The Storm of Heaven, page 26
I have to see her again, he mused to himself, and I will. But not in such romantic settings as these.
—|—
The chariot ride was much quieter this time and Vitellix drove with care, avoiding the delivery wagons crowding the streets after dark. Diana stood at his side, saying nothing, holding the rail with one hand and Ila with the other. After a time, they left the walls through the Tiburtina gate and were passing through the countryside surrounding the city.
"Vitellix? May I ask you a question?"
Diana's voice was barely audible over the rattle of iron-rimmed wheels on the hard surface of the road. The Gaul slowed the chariot, clucking at the horses. They were still at least a mile from their camp, rolling amid acres of vineyards and wheat fields bounded by stone walls.
"Of course." Diana heard the tension in his voice and softened the words she used.
"What god do we serve with these performances? I must be quite dense, not to have realized it before, but you are a priest, aren't you?"
Vitellix laughed and seemed to relax.
"I am," he said ruefully. "A high priest, even, of a forgotten and neglected cult. I am frankly surprised that this Lord Gaius knew us at all. His agents must be well informed! But to your question—we serve Lugh the Many-Handed, the Lord of the Sun and Creation and Song. Ours was once, as the man averred, a rich and powerful temple in Narbonensis. The sacred games of the sun, the 'ludus solis,' were attended by thousands. No more... in the time of the Conquest there were over a thousand priests. Now there are just the four of us."
"And me!" Ila growled, hitting Vitellix with her fist. "And Diana! Girls can serve the Many-Handed too!"
"Yes." Vitellix laughed. "In the old days, women were not allowed in the ranks of the priests, but that has changed. Ila's mother was the first, but she died of the cough, and now there are the two of you. In truth, I think the god delights in all expressions of art. Ours is just harder to express than most."
"Thank you," said Diana, hugging Ila and Vitellix. "I feel better now, refusing that man's advances. The god will protect us if we serve him well."
"I suppose..." Vitellix's face was indistinct in the darkness, but Diana thought that he was worried. "We still need to eat and feed the horses, though."
"I have cost us a place in these games." Diana bowed her head. "I am sorry."
"That was too high a price to pay," Vitellix said, flipping the reins and getting the horses going again. "Tomorrow I will go into the city again and see if I can find another patron, one less, ah, devoted to the arts."
CHAPTER TWENTY
Aelia Capitolina, Roman Judea
A hundred of the Sahaba sprinted forward, leaping over broken white gravel and crumbling fieldstone walls. Half the men carried ladders, the other half great wicker screens. The air above them filled with a hissing cloud of arrows. More of the Arabs shot from cover, aiming to keep the defenders' heads down.
"Allau Akbar!" All along the mile-wide front, the fierce cry of the Sahaba roared from thousands of throats. The sun was rising, pale gold light brushing the city towers. More Sahaba poured out of shallow trenches. Hierosolyma sat atop a rocky hill. The fields along the northern wall were poor and thin.
Arrows splintered on the limestone battlements, forcing the Roman defenders to duck. The Sahaba charging across the barren swath before the wall ran all-out. If they could reach the base of the wall, there would be shelter from the stones and arrows of the defenders. At the central gate on the Damascus road, the Romans were shooting back with winch-driven crossbows and slings. A siege tower three stories high, clapped together from looted planks, rumbled down the road, pushed by four hundred Arab warriors. It swayed and jiggled, forcing the men in the top to cling for dear life. Roman arrows filled the air, pincushioning the wooden facing of the tower. Suddenly one of the Sahaba crouched down in the top coughed and there was a tinny ringing sound. He fell back among his fellows, the side of his helmet caved in by a lead bullet. A moment later they pitched him over the side of the tower, letting him fall with a crunch onto the rocky soil below.
In the shelter of the smashed triumphal arch, Odenathus sat cross-legged, his eyes barely slits. The trap that had incinerated a good quarter of the Ben-Sarid cavalry on the first day had seared the bricks, giving them an odd, glassy sheen, and knocked down part of the arch. A band of Jalal's troops squatted around him, restless eyes watching the hills and the road. Each man's spear was laid on the ground close to hand and they had arrows on the bow. The main body of the Sahaba army was fully engaged in this assault, so it paid to keep a weather eye out for sorties from the city.
