The Dance of Time: Chapter Thirty Two

Near Mayapur, on the Ganges

    “It’s them, Great King,” said the Pathan scout, pointing to the east. “Must be. No general—not even a Malwa—would be leading a large army from a chaundoli.”

    “How close are they to the Ganges?”

    “For us, Great King, a day’s march. For them, two. By mid-afternoon on the day after tomorrow, they will have reached Mayapur. They will need to wait until the next day to ford the river. The Ganges is still quick-moving, just coming out of the Silawik hills and the rapids. They would be foolish—very foolish—to cross it after sundown.”

    “Unless they were forced to...” Kungas mused. “Do you know if there’s high ground nearby?”

    “Yes, Great King. I have been to the shrines at Mayapur, to see the Footstep of God.”

    Kungas was not surprised. The Pathans were not Hindus, but like tribesmen in many places they were as likely to adopt the gods of other people as their own. Mayapur—also known as Gangadwara—was an ancient religious site, which had drawn pilgrims for centuries. It was said that Vishnu had left his footprint there, at the exact spot where the holy Ganges left the mountains.

    The Pathan’s hands moved surely in the air, sketching the topography. “Here, below, is the Ganges. Here—not far—there is a ridge. Very steep. There is a temple on the crest. I have been to it.”

    “Is the river within mortar range of the ridge?”

    “Yes. The big mortars, anyway. And the flatland by the river is wide enough to hold the whole Malwa army, while they wait to cross.” The Pathan grinned fiercely. “They will be relaxed and happy, now that they are finally out of the hills and entering the plain. You will slaughter them like lambs, Great King.”

    As he studied the distant hills, Kungas pondered the man’s use of the title Great King. That was no title that Kungas himself had adopted or decreed, and this scout was not the first Pathan whom Kungas had heard use the expression. From what he could tell, in fact, it seemed to have become—or was becoming, at least—the generally accepted term for him among the tribesmen.

    Great King.

    There were subtleties in that phrase, if you knew—as Kungas did—the ways of thought of the mountain folk. People from lands accustomed to kings and emperors would think nothing of it. “Great” was simply one of many adjectives routinely attached to such rulers. A rather modest one, in fact, compared to the “divine” appellation of Indian tradition. Even the relatively egalitarian Axumites, when they indulged themselves in formal oratory, plastered such labels as “He Who Brought The Dawn” onto their monarchs.

    Something else was involved here. Great king—where the Kushans themselves simply called him “king.” The title added a certain necessary distance, for the Pathans. Kungas was not their king. Not the authority to whom they directly answered, who were their own clan leaders. But they would acknowledge that he was the overlord of the region, and would serve him in that capacity.

    Good enough, certainly for the moment.

    Kujulo was frowning slightly, looking at the Pathan. “Are you sure—”

    Kungas waved his hand. “If a Pathan scout says it’s Great Lady Sati, it’s Great Lady Sati.”

    The man looked very pleased. Kungas’ following question, however, had him frowning also.

    “How large is her army?”

    The Pathan’s hands moved again, but no longer surely, as if groping a little. “Hard to say, Great King. Very large army. Many hundreds of hundreds.”

    Kungas left off further questioning. The Pathan was not only illiterate, but had a concept of arithmetic that faded away somewhere into the distance after the number “one hundred.” Even that number was a borrowed Greek term. And, although the man was an experienced warrior, he was the veteran of mountain fights. Feuds between clans, clashes with expeditions from the lowlands—none of them involving forces on the scale of battles between civilized nations. Any estimate he gave of the size of Sati’s army would be meaningless.

    He nodded, dismissing the scout, and turned to Kujulo. “We’ll need some of our own soldiers to do a reasonably accurate count. Send off a party guided by the scout.”

    “And in the meantime? Continue the march?”

    “No. As hard as we’ve pressed them the past few days, the men need a rest.” He glanced at the sky, gauging the sun. “I’ll want a long march tomorrow, though, and it’ll be a hard one, followed by a night march after a few hours rest. I want to be at that ridge before Sati can cross the river.”

    Kujulo started to move off. Kungas called him back.

    “One other thing. By now, the bitch will be suspicious because we’ve cut the telegraph lines. Take three thousand men and march immediately. Stay to the south. She’ll send back a scouting expedition. Three thousand should be enough to drive them off—but make sure you draw their attention to the south.”

    Kujulo nodded. “While you march by night and slip past them to the north.”

    “Yes. If it works, we’ll come onto the ridge opposite the river. They won’t know we’re there until they start crossing.”

    Kujulo’s grin was every bit as savage as the Pathan’s. “A big army—tens of thousands of soldiers—in the middle of a river crossing. Like catching an enemy while he’s shitting. Good thing you made us wait to get more ammunition for the mortars, before we left Margalla Pass.”

