The Dance of Time b-6

by Eric Flint

  They were being ground up here. On level ground, the Ye-tai squad leader would have faced Kushans without worrying too much. Up here, in the hills and mountains, fighting them was like fighting crocodiles in a river.

  "I'm half-Sarmatian," he murmured. "Mother's side."

  None of his mates so much as curled a lip, despite the absurdity of the statement. There hadn't been any Sarmatians in centuries.

  It didn't matter, since that wasn't the point of the statement. Within a few seconds, all of the squad members were eyeing the new arrival.

  Fortunately for him, he wasn't stupid. "The war's lost," he said, softly but clearly. "That's what I think, anyway."

  The squad leader grinned. "What's your name?"

  The new man grinned back. "Prabhak. I know, it sounds funny. It's a Sarmatian name. Given to me by my mother."

  At that, the whole squad laughed. "Welcome, brother," said one of them. "Would you believe that all of us are half-Sarmatian?"

  That brought another little laugh. When it died down, Prabhak asked: "When? And which way?"

  The squad leader glanced at the sun, which was now setting. "As soon as dark falls. There'll be a half moon. Good enough. And we'll head for the Kushans."

  Prabhak winced, as did most of the squad members.

  "Don't be stupid," growled the squad leader. "You want to spend the rest of your lives living like goats?"

  Put that way. .

  "They say King Kungas isn't a bad sort," mused one of the squad members.

  The squad leader chuckled humorlessly. "Nobody says anything of the sort. He's a demon and his witch wife is even worse. Which is fine with me. Just the sort of rulers who can keep us alive, in what's coming."

  * * *

  The first fortress in the Vindhyas that Damodara's army reached was deserted. Its garrison had fled two days before, they were told by some of the natives.

  So was the second, and the third.

  The fourth fortress, far down from the crest, was still manned. Either the garrison or its commander was more stalwart.

  They were stalwart enough to last for exactly eight minutes, once Sanga launched the assault, before they tried to surrender.

  Tried, and failed. Sanga was giving no quarter.

  Even if he'd been inclined to, which he wasn't-not with his wife and children in Kausambi-Lord Damodara had commanded a massacre.

  Emperor Damodara, rather. As a mere lord, Damodara had always been noted for his comparative leniency toward defeated enemies, by Malwa standards. But the garrison of the fortress which had dared to resist him were no longer simply "enemies." They were traitors and rebels.

  Of course, Sanga allowed some of the garrison to escape. That, too, had been commanded by Emperor Damodara. There was no point in slaughtering garrisons if other garrisons didn't learn of it.

  By the next day, Damodara's army was out of the mountains and marching up the Chambal river. The Chambal was the main tributary of the Yamuna, whose junction was still five hundred miles to the north. Once they reached that junction, they'd still have three hundred miles to march down the Yamuna before reaching Kausambi.

  Even with every man in his army mounted, either as cavalry or dragoons, Damodara could not hope to make faster progress than twenty miles a day-and the long march would probably go slower than that. True, now that they were out of the Vindhyas, the countryside was fertile and they could forage as they went. But his army still numbered some forty thousand men. It was simply not possible to move such a huge number of soldiers very quickly.

  Six weeks, at least, it would take them to reach Kausambi. Conceivably, two months-and if they had to fight any major battles on the way, longer than that. They could not afford to be delayed by any of the fortresses along the way.

  The first fortress they encountered on the river was deserted.

  So was the next.

  So was the next.

  "They've heard of us, it seems," said Rana Sanga to the emperor.

  "I prefer to think it's the majestic aura of my imperial presence."

  "Yes, Your Majesty. Though I'm not sure I understand the difference."

  Damodara smiled. "Neither do I, as it happens. You'd think I would, since I believe I'm now semi-divine. Maybe even three-quarters."

  * * *

  The Bihari miner straightened up from his crouch. "They're getting close, master. I think so, anyway. It's hard to tell, because of all the echoes."