The siege tower approached the wall, still shaking and rumbling on the stone surfaced road. The huge wheels made an enormous racket. The front of the tower was thick with arrows and bolts. Some of the arrows had been dipped in pitch and were still burning. Though the face of the tower was draped with wet hides, parts of it were aflame, shrouding it in a haze of dirty white smoke. Archers in the top were firing back now, trying to hit their adversaries on the gate towers. Beside and behind the tower, more Sahaba crowded forward, wicker shields held up between themselves and the wall.
There was a snapping sound off to the right of the triumphal arch. One of the scorpions the Sahaba had captured at Lejjun let fly. The huge machine rocked back hard, dust spurting from its wheels. A long throwing arm of Lebanese cedar quivered in the air, bouncing against a restraining bar. The sixty-pound stone shrieked towards the walls. Sahaban engineers scurried around the machine, preparing to crank it back with great toothed wheels and load another stone.
The stone crashed into one of the square towers rising from the main length of the wall. Fine white dust billowed back from the impact and there was a ripping sound. The dust rose up in a cloud as the tower trembled. The hurled stone bounced on the ground at the base of the wall. Then a section of the stone flaked away, tumbling down into the ditch below. The tower remained. Romans staggered to their feet on the roof.
Odenathus turned back to watch the business on the road. The fighting tower was very close, only a dozen yards from the gate, and it was burning fiercely now, though the Sahaba continued to roll it forward, their efforts punctuated with repeated cheers.
"Allau Akbar! Allau Akbar!"
The lead edge of the tower crunched into the bastion flanking the gate. Smoke gouted up, clouding the air around the wooden tower and the wall. The Sahaba in the top raised a great shout and dropped a toothed wooden plankway onto the battlement. Romans crowded there, their mail glinting in the morning sun, swords already stabbing at the Arabs crowding out of the tower.
Odenathus tore his eyes away from the distant scene. He concentrated, reaching out slowly and carefully into the hidden world.
I should have done something by now! The Palmyrene was nervous. Jalal would be getting impatient, waiting with the main body of the Sahaba a mile away on the other side of the city. The northern wall of Hierosolyma ran from northeast to southwest. It turned southwards on the eastern side at the verge of the steep-sided Valley of Kidron. Similarly, to the southwest, it turned to follow a ridge that ran under the western flank of the city. Two main gates opened in the circuit of the wall—the northern, or Damascus, gate, and the western, or Joppa, gate. The western gate stood under the brooding flank of the Roman praetorium, a stout-looking citadel built directly into the wall. This was approached by a sloping road that ran under the wall itself, dropping from the ridge down into the Hinom Valley.
During the night, while the main body of the Sahaba made noise in the north, Jalal and two thousand of his best men had crept into the western valley to hide among the olive and lemon groves. Partially shielded by the ramp of the road, they were waiting for Roman attention to be focused in the north. In particular, the Roman wizards had to show themselves. Jalal intended to have his men scramble up a forty-foot stretch of rubble to reach the ramp, then cross thirty feet of open marble-surfaced road to the gate. It was an approach completely devoid of cover. Once there, they would have to storm the gate without the support of their one wizard, who was crouching on the other side of the city, waiting to engage the attention of their enemy.
The fighting on the wall by the siege tower grew sharper, with more Sahaba climbing out of the burning structure. The fighters had seized part of the wall. Ladders were going up all along the battlements, heaved up by eager hands, some men climbing the rickety rungs even before the ladders had touched down. Most of the men climbing the wall wore the clan signs of the Ben-Sarid twisted into their armor or kaffiyeh. Odenathus closed his eyes.
The unseen world was furious with activity. Thousands of men running, fighting, dying, putting forth all their will to survive clouded it with dizzying waves of sparks and half-seen flames. Even the flow of power in the ground rippled and contorted, influenced by those struggling above. It made any kind of work very difficult. This complication usually limited sorcery in battle to defense or subtle effect.
