by Eric Flint
"They already have grenades. The kshatriya are starting to pass them out to the regulars."
He took up the telescope again, and continued his scrutiny.
"They'll come in waves. Probably be one grenadier for every ten soldiers. The Ye-tai will be scattered through the lines in small squads, driving the regulars forward and pressing the assault. Some of the kshatriya will be in those lines, too, but most of them will stay at the center with the priests, manning the rockets. They'll also help the Kushans guard the wagons. They might-damn!"
He stiffened, staring through the telescope intently.
"Damn," he repeated. "They're bringing up the Kushans. All two thousand of them."
"On foot?" asked Agathius.
Belisarius lowered the telescope, nodded. Then, with a bit of a rueful smile:
"Kushans, in my experience, don't have any fetishes when it comes to fighting. On foot, on horse, on boats-it doesn't matter to them. Whatever, they'll do it well. Very well."
He turned away from the window. It was obvious from his stance and expression that he had reached a decision. His officers gathered closer.
"This changes things," Belisarius announced. "As you know, I'd wanted to wait until tomorrow before bringing in Maurice and his boys."
He tapped the palm of his hand with the telescope, emphasizing his words.
"We're going to beat these bastards, one way or the other. But I want more than that-I want to pulverize them. The best way to do that is to rout them early in the morning, so we've got a full day for pursuit."
The officers nodded. All of them-even the two young brothers-were experienced combatants. They knew that a battle won at the end of day was a battle half-won. The kind of relentless, driving pursuit which could utterly destroy a retreating enemy was simply impossible once daylight was gone.
Agathius glanced out the window. "It's still before noon," he mused. "If the battle starts soon enough-"
Belisarius shook his head. "I'd wanted to let the Malwa spend all day hammering their heads against us here. Bleed them dry, exhaust them-then hit them at dawn with a massive flank attack by Maurice and Kurush. The attack would break their army, and then we'd sally out of the villa and drive over them."
He saw that his officers still didn't understand. He didn't blame them. Their brief experience with Malwa soldiers had not prepared them for the Kushans.
"The Kushans are a different breed. They won't come at us in a mass, chivvied by Ye-tai, depending on their grenades to do the work. They'll come at us like the best kind of Roman infantry would attack this place."
Of the officers standing around him, Bouzes was the most familiar with Belisarius' infantry tactics. The general saw dawning comprehension in his face.
"Shit," muttered the young Thracian. He glanced around the room. "The villa's not a fortress, when you come down to it. The fortifications we jury-rigged were designed to fend off grenades, not-"
Belisarius finished the thought.
"Not two thousand of the finest foot soldiers anywhere in the world, charging in squads, aiming to push into every door and portal so they can use their swords and spears."
Cyril scowled. "Let 'em! I don't care how good they are. We're not lambs ourselves, general. Our cataphracts can fight on foot-just watch! With us to back up the Syrians, we'll chop those-"
Belisarius waved his hand.
"That's not the point, Cyril. I don't doubt that we'll beat back the Kushans. But I can guarantee that we won't be doing it without suffering lots of casualties and without being exhausted ourselves, when the day's over. I don't think we'll be in any shape to be pursuing anybody, tomorrow."
He rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. "I wonder. ."
Belisarius stepped back to the window and looked through the telescope again. For a minute, he studied the Kushans taking up their position. Then, pressing himself against the wall to the left of the window, he aimed the telescope at a sharp angle, studying something to the southwest.
"We've got no troops stationed at the corrals." He cast a quick, inquisitive glance at Bouzes. The young Thracian shook his head.
"No, sir." His tone grew a bit defensive: "I thought about it, but it's at least half a mile away. There didn't seem any point to-"
Belisarius smiled crookedly.
"No, there wasn't. I'm not criticizing your decision, Bouzes. I just wanted to make sure."
Again, Bouzes shook his head. "We've got nobody there, general."
"Good," stated Belisarius. He stared through the telescope for another minute, before turning away from the window.
"We're going to turn everything inside out. Instead of waiting until tomorrow, I'll have Maurice start the counter-attack at the beginning of the battle."
