Fortune's stroke

Chapter 37

As soon as Belisarius straightened after squeezing through the narrow passage, he saw Bouzes rushing toward him. Except for a well-lit area against the far wall, where Belisarius had set up his writing desk and map table, the interior of the cavernous warehouse was dark. Bouzes was in such a hurry that he tripped over some debris lying on the floor and wound up stumbling into Belisarius' arms.

"Easy, there, easy," chuckled Belisarius. He set Bouzes back up straight. "Things can't be that bad."

Bouzes muttered a quick apology. Then, pointing toward a door on the opposite wall: "Maurice says you've got to go up and see something. He told me to tell you as soon as you arrived."

Belisarius brow was creased, just slightly. "What's the problem?"

Bouzes shook his head. "Don't know. Maurice wouldn't tell me anything else. But he was very emphatic about it."

Belisarius strode toward the door. Behind him, he heard the heavy footsteps of his armored cataphracts following. The door, like the one he had just passed through, was low and narrow. Again, Belisarius had to stoop to pass through. Except for the huge doors designed for freight, the entire warehouse seemed to have been built by dwarves.

Once through the door, he clambered up a wooden staircase leading to the roof. As quickly as Belisarius was moving, the effort of negotiating the steep and narrow stairs was considerable, even for a man in his excellent condition and wearing only half-armor. He felt a moment's sympathy for his cataphract bodyguards. They'd be huffing by the time they made the same climb.

The staircase debouched into a small chamber. Again, Belisarius squeezed through a tiny door, and emerged into open air. Behind him, the northern wall of the warehouse reared up like a battlement. Ahead of him, the brick roof-braced underneath by heavy beams-formed a flat expanse stretching toward the sea. He could see the delta, glistening under a midday sun.

Belisarius had selected this warehouse for his headquarters because of its odd design. At one time, he suspected, the north wall of the building had been the outer wall of Charax. It was built like a fortification, at least-which might explain the tiny doors. When Charax expanded, and new walls were built, some enterprising merchant had simply built his warehouse against the six-foot-thick northern wall. The end result, so far as the Roman general was concerned, was as good a field headquarters as he could ask for. The massive north wall gave some protection from artillery while, at the same time, the flat roof provided him with a perfect vantage point from which to observe the delta.

He saw Maurice standing on the southern edge of the roof. There was no railing to keep someone from pitching over the side onto the docks thirty feet below, but Maurice seemed unconcerned. The chiliarch had apparently heard the squeaking of the door, for he was already looking at Belisarius when the general emerged onto the roof.

"Come here!" he hollered, holding up the telescope. "There's a new development I think you should consider."

Belisarius hurried over. As he made his way across the fifty-foot-wide expanse, he quickly scanned the entire area. From the roof, he could see all of southern Charax as well as the great delta which extended southward to the Persian Gulf itself, perhaps ten miles away. Charax had been built on the east bank of the largest tributary which formed the Tigris-Euphrates delta, on a spit extending south and west of the Mesopotamian mainland. The tributary could hardly be called a river. It was so broad that it was almost a small gulf in its own right. For all practical purposes, Charax was a port city which was surrounded by water from the west all the way around to its east-by-southeast quadrant.

His eyes scanned right, then left. He could see nothing that would cause Maurice such apparent concern. There were masses of Malwa troops on both banks of the tributary, but they had been there since the first few days of the siege. The Malwa had tried to position siege guns on those banks, where they could have fired into the harbor area, but had given up the effort after a week. The ground, as the reeds which covered the banks indicated, was much too soggy. The troops were there simply to keep the Romans from escaping while the main forces of the Malwa tried to hammer their way into the city from the north. They also kept the galleys patrolling the delta supplied with provisions.

He turned his eyes to the fore, looking for the galleys. Again, he could see nothing amiss. There had been upwards of twenty galleys stationed in Charax, when Belisarius broke into the city. Half of them had been on patrol, and all but three of the ones moored to the docks had managed to get free before Roman troops could seize them.

Since then, the Malwa had used the galleys to maintain a blockade. Belisarius' obvious escape route was to sail out on the cargo ships he had captured. But there was no way to get those ungainly vessels through a line of war galleys. The huge Malwa cargo ships might have been able to withstand ramming-some of them, at least-but the galleys were armed with rockets as well as rams. At close range, with no room to maneuver, rocket volleys would turn unarmored cargo ships into floating funeral pyres.