Odenathus concentrated, focusing his will, and fixed his thought on the siege tower. He had spent the night placing simple patterns of defense on the wood. He had also etched a watching eye, squeezing his own tears into the cut wood. Now, with his intent upon it, that mirrored eye opened in the hidden world and he was there, atop the tower, wreathed in flame and smoke and shouting men.
The top of the wall was thick with men, pushing and shoving, shields locked, hewing at one another with axes and swords. Some of the Sahaba wielded spiked maces. A horrendous banging sound filled the air, mixed with the screams of the wounded. Before the heedless frenzy of the Ben-Sarid, the Romans fell back, yielding a thirty-foot section of rampart. Odenathus scanned the wall, looking for the telltale traces of a hidden pattern or the enemy himself.
There! On the nearest tower, a hundred feet away, a mage-ward swirled and reflected. In the shelter of the arch Odenathus made a motion with his hand, tracing the pattern of a shield mnemonic. His shadow counterpart on top of the siege tower duplicated the action. The glittering blue orb of the Shield of Athena sprang up around the fighting platform. Odenathus could feel the hidden world flex and de-form as the power on the wall tower became aware of him.
Time compressed, seeming to drag slowly, and Odenathus reached deep into the earth. There were hidden springs and rivers beneath the barren land, each a glowing blue current of power. He felt it rise, strengthening his shield, but it was slow work. The dim figure on the wall tower moved and the hidden world was filled with a violent reddish light.
Odenathus blinked, his eyes streaming with tears, and he fell backwards.
The siege tower blew apart in a shocking blast of light and fire. Burning men were thrown skyward, wreathed in blue-white fire and trailing smoke. The top of the wall was ripped by the blast, knocking men down. Shattered timbers torn from the superstructure of the tower scythed into the tightly packed ranks of the Sahaba. Men fell, pierced by rapierlike splinters. Others leapt screaming into the plaza behind the wall, their armor red-hot, cloaks smoldering and covered with tiny flames. All around the base of the tower, the Arabs surging forward to attack the wall lay in windrows, thrown down by the shock of the blast. Even the Romans were stunned.
The tower, stripped down to a skeleton of furiously burning logs, fell apart, pelting the men on the ground with red-hot embers and lengths of flaming wood. In the shelter of the archway, Odenathus staggered up, his right hand twisting in the air as he dragged at the power he had gathered around himself. A flickering electric-blue sphere leapt across the space between him and his enemy. There was a burst of light and a crazy display of reflections as the sphere smashed into the Roman shield. The facets darkened and flexed, then sprang back, burning even brighter.
The Palmyrene cursed, wiping his palms on his tunic. Smoke billowed up out of the ruined tower, blocking his view of the wall. Odenathus could feel the vibration of his enemy. It was far too familiar. He mouthed a curse.
Damn that boy! He gets stronger every time we cross swords... Gods, Dwyrin, I don't want to hurt you!
—|—
A sharp boom echoed through the praetorium. Nicholas' head jerked up and he looked out the nearest window in surprise. It was narrow and barred with iron, but it showed the rooftops of the city and part of the northern wall. The centurion had been deep in conversation with Sextus Verus, the commander of the Roman engineers. Nicholas had begun to worry about the water supplies in the city. The siege was beginning to drag out and it seemed the "desert bandits" weren't going to leave. It might take months for a relieving Roman army to reach them.
"What was that?" Nicholas squinted out the slit of the window. A huge column of smoke rose from the northern gate, but the sound had been much closer. Sextus Verus was staring out the other window of the corner room.
"Centurion! It's the gate here! They're all over the ramp road!"
Nicholas cursed, interrupted by a second boom that made the pens and cups on the table shake. That one was close! Without looking back, the centurion leapt down the narrow flight of stone steps leading to the main floor. Sextus' boots tattled on the stairs behind him.
At the base of the staircase there was a common room, now filled with surprised-looking men and Vladimir, who was wiping his mouth. The Walach slept late. He spent the night prowling the wall outside the city, looking for unwary bandits and stray sheep. He was hungry most of the time, since all he wanted to eat was meat. Nicholas had put everyone on siege rations the very first day and directly controlled all of the grain in the city. They might be down to rats and dogs by the end, but they would not run out of food any sooner than absolutely necessary.
