The Storm of Heaven Read Online Free Page A

cover, while we do not."
    Khalid shook his head in dismay and made a show of rising from his camp chair. He flicked his robes into order and smoothed dark blue silk down over a fine Persian mail shirt. The young man glanced sidelong at the older Tanukh and stifled a smile. "I wonder, Lord Jalal, why it is, if the Roman position is so strong, that we are the ones outside and they are the ones inside. They outnumber us, conservatively, by four to one. They have better arms and armor and far more cavalry. Their heavy horse, these cataphracts , these mounted armored bowmen, are rightly feared throughout the world. Did they not crush the might of the Persian empire just two years ago?"
    Jalal bridled at the sneering tone in Khalid's voice and his eyes narrowed. The young commander grinned back at him, silently daring the older man to violence.
    The door to the tent parted and Mohammed entered, with Zoë hard on his heels. Jalal stood back from the table, relieved, and made a sharp nod in greeting. "Lord Mohammed, good morning."
    Mohammed ignored the tension in the air and looked idly from man to man. Khalid bowed in greeting and reclaimed his seat. Jalal also stepped away from the folding wooden table, taking his place with the other Tanukh on the opposite side. Mohammed marked the way in which the other men—the lieutenants and chieftains and petty kings—arranged themselves into familiar groups by clan and nation.
    "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