He hesitated. "Well, not quite. I don't think the Kushans will lead the first assault. Unless that Malwa commander's dumber than a chicken, he won't want to use his best troops until he's softened this place up a bit. He'll let regulars and Ye-tai hammer us with grenades. See what happens. If that doesn't work, then he'll send in the Kushans. They'll head up the second attack. And that's when I'll order Maurice to make his charge."
The look of incomprehension was back on the faces of the general's subordinates. Belisarius' own face broke into a cheerful grin. "The trick to dealing with Kushans, I've learned, is to exploit their talents."
"Begging your pardon, sir," spoke up Cyril, "but I don't understand what you're getting at. If Maurice attacks when the Kushans are still fresh-"
"What will the Kushans do?" demanded Belisarius. "Think, Cyril. And remember-they'll be excellent troops, with good commanders, on foot, suddenly finding themselves caught between a fortified villa and a heavy cavalry charge on their right flank."
Cyril was still frowning. Belisarius drove on.
"The rest of the Malwa army will be shattering, under that charge. Not to mention-"
He turned to Agathius. "Are your boys up for another bit of lance work? A sally, straight out of the villa?"
Agathius grinned. "After that promenade this morning? Hell, yes. It'll be a bitch, mind you, getting the horses through all those little gates."
Belisarius waved the matter off. "I don't care if the sally's ragged. It doesn't matter. All that matters is that while Maurice and Kurush are breaking the Malwa in half from the flank, the front lines of their army see a new threat coming at them straight ahead. The Ye-tai'll go berserk, trying to force the regulars to stand and fight. But the Kushans-"
"Sweet Jesus, yes," whispered Bouzes. He strode to the window and stared through it at a sharp angle. "They'll break for the corrals, and the barns and horse pens. Only place around where infantry could fort up and have a chance against heavy cavalry."
He stared back at Belisarius. "They'll have to react instantly, general. Are they really that good?"
"I'm counting on it," came the firm reply. "It's a gamble, I know. If they don't-if they stand their ground-then we'll be in one bloody mess of a brawl. It'll last all day."
He shrugged. "We'll still win, but half the Malwa army will make their escape."
Cyril and Agathius looked at each other. Then, at Belisarius.
"Glad I'm not a general," muttered Cyril. "I'd die from headache."
Agathius tugged at his beard. "If I understand correctly, general, you're planning to wreck the Malwa by isolating their best troops while we concentrate on chewing the rest of them to pieces."
Belisarius nodded. Agathius' beard-tugging grew intense.
"What's to stop the Kushans from sallying themselves? Coming to the aid of-"
Bouzes grinned. "Of what? The same stupid fucking Malwa jackasses who got them treed in the first place?"
Belisarius shook his head. "They won't, Agathius. The Malwa don't trust the Kushans for the good and simple reason that they can't. The Kushans will fight, in a battle. But they've got no love for their overlords. When the hammer falls, the Kushans will look out for themselves."
He turned to Bouzes. "After the initia
l sally-after we break them-move your Syrian troops to cover the Kushans. The infantry can't play any useful role, anyway, in a pursuit. But don't attack the Kushans-be a bloodbath if you do-just hold them there."
He grinned himself, now.
"Until tomorrow morning."
"We'll finish the Kushans then?" asked Coutzes.
Belisarius' grin faded to a crooked smile. He made a little fluttering motion with his hands.
"We'll see," he said. "Maybe. Maybe not. They're tough, Kushans. But I saw a girl work wonders with them, once, using the right words."
Half an hour later, the attack began. With a rocket barrage, as Belisarius had predicted.
As he watched the rockets soaring all over the sky, exploding haphazardly and landing hither and yon, Belisarius realized that the Malwa were actually doing him a large favor. Although his troops had always maintained a soldierly sangfroid on the subject, he knew that they had been quite apprehensive about the enemy's mysterious gunpowder weapons. Except for Valentinian and Anastasius, who had accompanied him to India, none of Belisarius' men had any real experience with gunpowder weapons. True, most of the soldiers had seen grenades used-some of them had even practiced with the devices. But even his katyusha rocket-men had never seen gunpowder weapons used in the fury and chaos of an actual battle.
