Fortune's stroke

Chapter 32

"I thought, at first, that you'd moved too quickly," said Belisarius. He finished cleaning the blood from his sword and tossed the rag into a corner of the room. The tattered piece of cloth, torn from a Malwa soldier's tunic, landed soddenly on a large pile of its fellows. From the grisly mound of linen, a pool of blood was spreading slowly across the stone floor, reflecting the light from the lamps on the walls.

It was a large floor. The room had once been the audience chamber of Charax's viceroy, before the Malwa turned it into their military headquarters. But even that floor was now half-stained. The blood pooling from the heap of bodies in one corner had almost joined that spilling from the rags.

Vasudeva shrugged. "I had planned to wait, until everyone was through the gates. But there was always the danger of someone spotting something wrong, and besides-"

He shrugged again. Coutzes, sitting at a nearby table with his feet propped up, laughed gaily. "Admit it, maniac of the steppes!" The young Syrian general lifted his cup, saluting the Kushan. "You just couldn't resist! Like a wolf, with a lamb in its jaws, trying to withstand temptation."

Coutzes downed the cup in a single gulp. Then grimaced.

"God, I hate plain water. Even from a well." But Coutzes didn't even glance at the amphorae lining the shelf on a nearby wall. Belisarius had given the most draconian orders, the day before, on the subject of liquor. The general had seen what happened to an army, storming a city, if it started to drink. Troops could be hard enough to control, at such times, even when they were stone sober. It was essential-imperative-that Charax stay intact until the Roman army was ready to leave. Drunken troops, among their multitude of other crimes, are invariably arsonists. Let fire run loose in Charax, with its vast arsenal of gunpowder, and ruin was the sure result.

Belisarius slid the sword back into its scabbard. "I wasn't criticizing," he said mildly. "Once I realized what caliber of opponent we were facing, I was only surprised that you'd waited so long."

Bouzes came through the door. His sword was still in his hand, but the blade was clean. A few streaks indicated that it had been put to use; but not, apparently, in the past few minutes.

Coutzes' brother was scowling fiercely. "Where did they find this garbage?" he demanded. "Did they round up every pimp in India and station them here?" He seemed genuinely aggrieved.

Maurice, leaning against a nearby wall, chuckled. "What did you expect, lad?" He tossed his head, northward. "Every soldier worth the name is marching along the Euphrates, ready to fight Khusrau. The Malwa must have figured they could garrison a place this well fortified with anybody who could walk."

"Some of them couldn't even do that!" snapped Bouzes. "Half the garrison was already drunk, before we even started the assault. The sun hadn't gone down yet!" His scowl became a thing purely feral. "They won't walk now, for sure. Not ever."

"I would like as many prisoners as possible, Bouzes," said Belisarius. As before, his tone was mild.

Yes, agreed Aide. The more enemy soldiers we can shove out the gates, the more mouths Link will have to feed. With nothing to feed them with.

Bouzes flushed under the implied reproof.

"I tried, General." He gave a quick, appealing glance at the other commanders in the room. "We all tried. But-"

Maurice levered himself off the wall with a push of the shoulder and took two steps forward. Bouzes gave a small sigh of relief.

"Forget it, General," said Maurice harshly. "If there's five hundred of that scum left tomorrow morning to push out into the desert, I'll be surprised. There'll be no mercy for Malwa, this night. Not after the men found the torture chambers, and the brothels. Any Mahaveda priest or mahamimamsa who died by the blade can count himself lucky. The men are dragging most of them to the torture chambers, to give them a taste of their own pleasures."

"Along with any soldier they caught within sight of one of the brothels," growled Coutzes. "Jesus."

Belisarius did not argue the matter. He had seen one of the brothels himself.

Roman soldiers were not, to put it mildly, the gentlest men in the world. Nor was "gallantry" a word which anyone in their right mind would ever associate with them. Any Roman veteran-and they were all veterans, now-had spent his own time in a military brothel, filing through a crib for a few minutes' pleasure.

