Thomas Harlan - The shadow of Ararat

Dahak's voice became almost audible, a low guttural growling that rose and fell to no rhythm that Baraz could identify. Finally the dark man rose up to stand with his legs straddling Baraz's feet. His hands flashed white in the darkness, reaching for the dark sky opposite the moon. He shouted something unintelligible. Then he squatted again, crossing his legs under him. He took a thin silver pipe out of one of the pockets in his robes and, with a breath, began to trill on it.

The sound made Baraz's skin crawl and he felt unaccustomed fear creeping into his blood like acid. The silver pipe chirped and tittered. The wind picked up and Baraz closed his eyes to keep blown dust from them. The sound of the pipe rose and rose, until Baraz almost screamed from the deafening noise. Then it stopped and there was silence.

Almost silence. A noise came, a slurping noise that seemed to come from all around. A chitinous rustling, the sound of a million crickets squirming in a great vat of stone. The air became very cold. Baraz screwed his eyes shut and dared not open them for fear of what he might see, looming over him, enormous, blocking out the sky and the moon.

Dahak's voice came, or something that sounded like the dark man's voice. Low and indistinct, but filled with power. Then, startling, recognizable words filtered through the rustling and slurping sound.

"Sleep now, mighty general, and when you wake, should you wake, you will be in the north, where battle waits for you. Sleep now, and dare not dream."

A dark cloth settled over the general and he twitched violently at the touch. But then he slept and did not dream, though he rose up, carried in ten thousand faint translucent tentacles across the sky, under an unseeing moon.

– |Mohammed spurred his horse hard, goosing it up the side of the wadi. Gravel and sand spurted from under the red mare's hooves and she flew up the slope. At his back, thirty of the Tanukh and an equal number of men from the city, swaddled in dust-brown robes and pale-tan kaffieh, surged after him. Al'Quraysh galloped across the sandy flat, his sword sliding out of its sheath in a flash. Ahead of him, Persian soldiers stared up in horror. The slab-sided shape of a thirty-foot-high siege tower loomed behind the Persians. Many of them were stripped to the waist, hauling on the ropes that dragged the wooden behemoth. Others had been trotting alongside, shields in front and spears over their shoulders. Now they were shouting and pointing at Mohammed as his horse flew across the hardpan.

Men ran, scattering before the charge of the desert horsemen, dropping the long ropes. Mohammed stormed into the thick of the spearmen, who had hastily run around to the back of the tower and were trying to form up into a line. His saber lashed out, cutting at the face of one of the spearmen. Blood fountained and the man fell, clutching at his ruined jaw. The rest of the Tanukh smashed into the engineers, swords flashing in the sun. More men died and then the Persians were running. The Tanukh whooped with delight, their voices raised in a high-pitched yell that echoed across the desert.

Mohammed spun his horse, checking the sweep of his men. The city was two miles distant, its gold walls rising above the date palms that lined the farmlands around it. The Persian army had established a crude earthwork a hundred yards from the walls. They thought that their engines would be safe here, miles from the city. He rose up in the saddle, shouting at his men. "Sideways! Pull it sideways!"

The spearmen were dead, scattered across the ground, or fled toward the palms. The other laborers had also scattered. The Tanukh wheeled their horses around the tower, shooting arrows into the fighting platforms inside it. As Mohammed watched, a green-robed Persian engineer toppled from the highest platform, his torso pierced by three arrows. He hit the ground with a sharp slapping sound and bounced once before lying still. The Palmyrenes were tossing torches into the lower chamber of the tower. Mohammed's horse trotted forward, obedient to the pressure of his knees.

He leaned out of the saddle and scooped up one of the tow ropes. With a deft hand, he wrapped it around the horns of his saddle and waved for the others to do the same. The Palmyrenes, with their heavier, four-cornered saddles, caught on and snared the rest of the ropes. Once they had each acquired a rope, Mohammed slashed his hand down and they moved, as one, to the east.

The tower trembled as the ropes drew taut, then the Palmyrenes whooped and put their heels to their horses. The beasts strained against the lines, their hooves kicking up dust. The whole tower suddenly groaned and began to tip. Mohammed shouted at two Tanukh who were still staring up at the wall of wooden slats that was bending toward them. The tower creaked and then toppled over, slowly, and smashed suddenly to the ground with a flat booming sound. Dust and sand billowed out from under it. The Palmyrenes cheered and Mohammed grinned at his men.

"Now the torches," he cried. Some of the Tanukh who had held back darted in, throwing ceramic jars of heavy olive oil and burning sticks into the collapsed tower. A thick black smoke began to rise. Mohammed wheeled his horse away and the whole band followed him, howling like banshees. Clouds of dust marked their passage into the desert waste.

– |"Enough," Dahak said sharply, his hand cutting off the rambling excuse. "These barbarians come and go as they please from the city. This will stop. Complete the earthwork within the next two days. Lord Khadames, I want every man we have digging. You will work in shifts, day and night, until it is done."

Khadames bowed stiffly, watching the pale face of the noble who had commanded the siege engines. All three, laboriously constructed over weeks of careful work, had been destroyed in the space of two days. The precious wood that they had scavenged from wagons and farmhouses and from the few suitable trees in the area was gone, wiped away in clouds of dirty smoke. The man was a cousin of the Great Prince Shahin, an honor enough to get him a command, but nothing to protect him from the wizard's icy anger.

When Baraz had left, he had given orders that Khadames would command the army, with the "able assistance" of Lord Dahak. Shahin had barely waited a day before challenging the lower-born Khadames, and many of the nobles in the army had supported the Great Prince. But Dahak had no patience for such bickering and simply declared that he would command. Against his glittering dark eyes, no one was brave enough to protest the usurpation of authority.

Since then the siege had pressed ahead at a wearing pace. Dahak was, as far as Khadames could tell, tireless, and he assumed that his followers were equally iron-willed. Baraz had led by example, exhorting his men to greater feats than they had imagined. Dahak commanded with a clear and icy fear. Failure was not tolerated if it sprang from incompetence.

"Your task was simple, and had you heeded the advice of Lord Khadames, you would have been successful. But you ignored his advice and my command. I will not tolerate this. We press ahead with the attack, though now I will grant another day to see that the circumvallation is complete. And you, Lord Pacorus, have exhausted my patience and mercy."

Khadames flinched from the bleak expression on the face of the sorcerer. A silence fell on the nobles and captains assembled in the tent. Lord Dahak rose from the plain wicker chair that had been Baraz's and stared down at the nobleman, bent before him in the proskynesis usually accorded to royalty. The sorcerer stared around the tent, forcing the men before him to meet his eyes. They were cold and Khadames realized with a shiver that the sorcerer's pupils were vertical and narrow, flecked with gold in green.

"This is a lesson. Learn it." Dahak's hand clenched into a fist. Dark-red light spilled out of the cracks between his withered fingers. On the ground, Pacorus suddenly moaned and tried to rise. Dahak's boot, a supple black leather with blood-red lacings, crushed down on the back of his neck, pinning him to the carpet. The nobleman began to tremble and his limbs twitched spasmodically. Khadames turned away when Pacorus' skin began to crawl and squirm with something moving under the surface, something like ten thousand worms.