He gave her a little bow. "And now, Queen of the Kushans, I must be off."
* * *
Belisarius drove the march south even more ruthlessly than he'd driven the one north.
"I want to catch them strung out in marching order," he explained to the Rajput kings, after sending out a host of Arab and Pathan scouts to find his target.
"It's so hot," half-complained his brother.
"Stop whining, youngster. Hot for the Malwa, too. Still hotter, when we catch them."
* * *
Kungas studied the scene on the opposite side of the Ganges. As dry and hot as it was, the fires that had been started over there were burned out by now, although plumes of smoke were rising here and there from still-smoldering ashes.
"As far down the river as we've gotten reports," Kujulo replied, "from the scouts that have come back."
"It must have been Belisarius," said Vima. "But I don't understand why he burned here. I'd have thought he'd be burning in front of her."
"Who's to say he isn't?" Kungas left off his examination of the opposite bank and studied the river itself. As big as it was, the Ganges had already swept downriver whatever traces of the burning had fallen into it.
"I think he wants to pin the bitch here, at the river. That's why he burned behind her. To trick her into coming back."
Vima frowned. "But why? If she's here, she's got water. It'd be better to burn her out when she's stranded between the rivers."
Kujulo shrugged. "If it worked, yes. But it's not that easy to 'strand' an army that big. She'd probably have enough supplies with her to make it to the Yamuna."
"She could get stored food from the garrisoned towns, too," said Kungas. "Belisarius is probably bypassing them, just burning everything else. I don't think he can have so big an army that he'd want to suffer casualties in a lot of little sieges and assaults. Especially if he's trying to move quickly."
Finally, he spotted what he was looking for, far down the river. A small cluster of little fishing boats.
"No, it makes sense. If he tricks her into coming back here, he can pin her against the river. Especially with us on the other side to keep her from crossing—which we will."
He pointed at the boats. "We'll use those to ferry a party across the river. Then we'll send cavalry up and down both banks of the river. Seize any boats we find, and wreck or burn any bridges, any timber—anything; ropes, whatever—that could be used to build new bridges or boats. We'll keep the bitch from crossing, while Belisarius lets her army starve to death. They'll have water, but that's all they'll have."
"She'll try to march down the Ganges," Vima pointed out.
"Yes, she will. With Belisarius burning everything before her on that side, and us doing the same on this side. And killing any foraging parties she tries to send out. I don't think she'll make it to a big enough garrisoned city—it'd have to be Kangora—before her army starts to fall apart."
He turned away from the river. "It's as good a plan as any—and I'm not going to try to second-guess Belisarius."
* * *
"But there have been no communications from the Great Lady since she reached the headwaters of the Sutlej!" protested the chief priest.
Lord Samudra was no longer even trying to be polite to the man—or any of the other pestiferous priests Sati had left behind in the Punjab to "oversee" him. He rarely even let them into his command bunker.
"Of course we haven't!" he snarled. "Until I can get an army up there to bottle them back up in the Vale of Peshawar, the Kushans will have raiding parties all over the area. For sure and certain, they'll have cut the telegraph lines. And they'll ambush any couriers she might have sent."
"You should! You should!" He clenched his fist and held it just under the priest's nose. "I've got eighty thousand Romans just to the south—"
"That's nonsense! There can't be more than—"
"—and fifty thousand Persians threatening to penetrate our lines in the north. In the middle of this, you want me to—"
"—can't be more than thirty thousand—I"
"Be silent!" Samudra shrieked. It was all he could do not to strike the priest with his fist.
With a great effort, he reined in his temper. "Who is the expert at gauging the size of armies, priest? Me or you? If I say I'm facing enemy forces numbering one hundred and thirty thousand men—barely smaller than my own—then that's what I'm facing!"
He lowered his fist by the expedient of throwing his whole hand to the side. The fist opened, and the forefinger indicated the door to the bunker.
"Get. Out. Out! The Great Lady instructed me to hold our lines, no matter what, and that is what I shall do. The Kushans are a distraction. We will deal with them when the time comes."
* * *
"He's panicking," mused Maurice, peeking over the fortified wall and looking to the north. "He's hunkering down everywhere, barely moving at all."
"Except for getting those ironclads into the Indus," Menander said grumpily. "The latest spy reports say that canal he's having dug is within two miles of the river."
Maurice thought about it. "Better leave off any more forays upriver with the Justinian, then. We'll need to get those minefields laid again."
"Eusebius is already working on it. He's got the mines mostly assembled and says he can start laying them in three days. That leaves me enough time—"
"Forget it. What's the point, Menander? We've already panicked them enough. From here on in, all we have to do is squat here."
He lowered his head and pointed over the wall with an upraised finger. "Belisarius asked us to keep that huge army locked up, and by God we've done so. The last thing I want is to take the risk that some mishap to the Justinian might boost their confidence."
* * *
"We accept!" Anna exclaimed, as soon as she finished reading the radio message from Bharakuccha. Then, with a tiny start, glanced at Calopodius. "Assuming, of course, you agree."
Her husband grinned. "I can imagine the consequences if I didn't! But I agree, anyway. It's a good idea."
"We'd have to live there ourselves, you understand."
"Yes, of course. Perhaps it would be best if we asked Antonina to find us a villa..."
"Yes." He instructed the operator to send that message.
A few minutes later, listening to the reply, Calopodius started laughing softly.
"What's so funny?" asked Anna. "I can't make any sense out of that bzz-bzz-bzz."
"Wait. You'll see in a moment, when you can read it yourself."
The radio operator finished recording the message and handed it to Anna. After she skimmed through, she smiled ruefully.
MUST BE JOKING STOP WHY GET VILLA WHEN CAN HAVE PART OF GOPTRI PALACE STOP WILL SET ASIDE CHOICE SUITE FOR YOU STOP PREFER RUBY OR EMERALD DECOR STOP
Reading the same message, Lord Samudra's gloom deepened. The Romans weren't even bothering to hide their communications any longer. Using the radio openly, when they could have used the telegraph!
"They're already carving us up," he muttered.
"Excuse me, Lord? I didn't quite hear that," said one of his lieutenants.
Samudra shook his head. "Never mind. What's the situation at Multan?"
"We just got a telegraph message from the garrison commander. He says the refugees are still pouring into the city. Much more, he says, and the city's defenses will be at risk."
The Malwa commander took a deep breath; then, slowly, sighed it out. "We can't hold Multan," he said quietly, speaking more to himself than the lieutenant.
Shaking his head again, he said more loudly: "Send orders to the garrison commander to evacuate his troops from Multan and bring them south. We'll need his forces to reinforce our own down here. And start building fortification across our northern lines. The Persians will be attacking us, soon enough."
"Yes, Lord. And the city's residents? The refugees?"
"Not my affair!" snapped Samudra. "Tell the commander to abandon them—and if any try to follow his army, cut them down. We do not have room for those refugees here, either. Soon enough, we'll be fighting for our lives."
* * *
The next morning, the group of priests left behind by Link forced their way into Samudra's bunker.
"You cannot abandon Multan!" shouted the head priest.
But Samudra had known they would come, and had prepared for it. By now, all of his officers were as sick and tired of the priests as he was.
It was done quickly, by a specially selected unit of Ye-tai. After the squawking priests were shoved into the bunker set aside for them, the commander of the Ye-tai unit reported back to Samudra.
Samudra hesitated. But not for long. This step, like all the others he had taken, was being forced upon him. He had no choices, any longer.
"Do it now. There's no point in waiting. But make sure—certain, you understand—that there is no trace of evidence left. When"—he almost said if—"we have to answer to Great Lady Sati, there can be no questions."
* * *
The Ye-tai commander got promoted that evening. The explosion that destroyed the bunker and all the priests in it was splendidly handled. Unfortunate, of course, that by sheer chance a Roman rocket had landed a direct hit on it. Still more unfortunate, that the priests had apparently been so careless as to store gunpowder in the bunker.
The mahamimamsa who might have disputed that—which they would have, since they would have been the ones to handle the munitions—had vanished also. Nothing so fancy for them, however. By now, the open sewers that had turned most of the huge Malwa army camp into a stinking mess contained innumerable bodies. Who could tell one from the other, even if anyone tried?
* * *
By the following day, in any event, it was clear that no one ever would. The epidemic Samudra feared had arrived, finally, erupting from the multitude of festering spots of disease. Soon, there would be too many bodies to burn. More precisely, they no longer had enough flammable material in the area to burn them. The sewers and the rivers would have to serve instead.
Perhaps, if they were lucky, the bodies floating down the Indus and the Chenab would spread the disease into the Roman lines in the Iron Triangle.
* * *
By the time Link and its army returned to the banks of the Ganges, the cyborg that ruled the Malwa empire was as close to what humans would have called desperation as that inhuman intelligence could ever become. It was a strange sort of desperation, though; not one that any human being would have recognized as such.
For Link, the universe consisted solely of probabilities. Where a human would have become desperate from thinking doom was almost certain, Link would have handled such long odds with the same uncaring detachment that it assessed very favorable probabilities.
The problem lay elsewhere. It was becoming impossible to gauge the probabilities at all. The war was dissolving into a thing of sheer chaos, with all data hopelessly corrupted. A superhuman intelligence that could have assessed alternate courses of action and chosen among them based on lightning-quick calculations, simply spun in circles. Its phenomenal mind had no more traction than a wheel trapped in slick mud.
Dimly, and for the first time, a mentality never designed to do so understood that its great enemy had deliberately aimed for this result.
Bizarre. Link could understand the purpose, but slipped whenever it tried to penetrate the logic of the thing. How could any sane mind deliberately seek to undermine all probabilities? Deliberately strive to shatter all points of certainty? As if an intelligent being were a mindless shark, dissolving all logic into a fluid through which it might swim.
For the millionth time, Link examined the enormous records of the history of warfare that it possessed. And, finally, for the first time—dimly—began to realize that the ever-recurrent phrase "the art of war" was not simply a primitive fetish. Not simply the superstitious way that semi-savages would consider the science of armed conflict.
It almost managed something a human would have called resentment, then. Not at its great enemy, but at the new gods who had sent it here on its mission. And failed to prepare it properly.
But the moment was fleeting. Link was not designed to waste time considering impossibilities. The effort it had taken the new gods to transport Link and its accompanying machinery had almost exhausted them economically. Indeed, the energy expenditure had been so great that they had been forced to destroy a planet in the doing.
