by Eric Flint
"Topography," said the mapmaker.
"Yes, that's it!" Kurush's head snapped back to Belisarius. "Where did you get the idea? I've never seen any other maps or charts which show elevation and terrain features. Except maybe one or two prominent mountains. And rivers, of course."
Belisarius shrugged. "It just came to me, one day." His words were abrupt, even a little curt.
Typical, groused Aide. I never get any credit. Glory hound!
Belisarius pursed his lips, trying not to smile. This was a subject he did not want broached. Belisarius had once told Kurush's uncle, the sahrdaran Baresmanas, the secret of Aide's existence. But he didn't think Kurush knew, and he saw no reason to change that state of affairs. The fact was that Aide had given him the idea, just as he had so many others that Belisarius had implemented.
Toil, toil, toil, that's all I do. A slave in the gold mines, while you get to prance around in all the finery. Good thing for you trade unions haven't been invented yet, or I'd go out on strike.
Wanting to change the subject—as much to keep from laughing as anything else—
The eight-hour day! For a start. Wages, of course. Not better wages, either—any wages. I'm not getting paid at all, now that I think about it. Exploiter! Then—
—Belisarius drove over Aide's witticisms—
—there's the whole matter of benefits. I'll let the medical slide, seeing as how the current state of medical practice makes me shudder, but—
—along with Kurush's onrushing stream of questions.
I demand a pension. Thirty-and-out, nothing less!
"Are any Persian towns in your eastern provinces centers of artisanship?" asked Belisarius. "Especially metalworking?"
Kurush's mouth snapped shut. For a moment, the Persian nobleman stared at Belisarius as if he were a madman. Then he burst into laughter.
"In the east?" he cried. Kurush's laughter was echoed by all three of his officers. One of them snorted. "Those hicks can barely manage to rim a cartwheel."
"Do they even have carts?" demanded another.
Kurush was back to vigorous headshaking. "The eastern provinces are inhabited by nothing besides peasants and petty noblemen. They know how to grow crops. And how to fight, of course—but even that, they do poorly."
He rocked his head back and forth, once, twice, thrice. The quick little gesture was by way of qualification. "I should be fair. The eastern dehgans are as good as any, in single combat. But their tactics—"
"Charge," sneered one of his officers. "If that doesn't work—charge again." His two fellows chortled agreement. "And if that doesn't work?" queried one. He shrugged. "Charge again. And keep doing it until your horse has the good sense to run away."
Kurush grinned. "If you want Persian artisans, Belisarius, you have to go to Mesopotamia or Persarmenia for them. Except in Fars province. There are some metalsmiths—armorers, mostly—in Persepolis and Pasargadae."
He cocked his head quizzically. "Why do you ask?"
Belisarius walked over to the table and stared down at the map, scratching his chin. "I ask because the gunpowder weapons Damodara's army is using are quite a bit more sophisticated than anything I expected them to have." He gestured with his head toward the east. The sound of the Malwa barrages carried clearly through the leather walls of the tent.
Still scratching his chin, he added: "I thought it might be possible that Damodara established a manufacturing center somewhere in Hyrcania or Khorasan. But that's not likely, if there are no native craftsmen to draw on. I doubt he would have brought an entire labor force with him all the way from the Gangetic plain. A few experts, maybe. But not the hundreds of skilled workers it would take to manufacture—"
Again, he gestured toward the east wall of the tent. Again, the sound of Malwa rocketry and cannon fire pierced the leather.
A new voice entered the discussion. "It is possible, General Belisarius. He could have set one up at Marv." Vasudeva rose from a chair in a corner of the tent and ambled toward the table. "Marv is a big enough town, and it's well located for the purpose."
Vasudeva reached the table and leaned over, pointing to Marv's location on the map. His finger then moved east to the river Oxus, and then, following the river's course, southeast to a spot on the map which bore no markings.
"Right about there is the city of Begram," said the Kushan general. "The largest Kushan city, after Peshawar. Our kings, in the old days, had their summer palaces at Begram." A bitter tinge entered his voice. "Peshawar is nothing but ruins, today. But Begram still stands. The Ye-tai did not destroy it, except for the stupas."
