Zenobia’s face had gone utterly pale. “It is the Boar, Shahr-Baraz… I’ve been tricked!”
Ahmet seized her arm and shook her. She snapped from her stupefaction.
“The battle is not done,” he hissed at her. “We have the upper hand. You are winning.”
She stared back at him with a lost expression on her face.
“He has never lost a battle,” she whispered. “He has slain his thousands, and his tens of thousands…”
Before them, down the slope, the giant and the bear like men who formed a wedge behind him were wading through the Nabatean lines like butchers. Many of the red-armored men turned to flee at the sight of the Boar, and the entire Palmyrene advance suddenly stalled.
“You must rally your men, O Queen. They will believe in you. Your legend is stronger than his!” Ahmet stared into her eyes, his will fully bent upon her.
She stared back and then fire kindled in her and she turned away, rising in the saddle, her clear high voice ringing over the battlefield. “Palmyra! To me! Palmyra and Zenobia!” The stallion leapt forward as she dug in her heels. A wild scream of rage flew from her and the entire battlefield froze, men staring up in shock as she and her Bactrians hurtled down into the melee like a stroke of lightning.
Baraz whirled around, hearing a great cry go up from the Romans, and he saw a black stallion rushing toward him with a solid block of lancers at its back. A slim figure in golden armor and a winged helm stood in the saddle, a silver sword raised in one hand. The Boar blinked twice and his vision focused enough to see that it was a woman.
Zenobia! His heart raced with surprise. He had heard rumors that the Queen of Silk was wont to lead her men in battle, but he had not believed it. Around him he felt the tide of battle shift again; the Romans had almost broken when he and the pretty birds had charged, but now they had taken heart again. Arrows fell around him like rain. He spun the heavy charger and pressed back through the struggling horsemen around him.
“Zenobia and Palmyra!” The shouts of the Romans rang over the clatter of steel and iron, and the screams and moans of the dying. The Romans pressed forward again, their front a bristling thicket of spears and swords. The Persian courtiers and the Luristani guardsmen were overwhelmed and went down fighting, axes and maces biting at the shields of the infantry to the last.
Beyond the battle Baraz gathered the remains of the horsemen who had been fighting on the left wing. One of them, to his disgust, was the Great Prince Shahin, his magnificent bronze and gold armor dented and muddy. The Great Prince’s face was haggard, and blood seeped from a cut on his forehead. The withers of his horse were caked in blood. Baraz counted heads; only fourteen horsemen remained to him. He looked to the right, up the Persian line, and saw to his horror that the fighting in the center had gone worse than before. The infantry had fallen back almost to the bridge and he was close to being cut off.
“Fall back to the bridge,” he shouted over the din. The Persians trotted west as fast as their weary horses could carry them.
The earth shook with the thunder of thirty thousand hooves. Dust billowed up from the rocky ground, rising in a great cloud behind Khadames and his knights as they stormed up the low hill at the western end of the battle. The Palmyrenes who had been sitting for the last hour and a half on the hillock were at last beginning to gather into a wedge to charge, but Khadames screamed in delight, his arm strong again. They were too late. They had waited too long for their reinforcements, and now he had the momentum against them. The sacrifice of the bandits had been for nothing. The Persian commander’s face split in a terrible grin. The ground sped by under his charger as eight thousand Persian heavy horse rushed up the hill in a great crescent.
Zenobia thrust with the point of her saber. The silver blade danced off of the Persian knight’s noseguard and then slid into his eyeslit. His whole body jerked convulsively and the Queen, screaming with delight, whipped the blade out, the first five inches sluicing blood into the air in a spray. Ahmet looked away as the knight toppled off his mount. Zenobia wheeled her horse and galloped out of the fray to the west. Ahmet’s white headdress was gone and his long dark hair blew free. His face was spotted with blood. The Queen trotted up the hill toward the road and her command tent. Half of the Bactrians who had ridden with her into the fight rode out again, hurrying to rejoin her. Only two of her messengers remained.
The field was clouded with dust, making it hard to see either end of the battle. Zenobia resettled the winged golden helmet that she had been wearing on her head. One of the wings had been sheared off and it was unbalanced. It still would not sit right, so she pulled it off of her head with a gasp and wrenched the other wing off. The heavy gold struck the ground and stood there, impaled on the wingtip in the broken earth. Zenobia uncurled the braid that she had woven of her hair that morning and let it fall across her back.
“Report!” she rasped to the messengers who had rejoined her. “What is happening!”
One of the dispatch riders, a Tanukh, bowed his head wearily.
“My Queen,” he said, “the Lord Mohammed was struck down on the left and has been carried back to the camp. He lives but is sorely wounded. The Emir ibn’Adi commands the remainder of the Tanukh, but…” He pointed helplessly off to the west.
A great roar echoed through the dust, and everyone turned to stare in that direction. A heavy crash, like a thousand cast-iron pots thrown into a gravel pit, echoed out of the tan clouds, and then, suddenly, the ground to the west of the road was filled with Palmyrene horsemen, knights and lancers alike, in flight. The silver shapes of Persian heavy horsemen loomed out of the dust in pursuit, their banners fluttering.
Zenobia groaned and crushed her fist into the mane of her horse. Ahmet gripped her shoulder hard, but some sound behind him made him turn.
To the east, downstream, beyond where the Nabateans had advanced to smash the right wing of the Persian army, a column of horsemen had appeared, riding hard up the valley. Their robes were black and their banners were a long snake on a field of sable. Ahmet’s eyes twitched left and right. To the right, the bluff where Aretas had planted his tent was abandoned, only a scattering of bodies and the forlorn banners of the Prince of the Rose Red City. To the left, the Nabatean horse and spearmen were still fighting, hacking their way into the right flank of the remaining Per sian infantry. There was nothing between the riders in black and the unprotected rear of the Palmyrene army.
“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.