Their own. The centuries of preparation—most of it required by the erection of the power and transmission grids that had blanketed the surface—could not possibly have been done on any other planet. Not with the Great Ones moving between the star systems, watching everything.
The surviving new gods—the elite of that elite—had retreated to a heavily-fortified asteroid to await the new universe that Link would create for them. They could defend themselves against the Great Ones, from that fortress, but could not possibly mount another intervention into human history.
They had taken a great gamble on Link. An excellent gamble, with all the probability calculations falling within the same margin of near-certainty.
Nothing but chaos. How was Link to move in that utterly alien fluid?
* * *
Link's sheath looked up at the commander of the army. Incredibly, it hesitated.
Not long enough, of course, for the commander himself to notice. To a human, a thousandth of second was meaningless.
But Link knew. Incredibly, it almost said: "I'm not sure. What do you recommend?"
It did not, of course. Link was not designed to consider impossibilities.
The Ganges plain, north of Mathura
As he'd hoped he would, Belisarius caught the Mathura garrison while it was still strung out in marching order.
"They're trying to form up squares," Abbu reported, "but if you move fast you'll get there before they can finish. They're coming up three roads and having trouble finding each other. The artillery's too far back, too." The old bedouin spat on the ground. "They're sorry soldiers."
"Garrison duty always makes soldiers sluggish, unless they train constantly." Ashot commented. "Even good ones."
The Armenian officer looked at Belisarius. "Your orders?"
"Our cataphracts are the only troops we've got who are really trained as mounted archers. Take all five hundred of them—use Abbu's bedouin as a screen—and charge them immediately. Bows only, you understand? Don't even think about lances and swords. Pass down the columns and rake them—but don't take any great risks. Stay away from the artillery. If they're already too far back, they'll never get up in position past a mass of milling infantrymen."
Ashot nodded. "You just want me to keep them confused, as long as I can."
"Exactly." Belisarius turned and looked at the huge column of Rajput cavalry following them. Using the term "column" loosely. Most of the cavalry were young men, eager for glory now that a real battle finally looked to be in the offing. Their ranks, never too precise at the best of times, were getting more ragged by the minute as the more eager ones pressed forward.
"I'm not going to be able to hold them, Ashot," Belisarius said. "That's all right—provided you can keep that Malwa army from forming solid musket-and-pike squares before I get there."
Seconds later, Ashot was mounted and leading his cataphracts forward.
Belisarius turned to the Rajput kings and top officers, who had gathered around him.
"You heard," he stated. "Just try to keep the charge from getting completely out of control."
Dasal grinned. "Difficult, that. Young men, you know—and not many of them well-blooded yet."
Belisarius winced, a little. Young, indeed. At a guess, close to a third of the twenty thousand cavalrymen he had under his command were still teenagers. Being Rajputs, they were proficient with lances and swords, even at that age. But, for many of them, this would be their first real battle.
If the Malwa had solid infantry squares, it'd be a slaughter before Belisarius could extricate his soldiers. Hopefully, the speed of his approach and Ashot's spoiling charge would keep the enemy off-balance just long enough. As impetuous as the Rajputs were certain to be, they'd roll right over that Malwa army if it wasn't prepared for them, even though it outnumbered Belisarius' army by something close to a three-to-two margin.
"We'll just have to hope for the best," he said, trying not to make the lame expression sound completely crippled. "Let's go."
* * *
Kungas and his men had no difficulty at all driving back the first Malwa attempt to force the river. It was a desperate undertaking, as few boats as the enemy had managed to scrounge up. Kungas was a little surprised they'd made the attempt at all. Not a single one of the enemy boats got within thirty yards of the north bank of the Ganges.
"What's that bitch thinking?" wondered Vima. "I thought she was supposed to be smarter than any human alive."
Kujulo shrugged. "How smart can you be, when you've run out of options? Trap a genius in a pit, and he'll try to claw his way out just like a rat. What else can he do?"
* * *
By the time Ashot reached the vanguard of the Malwa army, its commander had managed to get the columns on two of the roads to join forces. But he hadn't had time to get them into anything resembling a fighting formation.
Even moving at the moderate canter needed for accurate bow fire, Ashot needed no more than a few minutes to shred what little cohesion the forward units had. It was becoming obvious that the officers were either inexperienced or incompetent. Perhaps both.
That was not surprising, of course. After years of war, the Malwa army like any other would have gone through a selection process. The most capable and energetic officers, sent to the front; the sluggards and dull-wits, assigned to garrison duty.
Ashot even considered disobeying Belisarius' order and passing onward to find the artillery. The odds were that he'd be able to rip them up badly, also.
But he decided to forego the temptation. The scattered musket fire being directed at his men didn't pose much of a danger, but if he had the bad luck of catching even a few guns ready to fire and loaded with canister, he'd suffer some casualties—and he only had five hundred men to begin with.
"Back!" he bellowed. "We'll hit the forward units again!"
All he had to do, really, was keep the advanced regiments of enemy infantry in a state of turmoil. When the Rajputs struck them, they'd scatter them to the winds—and the fleeing infantrymen would transmit their panic all the way back through the long columns.
Belisarius didn't have to crush this army. All he had to do was send them into a panicky retreat to Mathura. The Malwa officers wouldn't be able to rally their army until it was all the way back into the city. And then, getting them to march out again would take several days.
Long enough, Ashot thought, to enable Belisarius to return to the Ganges and crush the army that really mattered. Link's army.
* * *
The raking fire of the Roman cataphracts on their return did exactly what Ashot thought it would. By the time the last cataphract passed out of musket range, the enemy's front lines were a shambles. Not a single one of the squares the Malwa officers had tried to form was anything more than a mass of confused and frightened men.
The Romans suffered only twenty casualties in the whole affair, and only seven of those were fatalities.
Just blind, bad luck, that Ashot was one of them. As he was almost out of range, a random musket ball fired by a panicked Malwa soldier passed under the flange of his helmet and broke his neck.
* * *
Belisarius didn't find out until later. At the time, he was cursing ferociously, trying to keep the Rajput charge from dissolving into a chaos even worse than that of the enemy's formations.
He failed, utterly, but it didn't matter. The young Rajputs suffered much worse casualties than they needed to have suffered, but their charge was so headlong that they simply shattered the front of the Malwa army. Twenty thousand cavalrymen charging at a gallop would have been terrifying for any army. Experienced soldiers, in solid formations and with steady officers, would have broken the charge anyway. But the Mathura garrison hadn't been in a real battle since many of its units had participated in the assault in Ranapur, years earlier.
They broke like rotten wood. Broke, and then—as Ashot had foreseen—began shredding the rest of the army in their panicked rout.
Belisarius and the kings tried to stop the Rajputs from pursuing the fleeing enemy. There was no need to destroy this army in a prolonged and ruthless pursuit. But it was hopeless. Their blood was up. The glorious great victory those young men eagerly wanted after the wretched business of being simple arsonists was finally at hand—and they wanted all of it.
After a time, Belisarius gave up the effort. The old kings could be relied upon to bring the Rajputs back, when they were finally done, and he'd just gotten word of Ashot.
* * *
Sadly, he gazed down on the Armenian's corpse. Ashot's expression was peaceful, with just a trace of surprise showing in his still-open eyes.
He'd been one of the best officers Belisarius had ever had serve under him. So good, and so reliable, that he'd assigned him to serve as Antonina's commander on her expedition to Egypt. Except for Maurice, Belisarius wouldn't have trusted anyone else with his wife's safety.
"Shall we bring him back?" asked Ashot's replacement, a Thracian cataphract named Stylian.
"No. We've got another forced march ahead of us, and who knows what after that? We'll bury him here, although I'll probably have him disinterred and his body taken home after the war."
Belisarius looked around. The landscape was typical of the area between the Ganges and the Yamuna. A grassy plain, basically, with fields surrounding the villages and dotted with groves and woods. They hadn't burned here, since Belisarius had seen no reason to.
His eyes were immediately drawn to a grove of sal trees perhaps a quarter of a mile away. The trees were considered holy by many Hindus and Buddhists. The legend had it that the famous Lumbini tract where the Buddha meditated and acquired salvation had been in a grove of sal trees.
"We'll bury him over there," he said. "It seems a good resting place, and it'll be easy to find the grave later."
While Stylian handled that matter, Belisarius organized his cataphracts to help Jaimal and Udai Singh and the old kings round up the Rajputs. That would take the rest of the day, under the best of circumstances. Belisarius could only hope that Link wouldn't be able to move far in the time it took him to get back to the Ganges.
* * *
Link had managed to move its army exactly seven miles down the Ganges. What was worse, the foraging parties it had sent out had returned with very little. The constant harassment of the Kushans, even on the south side of the Ganges, made the foragers exceedingly cautious. Kushans were not a cavalry nation in the same sense as Persians and Rajputs, but they seemed to be mostly mounted and just as proficient in the saddle as they were in all forms of warfare.
Link had only three thousand cavalry. Fewer than that, now, after a number of clashes with Kushan dragoons. It could not even stop the Kushans from continuing the scorched earth campaign that Belisarius had begun.
The situation would have been infuriating, if Link had been capable of fury. The burning done by Belisarius' and Kungas' armies prevented Link from marching quickly, foraging as it went. And the Kushan harassment, despite the fact that the Malwa outnumbered them at least two-to-one, made their progress slower still. Link could destroy any Kushan attempt to charge its solid infantry, true enough. But Kungas was far too canny to order any such foolish assault.
And where was Belisarius? Link had no information at all. All the telegraph lines had been cut, and the Kushans ambushed any scouts it sent out. Link was operating as blindly as any commander in human history, except that it had an encyclopedic a knowledge of the terrain. But that meant almost nothing, when it had no idea where the main enemy force was to be found in it.
The probability was that Belisarius had left to meet a garrison coming north from one of the large cities. Mathura, most likely.
It was always possible that such a garrison would defeat the Roman general. But Link estimated that probability as being very low. Not more than 10%, at best. Assuming the far more likely probability that Belisarius would triumph in that battle as he had in almost all others, he and his army would be back at the Ganges within a few days.
By which time, Link and its forces would not have moved more than ten or fifteen miles. Probably ten. Kushan harassment was becoming more intense, seemingly by the hour.
"What shall we do, Great Lady?"