For all the calm in Vasudeva's voice, Belisarius did not miss the underlying anger—even hatred. When the Ye-tai conquered the Kushan kingdom, a century earlier, they had singled out Buddhism for particularly savage repression. All the monks had been murdered, and the stupas razed to the ground. Like most Kushans Belisarius knew, Vasudeva still considered himself a Buddhist. But it was a faith he practiced in fumbling secret, with no monks or learned scrolls to guide him.
Vasudeva's finger retraced the route he had indicated a few seconds earlier. "As you can see, travel from Begram to Marv is not difficult. Most of it can be done by river craft."
"And what's in Begram?" asked Kurush.
Vasudeva smiled thinly. "Kushans. What else?" The smile faded. "More precisely, Kushan craftsmen. Even in the old days, Begram was the center of artisanship in the Kushan realm. Peshawar was bigger, but it was the royal city. Full of soldiers, courtiers, that sort of thing." With a chuckle, as dry as the smile: "And a horde of bureaucrats, of course."
Vasudeva fingered his wispy goatee. "If Damodara had the good sense—if, General Belisarius; the Malwa, as a rule, don't think of Kushans as anything other than vassal soldiers—he could have easily transplanted hundreds of Kushan craftsmen to Marv. There, he could have built up an armament center. Close enough, as you can see from the map, to supply his army once it passed the Caspian Gates. But far enough away, in a sheltered oasis, to keep it safe from Persian raiders."
He's right! said Aide to Belisarius. Marv would be perfect. The Seleucids walled the city eight hundred years ago. The whole oasis, actually. The Sassanids made it a provincial capital and a military center after they conquered the western part of the Kushan Empire. And Marv will become—would have become—the capital of Khorasan province after the Islamic conquest.
The Persian officers were staring at Vasudeva as if he were babbling in an unknown tongue. One of them turned his head and muttered to another: "I've never thought of Kushans as anything but soldiers."
Vasudeva heard the remark. His smile returned. It was a very thin smile.
"Nobody does," he said. "The fact remains that Kushans have been skilled artisans for centuries. Appearances to the contrary, we aren't barbarian nomads." He looked down at his hands, flexing his fingers. "My father was a very good jeweler. I wanted to follow in his footsteps. But the Malwa had other plans for me."
Belisarius felt a sudden rush of empathy for the stocky Kushan mercenary. He, as a boy, had wanted to be a blacksmith rather than a soldier. Until the demands of his class, and Rome, decreed otherwise.
"Damodara is smart enough," he mused. He leaned back from the table. "More than smart enough."
Belisarius began slowly pacing around. His softly spoken words were those of a man thinking aloud. "If he had good enough intelligence, that is. The Malwa spymaster, Nanda Lal, is a capable man—very capable—but I never got the sense, in the many days I spent in his company, that he thought much about manufacturing and artisanry. His orientation seemed entirely political and military. So where would Damodara have learned—?"
Narses!
"Narses," snarled Maurice. "He's got that stinking traitor working for him."
Belisarius stopped his pacing and stared at the Thracian chiliarch. His own eyes held nothing of Maurice's angry glare. They were simply calm. Calm, and thoughtful.
"That's possible," he said, after a few seconds.
"I've never spotted him, through the telescope. But if he's with Damodara's army, Narses would be sure to stay out of sight."
Belisarius scratched his chin. "Possible, possible," he mused. "Narses was an expert on central Asia." He gave Kurush a half-rueful, half-apologetic glance. "We always let him handle that side of our affairs with the Aryans. He was—well, I've got to be honest: superb—when it came to bribing and maneuvering barbarians into harassing Persia's eastern provinces."
For a moment, Kurush began to glower. But, within a couple of seconds, the glower turned into a little laugh.
"I know!" he exclaimed. "The grief that man caused us! It wasn't just barbarians, either. He was also a master at keeping those damned eastern noblemen stirred up against imperial authority."
Kurush took four quick strides to the entrance. He stared out and up, toward the crest of the pass. To all appearance, he was listening to the sound of the Malwa barrage. But Belisarius knew that the man's thoughts were really directed elsewhere, both in time and space.
