"Enough!" Damodara rose to his feet. "Understand this, Narses. What a general can do, an emperor cannot. I will succeed or I will fail, but I will do so as an emperor. There will be no further discussion on the matter."
"Be quiet, old man," Ajatasutra murmured coldly. "I was at Ranapur also."
He rose to his feet and gave Damodara a very deep bow. "Lord of Malwa. Let us do the thing like an assassin, not a torturer."
Charax, on the Persian Gulf
"I can't," said Dryopus firmly. Anna glared at him, but the Roman official in charge of the great port city of Charax was quite impervious to her anger. His next words were spoken in the patient tone of one addressing an unruly child.
"Lady Saronites, if I allowed you to continue on this—" He paused, obviously groping for a term less impolite than insane. "—headstrong project of yours, it'd be worth my career."
He picked up a letter lying on the great desk in his headquarters. "This is from your father, demanding that you be returned to Constantinople under guard."
"My father has no authority over me!"
"No, he doesn't." Dryopus shook his head. "But your husband Calopodius does. Without his authorization, I simply can't allow you to continue. I certainly can't detail a ship to take you to Barbaricum."
Anna clenched her jaws. Her eyes went to the nearby window. She couldn't see the harbor from here, but she could visualize it easily enough. The Roman soldiers who had all-but-formally arrested her when she and her small party arrived in the great port city of Charax on the Persian Gulf had marched her past it on their way to Dryopus' palace.
For a moment, wildly, she thought of appealing to the Persians who were now in official control of Charax. But the notion died as soon as it came. The Aryans were even more strict than Romans when it came to the independence of women. Besides—
Dryopus seemed to read her thoughts. "I should note that all shipping in Charax is under Roman military law. So there's no point in your trying to go around me. No ship captain will take your money, anyway. Not without a permit issued by my office."
He dropped her father's letter back onto the desk. "I'm sorry, but there's nothing else for it. If you wish to continue, you will have to get your husband's permission."
"He's all the way up the Indus," she said angrily. "And there's no telegraph communication between here and there."
Dryopus shrugged. "No, there isn't—and it'll be some time before the new radio system starts working. But there is a telegraph line between Barbaricum and the Iron Triangle. And by now the new line connecting Barbaricum and the harbor at Chabahari may be completed. You'll still have to wait until I can get a ship there—and another to bring back the answer. Which won't be quickly, now that the winter monsoon has started. I'll have to use a galley, whenever the first one leaves—and I'm not sending a galley just for this purpose."
Anna's mind raced through the problem. On their way down the Euphrates, Illus had explained to her the logic of travel between Mesopotamia and India. He'd had plenty of time to do so. The river voyage through Mesopotamia down to the port at Charax had taken much longer than Anna had expected, mainly because of the endless delays caused by Persian officials. She'd expected to be in Charax by late October. Instead, they were now halfway into December.
During the winter monsoon season, which began in November, it was impossible for sailing craft to make it to Barbaricum. Taking advantage of the relatively sheltered waters of the Gulf, on the other hand, they could make it as far as Chabahari—which was the reason the Roman forces in India had been working so hard to get a telegraph line connecting Chabahari and the Indus.
So if she could get as far as Chabahari... She'd still have to wait, but if Calopodius' permission came she wouldn't be wasting weeks here in Mesopotamia.
"Allow me to go as far as Chabahari then," she insisted.
Dryopus started to frown. Anna had to fight to keep from screaming in frustration.
"Put me under guard, if you will!"
Dryopus sighed, lowered his head, and ran his fingers through thinning hair. "He's not likely to agree, you know," he said softly.
"He's my husband, not yours," pointed out Anna. "You don't know how he thinks." She didn't see any reason to add: no more than I do.
His head still lowered, Dryopus chuckled. "True enough. With that young man, it's always hard to tell."
He raised his head and studied her carefully. "Are you that besotted with him? That you insist on going into the jaws of the greatest war in history?"
"He's my husband," she replied, not knowing what else to say.
Again, he chuckled. "You remind me of Antonina, a bit. Or Irene."
Anna was confused for a moment, until she realized he was referring to Belisarius' wife and the Roman Empire's former head of espionage, Irene Macrembolitissa. Famous women, now, the both of them. One of them had even become a queen herself.
"I don't know either one," she said quietly. Which was true enough, even though she'd read everything ever written by Macrembolitissa. "So I couldn't say."
Dryopus studied her a bit longer. Then his eyes moved to her bodyguards, who had been standing as far back in a corner as possible.
Illus' shoulders heaved a bit, as if he were suppressing a laugh. "No offense, sir—but if it's worth your career, just imagine the price we'd pay." His tone grew serious: "We'll see to it that she doesn't, ah, escape on her own."
Dryopus nodded and looked back at Anna. "All right, then. As far as Chabahari."
* * *
On their way to the inn where Anna had secured lodgings, Illus shook his head. "If Calopodius says 'no,' you realize you'll have wasted a lot of time and money."
"He's my husband," replied Anna firmly. Not knowing what else to say.
After the general finished reading Anna's message, and the accompanying one from Dryopus, he invited Calopodius to sit down at the table in the command bunker.
"I knew you were married," said Belisarius, "but I know none of the personal details. So tell me."
Calopodius hesitated. He was deeply reluctant to involve the general in the petty minutiae of his own life. In the little silence that fell over them, within the bunker, Calopodius could hear the artillery barrages. As was true day and night, and had been for many weeks, the Malwa besiegers of the Iron Triangle were shelling the Roman fortifications—and the Roman gunners were responding with counter-battery fire. The fate of the world would be decided here in the Punjab, Calopodius thought, some time over the next year or so. That, and the whole future of the human race. It seemed absurd—grotesque, even—to waste the Roman commander's time...
"Tell me," repeated Belisarius. For all their softness, Calopodius could easily detect the tone of command in the words.
Belisarius chuckled. "Be at ease, young man. I can spare the time for this. In truth—" Calopodius could sense, if not see, the little gesture by which the general expressed a certain ironic weariness. "I would enjoy it, Calopodius. War is a means, not an end. It would do my soul good to talk about ends, for a change."
That was enough to break Calopodius' resistance.
"I really don't know her very well, sir. We'd only been married for a short time before I left to join your army. It was—"
He fumbled for the words. Belisarius provided them.
"A marriage of convenience. Your wife's from the Melisseni family."
Calopodius nodded. With his acute hearing, he could detect the slight sound of the general scratching his chin, as he was prone to do when thinking.
"An illustrious family," stated Belisarius. "One of the handful of senatorial families which can actually claim an ancient pedigree without paying scribes to fiddle with the historical records. But a family which has fallen on hard times financially."
"My father said they wouldn't even have a pot to piss in if their creditors ever really descended on them." Calopodius sighed. "Yes, General. An illustrious family, but now short of means. Whereas my family, as you know..."
"The Saronites. Immensely wealthy, but with a pedigree that needs a lot of fiddling."
Calopodius grinned. "Go back not more than three generations, and you're looking at nothing but commoners. Not in the official records, of course. My father can afford a lot of scribes."
"That explains your incredible education," mused Belisarius. "I had wondered, a bit. Not many young noblemen have your command of language and the arts."
Calopodius heard the scrape of a chair as the general stood up. Then, heard him begin to pace about. That was another of Belisarius' habits when he was deep in thought. Calopodius had heard him do it many times, over the past weeks. But he was a bit astonished that the general was giving the same attention to this problem as he would to a matter of strategy or tactics.
"Makes sense, though," continued Belisarius. "For all the surface glitter—and don't think the Persians don't make plenty of sarcastic remarks about it—the Roman aristocracy will overlook a low pedigree as long as the 'nobleman' is wealthy and well educated. Especially—as you are—in grammar and rhetoric."
"I can drop three Homeric and biblical allusions into any sentence," chuckled Calopodius.
"I've noticed!" laughed the general. "That official history you're writing of my campaigns would serve as a Homeric and biblical commentary as well." He paused a moment. "Yet I notice that you don't do it in your Dispatches to the Army."
"It'd be a waste," said Calopodius, shrugging. "Worse than that, really. I write those for the morale of the soldiers, most of whom would just find the allusions confusing. Besides, those are really your dispatches, not mine. And you don't talk that way, certainly not to your soldiers."
"They're not my dispatches, young man. They're yours. I approve them, true, but you write them. And when they're read aloud by my son to the Senate, Photius presents them as Calopodius' dispatches, not mine."
Calopodius was startled into silence.
"You didn't know? My son is eleven years old, and quite literate. And since he is the Emperor of Rome, even if Theodora still wields the actual power, he insists on reading them to the Senate. He's very fond of your dispatches. Told me in his most recent letter that they're the only things he reads which don't bore him to tears. His tutors, of course, don't approve."
Calopodius was still speechless. Again, Belisarius laughed. "You're quite famous, lad." Then, more softly, almost sadly: "I can't give you back your eyes, Calopodius. But I can give you the fame you wanted when you came to me. I promised you I would."
The sound of his pacing resumed. "In fact, unless I miss my guess, those Dispatches of yours will someday—centuries from now—be more highly regarded than your official history of the war." Calopodius heard a very faint noise, and guessed the general was stroking his chest, where the jewel from the future named Aide lay nestled in his pouch. "I have it on good authority that historians of the future will prefer straight narrative to flowery rhetoric. And—in my opinion, at least—you write straightforward narrative even better than you toss off classical allusions."
The chair scraped as the general resumed his seat. "But let's get back to the problem at hand. In essence, your marriage was arranged to lever your family into greater respectability, and to provide the Melisseni—discreetly, of course—a financial rescue. How did you handle the dowry, by the way?"
Calopodius shrugged. "I'm not certain. My family's so wealthy that a dowry's not important. For the sake of appearances, the Melisseni provided a large one. But I suspect my father loaned them the dowry—and then made arrangements to improve the Melisseni's economic situation by linking their own fortunes to those of our family." He cleared his throat. "All very discreetly, of course."
Belisarius chuckled dryly. "Very discreetly. And how did the Melisseni react to it all?"
Calopodius shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "Not well, as you'd expect. I met Anna for the first time three days after my father informed me of the prospective marriage. It was one of those carefully rehearsed 'casual visits.' She and her mother arrived at my family's villa near Nicodemia."
"Accompanied by a small army of servants and retainers, I've no doubt."
Calopodius smiled. "Not such a small army. A veritable host, it was." He cleared his throat. "They stayed for three days, that first time. It was very awkward for me. Anna's mother—her name's Athenais—barely even tried to disguise her contempt for me and my family. I think she was deeply bitter that their economic misfortunes were forcing them to seek a husband for their oldest daughter among less illustrious but much wealthier layers of the nobility."
"Who knows? During those three days, Anna said little. In the course of the various promenades which we took through the grounds of the Saronites estate—God, talk about chaperones!—she seemed distracted to the point of being almost rude. I couldn't really get much of a sense of her, General. She seemed distressed by something. Whether that was her pending marriage to me, or something else, I couldn't say."
"And you didn't much care. Be honest."
"True. I'd known for years that any marriage I entered would be purely one of convenience." He shrugged. "At least my bride-to-be was neither unmannerly not uncomely. In fact, from what I could determine at the time—which wasn't much, given the heavy scaramangium and headdress and the elaborate cosmetics under which Anna labored—she seemed quite attractive."
He shrugged again. "So be it. I was seventeen, General." For a moment, he hesitated, realizing how silly that sounded. He was only a year older than that now, after all, even if...
"You were a boy then; a man, now," filled in Belisarius. "The world looks very different after a year spent in the carnage. I know. But then—"
Calopodius heard the general's soft sigh. "Seventeen years old. With the war against Malwa looming ever larger in the life of the Roman Empire, the thoughts of a vigorous boy like yourself were fixed on feats of martial prowess, not domestic bliss."
"Yes. I'd already made up my mind. As soon as the wedding was done—well, and the marriage consummated—I'd be joining your army. I didn't even see any reason to wait to make sure that I'd provided an heir. I've got three younger brothers, after all, every one of them in good health."
Again, silence filled the bunker and Calopodius could hear the muffled sounds of the artillery exchange. "Do you think that's why she was so angry at me when I told her I was leaving? I didn't really think she'd care."
"Actually, no. I think..." Calopodius heard another faint noise, as if the general were picking up the letters lying on the table. "There's this to consider. A wife outraged by abandonment—or glad to see an unwanted husband's back—would hardly be taking these risks to find him again."
"I doubt if she knows. Which is really what this is all about, I suspect." He paused; then: "She's only a year older than you, I believe."
Calopodius nodded. The general continued. "Did you ever wonder what an eighteen-year-old girl wants from life? Assuming she's high-spirited, of course—but judging from the evidence, your Anna is certainly that. Timid girls, after all, don't race off on their own to find a husband in the middle of a war zone."
Calopodius said nothing. After a moment, Belisarius chuckled. "Never gave it a moment's thought, did you? Well, young man, I suggest the time has come to do so. And not just for your own sake."
The chair scraped again as the general rose. "When I said I knew nothing about the details of your marriage, I was fudging a bit. I didn't know anything about what you might call the 'inside' of the thing. But I knew quite a bit about the 'outside' of it. This marriage is important to the Empire, Calopodius."
