He pointed a finger at Antonina's face. "That expression."
She didn't know whether to laugh or scowl. In the end, she managed to do both.
"It's a letter from Theodora. Sent by telegraph to Alexandria, relayed to Myos Hormos, and then brought by a dispatch vessel the rest of the way." She held it up. "My son—his wife Tahmina, too—is coming on a tour of our allies. Starting here in Axum, of course. He'll go with us to India."
"Ah." Ousanas nodded. "All is explained. Your delight at the unexpected prospect of seeing your son again, much sooner than you expected. Your chagrin at having to delay your much-anticipated reunion with your husband. The maternal instinct of a proper Egyptian woman clashing with the salacious habits of a Greek harlot."
He and Ezana exchanged stern glances.
"You should wait for your son," Ezana pronounced. "Even if you are a Greek harlot."
Antonina gave them the benefit of her sweetest smile. "I would remind both of you that Greek women are also the world's best and most experienced poisoners. And you do not use food-tasters in Ethiopia."
"She has a point," Ousanas averred.
Ezana grunted again. "She should still wait for her son. Even if she is—"
"Of course I'm going to wait for my son, you—you—fucking idiots!"
* * *
The next day, though, it was her turn to start needling Ousanas.
"What? If it's that hard for you, why don't you leave now? There's no reason you have to wait here until Photius arrives. You can surely find some way to pass the time in Barbaricum—or Chabahari, most like—as accustomed as you are to the humdrum life in this African backwater."
Ousanas scowled at her. For one of the rare times since she'd met him, years earlier, the Bantu once-hunter had no easy quip to make in response.
"Damnation, Antonina, it is difficult. It never was, before, because..."
"Yes, I know. The mind—even yours, o great philosopher—makes different categories for different things. It's convenient, that way, and avoids problems."
Ousanas ran fingers over his scalp. "Yes," he said curtly. "Even mine. And now..."
His eyes started to drift toward the window they were standing near. Then, he looked away.
Antonina leaned over and glanced down into the courtyard below, one of several in the Ta'akha Maryam. Rukaiya was still there, sitting on a bench and holding her baby.
"She is very beautiful," Antonina said softly.
Ousanas was still looking aside. "Beauty I could ignore, readily enough. I am no peasant boy." For an instant, the familiar smile gleamed. "No longer, at least. I can remember a time when the mere sight of her would have paralyzed me."
He shrugged, uncomfortably. "Much harder to ignore the wit and the intelligence, coupled to the beauty. The damn girl is even well educated, for her age. Give her ten years..."
Antonina eyed him. "I did choose her for a king's wife, you know. And not just any king, but Eon. And I chose very well, I think."
"Yes, you did. Eon was besotted with her. I never had any trouble understanding why—but it never affected me then, either."
"The wedding will be tomorrow, Ousanas. Leave the next day, if you will."
"I can't, Antonina. First, because it would look odd, since everyone now knows that you are waiting for Photius. People would assume it was because I was displeased with the girl, instead of... ah, the exact opposite."
He brought his eyes back to look at her. "The bigger problem, however, is Koutina. Which we must now discuss. Before I do anything else, I must resolve that issue. People are already jabbering about it."
Antonina winced. As pleased as she was, overall, with her settlement of the Axumite succession problem, it was not a perfect world and her solution had shared in that imperfection. Most of the problems she could ignore, at least personally, since they mainly involved the grievances and disgruntlements of people she thought were too full of themselves anyway.
"I don't know what to do about her," she admitted sadly.
The girl had been the most faithful and capable servant Antonina had ever had. And she'd now repaid her by separating her from Ousanas, with whom she'd developed a relationship that went considerably beyond a casual sexual liaison.
"Neither do I," said Ousanas. His tone was, if anything, still sadder. "She's always known, of course, that as the aqabe tsentsen I'd eventually have to make a marriage of state. But—"
He shrugged again. "The position of concubine was acceptable to her."
"It's not possible, now. You know that."
"Yes. Of course." After a moment's hesitation, Ousanas stepped to the window and looked down.
"She approached me about it two days ago, you know," he murmured.
"Yes. She told me she understood my existing attachment to Koutina and would have no objection if I kept her as a concubine." He smiled, turned away from the window, and held up a stiff finger. "'Only one, though!' she said. 'Koutina is different. Any others and I will have you poisoned.' Not the concubine—you!'"
Antonina chuckled. "That... is very much like Rukaiya."
Which, it was, although Antonina was skeptical that Rukaiya would actually be able to handle the situation that easily. Granted, the girl was Arab and thus no stranger to the institution of concubinage. Even her recent conversion to Christianity would not have made much difference, if any. Concubinage might be frowned upon by the church, but it was common enough practice among wealthy Christians also—including plenty of bishops.
Still, she'd been a queen for some time now—and Eon's queen, to boot. There had never been any hint of interest in concubines on Eon's part. Of course, with a wife like Rukaiya, that was hardly surprising. Not only was she quite possibly the most beautiful woman in the Axumite empire, she had wit and brains and a charming personality to go with it.
But it didn't matter, anyway. "Ousanas—"
"Yes, yes, I know." He waved his hand. "Absolutely impossible, given the nature of my new position as the angabo. The situation will be tricky enough as it is, making sure that the children Rukaiya will bear me have the proper relationship with Wahsi. Throw into that delicate balance yet another batch of children with Koutina..."
He shook his head. "It would be madness. She's not barren, either."
Koutina's one pregnancy had ended in a miscarriage. That was not particularly unusual, of course. Most likely, Koutina's next pregnancy would produce a child.
Suddenly, Ousanas shook his head again, but this time with rueful amusement. "Ha! It's probably a good thing Rukaiya is so comely and enjoyable to be around. I'm afraid there'll be no more sexual adventures on the part of the mighty Ousanas. As aqabe tsentsen, I could do most anything in that regard and only produce chuckles. As angabo, I will have to be like the Caesar's wife you Romans brag about—even if, mind you, I can't see where you've often lived up to it."
Antonina grinned. "Theodora does. Which, given her history, may seem ironic to some people. On the other hand, the one advantage to being an ex-whore—take it from me—is that you're not subject to the notion some women have that the man in some other woman's bed is much more interesting than the one in your own." She stuck out her tongue. "Bleah."
"Yes, I know. We are no closer to a solution. And the problem is as bad as it could be, because Koutina is not only losing you, she's losing me. I can't very well keep her on as my servant when you will be accompanying me on the same trip with..."
Her voice trailed off. Looking suddenly at Ousanas, she saw that his eyes had that slightly-unfocussed look she suspected were in her own.
"Photius would have to agree, of course," Ousanas mused. "Tahmina, rather."
Antonina tried to poke at the idea, to find any weak spots. "It still leaves the problem that Koutina will be with us. People might think—"
"Pah!" Ousanas' sneer, when he threw himself into it, could be as magnificent as his grin. "What 'people'? The only 'people'—person—who matters here is Rukaiya. And she will believe me—she'll certainly believe you—when we explain it to her. For the rest..."
He shrugged. "Who cares what gossip circulates, as long as Rukaiya doesn't pay attention to it? Gossip is easy to deal with. Ignore it unless it gets too obtrusive, at which point you inform Ezana that Loudmouths Alpha, Beta and Gamma have become a nuisance. Shortly thereafter, Loudmouths Alpha, Beta and Gamma will either cease being a nuisance or will cease altogether."
The grin came. "Such a handy fellow to have around, even if he lacks the proper appreciation of my philosophical talents."
The more Antonina considered the idea, the more she liked it. "Yes. Eventually, the trip is over. So long as there are no Ousanas bastards inconveniently lounging about"—here she gave him a pointed look—"there's no problem. Koutina goes to Constantinople as one of Tahmina's maidservants, and..."
Her face cleared. "She'll do quite well. You've already started her education. If she continues it—she's very pretty, and very capable—she'll eventually wind up in a good marriage. A senatorial family is not out of the question, if she has Tahmina's favor. Which, I have no doubt she will."
For a moment, she and Ousanas regarded each other with that special satisfaction that belongs to conspirators having reached a particularly pleasing conspiracy.
Then, Ousanas frowned. "I remind you. Photius will have to agree."
Antonina's expression became—she hoped, anyway—suitably outraged. "Of course, he will! He's my son, you idiot!"
* * *
When Photius arrived, two weeks later, he didn't actually have an opinion, one way or the other.
"Whatever you want, Mother," in the resigned but dutiful tones of an eleven-year-old.
Antonina's older daughter-in-law, on the other hand, proved far more perceptive.
"What a marvelous idea, Mother! And do you think she'd be willing to carry around a cuirass for me, too?" The sixteen-year-old gave her husband a very credible eyelash-batting. "I think I'd look good in a cuirass, Photius, don't you?"
Photius choked. "Not in bed!" he protested. "I'd break my hands, trying to give you backrubs."
Barbaricum, on the Indian coast
Anna and her companions spent their first night in India crowded into the corner of a tavern packed full with Roman soldiers and all the other typical denizens of a great port city—longshoremen, sailors, petty merchants and their womenfolk, pimps and prostitutes, gamblers, and the usual sprinkling of thieves and other criminals.
Like almost all the buildings in Barbaricum, the tavern was a mudbrick edifice which had been badly burned in the great fires which swept the city during the Roman conquest. The arson had not been committed by Belisarius' men, but by the fanatic Mahaveda priests who led the Malwa defenders. Despite the still-obvious reminders of that destruction, the tavern was in use for the simple reason that, unlike so many buildings in the city, the walls were still standing and there was even a functional roof.
When they first entered, Anna and her party had been assessed by the mob of people packed in the tavern. The assessment had not been as quick as the one which that experienced crowd would have normally made. Anna and her party were... odd.
The hesitation worked entirely to her advantage, however. The tough-looking Isaurian brothers and Abdul were enough to give would-be cutpurses pause, and in the little space and time cleared for them, the magical rumor had time to begin and spread throughout the tavern. Watching it spread—so obvious, from the curious stares and glances sent her way—Anna was simultaneously appalled, amused, angry, and thankful.
It's her. Calopodius the Blind's wife. Got to be.
"Who started this damned rumor, anyway?" she asked peevishly, after Illus cleared a reasonably clean spot for her in a corner and she was finally able to sit down. She leaned against the shelter of the walls with relief. She was well-nigh exhausted.
Abdul grunted with amusement. The Arab was frequently amused, Anna noted with exasperation. But it was an old and well-worn exasperation, by now, almost pleasant in its predictability.
Cottomenes, whose amusement at life's quirks was not much less than Abdul's, chuckled his own agreement. "You're hot news, Lady Saronites. Everybody on the docks was talking about it, too. And the soldiers outside the telegraph office." Cottomenes, unlike his older brother, never allowed himself the familiarity of calling her "girl." In all other respects, however, he showed her a lack of fawning respect that would have outraged her family.
After the dockboys whom Anna had hired finished stacking her luggage next to her, they crowded themselves against a wall nearby, ignoring the glares directed their way by the tavern's usual habitués. Clearly enough, having found this source of incredible largesse, the dockboys had no intention of relinquishing it.
Anna shook her head. The vehement motion finished the last work of disarranging her long dark hair. The elaborate coiffure under which she had departed Constantinople, so many weeks before, was now entirely a thing of the past. Her hair was every bit as tangled and filthy as her clothing. She wondered if she would ever feel clean again.
Squatting next to her, Illus studied her for a moment. His eyes were knowing, as if the weeks of close companionship and travel had finally enabled a half-barbarian mercenary soldier to understand the weird torments of a young noblewoman's soul.
Which, indeed, perhaps they had.
"You're different, girl. What you do is different. You have no idea how important that can be, to a man who does nothing, day after day, but toil under a sun. Or to a woman who does nothing, day after day, but wash clothes and carry water."