Now, the men were getting their first taste of Malwa gunpowder weapons. And the main result, after the first five minutes of that barrage, was-
"They'd do better to use scorpions and onagers," commented a Syrian infantryman, crouched behind a plaque-strengthened window not far from the general.
A Greek cataphract pressed against a nearby wall barked a laugh. "They'd do better to build an assault tower and piss on us," he sneered.
The Syrian watched a skittering rocket sail overhead and burst in midair. The man, Belisarius noted, did not even flinch. In the first moments of the barrage, the Roman soldiers had been shaken by the sound and fury which the rockets produced. But now, with experience, they were taking the matter in stride.
The same Syrian, catching a glimpse of Belisarius, cocked his head and asked:
"What's the point of this, sir, if you don't mind my asking?" The infantryman made a little gesture toward the window. "I don't think more than a dozen of these things have exploded anywhere in the compound. And only a few of them's done any real damage-the ones that blew up over the gardens."
"Don't get too overconfident, men," said Belisarius. He spoke loudly, knowing that all the soldiers crammed into the large room were listening.
"In the proper circumstances, these rockets can be effective. But you're right, in this situation they'd do a lot better to use old-style catapults. Rockets are an area-effect weapon-especially their rockets, which aren't anywhere near as accurate as ours."
He paused, allowing the happy thought of Roman rockets to boost morale, before continuing:
"They're almost useless used against a protected fixed position like this one. The reason the Malwa are using them"-he grinned-"is because the arrogant bastards are so sure of themselves that they didn't bother to bring any catapults. Like we did."
The general's grin was answered by a little cheer. When the cheer died down, the Syrian who had spoken up earlier asked another question.
"How would they be doing if they had those siege guns you've talked about?"
Belisarius grimaced. It was more of a whimsical expression than a rueful one, however.
"If they'd had siege guns, I never would have forted us up here in the first place." He waved his hand, casually. "Big siege guns would flatten a place like this inside of five minutes. In ten minutes, there'd be nothing but rubble."
Carefully-gauging-he watched the cheer fade from his soldiers' faces. Then, just before solemnity turned grim, he boomed:
"On the other hand, siege guns are so big and awkward that they're sitting ducks on a battleground."
Again, he waved his hand. The gesture, this time, was not casual in the least. It was the motion of a master craftsman, demonstrating an aspect of his skill.
"If they'd brought siege guns, we'd have ripped them with open-field maneuvers."
The grin returned.
"Either way, either way-it doesn't matter, men. We'll thrash the Malwa anyway it takes!"
Outside, two rockets burst in unison. But the sound, loud as it was, completely failed to drown the cheers which erupted through the crowded room.
Belisarius! Belisarius!
One soldier only, in that festive outburst, did not participate in the acclaim-the same Syrian, still crouched by the window, still watching everything outside with a keen and vigilant gaze.
"I think that's it, general," he remarked. "I'm pretty sure they're getting ready to charge."
Belisarius moved to the window, and crouched down next to the soldier. He drew out his telescope and peered through it. For a few seconds, no longer.
"You're right," he announced. The general leaned over and placed a hand on the Syrian's shoulder.
"What's your name?" he asked softly.
The man looked a bit startled. "Felix, sir. Felix Chalcenterus."
Belisarius nodded, rose, and strode out of the room. In the hallway beyond, he turned right and headed toward the villa's central gardens. The Greek cataphracts massed in the hallway squeezed to the sides, allowing him a narrow passageway through which to move. A very narrow passageway-crooked, cramped, and lined with scale armor.
By the time he emerged into the gardens-a bit the way a seed bursts out of a crushed grape-he felt like he had been through a grape-press himself. For all its imperial size, the villa was far too small a structure to hold thousands of troops packed within its walls. Still, Belisarius had insisted on crowding as many men as possible into the buildings. The villa was not a fortress. But its solidly-built walls and roofs provided far more protection from rockets and arrows than the leather screens and canopies which provided the only missile shelter for the troops resting in the villa's open grounds.
