Fortune's stroke

Chapter 19

Persia

Summer, 532 A.D.

"Can you disguise the entrance afterward?" asked Belisarius. He waved his hand, in a gesture which encompassed the valley. "The whole area, actually. Keep in mind, Kurush, there'll be more than ten thousand soldiers passing through here-and as many horses."

The Roman general turned his head, looking down at the river. The river flowed west by northwest. Like the valley itself, the river was small and rather narrow. The pass where it exited the valley was barely more than a gorge. They were almost in the foothills of the western slope of the Zagros, but the surrounding mountains seemed to have lost none of their usual ruggedness.

"I assume you'll be taking the horses out that way," Belisarius said, pointing toward the gorge. "By the time they pass through, the whole valley will be churned into mush. No way to disguise the tracks."

Kurush shook his head, smiling. "We won't try to hide the tracks, Belisarius. Quite the opposite! The more Damodara's mind is on that gorge, the more he'll be diverted from the real exit."

Belisarius scratched his chin. "I understand the logic, Kurush. But don't underestimate Damodara and Sanga-and their scouts. Those Pathan trackers can trail a mouse. They won't simply trot after the horses, salivating. They'll search the entire valley."

Belisarius turned his head and studied the entrance to the qanat. The timber-braced adit was located about a hundred yards up the mountainside, not far from the small river which had carved out this valley. The sloping ramp, after a few feet, disappeared into darkness.

He hooked a thumb in that direction. "There'll be tracks there too," he pointed out. "No way to disguise them, either. Even if you collapse the entrance, the tracks will be all over the area. Ten thousand troops leave a big trail."

Kurush's smile widened. He shook his head. "You're worrying too much. We can cover the soldiers' tracks by running the horses through afterward. Everywhere except this immediate area. Then-"

The Persian nobleman leapt onto a small rock a few feet away. From that perch, he leaned over and pointed along the steep slope of the mountain. "This is mining country, Belisarius. Silver, mostly. There are small deposits in this valley."

He spread his hands apologetically. "Nothing more than traces, really, according to the miners I brought with me. But the miners will be gone before Damodara arrives. And I doubt very much if an army of Rajput cavalrymen will be able to tell him that the ore in the area isn't worth mining."

Aide made a mental snort. Rajputs?

Belisarius chuckled. "Hardly! And their Pathans, outside of hunting, consider all forms of labor to be women's work."

The Roman general nodded. "Yes, that'll work. After we pass through, you'll have this whole slope turned into a mining operation. Cover our tracks with tailings." He pointed at the adit. "And I assume that you'll have your miners cover our tracks well into the qanat. Fifty yards should do it. Pathans are outdoorsmen. They won't be comfortable more than a few feet into that blackness."

Again, Belisarius studied the gorge at the far end of the valley. "All that will be left, after a few days," he mused, "are the tracks of Roman horses. Passing, by pure coincidence, through a mining area on their way into Mesopotamia."

He paused, thinking. "One thing, however. Those Pathans know their business, Kurush. You'll have to make sure-"

Kurush was grinning. "Yes, yes!" he interrupted. "I'll have the horses carrying sacks filled with dirt. Weighing about what a Roman soldier does. Their tracks will be deep enough."

Belisarius returned the grin with one of his own. "You've thought of everything, I see."

Kurush shrugged. Belisarius almost laughed. The modest gesture fit the Aryan sahrdaran about as well as a curtsy fits a lion.

His humor faded. "You understand, Kurush, that the hammer will fall on you? Once Damodara understands what has happened-and it won't take him long-he won't waste time trying to chase after me. He'll strike directly into Mesopotamia."

Kurush shrugged again. The gesture, this time, did not even pretend at modesty. It was the twitch of a lion's shoulders, irritated by flies.

"That is only fair, Roman, after all you've done for the Aryans."

Kurush sprang off the rock and strode over to Belisarius. He jabbed his chin toward the south, using his stiff Persian-cut beard as a pointer. "As soon as he gets the word, the emperor will begin retreating toward Babylon. He's on the verge of doing it, anyway, so it won't seem odd at all." Kurush scowled. "The Malwa have been pressing him very hard."

Belisarius eyed the sahrdaran. The Roman general had no difficulty interpreting Kurush's frowning face. He could well imagine the casualties which Emperor Khusrau's soldiers had taken over the past months. While Belisarius had been maneuvering with Damodara in the Zagros mountains all through the spring, Khusrau had been keeping the huge main army of the Malwa invasion penned up in the Tigris-Euphrates delta. The task would have been difficult enough, even without-

He decided to broach the awkward subject.

"Has the rebellion-?"

Khusrau's frown vanished instantly. The Persian nobleman barked a laugh.

