The Dance of Time b-6

by Eric Flint

  He spent more time examining the man who had spoken. An assassin, obviously. Lord Damodara recognized the type, from his adventurous youth.

  A very polite assassin, however, as all of them had been since they seized Damodara's parents from the bedroom of their palace and smuggled them into the night.

  Better to think of them as bodyguards, he decided wryly.

  "I'm exhausted," his wife said. She gazed longingly at the one bed in the room. It had been a long trip, especially for people of their advanced years.

  "Yes, we need sleep," her husband agreed. He nodded to the assassin. "Thank you."

  The man gave a bow in return. "We will be in the next room, should you need anything."

  After he was gone, closing the door behind him, Damodara's mother half-collapsed on the bed. She winced, then, feeling the thin pallet.

  "Not much!" she exclaimed, half-laughing and half-sobbing.

  Her husband made a face. "A year from now we will either be skin-sacks hanging from Emperor Skandagupta's rafters or be sleeping in one of the finest chambers in his palace."

  The noise his wife emitted was, again, half a sob and half a laugh. "Your son! I told you-years ago! — that you were letting him think too much."

  * * *

  There were times-not many-that Agathius was thankful he'd lost his legs at the Battle of the Dam.

  This was one of them. Being an obvious cripple might deflect some of the Persian fury being heaped upon his unoffending person, where the strength of Samson unchained would have been pointless.

  "— not be cheated, I say it again!"

  Khusrau punctuated the bellow with a glare ferocious enough to be worthy of. .

  Well, an emperor, actually. Which he was.

  The mass of Persian noblemen packed into Khusrau's audience chamber at Sukkur growled their approval. They sounded like so many hungry tigers.

  Not a dehgan in the lot, either, so far as Agathius could tell. That broad, lowest class of the Iranian azadan-"men of noble birth"-hadn't been invited to send representatives to this enclave. The only men in the room were sahrdaran and vurzurgan.

  Agathius shifted his weight on his crutches. "Your Majesty," he said mildly, "I just arrived here from Barbaricum. I have no idea beyond the sketchiest telegraph messages-which certainly didn't mention these issues-what the general has planned in terms of a postwar distribution of the spoils. But I'm quite sure he has no intention of denying the Iranians their just due."

  Another surge of muttered growls came. The phrase he'd better not! seemed to be the gist of most of them.

  "He'd better not!" roared Khusrau. His clenched fist pounded the heavy armrest of his throne. Three times, synchronized with bet-ter-not.

  "I'm sure the thought has never crossed his mind," said Agathius firmly. He contemplated a sudden collapse on the floor, but decided that would be histrionic. He wasn't that crippled, after all. Besides, he'd said the words with such complete conviction that even the angry and suspicious Persians seemed a bit mollified.

  And why not? The statement was quite true. Agathius was as certain as he was of the sunrise that the thought of swindling the Persians out of their rightful share of the postwar spoils had not, in fact, "crossed" Belisarius' mind.

  Been planted there like a sapling, yes. Been studied and examined from every angle, to be sure. Weighed, pondered, appraised, considered, measured, gauged, adjudged, evaluated, assessed-for a certainty.

  Crossed, no.

  * * *

  Belisarius studied the telegram.

  "Pretty blistering language, sir," Calopodius said apologetically, as if he were somehow responsible for the intemperate tone of the message.

  "Um." Belisarius scanned over it quickly again. "Well, I agree that the verbs 'cheat' and 'rob' are excessive. And there was certainly no need to bring up my ancestry. Still and all, it could be worse. If you look at it closely-well, squint-this is really more in the way of a protest than a threat."

  He dropped the Persian emperor's message onto the table. "And, as it happens, all quite unnecessary. I have no intentions of 'cheating' the Persians out of their fair share of the spoils."

  He turned to Maurice, smiling. "Be sure to tell Khusrau that, when he arrives."

  Maurice scowled back at him. "You'll be gone, naturally."

  "Of course!" said Belisarius gaily. "Before dawn, tomorrow, I'm off across the Thar."