But the scene in that brothel had been something out of nightmare. A nightmare which would have roused Satan from his sleep, trembling and shaken. Long rows of women-girls, probably, though it was impossible to determine their age-chained, spread-eagled, on thin pallets. On occasion, judging from residual moisture, they had been splashed with a pail of water to clean them off. All the women were sick; most suffered from bedsores; many were dying; not a few were already dead.

No, Roman soldiers were not what a later age would call "knights in shining armor." But they had their own firm concept of manhood, nonetheless, which was not that of pimps and sadists. The women in the brothels were all Persian, or Arab, just like the women those soldiers had been consorting with since they began their campaign in Persia. Many Roman soldiers had married their kinsfolk. Among Persians, since the Malwa invasion began, the name of Charax had been synonymous with bestiality. Their Roman allies-friends and husbands, as often as not-had absorbed that notion, over the past year and a half. Now, having seen the truth with their own eyes, they would exact Persia's vengeance.

And besides, mused Aide whimsically, they've spent the last six months fighting Rajputs. Can't do that, not even the crudest brawler recruited in Constantinople's hippodrome, without some of the chivalry rubbing off.

Belisarius' eyes fell on the pile of corpses in a corner. The body of the Malwa garrison's commander was on the very top. Belisarius himself had put the body there, with a thrust through the heart, after the man had failed to stutter surrender quickly enough.

For just an instant, Belisarius regretted that sword thrust. He could have disarmed the man. Saved him for the torture pits.

He shook off the thought. Took a deep breath, and forced down his own rage, seething somewhere deep inside. This was no time for rage. If he was having a hard enough time controlling his fury, he could well imagine the mental state of his troops.

That fury can't be stopped, but it must be controlled.

He turned his eyes back on his commanders. All of them were staring at him. Respectfully, but stubbornly.

He forced a smile. "I'm not arguing the point, Maurice. But if it gets out of control, if the men-"

"Don't worry about it," interrupted Maurice brusquely, shaking his head. He pointed to the row of amphorae lining the shelf. "To the best of my knowledge, that's the only liquor left in Charax which hasn't already been spilled in the streets. More often than not, the men do it themselves before they're even ordered. No one wants any Malwa to escape because some bastard was too drunk to spot them. As for the women-"

He shrugged. Coutzes lazed to his feet and strode over to the shelf. As he began plucking amphorae and tossing them through a nearby window, he said: "The only problem there, general, is that any woman in Charax who's managed to stay out of the brothels-hooking up with a garrison unit, usually, or an officer-is throwing herself at a Roman soldier tonight." The first sounds of shattering wine flasks came from the street below. "Can't blame them. They'll do anything to get out of here. So would I."

Finished with the last amphora, he turned back, grinning. "Even if meant being called Coutzes the Catamite for the rest of my life."

Belisarius chuckled, along with his officers. "All right," he said. "I don't care about that. I don't expect my soldiers to be saints and monks. By tomorrow, we'll have regular camp followers. As long as the women are treated decently enough, and the men are kept from liquor, I'll be satisfied. We'll take the women with us, when we leave. Those who want, we'll try to reunite with their families."

"Most of them don't have any families left," grated Bouzes.

"Except us," added Maurice. The chiliarch's gray eyes were as grim as death. He hooked a thumb toward the window. Now that the sounds of breaking amphorae had ended, the screams could be heard again.

"I'm telling you, General-relax. That isn't the sound of a city being sacked by troops raging out of control, raping, drinking and burning. That's just the sound of an executioner doing his duty."

After a moment, Belisarius nodded. He decided Maurice was right. The focused fury of an army, he could control.

He slapped his hands together. The sharp sound echoed in the room, snapping his officers alert.

"Let's get to the rest, then." He turned to Vasudeva. "Where does it stand with the ships?"

Vasudeva stroked his topknot. The pleasure he so obviously took in the act almost made Belisarius laugh. "The last word I got from Cyril-maybe half an hour ago-was that all of the cargo ships had been seized. Except one, which managed to pull free from the docks before the Greeks could get to it. Most of the galleys, of course, escaped also."

