The Dance of Time

Chapter 35

The Punjab

By the time Khusrau and his army reached the Kohat Pass, the emperor of the Persians was in an excellent frame of mind.

First, because he'd succeeded in taking most of the western Punjab for his empire. Formally speaking, at least, even if Persian occupation and rule was still almost meaningless for the inhabitants. He hadn't even bothered to leave behind detachments of dehgans under newly appointed provincial governments to begin establishing an administration.

He would, soon enough. In the meantime, there was still a war to be won and he only had thirty thousand troops at his disposal. Not enough to peel off even small detachments for garrison duty. Not with a Malwa army still in the Punjab that numbered at least one hundred and fifty thousand.

Second, because-here and there-he'd been able to grind up some more sahrdaran and vurzurgan hotheads in foolish charges against Malwa garrisons. It was amazing, really, how thick-headed those classes were.

Or, perhaps, it was simply their growing sense of desperation. For centuries, the grandees had been the real power in Persia. True, none of the seven great sahrdaran families or their vurzurgan affiliates ever formally challenged the right of an emperor to rule. Or that the emperor would always come from the imperial clan. But the reality had been that emperors were made and broken, at each and every succession, by the grandees. Those contestants for the throne who got their support, won. Those who didn't, lost their heads.

Their power had stemmed, ultimately, from two sources. One was their control of great swathes of land in a nation that was still almost entirely agricultural, which made them phenomenally wealthy. The other was their ability to field great numbers of armored heavy cavalry, which had been the core of Persia's might for centuries, because of that wealth.

They were losing both, now. Not quickly, no, but surely nonetheless. The huge areas of western India formerly ruled by the Malwa that Khusrau was incorporating into his empire, all of Sind and a third of the Punjab, were not being parceled out to the grandees, as they would have been in times past. Instead, Khusrau was adapting the Roman model and setting up an imperial administration, staffed by dehgans who answered directly to him and his appointed governors-most of whom were dehgans themselves.

Worse still, the grandees were witnessing the death knell of the armored horseman as the king of battles. Within a generation, even in Persia, it would be infantry armed with guns who constituted the core of imperial might. Infantry whose soldiers would be drawn, as often as not, from the newly conquered territories. Indian peasants from the Sind or the Punjab, who would answer to the emperor, not the grandees-and would do so willingly, because the Persian emperor had given their clans and tribes a far more just and lenient rule than they'd ever experienced at the hands of the Malwa.

The continued insistence of the grandees to launch their beloved cavalry charges, Khusrau thought, was simply the willful blindness of men who could not accept their coming fate.

So be it. Khusrau was quite happy to oblige them. Why not? They were ferocious cavalry, after all, so they generally managed to seize the small cities and towns they attacked. And every sahrdaran and vurzurgan who died in the doing was one less the emperor would have to quarrel with on the morrow.

By the time the war was over, only the Suren would remain as powerful as they had been, of the seven great families. And under Baresmanas' sure leadership, the Suren were reaching an accommodation with the emperor. They'd long been the premier family of the seven, after all, and now they had the emperor's favor. Unlike the rest, the Suren would accept a role that diminished them as a family but would expand their power and influence as individuals within the empire.

Last-best of all-there were the dehgans. The knightly class of Persia's nobility had always chafed under the yoke of the grandees. But they'd accepted that yoke, in the past, since they saw no alternative.

Khusrau was giving them an alternative, now, and they were seizing it. For a modest dehgan from a small village, the chance to become an imperial administrator or governor was a far better prospect than anything the grandees would offer. In the increasingly unlikely event that the grandees tried to launch a rebellion against Khusrau, he was not only sure he could crush them easily-but he'd have the assistance of most of the grandees' own feudal retainers in doing so.

* * *

"You're certainly looking cheerful, Your Majesty," said Irene. She'd come to meet him in a pavilion she'd had hastily set up at the crest of the pass, once she got word that the Persian army was approaching the borders of the Kushan kingdom.

Well, not quite at the crest. The pavilion was positioned on a small knoll a few hundreds yards below the crest, and the fortresses the Kushans had built upon it.

Khusrau-very cheerfully-gazed up at those fortifications.

"Very nicely built," he said. "I'd certainly hate to be the one who ever tried to storm them."

Lowering his eyes, and seeing the questioning look in Irene's eyes, Khusrau grinned. "Oh, don't be silly. Yes, I'm in a very good mood. For many reasons. One of them is that I don't have the prospect of watching my army bleed to death on these horrid-looking rocks."

Irene smiled. Khusrau, still grinning, turned slightly and pointed with his finger to the plain below. "I thought I'd found a small town there. With a modest garrison. Just big enough to formally mark the boundary of the Persian empire. And another town like it, a similarly discreet distance below the Margalla Pass. Any objection?"