"Continue down the Ganges," Link replied. What else could it say?
* * *
When Khusrau and his army reached Chandan, on the Chenab river, the emperor was so taken by the beauty of the town and its setting that he ordered his soldiers not to burn it. He did, however, give them permission to loot the homes and public buildings.
That took little time. Most of the population had fled already, taking their most valuable possessions with them. After his army had crossed the Jhelum and entered the land between that river and the Chenab, the Persians considered themselves in enemy territory. By the terms of the agreement Khusrau had made with the Romans and the new Malwa emperor, after the war this would become Malwa territory. So, they were destroying everything, driving the population south toward Multan, where they'd join a horde of refugees already overburdening the Malwa garrison there.
In an sense, they'd been in enemy territory also, west of the Jhelum, but those lands were destined to become part of the Persian empire, by the provisions of the agreement. So, Khusrau had kept his soldiers under tight discipline, and had refrained from any destruction except where enemy forces put up resistance.
There hadn't been much of that. Apparently, the Malwa commander of the main army in the Punjab had been withdrawing all his detachments in the north in order to reinforce the Malwa lines facing the Romans. Lord Samudra, as he was named, was adopting a completely defensive posture while the Persians and the Kushans invaded the northern Punjab with impunity. For all practical purposes, the Malwa empire's largest and most powerful army had become paralyzed on its western border, while Damodara and Belisarius and Kungas and Khusrau himself drove lances into its unprotected guts.
Khusrau thought Samudra was an idiot. Knew him to be an idiot, rather, since the Persian emperor was well aware that Maurice had no more than fifty thousand Roman troops in the Iron Triangle. Sixty thousand, perhaps, counting the various auxiliary units that were assigned to maintaining the critical supply lines from the Sind. But even including those soldiers, Maurice was still outnumbered well over two-to-one. Probably closer to three-to-one.
With fifty thousand men behind those formidable Roman defensive works, of course, Maurice could hold his own against Samudra. But only on the defensive—and the same was true the other way. Samudra could have easily taken over half his army north to put a stop to Khusrau's expedition and, possibly, even cut off the Kushan army. Depending on where Kungas had taken it, of course. Khusrau suspected the Kushans were already into the Gangetic Plain. If they were able to join forces with Belisarius...
But while the Malwa commander in the Punjab seemed capable enough, when it came to routine matters, Samudra obviously had not an ounce of initiative and daring. The Malwa regime was not one that fostered independent thinking on the part of its commanders.
Hard to blame them, really. The one great exception to that rule was probably even now battering at the gates of Kausambi.
* * *
Damodara was not battering at the gates, as it happened. But he was bringing the siege guns into position to do so.
"Yes, yes, Ajatasutra, I know we hope to enter the city through... ah, what would you call it? 'Treachery' seems inappropriate."
"Guile and stratagem, Your Majesty," Ajatasutra supplied.
Damodara smiled. "Splendid terms. On my side, anyway."
The new emperor glanced at Narses. The Roman spymaster was perched on the mule he favored, studying the fortifications on the western walls of Kausambi.
It was a knowing sort of examination, not the vacant stare that most imperial courtiers would have given such a purely military matter. Damodara had realized long since that Narses was as shrewd with regard to military affairs as he was with all others. Despite his age, and the fact that he was eunuch, Damodara was quite sure that Narses would make an excellent general himself.
What am I going to do with Narses? he asked himself, not for the first time. If I take the throne, do I dare keep such a man around? It'd be like sharing a sleeping chamber with a cobra.
The solution was obvious, but Damodara felt himself resisting that impulse. Whatever else, Narses had served him well for years. Superbly well, in fact. Had even, most likely, kept his family and that of Rana Sanga alive where they would have been murdered by Malwa otherwise.
It would bode ill, Damodara thought, if he began what amounted to a new dynasty in all but name with an act of treachery.
But what else can I do? The Romans certainly won't take him back. And the Persians and the Axumites and the Kushans know his reputation too well to entertain the thought of employing him, either.
What else is there, but an executioner or an assassin's blade?
Perhaps he could have him poisoned...
Damodara shook his head and went back to the matter immediately at hand.
"You think too much like an assassin, Ajatasutra. When the time comes, Rana Sanga is ready to lead the charge. He'll take ten thousand of his Rajputs. But first we must fix Skandagupta's entire attention on this side of the city. I don't have a large enough army to invest Kausambi, and the emperor—ah, the false emperor—knows it. At least, his commanders will tell him so. So, now that I've massed my troops here before the western gates and"—he gestured with his head toward the heavy artillery berms his engineers were constructing—"am setting up the siege guns I brought from Mathura, he'll concentrate his own troops on these walls, and at these gates."
Whether or not he was inclined to argue the matter, Ajatasutra made no attempt to do so. Instead, he began thoughtfully scratching his chin.
"How long, Emperor? Before you can order Sanga's charge, I mean."
Damodara shrugged. "Hard to know. Not for a few days, certainly."
"In that case, I should return to Kausambi. They could use me there, when the time comes. Whereas here..."
He waved his hand, indicating the soldiers under Damodara's command who were setting up their own camps and lines of defense against any possible sallies from the city. "Merely one blade among tens of thousands of others."
"Certainly. But..." Damodara's eyes widened a bit. "Can you get back into the city? By now, the guards will be on the alert for spies."
"Oh, yes. Don't forget that they're mediocre guards, and"—Ajatasutra cleared his throat modestly—"I am very far from a mediocre assassin. I'll get in."
His good humor faded, however, as he contemplated his superb horse. "Alas, the horse won't. Not even sorry garrison troops will think it's a tinker's nag."
He bowed low. "May I present him to Your Majesty, then? A token of my esteem. No! My awe at Your effulgent presence, divine in its aspect."
Damodara laughed. And what was he to do with Ajatasutra, for that matter, if he took the throne? He didn't doubt the assassin's loyalty, but within a few years Ajatasutra's mocking ways would have half the courtiers in Kausambi demanding his head.
But there'd be time enough to deal with that later. First, he had to take Kausambi.
"Go, Ajatasutra. If we're both still alive in a few days, I'll return the horse."
It seemed impolitic to add: You might need it.
* * *
From their position just south of the junction of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers, the five members of the Malwa assassination team stared at the empire's capital city. That part of it they could see looked fine. But they could easily hear the sound of big guns firing to the west.
"Marvelous," snarled the captain. "Just perfect. After ten thousand miles—more like eleven, by now—we finally get back to Kausambi—having succeeded in doing nothing—and the city's under siege."
"We'll never get in," said his lieutenant, morosely. "No way the guards will pass five strange men."
It was true enough. No doubt, ensconced somewhere in the huge imperial palace, were the records that would identify the assassination team and establish their bona fides. Probably, even, two or three of Nanda Lal's subordinates who would recognize them personally. The captain and the lieutenant, at least.
And so what? The odds that any such spymasters would heed a summons from a gate's guards—assuming the guards were willing to send a summons in the first place, instead of simply killing the five assassins and saving themselves a lot of possible trouble—were too low to even think about.
"No hope for it," he sighed. "We may as well cross the Ganges and set up camp on the other side, as close as we can get to the eastern gate. Maybe something will turn up."
His lieutenant eyed the distance. "At least it's not far." He spit on the ground. "We laugh at a few miles, after so many wasted thousands."
The Ganges
There had been many times, since the war began, that Belisarius had been glad to have Abbu and his Arab scouts in his service.
"Idiot Rajputs would have gotten you into another war, General," said the old bedouin chief, scowling. "Are they blind? Who else wears topknots?"
Abbu was being a little uncharitable, but... only a little. It was not as if Rajputs weren't familiar with Kushans. Until recently, there had been tens of thousands of Kushans in the Malwa military, many of whom had served in the same armies as Rajputs, if not in the same units.
On the other hand—being charitable—there were still a considerable number of Kushans in the service of the Malwa empire. By no means all of the Kushans had defected after Kungas re-created the old Kushan kingdom.
But they were no longer trusted, and there was no possibility at all that Link had included Kushan units in its army when it marched from the Punjab. Even idiot Rajputs should have understood that much.
"They're still young," muttered old Jaisal. "Young men don't think of these things."
Belisarius squelched his irritation. It would be purely stupid to offend the Rajputs who constituted almost his entire army, after all.
"Well, there was no harm done, apparently. The Kushans fled the scene as soon as contact was made and"—he cleared his throat, as diplomatically as possible—"the Rajput cavalrymen immediately began firing on them."
That fact was interesting, in and of itself. Under normal circumstances, Kushans were quite belligerent enough to have responded to the initial Rajput bow fire by attacking them. Especially since, by all accounts—those of the Rajputs as well as the Arab scouts—the Kushans had outnumbered the Rajput cavalry unit.
Abbu put his thoughts into words. "They were expecting us, General. Only possible answer."
"Yes." Belisarius scratched his chin. "I'm almost sure that means Kungas himself is here. He must have gambled that Maurice could keep the main Malwa army pinned in the south Punjab, while he marched into the Ganges plain to attack Link's army."
Belisarius smiled. "Well, yes. A timid fellow would hardly have marched across Central Asia in the middle of the world's greatest war to set up a new kingdom. With a new Greek bookworm wife, to boot."
Abbu had met Irene. "Crazy man," he muttered, his scowl returning.
Belisarius swiveled in the saddle to face Dasal and the other Rajput kings. "Can you keep your men under control? I have got to establish contact with the Kushans—and, as Abbu says, I don't need to start a new war with my allies."
All the Rajput kings had the grace to look embarrassed for a moment. They didn't answer immediately, however, Belisarius noted.
He wasn't surprised. Their smashing victory over the Mathura garrison had filled the young Rajput warriors with elation so great it bordered on heedlessness and reckless arrogance. Inexperienced to begin with, they were in no mood to listen to the lectures of old kings concerning the danger of accidentally fighting allies in the middle of a turbulent campaign of marches and counter-marches. "Friendly fire," as a future world would call it, was not something a nineteen-year-old Rajput cavalryman gave much thought to when he woke up in the morning. Or at any time of the day or night.
"Right." Belisarius swiveled again and brought Jaimal and Udai Singh under his gaze.
Jaimal smiled thinly. "Oh, yes, General Belisarius." He gave the old kings a sly look. "Our men are real veterans."
"But there are only fifty of us," cautioned Udai Singh.