  The term "echoes" seemed strange to Valentinian, but he understood what the miner meant. At the first dogleg, they'd dug two short false tunnels in addition to the one that led-eventually-to the exit in the stables. What the miner was hearing were the complex resonances of the sounds being made by the Malwa miners as they neared the end of clearing away the rubble that the Romans had left behind when they blew the charges.

  "Will you know when they break through?"

  "Oh, yes. Even before the charges go off."

  The miner grimaced as he made the last statement. As someone who had spent all of his adult life and a good portion of his childhood working beneath the earth, he had an automatic sympathy for men who would soon be crushed in a series of cave-ins. Enemies or not.

  Valentinian didn't share any of his sentiments. Dead was dead. What difference did it make if it came under tons of rock and soil, the point of a lance-or just old age?

  He turned to Rajiv. "Are you willing to do this? Or would you prefer it if I did?"

  The young Rajput prince shrugged. "If everything works right, the charges will go off automatically, anyway. I won't have to do anything."

  " 'If everything works right,' " Valentinian jeered. "Nothing ever works right, boy. That's the cataphract's wisdom."

  * * *

  But Valentinian proved to be wrong.

  When their miners finally broke through the rubble into a cleared area, two Malwa officers pushed them aside and entered the tunnel. For all the risk involved, they were both eager. Emperor Skandagupta had promised a great reward for whatever officers captured Damodara's family.

  Both of them moved their torches about, illuminating the area. Then, cursed together.

  "Three tunnels leading off!" snarled the superior officer. "But which is the right one?"

  His lieutenant gestured with his torch to the tunnel ahead of him. "I'll explore this one, if you want. You take one of the others. We can leave some men to guard the third, until we have time to investigate it."

  "As good a plan as any, I guess." The captain swiveled his head and barked some orders. Within a minute, three guards had entered the tunnel along with one of the mining engineers.

  "Make a diagram of the three tunnels," he commanded the engineer. "Nothing fancy. Just something that shows us-the emperor-what direction they lead."

  He ordered the guards to remain at the head of the third tunnel, while he and the lieutenant explored the other two.

  The engineer was done with his task in less than two minutes. "Nothing fancy," the man had said-and the engineer didn't want to stay there any longer than he had to. His sketch completed, he crawled back through the opening into the area that had now been cleared of the rubble left behind by the great explosions.

  He straightened up with a great sense of relief.

  * * *

  The lieutenant spotted the booby trap in his tunnel just in time to keep his foot from triggering the trip-wire.

  His superior was less observant.

  The charges in all three tunnels were wired together, of course. So the lieutenant's greater caution only gave him a split-second longer lifespan, before the tunnels collapsed. The guards at the third tunnel were just as surely crushed.

  The engineer was knocked off his feet by the explosion, and then covered with the dust blown through the opening. He had just enough presence of mind to keep a grip on the sketch he'd made and protect it from harm.

  * * *

  That caution, also, proved to be of no value.

  "This is useless," snarled
Skandagupta, after a quick study of the sketch. "They could have gone anywhere."

  The emperor crumpled up the sketch and hurled it at the engineer. "Impale him," he commanded.

  Chapter 28

  Kausambi

  "They'll be doing another search of the city," Anastasius said. "For sure and certain."

  Lady Damodara looked around the stall in the stable that had been turned into her personal chamber. Then, she smiled very crookedly.

  "Who would have thought the day would come that I'd regard a stable stall as luxurious surroundings?"

  Lady Sanga was smiling just as crookedly. "Living in a tunnel gives you a sense of proportion. Anything is better than that. Still, Anastasius is right. We can't take the risk."

  Lady Damodara sighed. "Yes. I know. The next search might be more thorough. There's really no way to keep soldiers out of this stable if they insist on coming in. As it is"-she gave Valentinian a sly glance-"we'll have to work hard and fast to remove any traces that we were here."

