The Dance of Time: Chapter Seventeen

The Indus

    The attack came as a complete surprise. Not to Anna, who simply didn’t know enough about war to understand what could be expected and what not, but to her military escort.

    “What in the name of God do they think they’re doing?” demanded Menander angrily.

    He studied the fleet of small boats—skiffs, really—pushing out from the southern shore. The skiffs were loaded with Malwa soldiers, along with more than the usual complement of Mahaveda priests and their mahamimamsa “enforcers.” The presence of the latter was a sure sign that the Malwa considered this project so near-suicidal that the soldiers needed to be held in a tight rein.

    “It’s an ambush,” explained his pilot, saying aloud the conclusion Menander had already reached. The man pointed to the thick reeds. “The Malwa must have hauled those boats across the desert, hidden them in the reeds, waited for us. We don’t keep regular patrols on the south bank, since there’s really nothing there to watch for.”

    Menander’s face was tight with exasperation. “But what’s the point of it?” For a moment, his eyes moved forward, toward the heavily-shielded bow of the ship where the Victrix’s fire-cannon was situated. “We’ll burn them up like so many piles of kindling.”

    But even before he finished the last words, even before he saw the target of the oncoming boats, Menander understood the truth. The fact of it, at least, if not the reasoning.

    “Why? They’re all dead men, no matter what happens. In the name of God, she’s just a woman!”

    He didn’t wait for an answer, however, before starting to issue his commands. The Victrix began shuddering to a halt. The skiffs were coming swiftly, driven by almost frenzied rowing. It would take the Victrix time to come to a halt and turn around; time to make its way back to protect the barge it was towing.

    Time, Menander feared, that he might not have.

    “What should we do?” asked Anna. For all the strain in her voice, she was relieved that her words came without stammering. A Melisseni girl could afford to scream with terror; she couldn’t. Not any longer.

    Grim-faced, Illus glanced around the barge. Other than he and Cottomenes and Abdul, there were only five Roman soldiers on the barge—and only two of those were armed with muskets. Since Belisarius and Khusrau had driven the Malwa out of the Sind, and established Roman naval supremacy on the Indus with the new steam-powered gunboats, there had been no Malwa attempt to threaten shipping south of the Iron Triangle.

    Then his eyes came to rest on the vessel’s new feature, and his tight lips creased into something like a smile.

    “God bless good officers,” he muttered.

    He pointed to the top of the cabin amidships, where a shell of thin iron was perched. It was a turret, of sorts, for the odd and ungainly looking “Puckle gun” that Menander had insisted on adding to the barge. The helmeted face and upper body of the gunner was visible, and Illus could see the man beginning to train the weapon on the oncoming canoes.

    “Get up there—now. There’s enough room in there for you, and it’s the best armored place on the barge.” He gave the oncoming Malwa a quick glance. “They’ve got a few muskets of their own. Won’t be able to hit much, not shooting from skiffs moving that quickly—but keep your head down once you get there.”

    It took Anna a great deal of effort, encumbered as she was by her heavy and severe gown, to clamber atop the cabin. She couldn’t have made it at all, if Abdul hadn’t boosted her. Climbing over the iron wall of the turret was a bit easier, but not much. Fortunately, the gunner lent her a hand.

    After she sprawled into the open interior of the turret, the hard edges of some kind of ammunition containers bruising her back, Anna had to struggle fiercely not to burst into shrill cursing.

    I have got to design a new costume. Propriety be damned!

    For a moment, her thoughts veered aside. She remembered that Irene Macrembolitissa, in her Observations of India, had mentioned—with some amusement—that Empress Shakuntala often wore pantaloons in public. Outrageous behavior, really, but... when you’re the one who owns the executioners, you can afford to outrage public opinion.

    The thought made her smile, and it was with that cheerful expression on her lips that she turned her face up to the gunner frowning down at her.

    “Is there anything I can do to help?”

    The man’s face suddenly lightened, and he smiled himself.

    “Damn if you aren’t a prize!” he chuckled. Then, nodding his head. “Yes, ma’am. As a matter of fact, there is.”

    He pointed to the odd-looking objects lying on the floor of the turret, which had bruised Anna when she landed on them. “Those are called cylinders.” He patted the strange looking weapon behind which he was half-crouched. “This thing’ll wreak havoc, sure enough, as long as I can keep it loaded. I’m supposed to have a loader, but since we added this just as an afterthought...”