When he finally emerged into the central gardens, he saw that even here the casualties from the barrage had been very light. This, despite the fact that the area was packed as tightly as the buildings were.
The horticultural splendor which had once reigned here was nothing but a memory, now. Every plant and shrub had been obliterated by the heavily-armored men who were jammed into every nook and cranny of the gardens. But few of those men seemed the slightest bit injured.
Belisarius was relieved, even though he was not surprised. Belisarius had been almost certain that the rockets' trajectories would be too flat to plunge into the gardens.
Obviously, his estimate had been correct. What few injuries had occured had resulted from the handful of rockets which, by bad luck, had exploded directly overhead. And even those had done little damage, due to the leather shrapnel screens stretched across much of the garden areas.
Again, Belisarius forced his way forward. Once he was through the gardens, he plunged into the jam-packed hallways of the buildings on the opposite side. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. By the time he finally staggered into the open grounds in the rear of the villa, he felt almost as if he had been through another lance charge.
The expedition had taken much longer than he had expected. No sooner did he emerge into the open than he heard a cacophony of distant shouting behind him. Malwa battle cries. The enemy had launched their ground assault.
Belisarius did not even think of turning back. The thought of undergoing that gauntlet again almost made him shudder. There would be no point, anyway. Bouzes was in command of the three thousand infantrymen manning the villa, with five hundred Constantinople cataphracts to back him up. Belisarius was quite confident of their ability to fight off the first attack.
Coutzes and Agathius, seeing the general emerge, hurried to meet him. Their own pace was not quick. The area to the rear of the villa held the rest of the Greek cataphracts and the Syrian cavalry-over four thousand men, along with their horses. But the p
opulation density was not as extreme as it had been in the villa itself. The imperial compound's wall-enclosed western grounds were many acres in extent. Open areas, for the most part, interspersed with bridle paths, hedges, patios and scattered trees.
Within a few seconds, Belisarius was consulting with his cavalry commanders. All three of them spoke loudly, due to the rapidly escalating noise coming from the other side of the villa. Malwa and Roman battle cries were mingled with the sound of grenade explosions.
Belisarius' first words were, "How many casualties?"
"They'd have done better to use catapults," snorted Agathius. He looked at Coutzes. "What would you say? Twenty, maybe-overall?"
Coutzes shrugged. "If that many. Only three fatal-ities, that I know of."
"What about the horses?" asked the general.
Agathius rocked his head back and forth. "They're a little skittish, general. But we were able to keep them pretty much under control. Don't think we lost more than a dozen. Most of those'll be back, in a few hours, except a couple who broke their fool necks jumping the rear wall."
Coutzes laughed. "I don't think Abbu's precious horse will be coming back! I swear, general, the fucking thing almost jumped over the trees as well as the wall!"
Agathius grinned. Belisarius' eyes widened.
"Abbu's-you mean that gelding he dotes on?"
" 'Dotes on'?" demanded Coutzes. "That gelding's the apple of the old brigand's eye! He practically sleeps with the damn beast."
"Not any more," chuckled Agathius. "He's fit to be tied, he is. Last I saw he was standing on the wall shooting arrows at the creature. Didn't come close, of course-the gelding was already halfway to Antioch."
Belisarius shook his head. He was smiling, but the smile was overlaid with concern. "Did he manage-"
Coutzes cut him off.
"Don't worry, general. Abbu sent the Arab couriers off as soon as we gave him the word. Half an hour ago, at least. Maurice'll have plenty of warning that the plans have changed."
Belisarius' smile grew very crooked. "I'm glad I won't be there to hear him, cursing me for a fussbudget." He did a fair imitation of Maurice's rasping voice: "What am I? A babe in swaddling clothes-a toddler-has to be told to pay attention because plans are changing? Of course the plan's changing! Aren't I the one who taught that-that-that general-that plans always change when the enemy arrives?"