She stared up at him. Seeing the warmth lurking somewhere deep in Illus' eyes, in that hard tight face, Anna was stunned to realize how great a place the man had carved for himself in her heart. Friendship was a stranger to Anna of the Melisseni.
"And what is an angel, in the end," said the Isaurian softly, "but something different?"
Anna stared down at her grimy garments, noting all the little tears and frays in the fabric.
The epiphany finally came to her, then. And she wondered, in the hour or so that she spent leaning against the walls of the noisy tavern before she finally drifted into sleep, whether Calopodius had also known such an epiphany. Not on the day he chose to leave her behind, all her dreams crushed, in order to gain his own; but on the day he first awoke, a blind man, and realized that sight is its own curse.
And for the first time since she'd heard Calopodius' name, she no longer regretted the life which had been denied to her. No longer thought with bitterness of the years she would never spend in the shelter of the cloister, allowing her mind to range through the world's accumulated wisdom like a hawk finally soaring free.
When she awoke the next morning, the first thought which came to her was that she finally understood her own faith—and never had before, not truly. There was some regret in the thought, of course. Understanding, for all except God, is also limitation. But with that limitation came clarity and sharpness, so different from the froth and fuzz of a girl's fancies and dreams.
In the gray light of an alien land's morning, filtering into a tavern more noisome than any she would ever have imagined, Anna studied her soiled and ragged clothing. Seeing, this time, not filth and ruin but simply the carpet of her life opening up before her. A life she had thought closeted forever.
"Practicality first," she announced firmly. "It is not a sin."
The words woke up Illus. He gazed at her through slitted, puzzled eyes.
"Get up," she commanded. "We need uniforms."
A few minutes later, leading the way out the door with her three-soldier escort and five dock urchins toting her luggage, Anna issued the first of that day's rulings and commandments.
"It'll be expensive, but my husband will pay for it. He's rich."
"He's not here," grunted Illus.
"His name is. He's also famous. Find me a banker."
It took a bit of time before she was able to make the concept of "banker" clear to Illus. Or, more precisely, differentiate it from the concepts of "pawnbroker," "usurer" and "loan shark." But, eventually, he agreed to seek out and capture this mythological creature—with as much confidence as he would have announced plans to trap a griffin or a minotaur.
"Never mind," grumbled Anna, seeing the nervous little way in which Illus was fingering his sword. "I'll do it myself. Where's the army headquarters in this city? They'll know what a 'banker' is, be sure of it."
That task was within Illus' scheme of things. And since Barbaricum was in the actual theater of Belisarius' operations, the officers in command of the garrison were several cuts of competence above those at Chabahari. By midmorning, Anna had been steered to the largest of the many new moneylenders who had fixed themselves upon Belisarius' army.
An Indian himself, ironically enough, named Pulinda. Anna wondered, as she negotiated the terms, what secrets—and what dreams, realized or stultified—lay behind the life of the small and elderly man sitting across from her. How had a man from the teeming Ganges valley eventually found himself, awash with wealth obtained in whatever mysterious manner, a paymaster to the alien army which was hammering at the gates of his own homeland?
Did he regret the life which had brought him to this place? Savor it?
Most likely both, she concluded. And was then amused, when she realized how astonished Pulinda would have been had he realized that the woman with whom he was quarreling over terms was actually awash in good feeling toward him.
Perhaps, in some unknown way, he sensed that warmth. In any event, the negotiations came to an end sooner than Anna had expected. They certainly left her with better terms than she had expected.
Or, perhaps, it was simply that magic name of Calopodius again, clearing the waters before her. Pulinda's last words to her were: "Mention me to your husband, if you would."
By midafternoon, she had tracked down the tailor reputed to be the best in Barbaricum. By sundown, she had completed her business with him. Most of that time had been spent keeping the dockboys from fidgeting as the tailor measured them.
"You also!" Anna commanded, slapping the most obstreperous urchin on top of his head. "In the Service, cleanliness is essential."
The next day, however, when they donned their new uniforms, the dockboys were almost beside themselves with joy. The plain and utilitarian garments were, by a great margin, the finest clothing they had ever possessed.
The Isaurian brothers and Abdul were not quite as demonstrative. Not quite.
"We look like princes," gurgled Cottomenes happily.
"And so you are," pronounced Anna. "The highest officers of the Wife's Service. A rank which will someday"—she spoke with a confidence far beyond her years—"be envied by princes the world over."
"Relax, Calopodius," said Menander cheerfully, giving the blind young officer a friendly pat on the shoulder. "I'll see to it she arrives safely."
"She's already left Barbaricum," muttered Calopodius. "Damnation, why didn't she wait?"
Despite his agitation, Calopodius couldn't help smiling when he heard the little round of laughter which echoed around him. As usual, whenever the subject of Calopodius' wife arose, every officer and orderly in the command bunker had listened. In her own way, Anna was becoming as famous as anyone in the great Roman army fighting its way into India.
Most husbands, to say the least, do not like to discover that their wives are the subject of endless army gossip. But since, in this case, the cause of the gossip was not the usual sexual peccadilloes, Calopodius was not certain how he felt about it. Some part of him, ingrained with custom, still felt a certain dull outrage. But, for the most part—perhaps oddly—his main reaction was one of quiet pride.
"I suppose that's a ridiculous question," he admitted ruefully. "She hasn't waited for anything else."
When Menander spoke again, the tone in his voice was much less jovial. As if he, too, shared in the concern which—much to his surprise—Calopodius had found engulfing him since he learned of Anna's journey. Strange, really, that he should care so much about the well-being of a wife who was little but a vague image to him.
But... Even before his blinding, the world of literature had often seemed as real to Calopodius as any other. Since he lost his sight, all the more so—despite the fact that he could no longer read or write himself, but depended on others to do it for him.
Anna Melisseni, the distant girl he had married and had known for a short time in Constantinople, meant practically nothing to him. But the Wife of Calopodius the Blind, the unknown woman who had been advancing toward him for weeks now, she was a different thing altogether. Still mysterious, but not a stranger. How could she be, any longer?
Had he not, after all, written about her often enough in his own Dispatches? In the third person, of course, as he always spoke of himself in his writings. No subjective mood was ever inserted into his Dispatches, any more than into the chapters of his massive History of the War. But, detached or not, whenever he received news of Anna he included at least a few sentences detailing for the army her latest adventures. Just as he did for those officers and men who had distinguished themselves. And he was no longer surprised to discover that most of the army found a young wife's exploits more interesting than their own.
"Difference," however, was no shield against life's misfortunes—misfortunes which are multiplied several times over in the middle of a war zone. So, within seconds, Calopodius was back to fretting.
"Why didn't she wait, damn it all?"
Again, Menander clapped his shoulder. "I'm leaving with the Victrix this afternoon, Calopodius. Steaming with the riverflow, I'll be in Sukkur long before Anna gets there coming upstream in an oared river craft. So I'll be her escort on the last leg of her journey, coming into the Punjab."
"The Sind's not that safe," grumbled Calopodius, still fretting. The Sind was the lower half of the Indus river valley, and while it had now been cleared of Malwa troops and was under the jurisdiction of Rome's Persian allies, the province was still greatly unsettled. "Dacoits everywhere."
"Dacoits aren't going to attack a military convoy," interrupted Belisarius. "I'll make sure she gets a Persian escort of some kind as far as Sukkur."
One of the telegraphs in the command center began to chatter. When the message was read aloud, a short time later, even Calopodius began to relax.
"Guess not," he mumbled—more than a little abashed. "With that escort."
The Lower
Indus
Spring, 534 A.D.
"I don't believe this," mumbled Illus—more than a little abashed. He glanced down at his uniform. For all the finery of the fabric and the cut, the garment seemed utterly drab matched against the glittering costumes which seemed to fill the wharf against which their river barge was just now being tied.
Standing next to him, Anna said nothing. Her face was stiff, showing none of the uneasiness she felt herself. Her own costume was even more severe and plainly cut than those of her officers, even if the fabric itself was expensive. And she found herself wishing desperately that her cosmetics had survived the journey from Constantinople. For a woman of her class, being seen with a face unadorned by anything except nature was well-nigh unthinkable. In any company, much less...
The tying-up was finished and the gangplank laid. Anna was able to guess at the identity of the first man to stride across it.
She was not even surprised. Anna had read everything ever written by Irene Macrembolitissa—several times over—including the last book the woman wrote just before she left for the Hindu Kush on her great expedition of conquest. The Deeds of Khusrau, she thought, described the man quite well. The Emperor of Persia was not particularly large, but so full of life and energy that he seemed like a giant as he strode toward her across the gangplank.
What am I doing here? she wondered. I never planned on such as this!
"So! You are the one!" were the first words he boomed. "To live in such days, when legends walk among us!"
In the confused time which followed, as Anna was introduced to a not-so-little mob of Persian officers and officials—most of them obviously struggling not to frown with disapproval at such a disreputable woman—she pondered on those words.
They seemed meaningless to her. Khusrau Anushirvan—"Khusrau of the Immortal Soul"—was a legend, not she.
By the end of that evening, after spending hours sitting stiffly in a chair while Iran's royalty and nobility wined and dined her, she had mustered enough courage to lean over to the emperor—sitting next to her!—and whisper the question into his ear.
Khusrau's response astonished her even more. He grinned broadly, white teeth gleaming in a square-cut Persian beard. Then, he leaned over and whispered in return:
"I am an expert on legends, wife of Calopodius. Truth be told, I often think the art of kingship is mainly knowing how to make the things."
He glanced slyly at his assembled nobility, who had not stopped frowning at Anna throughout the royal feast—but always, she noticed, under lowered brows.
"But keep it a secret," he whispered. "It wouldn't do for my noble sahrdaran and vurzurgan to discover that their emperor is really a common manufacturer. I don't need another rebellion this year."
She managed to choke down a laugh, fortunately. The effort, however, caused her hand to shake just enough to spill some wine onto her long dress.
"No matter," whispered the emperor. "Don't even try to remove the stain. By next week, it'll be the blood of a dying man brought back to life by the touch of your hand. Ask anyone."
She tightened her lips to keep from smiling. It was nonsense, of course, but there was no denying the emperor was a charming man.
But, royal decree or no, it was still nonsense. Bloodstains aplenty there had been on the garments she'd brought from Constantinople, true enough. Blood and pus and urine and excrement and every manner of fluid produced by human suffering. She'd gained them in Chabahari, and again at Barbaricum. Nor did she doubt there would be bloodstains on this garment also, soon enough, to match the wine stain she had just put there.
Indeed, she had designed the uniforms of the Wife's Service with that in mind. That was why the fabric had been dyed a purple so dark it was almost black.
But it was still nonsense. Her touch had no more magic power than anyone's. Her knowledge—or rather, the knowledge which she had obtained by reading everything Macrembolitissa or anyone else had ever written transmitting the Talisman of God's wisdom—now, that was powerful. But it had nothing to do with her, except insofar as she was another vessel of those truths.
Something of her skepticism must have shown, despite her effort to remain impassive-faced. She was only nineteen, after all, and hardly an experienced diplomat.
Khusrau's lips quirked. "You'll see."
The next day she resumed her journey up the river toward Sukkur. The emperor himself, due to the pressing business of completing his incorporation of the Sind into the swelling empire of Iran, apologized for not being able to accompany her personally. But he detailed no fewer than four Persian war galleys to serve as her escort.
"No fear of dacoits," said Illus, with great satisfaction. "Or deserters turned robbers."
His satisfaction turned a bit sour at Anna's response.
"Good. We'll be able to stop at every hospital along the way then. No matter how small."
And stop they did. Only briefly, in the Roman ones. By now, to Anna's satisfaction, Belisarius' blood-curdling threats had resulted in a marked improvement in medical procedures and sanitary practices.
