Thomas Harlan - The Gate of fire

Arad crawled under the sheltering bed of the wagon and lay down under the axle. Even with a good six inches of stout lumber above him, he did not feel safe. An armor-piercing shaft tore through the wood a foot from his head, making a high screech. The arrowhead ground to a halt inches from the ground. Men stampeded past, and one staggered, crying out, at the end of the wagon.

The body fell, twitching to the ground. An arrow had punched into the top of the man's clavicle and torn through his spine and out his lower back. Already dead, the corpse shuddered on the ground, and Arad's nostrils flattened as the stench of death flooded the air.

Lightning crackled from the west, the same blue-white refulgence shimmering on the sides of the tents. Men screamed anew, but now, almost unheard over the shrieks of dying men and the lamenting wail of the mob, Arad could hear the ring of steel on steel from the south. A wind blew past the wagon, tumbling men before it. Arrows, still raining from the sky, clattered aside, falling in drifts around the edge of the miniature cyclone. The wagon rocked back, almost tipping over, and Arad clung to the earth, feeling the thick, muddy loam well up around his fingertips.

Power walked close by, ringed by a whirling belt of lightning and howling wind.

Now, my pretty, breathed the soft voice of the sorcerer.

Arad stood, and the wagon toppled away behind him. The mobehedan priest was only yards away, his hand raised in a motion of power, directed toward the south. A half sphere of sizzling blue-white fire ringed him, setting all that it touched alight. A path of burning tents and scorched grass wound away behind the priest. Arad could feel the flow of power from the sky and the earth rush past, fueling the priest's defense.

The third entrance was waiting, and beyond it, the power to shake the earth.

Arad raised a hand, scribing a swift pattern in the air. His fists clenched at nothing and he drew them in, toward his center. Hissing power flooded into him, shattering the wagon and shriveling grass. He stabbed out his right hand, palm out, fingers stiff.

For an instant, all that Arad could see was a jagged ultraviolet flash and a burning arc of darkness between his palm and the mobehedan priest, half turned. All else seemed to stop, even the wind, even the arrows that continued to rain down out of the sky. Fifteen feet away, Arad could see an arrow paused in flight, hanging frozen in the air.

Then, with a clap of thunder that blew down the remaining tents, time resumed. The bolt of darkness shattered the whirling shield of lightning, and the priest was slammed to the ground, crashing through a line of tents and into the side of a watchtower. The tower was already burning fiercely, set alight by the Hun arrows, and now it toppled, thick timbers shattering and the roof of planks cracking apart as it fell. Arad felt the earth jump under his feet as it slammed into the ground with a roar.

But he did not wait to see if the priest would rise again from the shattered logs. He leapt forward, his hands sketching a pattern of glyphs that spun out and rotated around him in the air. Lightning licked out from him, stabbing into the collapsed tower. Fierce explosions rocked the camp, and a rain of debris was thrown up. Something buzzed and flashed in the ruined tower. Arad ducked aside. A sickly white sheet of flame rushed past him, thrown in desperation by the priest who crawled from the wreckage, his face covered with blood. Arad spun, slashing his hand down. The earth rippled, tearing in a line between him and the Persian. The priest rolled aside, mouthing an incantation of ward. The stroke cracked across a half-raised shield of power, and the air shuddered. His mouth in a grim line, Arad sprang across the smoking logs, his braids blowing out behind him in the rush of air from the fires that raged around him.

Blood caked his fingers as he pulled the priest's head back. The Persian was barely alive-the side of his face crushed in by the Fist of Geb. Arad surveyed him with dispassionate eyes and then, without his command, his hands jerked, cracking the priest's neck. Dim light died in the dark brown eyes.

Arad shuddered, his body quivering as Lord Dahak boiled into the shell of his body. Yellow fire gleamed in his eyes. Thin fingers crawled over the dead man's face, and Arad, free of the compulsion that had driven him into the camp, raged in his mind at the cold thing that possessed his hands and feet and eyes.

He was still screaming, all alone and unheard in the prison of his own skull when Lord Dahak consumed the dying spirit of the priest. For a brief moment, Arad felt the ka of the other man rush past him, shrieking in fear and agony, before the dreadful cold that controlled him destroyed it.

Arad fell terrible anger fill his heart, but he could do nothing.

Come, beloved servant. Lord Dahak's thought was filled with hunger. We hunt.

The night was filled with the sound of battle. The Huns were in the camp.

– |C'hu-lo sat on a fallen pillar, his legs crossed. A haunch of venison, taken from the burned camp down by the stream, was in his hand. He carved slices off it with the curved knife. It had been well seasoned, but he liked the salty taste. The valley between the frowning cliffs and the ruin of the great temple was filled with the sound of mallets driving posts into the ground. C'hu-lo was watching his men supervise the few hundred remaining peasants. His men were taking great joy in putting the lash to the poor wights, or cutting their throats if the dazed men fell.

The poles rose in a thick forest around the base of the ruined temple. A long slope ran up to the base of the stone walls. Once, it had been covered with trimmed grass and a garden of ornamental trees. Once, a stream had chuckled merrily down the slope, held between retaining walls of fitted stone. Now the trees were lumber for the poles, or for the fires that smoked and burned at the base of the hill. The stream was dry and filled with stones. A dim haze lay over the valley, cutting the light of the sun. Smoke rose in long, trailing columns from the fires. The air was thick with the sweet, cloying smell of roasted human flesh.

C'hu-lo took another bite of venison. He had taken wine, too, from the tents of the priests. The holy men had come well equipped to this place-they had not lacked for luxuries: soft cushions, exotic garments, iron braziers to hold coals in the cold night. Books filled with their blocky writing. C'hu-lo had thrown those things into the inferno of the bonfires himself. The silk of the double-peacock banners had burned merrily as well. The wine, however, was a strong tart vintage, from Shiraz in the south. C'hu-lo did not believe in wasting wine.

The sound of mallets rang across the valley, each dull thud driving a sharpened pole deeper into the ground. The Persian slaves wept in fear as they tilted up each pole, for those that they had emplaced before were now festooned with the bodies of their fellows.

C'hu-lo thought it was a good touch to put the bodies of your enemy's strongest men on display. Each priest of the twelve who had fought and struggled and died in the camp during the night battle had merited his own post. Some of them could no longer be recognized as the bodies of men.

The T'u-chueh Prince took a long swallow of wine. This was thirsty work.

– |"You see? The fire is dead. Even the ashes are cold."

Arad felt nothing, staring down into the rubble-choked pit. Some fragment of his consciousness railed at him, urging him to lash out at the serpent who walked beside him. But his limbs did not obey his will, and the anger had dulled, becoming a dim flicker in the back of his mind. The horrors of the night-the heady rush of a dying soul flooding his body, the taste of blood and cracked bones, even the sickening delight that seeped from the cold mind of the sorcerer as his thumbs punched into the gelid wetness of a man's eye sockets-they were muted. The sun, riding high above the haze, seemed cold and distant.