“Zenobia,” he whispered, “the missing horsemen-the Lakhmids-what color are their banners?”

“A red snake on a field of black,” the Queen said, turning, and then she saw them as well. Her pupils dilated for a moment, and then she raised her head. Fire still burned in her eyes, but with it there was a realization of the extent of the disaster she had led her men into. She gestured to the lone remaining trumpeter. She put the mouthpiece of the trumpet to her lips and blew a long single note. Across the field of battle, the weary commanders of the Roman army raised their heads, staring behind them. Some could see the Queen, shining golden amid her officers, others could only hear her.

“Fall back,” she cried out, a mournful sound on the suddenly quiet field. “Fall back!”

THE GATES OF TAURIS

The night sky over the city was lit with a sickly green glow. Odd lights burned and flickered on the battlements of Tauris. A mile downstream from the city, the Emperor of the West, Martius Galen Atreus, stared north across the swift waters of the Talkeh. The river was running deep here, and the far bank was only dimly visible in the moonlight. Where he stood, on a flat-topped hill overlooking the river, surrounded by his guardsmen bearing torches and lanterns, the wind rustled in the leaves of the sycamores and aspen trees that crowded the bank. At the Emperor’s side, one of the Eastern scouts raised a hooded lantern and flipped the stiff leather shutter up and down, then up and down again.

In the darkness on the far bank, there was an answering flare of light: flash-flash-flash. The men around the Emperor murmured softly; no one had expected their allies to be where they had promised to be. Who expected such things of barbarians? Galen raised a hand and the noise stopped.

“Send a man across with a rope,” he said to the centurion standing next to him. The twenty-year man turned and muttered gruffly into the darkness. A moment later two men climbed up the hill, stripped to the waist, with heavy leather belts. The men were well built, with thick chests and arms like wrestlers. Their dark hair was cut very short and their skin gleamed in the torchlight. Galen looked them over and nodded.

The centurion growled at the two. “There’s a band of horseflies on the far bank. They have an emissary to speak to the Emperor. Take a line across and bring the fellow back.” While he spoke, other legionnaires had snapped a waxed line of heavy cordage onto hooks built into the backs of the leather belts. The two legionnaires saluted and scrambled down through the reeds that lined, the water.

“Batavians,” the centurion rasped, “swim like eels.” His breath puffed white in the cold air. Galen nodded, drawing a heavy wool cloak around his shoulders. Winter was coming. There was a quiet splash, like a frog jumping into the water. The rope began to spool out from the hands of the legionnaires that were holding it.

The Emperor waited patiently in the darkness.

Galen rubbed his eyes wearily. It was late and he had been up since before dawn. Luckily, he sat in a chair a pace back from the heavy goldplated monster of a throne that Hera-clius’ servants had been lugging over mountain and valley for the last six weeks, and could indulge himself with a yawn. The great tent, fully the size of a villa,~was warm too, with hundreds of beeswax candles to light the audience chamber at its heart. The Eastern interpreter was listening intently to the words of a wizened old man in a bright blue shirt with heavy stitching around the collar and embroidery at the cuffs. The old man, with a wisp of white hair around his head and pale-yellow pantaloons, reminded the Western Emperor of a mummer in a traveling show. He smiled a little and turned his attention back to the notes that his secretary had given him of the numbers of wagons that were still sound, of the number of bushels of wheat and barley that remained in stores.

Long ago, when Galen had first opened discussions with the new Emperor of the East, they had struck upon an arrangement by which precedence could be resolved when one of them was in the lands of the other. By Imperial fiat, each had declared the other his magister militatum, an old title reserved for the official in charge of the armies of the state. Each Emperor had then agreed to the appointment of a strategos who actually performed those functions when the magister was absent from his post. Now, with both of them on campaign, Galen found that Heraclius had been serious about his fellow Emperor fulfilling his duties. In truth, it worked well, for Heraclius spent nearly all of his time unraveling political difficulties among his warlords and the local tribesmen, leaving Galen to tend to the army.

The little old man stopped speaking, and the interpreter turned to the Eastern Emperor, who was beginning to fidget on his golden throne.

“Avtokrator,” said the interpreter, a nobleman from Tarsus that had joined the army at the behest of Prince Theodore, in heavily accented Greek. “The headman blesses your house and your sons and welcomes you to the land of the Armenes. He says, too, that the Persians have many men, many thousands of men in the city. But he knows that the arms of the Rhomanoi are the strongest and that all the land will soon be free of the blight of the Iron Hats.”

Heraclius nodded and smoothed his beard. He was weary; the day had been very long. “Tell him, good Pro-culus, that the Emperor is pleased to receive his friendship. Tell him that he and the other headmen hereabouts will receive many fine gifts from my hand if they are good friends to us. Ask him if he knows who commands the defense of the city across the river, and-more to the point-if there are any other bridges across the river than the one at the city.”

The Tarsian nobleman related this in turn to the old Armenian and then the two dickered back and forth for a time, until Heraclius raised an eyebrow at Proculus and the noble bowed deeply to him in apology.

“Great Lord, pardon me. The headman says that it is said that the Persian general known as the Boar commands the defense of the city, and that the men who stand upon its walls wear coats of red and gold. By this I take it that they are Immortals.”

Galen looked up at this; he had been listening with half an ear while he made notes for his lieutenants to deploy the men and begin building a fortified camp. The other Eastern officers had stiffened at the mention of the Boar. Pursing his lips, Galen wracked his brain and then remembered: The Boar was the nickname of the foremost Persian general, Shahr-Baraz, a giant of a man who was rumored to have never lost a battle or a fight. The Roman remembered, too, that Heraclius had sent three great armies against the Persians when Chrosoes had begun this war and that the Boar had smashed each in turn. Galen rubbed his jaw, feeling sandpapery stubble under his fingers. How do these Easterners manage with those beards? he wondered. The. name of the Boar was something to conjure with for the Easterners: the enemy who had never been defeated by their arms.

“Ask the headman,” Heraclius said, “if any new men have come to the city of late or have left. Ask him if he has seen the General Baraz or if he has only heard that he commands here.”

Another long session of muttering went back and forth, then Proculus said: “Great Lord, the headman says that three seven-days ago, many of the horsemen left for the south in haste, but that the Boar was not with them. He says that the Boar has been seen often, stalking the battlements of the city with his banner men. He says that he has seen this with his own eyes. No other men have left the city, save for strong bands of the Iron Hats to punish the villages around the city.”

Galen looked over at Heraclius at this last. The Eastern Emperor stopped drumming his fingers on the armrest of the throne. “Punish the villages? What occurred that they had to be punished?”