    “We only lost a day, thanks to Irene’s efficiency, and I knew we’d make it up in the march.”

    “True. Best quartermaster I ever saw, she is. Stupid Pathans. If they had any brains, they’d know it was just plain and simple ‘king’—but with a very great queen.”

    He hurried off, then, leaving Kungas behind to ponder the question of whether or not he’d just seen his royal self deeply insulted.

    Being an eminently sane and rational man who’d begun life as a simple soldier, it took him no more than a second to dismiss the silly notion. But he knew his grandson—great-grandson, for sure—would think otherwise. There were perils to claiming Alexander and Siddhartha Gautama as the ancestors of a dynasty. It tended to produce a steep and rapid decline in the intelligence of the dynasty’s succeeding generations.

    But that was a problem for a later decade. In the coming few days, Kungas would be quite satisfied if he could tear the flanks of the army escorting Malwa’s overlord to what he thought was its final battle.

    He probably couldn’t manage to destroy the monster itself, unfortunately. But if Kungas was right, Belisarius was waiting to pounce on the creature somewhere down the Ganges. He’d kill the monster, if it was already bleeding.

    “Another splendid speech,” said Jaimal approvingly.

    Next to him, Udai Singh nodded. “I knew—I remembered—that your Hindi was excellent. But I didn’t know you were an orator, as well.”

    Belisarius glanced at the men riding beside him. Over the days of hard marches since they’d left Ajmer, a subtle change had come in the way Jaimal acted toward the Roman general. Udai Singh, also.

    In the beginning, they’d both been stiffly proper. Their new emperor and Rana Sanga had ordered them to place the Rajputs under Belisarius’ command, and they had done so dutifully and energetically. But it had been clear enough that some hostility lurked beneath the polite surface.

    Belisarius had wondered about that. He’d found it surprising. True, they’d been enemies until very recently. But the clashes between Belisarius’ army and Damodara’s had been gallant affairs, certainly by the standards of the Malwa war. He hadn’t though there’d be any real grudges left, now that they were allied. There’d certainly been no indication of personal animosity from either Damodara himself or Rana Sanga, when Belisarius met them for a parlay in the midst of their campaign in Persia.

    Now that the harsh pace the Roman general had set his Rajput army had brought them to the Yamuna thirty miles north of Mathura the hostility seemed to have vanished. Belisarius had led an army of twenty thousand men on a march of well over two hundred miles in nine days—something Rajputs would boast about for generations. But he didn’t think it was that feat alone that accounted for the change, much less the inspiring speeches he’d given along the way. Jaimal and Udai Singh were both well-educated. Their praise of his rhetoric had the flavor of aesthetes, not soldiers.

    The march had been ruthless as well as harsh. Ruthless toward everyone. Lamed horses were left behind, injured men were left behind—and the fields they passed through plundered and stripped of anything edible to either man or horse. The villages too, since at this time of year most of the foodstuffs were stored.

    There had been no atrocities, as such, committed upon the peasantry. But that hardly mattered. Those poor folk lived close to the edge of existence. Stripped of the stored foodstuffs they depended upon until the next harvest, many of them would die. If not of starvation in their little villages, of disease and exposure after they desperately took to the roads to find refuge elsewhere.

    If the war was won quickly, Belisarius would urge Damodara to send relief to the area. But there was no way to know if that would ever happen. Despite that uncertainty, Belisarius had ordered it done. In a life that had seen many cruel acts, including the slaughter of the Nika revolt, he thought this was perhaps the cruelest thing he’d ever done.

    And... Jaimal and Udai Singh’s veiled anger had faded with each day they witnessed it.

    He thought he understood, finally. The two were among Rana Sanga’s closest aides. They would surely have been with Sanga when he pursued Belisarius across India after his escape from Kausambi.

    Three years ago, that had been.

    “So,” he said to them, “have you finally forgiven me for the butchered couriers?”

    Both Rajputs seemed to flush. After a moment, Jaimal said softly: “Yes, General. I thought at the time it was just savagery.”

    “It was savagery,” said Belisarius. “The couriers—even more, the soldiers at the station—were just common folk. Boys, two of them. I remember. The memory plagues me, still, especially when I see children.”

    He swept his head in a little half-circle. “Complete innocents. No different, really, than the peasants I have been condemning to death these past days. I did it then, I do it now, and whatever my regrets I will make no apologies. Even less today, than I would have then. Because today—”

    He drew his sword and pointed forward with it, in a gesture that did not seem histrionic at all. Neither to him nor to the two men he rode beside.

    “Three years ago, I behaved like a beast to escape a monster. Today—finally—I do so to kill the thing.”

    Both Jaimal and Udai Singh tightened their jaws. Not in anger, but simply in determination.

