where he had been a moment before. Around him there was a confused swirl of men, horses, and ringing steel. The Tanukh charge had taken the Persians by surprise and had shattered the first two ranks of the Iron Hats. But once that momentum was spent, the heavily armored Persians had waded in, swords flashing. The Tanukh, despite incredible personal bravery, were being butchered.
Al’Quraysh spurred his horse away, trying to break out of the melee. Another Persian swung his horse around, its armored head butting against his own. The mare whinnied in pain and fear and reared. Mohammed angled her away from the Persian, hacking across her head at the man. His blade rang on the attacker’s armored arm and slid away. The Persian hacked at him overhand with an axe, and his shield splintered into fragments as the blade bit through the roundel. Mohammed shoved the ruined shield at the man and slapped his horse hard. It bolted away, carrying him past the knight. Suddenly a lane opened in the fray and he galloped into it.
A tight knot of his men appeared out of the battle ahead, charging through two Persians in only half-armor. A lance slammed into one of the cataphracts and speared through his lower belly and out his back, slick with gore. The man screamed and toppled off of his horse, taking the lance with him. The Arab whooped and drew a curved longsword from a sheath over his back. Mohammed was among them in an instant.
“Sound the retreat,” he yelled, his voice hoarse from shouting. “We fall back to the main body. Gather the men!” Trumpets began to shrill and the sole remaining bannerman waved his standard in a figure-eight pattern. Mohammed and his men charged uphill, their.fleet horses stretching full out. Behind them the other Tanukh struggled to fight free from the mass of Persians, but most were surrounded and hewn down. Al’Quraysh turned his horse as the Tanukh broke free, waving his saber above his head to rally the remaining men.
An arrow, fired from the Persian footmen screening the edge of their infantry battalions, whickered out of the air and smashed into his side. He staggered and stared down at the broken shaft hanging limply from his armpit. A cold rush of sickening sensation filled his right side. The saber fell from nerveless fingers. Two of his men, one of whom he dimly recognized as ibn’Adi, closed their horses up on either side, supporting him.
“Fall back on the Queen,” he whispered. “She will command us…”
Having fought free of the swarm of desert bandits, Khad-ames rallied his household men to him. The two blocks of Persian heavy horse were disorganized by the melee, and he began shouting orders to regroup them. The general struggled against a terrible desire to scratch his nose, but that was impossible under the heavy helmet that he wore. His splendid armor, carefully buffed and polished by his servants the night before, was spattered with dark-red gore and dinged from a hundred blows. His arms were incredibly weary and he did not think that he could raise his sword one more time. He peered out of the narrow eyeslit and saw that his men were regrouping quickly.