Thomas Harlan - The Gate of fire

"My lady," Ara ventured after a moment of silence had stretched in the tent, "what have you brought with you, such a heavy thing to make your breath so harsh?"

"Auntie," Zoe said gravely, standing and making a formal bow, "I have returned the Queen to the city, as is right."

"The Queen?" Ara was puzzled, and she settled her grip on the spear. "You are the Queen, my dear."

"No," Zoe said in a grave voice. "I have brought the true Queen home. I carried her on my back from where she lay. Now that she is here, we may ride against our enemies. She will lead us."

"Who is here?" Ara stood now, her face filled with fear. Her knuckles were white on the spear. "What have you done?"

"Zenobia is here, Auntie." Zoe's voice was very calm. She leaned down and, grunting a little at the weight of the corpse, dragged it up into a chair. "Your cousin sits before you. Listen, you can hear her, if it is quiet and you empty your mind. Do you hear her? I do."

Zenobia's corpse, horribly mutilated, her head stitched back to her withered body with crude leather straps, lay askew in the chair. The rags of a funeral sheet were still wound around her, but the cracked skin that still clung to her body had not yet yielded to corruption. Her long dark hair, once the glory of the city, was thin and patchy. Much of it had been gnawed away by something that crept with cold eyes in the tunnels under the mountain. The beautiful face was shrunken and creased with dreadful scars. The eyesockets were chipped where crows and ravens had pecked.

Zoe stood over the body, her face seemingly lit by an inner light. Her voice was sure and clear. "She says-and I hear her oh so clearly-that we must ride against the betrayer, Rome. That old gray empire must be torn down in fire and storm, even as our dear city fell to its treachery. The Queen calls for her horse-where is Bucephalus? Odenathus!"

Odenathus looked up, his face streaked with tears. His cousin stared back at him, her eyes hard as steel.

"Odenathus, where is the Queen's horse? She must ride in the morning. We march upon Damascus as soon as light touches the hills."

Chalcedon, on the Asian Shore of Propontis

Wind gusted out of the north, bringing the briny smell of the sea and ruffling Dwyrin's hair. He stopped at the side of the road, stepping off of the broad metaled surface, out of the way of the wagons and marching blocks of men who clogged it. He adjusted his right hand on the walking stick he had fashioned from an oak branch. That had been in Galatia, as the army had crossed the vast interior plain at the heart of the Empire. Now it was carved with interlocking dogs, their long tongues hanging out. It hadn't taken much, just a little time by the fire each night, before he fell asleep, exhausted from the day's exertions.

He did not mark it, but even the long days, marching thirty miles at a crack, no longer exhausted him. Like the twenty-year veterans, he had become used to the rhythm of the army. They rose, broke down the camp, digging up the palisade of stakes that had been erected the night before, filling in the latrine pits, and covering the cook's fires. Wagons were loaded, and the auxiliary infantry and the mercenaries rousted out of their unkempt sprawl. Then, with the full sun risen, they marched through the day. Luckily, from the Cilician gates to Propontis, it was all on good, hard-surfaced road. Towns and mountains and vast lakes passed by, making a slow-flowing montage of temples; barren, sheep-ravaged hillsides; and endless miles of orchard.

It had gone faster than Dwyrin had expected, and the funk that had clung to him in Antioch had been burned away by the Anatolian sun and the relentlessness of the daily routine. Even the frigid reserve of the older thaumaturges had failed to hold back his spirits. The weather had been good, too, and those rains that had gusted out of the north and east had not turned the land to mud. Dwyrin missed the gray mist and rain of his homeland, but he did not miss mud! No, not after months of slogging through it in Mesopotamia!

Crossing the old heartland of the Empire had been sobering, too, to see the marks of war that had come with the depredations of the Persian armies. Burned-out temples and ruined fortresses dotted the land, along with empty houses and abandoned villas. More than once the Legion outriders had flushed out bands of escaped slaves or other brigands in the hills as they had passed.

Dwyrin had heard that the Emperor had planned to make a great procession out of the journey, but there were odd rumors in the camp that Heraclius had become ill. In any case, he had not been seen riding one of his matching bay stallions in a long time. Still, the standard of the Imperial House rode at the front of the army, glittering and gold in a special wagon.

But now, after three weeks of marching beside a river, through rich farmland beneath snow-capped mountains thick with pine and spruce forest, they had come, at last, to the sea. Dwyrin walked a bit away from the road, up the side of the hill that the highway descended. From the height he could see out across the flat, rolling plain of Chalcedon to the blue line of the sea and a distant glittering white city.

"There she is, the heart of the world." Blanco's voice was gruff in the wind, and Dwyrin started a little when a heavy hand settled on his shoulder. "Behind white walls and beside the Golden Horn, the richest, most powerful city known to man."

Dwyrin nodded. Even at this distance he could catch the glint of golden temples and colorful marble balustrades. He turned, leaning on his staff. "What happens to me?" he asked, raising his voice above the wind. "Will I stay with this cohort? Will there be new recruits to join me in a five?"

Blanco shrugged, his face impassive. Despite this, Dwyrin could tell that the centurion was unhappy.

"Everyone says the Emperor has a new organization in mind for the field army. Until that is revealed to us-mere mortals that we are-no one is willing to commit to anything. You're to go into the 'pool of available recruits' that are handled by the office of the magister militatum. What that means, my lad, is that you will sit around in the barracks in the old palace for weeks, waiting for some pasty-faced clerk to get their thumb out and assign you to a new unit."

A long-held aggravation crept into the centurion's voice. Dwyrin frowned. "It's purely possible you'll be assigned back to this cohort," Blanco said, looking away at the sea, his eyes squinting into the wind. "But more likely you'll go someplace else entirely. You'll have to carry on your training on your own, which will be difficult."

Dwyrin shaded his eyes, looking up at the slightly taller man. "Is that safe?"

Blanco shook his head. "No, but it's the best you can do, for the time being. I received travel orders this morning. I'm being sent back to Antioch to take command of a new thaumaturgic cohort forming there." His face split for a second with a rueful grin.

Dwyrin stared at him in amazement. "We just came from there! Now you have to go back?"

The centurion nodded, hooking his thumbs into his belt. "By sea, at least," he said, pursing his lips. "I've had enough of marching for the moment."

Dwyrin shook his head. The army surpasses all understanding!

On the Height of Damawand

Khadames stood in the lee of a tall, dark pillar. It was one of the jagged teeth that rose from the very peak of the mountain, circling around the narrow little space where a bed of stone lay. A cold wind whistled between the monoliths; a northern wind that carried down the chill icy smell of the mountains that ringed the valley. When looking up from the valley floor, Damawand seemed massive; in comparison, its brothers to the north and east stood head and shoulders above it. The general tugged his heavy woolen cloak tight, hoping to keep the ice from his skin. The sun had risen, but it only rarely peered through the thin clouds that shrouded the peaks. It gave no warmth. Khadames rubbed gingerly at his right eye. Endless long hours sitting at his work table, laboring to keep the mountain and the army and the craftsmen fed, were beginning to tell upon him. If he closed his right eye, his vision was still sharp, but with it open? Half the world seemed lost in a dim haze.