20

There are standard preparations before any battle, and these I saw to, though I wondered whether any of them would be of use. First I looked over weapons and gear, little of it though there was. Between us we had only the two knives and Dabir’s sword, for I had cast mine down in the Khazar camp. I sharpened them anyway, and oiled Dabir’s scabbard.

Next I saw that we were fed. I’d had the sense to bring as much of the Khazar meal as I could carry, and we sat around the fire with it, though both Dabir and Lydia claimed they had no appetite. I broke some branches off that poor tree on top of the hill and tossed them on the fire to keep it going. They were green, of course, so that set the fire smoking, but there wasn’t anything else to use as fuel.

The horse shrank suddenly to its miniature size as we finished, then plopped over in the snow. All three of us stared, and Dabir rose slowly to recover it. He brought it back to the fire, weighing it in one hand. For a moment I thought he meant to throw it in.

“What happened to it?” I asked.

“The magic wears out eventually, depending on how much the creature is used.” His eyes strayed to the bull. “I imagine Koury used the horses more. I don’t know how to go about restoring it.”

“What are you going to do with it?” I asked him

“It looks like a plaything.” He smiled wistfully. “I thought I might send it on to Sabirah’s child.”

“It was created by a dark wizard,” Lydia remonstrated, “likely with blood magics. I would give that to no child.”

“It might fit in well upon our curio shelf when this all is over,” I suggested.

At this he snorted. “You think that even one of us shall live?” He pocketed the horse nonetheless.

“It shall be as Allah wills,” I said. “We should pray. The storm will reach us soon.”

Lydia did not join us, saying she would rather rest a little longer.

Dabir and I washed in the snow for our ablutions, then threw down our prayer rugs and knelt.

Afterward we climbed to the hill’s summit to see the creatures that moved within roiling, ashen clouds: towering figures of white and smaller, gliding figures that soon resolved themselves into rank upon rank of the snow women accompanied by monstrous wolves all the size of that we had battled, gigantic bears and cats, and all sorts of indistinct flitting things in white and blue. Behind all this were hundreds of dark riders.

“And all I have,” I said, “is a club and a knife.”

“And a magic bull.” Dabir put a hand to the animal, which he had brought up top with us.

The club was a reassuring weight in my hand, and my fingers tightened around the haft. I wondered how many times Herakles must have adjusted it himself before striding into battle. His exploits had become legend, and his bravery immortal. He had been placed by loving hands within a tomb fashioned by the same people who had revered him. I was most likely to die forgotten, my bones covered only by frost.

I heard Lydia’s feet crushing the snow behind us. “Why does she bring so many?”

“Usarshra knows we plan some kind of opposition,” Dabir replied. “She surely has felt that we have brought the weapons here and await her.”

I saw then a dark speck running ahead of the hordes, a large horned animal with a rider.

Lydia noticed my stare. “Enkidu’s oryx,” she explained.

I groaned only a little. “Is there anything else we will have to fight?”

“Nothing sorcerous will be able to cross the inner circle around our hill.”

“And to think,” I said, “I was wondering why Erragal crafted the outer circle so large. Now I’m wondering if they can all fit in.”

“Where is Usarshra?” Lydia asked. “We will only have the one chance.”

None of us could find her, and I could not be sure if I was pleased or saddened. I did not wish to see Najya die. And yet, I resolved to myself grimly, she might be dead already, her body animated only by the alien thing that had slain her soul. “She must be somewhere amongst that horde.”

On the creatures came, the snow women gliding out in front, dozens upon dozens of them, their hair and garments flying out behind. Now we could clearly see Enkidu’s oryx. This antelope was larger by half than any I had ever seen, and it was all white but for its black hooves and the masklike pattern upon its long face. Enkidu clasped its straight, backward-pointing horns as he rode.

The frost women poured in behind him as Enkidu descended into the valley and crossed toward us. The space I had thought vast now seemed very small.

The great white snow spirits of wolf and bear were not too far behind the women.

“Are you ready?” Dabir asked of Lydia.