    “Here, do you think?” asked Jaimal. “Or on the Ganges?”

    “Somewhere between here and the Ganges, most likely. The monster would not have crossed to the headwaters of the Yamuna, I don’t think. With the Rajputs beginning to revolt, there’d have been too much risk. Better to take the longer but surer northerly route and cross to the Footstep of God. But once into the great plain, it’ll want the garrison at Mathura for reinforcements before it goes on to meet Damodara at Kausambi.”

    That brought some good cheer. All three turned in the saddle and looked behind them. There was nothing to see except an ocean of horsemen and dust, of course.

    “Mathura,” gloated Udai Singh. “Which is behind us. The Malwa beast will have to face us with what it has.”

    “It was a great march, General Belisarius,” added Jaimal.

    So it had been. Great enough, even, to wash away great sins.

    “It is unseemly for a woman to lead warriors!” That came from one of the five Pathan chiefs sitting across from Irene in the throne room and glaring at her. He was the oldest, she thought. It was hard to know. They all looked liked ancient prunes to her, dried too long in the sun.

    “Unthinkable!” she agreed. The vigorous headshake that followed caused her veil to ripple in reverse synchrony to her ponytail. “The thought is impossible to even contemplate. No, no. I was thinking that you should lead the armies when they march out. You and the rest of the clan chiefs.”

    The five chiefs continued to glare at her.

    First, because they suspected her of mockery. “Armies” was a ridiculous term—even to them—to apply to separate columns of Pathan horsemen, not one of which would number more than six or seven hundred men. Clan rivalries and disputes made it difficult for Pathans to combine their forces closely.

    Second, because she’d boxed them, and they knew it. The young clansmen were becoming more boisterous and insistent with every passing day. Lately, even disrespectful.

    Their Great King—another term to cause old chiefs to scowl—was adding to his glory and where were the Pathan warriors?

    Were they to hide in their villages?

    It would not be long, the five old chiefs knew, before the ultimate insult was spoken aloud.

    Old women! Our chiefs—so-called—are nothing but old women!

    “We have no mortars,” grumbled one of the chiefs. “How are we to fight Malwa armies without mortars?”

    “Of course you do,” Irene disagreed, in a cheerful tone of voice. “The new mortars of the Pathans have become famous.”

    That wasn’t... exactly true. They were indeed famous, in a way, simply because the Kushans were astonished that illiterate and ignorant Pathans had managed to built mortars at all. But no Kushan soldier in his right mind would trust one enough to fire the thing.

    Irene found it rather amazing. When it came to anything else, Pathans were as hostile to innovation as so many cats would be to the suggestion they adopt vegetarianism. But show them a new weapon—one that was effective, anyway—and within a very short time they would be modeling their own after it. Much more effectively than she’d ever imagined such a primitive folk could do.

    Before the old chiefs could take further umbrage, she added: “What you lack is ammunition. Which I can supply you.”

    Boxed again. The glares darkened.

    “Oh, yes, lots of ammunition.” She pointed her finger out the palace window, toward the new arsenal. “It’s made over there. By old women. Many old women.”

    Boxed again.

    After they stalked out of the palace, Irene summoned her aides. “Send a telegraph message to the station at Margalla Pass. Tell them to send couriers after Kungas.”

    “Yes, Your Majesty. And the message to be taken to the king?”

    By now, Irene had taken off her veil. The smile thus displayed was a gleaming thing. “Tell the king that I have persuaded the Pathans to provide us with troops to help guard the passes. They say ten thousand, but let’s figure seven. Two thousand will go to Margalla Pass, the rest to Kohat Pass. If there’s any threat, it’s more likely to come from the south.”

    One of the aides frowned. “They won’t stay in the passes, Your Majesty. They’ll set off to raid the lowlands.”

    “Of course they will. Better yet. We’ll have a screen all over the northern Punjab of thousands of cavalrymen, who’ll warn us of any large approaching enemy force. They’ll scamper back to the passes when we need them, rather than face Malwa regulars in the open. Pathans are ignorant beyond belief, but they’re not actually stupid. Not when it comes to war, anyway.”

    She leaned back in her chair, basking in self-admiration. Not so much because she’d just relieved her husband of a great worry, but simply because—once again—she’d outfoxed clan chiefs.

    “Tell the king he needn’t worry about guarding his kingdom. With Pathan reinforcements, I can hold the passes against any Malwa army likely to be sent against us. He’s free to do whatever his judgment dictates is the best course.”

    She detested those old men. Absolutely, completely, thoroughly, utterly detested them.

    “Ha!” she barked. “If they’d sent their old women to negotiate, I’d have been lost!”

    Emperor Skandagupta goggled at the telegraph message in his hand.