  Valentinian returned the glance with a scowl. He'd argued against moving into the stable at all, preferring to remain the whole time in the enlarged tunnel below. Eventually, he'd given in, for the sole reason that providing the hideaways with enough edible food was too difficult if they stayed for very long in the tunnels.

  The problem wasn't money. Lady Damodara had a fortune in coins and jewels, and had brought all of it with her into the tunnels. She had more than enough money to feed them all with the world's finest delicacies for years.

  The problem was that large purchases of anything beyond simple foodstuffs would eventually be noticed by the city's authorities. And, unfortunately, the sort of cheap and readily available food that the stable-keeper's family could purchase without notice needed to be cooked.

  Cooking in a stable was easy. Cooking in a tunnel was not.

  Valentinian had then had to wage a mighty struggle to keep the Indians from decorating the stable so much that it would be impossible to disguise their occupancy.

  Anastasius was more sanguine. "No problem. One full day of horse shit will disguise anything."

  Both women laughed. The horses who'd formerly occupied that stable had been moved into adjoining ones, of course, but they could be moved back quickly and easily.

  The stable-keeper had explained to the one customer who'd inquired that the move was due to his doubts regarding the structural soundness of the stable. Doubts which, truth be told, weren't entirely faked. The stable that the refugees were using as a hiding place was the most wretched and rickety building in the compound. Of course, that meant it was also the one it was impossible to see into, because of the extra bracing and shoring.

  "No help for it," Lady Damodara stated firmly, when she was done laughing. "We'll make the move back into the tunnel this evening. And stop scowling, Valentinian! If we tried to move immediately, we'd be too careless in covering up all the signs that we've been here for weeks."

  That was true enough, but it didn't stop Valentinian from scowling.

  "Something will go wrong," he predicted.

  * * *

  In the event, nothing did go wrong. Skandagupta ordered another major search of the city. But, as with the initial search, the effort was undone by its very ambition.

  "Scour Kausambi" was an easy order to give, from the imperial palace. From the viewpoint of the mass of soldiers on the ground who had to carry it out, the task looked very different. All the more so because they were never given any clear instructions or explanations as to exactly what they were looking for, beyond "the Lady Damodara and her entourage." Most of the soldiers who conducted the search were peasants, other than the Ye-tai, who were usually semi-barbarians and almost as likely to be illiterate. Their assumptions concerning where a "great lady" could expect to be found hiding simply didn't include stables.

  A squad of soldiers searched the stables, to be sure. But their investigation was perfunctory. They didn't even enter the stall where the entrance to the tunnels below was located, much less give it the kind of search that might have uncovered the well-hidden trapdoor.

  Not surprising, of course. That stall had more manure in it than any of them.

  * * *

  Still, Valentinian insisted that everyone stay below for three days following the search. Only after Tarun, the stable-keeper's oldest son, reported that the search seemed to have ended all over the city, did Valentinian let the people from the palace come up to enjoy the relative comforts of the stable.

  * * *

  "See?" demanded Anastasius, grinning.

  Valentinian's scowl was just as dark as ever. "Don't be an idiot. This isn't going as well as we'd thought it would."

  "What are you talking about?" Still grinning, Anastasius waved a huge hand in the direction of the imperial palace. "Tarun says they added four more heads to Skandagupta's collection, perched on pikes outside the palace gates. He thinks one of them was even a member of the dynasty."

  "All that philosophy has rotted your brains. What do you think will happen next, Anastasius? I'll tell you what'll happen. Whoever the new batch of officers are in charge of the search, they'll throw still more men at digging out the rubble. Put enough hands to the work, and they could dig up the whole city. We're only a few hundred yards from the lady's palace, you know. That's really not that far, no matter how much we confused them with the doglegs."

  The grin faded from Anastasius' face. "You think?"

  "You're damn right 'I think.' I didn't worry about it, before, when we first came up with this scheme. Most of the tunnel passes under other buildings. To find out which direction it goes, once we collapsed the beginning of it, they can't just dig up soil. They have to level whole city blocks, in their own capital. Who's going to do that?"