Once more Lydia brought out her necklace and brushed her lips to the pendant there. I have seen Christians kiss images of their saints before, when happy, or sad, and I remembered that Dabir said she wore an image of a saint. I had no chance to examine it, though, for she tucked the pendant away, closed her eyes for a short moment, then nodded. Her eyes narrowed in concentration as she hefted the staff, and then it took on its glow. She touched it to the circle. On the instant, circles and symbols sprang brilliantly alive with golden light.

I leaned closer to Dabir. “Can Khazars cross the barrier?”

“Well, yes. Unless they are magic Khazars.”

I chuckled despite myself.

“It is a one-way barrier only to magic things—we can send things out, but they can send nothing in.”

“What of Enkidu?”

Dabir mulled that over it. “I suppose he could cross, unless he’s using magic at the time. His spells can’t, though.”

“And his oryx?”

“I do not know.” Dabir’s eyes narrowed into that contemplative look he adopted when his challenge was great. “It would depend upon whether the beast is purely supernatural, or an ordinary being endowed with magic.”

“Huh. Well, Enkidu and a couple of hundred cavalry are more than enough to worry about.”

“Usarshra’s sorcerous troops are in the lead,” Dabir pointed out.

They were only a bowshot out now from our position. They spread around us as they closed, slowly encircling our hill.

Enkidu guided his oryx to a trotted halt and stood staring up at us. Towering white man-shapes formed mostly of wind lumbered slowly around on our left flank. I now saw other, stranger creatures among those, large semitransparent serpents and huge billowing, shifting masses of cloud and frost that seemed sometimes to have shining crystalline eyes and sometimes maws with jagged teeth made all of icicles.

“You are sure I can channel the power of the spear to the outer circle from within ours?” Dabir asked Lydia.

“Erragal arranged for it to be done.” She then said something to Dabir about directing energies through substrata and sympathetic resonances and linked glyphs, though she might well have been speaking her native tongue, for it was all Greek to me.

Once we were surrounded fully by eerie snow beings on every side, a dozen of the snow women tested the barrier they could sense before them, invisible until they drifted into it. They turned instantly to steam against the red screen of energy thrown suddenly in their path. More and more of them came on, and more and more of them melted.

After some three dozen had vanished they halted their assault.

Enkidu hopped down from his antelope, breath steaming, and grinned up at us. I would have given much for a javelin.

“This is your plan?” he asked, laughing. “To cower behind a sorcerous circle? When it falls, we will simply sweep over you all!”

We did not answer him.

“I wonder,” he said, “will the barrier harm me?” And he reached up with his left hand and passed it through the circle just beyond the bottom of the hill. He laughed. “Come to me!”

He frowned a little, as we did not obey.

I allowed myself a smile. His mind magics had failed against us.

“Erragal left you a protective enchantment, did he? It will only delay things.”

“You would be wise to let Asim be,” Dabir called down. “Your messiah looks on him with special favor.”

“She has grown weary of Asim, and bade me finish the matter. Thus am I here! Come, man, and end your days as a warrior!”

“Where is Najya?” Dabir demanded.

“That is not your worry!”

“It should be yours!” Dabir retorted. “Has she sent you here because she cannot bear to see our destruction, or because she fears she might change her mind?”

Enkidu strode toward the slope.

“I must fight him,” I said softly.

Dabir looked over to me, and I almost saw his thoughts. For the first time, even though we were surrounded by an immense force of monsters, and an army of mounted Khazars still riding in with upraised weapons behind them, he looked frightened.

His concern touched me, and so I put a hand to his shoulder. I then called to Enkidu, halfway up the hill. “I will come and face you man to man!”

“Good!” Enkidu brandished his axe. His half-sketched bow was almost mocking, but he withdrew to level ground within our circle to await me.

“Asim, don’t do this.” Dabir’s gaze pierced me. “A prophecy is little enough to pin your life upon.”

“What prophecy?” Lydia demanded. “What nonsense is this? I’ll just blast him with sorcery. Do not risk yourself!”

I shook my head, for I was certain in my course, and spoke to Dabir. “Najya said that she would see me wield the club, in battle near a hill.”

Dabir started to protest but I cut him off.

“She has not been wrong yet. Here is the hill. Here is the club. There is my foe. But she is not here. And if you don’t activate the circle soon, the Khazars will ride to the front rank and shower us with arrows, or simply charge the hill.”