"That should be enough," Belisarius said. "I'll send Abbu and some of his scouts with you, along with a few of my cataphracts. All we need to do, for the moment, is make contact with the Kushans. Set up a time and place where Kungas and I can meet—assuming I'm right, and he's here. If not, whoever their commander is."
Sanga's two lieutenants trotted off, with Abbu and Stylian trailing behind. Belisarius could rely on Stylian to select level-headed cataphracts for the business. In the meantime, he had a different problem to deal with.
"I'm still guessing," he said to the kings, "but I'm pretty sure Kungas will have most of his army on the north bank of the Ganges. It's what I would do in his place. Keep Sati from crossing the river and using it as a shield between us and her."
Faced with a straightforward tactical issue, the kings were more at ease.
"Agreed," said Dasal. "Which means—until we can establish liaison—we should stay on this side."
"This side, and east of here," his younger brother grunted. "Resume the burning. Turn everything for twenty miles to the east into a wasteland. The Malwa will be stranded."
"The young men will complain," complained Chachu.
Dasal's frown might have been envied by Jove. "The young men will do as they are told."
* * *
The young Rajput warriors complained. Bitterly.
They also did as they were told.
By the time Jaimal and Udai and Abbu returned, the sky east of Sati's army was filled with smoke.
"It's Kungas," Jaimal said. "He recommends you meet at a fishing village—what used to be a fishing village—five miles upstream from the Malwa army."
Udai grinned. "He promises not to shoot you, if you have your hair in a topknot. Otherwise he may not be able to control his men. He says most of them are only ten years old. Heedless and careless."
Belisarius returned the grin. "I'd look silly in a topknot. I'll take my chances."
Stylian was frowning, however. "Only five miles from the enemy? That seems..."
Abbu was already shaking his head. "No need to worry. That Malwa army is not moving at all, any longer. Just sitting there, baking in the garam sun."
"Kungas says Sati had her elephants butchered, two days ago," added Jaimal. "The beasts were getting out of control—and, by now, they probably needed the meat, anyway. He thinks that army is getting pretty desperate."
* * *
The word "desperate" could have been applied to the soldiers of Link's army, well enough, but not to the cyborg itself. True, it had come to the conclusion that the position of its army was hopeless. But, in the odd way that its mind worked, that knowledge brought nothing more than what a human might have called "relief."
Not that either, really, since Link knew no emotions. Still, the other side of hopelessness was that decisions became very simple. If nothing else, rest from labor was at hand.
In a few hours, at least. Link still had to work through human instruments, and those flawed creatures always had their own needs. Which, at times, had to be respected.
So, with its inhuman patience, Link observed silently as the special priests and assassins in its chaundoli began their rituals.
It might even be said to do so with satisfaction. At least that part of the new gods' plan had worked properly. The cult fostered over a century earlier in the Khmer lands had served its purpose well. Link could rely on those priests and assassins to do what was needed.
If not, unfortunately, as quickly as it would have liked. But half a day's delay should not matter. Even if, as Link was assuming, Damodara had seized the big guns at Mathura, it would still take weeks before they could begin crumbling the walls of Kausambi.
* * *
Damodara's estimate was considerably more pessimistic.
"At least two months," he grumbled, watching the great cannons as they belched fire at the walls of Kausambi. Half of them missed entirely. The bores on those giant but crude siege guns were very sloppy. The huge stone balls that did strike the walls seemed to have no more effect than so many pebbles.
"If we're lucky," he added sourly.
But Rana Sanga barely heard him, and paid no attention to the guns at all. The Rajput king had entered that peculiar mental zone he usually entered before a great battle. A strange combination of serenity and fierce anticipation—the first, serving as a dam for the pent-up waters of the second.
When the time came—very soon, he thought—the dam would break.
No, would shatter. Pouring out in that flood would be the greatest ride of his life, followed by his greatest battle.
"Yes, Lord," said Sanga, absently. He didn't even notice that he used the old appellation for Damodara, instead of the new "Your Majesty."
* * *
"I'm nervous," said Tarun. "What if I do it wrong? Are you sure—"
"Don't be silly," Rajiv assured the young stable-boy. He held up the fuse, pinched between thumb and forefinger. "What's to go wrong? You've got a pocket full of matches. Just light this and take shelter."
Dubiously, Tarun brought out one of the matches in his pocket and studied it.
Trying not to let his exasperation show, Rajiv plucked the match from Tarun hand and struck it against one of the stones in the stable floor. The match flared up very nicely, with its usual acrid fumes.
"Specially made," he said forcefully. "By the best apothecary in Kausambi."
Honesty forced him to add: "Well... The best in this quarter, anyway. He's probably just as good as any in the imperial palace, though."
That was true enough, but it brought up another thing for Tarun to fret over.
"What if he betrays us? Matches are unusual things. What if he starts wondering—"
Squatting a few feet away, Valentinian laughed softly. "Weren't you just telling us yesterday that nobody is paying attention to the soldiers any more? Even the soldiers themselves?"
"They've even slacked off the digging," Anastasius added. "Good thing, too, as close as they were getting."
Never comfortable for very long in a squat, the huge cataphract rose to his feet. It was an ungainly movement, not because Anastasius was un-coordinated—which he certainly wasn't, for a man his size—but simply because the size itself created certain physical realities. A rhinoceros is ungainly also, rising to its feet. Not ungainly, however, in the charge that follows.
"Relax, boy. By now, Skandagupta has over a thousand corpses or heads decorating the walls of his palace. He's become a maniac, and everyone in the city knows it. Nobody in his right mind wants to get anywhere near him—or his police. That apothecary will do what everyone else is trying their best to do, these days. Mind his own business and hope he survives whatever's coming."
It was true enough, and Tarun knew it as well as anyone else in the stable. The soldiers and laborers engaged in digging up the area looking for the hideaways had been slacking off, for at least a week. "Slacking off," at least, in the sense of not getting much done that was of any use. To be sure, they managed to look as if they were working frenziedly. But most of it was make-work; literally, moving soil and rubble back and forth from one hole or pile to another.
You could hardly blame them. Every time they'd uncovered something, whoever was in charge wound up getting beheaded or impaled. Over time, of course, reports of no progress at all would be met with equal punishment. But that took more time than success.
By this point, in besieged Kausambi, most people were simply buying time.
* * *
Lady Damodara appeared in the stall. "Ajatasutra's back. He wants to know—"
"How soon?" asked the assassin himself, coming right behind her. "Inquiring emperors want to know."
Valentinian grinned, mirthlessly. "Now that you're here, how's tomorrow morning sound?"
"You'll do fine," Rajiv assured him. "But you'd better leave now. It's a big city and you've got a ways to go. And you need to be in place before sunrise."
"It's dark outside," Tarun protested.
"Of course it is," said Valentinian. "That's the plan. Now, go."
Tarun made no further protest. Whatever else he might be worried about was merely a possibility, involving someone else or something else at some other place and time.
Valentinian was here and now. Tarun went.
* * *
Belisarius wasn't really worried about any Malwa patrols sent out by Link. Where Belisarius had twenty thousand cavalrymen and Kungas had fifteen thousand dragoons, the monster had had only had three thousand cavalry to begin with. Far fewer than that, now, between the casualties they'd suffered in various clashes and—the crudest factor of all—the fact that they were now beginning to butcher their horses for the meat.
Still, he saw no reason to take chances. So, he made the rendezvous with Kungas well before daybreak.
The Kushan king was waiting for him, in one of the few huts in the small village that had escaped the Rajputs' arson. He was squatting on the dirt floor, with a bottle of rice wine and two cups.
"Nice to see you again," he said, pouring Belisarius a drink. "I'd worry about you getting drunk, except you can drink like a fish and this stuff's so thin it doesn't matter anyway. Best I could find."
Smiling, Belisarius squatted and took the cup. "I'm delighted to see you—and surprised. You took a mighty gamble, coming here from the Hindu Kush."
Kungas made the little shoulder twitch that did him for a shrug. "I figured you'd be here, somewhere. And since I'm a Kushan king, I need to prove I'm a great gambler or I'll soon enough have people muttering that I'm unfit to rule. Most of all, though, I want to see that bitch finally dead."
Belisarius swallowed the wine in one gulp. It was not a big gulp, however, since it was a very small cup.
Just as well. The stuff was wretched as well as thin. Exactly the sort of wine you'd expect to find in a poor fishing village.
The face he made, though, was not due to the wine.
"Then I hate to say this, but you're in for a big disappointment. The one thing we're not going to do is kill Great Lady Sati."
Kungas' eyes widened slightly. In his minimalist manner, that signified astonishment.
"Why in the world not?" Accusingly, almost plaintively, he added: "You killed her predecessor, didn't you?"
"Yes, I did. And I will say that few things in my life gave me more satisfaction than seeing Great Lady Holi die. But that was another place, another time, and under different circumstances. Here, and now, we want Sati simply isolated—but still alive."
He set the cup down on the floor. "That was a battle. This is the battle. More accurately, this is a holding action while the final battle is fought elsewhere, by Damodara."
Kungas tugged at his wisp of a goatee. "Um. You're gambling yourself."
"Yes and no. I'm not gambling—well, not much of a gamble—that Damodara will have reached Kausambi by now. What I'm gambling is simply that it will take him some time to break into the city. I've seen those defenses. Nothing in the world matches them, except possibly the ancient fortifications at Babylon."
The Kushan king's beard-tugging became more vigorous. "Damnation, Belisarius..."
The Roman general just waited, patiently. The best way to persuade Kungas of anything was to let him persuade himself. Beneath that impassive exterior, the Kushan was as smart as anyone Belisarius had ever known—and he was privy to all the secrets of Link's methods of rule. Belisarius had briefed Kungas and Irene extensively on the matter, before they left Constantinople on their great expedition to the Hindu Kush.
"Damnation," Kungas repeated. But the word, this time, was simply said fatalistically.
Belisarius waited. The Kushan's hand fell from the beard.
"All right. I understand the logic. As long as the bitch is alive, Link is locked into her body. Here—not in Kausambi. The minute she dies, Link will assume a new sheath. This new one in the imperial palace, so it will be able to take direct command of Kausambi's defenses. Instead of Skandagupta, whom no one in his right mind has ever considered a military genius. Or even a very competent emperor."
"Who?" Kungas wondered. "And how many sheaths does that monster have at its disposal?"