But most of the small military hospitals along the way were Persian. The "hospitals" were nothing more than tents pitched along the riverbank—mere staging posts for disabled Persian soldiers being evacuated back to their homeland. The conditions within them had Anna seething, with a fury that was all the greater because neither she nor either of the Isaurian officers could speak a word of the Iranian language. Abdul could make himself understood, but his pidgin was quite inadequate to the task of convincing skeptical—even hostile—Persian officials that Anna's opinion was anything more than female twaddle.
Anna spent another futile hour trying to convince the officers in command of her escort to send a message to Khusrau himself. Clearly enough, however, none of them were prepared to annoy the emperor at the behest of a Roman woman who was probably half-insane to begin with.
Fortunately, at the town of Dadu, there was a telegraph station. Anna marched into it and fired off a message to her husband.
Why Talisman medical precepts not translated into Persian STOP Instruct Emperor Iran discipline his idiots STOP
"Do it," said Belisarius, after Calopodius read him the message.
The general paused. "Well, the first part, anyway. The Persian translation. I'll have to figure out a somewhat more diplomatic way to pass the rest of it on to Khusrau."
Maurice snorted. "How about hitting him on the head with a club? That'd be somewhat more diplomatic."
By the time the convoy reached Sukkur, it was moving very slowly.
There were no military hospitals along the final stretch of the river, because wounded soldiers were kept either in Sukkur itself or had already passed through the evacuation routes. The slow pace was now due entirely to the native population.
By whatever mysterious means, word of the Wife's passage had spread up and down the Indus. The convoy was constantly approached by small river boats bearing sick and injured villagers, begging for what was apparently being called "the healing touch."
Anna tried to reason, to argue, to convince. But it was hopeless. The language barrier was well-nigh impassible. Even the officers of her Persian escort could do no more than roughly translate the phrase "healing touch."
In the end, not being able to bear the looks of anguish on their faces, Anna laid her hands on every villager brought alongside her barge for the purpose. Muttering curses under her breath all the while—curses which were all the more bitter since she was quite certain the villagers of the Sind took them for powerful incantations.
At Sukkur, she was met by Menander and the entire crew of the Victrix. Beaming from ear to ear.
The grins faded soon enough. After waiting impatiently for the introductions to be completed, Anna's next words were: "Where's the telegraph station?"
Urgent stop Must translate Talisman precepts into native tongues also STOP
Menander fidgeted while she waited for the reply.
"I've got a critical military cargo to haul to the island," he muttered. "Calopodius may not even send an answer."
"He's my husband," came her curt response. "Of course he'll answer me."
* * *
Sure enough, the answer came very soon.
Cannot STOP Is no written native language STOP Not even alphabet STOP
After reading it, Anna snorted. "We'll see about that."
You supposedly expert grammar and rhetoric STOP Invent one STOP
"You'd best get started on it," mused Belisarius. The general's head turned to the south. "She'll be coming soon."
"Like a tidal bore," added Maurice.
* * *
That night, he dreamed of islands again.
* * *
First, of Rhodes, where he spent an idle day on his journey to join Belisarius' army while his ship took on supplies.
Some of that time he spent visiting the place where, years before, John of Rhodes had constructed an armaments center. Calopodius' own skills and interests were not inclined in a mechanical direction, but he was still curious enough to want to see the mysterious facility.
But, in truth, there was no longer much there of interest. Just a handful of buildings, vacant now except for livestock. So, after wandering about for a bit, he spent the rest of the day perched on a headland staring at the sea.
It was a peaceful, calm, and solitary day. The last one he would enjoy in his life, thus far.
Then, his dreams took him to the island in the Strait of Hormuz where Belisarius was having a naval base constructed. The general had sent Calopodius over from the mainland where the army was marching its way toward the Indus, in order to help resolve one of the many minor disputes which had erupted between the Romans and Persians who were constructing the facility. Among the members of the small corps of noble couriers who served Belisarius for liaison with the Persians, Calopodius had displayed a great deal of tact as well as verbal aptitude.
It was something of a private joke between him and the general. "I need you to take care of another obstreperous aunt," was the way Belisarius put it.
The task of mediating between the quarrelsome Romans and Persians had been stressful. But Calopodius had enjoyed the boat ride well enough; and, in the end, he had managed to translate Belisarius' blunt words into language flowery enough to slide the command through—like a knife between unguarded ribs.
Toward the end, his dreams slid into a flashing nightmare image of BukkurIsland. A log, painted to look like a field gun, sent flying by a lucky cannon ball fired by one of the Malwa gunships whose bombardment accompanied that last frenzied assault. The Romans drove off that attack also, in the end. But not before a mortar shell had ripped Calopodius' eyes out of his head.
The last sight he would ever have in his life was of that log, whirling through the air and crushing the skull of a Roman soldier standing in its way. What made the thing a nightmare was that Calopodius could not remember the soldier's name, if he had ever known it. So it all seemed very incomplete, in a way that was too horrible for Calopodius to be able to express clearly to anyone, even himself. Grammar and rhetoric simply collapsed under the coarse reality, just as fragile human bone and brain had collapsed under hurtling wood.
The sound of his aide-de-camp clumping about in the bunker awoke him. The warm little courtesy banished the nightmare, and Calopodius returned to life with a smile.
"How does the place look?" he asked.
"It's hardly fit for a Melisseni girl. But I imagine it'll do for your wife."
"Yes." Calopodius heard Luke lay something on the small table next to the cot. From the slight rustle, he understood that it was another stack of telegrams. Private ones, addressed to him, not army business.
Calopodius laughed. "Well, whatever else, she still spends money like a Melisseni. Before she's done, that banker will be the richest man in India."
Luke said nothing in response. After a moment, Calopodius' humor faded away, replaced by simple wonder.
"Soon, now. I wonder what she'll be like?"
Lady Damodara's
palace
Kausambi
"We should go back," whispered Rajiv's little sister. Nervously, the girl's eyes ranged about the dark cellar. "It's scary down here."
Truth be told, Rajiv found the place fairly creepy himself. The little chamber was one of many they'd found in this long-unused portion of the palace's underground cellars. Rajiv found the maze-like complexity of the cellars fascinating. He could not for the life of him figure out any rhyme or reason to the ancient architectural design, if there had ever been one at all. But that same labyrinthine character of the little grottoes also made them...
But no thirteen-year-old boy will admit as much to his seven-year-old sister. Not even a peasant boy, much less the son of Rajputana's most famous king.
"You go back if you want to," he said, lifting the oil lamp to get a better look at the archway ahead of them. He could see part of another small cellar beyond. "I want to see all of it."
"I'll get lost on my own," Mirabai whined. "And there's only one lamp."
For a moment, Rajiv hesitated. He could, after all, use his sister's fear and the lack of a second lamp as a legitimate justification for going back. No reflection on his courage.
He might have, too, except that his sister's next words irritated him.
"There are ghosts down here," she whispered. "I can hear them talking."
"Oh, don't be silly!" He took a step toward the archway.
"I can hear them," she said. Quietly, but insistently.
Rajiv started to make a sarcastic rejoinder, when he heard something. He froze, half-cocking his head to bring an ear to bear.
She was right! Rajiv could hear voices himself. No words, as such, just murmuring.
"There's more than one of them, too," his sister hissed.
Again, she was right. Rajiv could distinguish at least two separate voices. From their tone, they seemed to be having an argument of some sort.
Would ghosts argue? he wondered.
That half-frightened, half-puzzled question steadied his nerves. With the steadiness, came a more acute sense of what he was hearing.
"Those aren't ghosts," he whispered. "Those are people. Live people."
Mirabai's face was tight with fear. "What would people be doing down here?"
That was... a very good question. And the only answer that came to Rajiv was a bad one.
He thrust the lamp at his sister. "Here. Take it and go back. Then get the Mongoose and Anastasius down here, as quickly as you can. Mother too. And you'd better tell Lady Damodara."
The girl squinted at the lamp, fearfully. "I'll get lost! I don't know the way."
"Just follow the same route I took us on," Rajiv hissed. "Any time I didn't know which way to go, when there was a choice, I turned to the left. So on your way back, you turn to the right."
He reminded himself forcefully that his sister was only seven years old. In a much more kindly tone, he added: "You can do it, Mirabai. You have to do it. I think we're dealing with treachery here."
Mirabai's eyes widened and moved to the dark, open archway. "What are you going to do?"
"I don't know," he whispered. "Something."
He half-forced her to take the lamp. "Now go!"
After his sister scampered off, Rajiv crept toward the archway. He had to move from memory alone. With the light of the lamp gone, it was pitch dark in these deep cellars.
After groping his way through the arch, he moved slowly across the cellar. Very faintly, he could see what looked like another archway on the opposite side. There was a dim light beyond that seemed to flicker, a bit. That meant that someone on the other side—probably at least one cellar further away, maybe more—had an oil lamp.
His foot encountered an obstacle and he tripped, sprawling across the stone floor. Fortunately, the endless hours of training under the harsh regimen of the Mongoose had Rajiv's reflexes honed to a fine edge. He cushioned his fall with his hands, keeping the noise to a minimum.
His feet were still lying on something. Something... not stone. Not really hard at all.
Even before he got to his knees and reached back, to feel, he was certain he knew what he'd tripped over.
Fingering gingerly, probing, it didn't take Rajiv long to determine who the man was. Small, wiry, clad only in a loincloth. It had to be one of the Bihari slave miners that Lady Damodara was using to dig an escape route from the palace, if it was someday needed. They worked under the supervision of half a dozen Ye-tai mercenary soldiers. Ajatasutra had bought the slaves and hired the mercenaries.
Now that he was close, he could smell the stink. The man had voided himself in dying. The body was noticeably cool, too. Although the blood didn't feel crusted, it was dry by now. And while Rajiv could smell the feces, the odor wasn't that strong any longer. He hadn't noticed it at all when he entered the room, and he had a good sense of smell. Rajiv guessed that the murder had taken place recently, but not all that recently. Two or three hours earlier.
He didn't think it could have happened earlier than that, though. The body wasn't stiff yet. Some years before—he'd been about eight, as he recalled—Rajiv had questioned his father's lieutenant Jaimal on the subject, in that simultaneously horrified, fascinated and almost gleeful way that young boys will do. Jaimal had told him that, as a rule, a body stiffened three hours after death and then grew limp again after a day and a half. But Rajiv remembered Jaimal also telling him that the rule was only a rough one. The times could vary, especially depending on the temperature. In these cool cellars, it might all have happened faster.
It was possible there'd simply been a quarrel amongst the slaves. But where would a slave have gotten the blade to cut a throat so neatly? The only tools they had were picks and shovels.
So it was probably treachery—and on the part of the Ye-tai. Some of them, at least.
Rajiv had to find out. He hadn't really followed the progress of the tunnel-digging, since it was none of his affair and he was usually pre-occupied with his training. The only reason he'd had today free to do some exploring was that the Mongoose was now spending more time in the company of Dhruva and her infant.
If the tunnel was almost finished—possibly even was finished...
Rajiv moved into the next cellar, slowly and carefully.
* * *
It seemed to Mirabai that it took her forever to get out of the cellars. Looking back on it later, she realized it had really taken very little time at all. The lamp had been bright enough to enable her to walk quickly, if not run—and her brother's instructions had worked perfectly.
The most surprising thing about it all was that she got more scared when it was over. She'd never in her life seen that look on her mother's face. Her mother never seemed to worry about anything.
* * *
"Get Kandhik," Valentinian hissed to Anastasius. "Break all his bones if you have to."
* * *
Anastasius didn't have to break any of Ye-tai mercenary leader's bones. As huge and powerful as he was, a simple twisting of the arm did the trick.
* * *
Kandhik massaged his arm. "I don't know anything," he insisted. The Ye-tai was scowling ferociously, but he wasn't scowling directly at Anastasius—and he was doing everything in his power not to look at Valentinian at all.