The general clucked his tongue reprovingly. "There's more to winning a war than tactics on the battlefield, lad. You've also got to keep an eye—always—on what a future day will call the 'home front.' " Calopodius heard him resume his pacing. "You can't be that naïve. You must know that the Roman aristocracy is not very fond of the dynasty."
"My family is," protested Calopodius.
"Yes. Yours—and most of the newer rich families. That's because their wealth comes mainly from trade and commerce. The war—all the new technology Aide's given us—has been a blessing to you. But it looks very different from the standpoint of the old landed families. You know as well as I do—you must know—that it was those families which supported the Nika insurrection a few years ago. Fortunately, most of them had enough sense to do it at a distance."
Calopodius couldn't help wincing. And what he wasn't willing to say, the general was. Chuckling, oddly enough.
"The Melisseni came that close to being arrested, Calopodius. Arrested—the whole family—and all their property seized. If Anna's father Nicephorus had been even slightly less discreet... The truth? His head would have been on a spike on the wall of the Hippodrome, right next to that of John of Cappadocia's. The only thing that saved him was that he was discreet enough—barely—and the Melisseni are one of the half-dozen most illustrious families of the Empire."
"I didn't know they were that closely tied..."
Calopodius sensed Belisarius' shrug. "We were able to keep it quiet. And since then, the Melisseni seem to have retreated from any open opposition. But we were delighted—I'm speaking of Theodora and Justinian and myself, and Antonina for that matter—when we heard about your marriage. Being tied closely to the Saronites will inevitably pull the Melisseni into the orbit of the dynasty. Especially since—as canny as your father is—they'll start getting rich themselves from the new trade and manufacture."
"Don't tell them that!" barked Calopodius. "Such work is for plebeians."
"They'll change their tune, soon enough. And the Melisseni are very influential among the older layers of the aristocracy."
"I understand your point, General." Calopodius gestured toward the unseen table, and the letters atop it. "So what do you want me to do? Tell Anna to come to the Iron Triangle?"
Calopodius was startled by the sound of Belisarius' hand slapping the table. "Damn fool! It's time you put that splendid mind of yours to work on this, Calopodius. A marriage—if it's to work—needs grammar and rhetoric also."
"I don't understand," said Calopodius timidly.
"I know you don't. So will you follow my advice?"
Belisarius chuckled. "You're more confident than I am! But..." After a moment's pause: "Don't tell her to do anything, Calopodius. Send Dryopus a letter explaining that your wife has your permission to make her own decision. And send Anna a letter saying the same thing. I'd suggest..."
Another pause. Then: "Never mind. That's for you to decide."
In the silence that followed, the sound of artillery came to fill the bunker again. It seemed louder, perhaps. "And that's enough for the moment, young man. I'd better get in touch with Maurice. From the sound of things, I'd say the Malwa are getting ready for another probe."
* * *
Calopodius wrote the letters immediately thereafter, dictating them to his scribe. The letter to Dryopus took no time at all. Neither did the one to Anna, at first. But Calopodius, for reasons he could not determine, found it difficult to find the right words to conclude. Grammar and rhetoric seemed of no use at all.
In the end, moved by an impulse which confused him, he simply wrote:
Do as you will, Anna. For myself, I would like to see you again.
Bharakuccha
The day after his meeting with Narses, Damodara went to the chambers occupied by Nanda Lal, in a different wing of the great palace. Politely, he waited outside for permission to enter. Politely, because Damodara was now officially the Goptri of the Deccan; and thus, in a certain sense, the entire palace might be said to be his personal property.
But there was no point in being rude. Soon enough, the chief spymaster of the Malwa empire emerged from his private chambers.
"Yes, Damodara?" he asked. Not bothering, as usual, to preface the curt remark with the general's honorifics.
Nanda Lal seemed to treasure such little snubs. It was the only sign of outright stupidity Damodara had ever seen him exhibit.
"I have decided to take the field against Rao and his rebels," Damodara announced. "Within a month, I think."
"At last! I am glad to hear it. But why move now, after...?"
He left the rest unstated. After you have resisted my advice to do so for so long?
"The army is ready, well enough. I see no reason to wait until we are well into garam season. As it is, we'll be campaigning through the heat anyway. But I'd like to end the business, if possible, before the southwest monsoon comes."
Above the lumpy, broken nose that Belisarius had given him, years ago, Nanda Lal's dark eyes were fixed on Damodara. The gaze was not quite suspicious, but very close.
"You still lack the heavy siege guns—that you have insisted for months are essential to reducing Deogiri."
Damodara shrugged again. "I don't intent to besiege Deogiri. It is my belief that Rao will come forth from the city to meet me on the field of battle. I sense that he has grown arrogant."
Nanda Lal turned his head, peering at Damodara from the side of his eyes. The suspicion had come to the surface now. "You 'sense'? Why? I have gotten no such indications from my spies."
Damodara decided it was time to put an end to courtesy. He returned the spymaster's sideways look with a flat, cold stare of his own. "Neither you nor your spies are warriors. I am. So it is my sense—not yours—which will guide me in this matter."
He looked away, as if indifferent. "And I am also the Goptri of the Deccan. Not you, and certainly not your spies. The decision is made, Nanda Lal." Casually, he added: "I presume you will wish to accompany the expedition."
Tightly, Nanda Lal replied: "You presume incorrectly. I shall remain here in Bharakuccha. And I will insist that you leave Toramana and his Ye-tais here with me." After a brief pause, in a slightly more conciliatory tone, he added, "To maintain the city's security."
Damodara's eyes continued to rove casually about the corridors of the palace, as if he were looking for security threats—and finding none.
"You may have half the Ye-tai force," he said at length, dismissively. "That's more than enough to maintain security. But I will you leave you Toramana in command, even though I could certainly use him myself."
* * *
That night, as soon as it was dark, Ajatasutra slipped out of the city. He had no great difficulty with the task, as many times as he'd done it. Would have had no difficulty at all, except that he was also smuggling out the fastest horse in Bharakuccha.
The horse was too good to risk breaking one its legs riding on rough Deccan roads with only a sliver of a crescent moon to see by. So, once far enough from the city, Ajatasutra made camp for the night.
It was a comfortable camp. As it should have been, since he'd long used the site for the purpose and had a cache already supplied.
He slept well, too. Woke very early, and was on his way south to Deogiri before the sun rose.
By mid-morning, he was in excellent spirits. There still remained the not-so-minor problem of avoiding a Maratha ambush, of course. But Ajatasutra was sanguine with regard to that matter, for the good and simple reason that he had no intention of attempting that difficult feat in the first place.
All he had to do was not get killed when the Maratha caught him by surprise. Which, they probably would. With the possible—no, probable—exception of Raghunath Rao, Ajatasutra thought he was the best assassin in India. But the skills of an assassin, though manifold, do not automatically include expertise at laying or avoiding ambushes in broken country like Majarashtra.
No matter. He thought it unlikely that the Marathas would kill a single man outright. It was much more likely they would try to capture him—a task which they would find supremely easy since he intended to put up no resistance at all.
Thereafter, the letter he carried should do the rest.
Well... It would certainly get him an audience with the Empress of Andhra and her consort. It was also possible, of course, that the audience would be followed by his execution.
Ajatasutra was not unduly concerned over that matter either, however. A man who manages to become the second best assassin in India is not, in the nature of things, given to fretfulness.
* * *
The ambush came later than he expected, a full three days after he left Bharakuccha and long after he'd penetrated into the highlands of the Great Country. On the other hand, it did indeed come as a complete surprise.
"That was very well done," he complimented his ambushers, seeing a dozen of them popping up around him. "I wouldn't have thought a lizard could have hidden in those rocks."
He complimented them again after four of them seized him and hauled him off the horse, albeit a bit more acerbically. The lads went about the task with excessive enthusiasm.
"No need for all that, I assure you!"
"Three, actually. There's another in my right boot and a small one tucked between my shoulder blades. If you'll permit to rise just a bit—no?—then you'll have to roll me over to get it."
He's got three daggers, captain! One of them's a throwing knife! He's an assassin!
A flurry of harsh questions followed.
"Well, yes, of course I'm an assassin. Who else would be idiotic enough to ride alone and openly through Maratha territory? But you may rest assured that I was not on my way to make an attempt on Rao's life. I have a letter for him. For the Empress, actually."
A flurry of harsher accusations followed.
"Oh, that's nonsense. If I wanted to assassinate the Empress, I'd hardly use a blade for the purpose. With Rao himself to guard her? No, no, poison's the thing. I've studied Shakuntala's habits, from many spy reports, and her great weakness is that she refuses to use a food-taster."
A flurry of still harsher proposals followed. They began with impalement and worked their way down from there.
Fortunately, by the time they got to the prospect of flaying the assassin alive, the captain of the Maratha squad had finally taken Ajatasutra's advice to look in his left boot.
"See? I told you I was carrying a letter for the Empress."
* * *
There came, then, the only awkward moment of the day.
"And here I took the time and effort to provide a Marathi translation, along with the Hindi," sighed Ajatasutra. "I'm an idiot. Too much time spent in palaces. Ah... I don't suppose you'd just take my word for it?"
A very long flurry of very harsh ridicule followed. But, in the end, the Maratha hillmen agreed that they'd accept the letter as good coin—provided that Ajatasutra read it aloud to them so they could be sure it said what he claimed it did.
Peshawar
Capital city of the
KushanKingdom
Kungas, also, found that the first Malwa assassination attempt came later than he'd expected.
He was not, however, caught by surprise. In fact, he wasn't caught at all.
Kungas was certainly not one of the best assassins in India. Not even close. He was, however, most likely the best assassin-catcher. For years, the Malwa had used him as a security specialist. After he broke from them to join Shakuntala's rebellion, she'd made him the commander of her imperial bodyguard.
"They're in that building," Kujulo murmured, pointing with his chin out of the window. He was too far away from the window to be seen from the outside, but he was also too experienced to run the risk that a large gesture like a pointing finger might be spotted. The human eye can detect motion easier than it can detect a still figure. "One of the two you predicted they'd use."
"It was fairly obvious," said Kungas. "They're the only two buildings fronting the square that have both a good angle for a shot and a good rear exit to make an escape from."
Next to him, also carefully standing back from the window so as not to be spotted, Vima chuckled softly. "It helps, of course, that we prepared the sites well. Like bait for rats."
Kungas nodded. The gesture, like Kujulo's chin-pointing, was minimal. Something that couldn't possibly be spotted even fifty feet away, much less across an entire city square.
Bait, indeed. The king of the Kushans—his queen, rather, acting on his instructions—had bought the two buildings outright. Then, placed her own agents in the position of "landlords," with clear and explicit instructions to rent any of the rooms to anyone, no questions asked—and make sure that their reputation for doing so became well known in Peshawar.
Inevitably, of course, that quickly made both buildings havens for prostitution and gambling. All the better, as far as Kungas was concerned. Within a week, all of the prostitutes were cheerfully supplementing their income as informers for the queen.
Irene had known the Malwa assassins were there within half an hour of their arrival.
Piss-poor assassins, in Kungas' opinion, when she told him. They'd started by annoying the whores with a brusque refusal of their services.
"All right," he said. "I see no reason to waste time."
"How do you want to do it?" asked Kujulo. "You don't want to use the charges, I assume."
In the unlikely event he might need it a last resort, Kungas had had all the rooms in the buildings that would be suitable for assassination attempts fitted with demolitions. Shaped charges, basically, that would spray the interior with shrapnel without—hopefully—collapsing the walls.
Still, with the ubiquitous mudbrick construction in Peshawar, Kungas saw no reason to take the risk. There was always the chance the building might collapse, killing dozens of people. Even if that didn't happen, the expense of repairing the damage would be considerable, and the work itself disruptive. Such an extreme measure might aggravate the residents of Peshawar.
Irene's spies had reported that Kungas was now very popular in the city, even among the non-Kushan inhabitants, and he saw no reason to undermine that happy state of affairs.
The new king's popularity was not surprising, of course. Kungas had maintained at least as much stability as the Malwa. More, really, since the Pathan hillmen had completely ceased their periodic harassment of the city-dwellers. He'd also lowered the taxes and levies, eliminated the most egregious of the Malwa regulations, and, most of all, abolished all of the harsh Malwa laws regarding religion. The enforced Malwa cult of mahaveda Hinduism had never sat well in the mountains. The moment Kungas issued his decrees, the region's underlying Buddhist faith had surged back to the surface.
No, there was no reason to risk undermining all that by blowing up parts of the city. Especially such visible parts, fronting on the main square.
"I've got my men ready," Kujulo added.
"What are they armed with? The assassins, I mean. Guns?"
"No. Bows. Probably be using poisoned arrowheads."
Kungas shook his head. "In that case, no. Keep your men ready, but let's try the Sarmatian girls."
Kujulo looked skeptical. Vima looked downright appalled.
"Kungas—ah, Sire—there isn't a one of them—"
"Enough," Kungas said. "I know they have no experience. Neither did you or I, once. How else do you get it?"
He shook his head again. "If the Malwa were armed with guns, it might be different. But bows will be awkward in the confines of those rooms. The girls will have a good chance. Some of them will die. But... That's what they wanted. To be real warriors. Dying comes with it."
