The Dance of Time: Chapter One

Bukkur Island, on the Indus river

    He dreamed mostly of islands, oddly enough.

    Besides, it gave him and his new wife something to do besides sit together in stiff silence.

    Calopodius’ half-sleeping reverie was interrupted. Wakefulness came with the sound of his aide-de-camp Luke moving through the tent. The heaviness with which Luke clumped about was deliberate, designed to allow his master to recognize who had entered his domicile. Luke was quite capable of moving easily and lightly, as he had proved many times in the course of the savage fighting on Bukkur Island. But the man, in this as so many things, had proven to be far more subtle than his rough and muscular appearance might suggest.

    “It’s morning, young Calopodius,” Luke announced. “Time to clean your wounds. And you’re not eating enough.”

    Calopodius sighed. The process of tending the wounds would be painful, despite all of Luke’s care. As for the other—

    “Have new provisions arrived?”

    There was a moment’s silence. Then, reluctantly: “No.”

    Calopodius let the silence lengthen. After a few seconds, he heard Luke’s own heavy sigh. “We’re getting very low, truth to tell. Ashot hasn’t much himself, until the supply ships arrive.”

    Calopodius levered himself up on his elbows. “Then I will eat my share, no more.” He chuckled, perhaps a bit harshly. “And don’t try to cheat, Luke. I have other sources of information, you know.”

    “As if my hardest job of the day won’t be to keep half the army from parading through this tent,” snorted Luke. Calopodius felt the weight of Luke’s knees pressing into the pallet next to him, and, a moment later, winced as the bandages over his head began to be removed. “You’re quite the soldiers’ favorite, lad,” added Luke softly. “Don’t think otherwise.”

    In the painful time that followed, as Luke scoured and cleaned and rebandaged the sockets that had once been eyes, Calopodius tried to take refuge in that knowledge.

    It helped. Some.

    “Are there any signs of another Malwa attack coming?” he asked, some time later. Calopodius was now perched in one of the bastions his men had rebuilt after an enemy assault had overrun it—before, eventually, the Malwa had been driven off the island altogether. That had required bitter and ferocious fighting, however, which had inflicted many casualties upon the Roman defenders. His eyes had been among those casualties, ripped out by shrapnel from a mortar shell.

    “After the bloody beating we gave ’em the last time?” chortled one of the soldiers who shared the bastion. “Not likely, sir!”

    Calopodius tried to match the voice to a remembered face. As usual, the effort failed of its purpose. But he took the time to engage in small talk with the soldier, so as to fix the voice itself in his memory. Not for the first time, Calopodius reflected wryly on the way in which possession of vision seemed to dull all other human faculties. Since his blinding, he had found his memory growing more acute along with his hearing. A simple instinct for self-preservation, he imagined. A blind man had to remember better than a seeing man, since he no longer had vision to constantly jog his lazy memory.

    After his chat with the soldier had gone on for a few minutes, the man cleared his throat and said diffidently: “You’d best leave here, sir, if you’ll pardon me for saying so. The Malwa’ll likely be starting another barrage soon.” For a moment, fierce good cheer filled the man’s voice: “They seem to have a particular grudge against this part of our line, seeing’s how their own blood and guts make up a good part of it.”

    The remark produced a ripple of harsh chuckling from the other soldiers crouched in the fortifications. That bastion had been one of the most hotly contested areas when the Malwa launched their major attack the week before. Calopodius didn’t doubt for a moment that when his soldiers repaired the damage to the earthen walls they had not been too fastidious about removing all the traces of the carnage.

    He sniffed tentatively, detecting those traces. His olfactory sense, like his hearing, had grown more acute also.

    “Must have stunk, right afterward,” he commented.

    The same soldier issued another harsh chuckle. “That it did, sir, that it did. Why God invented flies, the way I look at it.”

    Calopodius felt Luke’s heavy hand on his shoulder. “Time to go, sir. There’ll be a barrage coming, sure enough.”

    In times past, Calopodius would have resisted. But he no longer felt any need to prove his courage, and a part of him—a still wondering, eighteen-year-old part—understood that his safety had become something his own men cared about. Alive, somewhere in the rear but still on the island, Calopodius would be a source of strength for his soldiers in the event of another Malwa onslaught. Spiritual strength, if not physical; a symbol, if nothing else. But men—fighting men, perhaps, more than any others—live by such symbols.