  Valentinian was literally chewing on his beard. "But I never expected Skandagupta to carry out this kind of reign of terror. I figured he'd be satisfied with one or two searches, and then give it up, figuring the lady had somehow managed to get out of the city altogether."

  "Stop chewing on your beard. It's disgusting." As if to give his fellow cataphract a better example, Anastasius started tugging on his own beard. "How soon do you think Damodara and Sanga can get here?"

  Valentinian shrugged. At least the gesture dislodged the beard from his mouth. "Who knows? Be at least another month. And even when they do get here, so what? They still have to get into the city. There's no way to break down these walls without siege guns-and there's no way Damodara could have brought them with him from the Deccan."

  "I'm sure he has a plan," said Anastasius. Uncertainly.

  "Sure he does," sneered Valentinian. "Use his new imperial semi-divine aura to overawe the garrison." Again, he shrugged. "It might even work, actually. But not quickly enough to save our necks. We've got to come up with a new plan."

  "What?"

  "I don't know. I'm thinking."

  * * *

  By the next morning, he had his plan. Such as it was.

  Everyone agreed with the first part of the plan. The Bihari miners were sent back underground to prepare new false tunnels-with charges in them, naturally-at the two remaining doglegs.

  They made no protest, other than technical ones. Even leaving aside the fact that they were intimidated by Valentinian, the miners knew full well that their lives were now completely bound up with that of Lady Damodara and her entourage. If the Malwa caught them, they'd be staked alongside the others.

  "Where will we get the wood?" asked the chief miner. "There's no way to shore tunnels without wood. Even flimsy tunnels we're planning to blow up."

  "Don't be stupid." Valentinian swept his head in a little half-circle. "We're in a stable, if you hadn't noticed. Several stables, in fact. Take the wood from the stalls. Just use every other board, so the horses can't get out."

  * * *

  The stable-keeper protested, but that was more a matter of form than anything heartfelt. He, too, knew what would happen to himself and his entire fa
mily if the Malwa found them.

  * * *

  It was the second part of Valentinian's plan that stirred up the ruckus. Especially the part about Rajiv.

  Rajiv himself, of course, was thrilled by the plan.

  His mother was not.

  "He's only thirteen!"

  "That's the whole point," stated Valentinian. "Nobody notices kids. Especially if they're scruffy enough." He gave Rajiv a pointed look, to which the youngster responded with a grin.

  "I can do 'scruffy.' Tarun will help."

  The fourteen-year-old Tarun smiled shyly. He wasn't quite as thrilled by the plan as Rajiv, being a Bengali stable-keeper's son rather than a Rajput prince. But he had the natural adventurousness of a teenage boy, to which had been added something close to idol worship. Despite being a year older than Rajiv, Tarun was rather in awe of him-and delighted beyond measure that the Rajput prince had adopted him as a boon companion in time of trouble.

  His parents, naturally, shared Lady Sanga's opinion.

  "He's only fourteen!" wailed Tarun's mother.

  "And small for his age," added his father.

  "He's only a little bit small for his age," countered Rajiv. "But he's stronger than he looks-and, what's more important, he's very quick-witted. I don't have any hesitation at all about Tarun's part in the plan."

  Tarun positively beamed.

  Before the argument could spin around in another circle, Lady Damodara spoke. Hers was ultimately the authoritative voice, after all.

  "Let's remember that there are two parts to Valentinian's plan, and it's the second part that everyone's arguing about. But we may never have to deal with that, anyway. So let's concentrate today on the first part, which is the only part that involves the two boys. Does anybody really have any strong objection to Rajiv joining Tarun in his expeditions into the city?"

  Lady Sanga took a deep breath. "No." But the hostile look she gave Valentinian made her sentiments clear. Like all mothers since the dawn of time, Lady Sanga knew perfectly well that the difference between "part of the way" and "all of the way," when dealing with a teenage son, could not be measured by the world's greatest mathematicians. Or sorcerers, for that matter.