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 the 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 the 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. The 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.

“We attack at sunset in two days, with the sun at our backs. Understood?”

Pacorus whined in terrible pain under the dark man’s boot, his flesh beginning to flake away from liquid that had once been bone and sinew.

H

Dwyrin shuffled his feet, his breath puffing white in the chill predawn air. He stood next to Zoe, at the end of the line of their cohort, at parade rest. Quietly he checked his kit, making sure that all the straps were snugged tight and that nothing was hanging loose. The sky was pitch black-he guessed that clouds had come up in the night and covered the stars. Fitful light cast by lanterns and torches, illuminated him and the other thaumaturges clustered around him. They stood in four rows, their backs to their tents, grouped by rank. In the front row, the senior thaumaturges stood at ease, surrounded, to Dwyrin’s inner eye, by soft patterns that said warm and comfortable.

In the privacy of his mind, he cursed the priests at the school for neglecting to teach him anything useful like the so-obvious spells for keeping warm on a dark morning like this. Still, he was better off than Odenathus and Zoe, who were tightly bundled in every scrap of cloak or fur they could find. On the other side of the Palmyrene boy, one of the Gaulish wizards was almost grinning, blowing frosty breath up into the air. He didn’t think that it was that cold. Zoe he could feel trembling right at his side. For a moment he considered putting an arm around her, but then he thought of the knife at her side and rejected the idea.

“Soldiers, attention!”

The tribune, with all four centurions at his back, paced along the front of the assembly. The odd pieces of glass that were suspended in front of his eyes on wire frames glittered in the light of the torches. Like the centurions, he was clad in a heavy wool cloak and a doublet of furred leather. It looked warm too.

“Soon,” the tribune said in a carrying voice, “there will be battle. The armies of Persia advance upon us in haste. The weather will turn soon and close the passes to the south. This King of Kings, this Chrosoes, desires to decide the contest between his treacherous Empire and ours now. He hurries toward defeat. Some of you have never been in battle before. I will say this to you! If you follow orders and keep the men of your unit around you, if you obey the commands of your five-leader and your centurion, if you hold your place in the line of battle and do not run, you will live and we shall have victory.”

Dwyrin straightened up a little more, for the tribune and the centurions had come to the end of the line closest to them. Zoe stared straight ahead, over the heads of the men in front of them. Dwyrin wrenched his eyes aside.

“Some of you,” the tribune continued, walking behind them, “will not be fighting in the line of battle. You will be deployed forward of the main army, to harass and threaten the march and deployment of the enemy. This is a new strategy. It has not been tested in battle. It may fail, but I believe that it will succeed. I believe that we, the thaumaturgic arm of the Legion, will be decisive. Our success in the coming battle, operating in teams, will make all the difference.”