Belisarius could sense the jewel's hesitation. Not sure. It's complicated.
Try to explain, as best you can. We need to know.
After a moment, Aide said: It's not easy for it. Link, I mean. First of all, the sheath has to be female—never mind why—and, second of all, it has to be in the line of the dynastic clan. That's because... well, never mind that, either. Just take my word for it. There's a critical genetic component to the process. Several, in fact. Close blood relations are important.
Belisarius nodded. To Kungas, he said: "Aide's explaining it to me. Give us a moment.
Thirdly, the sheath itself has to be individually suitable. Not every girl is. Most aren't, in fact—and there are only a small number to choose from in the first place, being restricted to the female offspring of the dynastic clan. She has to be... The word won't mean anything to you, but it's something the future will call "autism." It's a pretty rare medical condition. Not very many children suffer from it.
Belisarius bother asking Aide to explain the terms. Some day, he would, but there wasn't the need for it now, or the time available.
He did purse his lips with distaste. Contempt, rather. That was absolutely typical of the methods of the "new gods" who claimed to be humanity's true future. They would not only use innocent children as the vessels for their rule, but would choose ones already damaged and even less able to protect themselves.
I see. The Malwa dynastic clan is a big one, but still...
There'd only be one available every few years. It would vary, of course. The long span of years between Holi's age and Sati's would have been unusual. Even so, I doubt if Link has more than two—maybe three—sheaths available. Not even that, really, because they need years of training in addition to everything else. The moment of transition—possession, if you will—is pretty traumatic. If the girl isn't thoroughly prepared for it, she'll simply die.
A thought came to Belisarius. If that's so... What if the new sheath is very young? It might actually be smarter...
He shook his head. "No, that's too much of a gamble."
Kungas twisted his head, quizzically. Belisarius explained: "There can't be many sheaths. Maybe only one—and she might very well still be a young girl. If so..."
He almost laughed, seeing the suddenly fierce expression on the Kushan's face.
"Tempting, isn't it, Kungas? What happens if the Malwa empire is suddenly ruled by a child? Will anyone—even Skandagupta—really listen to her?"
After a moment, Kungas expelled his breath. "No. As you say, too much of a gamble—even for a Kushan. What if she isn't? Sati was in her prime, after all, when she became the new Link."
* * *
What was too much of a gamble, even for a Kushan king, was not for a cyborg.
Not, at least, for this cyborg. Kungas and Belisarius had options. Link no longer did.
The Khmer had finished their rituals.
"Now," the thing known as Great Lady Sati commanded.
Expertly, the assassin standing behind her drove his dagger into Sati's spinal column. Just as expertly, the assassin standing before her drove his blade into her heart.
As her body slumped, a third assassin stepped forward and—with the same expertise—slit her throat from ear to ear.
A priest was there with a large bowl, to catch the sacred fluid. There was little spillage, since the goddess' heart was no longer beating.
That was good, because the blood was needed for the remaining rituals.
Those rituals done, the assassins slew all the priests but one. Then, slew themselves.
Being careful, even at the end, to keep the gore as minimal as possible.
That was not because of the needs of the rituals; which, to the contrary, normally put the gore to extensive use. But the goddess had ordered it all done quietly and economically.
Following the usual rituals would have permeated the chaundoli with a stench that the soldiers outside would have noticed almost immediately. As it was, in the heat of garam, they would notice it soon enough. Link wanted this army intact as long as possible, to keep Belisarius distracted.
The sole surviving priest remained at his duty. Simply sitting by the door to the chaundoli, that he might tell inquiring officers that the Great Lady was asleep and had given orders not to be disturbed.
* * *
In the special quarters far below the imperial palace at Kausambi, the eight year old girl known as Rani lay motionless and empty-eyed on the floor of her chamber. Her special Khmer attendants were deeply concerned, but could do nothing.
The sacred transference had happened, they knew. But it had happened much sooner than any of them had expected, including the girl herself.
She would survive, they decided. Beyond that, other than providing her with a cloth soaked in water to sip, they could only wait.
* * *
Tarun was too nervous to wait any longer. He'd gotten to the place Rajiv and he had picked long before he really needed to. It was an isolated corner in the maze of an outdoor bazaar not far from Kausambi's northernmost gate. At this time of night, the stalls were all closed and barred.
No one paid any attention to a twelve year old boy huddled in the darkness. There were many such in the city. A thief might have noticed the wrapped bundle beneath the boy's ragged cloak, but even if he had he would most likely have done nothing. What of any value could such a ragamuffin possess?
Still, the two hours Tarun waited seemed interminable to the stablekeeper's son. So, when he saw the first faint sign of dawn in the sky above, he rose and drew forth the signal rockets. There were three of them, in case of a misfire.
Nervous as he was, Tarun fumbled none of the simple tasks involved. Within seconds, one of the rockets was propped against the simple bamboo frame that held it erect, pointing at the sky. He lit the match, struck the fuse, and hurried to the other side of the stall.
He was even disciplined enough to remain there, the final seconds. If the rocket misfired, he'd retrieve the bamboo frame to use for a second.
For a wonder, nothing went wrong. The rocket didn't misfire, and it didn't blow up. It soared hundreds of yards into the dark sky above Kausambi.
It even exploded when it was supposed to. A great, bright yellow light shone over the city.
Tarun didn't spend any time admiring the sight, however. He just dropped the remaining rockets and hurried off. What would happen, would happen. He'd done his part and now simply wanted to get back to his family.
* * *
Few of the city's inhabitants ever saw the wondrous sight, for its people were mostly asleep.
The soldiers standing guard saw, of course, and raced to bring the news to their officers. Something is happening at the northern gate!
Valentinian and Anastasius and Ajatasutra and Tarun and their three Ye-tai mercenaries saw it also, of course. They arose from their own hiding place not far from the city's southern gate.
More precisely, Anastasius and Rajiv arose. The others remained in the small wagon, hidden from sight below a thin bamboo grate that held the produce which apparently filled the wagon's entire bed.
Anastasius seized the handles of the wagon, hauled it into the street, and began plodding toward the gate some fifty yards away. Rajiv walked beside him, dressed as a merchant's son. Clearly enough, the scion of a prosperous family assigned to oversee a strong but dimwitted laborer in his work.
"Why does the big guy always get stuck with these jobs?" complained Anastasius.
"Shut up," came Valentinian's voice from under the wagon's load. "You're not only as big as an ox, you look like one. Be thankful I didn't give Rajiv a whip."
* * *
Rana Sanga saw it also. And the dam shattered.
He was on his horse and charging out of the lines within a minute, with ten thousand Rajputs following.
Only Rajputs, and only half of those. Damodara would use the other half, and the Ye-tai and the kshatriya, for whatever else was needed. But this charge, the emperor knew, belonged to Rana Sanga alone.
There would be nothing imperial about it, really. Just the nation of the Rajputs, finally and truly regaining its soul.
"For the glory of Rajputana!" Sanga called, his lance and its pennant on high, in a piercing voice that was half a bellow and half a shriek.
"RAJPUTANA!" came the response from ten thousand throats.
* * *
The Malwa soldiers on the southern wall of the city did not understand what was happening. They knew only three things.
One, most of the garrison had been ordered to the northern gate.
Two, a flood—a torrent—a tidal bore of Rajput lances was pouring past them on the ground beyond the walls.
They only knew the third thing. Those lances looked as sharp as the sound of the Rajput battle cry.
"What are we going to do?" asked his mate in the squad.
"Don't be an idiot. Try to stay alive, what else? Do you care who the emperor is?"
Kausambi
Rajiv steeled himself. The two guards standing at the entrance to the gatehouse were among the ones he liked. Nice men, both of them—and so were their wives and kids.
"Rajiv?" asked Pallav. "What are you doing here? And with a wagon?"
"You know we can't let you out of the gate," said Gaurang.
Both of them were frowning, but neither had drawn his sword and their spears were still leaning against the gate hut. The many days Rajiv and Tarun had spent at the gate and the adjoining barracks, chatting with the guards and playing with their children, had made them a familiar sight. Besides, they were only boys.
"Oh, this is some stuff—food, mostly—my father told me I should bring you." Rajiv half turned, hiding the dagger he slid into his hand. "It's not much, really."
He frowned at Anastasius. "Put down the wagon, you cretin! Can't you see we've arrived?"
Anastasius, dull-faced, did as he was told. The moment Pallav stepped forward to look at the wagon's contents, Rajiv sprang.
Still, at the end—damn what the Mongoose would say—Rajiv made sure the blade sank into the meaty part of the soldier's thigh, not even close to the femoral artery. Twisting the dagger and snatching it out of the wound, Rajiv struck Pallav's head with the pommel. Being careful to avoid the fragile temple bones.
All to no purpose. Anastasius yanked the wagon handle out of its socket and crushed Pallav's skull as he fell. Then, in the back stroke, went for Gaurang. The slender arm the soldier threw up to block the blow was completely useless. As well block a rhino horn with a twig. His broken body was slammed into the hut so hard the flimsy wooden structure disintegrated.
Left to his own, Rajiv would probably have wasted some seconds, staring at the corpses. But the Mongoose was already out of the wagon and plunging into the open door of the gatehouse, spatha in hand. Ajatasutra was close behind.
There would be three or four more guards inside the gatehouse. Also men that Rajiv knew. Against the Mongoose, even if they'd been warned and ready, they'd have been dead men. As it was, the shrill cries of alarm and the soft wet sounds of massacre lasted but a few seconds. Most likely, Ajatasutra never got involved at all.
Fortunately, Rajiv didn't have to watch. Two men could work the gate mechanism, and there wasn't enough room in the narrow stairs leading up the tower or the chamber above for more than two men anyway.
For such work, Valentinian and Ajatasutra were the obvious choices. Anastasius and Rajiv and the three Ye-tai mercenaries were assigned to guard the entrance and fend off the soldiers from the adjacent barracks, long enough to allow Valentinian and Ajatasutra to open the gate.
The Ye-tai were already shoving the wagon across the entrance, after finishing the work of casting off the bamboo grate and the produce covering it. Anastasius reached into the wagon bed and withdrew the big maul hidden there, along with his bow and arrows, and the mace he favored for close-in work.
After they'd opened the gate, Valentinian and Ajatasutra would return below to help in the defense, while Anastasius went upstairs and smashed the gate mechanism.