“What’s going on?” Lydia insisted. “There’s no need to face him one at a time! We only stand a chance if we coordinate.”

“He’s going to draw out the queen,” Dabir said with cold certainty.

“She will come once the fight begins, and then you can work your magics,” I continued.

I did not expect to survive a one-on-one battle with one of the Sebitti, and Dabir must have seen that in my face.

Lydia looked sharply between the two of us. I thought at first she would argue more but she beckoned me close. I bent to her, assuming she meant to confide some secret. Instead she brushed my cheek, just above my beard, with her lips. “Fight well.”

I nodded.

“Go with God,” I heard Dabir say, his voice strained.

I strode down as Enkidu crossed over the line and grinned, beckoning at me with his free hand.

Beyond Enkidu, beyond the circle, were rank after endless rank of cold and ghostly beings of frost. Hundreds of snow women, each with Najya’s face, drifted above the surface of the snow, watching with glowing eyes. Beyond them loomed the larger monsters, so that I was ringed by the supernatural on all sides but from the hill where Dabir and Lydia watched.

Axes are most excellent weapons so long as you are on the offense, for they are devilishly hard to block. They are not, however, especially keen defensively. Thus I knew that the first move had best be mine. I feigned wary concern as I stepped out, then while Enkidu grinned, I cried out to Allah and swung the club.

It was a good blow, well delivered, but Enkidu had lived many more lifetimes than I. He avoided with a swift backwards step. I thought him off balance and pressed in with another swing, but the axe came down with terrific might. I sidestepped, and the speed of that blow set the air humming. With gritted teeth I pushed off and came in low, thinking to strike his arm, but Enkidu’s hand snaked out and clasped tight around the club haft. I sought then to use the power within it, but he tossed down the axe and grabbed hold of the club in both hands. He lifted it up, laughing as I dangled, for he was taller than me and on higher ground. My concentration was momentarily shattered. I had forgotten his strength.

Still, he had not properly thought the move through, and my kick caught him hard in the abdomen. He let out a grunt and dropped me. A normal man would have been doubled over, but as I rolled he snatched up the axe. I slid on the frost, and crossed over the sorcerous barrier.

On the instant the temperature dropped. My heart, already racing, beat now in fear, but the ice women made room for me, for us, as Enkidu came charging and drove the blade at me—they were opening a lane at the end of which I glimpsed riders. I barely scrambled up and away. Again and again he swung that gleaming axe, and I backed farther and farther out. I wished that I might call on the club’s power, but I did not, for there was so precious little of it left. Nowhere was there sign of Najya.

On Enkidu’s fourth swing I slid on a patch of ice and hit the ground on my side. Enkidu laughed and slammed down his blade. I slid as I struggled up, and this is all that saved me from losing my hand, for he struck again with blinding speed.

“Slay him!” came a male voice upon the wind. “Set his blood flowing upon the snow!”

I became aware of the chanting of Khazars as they reined in a stone’s throw off my left. Closer by, Enkidu’s oryx snorted and beat its front hooves against the frost.

I was cold, and tired, and I knew that I was outmatched—and making a poor showing besides. Yet I thought, if I strove harder, I might well earn my friend a few minutes more so that Najya would appear, and the spell could be worked.

You would think Enkidu’s tread would be heavy, but he was catlike as he advanced, whirling his axe without any sort of effort. “I have the gifts of the beasts of the field,” he said. “The cunning of the fox, the speed of the gazelle. A bear’s strength. What have you? I have no need of my magic to change your mood, though perhaps I should make you braver, so that you would fight better.”

On he came, his axe held ready.

He might not need magics, but I surely did, and I called upon them then. The club glowed as I rose. If I might at least strike him, I thought I could venture to paradise with a smile, like Alexis.

I took a step for him and his axe came up. I feinted that my left foot was losing purchase and leaned as if regaining my balance. The axe swept sideways. And I pushed hard off my right leg, diving at him and swinging as one.

The back end of his swing caught my armored shoulder as I leapt, and I knew blazing pain, but I also knew victory, for the club of Herakles slammed into his arm. I heard a crack and a scream. I hit the ground gracelessly on my elbow and found more pain.

I rolled to my side, gasping for breath.

