The Dance of Time: Chapter Thirty Three

Mayapur

    Kungas waited until the lead elements of Great Lady Sati’s army had crossed the river and her chaundoli was just reaching the opposite bank of the Ganges. He’d had to struggle mightily with himself not to give the order to open fire when there was still a chance to catch Sati herself.

    But that would have been stupid. The river was within reach of the big mortars, but the range was too great for any accuracy. They’d likely have missed Sati’s chaundoli altogether—while leaving her close enough to the main body of her army to rejoin it and provide her soldiers with sure and decisive leadership.

    “Open fire!”

    The whole ridge above Mayapur erupted with mortar fire.

    This way, the Malwa army would be almost as effectively decapitated as if they’d killed the bitch herself. She’d be stranded on the opposite bank of the river with her own bodyguard and the advance contingents, while the bulk of her army would be caught on this side.

    As Kungas had commanded, the mortar shells began landing, most of them in the river itself. The Ganges was too deep to be forded here, this early in garam, except by using guideropes. The soldiers in mid-crossing were moving very slowly and painstakingly. They had not even the minimal protection of being able to evade the incoming shells. They were caught as helplessly as penned sheep.

    Explosions churned the river. A river which, within seconds, was streaked with red blood.

    Kungas waited until the mortars had fired two more volleys.

    “The near bank, now! Big mortars only!”

    He didn’t have that much ammunition. Even to the near bank, the range was chancy for the small mortars. He wanted to save their ammunition for the charge that would soon be coming.

    Clumps of the soldiers packed on the near bank waiting their turn to ford the river were hurled aside by exploding mortar rounds. The casualties as such were fairly light. But, as Kungas had expected, the soldiers were already showing signs of panic. Being caught in the open as they were, by an attack that came as a complete surprise, was unnerving.

    He held his breath. This was the critical moment. If that Malwa army had the sort of officers trained by such generals as Belisarius, Damodara, or Rao—or Kungas himself—he was in real trouble. They’d organize an immediate counterattack, leading columns of men up the ridge. Kungas was confident that he’d be able to fend off such a counter-attack long enough to make a successful retreat. But he’d suffer heavy casualties, and this whole risky gamble would have been for nothing.

    After a few seconds, he let out the breath. Thereafter, he continued to breathe slowly and deeply, but the tension was gone.

    The Malwa officers, instead, were reacting as he had gambled they would. Surely, yes; decisively, yes—but also defensively. They were simply trying to squelch the panic and force the men back into their ranks and lines.

    Which, they did. Which, of course, simply made them better targets.

    “Idiots,” hissed the king’s second-in-command, standing next to him atop the ridge.

    Kungas shook his head. “Not fair, Vima. Simply officers who’ve spent too much time in much too close proximity to a superhuman monster. Too many years of rigidity, too many years of expecting perfect orders from above.”

    The next few minutes were just slaughter. Even the very first rounds had struck accurately, most of them. Kushans were hill-fighters and had adopted the new mortars with something approaching religious fervor. Where other men might see in a Cohorn mortar nothing but an ugly assemblage of angular metal, Kushans lavished the same loving care on the things that other warrior nations lavished on their horses and swords.

    Finally, Kungas saw what he was expecting. Several horsemen were driving their mounts recklessly back across the river. Couriers, of course, bringing orders from the Great Lady.

    “Well, it was nice while it lasted,” chuckled Vima harshly. “How long do you want to hold the ridge?”

    “We’ll hold it as long as we can keep killing ten of them to one of us. After that—which will be once they get too close for mortars—we’ll make our retreat. Nothing glamorous, you understand?”

    Vima smiled. “Please, Your Majesty. Do I look like a Persian sahrdaran?”

    “The battery is secure, Emperor,” said Toramana.

    “I think your Ye-tais should do the honors, then.”

    Toramana nodded. “Wise, I think. Rajputs pouring through the gate into Mathura would probably make the soldiers of the battery nervous.”

    After he was gone, Rana Sanga said sourly: “What has the world come to? That men would prefer to surrender to Ye-tai than Rajputs?”