"The head of the emperor's half-brother has been the main ornament of his pavilion for two weeks, now." Kurush grimaced. "Damn thing was a mass of flies, by the time I left. Stinky."

His good humor returned. "Ormazd's rebellion has been crushed. And that of the Lakhmids. We took Hira almost two months ago. Khusrau drove the population into the desert and ordered the city razed to the ground."

Belisarius let no sign of his distaste show. He had never been fond of "punitive action" against enemy civilians, even before he met Aide and was introduced to future standards of warmaking.

But he did not fault Khusrau. By the standards of the day, in truth, driving the population of Hira out of the city before destroying it was rather humane. The Lakhmids had been Persian vassals before they gave their allegiance to the Malwa invaders. Most Persian emperors-most Roman ones, for that matter, including Theodora-would have repaid that rebellion by ordering the city's people burned inside it.

And let's not get too romantic about the Geneva Convention and the supposedly civilized standards of future wars, either, remarked Aide. They won't prevent entire cities being destroyed, with their populations. Purely for "strategic reasons," of course. What difference does that make, to mangled children in the ruins of Coventry? Or to thousands of Korean slave laborers incinerated at Hiroshima?

Kurush was pointing with his beard again, this time to the west.

"The emperor has instructed me to defend Ctesiphon, while he retreats to Babylon. I will have ten thousand men. That should be enough to hold our capital city, for a few months. Damodara does not have siege guns."

Kurush turned his eyes to Belisarius. There was nothing in the Persian's gaze beyond a matter-of-fact acceptance of reality.

"In the end, of course," he said calmly, "we will be doomed. Unless your thrust strikes home."

Belisarius smiled crookedly. "It is said that an army marches on its belly, you know. I will do my best to drive a lance into the great gut of Malwa, once you have drawn the shield away."

Kurush chuckled. "`An army marches on its belly,'" he repeated. "That's clever! I don't recognize the saying, though. Who came up with it?"

Good move, genius, said Aide sourly. This will be entertaining, watching you explain to a sixth-century Persian how you came to quote Napoleon.

Belisarius ignored the quip. "I heard it from a Hun. One of my mercenaries, during my second campaign in the trans-Danube. I was rather stunned, actually, to find such a keen grasp of logistics in the mind of a barbarian. But it just goes to show-"

Father of lies, father of lies. It's a good thing my lips are sealed, so to speak. The stories I could tell about you! They'd make even Procopius' Secret History look like sober, reasoned truth.

Lord Damodara leaned back in his chair, studying Narses' scowling face.

"So what is it that bothers you, exactly?" he asked the eunuch.

"Everything!" snapped Narses. The old Roman glared around the interior of the pavilion, as if searching its unadorned walls for some nook or cranny in which truth lay hidden.

"None of what Belisarius is doing makes any sense," stated Narses. "Nothing. Not from the large to the small."

"Explain," commanded Damodara. The lord waved his pudgy little hand in a circular motion. The gesture included himself and the tall figure of the Rajput king seated next to him. "In simple words, that two simpletons like myself and Rana Sanga can understand."

The good-humored quip caused even Rana Sanga to smile. Even Narses, for that matter, and the old eunuch was not a man who smiled often.

"As to the `large,' " said Narses, "what is the purpose of these endless maneuvers that Belisarius is so fond of?" The eunuch leaned forward, emphasizing his next words. "Which are not, however-and cannot be-truly endless. There is no way he can stop you from reaching Mesopotamia. The man's not a fool. That must be as obvious to him, by now-" Narses jabbed a stiff finger toward the pavilion's entrance "-as it is to the most dim-witted Ye-tai in your army."

"He's bought time," remarked Sanga.

Narses made a sour face. "A few months, at most. It's not been more than eight weeks since the battle of the pass, and you've already forced him almost out of the Zagros. Your army is much bigger than his. You can defeat him on an open battlefield, and you've proven that you can maneuver through these mountains as well as he can. Within a month, perhaps six weeks, he'll have to concede the contest and allow you entry into Mesopotamia. At which point he'll have no choice but to fort up in Ctesiphon or Peroz-Shapur, anyway. So why not do it now?"

"I don't think it's odd," countered Damodara. "He's used the months that he kept us tied up in the Zagros to good advantage, according to our spies. That general of his that he left in charge of the Roman forces in Mesopotamia-the crippled one, Agathius-has been working like a fiend, these past months. By the time we get to Ctesiphon, or Peroz-Shapur, he'll have the cities fortified beyond belief. Cannons and gunpowder have been pouring in from the Roman armories, while we've been countermarching all over these damned mountains."