Enkidu’s face was frozen in bestial rage, and spittle ran down through his beard. He switched his axe to his other hand as advanced toward me, and I had not the breath to rise.

It was then that something huge and black drove hard into Enkidu’s back and sent him spinning to the ground. I saw with amazement that it was our black wooden bull, and I staggered to my feet, willing myself to move more quickly. Allah, but I ached.

The bull galloped through the transparent women, doing them little harm but collecting a sparkling frost coating. It circled back toward Enkidu. The Sebitti rose, shaking his head like a dog. He cast down his axe and crouched, waiting with his arms outspread, though he winced as he moved the one I’d injured. There were now seven paces between us, for the bull had knocked him far, and he was turned half away. Dabir had evened the field.

It was my thought to drive in at Enkidu when the bull next cast him down, but it was not to be, for Enkidu caught the creature’s horns in his hands. He screamed with pain, but did not yield. For all that he was a madman, I admired his fortitude. The wooden bull’s momentum set Enkidu sliding. His face strained from red to near purple, but he dug in his heels, lifted the creature by its horns, and cast the thing toward me.

I threw myself to the right, and the bull’s horn passed only a hand span above my head as I landed in the snow. The club of Herakles rolled from my sweaty palms and kept on rolling until it lay a full man’s length away. The earth shook as the bull struck the ground behind me.

I climbed, staggering toward the club, but a grinning Enkidu interposed himself.

The bull lay sideways upon the ground. One of its back legs was broken off entirely, and the other was twisted up to the right, poking up like an extra tail. It still pawed at the earth with its forelegs, but Enkidu’s oryx plowed into the thing with its head and cast it sideways. The club of Herakles rolled a few feet farther away.

“Your friend should not have interfered,” Enkidu said. “Now, mortal, make your peace, for I am coming to deliver your last blow.”

So saying, Enkidu came for me, raising his axe.

“I am at peace with Allah,” I said, only to myself.

He stopped before me and hefted up his weapon. “On your death, a new age begins.”

With that, the axe rose once more, up over his off shoulder.

“Stop!”

Najya’s voice echoed as through she had spoken from a thousand throats. Enkidu stood poised to deliver my deathblow, but looked from side to side, searching for her.

Dozens of the snow women shifted and flowed and converged one upon the other. Color came to them as they overlapped. Najya stepped forward as still more of the snow women flowed into her form. “Asim,” the multiple voices said. And then, in the last three steps, she was suddenly there, in the flesh, her hand thrust up toward Enkidu, as if she meant physically to restrain the axe from falling.

Far above that hand, a transparent red dome of energy flickered into existence. A roar of anger, half curse, half wind, swept up from the thousands assembled there.

Najya spun to face Dabir and screamed worldlessly. I swear that icy winds rolled up as she did this. Enkidu backed away from her.

I pushed to my knees and threw myself for the club, grasped it, remembered those forms a final time. Its enhanced senses warned me of a looming power to my rear and I ducked as I turned. Enkidu’s cut missed the top of my helm by only inches. He was just a little slower now, for all that I had injured him, and I managed to regain my feet.

Overhead I saw a tear within the sky itself all about Najya, widening at her gesture. A bright, deadly whiteness swept out, roaring, as though the old woman of the north had fully opened her sack of winds. Najya screamed also at her Khazars, who charged forward with their battle cries, lances leveled. The wind was too chaotic for accurate bow work.

Their beasts thundered around Enkidu and myself and they let us be, to battle alone to the death. I thought us well beyond the protective power of Anzu’s magic, but it might be Enkidu was so taken with rage it had not even occurred to him to control me. Spittle flecked his beard and mustache like the froth of a mad dog. He pressed on, swing after tireless swing, driving me back and farther back through the ranks of snow women and up against a vast wall of some white cloud thing.

But it broke apart just as I approached it, and around me a strange, great horned beast fell suddenly into frosty fragments. It was as though a mighty hand was sweeping through the mass of spirits, and where it touched, all dissolved. Enkidu held off, staring in astonishment. Over his shoulder, I saw Dabir atop the hill. He had lifted up the spear and was laying waste, calling out in a clear, deep voice, the fingers of his free hand raised, clawlike. Where he swung that hand, swathes of the monsters fell before him.