The Kushan shrugged. "No way to stop them, before they reached the screen of galleys in the outer harbor. Not without firing rockets or flame arrows. So Cyril let it be. He says we've got more ships than we need, anyway, and he didn't want to risk an explosion or a drifting fireship."

"God, no!" exclaimed Bouzes. The young officer shuddered slightly. Charax was a city made of stone and brick. It would not burn easily, if at all. But it was also, for all practical purposes, a gigantic powderkeg. The port had been the arsenal for Malwa's intended conquest of Persia.

"The Greeks hadn't searched the ships yet," continued Vasudeva. "Although I imagine by now they've probably-" He broke off, hearing footsteps. Then, waving his hand: "But let's let him tell us."

Cyril was marching through the door. As soon as he entered, his eyes fell on the pile of corpses in the corner.

"Got off too easy, the swine," he muttered. Turning to Belisarius, he said: "We've started the search. Everything looks good. Lucky for us, none of the priests were stationed aboard any of the craft."

That had always been Belisarius' deepest fear. Some of the huge ships moored at the dock had been loaded with gunpowder. A fanatic priest aboard one of them, if certain of capture, would have ignited its cargo. The explosion might well have destroyed the harbor, along with the Roman escape route.

"Nobody else?" he asked.

Cyril smiled. "The only ones aboard were sailors. After we stormed a few of the ships, the rest negotiated surrender. Once we were sure all of them were on the docks, and the ships were secured-"

His smile was as grim as Maurice's eyes. "We gave them new terms of surrender. They weren't happy about it, but-" He shrugged. "Their protests were short-lived."

Another laugh swept the room. Even Belisarius joined in. There would be no mercy for Malwa from anyone, that night. A dog, barking in Hindi, would have been slaughtered.

Belisarius turned to Bouzes. Without being prompted, the young Thracian officer moved back to the window and began pointing to the walls beyond. The gesture was a bit futile. It was still long before sunrise. The darkness was unbroken except by slowly moving Roman squads, holding torches aloft in their search for Malwa hideaways.

"All of the siege guns have been seized and manned. I talked to Felix just twenty minutes ago." He gave Cyril a half-apologetic glance over his shoulder. "Unlike the Greeks, who have plenty of seamen, Gregory doesn't have anyone who's fired guns that size. So he kept maybe two dozen Malwa gunners alive. Felix says they're babbling everything they know, faster than we can ask."

"Good," grunted his brother. "By tomorrow morning, we can fire a few test rounds. Using them for the shot."

Again, savage humor filled the room. And, again, Belisarius joined in.

Even Aide: Why not? The British did, during the Indian Mutiny. Unlike them, we've even got a decent excuse.

The bloodthirsty aura of that thought did not surprise Belisarius. He only wondered, for a moment, at the vastness of the universe. Which could produce, over the eons, such miracles as a crystal intelligence learning human wrath.

His eyes came back to Vasudeva. From experience with the Kushan since he entered the service of Rome, Belisarius had learned to use him as his executive officer in matters of logistics. Vasudeva was as proficient a lieutenant, in that complex work, as Maurice was on the battlefield.

Vasudeva tugged his goatee. "Everything's still a mess, of course. Will be, till at least tomorrow night. But I'm not worried about it."

He spread his arms, hands wide open, as if he were embracing a beloved but obese friend. "There were fifteen thousand men garrisoned here, permanently. Between their stores, and the huge stockpiles for the main army, the Malwa have bequeathed a treasure upon us. We don't really have to organize much of anything. Just grab what we need, load up the ships, and get ready to leave when the time comes. Won't take more than three days."

"The Malwa army should be back here by then," opined Cyril. "Their first elements, anyway. Enough to invest the city."

Maurice made a fist, and inspected his knuckles. "That'll be too late. Way too late. By the day after tomorrow, we'll be able to hold Charax against them. For three weeks, at the very least. A month and a half wouldn't surprise me. Although I don't want to think about our casualties, by then."

And now, all eyes were on Belisarius.

He smiled. Widely, not crookedly. All rage and fury vanished, as he remembered that other-much deeper-side of life.

"She'll come," he said. "She'll come."