Sanga nodded. "The whole campaign, to my mind, has Belisarius' signature written all over it. He always tries to force his enemy to attack him, so that he can have the advantage of the defensive. By stalling us for so many months here in the mountains, he's been able to create a defensive stronghold in Mesopotamia. It'll be pure murder, trying to storm Peroz-Shapur."

Narses stared at the two men sitting across the table from him. There seemed to be no expression at all on the eunuch's wizened, scaly face, but both Damodara and Sanga could sense the sarcasm lurking somewhere inside.

Neither man took offense. They were accustomed to Narses, and his ways, by now. There was a bitterness at the center of the eunuch's soul which was ineradicable. That bitterness colored his examination of the world, and gave scorn to his every thought.

Thoughts, however-and a capacity to examine-which they had come to respect deeply. And so a kinsman of the Malwa dynasty, and Rajputana's most noble monarch, listened carefully to the words of a lowborn Roman eunuch.

Narses leaned over and pointed with his finger to a location on the great map which covered the table.

"He will make his stand at Peroz-Shapur, not Ctesiphon," predicted Narses. "Belisarius is a Roman, when all is said and done. Ctesiphon is Persia's capital, but Peroz-Shapur is the gateway to the Roman Empire."

Damodara and Sanga both nodded. They had already come to the same conclusion.

Narses studied the map for a few seconds. Then:

"Tell me something. When the time comes, do you intend to hurl your soldiers at the walls of Peroz-Shapur?" He almost-not quite-sneered. "You don't have too many Ye-tai left, either, so the soldiers you'll use up like sheep at a slaughterhouse will all be Rajput."

Rana Sanga didn't rise to the bait. He simply chuckled. Damodara laughed outright.

"Not likely!" exclaimed the Malwa lord. He leaned over the table himself. The months of arduous campaigning had shrunk Damodara's belly enough that the movement was almost graceful.

Damodara's finger traced the Tigris river, from Ctesiphon upstream toward Armenia.

"I won't go near Peroz-Shapur." Another laugh. "Any more than I'd enter a tiger's cage. I won't try to besiege Ctesiphon either. I'll simply use the Tigris to keep my army supplied and move north into Assyria. From there, I can strike into Anatolia-or Armenia-while most of Khusrau's army is tied up fighting our main force on the southern Euphrates."

He leaned back, exuding self-satisfaction. "Belisarius will have no choice," pronounced Damodara. "All that work he's done to fortify Peroz-Shapur will be wasted. He'll have to come out and face me, somewhere in the field."

Narses' eyes left Damodara and settled on Rana Sanga. The Rajput king nodded his agreement with Damodara's explication.

"Ah," said Narses. "An excellent strategy. I am enlightened. Except-why hasn't Belisarius figured the same thing out himself? The man has never, to put it mildly, been accused of stupidity."

Silence. Damodara squirmed a bit in his chair. Sanga maintained his usual stiff composure, but the very rigidity of the posture indicated his own discomfort.

Narses sneered. "Ah, yes. You've wondered that yourselves, haven't you? Now and again, at least."

The eunuch relinquished the sneer, within a few seconds. He was too canny to risk offending the two men across the table from him. And, if the truth be told, he had a genuine respect for them.

"Let's leave that broad problem, for a moment, and move on to some seemingly minor questions. Of these, there are three that stand out."

Narses held up a thumb. "First. Why has Belisarius, since the very beginning of this campaign in the Zagros, always been willing to let us move north?"

Narses nodded toward the Rajput. "As Rana Sanga was the first to point out, many weeks ago." He gave another nod, this time at Damodara. "As you yourself remarked at the time, Lord, that makes no sense. It should be the other way around. He should be fighting like a tiger when we move north, and put up only token resistance when we maneuver to the south. That way, he would be keeping us from threatening Assyria."

Silence.

Narses held up his forefinger alongside the thumb.

"The second small problem. In all the skirmishes we've fought over the past months-even during the battle at the pass when his situation was desperate-Belisarius has never used his mercenaries. Why? He's got two thousand of the Goth barbarians, but he handles them like they were the only jewels in his possession."

Sanga cleared his throat. "Doesn't trust them, I imagine." The Rajput king scowled. "I don't trust mercenaries either, Narses."

The eunuch snorted. "Of course you don't!" Narses slapped his hand down on the table. The sharp sound seemed to fill the confines of the tent.

"Belisarius has never trusted mercenaries," hissed Narses. The eunuch's eyes were fixed on Sanga like a serpent's on its prey. "He never has. He is well known for it, in the Roman army-which, as you know, is traditionally an army which uses mercenaries all the time. But Belisarius never uses them except when he has no choice, and then he only uses mercenaries as auxiliaries. Hun light cavalry, for the most part."