  * * *

  Before Maurice could respond, Anna stalked into the headquarters bunker.

  She spoke with no preamble. "Your own latrines and medical facilities are adequate, General. But those of the Punjabi natives are atrocious. I insist that something be done about it."

  Belisarius bestowed the same gleeful smile on her. "Absolutely! I place you in charge. What's a good title, Maurice?"

  The chiliarch's scowl darkened. "Who cares? How about 'Mistress of the Wogs'?"

  Anna hissed.

  Belisarius clucked his tongue. "Thracian peasant. No, that won't do at all."

  He turned to Calopodius. "Exercise your talent for rhetoric here, youngster."

  Calopodius scratched his chin. "Well. . I can think of several appropriate technical titles, but the subtleties of the Greek language involved wouldn't mean anything to the natives. So why not just call her the Governess?"

  "That's silly," said Maurice.

  "My husband," said Anna.

  "Done," said Belisarius.

  * * *

  A full hour before sunrise, Belisarius and his expedition left the Triangle. To maintain the secrecy of the operation, they were ferried south for several miles before being set ashore. By now, Roman patrols had scoured both banks of the Indus so thoroughly that no enemy spies could be hidden anywhere.

  As always with water transport, the horses were the biggest problem. The rest was easy enough, since Belisarius was bringing no artillery beyond mortars and half a dozen of the rocket chariots.

  By mid-morning, they were completely out of sight of the river, heading east into the wasteland.

  * * *

  At approximately the same time, Sati started her own procession out of the Malwa camp to the north. There was no attempt at secrecy here, of course. What can be done-even then, with difficulty-by less than a thousand men, cannot possibly be done by thirty thousand. So huge was that mass of men, in fact, that it took the rest of the day before all of them had filed from the camps and started up the road.

  Preceded only by a cavalry screen and one Ye-tai battalion, the Great Lady herself led the way. Since the infantry would set the pace of the march, she would ride in the comfort of a large howdah suspended between two elephants.

  The "howdah" was really more in the way of a caravan or a large sedan than the relatively small conveyance the word normally denoted. The chaundoli, as it was called, was carried on heavy poles suspended between two elephants, much the way a litter is carried between two men. Its walls and roof were made of thin wood, with three small windows on each side. The walls and roof were covered with grass woven onto canes and lashed to the exterior. The grass would be periodically soaked with water during the course of the journey, which would keep the interior cool as the breeze struck the chaundoli.

  Since none of the Great Lady's special bodyguards or assassins were horsemen, those of them who could not be fit into her own chaundoli rode in a second one just behind her. They could have marched, of course. But the thing which possessed the body of the Great Lady had no desire to risk its special assistants becoming fatigued. Link didn't expect to need them, but the situation had become so chaotic that even its superhuman capacity for calculation was being a bit overwhelmed.

  * * *

  Lord Samudra watched Great Lady Sati's army depart from the great complex of fortresses and camps which had by then been erected facing the Roman lines in the Iron Triangle. Come evening, he returned to his own headquarters-which was, in fact, built much the same way as a chaundoli except the walls were of heavy timber. The water-soaked gras
s wasn't quite as effective a cooling mechanism with such a massive and stationary structure. But it was still far superior to the sweltering heat of a tent or the sort of buried bunkers the Roman generals used.

  Idiots, they were, in Samudra's opinion. The only reason they needed bunkers was because of their flamboyant insistence on remaining close to the fighting lines. Samudra's own headquarters was several miles beyond the farthest possible range of Roman cannons or rockets.

  "Have more water poured on the grass," Samudra commanded his majordomo. "And be quick about it. I am not in a good mood."

  Chapter 27

  The Iron Triangle

  At least Emperor Khusrau had enough sense to leave his Persian army on the west bank of the Indus, when he came storming into Maurice's bunker on the Iron Triangle. In point of fact, Maurice wouldn't have allowed him to bring them across-and he, not the Persians, controlled the rivers. The Iranians had nothing to match the Roman ironclad and fireship.