The mechanism was heavy, and very sturdy. But the maul was iron-headed, and very big. And Anastasius was Anastasius. Even if the soldiers could force their way up the tower, past one of the world's handful of great swordsmen and India's second-best assassin, it would take hours to repair the machinery and close the gates.
They would not have those hours. They would not even have very many minutes. Rajiv's father had only a few miles to come.
* * *
He came, at an easy canter that the horses could maintain for some time without tiring. As eager and impatient as he was to reach the gate, the Rajput king was far too experienced a horseman to do otherwise. He would save the energy of a gallop for the very end.
Twenty minutes, he thought it would take.
He was eager, and impatient, but not worried. Rana Sanga had fought the Mongoose for hours, once. He did not think for a moment that, in narrow quarters, garrison troops could defeat him.
Not in twenty minutes. Probably not in twenty hours. Without cannons, anyway.
* * *
Within five minutes, the warning was brought to the officer in command of the quarter's garrison. He was an exceptionally capable officer. Realizing immediately the implications, he ordered his soldiers to bring the four field guns they had. A six-pounder and three four-pounders.
They were an exceptionally well-trained unit, too. Five hundred men, no fewer. The commander was sure he could retake the gate once he reached it.
In... perhaps fifteen minutes. More likely, twenty. His soldiers were already awake, since he'd ordered them aroused the moment he heard of the rocket, but they were still mostly in the barracks. The gate was a third of a mile away, and the streets were very narrow.
Twenty minutes should still be quick enough. The rebel army was concentrating its attack on the north, according to the reports he'd been given, where the signal rocket had been fired by spies. Probably that gate was being seized by traitors also. The commanding officer was quite experienced. Most sieges were broken by treachery, not guns.
The emperor, he thought sourly, would have done far better to have ordered his soldiers to search for spies, instead of hidden refugees. Who cared what a great lady and her children did, huddling in a cellar somewhere?
* * *
The soldiers already at the gate were driven back within less than a minute. The sheer violence of the defense was not something they'd ever encountered. There was a huge ogre accompanying the traitors, whoever they were. A monstrous creature, that crushed the life out of men with its great mace, sometimes felling two soldiers with one bow. The ogre had fierce Ye-tai with it, too.
They reeled back, frightened. Their spears had been useless. Their swords, even more so.
"Bring bows!" shouted their commander. He was lacing on his armor, and having trouble with the task. He'd been sound asleep when the alarm was sounded, and was still feeling confused.
"Bring bows!" he shrieked again.
His men hurried to obey. The bows were kept in the barracks. And the ogre was not in the barracks.
Their commander gaped at the little flood of soldiers pouring back into the barracks.
He collapsed to the ground. Even if he'd had his armor on properly, the arrow protruding from his chest would have punched right through it.
The few soldiers who hadn't returned to the barracks stared at the sight. Then, at the traitors positioned behind the wagon across the gatehouse entrance.
"The ogre has a bow!" screamed one of them. "Ogre has a bow!"
All but one of them made it back into the barracks. The sluggard remained pinned to the doorway, by another arrow that struck...
Exactly the way you'd expect an ogre's arrow to strike. Went all the way through him and would have passed on completely except it hit the door post.
"Great big thing, too," muttered one of the soldiers, peeking out of a barracks window. "Way bigger than ours."
* * *
"Which gate?" shrieked Skandagupta. "Which gate? Speak plainly, damn you!"
The emperor was still muddle-headed with sleep. Dangerous at any time, he was positively venomous at times like this.
The general commanding the city's garrison wasn't sure of the answer himself. But what he said, very firmly and confidently, was: "Both gates, Your Majesty. The main attack seems to be coming at the north gate, however. Damodara himself is said to be leading the charge there."
That was true enough. Well. Probably. From the battlements, using telescopes, sentries had seen the rebel would-be emperor's pavilion being struck, and a surge of his soldiers toward the northern gate. A contingent of Ye-tai was leading the way, probably led by Toramana himself.
A slow surge, to be sure, except for the Ye-tai vanguard. Nothing like the charge being made by the Rajputs toward the southern gate. But that latter could be a feint.
"Then get yourself to the northern gate!" shrilled the emperor. "At once! Or I'll have your head for my collection! You coward! You stinking—"
"I obey, Your Majesty!" The general could safely take that shrieking imprecation for a royal dismissal. He was out of the audience chamber before the emperor had stopped cursing him.
He'd never felt such relief heading for a desperate battle in his life.
* * *
By the time the lieutenant who succeeded to command in the barracks could chivvy his soldiers out into the small square facing the gatehouse, another sound could be heard. Like a distant thunder, approaching. The sound of horses, and men shouting.
Rajiv understood the words before anyone else did.
Rajputana. And, also, the name of his father, chanted like a battle cry.
His father was coming. Would be here within a minute or two. He and his warriors would come through that gate like an avalanche of steel.
His bow in hand and an arrow notched, Rajiv stared at the soldiers assembling fearfully in the square. In a minute, perhaps two, they would be swept from existence. Men he knew. Men whose wives and children he knew.
"It is not honorable," he murmured.
"What was that, boy?" asked Anastasius.
"It is not bearable," he added, still murmuring.
"Speak up, if you've got something to say!"
Rajiv removed the arrow from the bowstring. Still holding the bow, he sprang onto the wagon before the entrance. Then, with two steps and a sure-footed leap, sprang off the wagon onto the hard-packed dirt of the square beyond.
"What the hell are you doing?" Anastasius bellowed.
Rajiv ignored him. He advanced toward the soldiers some forty yards away. The bow was still in his left hand, positioned as it should be. But he was now holding up the arrow as if it were a sword.
"Stop!" he cried. "I am Rajiv, a prince of Rajputana! Son of Rana Sanga!"
One of the soldiers in the front rank squinted at him. Abhay, that was. He had a son Rajiv's age, and a very pretty daughter about a year older. She'd been the source of new thoughts for Rajiv, in fact. New and rather unsettling ones.
Still walking toward them, he pointed back at the opening gate with the arrow. "My father is coming! Listen, and you can hear!"
All the soldiers stopped moving, and froze.
* * *
Sure enough. Coming louder and louder:
* * *
And they were Skandagupta's men.
* * *
Rajiv now raised the arrow high, as if it held a banner.
"Swear fealty to me! Swear it now!"
* * *
Valentinian emerged from the gate tower. "All right, Anastasius. Get up there and—what is that crazy kid doing?"
Ajatasutra came out also, in time to hear the exchange. After peering at the sight of Rajiv confronting the soldiers in the square, that familiar mocking smile came to his hawk face.
"Rajput prince. What do you expect?"
* * *
His voice broke—that too was new—and Rajiv silently cursed all new things.
He was even thinking about Abhay's daughter! Now—of all times!
* * *
Abhay looked at the soldier next to him. As if it were the first pebble in a cascade, that look passed from one soldier to the next.
The new commander saw, and cursed also. Not silently, however.
"Damn all traitors!" he shouted, pushing his way forward, spear in hand.
* * *
"All my efforts," Valentinian hissed. "Gone to waste. Ungrateful fucking stupid worthless brat."
The commander came out of the mass of soldiers, at a charge, his spear leveled.
Rajiv notched and fired the arrow in a movement so swift and sure not even Valentinian could really follow it. The commander fell dead, perhaps a foot of the shaft protruding from his throat.
"Well," said Valentinian. "Maybe not all."
* * *
* * *
The sound of shrieking Rajput voices coming from beyond the walls was almost deafening.
But what decided Abhay, in the end, was not that. It was the thunderous sound—more deafening still—of thousands of galloping horses.
He was afraid of horses. Had been, ever since he was kicked by one as a boy. The other soldiers teased him about it.
He, too, lunged forward. But with his spear held crossways, not in the killing thrust his commander had tried.
"I swear, Rajiv! I swear!" He fell to his knees, the spear still held crossways. "I swear!"
It took not more than ten seconds before all the soldiers from the barracks were on their knees beside him, swearing likewise.
"On your feet!" Rajiv bellowed. Tried to, rather. His voice broke again.
He pointed with the bow. "Line up against the wall of the barracks! In good ranks, you hear? Your spears in hand—but held at standing rest!"
They'd be safe enough there, he thought. The square was small, true, but the portion in front of the barracks was something in the way of an offset little plaza. They wouldn't simply be trampled. And their families within the barracks would be safer still.
As long as Rajiv was standing in front of them, they'd be safe. Where his father could see him, the moment he came through the gate.
Any time now. He'd never heard such a sound in his life. It was simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying. Ten thousand galloping horses shaking the ground, while ten thousand warrior throats shook the air.
* * *
"I will be damned," Valentinian muttered.
"Speak up!" shouted Anastasius, standing right next to him. The world was filled with the noise of horses and battle cries. "I can't hear you!"
Anastasius shook his head. "Well, no kidding! You just figured that out?"
Valentinian scowled. Grinning, Anastasius pushed him toward the entrance to the gate tower.
"Come on! Let's get out of the way! Expert Rajput horsemen or not, I don't want to get trampled."
* * *
The courier galloped up to the city's commander.
"The southern gate!" he shrieked, pointing back with his finger. "Rajputs! Treason! The gate is open! The Rajputs are coming! Thirty thousand of them! By now, they're in the city!"
The commander stared to the south. That gate was too far away to see. He was almost at the northern gate, by now, with ten thousand of his own men packing the streets.
A courier galloped up from the north.
"The Ye-tai are at the gate! The rebel's Ye-tai! Ten thousand of them! Toramana himself is outside!"
The commander stared to the north. That gate he could see. And the odds were even.
"Death to Toramana!" he shouted, swinging his sword. "To the north gate!"
* * *
Toramana was indeed outside the gate. But with only three thousand soldiers, not the ten thousand Sanga was leading into the city through the southern gate.
They were all Ye-tai soldiers, however. Quite visibly so. Toramana had seen to that.
The commander of Damodara's Ye-tai troops was sitting on his horse and looking up at the soldiers manning the gate. Very boldly, within bow range.
The soldiers on those walls were mostly Ye-tai also, as Damodara's spies had reported.
"Come on, boys!" Toramana shouted. "It's all over, and you know it! So what's it going to be? Service with me? Beer, women, and a long life?"
He drew his sword and raised it, as if inspecting the edge of the blade.
"Or do we have to get messy about this?"
