Hundreds of Arabs streamed back across the canal, their attack broken. Burning stones shrieked down out of the sky, crashing into the mud. Lakes of pitch burned furiously, filling the waterway with poisonous smoke. There were still knots of men fighting along the rampart, but they were dwindling in number. The legionaries concentrated their fire and rushed to shore up threatened parts of the wall.
"No," Khalid choked, barely able to speak. He felt sick, throat filled with bile. "No!"
Someone shouted above him. "There's a live one!"
Khalid froze, shoulder blades itching.
Out of the corner of his eye, something enormous moved in the sky.
"Hades!" Aurelian looked up in surprise, a wall of Praetorians in gleaming silver armor circling him. The priest Nephet was almost lost among their grim faces and muscle-bound arms, a thin, dry brown hawk in a plain robe. Black lightning flickered in a clear sky, reflecting in the prince's stunned eyes. The air above the forward wall shimmered and rippled with heat, revealing intermittent reflections of the earth below. The bulk of the bastion blocked Aurelian's view, but he could hear the sudden, strident din of battle. "Priest! What is happening?"
Nephet's thin old face grew grim, his eyes half-lidded. "The Persian magi, my lord, they are attacking the outer barrier." He leaned on his staff, attention far away. The prince saw the old man's arteries throb at the side of his throat. "Something is coming!"
Nephet's eyes flickered open, blazing with alarm. The hidden world was in upheaval, a vast, dark shape rushing towards him from the east. "To arms, my lord! The enemy is here!"
Zoe swept through the air, a hundred feet above the canal. Below her feet, she caught a glimpse of archers arrayed in ranks on the hard-packed earth. The Arabs were plucking arrows-thrust point-first into the sand-and fitting them to the bow. In the brief moment she perceived them, a thousand men fit fletching to thumb, lifted their bowstaves, then loosed. Iron-tipped, gray-fletched shafts snapped out across the canal, lofting high into the smoky, dust-filled air.
Before the Arabs could react to the apparition towering over them, Zoe had to look away, searching for the enemy. Dahak's will gripped her in steel fingers while she, Odenathus and Arad rushed through the air in a tight triangle. The sensation of flight was dizzying. Around them a dark haze swirled and shifted, a formidable ward radiating out from the jackal. The Lord of the Ten Serpents laughed to see their paltry shield of Athena.
You are my hounds, his thought crashed into hers. I will defend, you will attack, bright teeth deep in the Roman neck!
A vast shadow fell across the Roman fortification, mightier than the towers, spilling across the rampart, the fighting step, the crowds of legionaries staring up, eyes wide in fear, faces a sea of white ovals. Ahead, the golden wall shimmered and rippled, sheets of ghostly light falling in a slow wave down the face of the barrier. Zoe recognized the pattern-an interlocking matrix of thaumaturgic will, dozens of layers deep, constantly shifting, in endless motion to deny an enemy purchase-the battle-projection of a Roman thaumaturgic cohort. She felt the serpent's will move the colossal arm of the shadow and Zoe answered, summoning the power in the earth, invoking the flat blue shades of water, the living flame of reeds and trees. There was no stone here, not save the cut blocks of the wall's foundation, but they had been leached of power long ago.
Lightning blossomed, stabbing out from her hand as she moved her fingers in an old, old sign. The sky answered and brilliant blue-white thundered against the golden wall, ripping through gossamer, shattering delicate patterns, a sledge crashing into new-blown glass. Zoe gasped in surprise-she had never thrown such power before! A dark current boiled in her mind, flooding her senses, threatening to burst free of the binding of flesh and will. An enormous pressure crushed against her and Zoe screamed in panic, feeling the might of the Lord of the Ten Serpents flow through her.
Another bolt flashed across the narrowing distance and the golden wall shuddered. Below, in the fight still raging along the wall, men screamed in despair, throwing themselves to the earth. Wooden towers wicked into flame, pitch exploded in its barrels, scattering smoke and living green fire everywhere. Zoe felt the Roman thaumaturges reel back, stunned. Of her own accord, she struck-fist twisting into a pattern to rip the earth, to sunder stone, crack wood.
The shadow arm moved in unison with her will and an ephemeral fist smote the earth.
— |-
Khalid, still on his hands and knees, flinched back. A huge, towering figure-two hundred feet tall, his mind gibbered-strode out of the desert, skin black as night, face that of an enormous jackal, white fangs a tall man's length, red lips hideous against the ebon flesh, eyes blazing crimson. Lightning flashed, rocking the air with a stupendous boom and splintered across the sky, flooding over some invisible wall rising up from the Roman fortifications. A long, ringing tiiiiing followed, as if a stupendous crystal shattered. The Arab threw himself down the slope, thorns ripping his flesh, his arm crunching against another stake.
Behind him, the actinic glare of lightning flashed along the wall, driving men back with terrible heat, incinerating those still struggling on the rampart. When Khalid stopped rolling, the entire slope of the earthwork was on fire, wooden stakes and thornbush alike billowing flame and smoke. The titanic jackal wavered, its edges dancing with heat haze. It smashed a fist down into the center of the Roman wall. Khalid flinched and the earth jumped with an enormous crunch. A huge blast of dust roared up, logs and clods of earth flying in all directions.
For an instant, Khalid saw the sky distort, burning sparks licking off in jagged paths through the air. Pressure beat against his ears and he gasped for breath. The air itself bent, throwing insane reflections of the sky, the ground, running men. The smoke-jackal bent a vast dark shoulder, pressing at the empty air, an enormous foot grinding across the earthen rampart, splintering wood and crushing soldiers already stunned by the blasts ringing in the air into a crimson smear.
Thunder boomed out of the west and Khalid-still cowering at the base of the slope-saw blue-white lightning leap down from the sky, flaring across the jackal's shoulder and chest. The thing howled, ebon flesh incandescent where the blast had lit, then smote the air with a fist, then again. Tongues of fire slashed out of the west, haloing the monstrous creature's head with smoke. Still the air bent and Khalid realized some kind of invisible barrier was deforming under the jackal's attack. He crawled away from the smoldering brush, then remembered the blade of night lay somewhere behind, lost among the flames.
"Curse it!" he growled, hurriedly wrapping the tail of his kaftan around his face, leaving only a slit for his eyes. The fires were still sputtering, flames licking up here and there, curling bitter white smoke from the ashy ground. The young Arab scrambled up the slope, casting about wildly, desperate to find the sword of the city. His skin flushed with sweat. Where are my people?
Together! roared Dahak and Zoe's mind submerged in a rushing black flood. The hidden world convulsed with stabbing white bolts of power. The Roman thaumaturges were weighing in, furious in their assault, bending the earth and sky to crush the shadow creature mired against the golden wall. Zoe felt the serpent curse in rage, then she, Arad and Odenathus moved as one, colossal arm swinging back as they bent their power against the tattered, deformed pattern. Dimly, though the helices of fire slamming into their own wards, she perceived a huge group of desperate minds-sixty? seventy? — hurling flame, lightning, every scrap of power against them.