    He turned his head, studying the enemy vessels. “Better do it quick, ma’am. If those skiffs get alongside, your men and the other soldiers won’t be enough to beat them back. And they’ll have grenades anyway, they’re bound to. If I can’t keep them off, we’re all dead.”

    Anna scrambled around until she was on her knees. Then seized one of the weird-looking metal contraptions. It was not as heavy as it looked. “What do you need me to do? Be precise!”

    “Just hand them to me, ma’am, that’s all. I’ll do the rest. And keep your head down—it’s you they’re after.”

    Anna froze for a moment, dumbfounded. “Me? Why?”

    “Damned if I know. Doesn’t make sense.”

    But, in truth, the gunner did understand. Some part of it, at least, even if he lacked the sophistication to follow all of the reasoning of the inhuman monster who commanded the Malwa empire. The gunner had never heard—and never would—of a man named Napoleon. But he was an experienced soldier, and not stupid even if his formal education was rudimentary. The moral is to the material in war as three-to-one was not a phrase the man would have ever uttered himself, but he would have had no difficulty understanding it.

    Link, the emissary from the new gods of the future who ruled the Malwa in all but name and commanded its great army in the Punjab, had ordered this ambush. The “why” was self-evident to its superhuman intelligence. Spending the lives of a few soldiers and Mahaveda priests was well worth the price, if it would enable the monster to destroy the Wife whose exploits its spies reported. Exploits which, in their own peculiar way, had become important to Roman morale.

    Cheap at the price, in fact. Dirt cheap.

The Iron Triangle

    The battle on the river was observed from the north bank by a patrol of light Arab cavalry in Roman service. Being Beni Ghassan, the cavalrymen were far more sophisticated in the uses of new technology than most Arabs. Their commander immediately dispatched three riders to bring news of the Malwa ambush to the nearest telegraph station, which was but a few miles distant.

    By the time Belisarius got the news, of course, the outcome of the battle had already been decided, one way or the other. So he could do nothing more than curse himself for a fool, and try not to let the ashen face of a blind young man sway his cold-blooded reasoning.

    “I’m a damned fool not to have foreseen the possibility. It just didn’t occur to me that the Malwa might carry boats across the desert. But it should have.”

    “Not your fault, sir,” said Calopodius quietly.

    Belisarius tightened his jaws. “Like hell it isn’t.”

    Maurice, standing nearby, ran fingers through his bristly iron-gray hair. “We all screwed up. I should have thought of it, too. We’ve been so busy just being entertained by the episode that we didn’t think about it. Not seriously.”

    Belisarius sighed and nodded. “There’s still no point in me sending the Justinian. By the time it got there, it will all have been long settled—and there’s always the chance Link might be trying for a diversion.”

    “You can’t send the Justinian,” said Calopodius, half-whispering. “With the Victrix gone—and the Photius down at Sukkur—the Malwa might try an amphibious attack on the Triangle. They could get past the mine fields with a lot of little boats, where they couldn’t with just their few ironclads.”

    He spoke the cold truth, and every officer in the command center knew it. So nothing further was said. They simply waited for another telegraph report to inform them whether Calopodius was a husband or a widower.

The Indus

    Before the battle was over, Anna had reason to be thankful for her heavy gown.

    As cheerfully profligate as he was, the gunner soon used up the preloaded cylinders for the Puckle gun. Thereafter, Anna had to reload the cylinders manually with the cartridges she found in a metal case against the shell of the turret. Placing the new shells into a cylinder was easy enough, with a little experience. The trick was taking out the spent ones. The brass cartridges were hot enough to hurt her fingers, the first time she tried prying them out.

    Thereafter, following the gunner’s hastily shouted instructions, she started using the little ramrod provided in the ammunition case. Kneeling in the shelter of the turret, she just upended the cylinders—carefully holding them with the hem of her dress, because they were hot also—and smacked the cartridges loose.

    The cartridges came out easily enough, that way—right onto her lap and knees. In a lighter gown, a less severe and formal garment, her thighs would soon enough have been scorched by the little pile of hot metal.

    As it was, the heat was endurable, and Anna didn’t care in the least that the expensive fabric was being ruined in the process. She just went about her business, brushing the cartridges onto the floor of the turret, loading and reloading with the thunderous racket of the Puckle gun in her ears, ignoring everything else around her.

    Throughout, her mind only strayed once. After the work became something of a routine, she found herself wondering if her husband’s mind had been so detached in battles. Not whether he had ignored pain—of course he had; Anna had learned that much since leaving Constantinople—but whether he had been able to ignore his continued existence as well.

