She stood up. The three men nodded. “Good, get to it.”
After they were gone, she stood at the window, clicking the sword in and out of its sheath. The sky was turning dusky purple. The rooftops were already steeped in darkness. She sighed, rubbing her nose. Sahul, why didn’t you come south? What happened in the north?
THE DAMASCUS GATE, PALMYRA
The midmorning air trembled with a booming shock. Dust rose in a great pillar over the rooftops of the city. The sky was very blue, almost pure undiluted color, scrubbed clean of any clouds or impurities. The dust rose up, a bone-colored smear against the deep blue. Mohammed turned from the doorway, his face graven with weariness. His eyes were old in a still-young face. The kaffieh that was wound around his head and trailed over his shoulder was dirty and spotted with old blood. His breastplate was scored and marked with dozens of tiny dimples where spears, swords, arrows had been turned aside by the stout metal. His hands were marked with many cuts and stiff bandages were tied between his fingers. Still, his right hand rode easily on the pommel of a well-used saber.
“My Queen,” he said to the darkened room, “I must go to the gate. The Persians will come again in strength.”
“Is this the last day?” came a murmur from the darkness. There was a slithering sound as silk sheets rustled and fell away. In the dim light, the Southerner could see a pale blur rise up and slowly swim into focus as it came toward him. He bowed and took the hand of the woman.
“It may be,” he said, his voice gravelly with the strain of a hundred days of shouting commands. “There is something in the air… perhaps the wizard will show himself. If he does, then the gate will fail and the Persian will walk the streets of the city.”
Zenobia squeezed his hand, her long fingers firm.
“I shall command the people of the city to retire to the palace,“ she said. ”If the gate falls, then we will fight on here. Mohammed…“
He released her hand. Her shift was plain soft cotton, falling to her ankles, and her hair was loose and uncombed, a tangled cloud, around her neck and shoulders.
The southerner raised a hand, his fingers to her lips. “Say nothing, my lady. I choose to stand with my friends. I do not regret it, though it grieves me to see that your dream has died. I was lost for many years. In this struggle I have found purpose, short-lived though it may be, and I am well pleased for it.”
The Queen smiled, her eyes sparkling in the dim light. The press of events had finally stirred her from the death-watch that had possessed her for so long.
“I will be at your back, then, Al’Quraysh.”
There was the echo of another boom, louder than the first.
“Go, your purpose is getting impatient.”
He bowed again and strode out, his boots clicking on the polished tiles.
When he was gone, Zenobia returned to the bed and crawled across its expanse. Her fingers traced the forehead, sharp nose, and lips of the man lying in it. She bent close and kissed him, though he did not move. She felt only a faint breath on her cheek, but it was enough to know that he was alive.
“Well, my love, sleep in peace. I have duty to attend to.”
Zenobia stood up, feeling the leather strapping of the bed give under her weight, and pulled the slip off over her head. She stepped lightly off the bed and ran a hand through her hair. It was a mess and she frowned at the tangles caught in her fingers.
Silly, she thought to herself, it doesn’t matter if my hair is combed and brushed for death.
But then she paused and turned the silver mirror on her wardrobe toward her. No, she thought, today it does matter.
She rang a small glass bell, summoning her servants to draw her bath and dress her.
Mohammed looked out over the plain before the city. It seethed like an enormous anthill with men and horses and engines of war. The Persians had been coming down out of the hills since the dawn had broken, long lines of spearmen hurrying down the road. Horsemen thundered past, their lances glittering like stars. Four more great siege towers had been raised up and now they crouched a hundred yards from the wall. Stone-throwers couched behind battlements of rocks and raised earth lay behind them. As Mohammed watched, the one nearest the gate released, sending a boulder the size of a small man flying into the air.
“ ‘Ware!” echoed in a shout down the line of the battlement. Men ducked their heads below the merlons. The stone hissed through the air and struck the pinnacle of the left tower at the gate. Stone splintered violently on stone and shards of rock sprayed on the men crouched below. The gate tower stood unmoved, though another pale scar had been gouged from the sandstone facing.
Mohammed stood again, his hand shading his eyes. Hundreds of Persian archers in light armor and quivers full of arrows were running forward toward the gate. Among them, men jogged under the weight of mantlets woven from reeds gathered from the stream that fell away east of the city and leather cured from their own horses. All along the front of the enemy army, regiments and battalions were forming up. Men jostled to raise ladders to their shoulders. Arrows began to fly up from the advancing ranks, a dark cloud of angry birds.
“This is it,” Mohammed said to his commanders, stepping back from the fighting slit. “He has come out.”
Away, across the plain, behind the engines and the tens of thousands of men, a black wagon drawn by ten black horses had appeared on the road. A solid wall of knights in heavy armor surrounded it. Their banners were dark,
A
long fluttering pennons in the shape of serpents with scarlet scales. Around it, the marching men of the Persian army shied away, leaving a great clear space. Mohammed blinked-the air seemed to twist and shimmer over the distant image.
“Ten serpents…” he muttered, pursing his lips in thought. He shook his head, unable to dredge up the memory.
“To arms!” Mohammed shouted, his voice ringing out over the battlements and the shattered buildings behind the wall. Metal rang on stone as the Palmyrenes rushed to the wall. The Southerner looked out over them, a ragged line of men in battered armor and scarred faces. Too few of them were soldiers; most were the men of the city forced to defend their homes. Many had never held a spear or hacked at another man with a sword before these days. Now they were blooded veterans, forged hard in this hellish place. Mohammed turned back to the wall. Arrows rained out of the sky, clattering on the stones. He pressed himself close to the dun-colored brickwork.
Men along the battlement popped up, loosed their arrows into the running mass of Persians heading for the wall, and then ducked back down again. Mohammed drew his saber and checked the edge for chips or cracks. Shouting rose from below the wall. Another great stone caromed off of the nearest tower and bounced down onto the wall. Mohammed turned his head and cowered behind his shield. The stone plowed into a knot of men, bakers by the signs they had painted on their shields, and smashed them into a bloody dough of splintered bones and crushed intestine. Arrows fell like rain.
The ladders hit the wall, a long rippling rattle of wood on stone. Mohammed sprang up and raised his saber.
“Up! Up!” he screamed. “To the walls!”
The two Tanukh who shadowed the general stabbed out with their spears, pushing at the slats of the nearest ladder. One spear caught and the man put his shoulder into it. The ladder slid sideways and then suddenly toppled over. Screams and yells of anger filled the air. Mohammed ran back up onto the fighting platform that jutted from the side of the tower. Hundreds of ladders had gone up along the wall and the men of the city were furiously engaged, shoving them back. The city archers fired down into the masses of men swarming at the base of the wall, their arrows punching down into upturned faces. Another stone sailed oyer the wall and crashed through the tile roof of a building across the street. Fire gouted up from the ragged hole.