The crack of a smile re-appeared. "Besides, it's only fair—since we're using one of them as the decoy."
* * *
A few minutes later, the business began. The Sarmatian girl posing as Irene came into the square on horseback, surrounded by her usual little entourage of female guards.
Watching from the same window, Kungas was amused. Irene often complained that the custom in the area of insisting that women had to be veiled in public was a damned nuisance, personally speaking—but a blessing, from the standpoint of duplicity.
Was that Irene down there? Who could say, really? Her face couldn't be seen, because of the veil. But the woman was the right height and build, had the same color and length of hair in that distinctive pony-tail, wore the proper regalia and the apparel, and had the accustomed escort.
Of course, it was the queen. Who else would it be?
Kungas knew that the assassins across the square wouldn't even be wondering about it. True, Irene was almost certainly not their target and the assassins would make no attempt here. They'd wait for Kungas to show himself. Still, the appearance of the queen in the square so soon after their arrival would be a good sign to them. They'd want to study her movements carefully. All their attention would be fixed on the figure moving within range of the bows in the windows.
He waited for the explosions that would signal the attack. For all that Kungas was prepared to see Irene's girl warriors suffer casualties, he'd seen no reason to make them excessive. He didn't want to risk destroying the walls with the implanted shaped charges, true—but there was no reason not to use the much smaller charges it would take to simply blow open the doors.
Blow them open—and spray splinters all through the room. That should be enough to give the inexperienced girls the edge they'd need.
* * *
A bigger edge than he'd expected, in the event. A moment later, the explosions came—and one of the Malwa assassins was blown right out the window. From the way he toppled to the ground twenty feet below, Kungas knew he was already unconscious. A big chunk of one of the doors must have hit him on the back of the head.
He landed like a sack of meal. From the distance, Kungas couldn't hear the impact, but it was obvious that he hadn't survived it. Most of the street square was dirt, but it was very hard-packed. Almost like stone.
"Ruptured neck, for sure," Vima grunted. "Probably half his brains spilling out, too."
Another assassin appeared in the same window. His back, to be precise. The man was obviously fighting someone.
A few seconds later, he too toppled out of the window. Still clutching the spear that had been driven into his chest, he made a landing that was no better.
Worse, probably. The assassin had the bad luck of landing on the flagstones in front of the building's entrance.
The shouts and screams and other sounds of fighting could be heard across the square for a bit longer. Perhaps ten seconds.
Kungas glanced down into the center of the square, to assure himself that the decoy was unharmed. He had no particular concern for the girl in question—in fact, he didn't even know who it was—but he didn't want to face Irene's recriminations if she'd been hurt.
Self-recriminations, really. But Irene was not exempt from the normal human tendency to shed blame on others as a way of handling guilt.
That left the question of how many of the Sarmatian squad that launched the attack had been killed or injured. But that was a different sort of matter. Getting killed in a fight with weapons in hand didn't cause the same gut-wrenching sensation as getting killed serving as a helpless decoy.
"Odd, really," Kungas murmured to himself. "But that's the way it is. Someday I'll have to ask Dadaji if he can explain the philosophy of it to me."
He turned and headed for the door. "Come. Let's find out."
* * *
It was better than he'd thought. Certainly better than he'd feared.
"See?" he demanded of Vima. "Only one girl dead. One badly injured, but she'll probably survive."
"She'll never walk right, again," Vima said sourly. "Might lose that leg completely, at least from the knee down."
Kujulo chuckled. "Will you listen to him? Bad as a doddering old Pathan clan chief!"
For a moment, he hunched his shoulders and twisted his face into a caricature of a prune-faced, disapproving, ancient clansman. Even Vima laughed.
"Not bad," Kujulo stated firmly, after straightening. "Against five assassins? Not bad."
* * *
Irene was upset, of course. The dead and injured girls were names and faces to her. People that she'd known, even known well.
But there were no recriminations. No self-recriminations, even. Her Sarmatian guards themselves were ecstatic at their success, despite the casualties.
It probably wasn't necessary, but Kungas put it into words anyway.
"Make Alexander the Great and the Buddha's son the forefathers of a dynasty—this is what comes with it, Irene."
"Yes, love, I know. Now please shut up. And go away for a few hours."
Axum, in the Ethiopian highlands
Ousanas glowered at the construction crew working in the great field just on the outskirts of the city of Axum. Most of the field was covered with the stone ruins of ancient royal tombs.
"I ought to have the lot of them executed," he pronounced, "seeing as how I can't very well execute you. Under the circumstances."
Antonina smiled. "Approximately how much more of your Cassandra imitation will I be forced to endure?"
"Cassandra, is it? You watch, woman. Your folly—that of your husband's, rather—will surely cause the spiritual ruin of the great kingdom of Axum." He pointed an accusing finger at the radio tower. "For two centuries this ridiculous field given over to the grotesque monuments of ancient pagan kings has been left to decay. As it should. Now, thanks to you and your idiot husband, we'll be resurrecting that heathen taste in idolatry."
Antonina couldn't help but laugh. "It's a radio tower, Ousanas!"
The aqabe tsentsen of Ethiopia was not mollified. "A Trojan horse, what it is. You watch. Soon enough—in the dark, when my eagle eye is not watching—they'll start carving inscriptions on the damned thing."
Gloomily, his eyes ranged up and down the huge stone tower that was nearing completion. "Plenty of room for it, too."
Antonina glanced back at the Greek artisan who was over-seeing the project. "Tell me, Timothy. If I understand this right, once the tower is in operation anyone who tries to climb onto it in order—"
The artisan winced. "They'll be fried." Warily, he eyed the tall and very muscular figure of the man who was, in effect if not in theory, the current ruler of Ethiopia. "Ah, Your Excel—"
"See?" demanded Ousanas, transferring his glare to the hapless artisan. "It's already starting! I am not an 'excellency,' damnation, and certainly not yours. A humble keeper of the royal fly whisks, that's all I am."
Timothy sidled back a step. He was fluent in Ge'ez, the language of the Axumites, so he knew that the title aqabe tsentsen meant "the keeper of the fly whisks." He also knew that the modesty of the title was meaningless.
Antonina came to the rescue. "Oh, stop bullying the poor man. Timothy, please continue."
"Well... it's hard to explain without getting too technical. But the gist of it is that a big radio tower like this needs a big transmitter powered by"—here he pointed his finger at a huge stone building—"the steam engine in there. In turn, that—"
The next few sentences were full of mysterious terms like "interrupter" and "capacitor bank" that meant absolutely nothing to Antonina or Ousanas. But Timothy's concluding words seemed clear enough:
"—every time the transmitter key is depressed, you'd have something like two thousand watts of power shorting across your body. 'Fry' is about the right word for what'd happen, if you got onto the tower itself. But you'd never make it that far, anyway. Once you got past the perimeter fence you'd start coupling to the radials implanted around the base of the tower. Your body would start twitching uncontrollably and the closer you got, the worse it'd get. Your hair might even catch on fire."
Ousanas grimaced, but he was still not mollified. "Splendid. So now we will have to post guards to protect idolators from idolatry."
Antonina laughed again. "Even for you, Ousanas, this display is absurd! What's really bothering you? It's the fact that you still haven't figured out what I'm going to decree tomorrow regarding the succession. Isn't it?"
Ousanas didn't look at her, still glowering at the radio tower. After a moment, he growled, "It's not so much me, Antonina. It's Rukaiya. She's been pestering me for days, trying to get an answer. Even more, asking for my opinion on what she should do, in the event of this or that alternative. She has no more idea than I do—and you might consider the fact that whatever you decide, she will be the one most affected."
Antonia struggled—mightily—to keep her satisfaction from showing. She had, in fact, deliberately delayed making the announcement after telling everyone she'd reached a decision, in the specific hope that Rukaiya would turn to Ousanas for advice.
"I'd have thought she'd mostly pester Garmat," she said, as if idly.
Ousanas finally stopped glowering and managed a bit of a grin. "Well, she has, of course. But I have a better sense of humor than the old bandit. She needs that, right now."
"Well!" Antonina said briskly. "It'll all be settled tomorrow, at the council session. In the meantime—"
She turned to Timothy. "Please continue the work. Ignore this grumbler. The sooner you can get that finished, the sooner I can talk to my husband again."
* * *
"And that's another thing!" Ousanas grumbled, as they headed toward the Ta'akha Maryam. "It's just a waste. You can't say anything either secret or personal—not with that sort of broadcast radio—and it won't work anyway, once the monsoon comes with its thunderstorms. So I've been told, at least."
Antonina glanced at the sun, now at its mid-day altitude, as if gauging the season. "We're still some months from the southwest monsoon, you know. Plenty of time."
Constantinople
"You'd be putty in your father's hands," Theodora sneered.
"Which one? Belisarius or Justinian?"
"Either—no, both, since they're obviously conspiring with each other."
The dark eyes of the Empress Regent moved away from Photius and Tahmina to glare at a guard standing nearby. So far as Photius could determine, the poor man's only offense was that he happened to be in her line of sight.
Perhaps he also bore a vague resemblance to Belisarius. He was tall, at least, and had brown eyes.
Angrily, Theodora slapped the heavily-decorated armrest of her throne. "Bad enough that he's exposing my husband to danger! But he's also giving away half my empire!"
She shifted the glare back to Photius. "Excuse me. Your empire."
The correction was, quite obviously, a formality. The apology was not even that, given the tone in which she'd spoken the words.
"You hate to travel," Photius pointed out, reasonably. "And since you're actually running my empire"—here he bestowed a cherubic smile on his official adoptive mother—"you can't afford to leave the capital anyway."
"I detest that smile," Theodora hissed. "Insincere as a crocodile's. How did you get to be so devious, already? You're only eleven years old."
Photius was tempted to reply: from studying you, Mother. Wisely, he refrained.
If she were in a better mood, actually, Theodora would take it as a compliment. But, she wasn't. She was in as foul a mood as she ever got, short of summoning the executioners.
Photius and his wife Tahmina had once, giggling, develop their own method for categorizing Theodora's temper. First, they divided it into four seasons:
Placid. The most pleasant season, albeit usually brief.
Sour. A very long season. More or less the normal climate.
Sullen. Not as long as sour season. Not quite.
Fury. Fortunately, the shortest season of all. Very exciting while it lasted, though.
Then, they ranked each season in terms of its degree of intensity, from alpha to epsilon.
Photius gauged this one as a Sullen Epsilon.
Well... Not quite. Call it a Sullen Delta.
In short, caution was called for here. On the other hand, there was still some room for further prodding and pushing. Done gingerly.
"I like to travel myself," he piped cheerfully. "So I'm the logical one to send on a grand tour to visit our allies in the war. And it's not as if you really need me here."
He did not add: or want me here, either. That would be unwise. True, Theodora had all the maternal instincts of a brick. But she liked to pretend otherwise, for reasons Photius had never been able to fathom.
Tahmina said it was because, if she didn't, it would give rise to rumors that she'd been spawned by Satan. That might be true, although Photius was skeptical. After all, plenty of people already thought the Empress Regent had been sired by the devil.
Photius didn't, himself. Maybe one of Hell's underlings, but not Satan himself.
Theodora was back to glaring at the guard. No, a different one. His offense...
Hard to say. He resembled neither Belisarius nor Justinian. Except for being a man, which, in Theodora's current humor, was probably enough.
"Fine!" she snapped. "You can go. If nothing else, it'll keep Antonina from nattering at me every day once the radio starts working. By now, months since she left, she'll be wallowing in guilt and whining and whimpering about how much she misses her boy. God knows why. Devious little wretch."
She swiveled the dark-eyed glare onto Tahmina, sitting next to Photius. "You too. Or else once the cunning little bastard gets to Ethiopia he'll start nattering at me over the radio about how much he misses his wife. God knows why. It's not as if he's old enough yet to have a proper use for a wife."
Yet a third guard received the favor of her glare. "You can celebrate your sixteenth birthday in Axum. I'll send the gifts along with you."
Tahmina smiled sweetly and bowed her head. "Thank you, Mother."
"I'm not your mother. You don't fool me. You're as bad as he is. No child of mine would be so sneaky. Now go."
* * *
Once they reached the corridor outside Theodora's audience chamber, Photius whispered to Tahmina: "Sullen Delta. Close to Epsilon."
"Oh, don't be silly," his wife whispered back, smiling down at him. To Photius' disgruntlement, even though he'd grown a lot over the past year, Tahmina was still taller than he was. "That wasn't any worse than Sullen Gamma. She agreed, didn't she?"
* * *
The announcement was made publicly the next day. Photius wasn't surprised. It was usually hard to wheedle Theodora into anything. But the nice thing was that, if you could, she'd move quickly and decisively thereafter.
* * *
The Emperor of Rome will visit our allies in the war with Malwa. All the way to India itself! The Empress will accompany him, sharing the hardships of the journey.
All hail the virtuous Tahmina!
* * *
After reading the broadsheet, the captain of the Malwa assassination team tossed it onto the table in the apartments they'd rented. It was all he could do not to crumple it in disgust.
