The Storm of Heaven Read Online Free Page B

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 Zoë. 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, Zoë, 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."
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    "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