Thomas Harlan - The storm of Heaven

"Good morning," he said to the assembled men.

The table was covered with tattered papyrus scrolls. Mohammed leaned over the maps, pushing some aside. Luckily, his travels as a caravan master had taken him along the Roman roads tying the Empire together. He had crossed this highland plain before, coming up from the coast and heading for Damascus. Thick fingers smoothed his beard as he considered the sketch maps Khalid's scouts had devised.

"Al'Walid," he said, after a time, "you count the enemy numbers at forty-five thousand."

Khalid leaned forward, his dark eyes bright. He nodded sharply. "Yes, lord. The better parts of five legions face us, bolstered by auxiliaries and mercenaries of various sorts. My men have been in and out of their camps several times, garbed as their local scouts. I am sure of their strength, down to the count of horses lamed and the men sick from bad water or the sun."

Mohammed nodded and turned back to the papers and the table. After a long pause, he looked up, his gaze searching the faces of the men in the tent. The air was growing hot as the day advanced and the sun mounted into the sky. Soon it would be fierce indeed, particularly on the plain below the hill, where the wind was blocked by the rising land.

"Our number," he said, musing, as if to himself, "is half that. Perhaps a little more… Have any new contingents joined us in the night?"

"No," said a stoutly built man of middle height with a thick, curly black beard ornamented with small glittering jewels. Like many of his fellows, he wore Roman-style armor and carried a legionary's helmet under one arm. Despite his young age, he squinted nearsightedly in the dim light of the tent. "One of the local clans came in last night. Fifty or sixty men with bows and small shields at most."

Mohammed nodded. "Thank you, Lord Zamanes. Our strength is complete, then."

The King of Jerash and Bostra ducked his head and stood back, finding his place amongst the captains of the regiments drawn from the old Hellenic cities of the Decapolis. Zamanes was not comfortable with Mohammed, not since the Tanukh had started talking about the things that they had seen at the Ka'ba, or on the High Place in Petra. Still, the young Prince had thrown his lot in with the southerners. It was far too late to crawl back to his old allegiance now.

Mohammed considered them, these rebels. He was sure of the core of his army; the Sahaba-Jalal and Shadin and the rest of the Tanukh-that had made the haj from Palmyra, his own kinsmen from Mekkah and the lands about the dry city. The Sarid tribesmen had long been his ally, and their chieftain, the rascal Uri, had been his friend from youth. Even the Yemenite fighters with Khalid's captured fleet were familiar to him-the Quraysh and the Bani Hashim had traded with them for centuries.

Too, he knew the Palmyrenes. He understood Zoe. He could feel the furious anger burning in her heart, the overwhelming desire for vengeance that had broken her ties to the Legion. She was an eager hawk, straining against the hood, desperate to fly shrieking at the enemy. Her, he kept close by. Her talent and power had to be guided, or they would bring disaster.

Her cousin, young Odenathus, Mohammed thought he understood him as well. He followed his queen, Zoe, and his loyalty was to the dream that his beloved city might be rebuilt. Like her, he would fight, but the Quraysh lord thought the young Prince could be trusted to keep his head. His men, they would follow their queen. They were a small band, now no more than a few thousand exiles, but Mohammed trusted them near as much as his own Tanukh.

But these city-dwelling Romans that formed the majority of his army… Mohammed studied their faces openly, for he was not given to slyness or guile. Zamanes seemed a solid-enough fellow, but their loyalty had been to the Empire for so long! For centuries Roman rule had held the Levantine coast, the Decapolis and the great cities of Syria in its withered gray hand. Now they had risen up, outraged by the treachery of the Eastern Emperor, Heraclius. Frightened and stunned by the destruction of glorious Palmyra. Angered by the new census and the threat of heavy taxes to repay the cost of the long war against Persia. But would they stand, when the battle reached its pitch and men were dying in droves all around them?

"Khalid, you say that the Romans will come forth?"

"Yes, lord. My spies in their camp brought me news only hours ago… the Imperial Prince Theodore intends to crush us, today, in a single blow."

– |"Tiamat's dugs, you fool, what are you doing?"

The Imperial Prince Theodore, younger brother of the reigning avtokrator of the Eastern Roman Empire, the commander of the Legions currently in Judea and Syria Coele, turned in his saddle. A furious Armenian pulled up in a cloud of dust and gravel at his side. Theodore motioned slightly and one of his servants jogged up to the side of his stallion and whisked yellow-brown grains of sand from the Prince's cloak with a long-handled duster made of hawk-tail feathers. Behind the arrival, a cordon of tall men in red cloaks closed like a lake swallowing a sling-stone.

"General Vahan. You have left your post on the left wing? Is there a problem you could not resolve on your own?"

The Imperial Prince inclined his head, still smiling faintly, watching with amusement as the burly, thick-bodied Armenian princeling sputtered in rage, his weathered face turning red under a heavy black beard. Theodore and his escort of Egyptian body-servants and slaves, red-cloaked Faithful with long blond hair in plaits and axes gleaming in the morning sun, stood at ease across the crest of a low hill near the center of the Roman line. The forest of spears and colorful umbrellas and a windscreen of mauve-dyed linen sewn to iron strakes drew the eye from miles away.

From this low height, the Prince could cast his eyes right, shaded by a shining white parasol of waxed linen, and see rectangular blocks of his legionaries stretching away, two or three miles, to the edge of the plateau. To the left, past where a shallow streambed curved under the shoulder of a hill, there was a sloping open plain filled with slowly moving clouds of dust that marked the presence of Roman and Armenian cataphracts.

The cavalry and the left wing were Vahan's responsibility. The Armenian brought his roan mare up, wither to wither, with Theodore's black, glossy mount. The Prince laid a gentling hand on his horse's shoulder. The presence of the mare was beginning to excite the stallion. Both horses were fitted with barding: the Prince's an elaborately decorated chanfron of heavy felt reinforced with bands of iron, Vahan's of simpler hardened leather, stained by travel and use.

"Lord Prince…" Vahan swallowed another curse and blinked sweat from his eyes. Like his kinsmen on the plain below, he was clad in a heavy woolen doublet under lamellar armor of overlapping iron bands. Sweat seeped from the edges of his armor, turning the heavy leather laces black with moisture. Theodore wondered if the man could fight a full day in such heavy gear and not expire of thirst.

The Prince raised a finger and gestured. One of the servants hurried up. The cream-colored ceramic jug in her hand was beaded with water droplets, forced from the cool interior by the heat of the day. "Drink, Lord Vahan. You are not used to this lowland heat. Please… indulge yourself."

"No," Vahan said abruptly, ignoring the outraged glances of Theodore's aides. "You are sending the infantry ahead too soon. You must have them hold their position on this side of the wadi until my light horse deploys to screen their advance. A swift charge from my cataphracts will shatter the bandits; why spend your legionaries so fruitlessly?"

Theodore turned his attention back to the plain. The blocks of legionaries on the right-hand side of the hill were shaking themselves out into a long line of battle. As each cohort advanced over the uneven ground, they tended to separate and clump, following the path of least resistance. Despite this, Theodore could faintly hear the stentorian bellowing of the centurions, keeping their knock-kneed, imbecile charges in order. The first detachments were jogging up the slope beyond the dry streambed.