    Damodara just smiled.

    Within two hours, Mathura was his—and the great siege guns with it.

    Only one battery and two barracks of regular troops put up any resistance, once the garrison saw that Damodara’s army had gained entry into the city through treachery.

    All the soldiers in those two barracks were massacred.

    The Ye-tai contingent that served as a security unit for the recalcitrant battery were also massacred. Toramana led the massacre personally, using nothing but Ye-tai troops.

    After they surrendered, the surviving artillerymen were lined up. One out of every ten, chosen at random, was decapitated. Damodara thought that would be enough to ensure the obedience of the rest, and he didn’t want to waste experienced gunners.

    He’d need them, at Kausambi. Soon, now.

    Valentinian straightened up and rubbed his back. “Enough,” he growled. “I’ve stared at this sketch till I’m half-blind.”

    “It’s a good sketch!” protested Rajiv.

    “I didn’t say it wasn’t. And I don’t doubt that you and Tarun measured off every pace personally. I just said I’ve stared at it enough. By now, I’ve got it memorized.”

    “Me, too,” grunted Anastasius, also straightening up on his stool.

    The huge cataphract turned to the assassin squatting on the stable floor next to him. “You?”

    Ajatasutra waved his hand. “What does it matter? I won’t be one of the poor fellows sweating and bleeding in this desperate endeavor.”

    Easily, gracefully, he came to his feet. “I’m just a messenger boy, remember?”

    The two Roman soldiers looked at each other. Anastasius seemed reasonably philosophical about the matter. Valentinian didn’t.

    But Valentinian wasn’t inclined to argue the point, any more than Anastasius. They’d miss the assassin’s skills—miss them mightily—when the time came. But long hours of discussion and argument had led all of them to the same conclusion:

    Nothing would matter, if Sanga wasn’t there at the right time. That meant someone had to get word to him, across a north Indian plain that was turning into a giant, sprawling, chaotic, confused battlefield.

    A simple courier’s job—but one that would require the skills of an assassin.

    “You don’t have to gloat about it!” snapped Valentinian.

    Ajatasutra just smiled.

    “You don’t have to gloat!” complained Photius.

    Tahmina gave him that half-serene, half-pitying look that was the single habit of his wife’s that the eleven-year-old emperor of Rome positively hated. Especially because she always did it looking down at him. Even while they were sitting.

    “Stop whining,” she said. “It’s not my fault if you make elephants nervous. They seem to like me.”

    Gingerly, Photius leaned out over the edge of the howdah and gazed at the Bharakucchan street passing below.

    Very, very far below.

    “It’s not natural,” he insisted.

    Tahmina just smiled.

    “Tempting, isn’t it?” said Maloji.

    From their position on the very crest of the Vindhyas, Rao and Maloji gazed out over the landscape of northern India, fading below them into the distance. Visibility was excellent, since they were still some weeks from the monsoon season.

    Rao glanced at Maloji, then at the hill fortress his Maratha soldiers were building some dozens of yards away.

    “I won’t deny it. We’d still be fools to accept that temptation.”

    He looked back to the north, pointing with his chin. “For the first few hundred miles, everything would go well. By now, between them, Damodara and Belisarius will have turned half the Ganges plain into a whirlpool of war. Easy pickings for us, on the edges. But then?”

    He shook his head. “There are too many north Indians. And regardless of who wins this civil war, soon enough there will be another empire solidly in place. Then what?”

    “Yes, I know. But at least we’d get some of our own back, after all the killing and plundering the bastards did in the Deccan. For that matter, they’ve still got a huge garrison in Amaravati.”

    “Not for long, they won’t. Shakuntala got the word a few days ago. All of our south Indian allies have agreed to join us in our expedition to Amaravati, once we’ve finished this line of hill forts. The Cholas and Keralans even look to be sending large armies. Within two months—perhaps three—that garrison will be gone. One way or the other. So will all the others, in the smaller towns and cities. They’ll march their bodies out of the Deccan, or we’ll scatter their ashes across it.”