    “Mathura? Mathura? How did an enemy army get to Mathura?”

    The senior of the three generals facing him swallowed. His life and those of his two subordinates hung by a thread. As each week had passed since the beginning of Damodara’s rebellion, the emperor’s fury had become more savage. By now, there were over seven hundred heads or corpses impaled on the palace walls.

    Still, he didn’t dare lie. “We’re not sure, Your Majesty. Some of the reports we’ve gotten describe them as Rajputs.”

    Skandagupta crumbled the message and hurled it to the floor. “Why would Rajput rebels be moving north of Mathura? You idiot! If they came from Rajputana, they’d be trying to join up with Damodara.”

    He pursed his lips and spit on the general. “Who has still not been stopped by my supposedly mighty armies! You don’t even know where he is, any longer!”

    “Still far south of the Yamuna, surely,” said the general, in as soothing a tone as he could manage. “A large army cannot move quickly, as you know. From your own great military experience.”

    In point of fact, Skandagupta had no military experience at all, beyond sitting in a huge pavilion and watching his armies reduce rebel cities. But he seemed slightly mollified by the compliment.

    “True,” he grunted. “Still... why have the reports been so spotty?”

    The general didn’t dare give an honest answer. Because most of the garrisons—and telegraph operators—flee before Damodara arrives at their towns and forts.

    Instead, he simply shook his head sagely. “War is very chaotic, Your Majesty. As you know from your own experience. Once the fighting starts, information always becomes spotty.”

    Skandagupta grunted again. Then, pointed to the crumpled message. “Give me that.”

    One of the slaves attending him hastened to obey. After re-opening the message and studying it for a moment, Skandagupta snarled.

    The general and his two subordinates struggled not to sigh with relief. The snarl was familiar. Someone was about to die—but it wouldn’t be them.

    “Send a telegraph message to the governor at Mathura. The commander of the garrison is to be executed. The sheer incompetence of the man! If not—who knows?—treachery. Why didn’t he march out at once in pursuit of the enemy?”

    As one man, the generals decided to take that as a rhetorical question. To do otherwise would have been mortal folly. Because you ordered all garrisons to stay at their post no matter what, Your Majesty...

    Would not be a wise thing to say to Skandagupta in a rage.

    “Whichever officer replaces him in command is ordered to lead an expedition out of Mathura—immediately and with the utmost haste—to deal with this new enemy. Whoever it is.”

    “How many men from the garrison should he take, Your Majesty?”

    Skandagupta slapped the throne’s armrest. “Do I need to decide everything? As many as he thinks necessary—but not fewer than thirty thousand! Do you understand? I want this new threat crushed!

    That would strip the garrison of three-fourths of its soldiers. More than that, really, since the new commander was sure to take all his best troops with him. His best cavalry and foot soldiers, at least. The experienced artillerymen would remain behind, since there would be no way to haul great guns up the roads by the Yamuna without making the phrase immediately and with the utmost haste a meaningless term. But artillerymen alone could not possibly defend a city as large as Mathura.

    None of the generals was about to say that to the emperor, however. As many heads and bodies as there were perched on the palace walls, there were twice as many still-bare stakes waiting. Skandagupta had ordered the walls festooned with the things.

    “Yes, Your Majesty.”

    Damodara and his army reached the Yamuna forty miles downstream of Mathura. They were met there by a small contingent of Ye-tai deserters from the garrison, who’d decided that the phrase Toramana’s Ye-tai were words of wisdom.

    “Yes, Lord—ah, Your Majesty,” said the captain in command of the contingent. “Lord Shankara—he’s the new garrison commander—led most of the troops out of the city three days ago. They’re headed north, after another army that’s invading—ah, rebelling—ah, rightfully resisting—”

    Damodara waved the man’s fumbling words aside. “Enough, enough. How many did he leave behind?”

    “Not more than eight thousand, Your Majesty.”

    One of the other Ye-tai, emboldened by Damodara’s relaxed demeanor, added: “Most of them are piss-poor troops, Your Majesty. Except the artillerymen.”

    Damodara turned his head and grinned at Rana Sanga. “See? You doubted me! I told you I’d find siege guns—somewhere—and the troops to man them.”

    He swiveled his head back, bringing the grin to bear on the Ye-tai. “They’ll be co-operative, yes?”

    The Ye-tai captain gave one of his men a meaningful glance. That worthy cleared his throat and announced:

    “My cousin commands one of the batteries. I’ll show you the gate it protects.”

    “They’ll co-operate,” growled his captain.

    Damodara now bestowed the grin on Toramana. “I think these men will fit nicely in your personal regiment, don’t you?”

    “Oh, yes,” agreed Toramana. “But I’m thinking I’ll need to form another, before too long.”