The tide of victory

Chapter 22

Barbaricum

Autumn, 533 A.D.

The pilot in the bow of Belisarius' ship proved to be just as good as his boasts. Half an hour before dawn, just as he had promised, the heavily laden ship slid up onto the bank of the river. The bank, as could be expected from one of the many outlets of the Indus, was muddy. But even a landsman like Belisarius could tell, from the sudden, half-lurching way in which the ship came to a halt, that the ground was firm enough to bear the weight of men and horses.

For two weeks, once it had become clear that monsoon season was drawing to a close, Belisarius had been sending small parties to scout the Indus delta. Landing in small boats under cover of night, the scouts had probed the firmness of the ground along the many mouths of the river. Every year during the monsoon season, the great flow of the Indus deposited untold tons of silt in the delta. Until that new soil was dry enough, the project of landing thousands of men, horses and equipment was impossible.

"Nice to have accurate scouting," said Maurice, standing next to the general.

"It'll still be a challenge, but the ground should be firm enough. Barely, but enough."

Belisarius turned his head. In the faint light shed by a crescent moon, he could make out the shape of the next ship sliding alongside his own onto the bank. Other such ships, he knew, were coming to rest beyond that one-and many more still along two other nearby outlets of the river. Over the course of the next three days, Belisarius intended to land a large part of his entire army. Thirty thousand men, in all. Aide claimed it was the largest amphibious assault in all of human history to that day.

The general's eyes now moved to the bustling activity on his own ship. Already, the first combat engineers-a new military specialty which Belisarius had created over the past year-were clambering over the side of the ship. Those men were completely unarmored and bore no weapons of any kind beyond knives. Their task, for the moment at least, was not to fight. Their task was to make it possible for others to do so.

No sooner had the first engineers alit on the bank than others began handing them reed mats. Moving quickly, the engineers began laying the mats over the soft soil, creating a narrow pathway away from the still-soggy ground immediately by the riverbed.

"They're moving faster than I expected," grunted Maurice. "With as little training and preparation as we'd been able to give them. "

Belisarius chuckled. Maurice was still a bit disgruntled over the change of plans which had been made the past summer, after the sabotage attempt at Charax.

He's just grumbling, grumbled Aide. That man is never satisfied. How much training does it take to lay down some simple reed mats, anyway?

It's not all that simple, replied Belisarius. Moving in the dark, in unfamiliar territory, with the fear of enemy attack in the back of their minds-and them with neither weapons nor armor? Not to mention that probably half of them are still seasick.

He glanced at the sky. Still no sign of dawn, but the moon gave out just enough light to see that the sky was cloudless.

Pray this clear weather holds up, he continued. The three days we spent at sea waiting for it took a toll on most of the men. They're not sailors, you know.

Aide accepted the implied reproof without protest. For all that the crystal being had come to understand the nature of what he called his "protoplasmic brethren," Aide knew he was still prone to overlook the crude facts of protoplasmic existence. On the other hand. he couldn't have laid down those simple mats at all.

There was a new clattering noise. The Arab scouts were bringing their mounts out of the hold and beginning to walk them off the gangplank onto the reed-matted soil of the river. The horses had suffered from rough weather at sea at least as much as the men. But they were so eager to get their feet on terra firma that they made no effort to fight their handlers. The biggest problem the Arab scouts faced, in fact, was keeping the beasts from stampeding madly off the deck of the ship.

Abbu rolled over to Belisarius. The old Arab scout leader was practically swaggering.

"One day, General, no more." Abbu's pronouncement came with the certainty of a prophet. "One day from now, all opposition will be cleared to the walls of Barbaricum."

The old man's cheerful assurance transformed instantly into doom and gloom. He and Maurice exchanged a mutually satisfactory glower. Two natural-born pessimists agreeing on the sorry state of the universe.

"Thereafter, of course, disaster will follow." Abbu's thick beard jounced with satisfaction. "Disaster and ruin. The cannons will not arrive in time. The seaward assault will fail miserably, most of your newfangled gunships adrift or sunk outright. Your army will starve outside the walls of the city."