Lydia stood beside him, just visible through a cloud of fire and smoke. She leaned still upon the staff, fixed to the circle, but in her other hand she wielded a string of fire like a whip, and where it touched it left empty saddles and seared, tumbling corpses.

The Khazars shouted and charged the slope, and I thought all was done until Dabir left off slaying spirits, his eyes glowing golden as the sun. I think he cast up the earth before their feet so that their horses plunged madly, and they fell or galloped clear.

Enkidu shouted, though I could not make out his words. And though I wearied, aye, almost unto death, a faint spark had lit once more within me, and it was hope. I backed from him, the club held down to my right. He came on again, and again, swinging madly, like an animal. From left. From right, from left, each time missing me by only hairs. Any single blow would have taken my head. He was swift, aye, but that one arm was slower on the recovery, and when he swung by once more on the left, I sprang.

The club blazed as brightly as it had that first time, light once more as the air itself. I came up from the lower right. Surprise warred briefly with rage in Enkidu’s eyes as the club rose up and up, and he jerked back his chin, thinking he might avoid me. Yet he was too late. When I hit, a grisly crack echoed across that bitter landscape and he was lifted bodily into the air, his head half parted from his neck. Blood spewed fountainlike as he arced backward to land beside his axe with a thud. The blood flowed out for some time, dyeing the surrounding snow, but he had perished the moment I connected with him.

I stumbled after him, lost my balance, sank to one knee. The club was but dimly glowing now, its energies all but spent. Dimly could I perceive the sorcerous battle that went on around me. I thought at first the ground shook because my senses reeled, but at the last moment I turned my head to see Enkidu’s oryx a few feet off, charging at full strength and snorting fire. I tell you, at that moment I knew I was done.

But a huge wall of earth reared up and swept the animal off its feet and away. I stared in wonder as the creature was shunted off, crying in distress, and the wall struck against a dozen Khazars beyond, charging the hill on foot. I looked up to find Dabir upon the height, sweeping that glowing spear from right to left. With each movement, landscape rose and fell. Beside him Lydia’s whip stretched on for the length of a noble’s courtyard. With a single blow she sent ten Khazars screaming from their saddles.

Najya, though, still shouted, and the spirits obeyed. Dozens at a time they tossed themselves against the barrier. They dissolved as they struck, impacting so often that the circle about the hill was a permanent wall of transparent scarlet energy. This one was far more powerful than that Jibril had once erected in his house, but there were hundreds of spirits set against it, and Najya herself conjured more from the rift every moment. Sooner or later that barrier was going to go down, just like Jibril’s. Overhead, the red of the greater mystical dome—what I surmised to be the height of the banishment circle—flickered on and off. Anzu had been right. We did not have the power, probably because Dabir had to expend so much of it to fight the spirits.

I breathed in through battered ribs. Around me the spirits multiplied with astonishing speed, twelve appearing where but one had stood a moment before—women, clouds, vaporous monsters from ancient days—shunted in from the huge gap in the sky. The temperature plummeted further as they crowded into being, and the nearest stretched out to me with hands, tendrils, whatever they possessed, for I was life, and energy.

The club still flared, albeit dimly, and they recoiled. I knew that my protection could not possibly last much longer, and that they multiplied faster than Dabir could destroy them. I flung myself into a staggering charge. There was no longer any clear ground on which to walk, so thick were the frost spirits clustered, but they parted or disintegrated on contact with the club. My hands and face had left off stinging some time back and were now quite numb. Two Khazars and their mounts were toppled nearby, sheathed in frost and consumed by huddling spirits. I pressed on past a leering face formed of vapor, and an icy, skeletal bird thing. A few paces from Najya the club failed at last, crumbling apart in my hands as I passed through a final snow woman. Intent as I was, I knew a sense of remorse at the loss of the great weapon, which had served Herakles so well and never failed me.

And then I flung myself at the back of the woman I loved. Alerted by some sorcery, she spun in surprise just before I tackled her.

We hit the ground, hard, and the world spun. Starshot blackness blossomed across my vision. I shook my head. Najya, beside me, was already rising on her elbows. I rolled to face her, weakly raising one hand as she gritted teeth and brought one toward me, hate glittering in her sapphire eyes.