  Still, even Khusrau alone-in his current mood-would have been bad enough. Surrounded as he was with enough sahrdaran to pack the bunker, he was even worse. And the fact that Maurice was sure the Persian emperor was mostly playing to the audience didn't improve his own mood at all.

  "— not be cheated!"

  Maurice had had enough. "Cheated?" he demanded. "Who is 'cheating you,' damnation?" He had just enough control of his temper left to add: "Your Majesty."

  Maurice pointed to the west wall of the bunker. "Take as much as you can over there, for all I care! But don't expect me to do your fighting for you!"

  Several of the sahrdaran hissed angrily, one of them very loudly. That was a sahrdaran in his early forties whose name was Shahrbaraz. He was the oldest son of the leader of the Karin family, which was one of the seven great sahrdaran houses and perhaps the most influential after the Suren.

  Maurice glared at him, still pointing at the west wall. "Why are you here, hissing at me-instead of fighting to take the land you claim is yours?"

  Shahrbaraz started to respond angrily, but the emperor waved him down.

  "Be silent!" Khusrau commanded. He gave Maurice a fine glare of his own. "May I then assume that you will not object if I launch my own offensive?"

  "Not in the least."

  "And you will not object if we retain the land we conquer?"

  Maurice snatched up the messages on the center table and shook them at the emperor. Those were copies of the exchange between Belisarius and Damodara that had taken place days earlier. "How many times do I need to show this to you? Your Majesty. Whatever you can take west of the river is yours. As far north as you can manage to get."

  "To the Hindu Kush!" shouted one of the other sahrdaran. Maurice couldn't remember his name, but he was a prominent member of the house of the Spandiyads.

  By a mighty struggle, Maurice managed not to sneer. "I'd recommend you stop at the foot of the Hindu Kush. Keeping in mind that King Kungas counts the Vale of Peshawar as part of it. Everything north of Kohat Pass and west of Margalla Pass belongs to him, he says. But if you think you can roll over the Kushans as well as the Malwa, so be it."

  "And when have the Aryans cared-"

  "Be silent!" Khusrau roared again. This time, thankfully, it was the Spandiyad who was the recipient of his imperial glare. "We are not at war with the Kushans," he stated. "All of the west Punjab to the Hindu Kush. We will stop once we have reached the passes into the Vale of Peshawar held by our allies the Kushans."

  The emperor glanced down at the half-crumpled pile of messages. "As all have now agreed," he finished, more softly.

  When he looked up at Maurice, he seemed considerably calmer. "Will your gunships provide us with protection from the Malwa ironclads?"

  Maurice shook his head. Not angrily, but firmly nonetheless. "We can't, Your Majesty. I'm sorry, but we just can't. Neither the Justinian nor the Victrix is a match for them. Not even one of them, much less the two they have stationed on the Indus. That's why we laid the mine fields across the rivers. Once you move north of those minefields, you'll be on your own. I recommend you keep your army away from the rivers. Far enough away to be out of range of the ironclads' guns."

  Khusrau didn't seem surprised by the response. Or angry, for that matter. He simply grunted softly and turned away.

  "To the Hindu Kush!" he bellowed, striding toward the exit of the bunker.

  Within a minute, they were all gone.

  "Thank God," muttered Maurice. "Can't stand Persians. Never have liked the arrogant bastards. Think their shit doesn't stink."

  "It certainly does," sniffed Anna. She'd happened to be present in the bunker, visiting her husband, when the Persian delegation arrived. "I've visited their camps, on the way up here. Their sanitary practices would cause a hyena to tremble."

  Maurice chuckled. "Worse than the natives here?"

  "Yes, as a matter of fact," Anna replied stiffly. "Even before I started governessing them. Today, the Punjabi habits are much better. A week from now-well, a month-there'll be no comparison at all."

  Maurice didn't doubt it, although he thought Anna's estimate of one month was wildly optimistic. The difficulty wasn't so much native resistance-perhaps oddly, the Punjabis seemed quite taken by their new "Governess"-as it was the sheer scale of the problem.