Irene's smile widened considerably. "Of course not, Your Majesty. The kingdom of the Kushans would not presume to quarrel with whatever the Emperor of Iran and non-Iran chose to do within his own realm."

"Splendid. I'll be off, then. Still many more battles to fight. The Romans-staunch fellows-have most of the Malwa army pinned down at the Triangle, so I thought I'd take advantage of the opportunity to plunder and ravage their northerly towns. I might even threaten Multan. Won't try to take it, though. The garrison's too big."

The grin seemed fixed on his face. "Where's King Kungas, by the way?"

Before Irene could answer, he waved his hand. "None of my business, of course."

Irene hesitated, a moment. Then, sure that the Persians had no intentions upon the Vale of Peshawar, she said: "Actually, it is your business. We are allies, after all. My husband took most of our army east, to intercept and ambush the army Great Lady Sati is leading back to the Gangetic plain to fight Damodara. I've gotten word from him. The ambush was successful and he's continuing the pursuit."

That caused the emperor's grin to fade away. His eyebrows lifted. "We'd heard from our spies that she had something like forty thousand troops. Kungas can't possibly-"

" 'Pursuit' is perhaps not the right term. He thinks Belisarius is somewhere out there, also, although he's not sure. He'll stay at a distance from Sati's force and simply harass them, until he knows."

"Ah." Khusrau's head swiveled, toward the east. "Belisarius. . Yes, he might well be there, by now. He was gone from the Triangle, when I arrived. Maurice was very mysterious about it. But I suspect-I have spies too, you know-that he reached an agreement with the Rajputs. If I'm right, he crossed the Thar with a small force to organize and lead a Rajput rebellion."

Irene's gaze followed his. "I wondered. I could see no way-neither could my husband-that he could lead a sizeable Roman force from the Triangle into the Ganges. But through Rajputana. ." She chuckled softly. "It would be quite like him. I worry about that man's soul, sometimes. How will the angels cope with so many angles?"

Khusrau's chuckle was a louder thing. "Say better, how will the devils?"

He gave her a little bow. "And now, Queen of the Kushans, I must be off."

* * *

Belisarius drove the march south even more ruthlessly than he'd driven the one north.

"I want to catch them strung out in marching order," he explained to the Rajput kings, after sending out a host of Arab and Pathan scouts to find his target.

"Good plan," said Dasal.

"It's so hot," half-complained his brother.

"Stop whining, youngster. Hot for the Malwa, too. Still hotter, when we catch them."

* * *

Kungas studied the scene on the opposite side of the Ganges. As dry and hot as it was, the fires that had been started over there were burned out by now, although plumes of smoke were rising here and there from still-smoldering ashes.

"How far?" he asked.

"As far down the river as we've gotten reports," Kujulo replied, "from the scouts that have come back."

"It must have been Belisarius," said Vima. "But I don't understand why he burned here. I'd have thought he'd be burning in front of her."

"Who's to say he isn't?" Kungas left off his examination of the opposite bank and studied the river itself. As big as it was, the Ganges had already swept downriver whatever traces of the burning had fallen into it.

"I think he wants to pin the bitch here, at the river. That's why he burned behind her. To trick her into coming back."

Vima frowned. "But why? If she's here, she's got water. It'd be better to burn her out when she's stranded between the rivers."

Kujulo shrugged. "If it worked, yes. But it's not that easy to 'strand' an army that big. She'd probably have enough supplies with her to make it to the Yamuna."

"She could get stored food from the garrisoned towns, too," said Kungas. "Belisarius is probably bypassing them, just burning everything else. I don't think he can have so big an army that he'd want to suffer casualties in a lot of little sieges and assaults. Especially if he's trying to move quickly."

Finally, he spotted what he was looking for, far down the river. A small cluster of little fishing boats.

"No, it makes sense. If he tricks her into coming back here, he can pin her against the river. Especially with us on the other side to keep her from crossing-which we will."

He pointed at the boats. "We'll use those to ferry a party across the river. Then we'll send cavalry up and down both banks of the river. Seize any boats we find, and wreck or burn any bridges, any timber-anything; ropes, whatever-that could be used to build new bridges or boats. We'll keep the bitch from crossing, while Belisarius lets her army starve to death. They'll have water, but that's all they'll have."

"She'll try to march down the Ganges," Vima pointed out.

"Yes, she will. With Belisarius burning everything before her on that side, and us doing the same on this side. And killing any foraging parties she tries to send out. I don't think she'll make it to a big enough garrisoned city-it'd have to be Kangora-before her army starts to fall apart."