The Mongoose was a frightening man under any circumstances. Under these circumstances, with that weasel smile on his face and a sword in his hand, he was terrifying. Kandhik was neither cowardly nor timid, but he knew perfectly well that either of the Roman cataphracts could kill him without working up a sweat.
Anastasius might need to take a deep breath. Valentinian wouldn't.
"Don't know anything," he insisted.
Sanga's wife and Lata came into the chamber. So did Lady Damodara.
"Three of the Ye-tai are missing," the girl said. "The other two are asleep in their chamber."
Although Ye-tai were sometimes called "White Huns," they were definitely Asiatic in their ancestry. Their only similarity to Europeans was that their features were somewhat bonier than those of most steppe-dwellers. Their complexion was certainly not pale—but, at that moment, Kandhik's face was almost ashen.
"Don't know anything," he repeated, this time pleading the words.
"He's telling the truth," Valentinian said abruptly. He touched the tip of the sword to Kandhik's throat. "Stay here and watch over the women. Do everything right and nothing wrong, and you'll live to see the end of this day. If my mood doesn't get worse."
With that, he turned and left the room. Anastasius lumbered after him.
Dhruva came in with the baby. She and her sister stared at each other, their eyes wide with fright.
Not as wide as Mirabai's, however. "What should we do, Mother?"
Sanga's wife looked around, rubbing her hands up and down her hips. The familiar gesture calmed Mirabai, a bit.
"May as well go to the kitchen and wait," she said. "I've got some onions to cut. Some leeks, too."
"I agree," said Lady Damodara.
* * *
After several minutes of listening from the darkness of the adjoining cellar, Rajiv understood exactly what was happening. The three Ye-tai in the next cellar were, in fact, planning to betray their employers. Apparently—it was not clear what threats or promises they'd made to do it—they'd gotten two of the Biharis to dig a side tunnel for them. It must have taken weeks to do the work, while keeping it a secret from everyone else.
And, now, it was done. But one of the Ye-tai was having second thoughts.
"—never dealt with anvaya-prapta sachivya. I have! And I'm telling you that unless we have a guarantee of some—"
"Shut up!" snarled one of the others. "I'm sick of hearing you brag about the times you hobnobbed with the Malwa. What 'guarantees'?"
The quarrel went back over familiar ground. Rajiv himself was inclined to agree with the doubter. He'd no more trust the Malwa royal clan than he would a scorpion. But he paid little attention to the rest of it.
Whether or not the doubting Ye-tai was worried about the reaction of the anvaya-prapta sachivya, it was clear enough he was weakening. He didn't really have any choice, after all, now that the deed was effectively done. Soon enough, he'd give up his objections and the three Ye-tai would be gone.
Then... within a day, Lady Damodara's palace would be swarmed by Emperor Skandagupta's troops. And the secret escape tunnel wouldn't be of any use, because the Ye-tai traitors would have told the Malwa where the tunnel exited. They'd have as many soldiers positioned in the stable as they would at the palace. And it wouldn't take them long to torture the stable-keeper—his family, more likely—into showing them where it was.
It was up to Rajiv, then. One thirteen-year-old boy, unarmed, against three Ye-tai mercenaries. Who were...
He peeked around the corner again.
Definitely armed. Each of them with a sword.
But Rajiv didn't give their weapons more than a glance. He'd already peeked around that corner before, twice, and studied them well enough. This time he was examining the body of the second Bihari miner, whom the mercenaries had cast into a corner of the cellar after cutting his throat also.
Not the body, actually. Rajiv was studying the miner's tools, which the Ye-tai had tossed on top of his corpse.
A pick and a shovel. A short-handled spade, really. Both of the tools were rather small, not so much because most of the Biharis were small but simply because there wasn't much room in the tunnels they dug.
That was good, Rajiv decided. Small tools—at least for someone his size—would make better weapons than large ones would have.
Until he met the Mongoose, Rajiv would never have considered the possibility that tools might make weapons. He'd been raised a Rajput prince, after all. But the Mongoose had hammered that out of him, like many other things. He'd even insisted on teaching Rajiv to fight with big kitchen ladles.
Rajiv's mother had been mightily amused. Rajiv himself had been mortified—until, by the fourth time the Mongoose knocked him down, he'd stopped sneering at ladles.
He decided he'd start with the pick. It was a clumsier thing than the spade, and he'd probably lose it in the first encounter anyway.
There was no point in dawdling. Rajiv gave a last quick glance at the three oil lamps perched on a ledge. No way to knock them off, he decided. Not spaced out the way there were.
Besides, he didn't think fighting in the dark would be to his advantage anyway. That would be a clumsy business, and if there was one thing the Mongoose had driven home to him, it was that "clumsy" and "too damn much sweat" always went together.
"Fight like a miser," he whispered to himself. Then, came out of his crouch and sprang into the cellar.
He said nothing; issued no war cry; gave no speech. The Mongoose had slapped that out of him also. Just went for the pick, with destruction in his heart.
* * *
Still many cellars away, Valentinian and Anastasius heard the fight start.
Nothing from Rajiv. Just the sound of several angry and startled men, their shouts echoing through the labyrinth.
* * *
Rajiv went to meet the first Ye-tai. That surprised him, as he'd thought it would.
When you're outmatched, get in quick. They won't expect that, the fucks.
The Ye-tai's sword came up. Rajiv raised the pick as if to match blows. The mercenary grinned savagely, seeing him do so. He outweighed Rajiv by at least fifty pounds.
At the last instant, Rajiv reversed his grip, ducked under the sword, and drove the handle of the pick into the man's groin.
Go for the shithead's dick and balls. Turn him into a squealing bitch.
The Ye-tai didn't squeal. As hard as Rajiv had driven in the end of the shaft, he didn't do anything except stare ahead, his mouth agape. He'd dropped his sword and was clutching his groin, half-stooped.
His eyes were wide as saucers, too, which was handy.
Rajiv rose from his crouch, reversed his grip again, and drove one of the pick's narrow blades into an eye. The blunt iron sank three inches into the Ye-tai's skull.
As he'd expected, he'd lost the pick. But it had all happened fast enough that he had time to dive for the spade, grab it, and come up rolling in a far corner.
He wasn't thinking at all, really, just acting. Hours and hours and hours of the Mongoose's training, that was.
You don't have time to think in a fight. If you have to think, you're a dead man.
The slumping corpse of the first Ye-tai got in the way of the second. Rajiv had planned for that, when he chose the corner to roll into.
The third came at him, again with his sword high.
That's just stupid, some part of Rajiv's mind recorded. Dimly, there was another, wall-offed part that remembered he had once thought that way of using a sword very warrior-like. Dramatic-looking. Heroic.
But that was before hours and hours and hours of the Mongoose. A lifetime ago, it seemed now—and even a thirteen-year life is a fair span of time.
Rajiv evaded the sword strike. No flair to it, just—got out of the way.
Not much. Just enough. Miserly in everything.
A short, quick, hard jab of the spade into the side of the Ye-tai's knee was enough to throw off his backhand stroke. Rajiv evaded that one easily. He didn't try to parry the blow. The wood and iron of his spade would be no match for a steel sword.
Another quick hard jab to the same knee was enough to bring the Ye-tai down.
As he did so, Rajiv swiveled, causing the crumpling Ye-tai to impede the other.
Fuck 'em up, when you're fighting a crowd. Make 'em fall over each other.
The third Ye-tai didn't fall. But he stumbled into the kneeling body of his comrade hard enough that he had to steady himself with one hand. His other hand, holding the sword, swung out wide in an instinctive reach for balance.
Rajiv drove the edge of the spade into the wrist of the sword arm. The hand popped open. The sword fell. Blood oozed from the laceration on the wrist. It was a bad laceration, even if Rajiv hadn't managed to sever anything critical.
Go for the extremities. Always go for extremities. Hands, feet, toes, fingers. They're your closest target and the hardest for the asshole to defend.
The Ye-tai gaped at him, more in surprise than anything else.
But Rajiv ignored him, for the moment.
Don't linger, you idiot. Cut a man just enough, then cut another. Then come back and cut the first one again, if you need to. Like your mother cuts onions. Practical. Fuck all that other crap.
The second Ye-tai was squealing, in a hissing sort of way. Rajiv knew that knee injuries were excruciating. The Mongoose had told him so—and then, twice, banged up his knee in training sessions to prove it.
The Ye-tai's head was unguarded, with both his hands clutching the ruined knee. So Rajiv drove the spade at his temple.
He made his first mistake, then. The target was so tempting—so glorious, as it were—that he threw everything into the blow. He'd take off that head!
The extra time it took to position his whole body for that mighty blow was enough for the Ye-tai to bring up his hand to protect the head.
Stupid! Rajiv snarled silently at himself.
It probably didn't make any difference, of course. If the edge of the spade wasn't as sharp as a true weapon, it wasn't all that dull; and if iron wasn't steel, it was still much harder than human flesh. The strike cut off one of the man's fingers and maimed the whole hand—and still delivered a powerful blow to the skull. Moaning, the Ye-tai collapsed to the floor, half-unconscious.
Still, Rajiv was glad the Mongoose hadn't seen.
"Stupid," he heard a voice mutter.
Startled, he glanced aside. The Mongoose was there, in the entrance to the chamber. He had his sword in his hand, but it was down alongside his leg. Behind him, Rajiv could see the huge figure of Anastasius looming.
The Mongoose leaned against the stone entrance, tapping the tip of the sword against his boot. Then, nodded his head toward the last Ye-tai against the far wall.
"Finish him, boy. And don't fuck up again."
Rajiv looked at the Ye-tai. The man was paying him no attention at all. He was staring at the Mongoose, obviously frightened out of his wits.
The spade had served well enough, but there was now a sword available. The one the second Ye-tai had dropped after Rajiv smashed his knee.
No reason to waste the spade, of course. Certainly not with the Mongoose watching. Rajiv had been trained—for hours and hours and hours—to throw most anything. Even ladles. The Mongoose was a firm believer in the value of weapons used at a distance.
Rajiv would never be the Mongoose's equal with a throwing knife, of course. He was not sure even the heroes and asuras of the legends could throw a knife that well.
But he was awfully good, by now. The spade, hurled like a spear, struck the Ye-tai in the groin.
With the sword in his hand, Rajiv approached the Ye-tai. By now, of course, the man had noticed him. Half-crouched, snarling, clutching himself with his left hand while he tried to grab his dropped sword with the still-bleeding right hand.
Rajiv sliced open his scalp with a quick, flicking strike of the sword.
Don't try to split his head open, you jackass. You'll likely just get your sword stuck. And it's too easy to block and what's the fucking point anyway? Just cut him somewhere in the front of the head. Anywhere the blood'll spill into his eyes and blind him. Head wounds bleed like nothing else.
Blood poured over the Ye-tai's face. The sword he'd been bringing up went, instead, to his face, as he tried to wipe off the blood with the back of his wrist.
It never got there. Another quick, flicking sword strike struck the hand and took off the thumb. The sword, again, fell to the ground.
"Don't... fuck... it... up," the Mongoose growled.
Rajiv didn't really need the lesson. He'd learned it well enough already, this day, with that one mistake. He was sorely tempted to end it all, but not for any romantic reason. The carnage was starting to upset him. He'd never been in a real fight before—not a killing one—and he was discovering that men don't die the way chickens and lambs do when they're slaughtered.
He'd always thought they would. But they didn't. They bled the same, pretty much. But lambs—certainly chickens—never had that look of horror in their eyes as they knew they were dying.
That same, wall-offed part of Rajiv's mind thought he understood, now. The reason his father always seemed so stern. Not like his mother at all.
Father's son or mother's son, Rajiv was Mongoose-trained. So the sword flicked out five more times, mercilessly slicing and cutting everywhere, before he finally opened the big arteries and veins in the Ye-tai's throat.
"Good." The Mongoose straightened up and pointed with his sword toward a corner. "If you need to puke, do it over there. Cleaning up this mess is going to be a bitch as it is."