Kurush turned his head. "Assuming that you're right, Belisarius, what's the significance of it?"
"The significance, Kurush, is that it means this Malwa army is even more dangerous that we thought." The Roman general moved toward the entrance, stopping a few feet behind Kurush. "What it means is that this army could ravage Mesopotamia on its own, regardless of what happens to the main Malwa army in the delta."
Startled, Kurush spun around.
"They're not big enough!" he exclaimed. "If Emperor Khusrau wasn't tied up keeping the Malwa in Charax—" He stumbled to a halt; then, glumly: "And if we didn't have the traitor Ormazd to deal with in upper Mesopotamia—" His words trailed off again. Stubbornly, Kurush shook his head.
"They're still not big enough," he insisted.
"They are, Kurush," countered Belisarius. "If they have their own armament center—and I'm now convinced they do—then they are more than big enough."
He stepped up to the entrance, standing right next to Kurush. His next words the general pitched very low, so that only the Persian nobleman could hear.
"That's as good an army as any in the world, sahrdaran. Trust me. I've been fighting them for weeks, now." He hesitated, knowing Kurush's touchy Aryan pride, but pushed on. "And they've defeated every Persian army that was sent against them."
Kurush tightened his jaws. But, touchy or not, the Persian was also honest. He nodded his head curtly.
Belisarius continued. "I thought they'd be limited by the fact that Emperor Skandagupta sent Damodara and Sanga into eastern Persia with very little in the way of gunpowder weapons. But if that's not true—if they've created their own weapons industry along the way—then we are looking at a very different kind of animal. A tiger instead of a leopard."
Kurush frowned. "Would Skandagupta permit Damodara such freedom? I always got the impression, from what you told me of your trip to India, that the Malwa gunpowder industry was kept exclusively in their capital city of Kausambi—right under the emperor's nose."
Belisarius stared at the pass above them, as if he were trying to peer through the rock of the mountains and study the enemy on the other side.
"Interesting question," he murmured. "Offhand, I'd say—no. But what does Skandagupta know of things in far-off Marv?" Belisarius smiled himself, now—a smile every bit as thin as Vasudeva's had been.
"Narses," he said softly, almost lingering over the name. "If Damodara does have Narses working for him, then he's got one of the world's supreme politicians—and spymasters—helping to plan his moves. Narses is not famous, to put it mildly, for his slavish respect for established authority. And he worships no god but Ambition."
Kurush stared at Belisarius, wide-eyed. "You think—"
Belisarius' shoulders moved in a tiny shrug. "Who knows? Except this: if Narses is on the other side of that pass, then I can guarantee that he is spinning plans within plans. Never underestimate that old eunuch, Kurush. He doesn't think simply of the next two steps. He always thinks of the twenty steps beyond those."
Kurush's smile was not thin. "That description reminds me of someone else I know."
Belisarius did not smile in return. He simply nodded, once. "Well, yes. It does."
For a few seconds, the two men were silent. Then, after a quick glance into the interior of the tent to make sure no one could overhear, Kurush whispered: "What does this mean—in terms of your strategy?"
Again, Belisarius made that tiny shrug. "I don't know. At the moment, I don't see where it changes anything." He thrust out his chin, pointing at the enemy hidden from their sight by the pass above. "I can delay that army, Kurush, but I can't stop it. So I don't see that I have any choice but to continue with the plan we are already agreed on."
Belisarius gave his own quick glance backward, to make sure no one was within hearing range. Kurush was familiar with his plans, as were Belisarius' own chief subordinates, but he knew that none of the other Persian officers were privy to them. So far as they knew, Belisarius and his Roman army were in the Zagros simply to fend off Damodara's advance. He wanted to keep them in that happy state of ignorance.
"I do know this much," he continued, turning his eyes back to Kurush. "The rebellion in south India is now more important than ever. If our strategy works, here, and we drive the main Malwa army out of the delta—and if the rebellion in Majarashtra swells to gigantic proportions—then the Malwa will have no choice." Again, he pointed with his chin to the pass. "They will have to pull that magnificent army out of Persia. And use it, instead of Venandakatra's torturers, to crush the Deccan."
