Thyatis climbed the steps out of the cellar and carefully pushed the door open into the ground floor of the shop they had taken over the day before. The shop was still deserted, all of the goods packed away. Piles of wooden ladders filled the space, leaving only an aisle between them, She glided to the front, where heavy shutters were closed and barred against thieves. A small spyhole was set into the center of the shutter, and she swung the little iron flap up from it and peered out. The southern square was empty and dark, but by the light of a single lantern hung from a stone wall where the main thoroughfare of the city emptied into the square, she saw that a heavy fog was filling the air.
There was a faint sound behind her, the clink of armor. She turned and Nikos was standing there. Men were filing into the room behind him.
“Fog,” she breathed. “We couldn’t be luckier. Send the word to the other shops. We attack as soon as everyone is in position.”
Nikos gripped her shoulder with a gloved hand.
“Are you sure?” His voice was faint and filled with worry. “We’ve had no word from outside…”
“Victory to the bold,” she said, her teeth white in the dim light. “It’s the hour before dawn and there’s a heavy fog. Regardless of what the Roman army does, we have a chance to capture the bastion by ourselves.”
The Illyrian regarded her for a moment more, then shook his head slightly and moved off to prepare the men. Thyatis turned back to the spyhole. Within the next ten grains, they would be ready. She felt a familiar thrill of expectation. Hundreds of men were preparing to move at her command, like a strong swift horse responding to her will. They would live or die upon the strength of her planning and courage. Her fingers curled around the wire-wrapped hilt of her sword, feeling the grooves worn by long use. Even the borrowed helmet felt right on her head.
Galen stood in the mist, his gilded armor shrouded by an even heavier cloak. A servant stood by him, holding his plumed helmet and sword. Around him he could hear the quiet movement of thousands of men. Just to his left, on the hard-packed mud of the road, a tortoise rolled up through the darkness, the squeak of its huge wooden wheels swallowed by the liberal application of all of the pig grease that Heraclius’ foragers could steal. He strained to see forward through the mist that swallowed the bridge. There was nothing there, only shades of black. He rubbed his nose, feeling a tide of apprehension rise in him. For a brief moment he wished that he were his brother Aurelian. Aurelian had never felt the slightest fear in battle or any concern for his own safety. He wondered how Maxian was faring, buried under scribe-work in the palace. Galen pushed thoughts of his brothers away. The river rolled past, silent in the fog.
Moisture beaded on the massive beams that formed the gate of the city. The fog licked against the^ black stones and water puddled on the pavement. Dwyrin and Zoe crouched at the base of the gate, a dull gray cloak thrown over them. Under the wool it was still bitterly chill, but their shared warmth made it a little more bearable. The Hibernian was on his hands and knees, concentrating on the join between the two halves of the gate. The left valve of the gate was faced with a nine-inch-wide strip of iron that overlapped the right-hand side. Zoe was holding the cloak up over them in a tent.
Dwyrin shuddered, feeling the vibration of the spells etched into the oaken panels, and breathed out slowly to settle his mind. He descended again into the second entrance, and then the third. Perception folded away from him like the leaves of some infinite flower, each layer revealing ten thousand other layers. The cold receded as he did so, and the gates rose up, glittering with hidden power. A complex geometry held them closed against an attacker, delicate traceries of power and form a hundred levels deep. The boy was stunned by the work that had gone into the defense. He quailed for a moment in the face of that complexity.
Zoe, who had also descended into the hidden world with him, though slower, whispered: “Ignore all that, look at the stones.”
He looked down, dragging his gaze away from the subtly shifting patterns of the gate. The heavy volcanic stones of the roadway and the gate were dull and inert, sullen black lozenges. No power crept through them like an infinite number of glowing worms. They were stolid and well worn by the passage of thousands of feet. Dwyrin’s concentration focused. His fingers dug at the cold stones, and his perception flowed into the pavement, seeking for even a tiny spark of fire.
At last, deep under the gate, in the foundation of the tower platform, he found it. A small thing, only a whisper of fire, trapped in a great slab of basalt that had been laid to form the base of the gate itself. His spirit hand wrapped around the little flame and his unseen breath blew on it. It dimmed and then flickered brighter. He drew on the power of the other stones, weak as it was, and slowly it burned hotter and hotter.
Zoe‘ shivered under the cloak. The cold from the river and the mist was creeping up her legs and thighs. The Hibernian was still in a trance, his fingers trembling on the pavement, working in the deep stones. She rolled back and forth from her left foot to her right, trying to keep some circulation in them. Dwyrin suddenly shuddered and looked up.
“Let’s go,” he croaked. Zoe pulled him upright, startled at the hot flush in his skin. She carefully folded the woolen cloak aside and pushed him down the walkway at the side of the gate. The boy stumbled ahead of her, his skin steaming in the cold air. Behind them, the stones under the gate made a popping sound.
The sound of hundreds of running feet echoed back from the dark wall that towered over the southern square. Thyatis jogged through the darkness, following the dim shapes of her men running in front of her. The first rank of men were carrying long ladders, scrounged from the city in the previous weeks, and the pylons that had so vexed Jusuf. The wall that rushed toward them was twenty feet high on the city side, and the ladders were a good thirty feet long. Their uppers were wrapped in wool or cotton or hides to deaden the sound of their slapping home on the rampart. The mist continued to hang around them, and the Roman woman realized, as she ran, that it was swallowing the sound of their mass rush across the square.
The lead men reached sight of the wall, only five or six strides ahe#d of them, and halted. The men behind continued forward, pushing the ladders above their heads while the lead men swung the base of the ladders to the ground and put their full weight on the bottom rungs. Thyatis slowed, raising her sword to signal the men behind her to slow as well. She heard them pause, and she slid the blade back into the sheath slung over her back.
The first ladder rose into the air and then swung over to land with a clatter on the embrasure at the top of the wall. Thyatis was already springing up it, her hands and feet on the rungs. She shinnied up the ladder like a monkey, but even before she reached the top, she heard the ringing of alarm bells within the citadel. She screamed in rage and hurled herself over the battlement.
“Roma Victrix!” She bellowed and the sword was in her hand in a rush. All along the wall, a hundred ladders clattered home and men were already swarming up them. The top of the wall was empty and she sprinted left, toward the nearest guard tower. There was a great commotion in the bastion as hundreds of voices were raised in alarm. Lights began to flicker on in the fog, casting strange shadows. Ahead of her, a door opened and she saw the shapes of men spill out.
The first Persian had only a spear, his armor forgotten in his rush to reach the wall. She whipped out of the fog, her sword a horizontal blur that hewed through his exposed neck in a spray of blood. He was still gasping for air, his hand raised to his oddly constricted throat, and she was past him. The spear clattered to the stones. The next man was in half-armor with an axe, and the men behind him had spears and shields. Thyatis felt a tremendous rage bubbling up inside her and as it crested, she howled and was among them, her blade a spinning wheel of destruction.