The Dance of Time: Chapter Twenty Six

The Punjab

    “I am leaving you in charge, General Samudra,” said Great Lady Sati. To the general’s relief, the tone and timber of the voice was that of the young woman Sati appeared to be, not...

    The thing for which it was really just a vessel.

    The god—or goddess—he should say. But Samudra was beginning to have his doubts on that issue. Desperately, he hoped that the thing inside Great Lady Sati could detect none of his reservations.

    Apparently not, since she said nothing to the special assassins positioned against the walls of her caravan. Perhaps that was simply because Samudra’s general anxiety over-rode anything specific.

    He didn’t want to be left in charge of the Malwa army in the Punjab. That was not due to any hesitations concerning his own military abilities, it was simply because the situation was obviously beginning to crumble for political reasons, and Samudra was wary of the repercussions.

    Samudra had always stayed as far away as he could from political matters. Insofar as possible, at least, within the inevitable limits of the Malwa dynastic system of which he was himself a member. He was one of the emperor’s distant cousins, after all. Still, he’d done his very best throughout his life to remain a purely military figure in the dynasty.

    But all he said was: “Yes, Great Lady.”

    “I will take thirty thousand troops with me, from here, and another ten from Multan. No artillery units, however. They will slow me down too much and I can acquire artillery once I reach the Ganges plain. Have them ready by early morning, the day after tomorrow. You may select them, but I want good units with Ye-tai security battalions. Full battalions, Samudra.”

    He managed not to wince. The problem wasn’t the total number of soldiers Sati wanted to take back to Kausambi with her. Thirty thousand was actually lower than he’d expected. The problem would be filling out the ranks of the Ye-tai. Few of the security battalions were still up to strength. The defection of so many Kushans to Kungas and his new kingdom had forced the Malwa to use Ye-tai as spearhead assault troops. As brave as they were, the Ye-tai had little of the Kushan experience with that role. Their casualties had been very heavy, this past two years.

    Samudra knew he’d have no choice but to strip the needed reinforcements out of all the other security battalions. And with only one full day to do the work, it would be done hastily and haphazardly, to boot, with not much more in the way of rhyme or reason than what he might accomplish with a lottery.

    Gloomily, Samudra contemplated the months of fighting ahead of him here in the Punjab. The morale of the great mass of the soldiery was already low. The departure of Great Lady Sati, forty thousand troops—and a disproportionate percentage of the Ye-tai security forces—would leave it shakier still.

    On the brighter side, the Romans seemed content to simply fight a siege. If Great Lady Sati...

    Her next words brought considerable relief.

    “I do not expect you to make any headway in my absence,” she said. “Nor is it needed. Simply keep Belisarius pinned here while I attend to suppressing Damodara’s rebellion. We will resume offensive operations next year.”

    “Yes, Great Lady.” Samudra hesitated. The next subject was delicate.

    “No artillery units, understood. But of the thirty thousand, how many... ah...”

    “Cavalry? Not more than three thousand. Enough to provide me with a screen, that’s all. You understand that none of the cavalry may be Rajputs, I assume?”

    Samudra nodded. Although there’d been no open mutinies among the Rajputs yet—aside from the huge number already with Rana Sanga—no Malwa top commander could place much reliance on them until Damodara’s rebellion was crushed.

    Sati shrugged, in an oddly human gesture. “Without using Rajputs, we cannot assemble a large force of cavalry that I could depend upon. Since I’ll need to use mostly infantry, I may as well make it a strong infantry unit with only enough cavalrymen to serve as scouts and a screen. It shouldn’t matter, anyway. I don’t expect to encounter any opposition until I’ve almost reached Kausambi. Damodara will probably reach the capital before I do, but he’ll be stymied by the fortifications until I arrive. By then, after I’ve reached the plain, I’ll have been able to assemble a huge army from the garrisons in all the major cities along the Ganges. With me as the hammer and the walls of Kausambi as the anvil, Damodara will be crushed.”

    “Yes, Great Lady.”

    “Here?” exclaimed Dasal. The oldest of the Rajput kings in the chamber rolled his eyes and stared at the ceiling.

    “All it needed,” he muttered. From the expressions on their faces, it was obvious the other seven kings present in the chamber—they were all elderly, if none quite so old as Dasal—shared his gloomy sentiments.

    His younger brother Jaisal rose from his cushion and moved to a nearby window, walking with the creaky tread of a man well into his seventies. Once at the window, he stared out over the city of Ajmer.

    The capital of the Rajputs, that was—insofar as that fractious nation could be said to have a “capital” at all. Jaisal found himself wondering whether it would still be standing, a year from now.

    “Where are they being kept?” he asked.

    The Rajput officer who’d brought the news to the council shook his head. “I was not given that information. Nor will I be, I think. They may not even be in Ajmer, at all.”

    Dasal lowered his eyes. “They’re here somewhere,” he snorted. “Be sure of it.”

    “We could find them...” ventured one of the other kings. Chachu was his name, and his normally cautious manner was fully evident in the questioning tone of the remark.

    Simultaneously, one sitting and one still standing at the window, the brothers Dasal and Jaisal shook their heads.

    “What would be the point of that?” demanded Jaisal. “Better if we can claim we never knew the location of Damodara’s parents.”

    Gloomy silence filled the chamber again. The seven kings in that room formed what passed for a Rajput ruling council. None of them, singly or together, had any illusion that if Damodara’s rebellion was crushed, Rajputana would retain even a shred of its semi-autonomy. Direct Malwa rule would be imposed—harshly—and each and every one of them would be questioned under torture.

    Still, it was easier to deny something under torture that was a false accusation. Very narrowly defined, of course—but these were men grasping at straws.

    “That madman Rana Sanga,” Chachu hissed. But even that remark sounded as if it were punctuated by a question mark.

    “It’s not much,” said one of their kidnappers apologetically. “The problem isn’t even money, since we were given plenty. But Ajat—ah, our chief—told us to remain inconspicuous.”

    Damodara’s father finished his inspection of the room. That hadn’t taken long, as sparsely furnished as it was. It would be one of many such rooms in many such buildings in Ajmer. The city was a center for trade routes, and needed to provide simple accommodations for passing merchants, traders and tinkers.

    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 arrive 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 grass 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 major domo. “And be quick about it. I am not in a good mood.”