“Najya!” I gasped. “I know that you are there!”

“Weakness!” she screamed at me, and her cold hand dove at my neck.

The dome above us glowed gold, pink, red, blue. Najya’s eyes widened and she withdrew her hand to stare at the sky. “No!”

I felt the greater circle’s magic sweep over me like a strong current of water. Something pulled at my inner being, from far away, as though a hook had caught my soul. I pushed at thickened air with my hands, fighting it, willing myself to stay. Beside me, Najya convulsed. Her mouth worked, but no sound came.

“Asim!” Lydia shouted. “Get back to the inner circle!” Now, clearly, I heard Dabir chanting, and the spear in his hand glowed, brighter than ever, as though it burned its energy at an accelerated rate.

I looked down at Najya. I could not leave her there, like that. I supposed that if I had the strength to flee and if I bore her with me to safety, the spirit would be left within her. Better we should meet our end here, together.

The ice beings all about us raised voices in whistling agony, a song of death from a thousand throats. Najya screamed, too, a lone human voice among the monstrous things. She shuddered and shook, her eyes rolling in pain.

“I shall take her with me!” the spirit screamed.

Tightly I grasped those shaking, frigid hands. “Do not let her have you!”

“She is strong,” she cried, and I did not know if it was spirit or woman who spoke.

The beings, all of them, blurred and stretched and twisted in upon themselves, and suddenly there was nothing there but thickened mist and droplets of water, cascading onto that cold ground as though a rainstorm had birthed only feet above the surface of the earth. I have never heard anything like the sound of those spatters before or since.

Najya dropped limp in my arm as if she were boneless.

“Asim!” I saw Dabir racing down the hillside toward me, frantic.

It was then the great wave of water rushed in from every side.

Instantly I was engulfed in a freezing wave and knocked from my feet sideways. I came up sputtering in the frigid, swirling water, clinging to Najya’s arm. The current was too strong for me to stand. Though every use of my left arm brought agony, I stroked with it, and my hand struck something solid. It felt like wood, and I clung tightly to it.

It was the wooden bull, kicking its forelegs to propel itself. I knew then that Dabir must be controlling the thing still and praised Allah for my friend’s cleverness. It ceased its kicking. I held Najya with a death grip, keeping her face above water. Dabir clung to the bull’s other side with one of the handholds.

“Alhamdilillah!” he said. “You’ve made it!”

“Thanks to you.” I said. “Help me with Najya!”

This proved a challenge, for the wooden bull was spinning in the wild, rocking current. Dabir managed to board and sweep Najya onto his lap, but he could not also leverage me. I had little idea whether Najya even lived still.

“Is she alive?”

“She breathes!” Dabir managed.

“Where is Lydia?”

“Safe on the hill,” he said. “I think.”

It is no easy matter to learn such things when spinning in a mad current holding on to the leg and tail of a wooden bull.

It seemed that we floated thus for a mad hour or four, but on later reflection I think only a few grains in an hourglass would have dropped. As we struggled we saw hundreds of Khazars floating lifelessly around us. Also there were horses, some of which screamed and fought the water. But most of them, and their riders—men and women both—were dead.

Of a sudden my feet struck earth solidly. The bull lurched to a halt. The water had simply spread outward in a wave, and in a moment more it was but waist-deep, then barely to my ankles.

Of course I was thoroughly frozen, and shivering uncontrollably, yet that was nothing. I turned Najya’s limp body to me and checked for her breath. I could find none.

“She does not breathe!” I cried. I thought for a moment Dabir had lied to me.

But he looked as horrified as me. “I could not always keep her above the water!” He hurried around to the side of the bull. His teeth were chattering, but he did not slow. Mine, too, were rattling. Around us was left a tide of washed-up, fur-clad warriors.

Dabir lay her over the motionless wooden beast and pressed against her back once, twice, a dozen times. I stood shivering, watching him, thinking this a lonely place to dig a grave and that this was a poor time to lose her, after she had come through so much.

But then Najya coughed. She vomited water and coughed once more and lay weakly against the bull’s chest. I stepped to her side and touched her face with shaking fingers. She looked up at me and her eyes were brown.

“Asim,” she whispered.

So great was my joy that tears slid from my eyes.