Ahmet ran across the sand toward him, leaping over fallen pillars and broken statuary. Lightning danced from his hands, slashing across the face of the tower. Dahak wiped a pale hand across his mouth; it came away streaked with blood. A heavy bolt tore into his shields and the top half of the tower blew away in a cloud of bricks, dust, and bones. Heavy stones crumbled onto the sorcerer, smashing him to the floor of the doorway he had been blown into.
The Egyptian paused, panting, a good distance from the tower. It trembled and then collapsed in a roar of agonized stone and mortar. Ahmet struggled to rebuild his shields, now only a tattered wisp of their former strength. His hands were shaking and his nerves were an agony of brutalized tissue. He staggered, barely able to think. The Fist of Horus was more debilitating than he had heard.
Dahak rose up out of the rubble, a dark flame flickering around him. His face was a ruin of blood and broken bones. His mouth opened, showing sharp canines, and he screamed, a long dreadful cry of rage. In the city, men fell to the ground, mindless with fear. It was the sound of a great beast, hunting in the night beyond the light of the cave fire. On the wall Zehobia, her face streaked with tears, gripped with bloody fingers at the stones of the battlement.
Wreathed in a corona of ultraviolet fire, Dahak sped toward Ahmet, his mouth howling inhuman words. The sky darkened and Ahmet felt the sun grow dim. He clutched at the earth under his fingers, leaching the deep blue-green rivers of power that he felt under the land. The dark man raised a fist and then his hand flashed in a circle, describing a sphere filled with black light that he clawed from the air. His fist stabbed out. Ahmet surged up off the ground, wrapped in green fire of his own, then there was a brilliant light and the earth shook.
In the city, Zenobia wept to see the huge billow of flame that erupted from among the crooked towers. It blossomed like some infernal flower, rushing out in a blast that tore at the funereal pillars, turning the sand to glass around it. The hills rumbled with the sound of the blast and a hot wind flew before it. She turned away, shielding her face with her arm, still clad in the stout armor. Smoke shot into the sky, forming a pillar a mile high. When she turned back, nothing could be seen but desolation among the ruined towers save a single figure, black as night, stumbling among the shattered stones.
Dahak could barely see, his mind blinded by incredible pain. His skin smoked and his hair was burned away. He ran into something solid-the remaining fragment of a wall-and he slumped against it. He was exhausted, trembling with fatigue. His fingers, withered to clawlike talons, scraped at the stone for purchase, but there was none. The rock was very hot and it burned him as he slid down it. The sky wavered overhead and he moaned. All around him the air was filled with the creak of stones cracking and snapping as they cooled from the incredible heat. He crawled away, instinctively looking for some hole or pit to crawl into.
Fifty yards away, his skin caked with fine gray ash, Ahmet lay senseless in the center of the destruction. A fine dust rained out of the sky, powdered brick and stone, settling over him like a funeral cloth. His clothes had been burned away and long burns scarred his face and chest where his failing shields had ruptured. His breathing faltered and then stopped.
A thick pall of smoke and dust hung over the valley, drifting slowly to the south.
On the ridge, Baraz nudged his horse forward with his knees and looked down upon the city. Nothing moved. He motioned for his standardbearer and trumpeters to advance. His own long banner now flew, the stylized head of a tusked boar on a field of dark green. He wore his own armor too, old and battered and nicked by a hundred battles.
He rubbed his hand across the greasy iron rings. This is as it should be, he thought. Men will do this work and win this victory. He waved to the banner men behind him.
“Signal the attack!” he shouted, his voice ringing like a bell. Below the lip of the ridge, tens of thousands of Persians rose from a crouch and began moving forward. Those few engines that his engineers had been able to cobble together from the wagons rumbled forward on the road. The Boar turned his eyes back to the walls of the city and a fierce exultation filled him.
“Persia!” he shouted, raising his sword to catch the sun. “And victory!”
THE OUTSKIRTS OF KAHAK, NORTHERN PERSIA
Nikos stood in shadow, his broad face dimly lit by the bonfires and torches in the street below. The shutters were thrown wide, but the room itself was dark. The Illyrian was just inside the window and standing to one side, leaning against the poorly plastered mud-brick wall. A racket of horses neighing and men shouting rose from the street. Thyatis sat, cross-legged, on a thin cotton pallet against the far wall of the room. Her sword, gleaming with oil, lay across her knees. There was a sliding scrape as she honed the blade with a whetstone.
“What do you see?” she said, not looking up. Her voice was quiet.
“I see,” he answered, “more than a hundred men ahorse. Their mounts are burdened by half-armor of leather with broad rings of iron stitched to it. The men are bearded and fierce, with long lances and curved swords. Their helmet plumes are of many colors, and the banner they follow is the head of a tiger on a field of yellow.“
“That is the crest of the King of Luristan, Kurush of the House of Axane.” One of the Armenian boys had spoken, his voice soft in the darkness. “Those are dihqans, knights in your parlance, from the far South. They have traveled many leagues to reach this place.”
Thyatis nodded. Her thumb ran along the spine at the core of the length of Indian steel. It was a good sword; it had been a gift of the Duchess after her first successful mission. Holding the scabbard with her right hand, she tipped the blade in with the left and then ran it home among the silk lining. “It seems odd that such a pimple as this place should be so popular this late in the year.”
Jusuf, also sitting against the wall with the Armenians, nodded. “The King of Kings knows that the snow will be late,” he said.
Thyatis considered this, then spoke. “Will the snow truly be late? The air is chill already.”
Jusuf shook his head, his eyes upon her, hard over the barrier of his folded arms. “It is growing cold, but there has been no rain. It is a dry year. Snow may not close the passes to Albania and the north for another month or more.”
“Then,” she replied, “there is time enough for the King of Kings to gather an army and send it north against the Emperors and their army.”
“True,” Nikos said, gliding from the window and squatting next to her. “This is the third company of dihqan that has passed while I’ve watched today. By the conversation of the innkeeper and the merchants at the midday meal, there is a great road junction to the north.”
“Yes,” the other Armenian boy added, looking to his brother for support, “a great highway runs from the south to the shores of the Mare Caspium and the Persian city of Dastevan. They built it in the time of our grandfathers, when they were fighting the barbarians on the steppes north of the Araxes.”
Jusuf coughed and glared at both boys. They blanched, suddenly reminded of where he came from.
“Then we should leave this place soon, tonight, before someone thinks to mention a party of foreigners from the north to one of these nobles.” Thyatis looked at the two Armenian boys. “One of you, and… say, Menahem, will ride north to carry word of this to the Imperial army. The rest of us will continued south.”
The Bulgar, Menahem, looked up at the mention of his name. He was a short fellow, blessed with a very thick, bushy beard and curly brown hair. He rarely spoke, though he was not as reticent as Sahul. He slid a long knife with a toothed edge out of his belt.