His lieutenant, standing at the window, stared out over the Golden Horn. He didn't bother, as he had innumerable times since they'd arrived in Constantinople, shifting his gaze to study the imperial palace complex.
The three other members of the team were sitting at the table in the kitchen. The center of the table was taken up by one of the small bombards that Malwa assassination teams generally carried with them. The weapons were basically just simple, very big, one-round shotguns. Small enough that they could be hidden in trunks, even if that made carrying the luggage a back-breaking chore.
All three of them were glowering at it. The captain would insist that they bring the bombard with them, wherever they went. And, naturally, being the plebeians of the team, they'd be the ones who had to tote the wretched thing.
One of the three assassins spoke up. "Perhaps... if we stayed here... Theodora..."
The captain almost snarled at him. "Don't be stupid. Impossible, the precautions she takes. Not even Nanda Lal expects us to have a chance at her."
"She hasn't left the complex once, since we arrived," the lieutenant chimed in, turning away from the window. "Not once, in three months. Even Emperor Skandagupta travels more often than that."
He pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. A moment later, the captain did the same.
"We had a good chance with the boy," the lieutenant added. "High-spirited as he is. He and his wife both. Now..."
He looked at his superior. "Follow them?"
"Not one of us speaks Ge'ez, sir," pointed one of the assassins. "And none of us are black."
Gloomily, the captain shook his head. "Don't belabor the obvious. We'll have to move fast and reach Egypt before they do. Try and do it there, if we can. All of us can pass as Persians among Arabs—or the reverse, if we must."
"We may well have to," cautioned his lieutenant. "The security in Egypt is reportedly ferocious. Organized by Romans, too. It'll be easier in Persia—easier still, in Persian-occupied Sind. The Iranians insist on placing grandees in charge of security, and grandees tend to be sloppy about these things."
"True." The captain stared down at the broadsheet. Then, did crumple it.
"They're not even going to try to run the mines, I don't think," Menander said. He lowered the telescope and offered it to Belisarius.
The general shook his head. "Your eyes are as good as mine. At that distance, for sure. What are you seeing?"
Before answering, Menander came down from the low platform he'd been standing on to observe the distant Malwa naval base. Then, stooped slightly so that his head would be well below the parapet. That brought his face on a level with the general's, since Belisarius was standing in a slight crouch also.
That was something of a new habit, but one that had become well-ingrained. Beginning a few weeks earlier, the Malwa had demonstrated that they, too, could produce rifles good enough for long-range sniping.
"Both ironclads just came out of the bunker. But they steamed north. They're headed away from us."
Belisarius closed his eyes, thinking. "You're probably right. I'd already pretty much come to the conclusion that the Malwa were assuming a defensive posture. From that standpoint, building the ironclads actually makes sense—where it would be a pure waste of resources to build them to attack us here in the Triangle. They'd never get through the mine fields."
Menander frowned, trying to follow the general's logic. "But I still don't see... oh."
"Yes. 'Oh.' You've gotten a better look at those ironclads than anyone—certainly a longer one. Could you defeat them—either one—with the Justinian? Or the Victrix?"
"The Victrix would just be suicide. They've got a couple of big guns in the bows. Eighteen-pounders, I think. They'd blow the Victrix to pieces long before it could get close enough to use the fire cannon."
He paused, for a moment. "As for the Justinian... Maybe. Against one of them, not both. It would depend on a lot of things, including plenty of luck. I'd do better in a night battle, I think."
Belisarius waited, patiently. Excellent young officers like Menander always started off their assessments too optimistically. He preferred to give them time for self-correction, rather than doing it himself.
With Menander, it only took half a minute. He was well-accustomed to Belisarius' habits, by now.
"All right, all right," he said, smiling slightly. "The truth? I might win—against one of them. But it would depend on some blind luck working in our favor. Even with luck, I'm not sure I could do it in the daytime."
Belisarius nodded, almost placidly. "That's how they designed them, Menander. Those ironclads weren't designed to break into the Triangle. They were designed to keep you from breaking out."
He stretched, while still being careful to keep his head out of sight of any snipers. "Look at this way. The Malwa now figure, with those ironclads finished and in service, that they've got the same control over the rivers north of the Triangle that we have of them to the south. That means they're in position to do to us the same thing we did to them last year—cut our supply lines if we attempt any major prolonged offensive. There's no way to supply that kind of massive campaign without using water transport. It just can't be done. Not, at least, with more than fifteen or—at most—twenty thousand men. By the standards of this war, that isn't a powerful enough force to win a pitched battle. Not here in the Punjab, anyway."
He glanced at the wall of the fortifications, as if he could see through it to the Malwa trenches beyond. "I estimate they've got upwards of a hundred thousand men out there. 'Out there' meaning in this immediate vicinity, facing us here in the Triangle. They've probably got another twenty thousand—maybe thirty—facing Kungas at the Khyber Pass, and thirty or forty thousand more held as a reserve in Multan."
"By now? Forty thousand in the Triangle itself, with another twenty thousand or so on their way here from the Empire, in a steady trickle. The Persians have about forty thousand troops actively engaged on this front. But most of them are still in the Sind, and even in the best of circumstances Khusrau would have to leave a third of them there to administer the province."
The young officer made a sour face. Belisarius smiled.
"He's an emperor, Menander. Emperors think like emperors, it's just the nature of the beast. And Khusrau has the additional problem that he's bound and determined to keep his new province of Sind under direct imperial control, rather than letting his noblemen run the show. But that means he has to use a lot of soldiers as administrators. Whether he likes it or not—much less whether we like it or not."
Menander's sour expression shaded into a simple scowl. "In short, we're outnumbered at least two-to-one, and that's not going to change."
"Not for the better, that's for sure. The only way it'll change will be for the worse. If the Malwa succeed in crushing Shakuntala's rebellion in the Deccan, that would free up Damodara and his army. Another forty thousand men, and, in terms of quality, undoubtedly the best army in the Malwa empire."
He let that sink in for a few seconds. Then: "It'd be worse than that, actually. The Maratha revolt inspired and triggered off smaller revolts and rebellions all over India. I estimate the Malwa are forced to keep one-half to two-thirds of their army in India proper, just to maintain control of the empire. The truth is this, Menander. So far, we've been able to fight a Malwa empire that could only use one hand against us, instead of two. And the weaker hand, at that, since Damodara's in the Deccan. If they break Shakuntala and Rao and the Marathas, all those smaller rebellions will start fading away quickly. Within a year, we'd be facing another hundred thousand men here in the Punjab—and Damodara could get his forty thousand here within two months. Three, at the outside."
The general shrugged. "Of course, by then we'd be so well-fortified here that I doubt very much if even a Malwa army twice this size could drive us out. But there's no way we could go on the offensive ourselves, either—certainly not with those ironclads controlling the rivers. They'll build a few more, I suspect. Enough to place two ironclads on the Indus and at least one on each of its four main tributaries."
"A war of attrition, in other words." Menander sucked his teeth. "That... stinks."
"Yes, it does. The casualties will become horrendous, once you let enough time pass—and the social and political strain on the kingdoms and empires involved will be just as bad. That's what that monster over there is counting on now, Menander. It thinks, with its iron control over the Malwa Empire, that it can outlast a coalition of allies."
Menander eyed the general. "And what do you think, sir?"
"I think that superhuman genius over there is just a grandiose version of a village idiot."
The young officer's eyes widened, a little. "Village idiot? That seems..."
"Too self-confident on my part?" Belisarius smiled. "You watch, young man. What you're seeing here is what Ousanas would call the fallacy of confusing the shadow for the true thing—the pale, sickly, real world version of the ideal type."
The general chuckled. "Let me put it this way. Emperors—or superhuman imitations thereof—think in terms like 'iron control,' as if it really meant something. But iron is a metal, not a people. Any good blacksmith can control iron. No emperor who ever lived can really control people. That's because iron, as refractory a substance as it may be, doesn't dispute the matter with the blacksmith."
He looked now, to the southeast. "So, we'll see. Link thinks it can win this waiting game. I think it's the village idiot."
Deogiri
The new capital of the reborn Andhra
Empire
In Majarashtra—the
"Great Country"
"It's ridiculous," Shakuntala hissed. "Ridiculous!"
Even as young as she was, the black-eyed glare of the Empress of Andhra was hot enough to have sizzled lizards in the desert.
Alas, the assassin squatting before her in a comfortable lotus seemed completely unaffected. So, she turned to other means.
"Summon my executioners!" she snapped. "At once!"
The glare was now turned upon her husband, sitting on a throne next to hers. A slight movement of Rao's forefinger had been enough to stay the courtiers before one of them could do her bidding.
"A moment," he said softly. He turned to face her glare, his expression every bit as calm and composed as the assassin's.
"You are, of course, the ruler of Andhra. And I, merely your consort. But since this matter touches upon my personal honor, I am afraid you will have to defer to my wishes. Either that, or use the executioners on me."
Shakuntala tried to maintain the glare. Hard, that, in the face of her worst fear since reading the letter brought by the assassin.
After five seconds or so, inevitably, she broke. "Rao—please. This is insane. The crudest ruse, on the part of the Malwa."
Rao transferred the calm gaze to the figure squatting on the carpet in the center of the audience chamber. For a moment, India's two best assassins contemplated each other.
"Oh, I think not," Rao murmured, even more softly. "Whatever else, not that."
He rose abruptly to his feet. "Take him to one of the guest chambers. Give him food, drink, whatever he wishes within reason."
Normally, Rao was punctilious about maintaining imperial protocol. Husband or not, wiser and older head or not, Rao was officially the consort and Shakuntala the reigning monarch. But, on occasion, when he felt it necessary, he would exert the informal authority that made him—in reality, if not in theory—the co-ruler of Andhra.
Shakuntala did not attempt to argue the matter. She was bracing herself for the much more substantial issue they would be arguing over as soon as they were in private.
"Clear the room," she commanded. "Dadaji, you stay."
Her eyes quickly scanned the room. Her trusted peshwa was a given. Who else?
The two top military commanders, of course. "Shahji, Kondev, you also."
She was tempted to omit Maloji, on the grounds that he was not one of the generals of the army. Formally speaking, at least. But... he was Rao's closest friend, in addition to being the commander of the Maratha irregulars.
Passing him over would be unwise. Besides, who was to say? Sometimes, Maloji was the voice of caution. He was, in some ways, even more Maratha than Rao—and the Marathas, as a people, were not given to excessive flamboyance on matters of so-called "honor." Quite unlike those mindless Rajputs.
That was enough, she thought. Rao would not be able to claim she had unbalanced the private council in her favor.
But, to her surprise, he added a name. "I should like Bindusara to remain behind also."
Shakuntala was surprised—and much pleased. She'd considered the Hindu religious leader herself, but had passed him over because she'd thought Rao would resent her bringing spiritual pressure to bear. The sadhu was not a pacifist after the manner of the Jains, but neither was he given to much patience for silly kshatriya notions regarding "honor."
It took a minute or so for the room to clear. As they waited, Shakuntala leaned over and whispered: "I wouldn't have thought you'd want Bindusara."
Rao smiled thinly. "You are the treasure of my soul. But you are also sometimes still very young. You are over your head here, girl. I wanted the sadhu because he is also a philosopher."
Shakuntala hissed, like an angry snake. She had a disquieting feeling, though, that she sounded like an angry young snake.
Certainly, the sound didn't seem to have any effect on Rao's smile. "You never pay enough attention to those lessons. Still! After all my pleading." The smile widened, considerably. The last courtier was passing through the door and there was no one left to see but the inner council.
"Philosophy has form as well as substance, girl. No one can be as good at it as Bindusara unless he is also a master of logic."
* * *
Shakuntala began the debate. Her arguments took not much time, since they were simplicity itself.
We have been winning the war by patience. Why should we accept this challenge to a clash of great armies on the open field, where we would be over-matched?
Because one old man challenges another to a duel? Because both of the fools still think they're young?
* * *
When it came his turn, Rao's smile was back in place. Very wide, now, that smile.
"Not so old as all that, I think," he protested mildly. "Neither me nor Rana Sanga. Still, my beloved wife has penetrated to the heart of thing. It is ridiculous for two men, now well past the age of forty—"
"Almost fifty!" Shakuntala snapped.
"—and, perhaps more to the point, both of them now very experienced commanders of armies, not young warriors seeking fame and glory, to suddenly be gripped by a desire to fight a personal duel."
To Shakuntala's dismay, the faces of the three generals had that horrid look on them. That half-dreamy, half-stern expression that men got when their brains oozed out of their skulls and they started babbling like boys again.
"Be a match of legend," murmured Kondev.
The Empress almost screamed from sheer frustration. The day-long single combat that Rao and Rana Sanga had fought once, long ago, was famous all across India. Every mindless warrior in India would drool over the notion of a rematch.
"You were twenty years old, then!"
Rao nodded. "Indeed, we were. But you are not asking the right question, Shakuntala. Have you—ever once—heard me so much as mention any desire for another duel with Sanga? Even in my sleep."
"I think not. I can assure you—everyone here—that the thought has not once crossed my mind for at least... oh, fifteen years. More likely, twenty."
