The shadow's vast hands tore into gossamer gold, fingers wrapped in lightning, blazing with ultraviolet, and Dahak spoke a word. The sound reverberated in the smallest stone. Men fell dead for miles around, though others staggered and lived. The shining wall froze-constant motion stilled-and Zoe saw a vast overlapping matrix of geometric forms congeal from hurrying, inconstant, undefined motion. Dahak bellowed, forcing his strength through the shuddering form of Arad, and the golden ice shattered violently, breaking away in dizzying fragments from a pinpoint blast of will.
The opposing minds vanished from Zoe's perception, blown aside like leaves ripped from the trees by a titanic gale. The golden wall crumpled, breaking into brilliant shards, each one splintering into smoke, then nothing. The jackal strode forward, shadow long upon the land.
Khalid clung to the earth, feeling mud and brick buck under him like a wild horse. A log fell past, rolling down the slope. A huge ripping sound split the sky, then a shattering boom, followed by rushing, forge-hot wind. Khalid cowered, digging into the loose earth. A colossal footstep slammed down, followed by the screams of men. The Arab looked up and saw, not more than a yard away, a bronze-bound hilt gleaming in the wreckage.
"At last!" he croaked, crawling forward to seize the hilt with both hands. The blade of night sighed free from the earth and Khalid felt his heart soar with relief. The blade was unharmed! He rose to his feet, staring to the north. The head and shoulders of the jackal loomed up, wrapped in billowing smoke and dust. The thing's face was lit with flames. Stone splintered under its tread and Khalid saw a huge section of the Roman fortification was gone, cast down, only rubble and corpses remaining.
"Forward!" he screamed, pointing with the sword. "To me, Sahaba! To me!"
In the canal bottom, those men who still lived picked themselves up, caked with mud, streaked with crimson. Khalid ran along the slope, dodging fallen timbers, leaping across the dead. His men saw him, recognized the shining ebon blade in his hand, and they raised a tumultuous shout.
"The Eagle!" they cried, running forward, spears raised, catching the sun cutting down through the dust. "The Eagle!" Thousands of the Sahaba, shaking free of surprise and fear, flooded forward into the breach.
"That's torn it!" Sextus picked himself up from the road. An earth tremor had rippled the length of the wall and the military road, shaking open huge cracks in the earthwork, jumbling the logs laid down to provide a mud-resistant roadway. "Are you hurt?"
Frontius rolled over, unable to stand. His face was a tight mask of pain, gnarled hands wrapped around his ankle. "Aiii… I think it's broken." The engineer gasped. Sextus knelt down, fingers tugging at his friend's boot. Frontius turned a funny color, lips going white. "Don't…"
Sextus stopped messing with the laces, then slipped a knife from his belt. The heavy military leather resisted for a moment, then parted with a scraping sound. Sextus worked the remains of the hobnailed boot free, jaw clenching as he saw a purplish-black bruise around Frontius' ankle and shin. "It's bad," he bit out.
The earth quivered again and now a rolling series of crashing sounds, interspersed with thunderclaps, shook the air. Grunting, Sextus got a shoulder under Frontius, then staggered to his feet. The other engineer, hanging upside-down, croaked in alarm, then convulsed, vomiting. Sextus ignored the slick wet feeling on the back of his bare legs. He cast a look behind him, over his shoulder.
Smoke obscured the center of the Roman line. Black smoke billowed up from burning, damp wood. Clouds of dust were interspersed with the smoke and leaping flames intermittently lit the haze. Sextus blinked, unsure of his own eyes. Lightning jagged and ripped through the smoke, briefly illuminating something huge moving at the center of the conflagration. The engineer cursed, suddenly realizing what he was looking at. The distortion of scale was too vast to easily comprehend.
A colossal figure a hundred yards high plowed out of the smoke. Mangonel stones smashed against its chest, bursting with green fire. Clouds of arrows leapt up from the ground, clattering away from ebon-hued skin. A vast jackal head appeared from the smoke. Fire burst upon it like spring flowers-blossoming in a hundred radiant hues, then vanishing again. The thing chopped an enormous hand down and the earth shook. Sextus staggered, shifting his balance. A flare of unnamable color burst from the moving fist and siege engines blew apart in blue-black flame.
"Set is upon us," Sextus breathed, stunned. "The gods walk the earth!"
He turned, settling an unconscious Frontius upon his shoulders and staggered off down the road. The shape of the southern mirror tower loomed up ahead, only a half-mile away. It seemed intact, the morning sun gleaming on the polished shape of the disk in its cradle. Grim-faced Roman legionaries ran past, heading for the sound of battle.
Nephet groaned, pushing weakly at a smoking, charred timber pinning him among the dead. The old Egyptian's face was streaked with blood, his nose bleeding, thin fringe of hair plastered against a skull shining with sweat. His thin arm strained, then the square-cut timber lifted and clattered to the ground. Surprised, the priest looked up to see a powerful figure crouched over him.
"Lord Caesar!" Nephet turned his head and spit blood on the dusty ground.
"Get up," Aurelian growled, lifting the frail old man up with both hands. The Roman's eyes were narrow slits against bitter white smoke drifting through the ruins of the bastion. His armor was dented and scored with black streaks, his beard fouled with mud. "Can you stand? Can you fight?"
Nephet coughed, catching a fringe of the smoke hanging in the air. A sizzling crack-crack-crack roared overhead. The priest ducked, flinching away from the noise. Aurelian's fingers dug into his shoulders.
"Can you fight?" The Roman shook Nephet roughly. Memories flooded back, chilling the old priest's blood. He and the prince had rushed forward to the bastion, alarmed at the enormous noise and the flare of light. The old Egyptian had barely reached the wall in time to watch a conflagration unfold, then the earth heaved and something had smashed him to the ground.
"Yes." Nephet turned, leaning heavily on his staff. The side of one hand pressed against his brow. The skin felt hot, but touch served to focus his mind enough to descend once more into the maelstrom of the hidden world. My brothers! To me! The old priest sketched a glyph in the air, the mnemonic guiding his thought and will into the desired pattern. A pale, feeble radiance flickered into being around him-an incomplete, weak sphere of defense. Nephet reached out, his will winging across the battlefield, searching desperately for his fellow priests. Sons of Horus, heed my call!
Destruction lay all around, echoing between the physical and the ghost shapes of the hidden.
A hundred-foot-wide section of the forward rampart was gone, reduced to jagged heaps of brick and ash. The remains of an ancient triumphal arch listed drunkenly to one side-the old gate had been completely filled in, making a strong point in the wall. Now the sandstone slabs were cracked and splintered, scattered over a sixty-foot-wide swath from the gate. The bastion opposite, where Nephet had been standing, was cloaked with smoke, watchtowers burning fiercely, a massive gouge torn out of the sloping earthen berm. Glassy slag puddled, shimmering with heat, among the wreckage. The tents inside were blown down and dead and wounded men lay scattered like grain discarded on a threshing floor.
Hurrying lights-the shapes of men-poured through the breach, surging forward into battle with struggling knots of legionaries, regrouping after the blast. Nephet struggled to think-the wound on the side of his head burned with cold fire-and took some heart to see the Roman soldiers rallying around their Legion standards. Furious ghosts and vengeful spirits clustered thick around the ancient banners, driving back the whiplash of fear and despair radiating out from the enemy. The thin cries of the newly dead bolstered the hearts of the living. Older, stronger shades crowded around the legionaries fighting in the wreckage, turning aside burning motes of misfortune flooding the hidden world.