* * *
One of the Ye-tai soldiers on the walls was looking the other way, into the city.
"The commander's coming," he said, almost idly. "Took the bastard long enough. Got maybe three thousand men with him. Up close, anyway. More than that, trailing behind."
He didn't use the commander's name. Few of Kausambi's Ye-tai soldiers did. The man was a cypher to him. Just another one of the political generals churned up by the endless scheming within the Malwa dynastic clan. Very deadly scheming, of late.
Now, he turned and looked at his own platoon commander. So did all the other Ye-tai on the wall nearby.
The officer rubbed his face. "Ah, shit."
His soldiers waited, silently.
"Ah, shit," he repeated. Then he lowered his hand and said: "Make them open the gate. Let Toramana deal with the rest."
Before he finished, three of the Ye-tai were already plunging into the gatehouse.
They had their swords in hand, just in case the stupid peasants who actually operated the gate mechanism chose to argue the matter.
* * *
When he saw the gate start to open, Toramana grinned. Sanga wouldn't get all the glory.
He did not forget, of course, to wave his sword in salute at the Ye-tai on the battlements, as he led his men into the city. All three thousand of them, except a few couriers sent racing off to tell Damodara that there were now two breaches in Kausambi's walls.
For their part, the Ye-tai on the walls returned his salute with the proper salutations.
"Long live the new emperor!" bellowed one of them.
"Long live the rightful emperor!" he corrected himself.
"Death to the impostor Skandagupta!" his mate chimed in.
* * *
When Skandagupta saw the girl enter the imperial audience chamber, forcing her way past the assembled courtiers, he broke off in mid-tirade.
The eight year old girl was now past the courtiers, and standing in front of the throne.
The blooded draind from his face. A face that felt as empty as the one before him. The eyes before him.
"Great Lady Rani," the girl said.
Her voice changed, then. Into something no girl—no woman of any age—could possess.
"GREAT LADY RANI, NOW. YOU WILL OBEY ME, SKANDAGUPTA."
But all the emperor could do was scream.
Kausambi
The first thing Rana Sanga saw, after he charged through the gate into the square beyond, was his son. Rajiv, holding a bow but not wearing armor, standing in front of perhaps a hundred soldiers assembled in ranks in front of the gate's barracks.
It was one of the great moments of his life. Greater, even, than the first time he held his first-born child in his hands.
A tiny thing, Rajiv had been then, in Sanga's very large hands.
He would never be as big as Sanga. In that, Rajiv took after his mother. But, at that moment, he seemed to stand as tall as Sanga himself, sitting on his great warhorse.
"My soldiers, father!" Rajiv spread his hands, the left still holding the bow, as if to shelter the soldiers behind him. "My soldiers! Loyal and sworn to me! They are not to be harmed!"
Sanga had brought his horse to a halt, ten yards from Rajiv. A small clot of his lieutenants swirled around him.
He pointed his lance into the city. "To the imperial palace! I want Skandagupta's head! I will follow in a moment!"
The lieutenants wheeled their horses and resumed leading the charge. Hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of Rajputs followed them. Slowed greatly, of course, as they squeezed through the gate. But resuming the gallop immediately thereafter.
Finally, Sanga was able to move his gaze from his son's face, to examine the soldiers behind him.
He almost laughed. If there was one of them not trembling, Sanga could not spot him.
* * *
Abhay was certainly trembling. He had never in his life seen anything so fearsome as the Rajput king astride his horse a few yards away.
The horse alone would have been terrifying. Several hands taller than any horse Abhay had ever seen, clad in its own armor, the beast's eyes seemed to be filled with fury and its huge nostrils breathing rage.
But the king atop it! Steel helmet, steel chain and plate armor, steel-headed lance—even the shaft of the lance seemed like steel.
Not to mention being far larger than any lance Abhay could have held easily, even with both hands. In the huge, gauntleted hand of the Rajput king, it seemed as light as a wand.
The king was glaring, too. Or had some sort of scary expression on his face.
Just to make things complete, he had a name.
Rana Sanga. Every soldier in India had heard of Rana Sanga. The stories were endless.
And each and every one of them was true. Abhay didn't doubt it for a moment. Not any longer.
* * *
Sanga wasn't exactly glaring. He was simply, in his austere manner, trying to disguise both great pride and great amusement.
Sworn to his son's service, no less! The most wretched pack of garrison troops Sanga had ever seen!
But there was no contempt in the thoughts. Not even for the soldiers, and certainly not for Rajiv.
Sanga understood full well, what had happened here. He would not have done it himself. But he understood it.
"My wife's son, too," he murmured. "My great and glorious wife."
A movement caught his attention. Turning his head, he saw the Mongoose emerging from the gatehouse.
He slid the lance into its scabbard, and swung down gracefully from the saddle. Then, strode toward him.
As he neared, he saw that the Mongoose was scowling. Half-anger and half...
Embarrassment? That seemed odd.
"Look," the Mongoose rasped. "I tried my level best. It's not my fault's your son is crazy."
* * *
Abhay was astonished to see the Rajput king—so tall he was! even standing!—burst into laughter.
More astonished, still, to see him kneel before the foreign soldier.
Kneel, and extend his sword, hilt-first.
The words he spoke were clear to Abhay, who was standing not that far away. But they were simply meaningless.
"I am forever in your debt, Valentinian of Rome."
The Roman soldier named Valentinian cleared his throat.
"Name the service, and I will do it," insisted the Rajput king.
"Yes, well," Valentinian repeated.
The ogre had emerged from the gatehouse in time to hear the exchange.
"Valentinian, you're a fucking idiot," Abhay heard him growl. Much more loudly: "As it happens, Rana Sanga, there is one small little favor you could do us. A family matter, you might say. But later! Later! There's still a battle to be won."
Sanga rose, sheathing his sword. "As you say. The favor is yours, whatever it is. For the moment, I will trust you to keep my family safe."
"Well, sure," said Valentinian.
Then he was back to scowling. Rajiv stepped forward and insisted on accompanying his father.
Abhay felt fear return, in full force. He did not want to fight a battle. Any battle, anywhere—much less the great, swirling chaos that Kausambi had become.
"You are not armored, Rajiv," his father pointed out, mildly. "And your only weapons are a bow and a dagger."
Rajiv turned to face Abhay, who was a small man.
"You're about my size. Give me your armor. Your spear and sword, also."
Hastily—eagerly—ecstatically, Abhay did as he was commanded.
"Stay here—you and all the others," Rajiv told him quietly. "Protect your families, that's all. You wouldn't be—well. That'll be good enough. Just keep your wife and children safe. Especially your daughter. Ah, I mean, daughters."
He turned to Valentinian. "Is he ready for this? He's only thirteen."
Scowling seemed to come naturally to the Roman soldier. "You mean, other than being crazy? Yeah, he's ready. The truth is, he's probably better than most of your Rajputs. Already."
The Rajput king seemed, somehow, to grow taller still.
"Well, yeah. The Mongoose says so. What the hell. I trained him, didn't I?"
* * *
A few minutes later, they were gone. The Rajput king and his son, toward the imperial palace. The ogre—who turned out to be another Roman soldier—and the narrow-faced one who was almost as frightening, went somewhere else. The Ye-tai went with them, thankfully.
Where they went, exactly, Abhay didn't know. Wherever Sanga's family was hidden, he assumed.
He wasn't about to ask. He was not a crazy Rajput prince.
Fortunately, Sanga had left one of his Rajput soldiers behind. An older man; too much the veteran to find any great glory in the last battle of a war. Enough glory, anyway, to offset the risk of not being around to enjoy the fruits of victory afterward.
Somebody had to lend Rajiv a horse, after all. Who better than a grizzled oldster?
He was a cheerful fellow. Who, to the great relief of Abhay and the other garrison soldiers, just waved on the Rajputs who kept coming through the gate. There was never a moment when any real threat emerged.
Coming, and coming, and coming. It took an hour, it seemed—perhaps longer—before they all passed through. "Storming the gate," when the soldiers numbered in the thousands and the gate was not really all that wide, turned out to be mostly a poetic expression.
Abhay found that somehow reassuring. He didn't like poetry, all that much. But he liked it a lot better than he liked horses.
* * *
Toramana personally slew the commander of Kausambi, in the battle that erupted in the narrow streets less than two minutes after he and his Ye-tai started passing through the north gate.
He made a point of it, deliberately seeking out the man once he spotted the plumed helmet.
Idiot affectation, that was. Toramana's own helmet was as utilitarian and unadorned as that of any of his soldiers.
It didn't take much, really. The city's commander was leading garrison troops who hadn't seen a battle since Ranapur. Toramana and his Ye-tai had spent years fighting Belisarius and Rao.
So, a tiger met a mongrel cur in the streets of Kausambi. The outcome was to be expected. Would have been the same, even if the fact they were outnumbered didn't matter. In those narrow streets, only a few hundred men on each side could fight at one time, anyway.
When he saw Toramana coming, hacking his way through the commander's bodyguard, the Malwa general tried to flee.
But, couldn't. The packed streets made everything impossible, except the sort of close-in brutal swordwork that the Ye-tai excelled in and his own men didn't.
Neither did their general. Toramana's first strike disarmed him; the second cut off his hand; the third, his head.
* * *
"Save the head," Toramana commanded, after the garrison troops were routed.
His lieutenant held it up by the hair, still dripping blood.
"Why?" he asked skeptically. Toramana's Ye-tai, following their commander's example, were not much given to military protocol. "Getting divorced and re-married, already?"
Toramana laughed. "I don't need it for more than a day. Just long enough so those damned Rajputs don't get all the credit."
The lieutenant nodded, sagely. "Ah. Good idea."
* * *
Even with the partial data at its disposal—even working through the still-awkward sheath of a girl much too young for the purpose—Link knew what to do.
It still didn't know the exact nature of the disaster that had befallen it, while ensconced in the sheath named Sati. As always, Link's memories only went as far as Sati's last communion with the machines in the cellars.
Belisarius, obviously. As before.
The great plan of the new gods lay in shattered ruin. India was now lost. If Link had been in an adult sheath, it might have tried to rally the city's soldiers. But trapped in a girl's body, and with an emperor who had never been very competent and was now half-hysterical, such an attempt would be hopeless.
True, Damodara's forces were still outnumbered by Kausambi's garrison. Link knew that, within a 93% probability, despite the prattle of panicked courtiers and officers.