Anastasius pushed him aside and came into the chamber. "For the sake of Christ, Valentinian, will you give the boy a break? Three men, in his first fight—and him starting without a weapon."
The Mongoose scowled. "He did pretty damn good. I still don't want to clean up blood and puke all mixed together. Neither do you."
But Rajiv wasn't listening, any longer. He was in the corner, hands on his knees, puking.
He still had the sword firmly gripped, though—and was careful to keep the blade out of the way of the spewing vomit.
"Pretty damn good," the Mongoose repeated.
* * *
"We were very lucky," Lady Damodara said to Sanga's wife, that evening. "If it hadn't been for your son..."
She lowered her head, one hand rubbing her cheek. "We can't wait much longer. I must—finally—get word to my husband. He can't wait, either. I'd thought Ajatasutra would have come back, by now. The fact that he hasn't makes me wonder—"
"I think you're wrong, Lady. " Rajiv's mother was standing by the window, looking out over Kausambi. She was making no attempt to hide from sight. Even if the Malwa dynasty had spies watching from a distance—which was very likely—all they would see in the twilight was the figure of a gray-haired and plain-seeming woman, dressed in simple apparel. A servant, obviously, and there were many servants in such a palace.
"I think Ajatasutra's long absence means the opposite. I think your husband is finally making his move."
More hopefully, Lady Damodara raised her head. She'd come to have a great deal of confidence in the Rajput queen. "You think so?"
Sanga's wife smiled. "Well, let me put it this way. Yes, I think so—and if I'm wrong, we're all dead anyway. So why fret about it?"
Lady Damodara chuckled. "If only I had your unflappable temperament!"
The smile went away. "Not so unflappable as all that. When I heard, afterward, what Rajiv had done..." She shook her head. "I almost screamed at him, I was so angry and upset."
"Yes, he was. That is why I was so angry. Reckless boy! But..."
She seemed to shudder a little. "He was also very, very deadly. That is why I was so upset. At the Mongoose, I think, more than him."
Lady Damodara tilted her head. "He is a Rajput prince."
"Yes, he is. So much is fine. What I do not want is for him to become a Rajput legend. Another damned Rajput legend. Being married to one is enough!"
There was silence, for a time.
"You may not have any choice," Lady Damodara finally said.
"Probably not," Sanga's wife agreed gloomily. "There are times I think I should have poisoned Valentinian right at the beginning."
There was silence for a time, again.
"He probably wouldn't have died anyway."
Peshawar
"What if it's in the middle of garam season?" Kungas asked skeptically, tugging at his little goatee. "The heat won't be so bad, here in the Vale, although it will be if we descend into the Punjab. But I'm concerned about water."
Ashot started to say something, but Kungas waved him down impatiently. "Yes, yes, fine. If we make it to the Indus, we'll have plenty of water. Even in garam."
He jerked his head toward a nearby window in the palace, which faced to the south. "I remind you, Ashot, that I have well over twenty thousand Malwa camped out there, just beyond the passes. Closer to thirty, I think. I'd have to get through them, before I could reach the Indus—with no more than twenty thousand men of my own. Less than that, actually, since I'd have to leave some soldiers here to keep the Pathans from getting stupid ideas."
Ashot said nothing. Just waited.
Kungas went back to his beard-tugging.
"The Malwa have stopped trying to break into the Vale. For weeks, now, they've been putting up their own fortifications. So I'd have to get through those, too."
"Piss-poor fortifications, true. Lazy Malwa. Also true that those are not their best troops. There are not more than three thousand Ye-tai in the lot. Still."
Eventually, Kungas gave Ashot his crack of a smile. "You are not trying to persuade me, I notice. Smart man. Let me persuade myself."
Ashot's returning smile was a wider thing. Of course, almost anyone's smile was wider than that of Kungas, even when the king was in a sunny mood.
"The general is not expecting you to defeat those Malwa," the Armenian cataphract pointed out. "If you can, splendid. But it would be enough if he knew you could tie them up. Keep them from being used elsewhere."
Kungas sniffed. "Marvelous. I point out to you that I am already tying them up and keeping them from being used against him. And have to do nothing more vigorous than drink wine and eat fruit in the doing."
He matched deed to word, taking a sip from his wine and plucking a pear from a bowl on the low table in front of the settee. The sip was very small, though, and he didn't actually eat the pear. Just held it in his hand, weighing it as if it were the problem he confronted.
Ashot started to open his mouth, then closed it. Kungas' little smile widened slightly.
"Very smart man. Yes, yes, I know—the general is assuming that if he produces enough of a crisis, the Malwa will draw their troops away from the Vale to reinforce the soldiers he faces. And he wants me to stop them from doing so, which—alas—I cannot do drinking wine and eating pears."
Kungas set the pear back in the bowl, rose and went to the window. On the way, almost absently, he gave his wife's pony tail a gentle stroke. Irene was sitting on a chair—more like a raised cushion, really—at the same low table. She smiled at his passing figure, but said nothing.
Like Ashot, she knew that the best way to persuade Kungas of anything was not to push him too hard.
Once at the window, Kungas looked out over the Vale of Peshawar. Not at the Vale itself, so much as the mountains beyond.
"How certain is Belisarius that such a crisis is coming?" he asked.
Ashot shrugged. "I don't think 'certain' is the right word. The general doesn't think that way. 'Likely,' 'not likely,' 'possible,' 'probable'—it's just not the way his mind works."
"No, it isn't," mused Kungas. "As my too-educated Greek wife would put it, he thinks like a geometer, not an arithmetician. It's the angles he considers, not the sums. That's because he thinks if he can gauge the angle correctly, he can create the sums he needs."
The Kushan king's eyes lowered, now looking at the big market square below. "Which, he usually can. He'd do badly, I think, as a merchant. But he's probably the deadliest general in centuries. I'm glad he's not my enemy."
Abruptly, he turned away from the window. "Done. Tell Belisarius that if the Malwa start trying to pull troops from the Vale, I will do my best to pin them here. I make no promises, you understand. No guarantees. I will do my best, but—I have a kingdom to protect also, now that I have created it."
Ashot rose, nodding. "That will be more than enough, Your Majesty. Your best will be more than enough."
Kungas snorted. "Such phrases! And 'Your Majesty,' no less. Be careful, Ashot, or your general will make you an ambassador instead of a soldier."
The Armenian cataphract winced. Irene laughed softly. "It's not so bad, Ashot. Of course, you'll have to learn how to wear a veil."
* * *
"I'm going with you," Shakuntala announced. "And don't bother trying to argue with me. I am the Empress."
Her husband spread his hands, smiling. A very diplomatic smile, that was.
"I would not dream of opposing your royal self."
Shakuntala gazed up at him suspiciously. For a moment, her hand went to stroke her belly, although she never completed the gesture.
"What's this?" she demanded. "I was expecting a husband's prattle about my duties as a mother. A lecture on the dangers of miscarriage."
The smile still on his face, Rao shrugged. "Bring Namadev, if you want to. Not much risk of disease, really, now that garam has started."
"Don't remind me," the Empress said. She moved over to a window in the palace and scowled out at the landscape of Majarashtra. The hills surrounding Deogiri shimmered in the heat, from hot air rising from the baked soil.
Whatever else Indians disputed over, they all agreed that rabi was the best season, cool and dry as it was. One of India's three seasons, it corresponded roughly to what other lands considered winter. Alas, now that they were in what Christians called the month of March, rabi had ended.
Thereafter opinions diverged as to whether garam was worse than khalif, or the opposite. In Shakuntala's opinion, it was a silly argument. Garam, obviously! Especially here in the Great Country!
The monsoon season could be a nuisance, true enough, with its heavy rains. But she came from Keralan stock, on her mother's side, and had spent a fair part of her childhood in Kerala. Located as it was on India's southwest coast, Kerala was practically inundated during khalif. She was accustomed to rains far heavier than any that came here.
In any event, stony and arid Majarashtra desperately needed the monsoon's rainfall by the time it came. That began in what the Christians called "late May." What the Great Country did not need was the dry and blistering heat of garam. Not for one day, much less the three months it would last.
"I hate garam," she muttered. "Especially in the palace. It will be good for me—our son too!—to get outside for a while."
"Probably," Rao allowed. "You and Namadev will travel in a howdah, of course. The canopy will keep off the sun, and you might get some breeze."
Shakuntala turned away from the window and looked at him. "Are you really that sure, Rao? You are my beloved."
The expression that came to her husband's face then reminded Shakuntala forcibly of the differences between them, however much they might love each other. Where she was young, Rao was middle-aged. And, perhaps even more importantly, he was a philosopher and she was... not.
"Who can say?" he asked serenely.
"You are relying too much on complicated logic," she hissed. "Treacherous, that is."
"Actually, no. There is the logic of it, true enough. But, in the end..."
He moved to the same window and gazed out. "It is more than I am swayed by the beauty of the thing. Whatever deities exist, they care not much for logic, for they treasure their whimsy. But they do love beauty. All of them—even the most bloody—will adore the notion."
"You are mad," she stated, with the certainty of an Empress.
Of course, she'd stated those words before. And been proven wrong.
"Bring the baby too," Rao said, tranquilly. "He will be in no danger."
* * *
From the battlements on the landward side of the city, Nanda Lal and Toramana watched Damodara's great army set out on its march upriver.
Suspicion was ever-present in the Malwa empire's spymaster, and today was no exception.
"Why the Narmada?" he demanded softly. "This makes no sense to me. Why does Damodara think Raghunath Rao will be foolish enough to meet him on a river plain? He'd stay in the badlands, I would think, where the terrain favors him."
Although Nanda Lal's eyes had never left the departing army, the question was addressed at the big Ye-tai general standing next to him.
Toramana, never prone to expansive gestures, shifted his shoulders a bit. "Better to say, why not? Lord, it may be that Rao will not come down out of the hills. But he says he will, to meet Sanga in single combat. So, if he doesn't, he is shamed. The worst that happens, from Damodara's position, is that he has undermined his opponent."
Nanda Lal made a face. Raised as he was in the Malwa dynasty's traditions—not to mention the even colder school of Link—it was always a bit difficult for him to realize that other men took this business about "honor" quite seriously. Even the Ye-tai next to him, just a hair's breadth removed from nomadic savagery and with a personality that was ruthless in its own right, seemed at least partly caught up in the spirit of the thing.
So, he said nothing. And, after cogitating on the problem for a few minutes, decided that Toramana was probably right.
"Notify me if you hear anything amiss," he commanded, and left. He saw no reason to stay until the last elements of Damodara's army were no longer visible from the battlements. Let the Ye-tai barbarian, if he chose, find "honor" in that splendid vista of dust, the rear ends of animals, and the trail of manure they left behind.
* * *
Toramana did remain on the battlements until the army was no longer in sight. Not because of any demands of honor, however. He was no more of a romantic than Nanda Lal on the subject of horseshit. Or any other, for that matter.
No, he did so for two other reasons.
First, to be certain he had suppressed any trace of humor before he was seen by any of Nanda Lal's spies in the city. Or even good cheer, of which the Ye-tai general was full.
Damodara had said nothing to him, of course. Neither had Narses, beyond the vaguest of hints. It didn't matter. Toramana, from his own analysis of the situation, was almost certain that Damodara had decided the time had come. The reason he was full of good cheer was because, if he was right, that meant both Damodara and Narses had great confidence in him. They were relying on Toramana to do what was necessary, without needing to be told anything.
He'd know, of course, if his assessment was correct. There would be one sure and simple sign to come.
So, he foresaw a great future for himself. Assuming he survived the next few months. But, if he did—yes, a great future.
And an even greater future for his children.
Of course, producing those children also depended on surviving the next few months. But Toramana was a confident man, and on no subject so much as his own prospects for survival.
That led him to his other reason for remaining on the battlements, which was the need to make a final decision on the second most important issue he faced.