He turned away from the river. "It's as good a plan as any-and I'm not going to try to second-guess Belisarius."

* * *

"But there have been no communications from the Great Lady since she reached the headwaters of the Sutlej!" protested the chief priest.

Lord Samudra was no longer even trying to be polite to the man-or any of the other pestiferous priests Sati had left behind in the Punjab to "oversee" him. He rarely even let them into his command bunker.

"Of course we haven't!" he snarled. "Until I can get an army up there to bottle them back up in the Vale of Peshawar, the Kushans will have raiding parties all over the area. For sure and certain, they'll have cut the telegraph lines. And they'll ambush any couriers she might have sent."

"You should-"

"You should! You should!" He clenched his fist and held it just under the priest's nose. "I've got eighty thousand Romans just to the south-"

"That's nonsense! There can't be more than-"

"— and fifty thousand Persians threatening to penetrate our lines in the north. In the middle of this, you want me to-"

"— can't be more than thirty thousand-"

"Be silent!" Samudra shrieked. It was all he could do not to strike the priest with his fist.

With a great effort, he reined in his temper. "Who is the expert at gauging the size of armies, priest? Me or you? If I say I'm facing enemy forces numbering one hundred and thirty thousand men-barely smaller than my own-then that's what I'm facing!"

He lowered his fist by the expedient of throwing his whole hand to the side. The fist opened, and the forefinger indicated the door to the bunker.

"Get. Out. Out! The Great Lady instructed me to hold our lines, no matter what, and that is what I shall do. The Kushans are a distraction. We will deal with them when the time comes."

* * *

"He's panicking," mused Maurice, peeking over the fortified wall and looking to the north. "He's hunkering down everywhere, barely moving at all."

"Except for getting those ironclads into the Indus," Menander said grumpily. "The latest spy reports say that canal he's having dug is within two miles of the river."

Maurice thought about it. "Better leave off any more forays upriver with the Justinian, then. We'll need to get those minefields laid again."

"Eusebius is already working on it. He's got the mines mostly assembled and says he can start laying them in three days. That leaves me enough time-"

"Forget it. What's the point, Menander? We've already panicked them enough. From here on in, all we have to do is squat here."

He lowered his head and pointed over the wall with an upraised finger. "Belisarius asked us to keep that huge army locked up, and by God we've done so. The last thing I want is to take the risk that some mishap to the Justinian might boost their confidence."

"But-"

"Forget it, I said."

"We accept!" Anna exclaimed, as soon as she finished reading the radio message from Bharakuccha. Then, with a tiny start, glanced at Calopodius. "Assuming, of course, you agree."

Her husband grinned. "I can imagine the consequences if I didn't! But I agree, anyway. It's a good idea."

He hesitated a moment. Then:

"We'd have to live there ourselves, you understand."

"Yes, of course. Perhaps it would be best if we asked Antonina to find us a villa. ."

"Yes." He instructed the operator to send that message.

A few minutes later, listening to the reply, Calopodius started laughing softly.

"What's so funny?" asked Anna. "I can't make any sense out of that bzz-bzz-bzz."

"Wait. You'll see in a moment, when you can read it yourself."

The radio operator finished recording the message and handed it to Anna. After she skimmed through, she smiled ruefully.

"Well, that's that."

MUST BE JOKING STOP WHY GET VILLA WHEN CAN HAVE PART OF GOPTRI PALACE STOP WILL SET ASIDE CHOICE SUITE FOR YOU STOP PREFER RUBY OR EMERALD DECOR STOP

* * *

Reading the same message, Lord Samudra's gloom deepened. The Romans weren't even bothering to hide their communications any longer. Using the radio openly, when they could have used the telegraph!

"They're already carving us up," he muttered.

"Excuse me, Lord? I didn't quite hear that," said one of his lieutenants.

Samudra shook his head. "Never mind. What's the situation at Multan?"

"We just got a telegraph message from the garrison commander. He says the refugees are still pouring into the city. Much more, he says, and the city's defenses will be at risk."

The Malwa commander took a deep breath; then, slowly, sighed it out. "We can't hold Multan," he said quietly, speaking more to himself than to the lieutenant.

Shaking his head again, he said more loudly: "Send orders to the garrison commander to evacuate his troops from Multan and bring them south. We'll need his forces to reinforce our own down here. And start building fortification across our northern lines. The Persians will be attacking us, soon enough."

"Yes, Lord. And the city's residents? The refugees?"

"Not my affair!" snapped Samudra. "Tell the commander to abandon them-and if any try to follow his army, cut them down. We do not have room for those refugees here, either. Soon enough, we'll be fighting for our lives."