But that, too, didn't matter. There was no comparison at all between the morale and cohesion of the opposing sides. Damodara's army had the wind in its sails, now that it had breached the city's walls. Worse still, it had commanders who knew how to use that wind, beginning with Damodara himself.
The only really seasoned army Link had was in the Punjab. A huge army, but it might as well have been on the moon. That army had been paralyzed by Belisarius, it was much too far away for Link to control any longer—and none of the garrisons in any of the cities in the Ganges plain could serve as a rallying point. Not after Kausambi fell, as it surely would by nightfall.
All that remained—all that could remain—was to salvage what pieces it could and begin anew.
Start from the very beginning, all over again. Worse than that, actually. Link would lose the machinery in the imperial cellars. Without that machinery, it could not be transferred once its current sheath died or became too old or ill to be of use. Link would die with it.
Perhaps it was fortunate, after all, that the sheath was only eight years old.
Not that Link really thought in terms like "fate" or "fortune." Still, it was a peculiar twist in probabilities. It would take at least half a century for Link to recreate that machinery, even after it made its way to the Khmer lands.
The work could not be done there, in the first place. In this world, only the Romans and the Chinese had the technical wherewithal, with Link to guide the slave artisans.
Fortunately, the new gods had planned for such an unlikely outcome. Link held the designs in its mind for much cruder machines, that would still accomplish the same basic task.
Half a century, at least. Hopefully, the sheath would prove to be long-lived. They normally weren't, simply because Link made no effort to keep them alive, if doing so was at all inconvenient. But it knew how to do so, if it chose, assuming the genetic material was not hopeless. The regimen was very strict, but—obviously—that posed no problem at all. Food meant nothing at all to Link, and the time spent in mindless exercise could still be used for calculations.
"Where are we going?" whispered Skandagupta. His voice was still hoarse, from the earlier screaming.
The threat was not an idle one. An eight-year-old girl's body could not have overwhelmed Skandagupta, even as pudgy and unfit as he was. But Link had kept its special assassins, after ordering them to kill all the women in the cellars. Any one of the assassins—much less all three—could have slain Skandagupta instantly.
The specially-trained women would have been useful, later. But they were simply not trained, nor physically conditioned after years living in cellars, for the rigors of the journey that lay ahead. And Link could not afford to leave them alive. Under torture, they might say too much about their origins.
It was questionable whether Skandagupta would survive those rigors. Link's sheath was small enough that it could be carried by the assassins, when necessary. Skandagupta was not, even after he lost his fat, as he surely would. Link could not afford to wear out its assassins.
As it was, Link had almost ordered the emperor killed anyway. The probabilities teetered on a knife's edge. On the one hand, Skandagupta was an obvious impediment in the immediate future. On the other hand...
It was hard to calculate. There were still too many variables involved. But there were enough of them to indicate that, given many factors, having the legitimate emperor of India ready at hand might prove useful.
No matter. Link could always have Skandagupta murdered later, after all.
The tunnel they were passing through was poorly lit. Skandagupta stumbled and fell again.
The shock was enough to jar the creature out of its fear. "Where are we going? And what will happen to my wife and children?"
Link decided that answering was more efficient than another threat.
"We are going to the Khmer lands. I prepared this escape route decades ago. Your wife and daughters are irrelevant, since they are outside the succession. Your only son, also. By the end of the day he will have either renounced his heritage and publicly admitted Damodara's forgeries to be the truth, or he will be dead."
"IF HE SPEAKS AGAIN WITHOUT PERMISSION," Link instructed the assassins, "BEAT HIM."
"LEAVE HIS LEGS UNDAMAGED. HIS BRAIN ALSO, SUCH AS IT IS. SO LONG AS HE CAN STILL WALK."
* * *
Damodara entered the palace just as the sun was setting. There was still some fighting in the city, here and there, but not much.
It was all over. His great gamble had worked.
"Skandagupta's son says he will agree to the—ah—new documents," Narses said.
Damodara considered the matter. "Not good enough. He has to swear he's a bastard, also. His real father was... whoever. Pick one of the courtiers whose heads decorate the walls outside. Someone known to be foul as well as incompetent."
Narses sneered. "Hard to choose among them, given those qualifications."
"Don't take long." Damodara's lips twisted into something that was perhaps less of a sneer, but every bit as contemptuous. "I want those heads off the walls and buried or burnt by tomorrow afternoon. The impaled bodies, by mid-morning. What a stench!"
"They should be here within an hour. They're all safe and well."
Damodara nodded. "See to it that stable-keeper is rewarded. Lavishly. In addition to being made the new royal stable-master.
"Yes, Your Majesty. What about—"
"The two Roman soldiers?" Damodara shook his head, wonderingly. "What sort of reward would be suitable, for such service as that?"
Narses' sneer returned. "Oh, they'll think of something."
* * *
"Someone's coming," said one of the members of the assassination team. He spoke softly. Just as softly as he let the grasses sway back, hiding their position alongside the road to the Bay of Bengal.
"Don't know. But from the clothes he's wearing, someone important, even though he's on foot. He's got a girl with him, and those weird little yellow assassins the witches keep around."
The captain frowned. He knew who the man was talking about, of course, even if none of the regular Malwa assassination teams ever had much contact with the witches and their entourage. But they'd always paid some attention to the Khmer assassins. Just keeping an eye on the competition, as it were.
"What in the world would... Let me see."
He slithered his way to the top of the knoll and carefully parted the grasses.
"It's the emperor," he hissed.
"Are you sure?" asked his lieutenant.
"Come and look for yourself, if you don't believe me."
The lieutenant did so. Like the captain, though not the other three assassins, he'd been introduced to the emperor once. At a distance, of course, and as part of a small crowd. But it was something a man remembered.
"Damned if you're not right. But what would he be doing... Oh. Stupid question."
The captain smiled, sardonically. "I guess we know who won the siege."
He took a deep breath and let it out. "Well, thank whatever gods there are. After eleven thousand wasted miles and I don't want to think how many wasted hours, we've finally got something to do."
* * *
Fortunately, they'd hauled their little bombard the whole way. For all their diminutive size, the Khmer assassins were deadly. But a blast of canister swept them away as neatly as you could ask for. The one who survived, unconscious and badly wounded, got his throat cut a few seconds later.
They hadn't intended to hit the emperor or the girl, but the group had been tightly bunched and canister just naturally spreads.
The girl wasn't too badly hurt. Just a single ball in the left arm. She might lose the arm, but it could have been worse.
There was no chance, however, that Skandagupta would survive.
"Gut-shot," the lieutenant grunted. "He'll die in agony, in a few days. Damodara might like that."
The captain shook his head. "Not by reputation, and all we really need is the head, anyway. Or do you want to carry the fat little bastard?"
The lieutenant eyed the distant walls of Kausambi. Night was falling, but he could still hear the sounds of scattered fighting.
"Well... it's only a few miles. But after eleven thousand, I'm not in the mood for any extra effort." He knelt down, and with a few expert strokes, severed the imperial head.
The girl was still squawling at them, as she had been since the attack. It was a very strange sound, coming from such a small female. As if her voice emerged from a huge cavern of a chest.
Consciously and deliberately, the assassins had blocked the actual words from their minds You had to be careful, dealing with the witches. Which she obviously was, despite her youth. A witch-in-training, at least.
The captain struck her on the head with the pommel of his dagger. Carefully, just enough to daze the creature.
You never knew, with the witches and the imperial dynasty—of which Damodara was still a part, after all. The reward might be greater, if she were still alive.
Alive, however, was good enough.
"I'm sick of that squawling," said the captain. "Her eyes are creepy, too. Gag her and blindfold her, before she comes to."
* * *
They decided to wait until the next day, before entering the city to seek their reward. By then, the fighting should have ended.
Before long, however, the captain was regretting that decision. They were all very well-traveled, by now, and—alas—the lieutenant liked to read.
"You know," he said, "the story has it that when some Persians presented Alexander the Great with the body of Darius, he had them all executed. For regicide, even though he was hunting the former emperor himself."
Silently, the captain cursed all well-read men. Then, because maintaining morale was his duty, pointed out the obvious.
"Don't be silly. Alexander the Great was a maniac. Everybody says Damodara is a level-headed, practical fellow."
* * *
Lord Samudra learned the war was over that night, from a radio message sent from Kausambi.
FALSE EMPEROR OVERTHROWN STOP TRUE EMPEROR DAMODARA SITS ON THRONE IN KAUSAMBI STOP YOU WILL OBEY HIM LORD SAMUDRA STOP WAR IS OVER STOP ESTABLISH LIASON WITH MAURICE OF THRACE TO NEGOTIATE CEASE FIRE WITH ROMAN AND PERSIAN ARMIES IN PUNJAB STOP
"What are you going to do?" asked one of his aides.
Samudra let the message fall to the table in the bunker. "What do you think? I'm going to do exactly as I'm told. The Romans will have received the same message. By now, they've got us outnumbered. Between them and the Persians, we're facing something like two hundred thousand men."
"And we're losing soldiers by the droves every day," said a different aide, gloomily. "As much by desertion as disease."
There was silence, for a time. Then Samudra said: "You want to know the truth? I know Damodara pretty well. We're cousins, after all. He's about ten times more capable than Skandagupta and—best of all—he's even-tempered."
There was further silence, finally broken by one of the aides.
"Long live the new emperor, then."
"Idiot," said Samudra tonelessly. "Long live the true emperor. The greatest army of the Malwa empire does not obey rebels, after all."
* * *
It was several days before Belisarius learned the war was over. The news was brought to him by a special courier sent by Damodara.
A Rajput cavalryman, naturally. The man was exceptionally proud—as well he might be—that he'd made the ride as fast as he had, without killing a single horse.
"So, that's it," said Belisarius, rising from his squat across from Kungas.
The two of them emerged from the hut and studied the Malwa army they'd trapped on the Ganges.
There's been little fighting, and none at all for the past four days.
"You were right, I think," said Kungas. "The bitch did kill herself, days ago."
"Most likely. We'll know soon enough. That army's looking at starvation, before too long. They slaughtered their last horses two days ago."
"I'll send an envoy to them. Once they get the news, they'll surrender."
The Kushan king eyed Belisarius. "You know, I don't think I've ever seen that crooked a smile on your face. What amuses you so?"