  Malwa armies were always notorious for their rough habits with local populations. The huge Malwa army dug in to the north of the Triangle was behaving especially badly, as packed in as those soldiers were and suffering all the miseries and frustrations of siege warfare. The Iron Triangle had become a refuge for untold thousands of Punjabis in the area. They came across the rivers, on small skiffs or even swimming through the minefields.

  By now, the population density of the Triangle was almost that of a huge city. Worse, really, since most of the land area had to be left available for farming. The Triangle got much of its supplies from the Sind, brought up by the river boats, but it still had to provide the bulk of its own food. Controlling the raw sewage produced by such a population was enough to make Hercules' legendary cleaning of the Augean Stables look like an afternoon's easy chore.

  "You'll see," said Anna.

  * * *

  "There'll be enough, General," said Ashot. "Just barely."

  Belisarius nodded, after he finished wiping his face with a cloth. That was to clean off the dust, mostly. Despite the heat, the Thar was so dry that sweat didn't have time to really accumulate.

  He was careful not to let his worry show. This was the third well they'd reached, and all of them had had just enough water-just barely-for his expedition. They had almost no reserve left at all. If even one of the wells was empty, or near-empty. .

  But there was no point in fretting over the matter. The long war with the Malwa was nearing its end, and there remained only to drive home the lance-or die in the attempt. It was in the hands of Fate, now.

  "Let's be off," he said. He glanced at the horizon, where the dawn was beginning. "There's still enough time for three hours' travel before the sun's up high enough to force us to camp for the day."

  "I feel like a bat," complained Ashot. "Live by night, sleep by day."

  He said it fairly cheerily, though. Ashot had plenty of experience with desert campaigns, and knew perfectly well that no sane man traveled through an area like the Thar when the sun was up. Like all the cataphracts on the expedition, he was wearing loose-fitting Arab-style robes instead of armor-the only difference being that Ashot knew how to put them on without help from one of Abbu's men.

  * * *

  "Something's happening," Kujulo stated. Slowly, he swept the telescope across the terrain below the pass. "I'm not sure what, but there's too much movement down there."

  "Are they preparing another attack?" asked one of the other Kushans.

  "After the way we butchered the last one? Doubt it," grunted Kujulo. "No, I think they're pulling out some of their forces. And I think-not sure about this at all-that there's some sort of troop movement in the far
distance. But it doesn't seem to be reinforcements."

  He lowered the telescope. Awkwardly, since it was big and clumsy; it was one of the eyeglasses newly made in Begram's fledgling optical industry, not one of the sleek Roman devices.

  "Let the king know," he commanded. "This may be what he's expecting."

  * * *

  Miles away, a squad of Ye-tai had a much better view of what was happening. They were serving as sentries for the Malwa army positioned against the Kushans-and none too happy about it, either. In times past, it would have been Kushans themselves who'd be detached for this rigorous duty. But Kushans could no longer be relied upon, what few of them were still left in the Malwa forces. Their army's commander hadn't dared used common troops for the purpose. Kushans were much too good at mountain warfare to depend on levied infantry to serve as outlying sentries.

  "Tell me again," said the squad leader.

  The new member of the squad shrugged. He'd only arrived the day before. "Don't believe me, then. Great Lady Sati is on her way to the capital. With forty thousand troops. Seems there's a big rebellion."

  "Why were you traveling with them?"

  "I wasn't. I was just part of a troop sent by Samudra up here. We only marched with the Great Lady's expedition for a short distance. She's headed up the Sutlej, of course."

  "I wish we were too," muttered one of the other squad members.

  Again, the newcomer shrugged. "So do I. But they're leaving some of the Ye-tai they brought with them here-me among them, worse luck-while they take back to the Punjab almost ten thousand regular troops."

  "Why do the two of you wish you were going back to the plain?" demanded the squad leader. "So we could get lost in a whirlpool in the Ganges? Don't be stupid."

  Their camp was perched on a rise that looked directly onto Margalla Pass, which divided the Vale of Peshawar from the Punjab proper. From the distance, the squad leader couldn't see any of the Kushan troops who were holding the pass. But he imagined he could almost see the blood the Malwa army had left on those slopes, in the course of four defeated assaults.