He leaned forward a bit, gripping the armrests of the throne in his powerful, out-sized hands. "So why does anyone think that Rana Sanga would think of it, either? Have I aged, and he, not? True, he is a Rajput. But, even for Rajputs, there is a difference between a husband and a father of children and a man still twenty and unattached. A difference not simply in the number of lines on their faces, but in how they think."
Shahji cleared his throat. "He has lost his family, Rao. Perhaps that has driven him to fury."
"But has he lost them?" Rao looked to Dadaji Holkar. Not to his surprise, the empire's peshwa still had one of the letters brought by the Malwa assassin held in his hand. Almost clutched, in fact.
"What do you make of it, Dadaji?"
Holkar's face bore an odd expression. An unlikely combination of deep worry and even deeper exultation. "Oh, it's from my daughters. There are little signs—a couple of things mentioned no one else could have known—"
"—that make me certain of it." He glanced at Kondev and shook his head. "Torture seems unlikely. For one thing, although the handwriting is poor—my daughters' education was limited, of course, in the short time I had before they were taken from me—it is not shaky at all. I recognized it quite easily. I can even tell you which portion was written by Dhruva, and which by Lata, from that alone. Could I do so, were the hands holding the pen trembling with pain and fear as well as inexperience? Besides..."
He looked at the door through which the courtiers had left—and, a bit earlier, an assassin. "I do not think that man is a torturer."
"Neither do I," said Rao firmly. "And I believe, at my advanced age"—here, a sly little smile at Shakuntala—"I can tell the difference."
Shakuntala scowled, but said nothing. Rao gestured at Holkar. "Continue, please."
"The letter tells me nothing, naturally, of the girls' location. But it does depict, in far more detail than I would have expected, the comfort of their lives now. And there are so many references to the mysterious 'ladies' to whom they have—this is blindingly obvious—grown very attached."
Dadaji studied the letter in his hand, for a moment. "I conclude from this that someone—not my daughters, someone else—is sending me a message here. Us, rather, a message."
Rao leaned back in his throne. "So I think, also. You will all remember the message sent to us last year from Dadaji's daughters, with the coin?"
Several heads nodded, Shakuntala's among them.
"And how Irene Macrembolitissa convinced us it was not a trap, but the first step in a complex maneuver by Narses?"
Rao pointed to the letter. "I think that is the second step. Inviting us to take a third—or, rather, allow someone else to do so."
That statement was met by frowns of puzzlement on most faces. But, from the corner of her eye, Shakuntala saw Bindusara nodding.
She could sense that she was losing the argument. For a moment, she had to struggle desperately not to collapse into sheer girlish pleading—which would end, inevitably, with her blurting out before the council news she had not yet even given to Rao. Of the new child that was coming.
Suddenly, Rao's large hand reached over and gave her little one a squeeze. "Oh, be still, girl. I can assure you that I have no intention whatsoever of fighting Rana Sanga again."
His smile was simply cheerful now. "Ever again, in fact. And that is precisely why I will accept the challenge."
In the few seconds those two sentences required, Shakuntala swung from despair to elation and back. "You don't need to do this!"
"Of course, I don't. But Rana Sanga does."
Axum
"What, no elephants?" Antonina asked sarcastically.
Ousanas shook his head. "They won't fit in the corridors, not even in the Ta'akha Maryam. We tried. Too bad, though. It would have made a nice flourish. Instead—"
He gestured before them, down the long hallway leading to the throne room. "—we must walk."
Antonina tried to picture war elephants inside the Ta'akha Maryam, her mind boggling a little. Even if the huge beasts could have been inserted into the halls...
She looked down the long rows of guards and officials, flanking both sides. "They'd have crushed everybody," she muttered.
"Oh, not the soldiers. Most of them would have scampered aside in time, and the ones who didn't had no business being sarwen anyway. In fact, Ezana thought it would be a useful test."
Ezana was the senior commander of the three royal regiments. Antonina thought he was probably cold-blooded enough to have said that. There was something downright scary about Ezana. Fortunately, he was not hot-tempered, nor impulsive. Even more fortunately, his devotion to the dynasty was unquestioned by anyone, including Antonina.
Ezana had been one of Eon's two bodyguards while he'd still been a prince. That was a very prestigious position for the soldiers who made up Ethiopia's regiments—the "sarwen," as they called themselves. When Eon had assumed the throne, Ezana had become the commander of the royal regiments—and the other bodyguard, Wahsi, had been appointed the military commander of the Ethiopian naval expedition that Antonina had used to rescue Belisarius and his army from the siege of Charax.
Wahsi had died in battle in the course of that expedition. Eon's son, the new Axumite King of Kings, had been named after him.
So, Antonina had no doubt at all of Ezana's loyalty to the infant negusa nagast, sired by the prince he'd guarded and named after his best friend. Still, he was... scary.
"The slaughter among the officials, of course, would have been immense," Ousanas continued cheerfully. "seeing how half of them are as fat as elephants, and eight out of ten have brains that move more ponderously. But it was my assessment that the loss of one-third would be a blessing for the kingdom. Ezana was hoping that half would be crushed."
Antonina thought the aqabe tsentsen was joking, but she wasn't sure. There were ways in which Ousanas was even scarier than Ezana. But since they were nearing the entrance to the throne room, she decided she'd simply pretend she hadn't heard.
One-third of Ethiopia's officials, slain in a few minutes! Half, according to Ezana!
Bloodthirsty African maniacs. Antonina would have been quite satisfied with a simple, unostentatious Roman decimation.
* * *
As if his booming commander's voice wasn't enough, Ezana slammed the iron-capped ferrule of his spear onto the stone floor. "Be silent!"
The throne room had become perfectly quiet even before the ferrule hit the floor. Leaving aside the fact that no one in their right mind was going to disobey Ezana under these circumstances, the crowd packed into the huge chamber was waiting to hear Antonina's decrees. Eagerly, in some cases; anxiously, in others; fearfully, in some. But not one person there was indifferent, or inclined to keep chattering.
Actually, there hadn't been much chatter anyway. Antonina had noticed the unusual quiet the moment she entered the room. Ethiopians had informal habits, when it came to royalty, certainly compared to Roman or Persian custom. As a rule, even during an official session, the royal audience chamber had a constant little hubbub of conversation in the background. Nothing boisterous or intrusive, to be sure. But neither Ethiopian soldier-seamen nor Arab merchants saw any reason not to conduct quiet business in the back of the chamber while the negusa nagast and his officials made their various judgments and rulings around the throne.
Not today. The chamber had been subdued when Antonina entered, and now it was utterly silent.
Well... not quite. Softly and contentedly, the baby ruler of the kingdom was suckling his mother's breast, as she sat on the throne.
That was being done on Antonina's instructions. Normally, for such a session, Rukaiya would have used a wet nurse just as readily as any Roman empress. But Antonina had thought the sight of the baby feeding would help remind everyone of the cold and hard facts that surrounded that softest of realities.
On one side, the cold and hard facts that this was the son of Eon the Great and his successor—and this was the woman he had chosen to be his queen. On the other, the colder and harder facts that the successor was a babe, and the queen a teenager. The same cold and hard facts that had existed when Alexander the Great died—and, within a few short years, had led to civil war, the eventual division of the empire between the Diadochi, and the murder of Alexander's widow and child.
Ezana waited until Antonina had climbed the steps that led up to the royal dais. The steps were wide, but shallow. Wide enough to give the guards positioned just behind the throne time to intercept any would-be assassin. Shallow enough, that the ruler was not so elevated above his subjects that a normal conversation couldn't be held with those seeking an audience.
There was a chair waiting for her there, to the right of the queen's. A throne, really, though not as large or elaborate as the one in which Rukaiya sat with the infant negusa nagast. But Antonina had already decided she'd make her decrees while standing. She'd learned that trick from watching her friend Theodora rule Rome.
Sit, when you're judging and negotiating—but always stand, when you're really laying down the law.
As soon as Antonina had reached her position and given him a little nod—she'd already told Ezana she wouldn't be using the chair for this—the regimental commander's voice boomed out again.
"As decreed by Eon the Great on his deathbed, the Roman woman Antonina will rule on the measures to be taken to ensure the royal succession. Eon gave her complete authority for the task. I was there, I heard, I bear witness. Her decrees are final. Her decrees are absolute. They will not be questioned."
That was... not entirely true. No decrees laid down by anyone other than God could cover all the details and complexities. Antonina knew full well that, starting on the morrow, she'd be sitting in that chair and dickering over the fine points. Still, for the moment—
In case anyone had any lingering doubts, Ezana slammed the spear butt on the stones again. "Not by anyone!"
Before she began, she glanced around the room. All the principals were there. Ousanas was standing on the lowest step of the dais, to her right, as was customary for the aqabe tsentsen. Ezana occupied the equivalent position to the left, as befit the commander of the royal regiments. Just to his left, on the stone floor, were the rest of the commanders of the regiments stationed in Axum.
Directly front of the dais were assembled the kingdom's officials, with old Garmat at the center. Officially, he was the viceroy of the Axum-controlled portions of Arabia. In reality, he also served as one of the ruler's closest advisers. Garmat had served Eon's father Kaleb in the same posts that Ousanas had later served Eon himself—first, as the dawazz for the prince; then, as the aqabe tsentsen for the king. The half-Arab one-time bandit was cunning and shrewd, and much respected by everyone in the kingdom.
Spread out to either side of the officials, and ranging beyond throughout the throne room, was the elite of the realm. The majority were Ethiopians, but perhaps a third were Arabs. All of the latter were either tribal or clan chiefs, or experienced and wealthy merchants and traders—or, more often than not, both together.
There was one Arab standing next to Garmat, in the small group of officials at the center. That was Rukaiya's father, who was one of the wealthiest of the Quraysh merchants in Mecca—and had been appointed by Eon himself as the viceroy for Arabia's west coast. The Hijaz, as it was called, the area north of Yemen that was dominated by the Quraysh tribe.
"You all understand the problem we face," Antonina began. She saw no reason to bore everyone with a recitation of the obvious. Everyone there had had months to consider the situation, and by now everyone understand it perfectly well.
"The future for Axum is splendid, provided the kingdom can pass through the next twenty years without strife and turmoil. To do so, in my judgment, the throne needs an additional bulwark."
Since Axumites were expert sailors as well as stone masons, she added another image. "An outrigger, if you will, to keep the craft from overturning in heavy seas."
She had to fight down a smile, seeing Ousanas and Garmat wince slightly. Both men were fond of poetry—Garmat more than Ousanas—and she knew she'd be hearing wisecracks later concerning her pedestrian use of simile and metaphor.
Ezana's expression, on the other hand, was simply intent. And it was ultimately Ezana who mattered here. Not simply because he commanded the spears of the regiment, but because he—unlike Ousanas and Garmat, each outsiders in their different ways—was Ethiopian through and through. If Ezana accepted her ruling, with no hesitations or doubts, she was confident the rest would follow.
"So, I have decided to create a new post for the kingdom. The name of this official will be the angabo."
She paused, knowing that the little murmur which swept the room was both inevitable and worked to her advantage.
The term "angabo" was well known to those people, especially the Ethiopians. The kingdom of Axum had several legends concerning its origins. The predominant one, contained in the Book of Aksum, held that the founder of the city of Axum was Aksumawi, son of Ethiopis and grandson of the Noah of the Bible. A related legend had it that the kings of Axum were descendants of Solomon and Makeda, the queen of Sheba. Those were the officially favored legends, of course, since they gave the now-Christian kingdom an impeccably Biblical lineage for their rulers.
But Axum had only converted to Christianity two centuries earlier, and there still existed a third and older legend. This legend had no formal sanction, but it was well-respected by the populace—and neither the kings of Ethiopia nor its Christian bishops had ever made any attempt to suppress it. Axumites were not much given to doctrinal asperity, certainly by the standards of Rome's contentious bishops and patriarchs. All the more so since the legend, however pagan it might be, was hardly derisive toward the monarchy.
According to that older legend, Ethiopia had once been ruled by a great and evil serpent named Arwe or Waynaba. Once a year, the serpent-king demanded the tribute of a young girl. This continued until a stranger named Angabo arrived, slew the serpent, saved the girl, and was then elected king by the people. His descendant, it was said, was the Makeda who was the queen of Sheba of the Solomon story—although still another version of the legend claimed Makeda was the girl he rescued.
Antonina glanced down at Garmat. The old adviser was managing to keep a straight face—which must have been hard, since he was the one person with whom Antonina had discussed her plans. And he, unlike her, was standing where he could see Ousanas directly.
Such a pity, really. By now, the quick mind of Ousanas would have realized where she was going with this—and Antonina would have paid a princely sum to have been able to watch the expression on his face.
She tried, surreptitiously, out of the corner of her eye. But, alas, the aqabe tsentsen was just that little bit too far to the side to see his face as anything other than a dark blur.
"The angabo will command all the regiments of Axum except the three royal regiments. Those will, as now, remain under the authority of the senior commander. Ezana, as he is today."
The regimental commanders wouldn't much like that provision. Traditionally, they'd been equals who met as a council, with no superior other than the negusa nagast himself. But Antonina didn't expect any serious problems from that quarter. Ethiopia had now grown from a kingdom to an empire, and the sarwen were hard-headed enough to recognize that their old egalitarian traditions would have to adapt, at least to a degree. Over half of the regiments were now in India, after all—so how could the council of commanders meet in the first place?