"Barbaricum doesn't have any walls," commented Belisarius mildly. "The cannons we're offloading are mostly to stop any relief ships bringing reinforcements from upriver. If there are any, that is. Khusrau should be starting his own attack out of the Kacchi desert any day now. Who knows? He may have begun already."

Abbu was not mollified. "Persians! Attacking through a desert? By now, half of them are bones bleaching in the sun. Mark my words, General of Rome. We are destined for an early grave."

Belisarius had to fight to keep from grinning. Abbu's high spirits were infectious. From years of working with the old bandit-in-all-but-name, Belisarius knew full well that Abbu's confidence stood in direct-and inverse-proportion to his grousing. A gloomy and morose Abbu was a man filled with high morale. A cheerful Abbu, dismissing all danger lightly, was a man with his back to the wall and expecting imminent demise.

"Be off, Abbu," Belisarius chuckled. "Clear any and all Malwa from my path."

"That!" The Arab scout began to turn away, heading for his horse. "That! The only thing which will go as planned!"

Within a minute or so, Abbu was over the side and organizing the Arab outriders. Within ten minutes, hundreds of lightly armed Arabs-from many ships-were disappearing into the darkness. Moving as swiftly as any light cavalry on earth, they would fall on any Malwa troops outside Barbaricum's shelter and either kill them or drive them into the port.

When the last Arab had vanished into the purple gloom of a barely breaking day, Belisarius turned to Maurice.

"So? Where are your predictions of catastrophe?"

Maurice grunted. "Abbu said it all. Nothing to add."

A heavier clattering began. The first of the Roman warhorses were being brought onto the deck, and the heavily armored cataphracts were clumping around to lead them off the ship.

Maurice's face seemed to lighten a bit. Or, perhaps, it was simply that daylight was beginning to spread. "Might not be so bad, though. Abbu always was a pessimist. We might be able to fight our way back through the mountains, after the disaster, with maybe a tenth of the army still alive."

By the time Belisarius caught sight of Barbaricum, the city was already burning. Burning fiercely, in fact-far more than any city made primarily from mudbrick should have been.

"No way the ships' guns caused that," said Maurice.

Belisarius shook his head. He halted his horse atop a slight rise in the landscape-more like a little mound of dry mud than a "rise"-and cocked an ear. He couldn't see the Roman fleet beyond the port, but he could hear the sound of its cannonade.

"Sounds good, though," he said quietly. "I don't think the fleet has suffered much damage."

He listened for perhaps five minutes longer. Only once, in that time, did he hear the deeper roar of one of the Malwa siege guns positioned to protect the harbor. And even that one sounded odd. Slightly muted, as if-

"They're using light powder loads," said Gregory. The commander of the artillery force which was off-loading onto the delta-miles behind them, now-had accompanied Belisarius and Maurice. "Looks like you were right, General. They're saving it for something else."

Belisarius left off listening to the cannon fire and studied Barbaricum. Much of the city was invisible, shrouded in smoke. But, here and there, he could see portions of the mudbrick buildings which made up most of the city's outlying areas.

Barbaricum was an unwalled city. But its residential areas were so tightly packed, one building abutting another, that at a superficial glance they appeared to form a defensive wall. The more so since, so far as he could see, there were no windows in any of the exterior walls of the buildings. That might be due to conscious planning, but Belisarius suspected it was simply a matter of cost. The population of Barbaricum, as the name itself implied, was polyglot and largely transient. The simplest and cheapest construction would be the norm.

He reached down into a saddlebag and pulled out his telescope. Then, looking for gaps in the smoke, he began studying the few alleyways which opened into the city's interior. Still, he could see hardly anything. The alleyways were narrow and crooked, providing only short lines of sight. Needless to say, they were filled with refuse. Only one of the alleys-the one Belisarius focused his attention upon-provided a glimpse of more than a few yards into Barbaricum.

A sudden lull in the cannon fire, perhaps combined with a slight shift in the wind, allowed him for the first time to hear sounds coming from the city itself. Sounds of screaming.

"You were right," repeated Gregory. The words were almost hissed.

Belisarius tightened his jaws. As soon as Gregory began to speak, he had caught sight through the telescope of the first signs of movement in the city. Four people, dressed in rags-two women and two children, he thought-were running down one of the alleyways. Trying to get out of the city.