    So he allowed Luke to guide him out of the bastion and down the rough staircase which led to the trenches below. On the way, Calopodius gauged the steps with his feet.

    “One of those logs is too big,” he said, speaking firmly, but trying to keep any critical edge out of the words. “It’s a waste, there. Better to use it for another fake cannon.”

    He heard Luke suppress a sigh. And will you stop fussing like a hen? was the content of that small sound. Calopodius suppressed a laugh. Luke, in truth, made a poor “servant.”

    “We’ve got enough,” replied Luke curtly. “Twenty-odd. Do any more and the Malwa will get suspicious. We’ve only got three real ones left to keep up the pretense.”

    As they moved slowly through the trench, Calopodius considered the problem and decided that Luke was right. The pretense was probably threadbare by now, anyway. When the Malwa finally launched a full-scale amphibious assault on the island that was the centerpiece of Calopodius’ diversion, they had overrun half of it before being beaten back. When the survivors returned to the main Malwa army besieging the city of Sukkur across the Indus, they would have reported to their own top commanders that several of the “cannons” with which the Romans had apparently festooned their fortified island were nothing but painted logs.

    But how many? That question would still be unclear in the minds of the enemy.

    Not all of them, for a certainty. When Belisarius took his main force to outflank the Malwa in the Punjab, leaving behind Calopodius and fewer than two thousand men to serve as a diversion, he had also left some of the field guns and mortars. Those pieces had savaged the Malwa attackers, when they finally grew suspicious enough to test the real strength of Calopodius’ position.

    “The truth is,” said Luke gruffly, “it doesn’t really matter anyway.” Again, the heavy hand settled on Calopodius’ slender shoulder, this time giving it a little squeeze of approval. “You’ve already done what the general asked you to, lad. Kept the Malwa confused, thinking Belisarius was still here, while he marched in secret to the northeast. Did it as well as he could have possibly hoped.”

    They had reached one of the covered portions of the trench, Calopodius sensed. He couldn’t see the earth-covered logs which gave some protection from enemy fire, of course. But the quality of sound was a bit different within a shelter than in an open trench. That was just one of the many little auditory subtleties which Calopodius had begun noticing lately.

    He had not noticed it in times past, before he lost his eyes. In the first days after Belisarius and the main army left Sukkur on their secret, forced march to outflank the Malwa in the Punjab, Calopodius had noticed very little, in truth. He had had neither the time nor the inclination to ponder the subtleties of sense perception. He had been far too excited by his new and unexpected command and by the challenge it posed.

    Martial glory. The blind young man in the covered trench stopped for a moment, staring through sightless eyes at a wall of earth and timber bracing. Remembering, and wondering.

    The martial glory Calopodius had sought, when he left a new wife in Constantinople, had certainly come to him. Of that, he had no doubt at all. His own soldiers thought so, and said so often enough—those who had survived—and Calopodius was quite certain that his praises would soon be spoken in the Senate.

    Precious few of the Roman Empire’s most illustrious families had achieved any notable feats of arms in the great war against the Malwa. Beginning with the top commander Belisarius himself, born into the lower Thracian nobility, it had been largely a war fought by men from low stations in life. Commoners, in the main. Agathius—the now-famous hero of Anatha and the Dam—had been born into a baker’s family, about as menial a position as any short of outright slavery.

    Other than Sittas, who was now leading Belisarius’ cataphracts in the Punjab, almost no Greek noblemen had fought in the Malwa war. And even Sittas, before the Indus campaign, had spent the war commanding the garrison in Constantinople which overawed the hostile aristocracy and kept the dynasty on the throne.

    Had it been worth it?

    Reaching up and touching gently the emptiness which had once been his eyes, Calopodius was still not sure. Like many other young members of the nobility, he had been swept up with enthusiasm after the news came that Belisarius had shattered the Malwa in Mesopotamia. Let the adult members of the aristocracy whine and complain in their salons. The youth were burning to serve.