In essence, Antonina had just recreated the old Roman division between the regular army and the Praetorian Guard. That hadn't worked out too well for Rome, in the long run. But Antonina didn't think Axum would face the same problem that the Roman Empire had faced, of being so huge and far-flung that the Praetorian Guard wound up being the tail in the capital that wagged the dog in the far-off provinces.
Even with the expansion into the African continent to the south that Eon and Ousanas had planned, Axum would still remain a relatively compact realm. The three royal regiments would not have the ability of the Praetorian Guard to over-ride the army, seeing as how most of the regular regiments under the control of the angabo would be stationed no farther away than southern and western Arabia—just across the Red Sea. They'd be even closer once the capital was moved from Axum to the great Red Sea port of Adulis, as was planned also.
And, in any event, the long run was the long run. Antonina had no illusions that she could manipulate political and military developments over a span of centuries. She simply wanted to buy Axum twenty years of internal peace—and leave it reasonably secure at the end.
"The position of the angabo will be a hereditary one," she continued, "unlike the positions of the aqabe tsentsen, or the viceroys, or the commanders of the sarwen. Second only to the negusa nagast, the angabo will be accounted the highest nobleman of the realm."
She waited for a moment, letting the crowd digest that decree. The Ethiopian nobility wouldn't much like that provision, of course—but, on the other hand, it would please the sarwen commanders. Often enough, of course, the commanders were noblemen—but that was not the root source of either their identity or their authority within the regiments.
"The descendants of the angabo, however, may not under any circumstances assume the throne of the kingdom. They may marry into the ruling dynasty, but the children of that union will inherit the position of the angabo, not the negusa nagast. They will be, forever, the highest noblemen of Axum—but they will also be, forever, barred from the throne itself."
That was the key. She'd considered the Antonine tradition of adoption as an alternative, but both she and Garmat had decided it would be too risky. Unlike Romans, neither the Ethiopians nor the Arabs had ever used the custom of political adoption in that manner. It would be too foreign to them. This, however, was something everyone could understand. She'd essentially created a Caesar alongside an Augustus—but then divided the two into separate lineages. Instead of, as the Romans had done, making the Caesar the designated successor to the Augustus.
Eventually, some day, one or another angabo might manage to distort the structure enough to overthrow a dynasty. But... not for at least a century, she judged. Garmat thought it would be at least that long before anyone even seriously tried.
"They'll like this set-up, once they get used it," he'd told her confidently, the day before. "Ethiopians and Arabs alike. Watch and see if I'm not right. It's almost a dual monarchy, with a senior and a junior dynasty, which means that if you can't wheedle one, maybe you can wheedle what you need out of the other. Good enough—when the alternative is the risk of a failed rebellion."
Then, grinning: "Especially after they contemplate the first and founding angabo."
Antonina paused again. By now, many sets of eyes were swiveling toward a particular person in the room. The first pair had been those belonging to Rukaiya's father.
She was not surprised, on either count. Many of the people in that room were extremely shrewd—none more so than Rukaiya's father, leaving aside Garmat himself.
Best of all, to her, was the sense she got that he was immensely relieved. A very slight sense, since the man had superb control over his public face, but it was still definitely there. He'd be the one person in the room who would consider this as a father, not simply as a magnate of the kingdom—and he doted on Rukaiya.
"To make certain that the position of the angabo and his descendants is established surely and certainly for all to see, the first angabo will marry Rukaiya, widow of Eon the Great and the regent of the kingdom. Their children will thus be the half-brothers and sisters of the negusa nagast, Wahsi."
She turned her head enough to look at Rukaiya. The girl was staring up at her, blank-faced. The young queen was still waiting, still keeping her expression under tight control. She'd known for some time that she would most likely have to re-marry—and soon—as little as she looked forward to the prospect.
Now, obviously, she simply wanted... the name.
She dreaded hearing it, of course. Rukaiya was a very capable, energetic and free-spirited girl. She'd been raised by a lenient and supportive father and married to a young prince, a bibliophile himself, who'd enjoyed her intellect and encouraged her learning. Now, she faced the prospect of marriage to...
Whoever it was, not someone likely to be much like her father or her former husband.
Antonina had to struggle to keep her own face expressionless. Silly girl! Did you really think I'd condemn you to such a living death? Nonsense.
"The rest is obvious. The first angabo, like the Angabo of legend, must be a complete outsider. Neither Ethiopian nor Arab, and with no existing ties to any clan or tribe in the kingdom. Yet he must also be a famous warrior and a wise counselor. One whom all know can and has hunted and slain evil serpent-kings—as this one, in my presence once, helped my husband trap and slay the serpent-queen of Malwa. Who was the greatest, and most evil, creature in the world."
Finally, she turned to look at him squarely.
Ousanas would have figured it out as quickly as Rukaiya's father. By now, he had his expression completely under control.
Too bad. It was probably the only chance Antonina would ever get to make the man's jaw drop.
Noisily, Garmat cleared his throat. "Does Ousanas accept the post?"
The famous grin came, then. "What does 'accept' have to do with it?" He nodded toward Ezana, standing stone-faced on the other side of the dais. "I heard what he said, even if some others were deaf. The words were 'final' and 'absolute'—and I distinctly remember 'without question.' That said..."
For a moment, while Ousanas' grin faded away, he and Ezana stared at each other. It was not quite a contest of wills. Not quite.
Ousanas turned to the queen, sitting on the throne. "That said," he continued quietly, "I would not force this on Rukaiya. She has been very dear to me also, if not the same way she was to Eon."
The moment Antonina had spoken the name, she'd seen Rukaiya lower her head, as if she were solely concerned with her feeding infant. That was as good a way as any to bring herself under composure, of course.
Now, she looked up. Quickly, before lowering her head again to concentrate on Wahsi.
There might have been a hint of tears in her eyes. But all she said was: "I have no objection, Ousanas."
"It is done!" Ezana boomed. More forcefully than ever, the spearbutt slammed the stones. "It is done—and the royal regiments stand ready to enforce the decrees. As before. As always. As ever."
He glanced at Antonina. Seeing her little nod, he boomed: "All clear the chamber! There will be no further audience until the morrow."
* * *
At a small sign from Antonina, Garmat remained behind. No one would think that amiss. The old adviser's special relationship to the throne was well-established and accepted. In any event, most people in the room would already have realized that he would soon be the new aqabe tsentsen, to replace Ousanas.
She would have liked to have Rukaiya's father remain. Under the circumstances, however, that might give rise to certain resentments.
Ezana stayed, also. He'd begun to leave, but even before Antonina could signal him to stay, Ousanas ordered him to do so.
Ordered him, outright. The first time he'd ever done so, in the many years the two men had known each other and worked closely together training and nurturing and protecting a young prince named Eon.
To Antonina's relief, Ezana had not seemed to bridle at all. In fact, he seemed a bit relieved himself.
In the short time that it took to clear the chamber, Antonina studied Ousanas. The man had seemed majestic to her for several years. Never more so than now.
* * *
Once the room was empty except for the five key people—six, counting the infant—Ousanas smiled ruefully.
"I will admit—again—that you are a genius, Antonina. This will work, I think. But..."
He looked at Rukaiya. She, back at him. There was sadness in both faces.
"I am not ready for this. Not yet. Neither is she."
There were definitely tears in Rukaiya's eyes, now. She shook her head. "No, I am not. I have... no objection, as I said. Sooner or later, I would have had to marry again, and I can think of no one I'd prefer. But Eon is still too close."
Ezana cleared his throat. "Yes. Of course. But I think he would be pleased, Rukaiya. And I knew him as well as any man."
She smiled, slightly. "Oh, yes. His ghost will be pleased—but not yet."
"It doesn't matter," Antonina said firmly. "We need to hold the wedding soon, but there is no reason you need to consummate the marriage immediately. In fact—"
Garmat picked up the cue, seamlessly. "It would be a bad idea," he said firmly. "We will need children from this union—many children, to be blunt, to give Wahsi a host of half-brothers and sisters to help him rule, since he will have no full ones. But we don't need them right now. No one will even start thinking about opposition for at least two years."
"More likely five—or ten," Ezana grunted. The smile that followed was a very cold sort of thing. "I can guarantee that much."
Garmat nodded. "Actually, the danger would be for you to have a child too soon. Enough time must elapse for it to have been impossible for Eon to have been the father. Impossible. That means waiting at least a year after his death last summer."
The relief on the faces of both Rukaiya and Ousanas was almost comical.
"Of course," Ousanas said. "Stupid of me not to have seen it instantly. Or else—three generations from now—some over-ambitious and small-brained great-grandson of mine might start claiming he was actually the great-grandson of Eon."
Smiling very gently now, he stepped forward and placed his hand on the baby's head. "In my safe-keeping, also."
He straightened. "We should do more, I think. Make it impossible the other way, also. And do so in a way that is publicly obvious, even to bedouin."
Clearly enough, his brain was back to working as well as always.
"Yes," she said firmly. This was something that Antonina and Garmat had already decided upon. "There is no need for me to remain here, and I would very much like to see my husband again. Ousanas should go with me to India, leading whatever military force Axum can add to the war."
She gave a quick glance at Ezana. "Except the three royal regiments, of course."
"We'll leave two regiments in Arabia also," said Garmat. "That will be enough. The Arabs will have no problem with Antonina's decrees on the succession."
"That will be enough," Ezana agreed. "The kingdom will be stable, and Ousanas can squeeze whatever advantage he can get for Axum from our deepened participation in the war. By the time he gets back, at least a year will have elapsed from Eon's death."
"Yes. I agree." She also, smiled gently. "And I will be ready, by then, for another husband."
"Done!" Ezana boomed. He did, however—just barely—manage to restrain himself from slamming the ferrule on the stones.
Ousanas scowled. "And, now—for the details! We'll have at least a week to squabble—more likely, two—before a suitable wedding can be organized. The first thing I want clearly established is that the royal regiments—not the otherwise-soon-to-be-impoverished mendicant family of the downtrodden angabo—has to pay for all the damage done to the floors by heavy-handed commanders."
"Ridiculous!" boomed Ezana. "The maintenance of the palace should clearly be paid for out of the angabo's coffers."
The spearbutt slammed the floor.
Chabahari, in the Straits of Hormuz
Chabahari seemed like a nightmare to Anna. When she first arrived in the town—city, now—she was mainly struck by the chaos in the place. Not so long ago, Chabahari had been a sleepy fishing village. Since the great Roman-Persian expedition led by Belisarius to invade the Malwa homeland through the Indus valley had begun, Chabahari had been transformed almost overnight into a great military staging depot. The original fishing village was now buried somewhere within a sprawling and disorganized mass of tents, pavilions, jury-rigged shacks—and, of course, the beginnings of the inevitable grandiose palaces which Persians insisted on putting anywhere that their grandees resided.
Her first day was spent entirely in a search for the authorities in charge of the town. She had promised Dryopus she would report to those authorities as soon as she arrived.
But the search was futile. She found the official headquarters easily enough—one of the half-built palaces being erected by the Persians. But the interior of the edifice was nothing but confusion, a mass of workmen swarming all over, being overseen by a handful of harassed-looking supervisors. Not an official was to be found anywhere, neither Persian nor Roman.
"Try the docks," suggested the one foreman who spoke Greek and was prepared to give her a few minutes of his time. "The noble sirs complain about the noise here, and the smell everywhere else."
The smell was atrocious. Except in the immediate vicinity of the docks—which had their own none-too-savory aroma—the entire city seemed to be immersed in a miasma made up of the combined stench of excrement, urine, sweat, food—half of it seemingly rotten—and, perhaps most of all, blood and corrupting flesh. In addition to being a staging area for the invasion, Chabahari was also a depot where badly injured soldiers were being evacuated back to their homelands.
Those of them who survive this horrid place, Anna thought angrily, as she stalked out of the "headquarters." Illus and Cottomenes trailed behind her. Once she passed through the aivan onto the street beyond—insofar as the term "street" could be used at all for a simple space between buildings and shacks, teeming with people—she spent a moment or so looking south toward the docks.
"What's the point?" asked Illus, echoing her thoughts. "We didn't find anyone there when we disembarked." He cast a glance at the small mound of Anna's luggage piled up next to the building. The wharf boys whom Anna had hired to carry her belongings were lounging nearby, under Abdul's watchful eye.
"Besides," Illus continued, "it'll be almost impossible to keep your stuff from being stolen, in that madhouse down there."
Anna sighed. She looked down at her long dress, grimacing ruefully. The lowest few inches of the once-fine fabric, already ill-used by her journey from Constantinople, was now completely ruined. And the rest of it was well on its way—as much from her own sweat as anything else. The elaborate garments of a Greek noblewoman, designed for salons in the Roman Empire's capital, were torture in this climate.
A glimpse of passing color caught her eye. For a moment, she studied the figure of a young woman moving down the street. Some sort of Indian girl, apparently. Since the war had erupted into the Indian subcontinent, the inevitable human turbulence had thrown people of different lands into the new cauldrons of such cities as Chabahari. Mixing them up like grain caught in a thresher. Anna had noticed several Indians even in Charax.