As it was, Belisarius' soldiers had been hard-pressed to extinguish the small conflagrations started on the moored ships by long-range rocket fire. Link was making no pretense of saving the cargo ships to evacuate the Malwa troops. Even though the vast majority of the rockets never came close to the docks, the galleys as well as the troops stationed on the banks had kept up a steady barrage since the beginning of the siege. Belisarius didn't want to think about the disciplinary measures which Link must be taking, to keep its troops driving forward into what, by now, even the dimwits among them must have realized was a suicide mission.

I'm sure that Link has promised the Ye-tai commanders that Malwa would save the Ye-tai, if the barbarians kept the regular troops under control.

Belisarius agreed with Aide's assessment. But, as he advanced toward Maurice, Belisarius could still see nothing in the delta to cause any concern. Outside of three galleys moored to a makeshift pier on the east bank, taking on supplies, the rest were on patrol. As usual, the Malwa kept five galleys close to the harbor, with the remainder spread out between one and two miles away.

When he came up to Maurice, the gray-haired chiliarch was studying the galleys themselves. His expression seemed one of grim satisfaction.

"They haven't seen it yet," he said. "Our elevation's better."

He handed Belisarius the telescope. Grim satisfaction was replaced by-

Before he even got the telescope up, in a motion so quick he almost gave himself a black eye, Belisarius knew. He only heard Maurice's next words dimly, through the rushing blood in his ears.

"Yeah, I thought you'd want to see it, lad. It's not often, after all, that a man gets to watch Venus rise from the waves."

Belisarius saw the glint before he spotted the masts. He had been looking for sails, until he realized there wouldn't be any. This close to their final destination, the Ethiopian warships would be advancing under oar.

But there was no doubt of what he was seeing. Belisarius was not a seaman, but he could tell the difference between a warship and a cargo vessel at a glance. The twelve vessels whose masts he could see, perhaps ten miles away, were obviously fighting craft. And he had enough experience, with perhaps a minute's study, to be able to distinguish the upperstructure of an Axumite warship from a Malwa galley.

"They're ours, all right," he muttered happily. "No doubt about it. But-" He brought the telescope back to the lead ship in the oncoming flotilla. There it was again. Something glinting.

He pulled the telescope away from his eye, frowning. Not worried, simply puzzled. "There's something odd-"

Maurice nodded. "You spotted it too? Something shining on and off, on the lead ship?" The chiliarch's eyes fixed on the horizon. "I saw it myself. First thing I spotted, in fact. Still haven't been able to figure out what it is. Might be a mirror, I suppose, if Antonina wanted to signal-"

Both men, simultaneously, realized the truth. And both, simultaneously, burst into laughter.

"Well, of course!" shouted Maurice gaily. "She's Venus, isn't she? Naturally she's got the biggest damn brass tits in the world!"

Belisarius said nothing coherent, until he stopped leaping about in a manner which was halfway between a drunken jig and a war dance. Then, before the astonished eyes of the cataphract bodyguards who had finally puffed their way onto the roof, the strategos of the Roman Empire and the commander of its finest army-normally as cool as ice in the face of the enemy-began taunting the distant Malwa troops like an eight-year-old boy in a schoolyard.

"That's my lady! That's my lady!" was the only one of those expressions which was not so gross, so obscene, so foul, so vile, and so vulgar, that Satan's minions would have fled in horror, taloned paws clasped over bat-ugly ears.

In the hours which followed, as Maurice and Vasudeva organized the escape from Charax, Belisarius paid no attention to the doings of his army.

There was no need for him to do so, of course. The plans for the escape had been made weeks before Charax was even seized. Ever since the Romans had taken the city, a large portion of the soldiers had been working like beavers to get ready for departure. The cargo ships were loaded with provisions. The city was mined for final destruction. All that remained to be done was drive out the horses, collect the civilians, and organize the fighting retreat back to the docks.

The horses were driven out within the first two hours. Released from their holding corrals near the docks, the panicked creatures were driven through broken streets toward the Malwa lines. It was a task which the Roman soldiers carried out with reluctance but, perhaps for that reason, as quickly as possible.

Most of the horses would die, they knew. Many would be killed by the Malwa themselves, either because they were mistaken for a cavalry charge or simply from being struck by stray missiles or grenades. Others would break their legs clambering through the rubble. Most of the horses who escaped the city, except for those captured by the Malwa, would probably die of starvation in the desert and swamps beyond. And even those horses which found themselves in the relative safety of Malwa captivity would, in all likelihood, be eaten by the Malwa troops as they themselves became desperate for food.

But the only alternative was to destroy them along with the city. There was absolutely no way to load them aboard the cargo ships. Transporting large numbers of horses by sea was a difficult enough task, under the best of circumstances. It would be impossible for an army making a hurried escape under enemy fire. Given the alternatives, the Romans would drive the horses out. Some would survive in the desert, after all, long enough to be captured by bedouin.