    “’Allies,’” Maloji muttered.

    In truth, the other realms of south India had played no role at all in the actual fighting, up till now. As important as the alliance was for the Andhran empire for diplomatic reasons, most of Shakuntala’s subjects—especially the Marathas—were contemptuous of the other Deccan powers.

    “Patience, Maloji, patience. They were disunited, and the Malwa terrified them for decades. Now that we’ve shown they can be beaten, even if Damodara’s rebellion fails and Skandagupta keeps the throne, the rest of the Deccan will cleave to us. They’ll have no choice, anyway. But with our foreign allies—all the aid we can expect through Bharakuccha, if we need it—they’ll even be sanguine about it.”

    “Bharakuccha,” Maloji muttered.

    Rao laughed. “Oh, leave off! As great an empire as Andhra has now become, we can well afford to give up one city. Two cities, if you count the Axumite presence in Chowpatty. What do we care? There are other ports we can expand, if we desire it. And having the Ethiopians with their own interests in the Indian trade, we’ll automatically have their support also, in the event the Malwa start the war up again.”

    “They’re not that big.”

    “No—which is exactly why we agreed to let them have Bharakuccha. They’re no threat to us. But they probably have the most powerful navy in the Erythrean Sea, today. That means the Malwa won’t be able to prevent the Romans from sending us all the material support we need.”

    Judging from the expression on his face, Maloji was still not entirely mollified. “But would they?”

    “As long as Belisarius is alive, yes,” replied Rao serenely. “And he’s still a young man.”

    “A young man leading an army into the middle of the Gangetic plain. Who’s to say he’s even still alive?”

    Rao just smiled.

    Belisarius himself was scowling.

    “As bad as Persians!” He matched the old Rajput kings glare for glare. “You’ve heard the reports. Sati will have at least thirty thousand infantry, half of them armed with muskets and the rest with pikes. We have no more chance of breaking them with cavalry charges that we do riding our horses across the ocean.”

    As indignant as they were, the kings were quite familiar with warfare. The two brothers Dasal and Jaisal looked away, still glaring, but no longer at Belisarius. One of the other kings, Chachu, was the only one who tried to keep the argument going.

    “You have rockets,” he pointed out.

    Belisarius shrugged. “I’ve got eight rocket chariots with no more than a dozen rockets each. That’s enough to harass the Malwa. It’s not the sort of artillery force that would enable me to smash infantry squares.”

    Chachu fell silent, his angry eyes sweeping across the landscape. It was quite visible, since the command tent they were standing under was no more than an open pavilion. Just enough to shelter them from the hot sun. They were out of sight of the Yamuna, by now, marching north toward the Ganges. Well into garam season, the flat plain was parched and sere.

    “It is dishonorable,” he muttered.

    Belisarius felt his jaws tighten. There was much to admire about Rajputs. There was also much to despise. He thought it was quite typical that Rajput kings would be solely concerned with their honor—when what bothered Belisarius was the destruction he’d soon be visiting upon innocent peasants.

    “We... have... no... choice,” he said, rasping out the words. “The tactical triangle is simple.”

    He held up his thumb. “Cavalry cannot break infantry armed with guns, so long as they remain in tight formations and keep discipline. You can be sure and certain that an army led by Malwa’s overlord will do so.”

    His forefinger came up alongside the thumb. “Artillery can smash infantry squares—but we have no artillery worth talking about.”

    Another finger. “On the other side, Sati has only enough cavalry to give her a scouting screen. Not enough—not nearly enough—to drive us off.”

    He lowered his hand. “So, we keep the pressure on them—from a bit of a distance—and force them to remain in formation. That means they move slowly, and cannot forage. And there’s nothing to forage anyway, because we will burn the land bare around them. Once their supplies run out, they’re finished.”

    In a slightly more conciliatory tone, he added: “If you were mounted archers in the manner of the Persians, I might try the same tactics that defeated the Roman general Crassus at Carrhae. But—we must be honest here—you are not.”

    Chachu’s head came back around. “Rajput archers are as good—!”