Mainly, she just envied the woman's clothing, which was infinitely better suited for the climate than her own. By her senatorial family standards, of course, it was shockingly immodest. But she spent a few seconds just imagining what her bare midriff would feel like, if it didn't feel like a mass of spongy, sweaty flesh.
Illus chuckled. "You'd peel like a grape, girl. With your fair skin?"
Anna had long since stopped taking offense at her "servant's" familiarity with her. That, too, would have outraged her family. But Anna herself took an odd little comfort in it. Much to her surprise, she had discovered over the weeks of travel that she was at ease in the company of Illus and his companions.
"Damn you, too," she muttered, not without some humor of her own. "I'd toughen up soon enough. And I wouldn't mind shedding some skin, anyway. What I've got right now feels like it's gangrenous."
It was Illus' turn to grimace. "Don't even think it, girl. Until you've seen real gangrene..."
A stray waft of breeze from the northwest illustrated his point. That was the direction of the great military "hospital" which the Roman army had set up on the outskirts of the city. The smell almost made Anna gag.
The gag brought up a reflex of anger, and, with it, a sudden decision.
Anna shrugged. "Maybe there'll be an official there. If nothing else, I need to find where the telegraph office is located."
Illus' face made his disagreement clear enough. Still—for all that she allowed familiarity, Anna had also established over the past weeks that she was his master.
"Let's go," she repeated firmly. "If nothing else, that's probably the only part of this city where we'd find some empty lodgings."
"True enough," said Illus, sighing. "They'll be dying like flies, over there." He hesitated, then began to speak. But Anna cut him off before he got out more than three words.
"I'm not insane, damn you. If there's an epidemic, we'll leave. But I doubt it. Not in this climate, this time of year. At least... not if they've been following the sanitary regulations."
Illus' face creased in a puzzled frown. "What's that got to do with anything? What regulations?"
Anna snorted and began to walk off to the northwest. "Don't you read anything besides those damned Dispatches?"
Cottomenes spoke up. "No one does," he said. Cheerfully, as usual. "No soldier, anyway. Your husband's got a way with words, he does. Have you ever tried to read official regulations?"
Those words, too, brought a reflex of anger. But, as she forced her way through the mob toward the military hospital, Anna found herself thinking about them. And eventually came to realize two things.
One. Although she was a voracious reader, she hadn't ever read any official regulations. Not those of the army, at any rate. But she suspected they were every bit as turgid as the regulations which officials in Constantinople spun out like spiders spinning webs.
Two. Calopodius did have a way with words. On their way down the Euphrates—and then again, as they sailed from Charax to Chabahari—the latest Dispatches and the newest chapters from his History of Belisarius and the War had been available constantly. Belisarius, Anna had noted, seemed to be as adamant about strewing printing presses behind his army's passage as he was about arms depots.
The chapters of the History had been merely perused on occasion by her soldier companions. Anna could appreciate the literary skill involved, but the constant allusions in those pages were meaningless to Illus and his brother, much less the illiterate Abdul. Yet they pored over each and every Dispatch, often enough in the company of a dozen other soldiers. One of them reading it aloud, while the others listened with rapt attention.
As always, her husband's fame caused some part of Anna to seethe with fury. But, this time, she also thought about it. And if, at the end, her thoughts caused her anger to swell, it was a much cleaner kind of anger. One which did not coil in her stomach like a worm, but simply filled her with determination.
The hospital was even worse than she'd imagined. But she did, not surprisingly, find an unused tent in which she and her companions could make their quarters. And she did discover the location of the telegraph office—which, as it happened, was situated right next to the sprawling grounds of the "hospital."
The second discovery, however, did her little good. The official in charge, once she awakened him from his afternoon nap, yawned and explained that the telegraph line from Barbaricum to Chabahari was still at least a month away from completion.
"That'll mean a few weeks here," muttered Illus. "It'll take at least that long for couriers to bring your husband's reply."
Instead of the pure rage those words would have brought to her once, the Isaurian's sour remark simply caused Anna's angry determination to harden into something like iron.
"Good," she pronounced. "We'll put the time to good use."
"Give me tonight to figure it out."
* * *
It didn't take her all night. Just four hours. The first hour she spent sitting in her screened-off portion of the tent, with her knees hugged closely to her chest, listening to the moans and shrieks of the maimed and dying soldiers who surrounded it. The remaining three, studying the books she had brought with her—especially her favorite, Irene Macrembolitissa's Commentaries on the Talisman of God, which had been published just a few months before Anna's precipitous decision to leave Constantinople in search of her husband.
Irene Macrembolitissa was Anna's private idol. Not that the sheltered daughter of the Melisseni had ever thought to emulate the woman's adventurous life, except intellectually. The admiration had simply been an emotional thing, the heroine-worship of a frustrated girl for a woman who had done so many things she could only dream about. But now, carefully studying those pages in which Macrembolitissa explained certain features of natural philosophy as given to mankind through Belisarius by the Talisman of God, she came to understand the hard practical core which lay beneath the great woman's flowery prose and ease with classical and biblical allusions. And, with that understanding, came a hardening of her own soul.
Fate, against her will and her wishes, had condemned her to be a wife. So be it. She would begin with that practical core; with concrete truth, not abstraction. She would steel the bitterness of a wife into the driving will of the wife. The wife of Calopodius the Blind, Calopodius of the Saronites.
The next morning, very early, she presented her proposition.
"Do any of you have a problem with working in trade?"
The three soldiers stared at her, stared at each other, broke into soft laughter.
"We're not senators, girl," chuckled Illus.
Anna nodded. "Fine. You'll have to work on speculation, though. I'll need the money I have left to pay the others."
Anna smiled grimly. "I think you call it 'the muscle.'"
Cottomenes frowned. "I thought we were 'the muscle.' "
"Not any more," said Anna. "You're promoted. All three of you are now officers in the hospital service."
Anna realized she hadn't considered the name of the thing. For a moment, the old anger flared. But she suppressed it easily enough. This was no time for pettiness, after all.
"We'll call it Calopodius' Wife's Service. How's that?"
The three soldiers shook their heads. Clearly enough, they had no understanding of what she was talking about.
It didn't take them long. Illus' glare was enough to cow the official "commander" of the hospital, who was as sorry-looking a specimen of "officer" as Anna could imagine. And if the man might have wondered at the oddness of such glorious ranks being borne by such as Illus and his two companions—Abdul looked as far removed from a tribune as could be imagined—he was wise enough to keep his doubts to himself.
The dozen or so soldiers whom Anna recruited into the Service in the next hour—"the muscle"—had no trouble at all believing that Illus and Cottomenes and Abdul were, respectively, the chiliarch and two tribunes of a new army "service" they'd never heard of. First, because they were all veterans of the war and could recognize others—and knew, as well, that Belisarius promoted with no regard for personal origin. Second—more importantly—because they were wounded soldiers cast adrift in a chaotic "military hospital" in the middle of nowhere. Anna—Illus, actually, following her directions—selected only those soldiers whose wounds were healing well. Men who could move around and exert themselves. Still, even for such men, the prospect of regular pay meant a much increased chance at survival.
Anna wondered, a bit, whether walking-wounded "muscle" would serve the purpose. But her reservations were settled within the next hour after four of the new "muscle," at Illus' command, beat the first surgeon into a bloody pulp when the man responded to Anna's command to start boiling his instruments with a sneer and a derogatory remark about meddling women.
By the end of the first day, eight other surgeons were sporting cuts and bruises. But, at least when it came to the medical staff, there were no longer any doubts—none at all, in point of fact—as to whether this bizarre new "Calopodius' Wife's Service" had any actual authority.
Two of the surgeons complained to the hospital's commandant, but that worthy chose to remain inside his headquarters' tent. That night, Illus and three of his new "muscle" beat the two complaining surgeons into a still bloodier pulp, and all complaints to the commandant ceased thereafter.
Complaints from the medical staff, at least. A body of perhaps twenty soldiers complained to the hospital commandant the next day, hobbling to the HQ as best they could. But, again, the commandant chose to remain inside; and, again, Illus—this time using his entire corps of "muscle," which had now swollen to thirty men—thrashed the complainers senseless afterward.
Thereafter, whatever they might have muttered under their breath, none of the soldiers in the hospital protested openly when they were instructed to dig real latrines, away from the tents—and use them. Nor did they complain when they were ordered to help completely immobilized soldiers use them as well.
* * *
By the end of the fifth day, Anna was confident that her authority in the hospital was well enough established. She spent a goodly portion of those days daydreaming about the pleasures of wearing more suitable apparel, as she made her slow way through the ranks of wounded men in the swarm of tents. But she knew full well that the sweat which seemed to saturate her was one of the prices she would have to pay. Lady Saronites, wife of Calopodius the Blind, daughter of the illustrious family of the Melisseni, was a figure of power and majesty and authority—and had the noble gowns to prove it, even if they were soiled and frayed. Young Anna, all of nineteen years old, wearing a sari, would have had none at all.
By the sixth day, as she had feared, what was left of the money she had brought with her from Constantinople was almost gone. So, gathering her now-filthy robes in two small but determined hands, she marched her way back into the city of Chabahari. By now, at least, she had learned the name of the city's commander.
It took her half the day to find the man, in the taberna where he was reputed to spend most of his time. By the time she did, as she had been told, he was already half-drunk.
"Garrison troops," muttered Illus as they entered the tent which served the city's officers for their entertainment. The tent was filthy, as well as crowded with officers and their whores.
Anna found the commandant of the garrison in a corner, with a young half-naked girl perched on his lap. After taking half the day to find the man, it only took her a few minutes to reason with him and obtain the money she needed to keep the Service in operation.
Most of those few minutes were spent explaining, in considerable detail, exactly what she needed. Most of that, in specifying tools and artifacts—more shovels to dig more latrines; pots for boiling water; more fabric for making more tents, because the ones they had were too crowded. And so forth.
She spent a bit of time, at the end, specifying the sums of money she would need.
"Twenty solidi—a day." She nodded at an elderly wounded soldier whom she had brought with her along with Illus. "That's Zeno. He's literate. He's the Service's accountant in Chabahari. You can make all the arrangements through him."
The garrison's commandant then spent a minute explaining to Anna, also in considerable detail—mostly anatomical—what she could do with the tools, artifacts and money she needed.
Illus' face was very strained, by the end. Half with fury, half with apprehension—this man was no petty officer to be pounded with fists. But Anna herself sat through the garrison commander's tirade quite calmly. When he was done, she did not need more than a few seconds to reason with him further and bring him to see the error of his position.
"My husband is Calopodius the Blind. I will tell him what you have said to me, and he will place the words in his next Dispatch. You will be a lucky man if all that happens to you is that General Belisarius has you executed."
She left the tent without waiting to hear his response. By the time she reached the tent's entrance, the garrison commander's face was much whiter than the tent fabric and he was gasping for breath.
The next morning, a chest containing a hundred solidi was brought to the hospital and placed in Zeno's care. The day after that, the first of the tools and artifacts began arriving.
Four weeks later, when Calopodius' note finally arrived, the mortality rate in the hospital was less than half what it had been when Anna arrived. She was almost sorry to leave.
In truth, she might not have left at all, except by then she was confident that Zeno was quite capable of managing the entire service as well as its finances.
"Don't steal anything," she warned him, as she prepared to leave.
Zeno's face quirked with a rueful smile. "I wouldn't dare risk the Wife's anger."
She laughed, then; and found herself wondering through all the days of their slow oar-driven travel to Barbaricum why those words had brought her no anger at all.
And, each night, she took out Calopodius' letter and wondered at it also. Anna had lived with anger and bitterness for so long—"so long," at least, to a nineteen-year-old girl—that she was confused by its absence. She was even more confused by the little glow of warmth which the last words in the letter gave her, each time she read them.
"You're a strange woman," Illus told her, as the great battlements and cannons of Barbaricum loomed on the horizon.
There was no way to explain. "Yes," was all she said.
* * *
The first thing she did upon arriving at Barbaricum was march into the telegraph office. If the officers in command thought there was anything peculiar about a young Greek noblewoman dressed in the finest and filthiest garments they had ever seen, they kept it to themselves. Perhaps rumors of "the Wife" had preceded her.
"Send a telegram immediately," she commanded. "To my husband, Calopodius the Blind."
They hastened to comply. The message was brief:
Address medical care and sanitation in next dispatch STOP Firmly STOP
When Calopodius received the telegram—and he received it immediately, because his post was in the Iron Triangle's command and communication center—the first words he said as soon as the telegraph operator finished reading it to him were:
Belisarius had heard the telegram also. In fact, all the officers in the command center had heard, because they had been waiting with an ear cocked. By now, the peculiar journey of Calopodius' wife was a source of feverish gossip in the ranks of the entire army fighting off the Malwa siege in the Punjab. What the hell is that girl doing, anyway? being only the most polite of the speculations.
The general sighed and rolled his eyes. Then, closed them. It was obvious to everyone that he was reviewing all of Calopodius' now-famous Dispatches in his mind.
"We're both idiots," he muttered. "We've maintained proper medical and sanitation procedures here, sure enough. But..."
