Shirin wiped water from her face, her shoulders trembling. She turned away, pulling the iron door closed and putting her shoulder into the bar that held it closed from the other side. It was rusty and creaked for a moment before it slid home. With the door closed, the screams and crackle of falling timbers shut off.
The boat was a long skiff with a covered cabin at one end. Nikos stood in the stern, his bare toes gripping the planks of the deck, a heavy pole in his hands. Two Khazars reached up and helped Shirin into the boat. The Princess stepped gingerly to the little cabin and ducked down to crawl into it. Thunder rumbled in the heavens above. Lightning flickered from cloud to cloud. The Khazars cast off the mooring rope and Nikos dug in with the pole. The stones of the dock backed away, pooling with water in the downpour.
The boat slipped away into the storm, water pouring down all around it. Nikos, soaked to the bone, began singing a song of his youth as he held the tiller steady. The surface of the Tigris was broad and flat, dimpled with thousands of falling raindrops. Darkness folded around them. The Khazars put their backs into the stroke. The far shore was nearly a mile distant.
In the close darkness of the cabin, Shirin wormed herself into the woolen blankets, gathering her sleepy children around her. They murmured but fell asleep again, smelling her perfume in the night. It was warm, and the blankets were soft. The boat rocked gently from side to side with the stroke of the oars. The Princess drowsed, her babies in her arms, Thyatis’ exhausted breath soft in her ear, one scarred forearm curled across Shirin’s smooth stomach. Tears leaked from Shirin’s eyes, even after she had fallen into a deep sleep.
CROWS OVER PALMYRA
Dahak stood in the ruins of the Damascus Gate, fine gray ash puffing up beneath his boots as he paced. Two stonemasons, their faces white with fear, knelt before him, each holding the side of a black sheet of polished basalt. On the face of the stone, in ancient spiky letters, they had carved an inscription. Only Dahak could read the words graven there, but he found them a fine jest drawn from a memory of his youth. His fingers, clawlike and withered, caressed the surface of the stone. Its smoothness was a thing of beauty. The words read:
I destroyed them, tore down the wall, and burned the town with fire; I caught the survivors and impaled them on stakes in front of their towns… Pillars of skulls I erected in front of the city… I fed their corpses, cut into small pieces, to dogs, pigs, vultures… I slowly tore off his skin… Of some I cut off the hands and limbs; of others the noses, ears and arms; of many soldiers I put out the eyes… I flayed them and covered with their skins the wall of the city…
The Lord Dahak laughed softly to read it and held the hot feeling of revenge close to his heart. It warmed him, he who always felt a chill in his breast. He shuffled back to the steps of his wagon. His men had pulled it out of the ditch, and the loot of the palace adorned it. Plates of beaten gold covered the doors, etched with many symbols. The Lord Dahak had placed them there with acid brewed from the blood of living men. His right hand, almost fully fleshed again, grasped the railing and he pulled himself up.
“Nail it to the wall of the gate, there, above the entrance.”
The stonemasons bowed their heads to the stones of the ramp. They alone of all who had lived in the city before the coming of the Persians survived. Soldiers helped them raise the black stone up. Hammers rang, driving bolts of iron into the sandstone wall.
Dahak looked about him, seeing his handiwork. He was well pleased. The long walls of the city lay in ruins, torn down by heat and water and splitting bolts. The houses of the city were empty shells, scooped out by fire. No statue stood whole, no column in that long arcade of columns rested upon its base. The four houses of the gods of the city were shattered piles of cracked stone, brought down by his own hand. Windrows of skulls lay heaped around the gate, empty eyes staring at a brassy sky.
Atop the remaining fragment of the gate, a body hung, its head pinned back by black spikes, its arms flung wide. In death, Zenobia held no beauty. Arrows and spears had torn her body when she had fallen, a raging whirlwind at the last gate. Thirty men had perished, braving the reach of her sword. Archers had brought her down at last, for no man would face her hand to hand. Her body was dragged through the streets, torn by the kicking boots of the soldiers, to Dahak as he sat in the ruin of the House of the Four Gods. Her head had been struck from her body and paraded before the thousands of moaning captives on a tall pole. Her eyes had been plucked out, leaving only ragged pits filled with clotted blood.
All this the people of the city had seen before Dahak had walked among them, a dark shape passing for a man, feasting. When he was done, the withered dead lay in their thousands, skin shrunken to their skulls. Fires had been set, and the soldiers of the army had labored through long nights feeding the bodies to the flames.
Palmyra had died a long and agonizing death.
Dahak laughed, a chill sound that echoed off of the walls of the ruined gate.
“Good-bye, O Mighty Queen,” he said, bowing mockingly to the corpse above the gate. The head had been sewn back onto the torso, though it was a poor job, done in haste with thick leather stitches.
“Fear not for your beloved. He rests easy under my hand.“
Dahak caressed the sarcophagus that was strapped to the back of the wagon. It was heavy gray slate, carved long ago by stonemasons in honor of one of the great nobles of the city. Now its occupant was scattered across the desert, and the body of the Egyptian priest, wrapped in burial shrouds and packed in salt, was closed up inside. A seal of lead and gold filled the cracks between the cover and the base. Dahak climbed over the top of the wagon, his long robes trailing after him.
“Hey-yup!” He flicked the reins and the twenty mules that had been hitched to the wagon twitched their ears and ambled forward. Dahak settled back into the hard-backed wooden seat. In the depths of his cowl, his flesh crept and crawled, pulling his lips into a semblance of a smile. Troops of horsemen trotted out to join the wagon as it rolled west on the long road to cultivated lands. As it passed down the road and through the funereal towers, regiments of spearmen picked up packs heavy with loot and fell in behind. Wagons rumbled onto the road. The Persian army was leaving the city in the desert.
Dahak surveyed his army-for it was his army now, broken to his will by fear and compliance in dreadful acts- and was pleased. His debt had ended with the death of the King of Kings, felt even across many long miles. Now he had no need to restrain himself.
The barren land lay quiet under a dim sun. Crows circled over the city.
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