Thomas Harlan - The shadow of Ararat

The thing stood and its fist clenched. Ahmet's shields fractured and crumpled under the blow, hurling him back thirty feet to smash flat onto the sand. He shook his head clear and rolled up as a line of white-hot fire scorched the ground where he had lain. The Egyptian rotated his right hand across the front of his body, and the air between him and the thing wavered glassily. Dahak's second bolt spattered across the invisible barrier, etching it like acid. The sand under the wall of air boiled, fusing to mottled glass.

Ahmet snarled and swallowed the power in the stones of the nearest tower. Stones cracked like a bowstring and the entire edifice, thirty feet of sandstone blocks bigger than a man and thousands of pounds of brick and mortar, toppled slowly over. Dahak scrambled aside then made a prodigious leap into the air as the tower smashed down where he had been. The booming sound of the collapsing tower washed over Ahmet like a wave, and the sand jumped at the impact. Dust billowed up, obscuring the field. The Egyptian dashed to his right as fast as he could run.

The ground convulsed behind him, bulging upward like a mushroom with frightening speed. Then it burst, spraying sand in all directions, and something enormous and writhing with green-black tentacles was exposed for a split second before it all collapsed into the ground with a boom! Sand fountained and the ground groaned as a deep pit was carved out. Lightning stabbed from Ahmet's hands into the pall of dust that had billowed up from the tower, searching for the dark man.

A hammerblow threw the Egyptian to the ground and his shields flared like the sun, a hundred layers disintegrating in an instant. Through a blur of sweat and falling sand, Ahmet saw the dark man standing on the pinnacle of a tower on his left. On his knees, the priest screamed in rage and punched in the air at the distant figure. The tower exploded, erupting with shattered rock and brick from every window and doorway. It crumbled majestically, each floor shattering in succession and the whole thing toppling to one side. The dark figure staggered on the summit as it slid sickeningly toward the ground. Then Dahak sprang up and flew through the air to the next tower, his robes streaming out behind him like the wings of some enormous raven.

Ahmet wept in rage. The creature can fly!

The Egyptian staggered to his feet and drew his hands, palms facing, together before his chest, his face a mask of concentration. Around him the sand and rocks within a dozen paces flashed a bright blue-white and collapsed to ash and smoke. Snarling, his hands flexed outward, palms facing the figure of the enemy hurtling toward him through the air. He shouted, his voice enormous, filling the whole valley. In the city, windows of rare glass shattered, spraying the streets with a cloud of tiny knives. People screamed, their faces drenched with blood. The walls of the city shook and men stumbled back from the ramparts, stricken deaf by the sound.

Dahak slewed wildly to one side, trying to avoid the blow, but it was not enough. Something enormous slammed into him and his own shields blazed up, radiating tongues of flame in all directions. He cartwheeled through the air and smashed into the side of another tower. The edifice trembled and cracked, parts of the upper stories sliding down in slow motion, dust bursting out of the far side. The dark man pulled himself limply out of the crushed bricks, his right hand making a sign in the air before him.

Ahmet ran across the sand toward him, leaping over fallen pillars and broken statuary. Lightning danced from his hands, slashing across the face of the tower. Dahak wiped a pale hand across his mouth; it came away streaked with blood. A heavy bolt tore into his shields and the top half of the tower blew away in a cloud of bricks, dust, and bones. Heavy stones crumbled onto the sorcerer, smashing him to the floor of the doorway he had been blown into.

The Egyptian paused, panting, a good distance from the tower. It trembled and then collapsed in a roar of agonized stone and mortar. Ahmet struggled to rebuild his shields, now only a tattered wisp of their former strength. His hands were shaking and his nerves were an agony of brutalized tissue. He staggered, barely able to think. The Fist of Horus was more debilitating than he had heard.

Dahak rose up out of the rubble, a dark flame flickering around him. His face was a ruin of blood and broken bones. His mouth opened, showing sharp canines, and he screamed, a long dreadful cry of rage. In the city, men fell to the ground, mindless with fear. It was the sound of a great beast, hunting in the night beyond the light of the cave fire. On the wall Zenobia, her face streaked with tears, gripped with bloody fingers at the stones of the battlement.

Wreathed in a corona of ultraviolet fire, Dahak sped toward Ahmet, his mouth howling inhuman words. The sky darkened and Ahmet felt the sun grow dim. He clutched at the earth under his fingers, leaching the deep blue-green rivers of power that he felt under the land. The dark man raised a fist and then his hand flashed in a circle, describing a sphere filled with black light that he clawed from the air. His fist stabbed out. Ahmet surged up off the ground, wrapped in green fire of his own, then there was a brilliant light and the earth shook.

In the city, Zenobia wept to see the huge billow of flame that erupted from among the crooked towers. It blossomed like some infernal flower, rushing out in a blast that tore at the funereal pillars, turning the sand to glass around it. The hills rumbled with the sound of the blast and a hot wind flew before it. She turned away, shielding her face with her arm, still clad in the stout armor. Smoke shot into the sky, forming a pillar a mile high. When she turned back, nothing could be seen but desolation among the ruined towers save a single figure, black as night, stumbling among the shattered stones.

– |Dahak could barely see, his mind blinded by incredible pain. His skin smoked and his hair was burned away. He ran into something solid-the remaining fragment of a wall-and he slumped against it. He was exhausted, trembling with fatigue. His fingers, withered to clawlike talons, scraped at the stone for purchase, but there was none. The rock was very hot and it burned him as he slid down it. The sky wavered overhead and he moaned. All around him the air was filled with the creak of stones cracking and snapping as they cooled from the incredible heat. He crawled away, instinctively looking for some hole or pit to crawl into.

Fifty yards away, his skin caked with fine gray ash, Ahmet lay senseless in the center of the destruction. A fine dust rained out of the sky, powdered brick and stone, settling over him like a funeral cloth. His clothes had been burned away and long burns scarred his face and chest where his failing shields had ruptured. His breathing faltered and then stopped.

A thick pall of smoke and dust hung over the valley, drifting slowly to the south.

– |On the ridge, Baraz nudged his horse forward with his knees and looked down upon the city. Nothing moved. He motioned for his standardbearer and trumpeters to advance. His own long banner now flew, the stylized head of a tusked boar on a field of dark green. He wore his own armor too, old and battered and nicked by a hundred battles. He rubbed his hand across the greasy iron rings. This is as it should be, he thought. Men will do this work and win this victory. He waved to the banner men behind him.

"Signal the attack!" he shouted, his voice ringing like a bell. Below the lip of the ridge, tens of thousands of Persians rose from a crouch and began moving forward. Those few engines that his engineers had been able to cobble together from the wagons rumbled forward on the road. The Boar turned his eyes back to the walls of the city and a fierce exultation filled him.