His words trailed off. His second-in-command, Maurice, filled in the rest.
"She must have passed through half the invasion staging posts along the way. Garrison troops, garrison officers—with the local butchers as the so-called 'surgeons.' God help us, I don't even want to think..."
"I'll write it immediately," said Calopodius.
Belisarius nodded. "Do so. And I'll give you some choice words to include." He cocked his head at Maurice, smiling crookedly. "What do you think? Should we resurrect crucifixion as a punishment?"
Maurice shook his head. "Don't be so damned flamboyant. Make the punishment fit the crime. Surgeons who do not boil their instruments will be boiled alive. Officers who do not see to it that proper latrines are maintained will be buried alive in them. That sort of thing."
Calopodius was already seated at the desk where he dictated his Dispatches and the chapters of the History. So was his scribe, pen in hand.
"I'll add a few nice little flourishes," his young voice said confidently. "This strikes me as a good place for grammar and rhetoric."
The Thar
Desert
Near the Iron Triangle
Three days later, at sunrise, Belisarius and a small escort rode into the Thar Desert. "The Great Indian Desert," as it was also sometimes called.
They didn't go far. No farther than they'd been able to travel in the three days since they'd left the Triangle. Partly, that because Belisarius' bodyguards were by now pestering him almost constantly regarding his security. They hadn't been happy at all when he'd informed them he planned to leave the Triangle on a week-long scouting expedition of his own. The bodyguards had the not-unreasonable attitude that scouting expeditions should be done by scouts, not commanders-in-chief.
Belisarius didn't disagree with them, as a matter of general principle. Nor was this expedition one of the periodically calculated risks he took, proving to his men that he was willing to share their dangers and hardships. It was, in fact, purely and simply a scouting expedition—and not one in which he expected to encounter any enemies.
Why would he, after all? The Thar was enemy enough, to any human. With the exception of some small nomadic tribes, no one ventured into it willingly. There was no logical reason for the Malwa to be sending patrols into its interior. In any event, Belisarius had been careful to enter the desert much farther south than the most advanced Malwa contingents.
Aide wasn't any happier at the situation than the bodyguards.
This is purely stupid. Why are you bothering, anyway? You already crossed the Thar, once before, when you were fleeing India. And don't try to deny it! I was there, remember?
Belisarius ignored him, for a moment. His eyes continued to range the landscape, absorbing it as best he could.
True, he had crossed this desert once—albeit a considerable distance to the south. Still, what he could see here was not really any different from what he'd seen years earlier. The Thar desert, like most deserts, is much of a sameness.
Yes, I remember—but my memories were those of the man who crossed this desert then. One man, alone, on a camel rather than a horse, and with plenty of water and supplies. I needed to see it again, to really bring back all the memories.
I could have done that for you, Aide pointed out peevishly. One of the crystal's seemingly-magical powers was an ability to bring back any of Belisarius' memories—while Aide had been with him, at least—as vividly as if they'd just happened.
Belisarius shook his head slightly. It's still not the same. I need to feel the heat again, on my own skin. Gauge it, just as I gauge the dryness and the barrenness.
He gave Abbu, riding just behind him to his left, a little jerk of the head to summon him forward.
"What do you think?" he asked the leader of his Arab scouts.
Abbu's grizzle-bearded countenance glared at the desert. "It is nothing, next to the Empty Quarter!"
Bedouin honor having been satisfied, he shrugged. "Still, it is a real desert. No oases, even, from what I've been told."
He's right, Aide chimed in. There aren't any. The desert isn't as bad as it will become a millennia and a half from now, when the first real records were maintained. The Thar is a fairly recent desert. Still, as the old bandit says, it is indeed a real desert. And no artesian wells, either.
Belisarius mused on the problem, for a minute or so.
Could we dig our own wells, then?
I could find the spots for you. Very likely ones, at least. The records are good, and the aquifers would not have changed much. But there are no guarantees, and... In a desert this bad, if even one of my estimates proves wrong, it could be disastrous.
Belisarius was considerably more sanguine than Aide, on that score. He had found many times that Aide's superhuman intellect, while it often floundered with matters involving human emotions, rarely failed when it came to a straightforward task of deduction based on a mass of empirical data.
Still, he saw no reason to take unnecessary chances.
"Abbu, if I send you and some of your men through this desert—a dozen or two, whatever you wish—along with a chart indicating the likely spots to dig wells, could you find them?"
Abbu's expression was sour. "I don't read charts easily," he grumbled. "Detest the newfangled things."
Belisarius suppressed a smile. What Abbu said was true enough—the part about detesting the things, at any rate—but the scout leader was perfectly capable of reading them well enough. Even if he weren't, he had several young Arabs who could read and interpret maps and charts as easily as any Greek. What was really involved here was more the natural dislike of an old bedouin at the prospect of digging a number of wells in a desert.
You'd be an idiot to trust him to do it properly, anyway. If you want good wells made—ones that you can depend on, weeks or months later—you'd do better to use Greeks.
Teaching your grandfather to suck eggs again? I just want Abbu to find the spots. I'll send some of my bucellarii with him to do the work. Thracians will be even better than Greeks.
After he explained the plan to Abbu, the scout leader was mollified. "Easy, then," he announced. "Take us three weeks."
Abbu squinted at the desert. "Maybe a month. The Thar is three hundred miles across, you say?"
Not really, Aide chimed in. Not today, before the worst of the desiccation has happened. Say, two hundred miles of real desert, with a fifty-mile fringe. We're still in the fringe here, really.
"Figure two hundred miles of real desert, Abbu, with another fifty on either side like this terrain."
The old Arab ran fingers through his beard. "And you want us to use horses. Not camels?"
"Then, as I say, three, maybe four weeks. Coming back will be quick, with the wells already dug."
Abbu cocked his head a little, looking at Belisarius through narrowed eyes.
"What rashness are you contemplating, general?"
Belisarius pointed with his chin toward the east. "When the time comes—if the time comes—I may want to lead an expedition across that desert. To Ajmer."
"Ajmer?" The Arab chief's eyes almost literally bulged. "You are mad! Ajmer is the main city of the Rajputs. It would take you ten thousand men—maybe fifteen—to seize the city. Then, you would be lucky to hold it against the counter-attack."
He stretched out his hand and flipped it, simultaneously indicating the desert with the gesture and dismissing everything else. "You cannot—can not, general, not even you—get more than a thousand men across that desert. Not even with wells dug. Not even in this fine rabi season—and we'll soon be in the heat of garam. With camels, maybe two thousand. But with horses? A thousand at most!"
"I wasn't actually planning to take a thousand," Belisarius said mildly. "I think five hundred of my bucellarii will suffice. With an additional two hundred of your scouts, as outriders."
Fiercely, Abbu shook his head. "Not a chance, general. Not with only five hundred of your best Thracians. Not even with splendid Arab scouts. We would not get within sight of Ajmer before we were overrun. Not all the Rajputs are in the Deccan with Damodara, you know. Many are not."
Belisarius nodded placidly. "A great many, according to my spies. I'm counting on that, in fact. I need at least fifteen thousand Rajputs to be in or around Ajmer when we arrive. Twenty would be better."
Abbu rolled his eyes. "What lunacy is this? You are expecting the Rajputs to become changed men? Lambs, where once they were lions?"
Belisarius chuckled. "Oh, not that, certainly. I'd have no use for Rajput lambs. But... yes, Abbu. If I do this—which I may well not, since right now it's only a possibility—then I expect the Rajputs to have changed."
He reined his horse around. "More than that, I will not say. This is all speculation, in any event. Let's get back to the Triangle."
* * *
When they returned to the Triangle, Belisarius gave three orders.
The first summoned Ashot from the Sukkur Gorge. He was no longer needed there, in command of the Roman forces, now that the Persians had established firm control over the area.
"I'll want him in charge of the bucellarii, of course," he told Maurice, "since you'll have to remain behind."
The bucellarii were Belisarius' picked force of Thracian cataphracts, armored heavy cavalrymen. A private army, in essence, that he'd maintained for years. A large one, too, numbering by now seven thousand men. He could afford it, since the immense loot from the past years of successful campaigns—first, against the Persians; and then, in alliance with them against the Malwa—had made Belisarius the richest person in the Roman Empire except for Justinian and Theodora.
Maurice had been the leader of those bucellarii since they were first formed, over ten years earlier. But, today, he was essentially the second-in-command of the entire Roman army in the Punjab.
Maurice grunted. "Ashot'll do fine. I still say it's a crazy idea."
"It may never happen, anyway," Belisarius pointed out. "It's something of a long shot, depending on several factors over which we have no control at all."
Maurice scowled. "So what? 'Long shot' and 'no control' are the two phrases that best describe this war to begin with."
Belisarius gave the crystal the mental equivalent of a very cross-eyed look. If I recall correctly, you were the one who started the war in the first place.
Oh, nonsense! I just pointed out the inevitable.
* * *
The second order, which he issued immediately thereafter, summoned Agathius from Mesopotamia.
"We don't need him there either, any more," he explain to Maurice.
"No, we don't. Although I hate to think of what chaos those damn Persians will create in our logistics without Agathius to crack the whip over them. Still..."
The chiliarch ran fingers through his grizzled beard. "We could use him here, better. If you go haring off on this preposterous mad dash of yours, I'll have to command the troops here. Bloody fighting, that'll be, all across the front."
"Bloodier than anything you've ever seen," Belisarius agreed. "Or I've ever seen—or anyone's ever seen. The two greatest armies ever assembled in history hammering at each other across not more than twenty miles of front. And the Malwa will hammer, Maurice. You can be sure that Link will give that order before the monster departs. Whatever else, it will want this Roman army kept in its cage, and not able to come after it."
Maurice's grunted chuckle even had a bit of real humor. Not much, of course. "But no fancy maneuvers required. Nothing that really needs the crooked brain of Belisarius. Just stout, simple-minded Maurice of Thrace, like the centurion of the Bible. Saying to one, come, and he cometh. Saying to another, go, and he goeth."
Belisarius smiled, but said nothing.
Maurice grunted again, seeing the smile. "Well, I can do that, certainly. And I agree that it would help a lot to have Agathius here. He can manage everything else while I command on the front lines."
* * *
The third order he gave to Ashot, a few days later, as soon as he arrived.
More in the way of a set of orders, actually. Which of them Ashot chose to follow would depend on... this and that.
"Marvelous," said Ashot, after Belisarius finished. The stubby Armenian cataphract exchanged a familiar look with Maurice. The one that translated more-or-less as: what sins did we commit to be given such a young lunatic for a commander?
But he verbalized none of it. Even the exchange of looks was more in the way of a familiar habit than anything really heartfelt. It was not as if he and Maurice weren't accustomed to the experience, by now.
"I don't much doubt Kungas will agree," he said. "So I should be back within a month."
Belisarius cocked an eyebrow. "That soon?"
"There are advantages to working as closely as I have with Persians, general. I know at least two dehgans in Sukkur who are familiar with the terrain I'll have to pass through to reach Kungas. They'll guide me, readily enough."
"All right. How many men do you want?"
"Not more than thirty. We shouldn't encounter any Malwa, the route I'll be taking. Thirty will be enough to scare off any bandits. Any more would just slow us down."
* * *
Ashot and his little troop left the next morning. Thereafter, Belisarius went back to the routine of the siege.
"I hate sieges," he commented to Calopodius. "But I will say they don't require much in the way of thought, once everything's settled down."
"Meaning no offense, general, but if you think you hate sieges, I invite you to try writing a history about one. Grammar and rhetoric can only do so much."
* * *
Antonina stared down at the message in her hand. She was trying to remember if, at any time in her life, she'd ever felt such conflicting emotions.
"That is the oddest expression I can ever remember seeing on your face," Ousanas mused. "Although it does remind me, a bit, of the expression I once saw on the face of a young Greek nobleman in Alexandria."
Stalling for time while she tried to sort out her feelings, Antonina muttered: "When did you ever know any Greek noblemen in Alexandria?"
Glancing up, she saw Ousanas was smiling. That serene little smile that was always a little disconcerting on his face.
"I have led a varied life, you know. I wasn't always shackled to this wretched little African backwater in the mountains. On that occasion—there were several—the youth fancied himself a philosopher. I showed him otherwise."
Lounging on a nearby chair in Antonina's salon, Ezana grunted. He'd taken no offense, of course, at Ousanas' wisecrack about Axum. Partly, because he was used to it; partly, because he knew from experience that the only way to deal with Ousanas' wisecracks was to ignore them.
"And that is what caused a peculiar expression on his face?" he asked skeptically. "I would have thought one of your devastating logical ripostes—for which the world has seen no equal since Socrates—would have simply left him aghast at his ignorance."
Ezana was no slouch himself, when it came to wisecracks—or turning a properly florid phrase, for that matter. Ousanas flashed a quick grin in recognition, and then shrugged.
"Alas, no. My rebuttal went so far over his head that the callow stripling had no idea at all that I'd disemboweled him, intellectually speaking. No, the peculiar expression came not five minutes later, when a courier arrived bearing the news that the lad's father had died in Constantinople. And that he had inherited one of the largest fortunes in the empire."