As he watched, one of the women stumbled and fell. For a moment, Belisarius thought she had tripped over some of the refuse in the alley. Twisted an ankle or broken a bone, judging from the way she was writhing on the ground. Her face was distorted by a grimace. Belisarius could hear nothing, but he was quite sure she was screaming.

Then he spotted the arrow sticking out of the back of the woman's leg. An instant later, another arrow took her in the ribs. Now he could hear her screams.

When the woman fell, one of the children had stopped and hesitated. Began to turn back, until the other woman grabbed the child and resumed the race to get out of the city.

Too late. Three soldiers came into sight, racing down the alley. A second or two later, a Mahaveda priest became visible also. The priest was shouting something. When the soldiers reached the wounded woman lying in the alley, one of them paused just long enough to slash her neck with a sword. Arterial blood spurted against the grimy walls of the nearest building.

The other two soldiers kept up their pursuit of the surviving woman and the two children. The refugees were now almost out of the city.

Behind him, Belisarius heard one of his bodyguards snarling a curse. Priscus, that was-his eyesight was superb, and he had no need of a telescope to follow what was happening.

"We could maybe reach-" said the cataphract, uncertainly.

Before Belisarius could shake his head, Aide's voice was ringing in his mind.

No! No! That city is a death-trap!

Belisarius sighed. He lowered the telescope and turned his head.

"I'm sorry, Priscus. We can't risk it. The Malwa started those fires, not our cannons. That was deliberate. They always knew they couldn't hold Barbaricum against a serious assault. Not so long as we control the sea. So they're starting the scorched earth policy right here. And, as I feared-and expected-that will include slaughtering the populace."

He turned back, forcing himself to watch the last moments, though he saw no reason to use the telescope. The two soldiers had overtaken the fleeing woman and children just outside the city. Blades flashed in the distance. Then, moving more slowly, the two soldiers jogged back to their fellow and the priest, who were standing at the mouth of the alley. Once the small party was reunited, they began prowling back into the city's interior. They reminded Belisarius of scavengers, searching rubbage for scraps of food.

"Fucking animals," snarled Priscus. "But wait till they try to leave themselves."

The cataphract's eyes ranged the landscape behind the small command party. The sight seemed to fill his hard face with satisfaction.

Already, columns of Roman troops could be seen marching through the flat terrain. Some of those soldiers were following the path left by Belisarius and his party. Most of them, however, were ranging inland. Within a few hours, Barbaricum would be surrounded by the Roman army. The city was already surrounded by a cavalry screen.

"No prisoners," Priscus growled. He gave Belisarius a hard, almost angry stare. The Roman commander's policy of not allowing atrocities had, over the past two years, become firmly established throughout his army. With, as always, his personal household troops-bucellarii, as the Romans called them-ready to enforce the policy. Priscus was one of those bucellarii himself, and normally had no quarrel with the policy. Today, clearly enough, discipline was straining at the leash.

Belisarius returned the stare with one that was just as hard, if not angry. "Don't be stupid, Priscus," he said calmly. "Most of those soldiers are just following orders. And after they finish butchering the civilians, we're going to need them for a labor force."

His lips quirked for a moment, before he offered the consolation prize. "Mahaveda priests, on the other hand, are unaccustomed to hard labor. So I don't believe there's any need to keep them alive. Or any officers, for that matter."

Priscus scowled, as did Isaac and the rest of Belisarius' small squad of bodyguards. But none of them made any further argument or protest.

"Cheer up, lads," said Maurice. The words were accompanied by a burbling laugh so harsh it sounded like stones clashing in a torrent. "Nobody said anything about making their life easy."

The chiliarch-the term meant, literally, "ruler of a thousand," though Maurice commanded far more than a thousand men-turned in his saddle and grinned at Priscus and the other cataphracts. The teeth, shining in his rough-hewn, high-cheeked, gray-bearded face, gave the man more than a passing resemblance to an old wolf.

"We may not work the bastards to death," he continued cheerily. "Not quite. But they'll be wishing we had, be sure of it."

His words, beginning with "bastards to death," were punctuated by a ripple of sharp, cracking explosions.