    “Oh, be quiet!” snapped Dasal. The oldest of the Rajput kings shifted his glare from the landscape to his fellow king. “I have seen Persian dehgans in combat. You haven’t. What the Roman general is talking about is not their individual skill as bowmen—although that’s much greater than ours also, except for a few like Sanga. Those damn Persians grow up with bows. He’s talking about their tactics.”

    Dasal took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “We do not fight in that manner, it is true. Rajputs are a nation of lancers and swordsmen.”

    Belisarius nodded. “And there’s no way to train an army in such tactics quickly. My own bucellarii have been trained to fight that way, but there are only five hundred of them. Not enough. Not nearly enough.”

    Chachu’s face looked as sour as vinegar. “Where did you learn such a disgraceful method?”

    Belisarius’ chuckle was completely humorless. “From another Roman defeat, how else? I propose to do to Sati’s Malwa army exactly what the Persians did to the army of the Roman Emperor Julian, when he was foolish enough to march into the Mesopotamian countryside in midsummer with no secured lines of supply.”

    Belisarius’ gaze moved across the same landscape. It was richer than that of Mesopotamia, but every bit as dry this time of year. Just more things to burn.

    “Julian the Apostate, he was called,” Belisarius added softly. “A brilliant commander, in many ways. He defeated the Persians in almost every battle they fought. But he, too, was full of his own inflated sense of glory. I am not. And, Roman or no, I command this army. Your own emperor has so decreed.”

    He let the silence settle, for a minute. Then, brought his eyes back to the assembled little group of kings. “You will do as I say. As soon as our scouts make the first contact with Sati’s army, we will start burning the land. Behind her as well as before her. On both sides of the Ganges, so that even if she manages to find enough boats, it will do her no good.”

    After the kings had left the pavilion, Belisarius turned to Jaimal and Udai Singh.

    “And you?”

    Udai shrugged. “It is a low tactic, no doubt about it. But who cares, when the enemy is Malwa?”

    Jaimal just smiled.

    Two days after the battle at Mayapur—such as it was—Kungas and his army had covered thirty-five miles in their retreat to Peshawar. It was a “retreat,” of course, only in the most technical sense of the term. They’d left Sati in command of the battlefield, true enough. But they’d accomplished their purpose, and it was now time to hurry back lest the Malwa take advantage of their absence to invade the Vale.

    The first of Irene’s couriers reached them while they were still in the hills.

    Kungas read her message several times over, before showing it to Vima and Kujulo.

    “What do you want to do?” asked Vima.

    Kungas was already looking back toward the east. After a moment, he turned and gazed at the distant peaks of the Himalayas.

    So far off, they were. So majestic, also.

    He decided it was an omen.

    “We’ll go back,” he said. “I want that bitch dead. No, more. I want to see her dead.”

    After traveling perhaps a hundred miles north of the Vindhyas, following the route Damodara and his army had taken, the captain of the assassination team had had enough.

    “This is a madhouse,” he said to his lieutenant. “Half the garrisons vanished completely, leaving the countryside open to bandits. What’s worse, the other half roaming the countryside like bandits themselves.”

    “And there’s only five of us,” agreed his subordinate gloomily. “This whole assignment has turned into one stinking mess after another. What do you want to do?”

    The captain thought for a moment. “Let’s start by getting away from the area Damodara passed through. We’ll go east, first, and then see if we can work our way up to Kausambi from the south. It’ll take longer, but there’ll be less chance of being attacked by dacoits.”

    The lieutenant nodded. “I can’t think of anything better. By the time we get to Kausambi, of course, Damodara will have it under siege. Which will be a fitting end to the most thankless task we’ve ever been given.”

    “We can probably make it through the lines,” the captain said, trying to sound confident. “Then...”

    “Report? To who? Nanda Lal’s dead and—I don’t know about you—but I really don’t want to have to tell the emperor that we’ve traveled ten thousand miles to accomplished exactly nothing. He’s foul-tempered in the best of times.”

    The captain just smiled. But it was a sickly sort of thing.