    She suspected he had, and found herself quite warmed by the thought. She even handed up the next loaded cylinder with a smile.

    The gunner noticed the smile, and that too would become part of the legend. He would survive the war, as it happened; and, in later years, in taverns in his native Anatolia, whenever he heard the tale of how the Wife smote down Malwa boarders with a sword and a laugh, saw no reason to set the matter straight. By then, he had come to half-believe it himself.

    Anna sensed a shadow passing, but she paid it very little attention. By now, her hands and fingers were throbbing enough to block out most sensation beyond what was necessary to keep reloading the cylinders. She barely even noticed the sudden burst of fiery light and the screams which announced that the Victrix had arrived and was wreaking its delayed vengeance on what was left of the Malwa ambush.

    Which was not much, in truth. The gunner was a very capable man, and Anna had kept him well-supplied. Most of the skiffs now drifting near the barge had bodies draped over their sides and sprawled lifelessly within. At that close range, the Puckle gun had been murderous.

    “Enough, ma’am,” said the gunner. “It’s over.”

    Anna finished reloading the cylinder in her hands. Then, when the meaning of the words finally registered, she set the thing down on the floor of the turret. Perhaps oddly, the relief of finally not having to handle hot metal only made the pain in her hands—and legs, too, she noticed finally—all the worse.

    She stared down at the fabric of her gown. There were little stains all over it, where cartridges had rested before she brushed them onto the floor. There was a time, she could vaguely remember, when the destruction of an expensive garment would have been a cause of great concern. But it seemed a very long time ago.

    “How is Illus?” she asked softly. “And the others? The boys?”

    The gunner sighed. “One of the boys got killed, ma’am. Just bad luck—Illus kept the youngsters back, but that one grenade...”

    Vaguely, Anna remembered hearing an explosion. She began to ask which boy it was, whose death she had caused, of the five urchins she had found on the docks of Barbaricum and conscripted into her Service. But she could not bear that pain yet.

    “Illus?”

    “He’s fine. So’s Abdul. Cottomenes got cut pretty bad.”

    Something to do again. The thought came as a relief. Within seconds, she was clambering awkwardly over the side of the turret again—and, again, silently cursing the impractical garment she wore.

    Cottomenes was badly gashed, true enough. But the leg wound was not even close to the great femoral artery, and by now Anna had learned to sew other things than cloth. Besides, the Victrix’s boiler was an excellent mechanism for boiling water.

    The ship’s engineer was a bit outraged, of course. But, wisely, he kept his mouth shut.

The Iron Triangle

    The telegraph started chattering. Everyone in the command bunker froze for a moment. Then, understanding the meaning of the dot-dashes faster than anyone—even the operator jotting down the message—Calopodius slumped in his chair with relief. The message was unusually long, with two short pauses in the middle, and by the time it was completed Calopodius was even smiling.

    Belisarius, unlike Calopodius, could not quite follow the message until it was translated. When he took the message from the hand of the operator and scanned it quickly, he understood the smile on the face of the blind young officer. He grinned himself.

    “Well, I’d say she’s in good form,” he announced to the small crowd in the bunker. Then, quoting:

    “ALL FINE EXCEPT COTTOMENES INJURED AND RAFFI DEAD. RAFFI ONLY TWELVE YEARS OLD. FEEL HORRIBLE ABOUT IT. MENTION HIM IN DISPATCHES. PLEASE. ALSO MENTION PUCKLE GUNNER LEO CONSTANTES. SPLENDID MAN. ALSO INSTRUCT GENERAL BELISARIUS MAKE MORE PUCKLE GUNS. SPLENDID THINGS. ALSO—”

    “Here’s where the pause was,” explained the general. His grin widened. “It goes on:

    “OPERATOR SAYS MESSAGE TOO LONG. OPERATOR REFUSES GIVE HIS NAME. MENTION NAMELESS OPERATOR IN DISPATCHES. STUPID OFFICIOUS ASININE OBNOXIOUS WORTHLESS FELLOW.”

    “Why do I think someone in that telegraph station has a sword at his throat?” mused Maurice idly. “Her bodyguards are Isaurians, right? Stupid idiot.” He was grinning also.

    “MENANDER SAYS WILL ARRIVE SOON. WILL NEED NEW CLOTHES.”

    Belisarius’ grin didn’t fade, exactly, but it became less purely jovial. His last words were spoken softly, and addressed to Calopodius rather than to the room at large.

    “Here was the second pause. The last part of the message reads:

    “AM EAGER TO SEE YOU AGAIN. MY HUSBAND.”