    And serve they had... but only as couriers, in the beginning. It hadn’t taken Calopodius long to realize that Belisarius intended to use him and his high-born fellows mainly for liaison with the haughty Persians, who were even more obsessed with nobility of blood-line than Greeks. The posts carried prestige—the couriers rode just behind Belisarius himself in formation—but little in the way of actual responsibility.

    Standing in the bunker, the blind young man chuckled harshly. “He used us, you know. As cold-blooded as a reptile.”

    Silence, for a moment. Then, Calopodius heard Luke take a deep breath.

    “Aye, lad. He did. The general will use anyone, if he feels it necessary.”

    Calopodius nodded. He felt no anger at the thought. He simply wanted it acknowledged.

    He reached out his hand and felt the rough wall of the bunker with fingertips grown sensitive with blindness. Texture of soil, which he would never have noticed before, came like a flood of dark light. He wondered, for a moment, how his wife’s breasts would feel to him, or her belly, or her thighs. Now.

    He didn’t imagine he would ever know, and dropped the hand. Calopodius did not expect to survive the war, now that he was blind. Not unless he used the blindness as a reason to return to Constantinople, and spent the rest of his life resting on his laurels.

    The thought was unbearable. I am only eighteen! My life should still be ahead of me!

    That thought brought a final decision. Given that his life was now forfeit, Calopodius intended to give it the full measure while it lasted.

    “Menander should be arriving soon, with the supply ships.”

    “Yes,” said Luke.

    “When he arrives, I wish to speak with him.”

    “Yes,” said Luke. The “servant” hesitated. Then: “What about?”

    Again, Calopodius chuckled harshly. “Another forlorn hope.” He began moving slowly through the bunker to the tunnel which led back to his headquarters. “Having lost my eyes on this island, it seems only right I should lose my life on another. Belisarius’ island, this time—not the one he left behind to fool the enemy. The real island, not the false one.”

    “There was nothing false about this island, young man,” growled Luke. “Never say it. Malwa was broken here, as surely as it was on any battlefield of Belisarius. There is the blood of Roman soldiers to prove it—along with your own eyes. Most of all—”

    By some means he could not specify, Calopodius understood that Luke was gesturing angrily to the north. “Most of all, by the fact that we kept an entire Malwa army pinned here for two weeks—by your cunning and our sweat and blood—while Belisarius slipped unseen to the north. Two weeks. The time he needed to slide a lance into Malwa’s unprotected flank—we gave him that time. We did. You did.”

    He heard Luke’s almost shuddering intake of breath. “So never speak of a ‘false’ island again, boy. Is a shield ‘false,’ and only a sword ‘true’? Stupid. The general did what he needed to do—and so did you. Take pride in it, for there was nothing false in that doing.”

    Calopodius could not help lowering his head. “No,” he whispered.

    But was it worth the doing?

The Indus river in the Punjab
Belisarius’ headquarters
The Iron Triangle

    “I know I shouldn’t have come, General, but—”

    Calopodius groped for words to explain. He could not find any. It was impossible to explain to someone else the urgency he felt, since it would only sound... suicidal. Which, in truth, it almost was, at least in part.

    But...

    “May—maybe I could help you with supplies or—or something.”

    “No matter,” stated Belisarius firmly, giving Calopodius’ shoulder a squeeze. The general’s large hand was very powerful. Calopodius was a little surprised by that. His admiration for Belisarius bordered on idolization, but he had never really given any thought to the general’s physical characteristics. He had just been dazzled, first, by the man’s reputation; then, after finally meeting him in Mesopotamia, by the relaxed humor and confidence with which he ran his staff meetings.

    The large hand on his shoulder began gently leading Calopodius off the dock where Menander’s ship had tied up.

    “I can still count, even if—”

    “Forget that,” growled Belisarius. “I’ve got enough clerks.” With a chuckle: “The quartermasters don’t have that much to count, anyway. We’re on very short rations here.”

    Again, the hand squeezed his shoulder; not with sympathy, this time, so much as assurance. “The truth is, lad, I’m delighted to see you. We’re relying on telegraph up here, in this new little fortified half-island we’ve created, to concentrate our forces quickly enough when the Malwa launch another attack. But the telegraph’s a new thing for everyone, and keeping the communications straight and orderly has turned into a mess. My command bunker is full of people shouting at cross-purposes. I need a good officer who can take charge and organize the damn thing.”