So, at least, Belisarius had explained the matter to his troops. And, so far as it went, the explanation was not dishonest. But the general's ultimate reason for the choice had not been humanitarian. When he needed to be, Belisarius could be as ruthless as any man alive. He knew full well that as soon as Link discovered that enemy warships were approaching Charax, it would understand-finally-the full extent of Belisarius' plan. At which point Link would order an all-out, frenzied assault on Charax, driving the Malwa troops forward as if they were beasts themselves. Stampeding herds of horses, meeting those incoming human herds, would create as much confusion as possible-confusion which would delay the Malwa advance, and give the escaping Romans that much greater a chance to save their own lives.

It took even less time to organize the evacuation of the civilians. The civilians were all women. There had been a handful of male Persian civilians when the Romans took the city. Within a day, after the women told their tales, they had been executed along with the Malwa soldiers with whom they had collaborated.

The female civilians had been warned days in advance, and now were being rounded up. But there was hardly any "rounding up" to do. Since the Romans had arrived and freed them from Malwa subjugation, none of Charax's women had strayed more than a few yards away from a Roman soldier at any time of the day or night. That was from their own choice, not coercion. They had been like half-drowned kittens, desperately clutching a log for survival.

As poor women thrust into such a wretched state have done throughout history, the survivors of Malwa Charax had become camp followers of the Roman army. Depending on their age, appearance, and temperament, they had become concubines, cooks, laundresses, nurses-more often than not, all of those combined. And if their current status was dismal, by abstract standards, it seemed like a virtual paradise to them.

The Roman soldiers, crude as they might be, were rarely brutal to their women. Belisarius' soldiers, at least. Other Roman armies might have been. But, between Belisarius' discipline-to which they had long been accustomed-and their own horror at Malwa bestiality, the soldiers had conducted themselves in a manner which might almost be called chivalrous. So long, of course, as the term "chivalrous" is understood to include: vulgarity; coarse humor; the unthinking assumption that the women would feed them, clean up after them and do the washing; and, needless to say, an instant readiness to copulate using any means short of outright rape.

In truth, the social position of most of the women was no worse than it had been before the Malwa invasion. More licentious, true. But there was this by way of compensation: the new men in their lives had proven themselves to be tough enough to give those women a real chance for survival. That is no small thing, in the vortex of a raging war. Belisarius, through his officers, had already told the women that they would be reunited with whatever families they might still have. But, not to his surprise, the majority had made clear that they would just as soon remain camp followers of his army-wherever it went.

The difficulty in evacuating the women, therefore, was not in collecting them. Those women who could move were gathered on the docks sooner than anyone else. The problem was that, even weeks after the liberation of Charax, many of the women could not move. At least a third of the women who had been enslaved in the military brothels were still too weak or sick to move under their own power. Their evacuation posed a major medical undertaking.

That evacuation took three hours, before all the litters were carried aboard the ships. In the end, only twelve women were left behind, in the medical ward set aside for the most badly abused slaves. All of them were unconscious, and so close to death that moving them seemed impossible.

The Roman officer in charge of evacuating that medical ward danced back and forth, fretful and indecisive. A nurse, who had herself been chained in one of the brothels, whispered to a Kushan soldier. He handed her his dagger. The nurse, cold-faced, ordered everyone out of the ward, using a tone which Empress Theodora would have approved. When she emerged, five minutes later, her face was calm, her manner relaxed. She had even taken the time to clean the dagger.

All that remained was the fighting retreat of the soldiers holding the front lines. Under any circumstances in the world, other than the one in which he found himself, Belisarius would have overseen that retreat personally. His bodyguards would have been driven half-insane, from the risks he would have taken. But today-

Maurice did not even bother to discuss it with Belisarius. He simply carried out the task himself. The work was not beyond his capability, after all. In truth, Maurice probably led that retreat as well as Belisarius could have. And there was an added advantage, at least to the soldiers who served as Maurice's bodyguards. The grizzled veteran had a proper understanding of the proper place of a proper commanding officer in the middle of a battle, thank you.

So, in one of history's little ironies, the military genius who led what was arguably, up to that day, the most daring and brilliant campaign of all time, played no role in its dramatic conclusion. Never even noticed it, in truth. Instead, his eye glued to a telescope, the general found himself undergoing a brand-new experience.

He knew, abstractly, of the anguish Antonina had always undergone whenever he went off to war. And he had chuckled, hearing the tales from Maurice and Irene afterward, of the way Antonia spent the day after his departure.

He was chuckling no longer. Belisarius, watching his wife wage a battle at sea-right under his eyes, but beyond his reach or control-finally understood what it meant. To stare at a horse.