Thomas Harlan - The Gate of fire

"Let's go," Jalal barked in his rough voice. His throat felt like sandpaper and tasted of smoke. "We need to get back to the northern gate."

The Tanukh slipped past, their sabers and long knives at the ready. Four of them now carried Mohammed in a litter. The chieftain was very pale and still. Jalal watched him being carried past, and worry clouded his long, lean face. He wondered if he had struck too hard. The fear had been real, though, and the strange gleam in the man's eye had set him on edge. Jalal turned the corner after the last of his men were past. He was not familiar with the maze of the temple precincts, and he wondered how they were going to find their way back to the gate.

The street ended in a blank wall of crumbling brick and a climbing vine with small red flowers. The lead men were already rattling the doors that led off of the cul-de-sac. Jalal cursed as he came up. Then he froze and motioned his men to the sides of the street. An echo of running feet rippled along the walls behind him. He stepped to the nearest wall and flattened against it. One thick thumb eased his saber from its sheath and he held the leather scabbard across his chest, his left hand wrapped around the hilt. Likewise, his men crouched against the walls, waiting. The four men with Lord Mohammed carried him to the back corner of the cul-de-sac and placed him gently on the ground.

A youth in a long robe and a small striped blue cap trotted around the corner, breathing easily. He had a wooden staff in his hand. The Tanukh crouched at the corner looked down the street behind the lad after he had passed and held up two fingers. Jalal cursed again-silently, this time-and stepped out in front of the running boy. The lad pulled up sharply and opened his mouth to cry out. Jalal's fist cracked him on the side of his head, felling him like a poleaxed ox. The staff clattered to the ground and rolled away to fetch up at one of the doorsteps. The Tanukh tensed, ready to meet the dozen men who could now be heard running closer.

Jalal drew the saber, feeling the metal slither out of the sheath. The air seemed clearer to him, the surfaces of the walls and the edgings of the doorways very distinct.

– |Khalid stood at the edge of the milling crowd, looking upon the burning ruin of the great temple with wry amusement. Around him his men made a living wall of shoulders and interposed bodies. The fires in the crumbled building were still burning merrily, consuming the shapes of the gods and demons who had filled the temple. The crowd was still angry, but directionless. The priests of the outer temples mocked those who had served within the great building, while those worthies accused the "lesser" priests of black treachery. Khalid turned around, slowly, watching the roofs of the other buildings and feeling the tension in the air. Soon something would spark this tinder, and blood would flow. He smiled again, catching the eye of two of his lieutenants. "It is a sign," he cried out, his clear, young voice rising easily over the bickering of the crowd. "The corruption of the temples will be cleansed with fire! Cast down these foreign idols!"

Around him, people paused, halting in their arguments or gossip. Khalid nodded to his lieutenants, and they took up the cry as well, moving through the mob, their voices raised.

"Throw down the idols! Out with the foreigners! Cleanse the temples!"

Within a grain, one of the priests of Zeus Pankrator shoved a Mekkan merchant who had taken up the cry to "drive out the foreigners." The merchant pushed back, and one of Khalid's men, moving through the crowd behind the two men, threw a wine bottle. The bottle cracked open the head of one of the acolytes of the Pankrator Temple. The acolytes shouted abuse at the crowd and threw paving stones back. The Mekkans, hit by the stones, returned fire.

Within ten grains, the temple square surged with a full-blown riot. Priests were knocked to the ground and trampled by the mob. Massed fists beat acolytes barely out of childhood into bloody ruin. Stones and brickbats and offal filled the air as each temple faction raged against the others. The fire burned on, unnoticed. Khalid and his men regrouped near the entrance to the square, still raising a cry to "tear down the idols." The mob, tearing itself to bits, surged up onto the steps of the arcade.

Khalid laughed merrily and ordered his men back. They hurried along the passage, catching a glimpse of the fighting in the square from time to time through the archways that led out into the center of the temple district. After a few grains they reached the front of an imposing temple to Baalshamin. A cluster of priests huddled in the doorway, under towering statues of the god's winged servants. The scent of incense and myrrh and cardamom drifted out from the half-closed doors. The flickering glow of lanterns and torches highlighted the shaven heads of the priests. Khalid stopped, eyeing the doorway with interest. His men stopped, too, gathering around him.

"I wonder," Khalid said to his lieutenants, "if there might be idols that should be cast down in this place?" His eyes lingered on the rich vestments and heavy gold ornaments on the wrists and necks of the priests. His lieutenants laughed, too, a cruel sound, and nodded their heads.

"Yes, Captain, these idolaters must be rich in sin to affront the great gods so!"

– |"Ay! Lord Uri-you'll come to your death, charging around corners like that!"

Jalal resheathed his saber with a snap, trembling a little now that his body no longer expected imminent violent action. The Ben-Sarid fighters and the Tanukh faced off in the little street, half of the men in the shade of the buildings, the others in full sun. The Ben-Sarid were watching their lord for a sign, but the Tanukh made an ostentatious show of putting their sabers and spears away. On the ground between the two parties, the runner woke groggily, holding his head and moaning. Jalal put a friendly smile on his face and offered the lad a hand up. Still disoriented, the boy accepted and fairly flew to his feet as Jalal put some strength to it. "Be careful, lad, you could run into a pointy object." Jalal turned the boy around and sent him back to the Ben-Sarid with a gentle shove.

In the opposite line, Lord Uri frowned, but slowly resheathed his own blade. Jalal watched the older man's expression-reading anger and fear and calculation pass across the aquiline features. Finally, the Ben-Sarid lord nodded and gestured for his men to stand easy. Jalal bowed a little and stepped forward. "Lord Uri, my captain has fallen ill from smoke. Is there a place nearby where he may rest?"

Uri peered over Jalal's shoulder, seeing Mohammed's litter. "Yes," muttered the Ben-Sarid, frowning, "one of my cousins maintains a house here in the temple precincts. We can take him there."

Jalal nodded his thanks, and the Tanukh gathered around him again, preparing to move.

"What is that sound?" Uri asked, staring back down the street. "It sounds like the sea."

"No," Jalal said with a grim smile, for he had heard such a sound before. "It is the mob in full spate, crying out for blood and vengeance upon their enemies."

The Ruins of Palmyra, Syria Coele

Zoe walked in a field of skulls. Her legion boots cracked and crushed the pale white fragments that covered the broad avenue. Tiny clouds of white dust drifted up behind her, then settled slowly in the still, hot air. She wore an enveloping white and pale green cloak, a Ghassani djellaba. It had a deep hood that fell over her face like a shroud, shading her eyes and the grim line of her mouth. The sun was westering, preparing to fall into hiding behind the barren hills that lined the valley to the southwest. She picked her way slowly with a twisty walking stick of Syrian thorn in one hand. Her other hand was hidden in the folds of her cloak. Ten paces behind her, Odenathus followed her with stricken eyes and a shuffling gait. While she stared straight ahead, her head held high, he looked all around, trying to take in the utter devastation that had been visited upon his home.