Narses jabbed at the map. "So why would he bring two thousand Goth heavy cavalry with him, in a campaign like this one? There's nothing in this kind of campaign which would keep a mercenary's interest. No loot, no plunder. Nothing but weeks and weeks of arduous marches and countermarches, for nothing beyond a stipend."

The eunuch laughed sarcastically. "Belisarius never would have brought Goth mercenaries along with him for the good and simple reason, if no other, that he would have known they'd desert within two months. Which brings me-"

He held up a third finger.

"Point three. Why haven't those mercenaries deserted?" Another sarcastic, sneering laugh. "Goths are about as stupid as the horses they ride, but even horses aren't that stupid."

Narses planted both hands on the table and pushed himself against the back of his chair. For just an instant, in that posture, the small old eunuch seemed a more regal figure than the Malwa dynast and the Rajput king who faced him.

"So. Let's put it all together. We have one of history's most cunning generals-who always subordinates tactics to strategy-engaged in a campaign which, for all its tactical acumen, makes no sense at all strategically. In the course of this campaign, he drags along a bunch of mercenaries he has no use for, and which have no business being there on their own account. What does that all add up to?"

Silence.

Narses scowled. "What it adds up to, Lord and King, is-Belisarius. He's up to something. Something we aren't seeing."

"What?" demanded Damodara.

Narses shrugged. "I don't know, Lord. At the moment, I only have questions. But I urge you"-for just an instant, the eunuch's sarcastic, sneering voice was filled with nothing beyond earnest and respectful pleading-"to take my questions seriously. Or we will find ourselves, in the end, like so many of Belisarius' opponents. Lying in the dirt, bleeding to death, from a blow we never saw coming."

The silence which now filled the tent was not the silence of a breath, held in momentary suspense. It was a long, long silence. A thoughtful silence.

Damodara finally broke it.

"I think we should talk to him," he announced. "Arrange a parley."

His two companions stared at him. Both men were frowning.

Narses was frowning from puzzlement. "What do you hope to accomplish? He'll hardly tell you what he's planning!"

Damodara chuckled. "I didn't imagine he would." The Malwa lord shrugged. "The truth? I would simply like to meet the man, after all this time. I think it would be fascinating."

Damodara shifted his eyes to Rana Sanga. The Rajput king was still frowning.

Not from puzzlement, but-

"I am bound to your service by honor, Lord Damodara," rasped Sanga. "That same honor-"

Damodara raised a hand, forestalling the Rajput. "Please, Rana Sanga! I am not a fool. Practical, yes. But practical in all things." He chuckled. "I would hardly plan a treacherous ambush, in violation of all codes of honor, using Rajputs as my assassins. Any Rajputs, much less you."

Damodara straightened. "We will find a meeting place where ambush is impossible. A farmhouse in open terrain, perhaps, which Belisarius' scouts can search for hidden troops."

He nodded at Rana Sanga. "And you, King of Rajputana, will serve as my only bodyguard at the parley itself. That should be enough, I think, to protect me against foul play-and will be enough, I am certain, to assure Belisarius that he has nothing to fear. Not once he has your word of honor, whatever he thinks of my own."

The frown faded, somewhat, from Sanga's brow. But the quick glance which the Rajput king gave Narses still carried a lurking suspicion.

Damodara chuckled again. "Have no fear, Rana Sanga. Narses won't be within miles of the place."

"Not likely!" snorted the eunuch.

A week later, Damodara's dispatch rider returned with Belisarius' response.

"The Roman general wrote it out himself," the Rajput said, as he handed over the sealed sheet. The man seemed a bit puzzled. Or, perhaps, a bit in awe. "He didn't even hesitate, Lord Damodara. He wrote the reply as soon as he finished reading your message. I watched him do it."

Damodara broke the seal and began reading. He was surprised, but not much, to see that Belisarius' message was written in perfect Hindi.

When he finished, Damodara laughed.

"What's so amusing?" asked Narses.

"Did he agree?" asked Rana Sanga.

Damodara waved the letter. "Yes, he agreed. He says we can pick the location, and the time. As long as Rana Sanga is there, he says, he has no concerns about treachery."

The Rajput's face was stiff as a board. Damodara smiled, knowing how deeply Sanga was hiding his surge of pride.

He transferred the smile to Narses.

"As for the amusement-Belisarius did add a stipulation, Narses. He insists that you must be at the parley also."

The eunuch's face almost disappeared in a mass of wrinkles. Damodara's smile became an outright grin. The Roman traitor, in that moment, was not even trying to hide his own emotions. That great frown exuded suspicion, the way a glacier exudes chilliness.

"Why me?" demanded Narses.

Damodara shrugged. "I have no idea. You can add that to your list of unanswered questions."