Kurush eyed him. He knew how much Belisarius liked and admired the Marathas and their Empress Shakuntala. "That'll be very tough on the rebels."
Belisarius winced, but only briefly. "Yes—and then again, maybe not."
He paused, staring at the mountains. "Those men are far better soldiers than anything Venandakatra has. And there's no comparison at all between their leaders and the Vile One. But that army is Rajput, now, at its core. And Damodara has welded himself to them. Rajputs have their own hard sense of honor, which fits their Malwa masters about as well as a glove fits a fish tail. I'm not sure how good they'll be, when the time comes for murder instead of war."
Kurush scowled. The expression made clear his own opinion. Malwa was Malwa.
Belisarius did not argue the point. He was not at all sure that Kurush was wrong. But, inwardly, he made another shrug. As much as Belisarius prided himself on his ability to plan ahead, he had never forgotten that the heart of war is chaos and confusion. Between the moment—now—and the future, lay the maelstrom. Who could foresee what combinations, and what contradictions, that vortex would produce? In the months—years—ahead?
Now intervened, breaking his train of thought. The sounds of the Malwa barrage abruptly ceased. Looking up the slope, Belisarius saw a courier racing toward the field headquarters. One of Bouzes' Syrians, he thought.
Belisarius did not wait for the man to arrive. He turned back into the tent and announced, to the Roman and Persian officers who had remained by the table: "Gentlemen, there's a battle to be fought."
Chapter 12
On his way back up the slope, Belisarius stopped when he came to the trenches where the handcannon soldiers were dug in. He turned to Maurice, waving his hand.
"Go on ahead, and see to the rest of the army. I want to go over our plans one last time with Mark and Gregory."
Maurice nodded, and continued plodding toward the crest of the pass. His progress was slow. The trench through which he was moving had been recently dug. The soil was still loose, making for unfirm footing. His biggest difficulty, however, came from the sheer weight of his weapons and armor. Cataphract gear was heavy enough, sitting on a horse. For a man on foot, climbing uphill, the armor seemed made of lead ingots instead of steel scale. The weapons weighed more than Nero's sins.
Belisarius felt a moment's sympathy for Maurice—but only a moment. He was wearing his own cataphract
gear, and would be making that trek himself soon enough. If the war against Malwa dragged on for years, Belisarius thought the day would come when Roman soldiers could finally be rid of that damned armor. In visions which Aide had given him of gunpowder armies of the future, soldiers had worn nothing but a plate cuirass and a helmet. Just enough to stop a bullet, except at close range.
He sighed. That day was still far off. Belisarius had spent hours—and hours and hours—studying the great generals of the future, especially those of the first centuries of gunpowder warfare. Aide knew all of human history, and the crystal had shown Belisarius the methods and tactics of those men. Jan Zizka; Gonzalo de Cordoba and the Duke of Parma; Maurice of Nassau; Henry IV of France; Tilly and Wallenstein, and Gustavus Adolphus; Turenne and Frederick the Great; Marlborough; Napoleon and Wellington; and many others.
Of all those men, the only one Belisarius truly admired was Gustavus Adolphus. To some degree, his admiration was professional. Gustav II Adolf, King of Sweden, had reintroduced mobility and fluid tactics into a style of war which had become nothing more than brutal hammering. Massive squares of musket and pike slamming into other such squares, like the old Greek phalanxes.
But, for the most part, Belisarius was attracted by the man himself. Gustavus Adolphus had been a king—a very self-confident and ambitious king, in point of fact—who was by no mean immune from monarchy's vices. Still, he had been scrupulous about consulting the various estates of his kingdom, as he was required to do by Swedish law. He had managed to win the firm loyalty of his officers and soldiers by his fair and consistent conduct. He was as good a king as he was a general—Sweden was, by far, the best administered realm of his time. He had been the only king of his day who cared a fig for the needs of common folk. And his troops, when they entered the Thirty Years War under his command, had been the only soldiers who did not ravage the German countryside.
I would have liked to meet that man, he mused.
Aide's voice came into his mind. The crystal's thoughts were hesitant, almost apologetic.