    Cheerfully: “That’s you, lad! Being blind won’t be a handicap at all for that work. Probably be a blessing.”

    Calopodius wasn’t certain if the general’s cheer was real, or simply assumed for the purpose of improving the morale of a badly maimed subordinate. Even as young as he was, Calopodius knew that the commander he admired was quite capable of being as calculating as he was cordial.

    But...

    Almost despite himself, he began feeling more cheerful.

    “Well, there’s this much,” he said, trying to match the general’s enthusiasm. “My tutors thought highly of my grammar and rhetoric, as I believed I mentioned once. If nothing else, I’m sure I can improve the quality of the messages.”

    The general laughed. The gaiety of the sound cheered up Calopodius even more than the general’s earlier words. It was harder to feign laughter than words. Calopodius was not guessing about that. A blind man aged quickly, in some ways, and Calopodius had become an expert on the subject of false laughter, in the weeks since he lost his eyes.

    This was real. This was—

    Something he could do.

    A future which had seemed empty began to fill with color again. Only the colors of his own imagination, of course. But Calopodius, remembering discussions on philosophy with learned scholars in far away and long ago Constantinople, wondered if reality was anything but images in the mind. If so, perhaps blindness was simply a matter of custom.

    “Yes,” he said, with reborn confidence. “I can do that.”

    For the first two days, the command bunker was a madhouse for Calopodius. But by the end of that time, he had managed to bring some semblance of order and procedure to the way in which telegraph messages were received and transmitted. Within a week, he had the system functioning smoothly and efficiently.

    The general praised him for his work. So, too, in subtle little ways, did the twelve men under his command. Calopodius found the latter more reassuring than the former. He was still a bit uncertain whether Belisarius’ approval was due, at least in part, to the general’s obvious feeling of guilt that he was responsible for the young officer’s blindness. Whereas the men who worked for him, veterans all, had seen enough mutilation in their lives not to care about yet another cripple. Had the young nobleman not been a blessing to them instead of a curse, they would not have let sympathy stand in the way of criticism. And the general, Calopodius was well aware, kept an ear open to the sentiments of his soldiers.

    Throughout that first week, Calopodius paid little attention to the ferocious battle which was raging beyond the heavily timbered and fortified command bunker. He traveled nowhere, beyond the short distance between that bunker and the small one—not much more than a covered hole in the ground—where he and Luke had set up what passed for “living quarters.” Even that route was sheltered by soil-covered timber, so the continual sound of cannon fire was muffled.

    The only time Calopodius emerged into the open was for the needs of the toilet. As always in a Belisarius camp, the sanitation arrangements were strict and rigorous. The latrines were located some distance from the areas where the troops slept and ate, and no exceptions were made even for the blind and crippled. A man who could not reach the latrines under his own power would either be taken there, or, if too badly injured, would have his bedpan emptied for him.

    For the first three days, Luke guided him to the latrines. Thereafter, he could make the journey himself. Slowly, true, but he used the time to ponder and crystallize his new ambition. It was the only time his mind was not preoccupied with the immediate demands of the command bunker.

    Being blind, he had come to realize, did not mean the end of life. Although it did transform his dreams of fame and glory into much softer and more muted colors. But finding dreams in the course of dealing with the crude realities of a latrine, he decided, was perhaps appropriate. Life was a crude thing, after all. A project begun in confusion, fumbling with unfamiliar tools, the end never really certain until it came—and then, far more often than not, coming as awkwardly as a blind man attends to his toilet.

    Shit is also manure, he came to understand. A man does what he can. If he was blind... he was also educated, and rich, and had every other advantage. The rough soldiers who helped him on his way had their own dreams, did they not? And their own glory, come to it. If he could not share in that glory directly, he could save it for the world.

    When he explained it to the general—awkwardly, of course, and not at a time of his own choosing—Belisarius gave the project his blessing. That day, Calopodius began his history of the war against the Malwa. The next day, almost as an afterthought, he wrote the first of the Dispatches to the Army which would, centuries after his death, make him as famous as Livy or Polybius.