Thomas Harlan - The storm of Heaven

Khalid flashed them a brilliant smile but then turned his attention to the roadway he could make out down the slope. It was crowded with men walking, and more wagons, and beyond all that, there was the dark slash of a ravine cutting across the plateau and a bridge.

– |The rest of the Arab reserve flowed past the wagons on the uphill side, with Shadin in the lead, his thick hand gripping the hilt of a long, hand-and-a-half sword. The drumming of hooves almost drowned out the war cries of the Tanukh and the Palmyrene knights, but those men raised their voices all the more. Shadin's thoughts flickered, momentarily, to his sword-brother Jalal, who had held the command of the center of the Arab line at dawn. Do you still live, my brother?

It didn't matter now, for the lead edge of the Arab charge, six thousand men strong, was about to slam into the rear cohorts of the Roman left wing. Shadin raised his voice in a scream of rage that echoed back from the empty sky. Allau Akbar!

– |Theodore and his bodyguards reached the standards of the tribune commanding the left wing of the Roman force as the sky began to darken. The Lord Prince was hurrying the man through the usual pleasantries, trying to find out where Vahan had gone, when Boleslav suddenly shouted in fear. Theodore's head snapped up in alarm; he had never heard such a cry from one of the Faithful.

The eastern half of the sky was gone, swallowed into a towering wall of darkness. The sky above turned a sickly yellow, boiling and seething with angry motion. Sodium-yellow lightning rippled through the depths of the black cloud, illuminating a rushing storm front from within. For an instant, the Lord Prince was aware that a terrible silence had settled on the field of battle. Men all around him looked up in awe and terror, seeing only the outline of the outcropping and a single white figure that stood on the summit, hands raised. There was no wind, no sound, not even the rattle of metal on stone.

"All-father, receive our souls on bright wings."

The Faithful broke the silence with their song, raised in a hundred basso throats. Theodore stared around wildly, seeing that the Northmen had raised their axes in defiance to the dreadful sky rushing towards them.

"All-father, hear us, send your winged messengers to bind our wounds, to lift us up from the field of battle. Valhalla is waiting, the golden hall on a green hill. All-father, hear us!"

Then the song was drowned by the awesome roar of the wind and the world vanished in a howling storm of blinding sand and grit and Theodore's horse bucked in fear and he was falling.

– |Zoe cowered in the lee of a slab of cracked blackish rock. Odenathus crowded in beside her, his cloak stretched over both of them. The sky screamed and raged and she could hear, somehow, through the tumult the sound of Mohammed's voice tolling like a temple bell. Sand lashed at their shelter, spilling through the cracks between the stone and the cloak. The fabric was stretched taut by the pressure of the wind. Her cousin moaned in fear, feeling the power that was unleashed in the sky above them.

I knew he was strong, Zoe wailed to herself, palms pressed over her ears, trying to shut out the hammering noise. It was useless; the roaring sound was in the ground as well as the sky. It filled the hidden world. I didn't know what that meant!

The earth shook under her and she screamed in fear.

– |Mohammed stood on the boulder, staring down into the valley. The wind died around him, leaving a quiet space in the maelstrom. Not more than a dozen yards away, the storm raged, tearing out brush by its roots, whirling away tents and wagons. Eddies of dust and sand and grit curled around an invisible sphere, rushing past like the current of a river. Here, where he stood, listening to the sky, there was only a quiet whisper of movement in the air. Tiny grains of sand pattered down where the storm met the quiet, making little cones on the ground.

You must act, O man, but I will guide you.

A voice was speaking from the clear air, here in the heart of the storm. Outside, beyond this sanctuary, the wind ripped and howled, shifting the stones of the hill in their foundations. Darkness covered more than the sky now as the sandstorm flowed across the desert, cracking trees and lashing men as they lay huddled on the ground.

Some men still moved in the storm. Khalid and his riders were galloping down the road towards the bridge across the Wadi Ruqqad. Mohammed could see them, in the queer yellow-green light filling the quiet sphere. He knew that they would reach the span and seize it from the Romans, stunned by the storm. On the slope below him, where the men of the Decapolis had watered the ground with their blood throughout the long day, his followers could stand in the wind. The Roman army had already splintered, in fear and surprise, and Shadin and Jalal were meeting amid the carnage, their faces striped with blood.

You must strike to the sea. Swiftly. Swiftly.

Mohammed nodded. The voice from the clear air rarely gave him counsel, but in this thing he was already determined. He fingered a medallion hanging around his neck. It had come to him by a messenger's hand, while he and his men had been encamped at the old Nabatean capital of Petra. It was from his wife's sister. It was an old coin, struck in the mint of Mekkah in his father's time. On the obverse was stamped the image of a ship.

Mohammed stared out, into the storm, at the ruin below him. Across the valley, between curtains of hurtling dust, he could see lightning stabbing in the murk. The Quraysh shook his head slowly, feeling the ripple of power even at this distance. The Roman thaumaturges could feel the will in the storm and sought to meet it with their own.

Foolish.

Mohammed knew the strength of the Lord of the Empty Places, of the Wasteland. Was it not the strength of the whole world itself? Of all that existed, or had ever existed?

How can men seek to overturn that?

The lightning faded and died, muted and swallowed by the roiling yellow-brown sky. Intermittent red and viridian flashes continued for a little while, but then they too ceased.

The Quraysh turned away, pulling a scarf over his face. This work was done.

– |Wind shrieked and hissed, lashing Colonna with a stinging hail of sand and gravel. Bits of wood, splintered from the leaning trees, flew through the air like tiny javelins. The centurion was crouched in the lee of a wagon, close by the bridge abutment. Some of his men had climbed down the steep sides of the ravine, seeking shelter from the storm.

What a fine day, the centurion thought, head bent to his knees, hiding his face from the gale threatening to rip the flesh from his bones. All our work undone by a freakish storm, a khamsin, out of the deep desert.

Most of the men trying to cross the bridge had gone to ground when the thundering black wall had come roaring out of the east, but Colonna's detachment had tried to keep order on the span itself, shoving the remaining wagons across with main strength. Then the storm had hit, smashing them to the ground, tearing shields from men's backs. Carrying young Domus Aureus shrieking in fear, right off the bridge itself to fling him into the ravine.

The color of the air changed, deepening from a sickly yellow to a darker, more ominous shade. Colonna felt the wind shift too, and then suddenly it slacked off. Shaking dust and sand from his shaven head, the centurion staggered up and lurched out onto the road.

"Form up!" he started to call out to his men, then felt the echo of hooves on the ground.

Colonna turned sharply, his gladius sticking as it rasped out of a sheath clogged with red grit.

A horseman loomed out of the darkness, robes billowing in a following wind. Colonna started to shout, started to bring up his sword to block the lance tip flickering in the air.