He came to that decision quickly. More quickly than he had expected he would. Odd, perhaps. Toramana was not generally given to experimental whimsy. On the other hand, new times called for new measures.
Odder still, though, was the sense of relief that decision brought also.
Why? he wondered. Fearing, for a moment, that he might have been infected with the decadence he saw around him. But he soon decided that there was no infection. Simply...
And how odd that was! He was actually looking forward to it.
* * *
That evening, as he had done every evening since she'd arrived in Bharakuccha, Toramana presented himself at the chambers where his intended had taken up residence in the great palace.
Outside the chambers, of course. Betrothed or not, there would be no question of impropriety. Even after Indira appeared and they began their customary promenade through the gardens, she was followed by a small host of wizened old chaperones and three Rajput warriors. Clansmen of Rana Sanga's, naturally.
For the first few minutes, their talk was idle. The usual meaningless chitchat. Meaningless, at least, in its content. The real purpose of these promenades was simply to allow a groom and his future bride to become at least somewhat acquainted with each other. As stiff as they were, even Rajputs understood that the necessary function of a wedding night was simplified and made easier if the spouses didn't have to grope at each other's voices as well as bodies.
After a time, Toramana cleared his throat. "Can you read?"
Indira's eyes widened. Toramana had expected that. He was pleased to see, however, that they didn't widen very much, and the face beneath remained quite composed. To anyone watching, she might have been mildly surprised by a comment he made concerning an unusual insect.
His hopes for this wife, already high, rose a bit further. She would be a splendid asset.
"No," she replied. "It is not the custom."
Toramana nodded. "I can read, myself. But not well. That must change. And I will want you to become literate also. I will hire tutors for us."
She gazed at a nearby vine. The slight widening of the girl's eyes was gone, now.
"There will be some talk. My brother's wife can read, however, even if somewhat poorly. So probably not all that much talk."
"Talk does not concern me," Toramana said stiffly. "The future concerns me. I do not think great families with illiterate women will do so well, in that future."
The smile that spread across her face was a slow, cool thing. The very proper smile of a young Rajput princess hearing her betrothed make a pleasant comment regarding a pretty vine.
"I agree," she said. "Though most others would not."
"I am not concerned about 'most others.' Most others will obey or they will break."
The smile spread just a bit further. "A few others will not break so easily."
"Easily, no. Still, they will break."
The smile now faded quickly, soon replaced by the solemn countenance with which she'd begun the promenade. As was proper. A princess should smile at the remarks of her betrothed, to be sure, but not too widely and not for too long. They were not married yet, after all.
"I am looking forward to our wedding," Indira said softly. Too softly for the wizened little horde behind them to overhear. "To the marriage, even more."
"It is not the custom," she repeated.
"Customs change. Or they break."
* * *
Before nightfall, the promenade was over and Toramana returned to his own quarters.
No sooner had the Ye-tai general entered his private sleeping chamber than the one sure and simple sign he'd expected made its appearance.
Like a ghost, emerging from the wall. Toramana had no idea where the assassin had hidden himself.
"I'm afraid I'll need to sleep here," Ajatasutra said. "Nanda Lal has spies almost everywhere."
Toramana's lip curled, just a bit. "He had no spies here."
"Four days. Though nothing will be needed from you immediately. It will take at least two days for Damodara to return."
The assassin shrugged. "Whatever is necessary. The future is hard to predict. It looks good, though. I do not foresee any great difficulty."
Toramana began removing his armor. It was not extensive, simply the half-armor he wore on garrison duty. "No. There should be no great difficulty."
There was a thin, mocking smile on Ajatasutra's face, as there often was. On another man's face, that smile would have irritated Toramana, perhaps even angered him. But the Ye-tai general was accustomed to it, by now.
So, he responded with a thin, mocking smile of his own.
"What amuses you?" Ajatasutra asked.
"A difficulty I had not foreseen, which I just now remembered. Nanda Lal once promised me that he would attend my wedding. And I told him I would hold him to it."
"Ah." The assassin nodded. "Yes, that is a difficulty. A matter of honor is involved."
The armor finally removed and placed on a nearby stand, Toramana scratched his ribs. Even half-armor was sweaty, in garam.
"Not that difficult," he said.
He and Ajatasutra exchanged the smile, now. They got along very well together. Why not? They were much alike.
* * *
Agathius was on the dock at Charax to greet Antonina and Photius and Ousanas when the Axumite fleet arrived.
So much, Antonina had expected. What she had not expected was the sight of Agathius' young Persian wife and the small mountain of luggage next to her.
"We're going with you," Agathius announced gruffly, as soon as the gangplank was lowered and he hobbled across.
He looked at Ousanas. "I hear you have a new title. No longer the keeper of the fly whisks."
"Indeed, not! My new title is far more august. 'Angabo,' no less. That signifies—"
"The keeper of the crutches. Splendid, you can hold mine for a moment." Agathius leaned his weight against the rail and handed his crutches to Ousanas. Then, started digging in his tunic. "I've got the orders here."
By the time Antonina stopped giggling at the startled expression on Ousanas' face, Agathius was handing her a sheaf of official-looking documents.
"Right there," he said, tapping a finger on the name at the bottom. "It's not a signature, of course. Not in these modern times, with telegraph."
He seemed to be avoiding her eyes. Antonina didn't bother looking at the documents. Instead, she looked at Agathius' wife, who was still on the dock and peering at her suspiciously.
"I'll bet my husband's orders don't say anything about Sudaba."
Agathius seemed to shrink a little. "Well, no. But if you want to argue the matter with her, you do it."
"Oh, I wouldn't think of doing so." Honey dripped from the words. "The children?"
"They'll stay here. Sudaba's family will take them in, until we get back." The burly Roman general's shoulders swelled again. "I insisted. Made it stick, too."
Antonina was trying very hard not to laugh. Sudaba had become something of a legend in the Roman army. What saved Agathius from being ridiculed behind his back was that the soldiery was too envious. Sudaba never henpecked Agathius about anything else—and precious few of them had a young and very good-looking wife who insisted on accompanying her husband everywhere he went. The fact that Agathius had lost his legs in battle and had to hobble around on crutches and wooden legs only augmented that amatory prestige.
Ousanas grinned and handed back the crutches. "'Angabo' does not mean keeper of the crutches. It also doesn't mean 'nursemaid,' so don't ask me to take in your brats when you return. They'll be spoiled rotten."
In a cheerier mood, now that he knew Antonina wouldn't object to Sudaba's presence, Agathius took back the crutches. "True. So what? They're already spoiled rotten. And we'll see how long that grin lasts. The Persians insist on a huge festival to honor your arrival. Well—Photius' arrival, formally speaking. But you'll have to attend also."
* * *
There had never been a grin on the face of the Malwa assassination commander, or any of his men. Not even a smile, since they'd arrived at Charax.
Any assassination attempt in Egypt had proven impossible, as they'd surmised it would be. Unfortunately, the situation in Charax was no better. The docks were still under Roman authority, and the security there was even more ferocious than it had been in Alexandria.
True, for the day and half the festival lasted, their targets were under Persian protection. But if the Aryans were slacker and less well-organized than the Romans, they made up for it by sheer numbers. Worst of all, by that invariant Persian snobbery. Only Roman officials and Persian grandees and azadan—"men of noble birth"—were allowed anywhere in the vicinity of the Roman and Axumite visitors.
With the resources available, in the time they had, there was no way for the assassins to forge documents good enough to pass Roman inspection. As for trying to claim noble Aryan lineage...
Impossible. Persian documents were fairly easy to forge, and it would be as easy for some of the assassins to pass themselves off as Persians as polyglot Romans. But if Persian bureaucrats were easy to fool, Persian retainers were not. Tightly knit together by kinship as the great Persian families were, they relied on personal recognition to separate the wheat from the chaff—and to those keen eyes, the Malwa assassins were clearly chaff. If nothing else, they'd certainly insist on searching their luggage, and they'd find the bombard—a weapon that had no conceivable use except assassination.
"No help for it," the commander said, as he watched the Axumite war fleet leaving the harbor, with their target safely aboard the largest vessel. "We'll have to try again at Barbaricum. No point even thinking about Chabahari."
His men nodded, looking no more pleased than he did. Leaving aside the fact that this mission had been frustrating from the very start, they now had the distinctly unpleasant prospect of voyaging down the Gulf in an oared galley. It was unlikely they'd be able to use sails, traveling eastbound, with monsoon season still so far away. And—worst of all—while they'd had enough money to afford a galley, they hadn't been able to afford a crew beyond a pilot.
Malwa assassins were expert at many things. Rowing was not one of them.
"Our hands'll be too badly blistered to hold a knife," one of them predicted gloomily.
"Shut up," his commander responded, every bit as gloomily.
The Indus
The attack came as a complete surprise. Not to Anna, who simply didn't know enough about war to understand what could be expected and what not, but to her military escort.
"What in the name of God do they think they're doing?" demanded Menander angrily.
He studied the fleet of small boats—skiffs, really—pushing out from the southern shore. The skiffs were loaded with Malwa soldiers, along with more than the usual complement of Mahaveda priests and their mahamimamsa "enforcers." The presence of the latter was a sure sign that the Malwa considered this project so near-suicidal that the soldiers needed to be held in a tight rein.
"It's an ambush," explained his pilot, saying aloud the conclusion Menander had already reached. The man pointed to the thick reeds. "The Malwa must have hauled those boats across the desert, hidden them in the reeds, waited for us. We don't keep regular patrols on the south bank, since there's really nothing there to watch for."
Menander's face was tight with exasperation. "But what's the point of it?" For a moment, his eyes moved forward, toward the heavily-shielded bow of the ship where the Victrix's fire-cannon was situated. "We'll burn them up like so many piles of kindling."
But even before he finished the last words, even before he saw the target of the oncoming boats, Menander understood the truth. The fact of it, at least, if not the reasoning.
"Why? They're all dead men, no matter what happens. In the name of God, she's just a woman!"
He didn't wait for an answer, however, before starting to issue his commands. The Victrix began shuddering to a halt. The skiffs were coming swiftly, driven by almost frenzied rowing. It would take the Victrix time to come to a halt and turn around; time to make its way back to protect the barge it was towing.
Time, Menander feared, that he might not have.
* * *
"What should we do?" asked Anna. For all the strain in her voice, she was relieved that her words came without stammering. A Melisseni girl could afford to scream with terror; she couldn't. Not any longer.
Grim-faced, Illus glanced around the barge. Other than he and Cottomenes and Abdul, there were only five Roman soldiers on the barge—and only two of those were armed with muskets. Since Belisarius and Khusrau had driven the Malwa out of the Sind, and established Roman naval supremacy on the Indus with the new steam-powered gunboats, there had been no Malwa attempt to threaten shipping south of the Iron Triangle.
Then his eyes came to rest on the vessel's new feature, and his tight lips creased into something like a smile.
"God bless good officers," he muttered.
He pointed to the top of the cabin amidships, where a shell of thin iron was perched. It was a turret, of sorts, for the odd and ungainly looking "Puckle gun" that Menander had insisted on adding to the barge. The helmeted face and upper body of the gunner was visible, and Illus could see the man beginning to train the weapon on the oncoming canoes.
"Get up there—now. There's enough room in there for you, and it's the best armored place on the barge." He gave the oncoming Malwa a quick glance. "They've got a few muskets of their own. Won't be able to hit much, not shooting from skiffs moving that quickly—but keep your head down once you get there."
It took Anna a great deal of effort, encumbered as she was by her heavy and severe gown, to clamber atop the cabin. She couldn't have made it at all, if Abdul hadn't boosted her. Climbing over the iron wall of the turret was a bit easier, but not much. Fortunately, the gunner lent her a hand.
After she sprawled into the open interior of the turret, the hard edges of some kind of ammunition containers bruising her back, Anna had to struggle fiercely not to burst into shrill cursing.