"Attack on the Joppa gate," Nicholas shouted as he ran across the room. "Signal the reserves!"
The men followed with a cry, snatching up weapons and shields. One of the boys that ran messages for the garrison sprinted back up the stairs, heading for the roof of the citadel. Some of the soldiers paused a moment to cram on a helmet, then the whole lot poured out of the main floor of the citadel and into the square. Other men, citizens, were running towards the gate as well, scrawny hands wrapped around makeshift spears or scythes. Some few had crude round shields and swords.
Aelia Capitolina was cursed with a polyglot population of locals, Syrians, Egyptians, Arabs, Roman settlers and vagrants. Hardly anyone could call it the city of their fathers. Despite fierce proscriptions, a number of odd religious cults remained active in the area, and many of their adherents had fled into the city with the approach of the Arab army. Luckily for Nicholas, a large number of legionaries had been settled here as part of an Imperial effort to "pacify" the province. Those men were old, but they still remembered how to be soldiers.
They and their sons held the northern wall. Many of the other denizens of the old city refused to fight at all, hiding in their homes behind locked and barricaded doors. Nicholas sometimes wished that he had the troops to root them out and expel them from the city, but he dared not fight a civic insurrection as well.
A violent crashing echoed out of the gatehouse as Nicholas skidded to a halt in the gloom under the gate. Sunlight suddenly flooded the dark chamber as the gate splintered open. The centurion cursed violently and slipped Brunhilde from her sheath with a singing rasp. The iron head of a large ram crashed through, throwing metal studs and heavy wood to the floor in a clatter. Nicholas caught a brief glimpse of the roadway outside the shattered door. It was thick with green turbans and round shields.
"Form shield wall!" Nicholas kicked debris away with his boots. He spared an instant to praise the Walküre for watching over him this day and reminding him on waking to kit out in full armor. Men surged in from the sunlight, leaping over the scattered wood. The ram retired, hauled back by a dozen brawny arms. Nicholas leapt forward, Brunhilde's hilts in both hands, and slashed the tip of her blade across the face of the first men swarming through the opening.
They were blinded for a moment, coming out of the sun and into the close darkness of the gatehouse. Unfortunately for Nicholas, it was a poorly designed structure, allowing the road to run straight into the city without so much as a dogleg or a second, interior gate.
The double-forged tip of the sword, razor sharp, sheared through the faces of the first three men, shattering bone and cartilage, spraying blood along its path in a flat hard arc. All three screamed horribly and toppled back. They fouled the men trying to push through the gate. Nicholas jumped in, ignoring the wounded men, and Brunhilde blurred down, shattering the helm of the next man with a ringing clang. The northern steel, birthed in Nebelungen forges, cut into the soft hand-forged iron like an adze into wood. The soldier convulsed, blood flooding out of his helmet. Nicholas wrenched the blade away, deforming the helmet and flinging it off into the crowd of men outside the gate.
Spears jabbed and there was suddenly a thicket of shields in front of him. Behind the green-turbaned soldiers, Nicholas caught sight of a thick-shouldered man shouting commands. The spearmen lurched forward as one, pressed by their comrades pouring up the slope outside. Nicholas skipped back, batting aside two spears snaking for his gut.
Then Vladimir was at his side, yowling his high-pitched war cry and swinging a heavy-bladed ax. It bit into the first shield and Nicholas tore his attention away. Another spear glanced from his breastplate and he twisted to one side. Brunhilde slashed down, splintering wood and hewing through two spear shafts. Another spear ground into his side and he gasped, feeling the point dig into the center of a mail link. Blood welled out, but Nicholas was past feeling any pain. Vladimir had retreated as well, fending off five or six spearmen with vicious sweeps of the ax.
"Shields, forward!" Sextus Verus' voice rang off the arched ceiling of the gatehouse.
Legionaries pushed past, their rectangular scutum covering them from ankle to chest. Nicholas felt them part, letting him fall back through them, and then there was an unholy racket as the Roman soldiers came to grips with the Arabs in the passage. Behind their interlocking wall of shields, the legionaries pushed in close, their short swords flickering in the space between the two lines of men.
