Damascus was a city of a dozen gates; some small, some large. Odenathus knew that their effort here was fruitless. Zoe cried out in rage, drawing his attention. He turned in time to see her stab an angry fist at the looming gate.

The air twisted and buckled between the young woman and the gate and Odenathus flinched back, feeling the rage and hatred that howled around her. Stones in the field at her feet shattered, crumbling to dust, and the sky darkened. A wind rose up, whipping grit against the horses.

The main gate, a thirty-foot-wide expanse of iron and wood, shuddered, booming like a bass drum. For an instant, Odenathus could see the gate and the surrounding towers flare up with a tracery of dark red light. Ancient spells and wards, bound into the rock and wood and iron of the gate from the days of the first men, flickered and refracted. Zoe's stroke spattered on the ancient inter-locking vertices. Odenathus blinked, calling up the sight he had set aside, and saw the fading echo of the bolt draining away in a hundred traps and guides, flowing across the front of the gate like water spilling on a stone. "It is too strong, my Queen." His voice was quiet and soft, so that no one else could hear.

Zoe spun, her face a mask of rage. Smoky power burned behind her eyes, only barely restrained. "We will break this city." Her voice was still soft, too, but he could hear a scream building in it.

"We will not." He urged his horse up to hers, wither to wither. He leaned close, his gray eyes matching her dark brown ones. "This is a city of almost five hundred thousand souls- we have but three hundred men, and there are only two of us with the power. Listen, you can hear the citizens jeering us."

Zoe looked over her shoulder, and it was true. On the ramparts, thousands of Syrians- men and women alike- were shouting and screaming. Stones and refuse and offal rained from the wall, though none of the Palmyrenes were close enough to strike. The young woman shuddered, leaning against the high cantle of her saddle. "Rome has betrayed them, too." Zoe's voice was thick with emotion. "Will they not rise up? Will they not stand with us against the Empire that uses us and then discards us?"

Odenathus caught her shoulder and turned her around, gently. "My Queen, it is not their city that Rome offered up as a sacrifice. They do not care what happens to us. Come, let us go."

Zoe shook her head, a track of tears on one cheek. "I will not slink away like a whipped cur," she snarled. "She is watching. She would find a way to bring down those gates in ruin and fire."

Odenathus' face closed up, and he forced himself to keep from turning to look back across the bridge. There, on the far side of the river, another cluster of riders guarded a wagon. In the back of the wagon, carefully tied to a chair of gold and ivory that had once graced the Garden Room in the palace, was the body of Zenobia, once Queen of Palmyra. The body was ancient and withered, horribly scarred and disfigured, but it rode in the wagon in state, clothed in gold and samite and silk. Zoe had insisted, once she had returned from her long days in the hills above the city, that the dead Queen still ruled the city. Hidden wires and rods of copper held the body together and kept it upright. Odenathus felt a chill whenever he looked upon it.

"She," Odenathus said, his mind working furiously, "would have come with a great army and a plan to get through that gate and friends within the city, waiting for her word to rise up."

Zoe looked up, her eyes bleak. She opened her mouth, a hot retort on her lips, but a cry came from the west. Odenathus turned, raising his head. Tiris and the horsemen he had sent that way were riding back in a great hurry. The last men in the column were turned in their saddles, firing their bows at something behind the curve of the city wall. Odenathus wheeled his horse and raised his voice in a shout.

"Fall back, over the bridge! Lycius, send a rider to get Gadama and his men. Move!"

Without regard for the black look that Zoe gave him, Odenathus turned again and galloped over the bridge. The crowd of Palmyrene horses followed, flowing across the span in a brown, red, and black stream. Tiris and his scouts thundered after them. Zoe was last, walking her horse back, as she watched the walls in fury. No sooner had she reached the far side of the bridge than a strong troop of cavalry in Imperial red came trotting around the corner of the wall. She ground her fist into the saddle in disgust. Her quick eye counted at least a cohort of Imperial armored knights in scale and lamellar armor. If they were here, then a Legion or a goodly part of it must be hard on their heels.

The first rank of clibanari reined up at the other end of the bridge and drew long, shafted arrows to their curved horse-bows. Zoe turned her horse and slashed her hand down before she kicked the stallion and it bolted away to the east in a cloud of dust.

Behind her the Imperials swerved aside from the end of the bridge. The span suddenly trembled, sending dust spurting from the sides, and the roadbed jumped as the entire structure gave voice in a tremulous groan. At the top of the slope, from the river, Zoe turned, watching with angry eyes. The structure settled again, sending down a rain of rock chips and dust into the river that rolled slowly between the piers. Her face contorted in anger, and she chopped her hand down again, her will sending a shockwave of power lashing out at the stone and brick. It shook again, quivering along its full hundred-foot length, and part of the facing on the stone pier nearest the city suddenly peeled away and toppled into the river. A white spray of water roared up as the marble and travertine crashed into the stream.

But the bridge held. More Imperials were arriving every second at the far end. Some of them lifted their bows, and Zoe could see the flicker of arrows reaching high into the air. Their thaumaturges had to be close by. She goosed the stallion again, and it blew its nostrils and then sprinted away, it's mane streaming in the wind.

"I will not allow it." Zoe and Odenathus were crouched near the back of the wagon that carried the throne of gold and ivory. Their faces were in shadow. Sunset was only minutes away. The rear axle had cracked, spilling the wagon into a ditch as they had attempted to cross one of the wadi that crisscrossed the Syrian highlands south of Damascus. It was rocky country and hard going away from the metaled Imperial roads. At first it had seemed that the Legion would not pursue them, but Odenathus was not willing to risk it. They had pressed hard for two days, seeing no pursuit, but then, at a crossroads sixty miles from the city, they had nearly blundered into an ambush. Only the fierce and sudden application of their combined power had extricated them alive from the trap.

Odenathus stood, brushing sand from his leggings. The wagon was a lost cause. "We cannot repair the axle. Those Hunnic light horse are closing hard on us. Even now they are making up ground while we argue. My Queen, we will have to leave it."

"And her?" Zoe stood, too, her thin frame trembling with anger. " Shall we cast the Queen aside, leaving her to lie in a ditch while we slink away into the night? She is our honor!"

Odenathus controlled himself, chanting a calming meditation in his mind. He had argued long and hard with his cousin. It was insane to take those few souls left to the city and launch a raid into the Imperial provinces. Better, he had argued, to rebuild the city and allow the scattered children of Palmyra to come home again. The city, he knew, was still rich with ships and warehouses and trading contacts throughout the whole of the world. If the center could be rebuilt, even enough to allow the lost to find their way home, theycould- in time- restore the city. Zoe would not hear of it.