I have got to design a new costume. Propriety be damned!
For a moment, her thoughts veered aside. She remembered that Irene Macrembolitissa, in her Observations of India, had mentioned—with some amusement—that Empress Shakuntala often wore pantaloons in public. Outrageous behavior, really, but... when you're the one who owns the executioners, you can afford to outrage public opinion.
The thought made her smile, and it was with that cheerful expression on her lips that she turned her face up to the gunner frowning down at her.
"Is there anything I can do to help?"
The man's face suddenly lightened, and he smiled himself.
"Damn if you aren't a prize!" he chuckled. Then, nodding his head. "Yes, ma'am. As a matter of fact, there is."
He pointed to the odd-looking objects lying on the floor of the turret, which had bruised Anna when she landed on them. "Those are called cylinders." He patted the strange looking weapon behind which he was half-crouched. "This thing'll wreak havoc, sure enough, as long as I can keep it loaded. I'm supposed to have a loader, but since we added this just as an afterthought..."
He turned his head, studying the enemy vessels. "Better do it quick, ma'am. If those skiffs get alongside, your men and the other soldiers won't be enough to beat them back. And they'll have grenades anyway, they're bound to. If I can't keep them off, we're all dead."
Anna scrambled around until she was on her knees. Then seized one of the weird-looking metal contraptions. It was not as heavy as it looked. "What do you need me to do? Be precise!"
"Just hand them to me, ma'am, that's all. I'll do the rest. And keep your head down—it's you they're after."
Anna froze for a moment, dumbfounded. "Me? Why?"
"Damned if I know. Doesn't make sense."
But, in truth, the gunner did understand. Some part of it, at least, even if he lacked the sophistication to follow all of the reasoning of the inhuman monster who commanded the Malwa empire. The gunner had never heard—and never would—of a man named Napoleon. But he was an experienced soldier, and not stupid even if his formal education was rudimentary. The moral is to the material in war as three-to-one was not a phrase the man would have ever uttered himself, but he would have had no difficulty understanding it.
Link, the emissary from the new gods of the future who ruled the Malwa in all but name and commanded its great army in the Punjab, had ordered this ambush. The "why" was self-evident to its superhuman intelligence. Spending the lives of a few soldiers and Mahaveda priests was well worth the price, if it would enable the monster to destroy the Wife whose exploits its spies reported. Exploits which, in their own peculiar way, had become important to Roman morale.
Cheap at the price, in fact. Dirt cheap.
The battle on the river was observed from the north bank by a patrol of light Arab cavalry in Roman service. Being Beni Ghassan, the cavalrymen were far more sophisticated in the uses of new technology than most Arabs. Their commander immediately dispatched three riders to bring news of the Malwa ambush to the nearest telegraph station, which was but a few miles distant.
By the time Belisarius got the news, of course, the outcome of the battle had already been decided, one way or the other. So he could do nothing more than curse himself for a fool, and try not to let the ashen face of a blind young man sway his cold-blooded reasoning.
"I'm a damned fool not to have foreseen the possibility. It just didn't occur to me that the Malwa might carry boats across the desert. But it should have."
"Not your fault, sir," said Calopodius quietly.
Belisarius tightened his jaws. "Like hell it isn't."
Maurice, standing nearby, ran fingers through his bristly iron-gray hair. "We all screwed up. I should have thought of it, too. We've been so busy just being entertained by the episode that we didn't think about it. Not seriously."
Belisarius sighed and nodded. "There's still no point in me sending the Justinian. By the time it got there, it will all have been long settled—and there's always the chance Link might be trying for a diversion."
"You can't send the Justinian," said Calopodius, half-whispering. "With the Victrix gone—and the Photius down at Sukkur—the Malwa might try an amphibious attack on the Triangle. They could get past the mine fields with a lot of little boats, where they couldn't with just their few ironclads."
He spoke the cold truth, and every officer in the command center knew it. So nothing further was said. They simply waited for another telegraph report to inform them whether Calopodius was a husband or a widower.
Before the battle was over, Anna had reason to be thankful for her heavy gown.
As cheerfully profligate as he was, the gunner soon used up the preloaded cylinders for the Puckle gun. Thereafter, Anna had to reload the cylinders manually with the cartridges she found in a metal case against the shell of the turret. Placing the new shells into a cylinder was easy enough, with a little experience. The trick was taking out the spent ones. The brass cartridges were hot enough to hurt her fingers, the first time she tried prying them out.
Thereafter, following the gunner's hastily shouted instructions, she started using the little ramrod provided in the ammunition case. Kneeling in the shelter of the turret, she just upended the cylinders—carefully holding them with the hem of her dress, because they were hot also—and smacked the cartridges loose.
The cartridges came out easily enough, that way—right onto her lap and knees. In a lighter gown, a less severe and formal garment, her thighs would soon enough have been scorched by the little pile of hot metal.
As it was, the heat was endurable, and Anna didn't care in the least that the expensive fabric was being ruined in the process. She just went about her business, brushing the cartridges onto the floor of the turret, loading and reloading with the thunderous racket of the Puckle gun in her ears, ignoring everything else around her.
Throughout, her mind only strayed once. After the work became something of a routine, she found herself wondering if her husband's mind had been so detached in battles. Not whether he had ignored pain—of course he had; Anna had learned that much since leaving Constantinople—but whether he had been able to ignore his continued existence as well.
She suspected he had, and found herself quite warmed by the thought. She even handed up the next loaded cylinder with a smile.
The gunner noticed the smile, and that too would become part of the legend. He would survive the war, as it happened; and, in later years, in taverns in his native Anatolia, whenever he heard the tale of how the Wife smote down Malwa boarders with a sword and a laugh, saw no reason to set the matter straight. By then, he had come to half-believe it himself.
Anna sensed a shadow passing, but she paid it very little attention. By now, her hands and fingers were throbbing enough to block out most sensation beyond what was necessary to keep reloading the cylinders. She barely even noticed the sudden burst of fiery light and the screams which announced that the Victrix had arrived and was wreaking its delayed vengeance on what was left of the Malwa ambush.
Which was not much, in truth. The gunner was a very capable man, and Anna had kept him well-supplied. Most of the skiffs now drifting near the barge had bodies draped over their sides and sprawled lifelessly within. At that close range, the Puckle gun had been murderous.
"Enough, ma'am," said the gunner. "It's over."
Anna finished reloading the cylinder in her hands. Then, when the meaning of the words finally registered, she set the thing down on the floor of the turret. Perhaps oddly, the relief of finally not having to handle hot metal only made the pain in her hands—and legs, too, she noticed finally—all the worse.
She stared down at the fabric of her gown. There were little stains all over it, where cartridges had rested before she brushed them onto the floor. There was a time, she could vaguely remember, when the destruction of an expensive garment would have been a cause of great concern. But it seemed a very long time ago.
"How is Illus?" she asked softly. "And the others? The boys?"
The gunner sighed. "One of the boys got killed, ma'am. Just bad luck—Illus kept the youngsters back, but that one grenade..."
Vaguely, Anna remembered hearing an explosion. She began to ask which boy it was, whose death she had caused, of the five urchins she had found on the docks of Barbaricum and conscripted into her Service. But she could not bear that pain yet.
"He's fine. So's Abdul. Cottomenes got cut pretty bad."
Something to do again. The thought came as a relief. Within seconds, she was clambering awkwardly over the side of the turret again—and, again, silently cursing the impractical garment she wore.
* * *
Cottomenes was badly gashed, true enough. But the leg wound was not even close to the great femoral artery, and by now Anna had learned to sew other things than cloth. Besides, the Victrix's boiler was an excellent mechanism for boiling water.
The ship's engineer was a bit outraged, of course. But, wisely, he kept his mouth shut.
The telegraph started chattering. Everyone in the command bunker froze for a moment. Then, understanding the meaning of the dot-dashes faster than anyone—even the operator jotting down the message—Calopodius slumped in his chair with relief. The message was unusually long, with two short pauses in the middle, and by the time it was completed Calopodius was even smiling.
Belisarius, unlike Calopodius, could not quite follow the message until it was translated. When he took the message from the hand of the operator and scanned it quickly, he understood the smile on the face of the blind young officer. He grinned himself.
"Well, I'd say she's in good form," he announced to the small crowd in the bunker. Then, quoting:
"ALL FINE EXCEPT COTTOMENES INJURED AND RAFFI DEAD. RAFFI ONLY TWELVE YEARS OLD. FEEL HORRIBLE ABOUT IT. MENTION HIM IN DISPATCHES. PLEASE. ALSO MENTION PUCKLE GUNNER LEO CONSTANTES. SPLENDID MAN. ALSO INSTRUCT GENERAL BELISARIUS MAKE MORE PUCKLE GUNS. SPLENDID THINGS. ALSO—"
"Here's where the pause was," explained the general. His grin widened. "It goes on:
"OPERATOR SAYS MESSAGE TOO LONG. OPERATOR REFUSES GIVE HIS NAME. MENTION NAMELESS OPERATOR IN DISPATCHES. STUPID OFFICIOUS ASININE OBNOXIOUS WORTHLESS FELLOW."
"Why do I think someone in that telegraph station has a sword at his throat?" mused Maurice idly. "Her bodyguards are Isaurians, right? Stupid idiot." He was grinning also.
"MENANDER SAYS WILL ARRIVE SOON. WILL NEED NEW CLOTHES."
Belisarius' grin didn't fade, exactly, but it became less purely jovial. His last words were spoken softly, and addressed to Calopodius rather than to the room at large.
"Here was the second pause. The last part of the message reads:
"AM EAGER TO SEE YOU AGAIN. MY HUSBAND."
The Narmada river
The Malwa army drawn up on the open plain just south of the Narmada was terrifying. Looking over them from a distance, perched in her howdah with the baby, Shakuntala finally understood—really understood—why her husband had been so cautious in his tactics from the very beginning.
It might be better to say, cautious in his strategy. When the Panther did strike, he struck hard and fast. But he'd carefully avoided getting anywhere near the Malwa lion's jaws and talons.
"Impressive, aren't they?" Rao called up to her. He was riding a horse alongside the elephant that bore her and Namadev.
Until that morning, two maidservants had been in the howdah with them. But Shakuntala had insisted they remain behind, when the Maratha army moved out at dawn to meet Damodara and his forces. The Empress still suspected treachery. For that reason, she had one of the best horses in India following behind, in case she and Namadev had to flee precipitously into the badlands of the Great Country. On that horse, she was confident she could elude even Rajput cavalry. On an elephant, hopeless to do so.
She stared down at her husband. Amazingly, to all appearances, he was in as sunny a mood as she'd ever seen him.
Rao raised himself a little in his stirrups—by now, the Roman innovations were ubiquitous—to get a better view of the enemy. "The best army the Malwa have, for a certainty." He pointed with his finger, and then slowly swept it across the front lines of the enemy. They were still a thousand yards away.
"See how Damodara has his artillery units scattered among the infantry? You won't see that in any other Malwa army. No lolling about in the comfort of the rear for his kshatriya."
The finger jabbed; here, there, there.
"Notice, also, the way he has the Ye-tai units positioned with respect to the main force of Rajput cavalry. In the center, most of them, forming his spearhead while the Rajputs are concentrated on the flanks. His Ye-tai will lead the charge, here, not stay behind to drive forward badly-trained and ill-motivated peasant foot soldiers."
The finger lowered. "Of which," he concluded cheerily, "Damodara doesn't have that many in any event. They're back guarding the supply wagons, I imagine. Along with the mahaveda priests, of course, who control the munitions supply. That last feature is about the only way in which Damodara's army still resembles a Malwa force."
"Rao..." Shakuntala said hesitantly.
"Oh, yes, my dearest. You're quite right." Still standing in the stirrups, Rao swiveled his upper body back and forth, studying his own army.