* * *

The next morning, the group of priests left behind by Link forced their way into Samudra's bunker.

"You cannot abandon Multan!" shouted the head priest.

But Samudra had known they would come, and had prepared for it. By now, all of his officers were as sick and tired of the priests as he was.

"Arrest them," he commanded.

It was done quickly, by a specially selected unit of Ye-tai. After the squawking priests were shoved into the bunker set aside for them, the commander of the Ye-tai unit reported back to Samudra.

"When, Lord?"

Samudra hesitated. But not for long. This step, like all the others he had taken, was being forced upon him. He had no choices, any longer.

"Do it now. There's no point in waiting. But make sure-certain, you understand-that there is no trace of evidence left. When"-he almost said if-"we have to answer to Great Lady Sati, there can be no questions."

"Yes, Lord."

* * *

The Ye-tai commander got promoted that evening. The explosion that destroyed the bunker and all the priests in it was splendidly handled. Unfortunate, of course, that by sheer chance a Roman rocket had landed a direct hit on it. Still more unfortunate, that the priests had apparently been so careless as to store gunpowder in the bunker.

The mahamimamsa who might have disputed that-which they would have, since they would have been the ones to handle the munitions-had vanished also. Nothing so fancy for them, however. By now, the open sewers that had turned most of the huge Malwa army camp into a stinking mess contained innumerable bodies. Who could tell one from the other, even if anyone tried?

* * *

By the following day, in any event, it was clear that no one ever would. The epidemic Samudra feared had arrived, finally, erupting from the multitude of festering spots of disease. Soon, there would be too many bodies to burn. More precisely, they no longer had enough flammable material in the area to burn them. The sewers and the rivers would have to serve instead.

Perhaps, if they were lucky, the bodies floating down the Indus and the Chenab would spread the disease into the Roman lines in the Iron Triangle.

* * *

By the time Link and its army returned to the banks of the Ganges, the cyborg that ruled the Malwa empire was as close to what humans would have called desperation as that inhuman intelligence could ever become. It was a strange sort of desperation, though; not one that any human being would have recognized as such.

For Link, the universe consisted solely of probabilities. Where a human would have become desperate from thinking doom was almost certain, Link would have handled such long odds with the same uncaring detachment that it assessed very favorable probabilities.

The problem lay elsewhere. It was becoming impossible to gauge the probabilities at all. The war was dissolving into a thing of sheer chaos, with all data hopelessly corrupted. A superhuman intelligence that could have assessed alternate courses of action and chosen among them based on lightning-quick calculations, simply spun in circles. Its phenomenal mind had no more traction than a wheel trapped in slick mud.

Dimly, and for the first time, a mentality never designed to do so understood that its great enemy had deliberately aimed for this result.

Bizarre. Link could understand the purpose, but slipped whenever it tried to penetrate the logic of the thing. How could any sane mind deliberately seek to undermine all probabilities? Deliberately strive to shatter all points of certainty? As if an intelligent being were a mindless shark, dissolving all logic into a fluid through which it might swim.

For the millionth time, Link examined the enormous records of the history of warfare that it possessed. And, finally, for the first time-dimly-began to realize that the ever-recurrent phrase "the art of war" was not simply a primitive fetish. Not simply the superstitious way that semi-savages would consider the science of armed conflict.

It almost managed something a human would have called resentment, then. Not at its great enemy, but at the new gods who had sent it here on its mission. And failed to prepare it properly.

But the moment was fleeting. Link was not designed to waste time considering impossibilities. The effort it had taken the new gods to transport Link and its accompanying machinery had almost exhausted them economically. Indeed, the energy expenditure had been so great that they had been forced to destroy a planet in the doing.

Their own. The centuries of preparation-most of it required by the erection of the power and transmission grids that had blanketed the surface-could not possibly have been done on any other planet. Not with the Great Ones moving between the star systems, watching everything.

The surviving new gods-the elite of that elite-had retreated to a heavily fortified asteroid to await the new universe that Link would create for them. They could defend themselves against the Great Ones, from that fortress, but could not possibly mount another intervention into human history.

They had taken a great gamble on Link. An excellent gamble, with all the probability calculations falling within the same margin of near-certainty.

And now. .

Nothing but chaos. How was Link to move in that utterly alien fluid?

* * *

"Your commands, Great Lady?"

Link's sheath looked up at the commander of the army. Incredibly, it hesitated.

Not long enough, of course, for the commander himself to notice. To a human, a thousandth of second was meaningless.

But Link knew. Incredibly, it almost said: "I'm not sure. What do you recommend?"

It did not, of course. Link was not designed to consider impossibilities.