The Maratha army was barely than half the size of the enemy force across the field. And didn't bear so much as a fourth the weight of fine armor, fine swords and lances—and not a tenth the weight of firearms and gunpowder.
"Oh, yes," he repeated, his voice still as sunny-toned as ever, "if I were idiotic enough to meet them on this field, they'd hammer us flat. Be lucky if a third of my army survived at all."
"Be still, dearest. This is not a field where two armies will meet. Simply two souls. Three, actually, counting Damodara. Perhaps four, if we count Narses as well. Which I think we must."
She took a deep, slow breath. "Your soul is as great as any I have ever known. But it is not great enough to do this."
He laughed. "Of course not! It's not my soul I'm counting on, however."
He reached up and extended his hand. "Touch me, dearest. Not for the last time! Simply—a gift."
She did so, briefly clutching the strong fingers. Strong and large. Rao had the hands of a man half again his size.
Then, he was gone, trotting his horse onto the open field between the armies.
* * *
Sitting on his own mount at the very front and center of the Malwa army, Rana Sanga watched him come.
At first, he simply assumed it was Raghunath Rao, from the logic of the matter. Even the keen eyes of the man who was probably India's greatest archer could not distinguish features at the distance of a thousand yards. The more so, when he had not seen the features themselves in over two decades. The famous duel between he and Rao had happened when they were both young men.
Long ago, that was. A thousand years ago, it seemed to the greatest king of Rajputana. Between then and now lay a gulf that could not be measured in simple years. The young Sanga who had faced a young Rao so long ago had been sure and certain in his beliefs, his creed, his duty, his loyalties, and his place in the universe. The middle-aged man who was about to meet him again was no longer sure of anything.
Except in his prowess as a warrior, of course. But Rana Sanga knew full well that was the least of the things that were meeting today on a new field of battle. Something much greater was at stake now. He only wished he knew exactly what it was. But the only thought that came to his mind was...
It was bizarre, really. All he could think of was onions, peeling away. With every horse's pace the distant figure shortened between them, Sanga could sense another peel, falling.
Soon enough—still long before he could recognize the features—he knew it was Rao.
"I'd half-forgotten," he murmured.
* * *
Next to him, Damodara raised a questioning eyebrow.
"How frightening an opponent he is," Sanga explained.
Damodara squinted at the coming figure, trying to discern what Sanga seemed to see in it. Damodara himself was...
Unimpressed, really. Given the reputation of the Panther—or the Wind of the Great Country, as he was also known—he'd been expecting some sort of giant of a man. But the Maratha warrior approaching across the field seemed no more than average size.
Very wide in the shoulders, true. So much was obvious even at a distance, and Damodara didn't think it was due to the armor Rao was wearing. It was not elaborate armor, in any event. Just the utilitarian gear than any hill-fighter might bring into battle.
But as Rao neared, he began to understand. It was a subtle thing, given that the man was on horseback. Still, after a time, it became apparent enough.
"The way he moves, even riding a horse..."
Sanga barked a harsh laugh. "Hope you never see him move up close, with a blade or his iron-clawed gauntlet! Not even the Mongoose is so fast, so sure. Always so balanced. I remember thinking I was facing an asura under the human-seeming flesh."
The Rajput king eased his sword out of the scabbard. Just an inch or so, making sure it was loose. Then, did the same with the lance in its scabbard by his knee.
Then, drew his bow. He'd start with that, of course. With a bow, Sanga out-matched Rao. With a lance also, probably, especially now with the added advantage of stirrups.
Still, given Rao, it would probably end with them on foot. The last time they'd met, they'd fought for an entire day with every weapon they'd possessed. And then, too exhausted to move, had finished by exchanging philosophical barbs and quips.
"Wish me well, Lord," he said. Then, spurred his own horse into a trot.
* * *
A great roar went up from the Malwa army. Matched, a moment later, by one from the Marathas across the field.
* * *
"Oh, splendid," murmured Ajatasutra. He and the assassin he'd kept with him exchanged a little smile.
"Let's hope they keep it up." The assassin glanced at one of the nearby munitions wagons. The mahaveda head priest and the two mahamimansa who guarded it were standing, their eyes riveted on the two combatants approaching each other. They were paying no attention at all to the men who, in the nondescript and patchy armor of common infantrymen, were quietly spreading through the munitions wagons.
Ajatasutra pinched his hawk nose, smiling more widely under the fingers. "If need be, yes. But unless I'm much mistaken, that won't be necessary. The thing will be, ah, quite obvious."
The assassin cocked his head slightly, in a subtle question.
"Look at it this way. The two most flamboyant men in India are about to meet. True, one is the sternest of Rajputs and the other is reputed to be a great philosopher. Still, I don't think subtlety will be the end result."
* * *
Narses just watched, perched on his mule. Whatever he could do, he had done. The rest was in the hands of whatever God existed.
So, although he watched intently, he was quite calm. What would happen, would happen. There remained only the anticipation of the outcome. The greatest game of all, the game of thrones.
For the rest—whatever God might be—Narses was quite sure he was damned anyway. But he thought he'd have the satisfaction, whatever happened, of being able to thumb his nose at all the gods and devils of the universe, as he plunged into the Pit.
Which, he reminded himself, might still be some decades off anyway.
* * *
Damodara was far less relaxed. As tense and as keyed up as he'd ever been, on the edge of a battle.
It could not be otherwise, of course. It was he who would, as commanders must, gauge the right moment.
* * *
Once Sanga and Rao were within seventy yards of each other, Rao drew up his horse.
Sanga did likewise. He already had the bow in his left hand. Now, relinquishing the reins, he drew and notched an arrow with the right.
Then, waited. Gallant as ever, the Rajput king would allow the Maratha chieftain and imperial consort to ready his own bow.
Titles had vanished, on this field. Everything had vanished, except the glory of India's two greatest warriors meeting again in single combat.
Rao grinned. He hadn't intended to, but the sight of Sanga's frown—quite obvious, even at the distance, given the open-faced nature of Rajput helmets—made it impossible to do otherwise.
Always strict! Sanga was obviously a bit disgruntled that Rao had been so careless as not to have his own bow already in hand. Had the great Maratha warrior grown senile?
"The last time," Rao murmured, "great king of the Rajputs, we began with bows and ended with philosophy. But we're much older now, and that seems like such a waste of sweat. So let's start with philosophy, shall we? Where it always ends, anyway."
Rao slid from his horse and landed on the ground, poised and balanced on his feet.
First, he reached up, drew his lance from the saddle scabbard, and pitched it aside. Then, did the same with the bow. Being careful, of course, to make sure they landed on soft patches of soil and far from any rocks. They were good weapons, very well made and expensive. It would be pointless extravagance to damage them. From a philosophical standpoint, downright grotesque.
The arrow quiver followed. Holding it like a vase, he scattered the arrows across the field. Then, tossed the quiver aside. He was less careful where they landed. Arrows were easy enough to come by, and the utilitarian quiver even more so.
Armed now only with a sword and hand weapons, Rao began walking toward Sanga. After ten steps, the sword was pitched to the ground.
Laid on the ground, rather, and carefully at that. It was an excellent sword and Rao didn't want to see it damaged. Still, it was all done very quickly.
His iron-clawed gauntlet being a sturdier thing, he simply dropped it casually as he moved on.
He walked slowly. Not for the sake of drama, but simply because unlacing and removing armor requires some concentration.
The helmet was the easiest, so it went first. Tough and utilitarian, like the gauntlet, simply dropped from one pace to the next. The rest took a bit of time. Not much, given Rao's fingers.
By the time he was done, he stood thirty yards from Sanga. And wore nothing but a loincloth.
And, still—he hadn't meant to, but couldn't resist—that same grin.
* * *
Shakuntala held her breath. The baby squawled, so tightly was she clutching him. But she never heard.
* * *
Damodara rolled his eyes. Just for a moment, praising the heavens.
True, he'd expected something. That was why he had waited. But he hadn't expected Rao to make it the simplest task he'd probably ever confront, as the emperor of Malwa.
He spurred his horse forward. No slow trot, this, either.
* * *
There was no way—not even Rao!—that any man could survive against him, standing there and in that manner.
He did know what to do. And couldn't.
Not though his very soul was screaming at him. As was the soul of his wife, whether she was dead or not.
And, still, all he could think of was onions. Not peeling away now, though. He could sense the shadow of his wife, throwing them at him.
* * *
The voice came as an immense relief. Swiveling in his saddle, Sanga stared at Damodara. For years now, the man coming toward him had been his commander. At first, Sanga had obeyed of necessity; then, with acceptance; finally, with great pleasure.
For the first time in his life, Sanga realized, he had a true and genuine lord. And, desperately, wanted his master's guidance.
* * *
Ajatasutra glanced up at the priest atop the wagon he was now standing beside. The mahaveda was scowling, of course. But, if anything, had his attention more riveted in the distance than ever.
* * *
As soon as Damodara drew alongside the Rajput king, he nodded toward Rao.
"You cannot survive this, Sanga," he said softly. "When glory and honor and duty and necessity all clash together, on the same field, no man can survive. Not even the gods can do so."
The Rajput's dark eyes stared at him.
"Yes, well." Damodara cleared his throat. Awkward, that. But he did need to keep a straight face. Even if that maniac's grin thirty yards away was infectious.
"Yes, well. That's actually the point. You may recall that I once told you, on the banks of the Tigris, that the day might come when I would need to remind you of your oath."
"Yes, Lord." The eyes seemed darker yet. "I swore an oath—as did all Rajputs—to the Emperor of Malwa."
"Indeed so. Well, I just discovered—"
He had to clear his throat again. No choice. Damn that Maratha rascal!
"Amazing news. Horrifying, actually. But Narses ferreted out the plot. It seems that—two generations ago, if you can believe it—"
Damodara had insisted on that, over-riding the eunuch's protests, even though it made the forgeries far more difficult. He did not think it likely his father and mother would survive what was coming, despite Narses' assurances. So be it. They were elderly, in any event. But he would not have them shamed also.
"—unscrupulous plotters in the dynasty substituted another baby for the rightful heir. Who was my grandfather, as it happens. The rightful heir to the throne, that is. Which means that Skandagupta is an impostor and a fraud, and his minion Nanda Lal is a traitor and a wretch. And, well, it seems that I am actually the Emperor of Malwa."
By now, he wished he could strangle that still-grinning Maratha ape. Even though he'd gotten it all out without choking once.
Alas. The only man who could possibly manage that feat was Rana Sanga.
Who was still staring at him, with eyes that now seemed as dark as eternity.
Carefully keeping his gaze away from Rao and his blasted grin, Damodara spoke as sternly as he could manage.
"So, king of Rajputana. Will you honor your oath?"
* * *
It all fell into place for Sanga, then. As if the last shadow onion, hurled by his shadow wife, had struck him on the forehead and abruptly dispelled all illusions.
He looked away from Damodara and gazed upon Rao.
He always understood, Sanga realized. And, thus, understood me as well.
Sanga remembered the silvery moon over tortured Ranapur, that he had turned away from out of his duty. And knew, at last, that the duty has been illusion also. Already, then, nothing but illusion.
He remembered Belisarius holding a jewel in his hand, and asking the Rajput king if he would exchange his plain wife for a beautiful one. The answer to that question had been obvious to Sanga at the time. Why, he wondered now, had he not seen that the same answer applied to all things?
He remembered Belisarius' exact words, speaking of the jewel in his hand. How stupid of Sanga, not to have understood then!
This, too, is a thing of pollution. A monster. An intelligent being created from disease. The worst disease which ever stalked the universe. And yet—
Is he not beautiful? Just like a diamond, forged out of rotting waste?
For years, Sanga had held tightly to the memory of his duel with Rao. Had held to that memory, as he'd seen the glory of his youth slide into what seemed an endless pit of vileness and corruption.