"They're destroying the big guns at the harbor," pronounced Gregory.

No sooner were those words out, than a sudden roar erupted from the city. The sound of a gigantic explosion billowed across the countryside. A large part of Barbaricum-the port area, it seemed-vanished under a huge cloud of smoke and debris.

"They're blowing the whole harbor area itself, now." Gregory grimaced. "I'd have thought they'd wait a bit. Most of the men destroying the guns must have been caught. " His words trailed off, as he shook his head.

Belisarius was a bit surprised himself. Malwa artillery was staffed exclusively by Malwa kshatriya, the warrior caste. As a rule, the Malwa tended to coddle that elite class. He had expected the Malwa commander of Barbaricum to try to include the kshatriya in the break-out.

There won't be a break-out, said Aide suddenly. No way to be sure, but.

As with Gregory, faced with such incredible ruthlessness, Aide's thoughts trailed into silence. Belisarius could almost picture the crystalline equivalent of a headshake.

Belisarius completed the thought, speaking aloud for the benefit of the men around him.

"At a guess, I'd say the Mahaveda have usurped command in Barbaricum. Probably had the actual military commander summarily executed. For incompetence, or dereliction of duty-whatever. The priests will be running the show entirely, from now on."

Clearly enough, from the look of satisfaction which came over the faces of Maurice, Gregory, and his bodyguards, that thought caused them no great discomfort. None at all, truth be told.

"Good riddance," muttered Isaac. "Let the bastards all burn in hell."

Priscus rumbled a laugh, of sorts. "Nice. We can just sit out here and watch them fry."

Gregory's face was now creased with a frown. "Maybe not. If there are any Kushans in Barbaricum, I'd be surprised if they didn't mutiny. Once they finally understood what the priests have in store for them."

Belisarius began to speak, but fell silent once he saw Maurice shake his head. Unlike Gregory, who had been preoccupied with off-loading his troops' equipment, Maurice had been present two nights before when Belisarius heard the report of the spies returned from Barbaricum.

"There aren't any Kushans here," announced Maurice. "In fact, according to our spies, the Malwa are pulling them out of the Indus entirely." Again, he grinned like a wolf. "I'm willing to bet Kungas has been chewing his way through central Asia, and the word is spreading. Apparently, several thousand Kushans stationed in the upper valley mutinied. Last anyone saw, they were heading up the Jhelum, with the heads of Mahaveda priests and Malwa kshatriya-and not a few Ye-tai-perched on their pikes."

Geography was not Gregory's best subject. "What's the Jhelum?"

"One of the tributaries of the Indus," replied Belisarius. "It provides the easy access-relatively easy, that is-to the Hindu Kush. And Peshawar, where Kungas plans to rebuild the Kushan capital."

"Oh."

Priscus laughed. "Oh! The fucking Malwa empire is starting to come apart at the seams."

Belisarius saw no reason to correct the cataphract's overly optimistic assessment. In reality, he knew, the great Malwa empire-still the world's most powerful-could hardly be described as "coming apart at the seams."

True, the northwest Deccan was lost entirely, except for Bharakuccha and the lowlands along the Narmada river. But the Malwa conquest of the Andhra empire was only a few years in the past, and the region had never really been incorporated by the Malwa. Even the southern and eastern portions of conquered Andhra had been sullen and restive. The northwest-Majarashtra, the heartland of the Marathas-had never stopped fighting openly, even before Shakuntala escaped captivity and provided the rebels with a rallying point.

As for the Kushans.

They never fit very well into the Malwa scheme of things, said Aide. Not pampered and privileged like the Ye-tai, not locked in by custom and tradition like the Rajputs-a square peg in a round hole. Always were, at the best of times. They were bound to break away, given any chance at all.

After a moment's silence, Aide continued his thoughts:

You can't say the Malwa empire is "coming apart at the seams" until the heartland erupts in rebellion. The Ganges valley where the tens of millions of Malwa subjects are concentrated. And not just rebels in the forests of Bihar and Bengal, either. Peasants in the plain, and townsmen in the great cities. That's what it will take. And they won't risk rebellion-not after the massacre of Ranapur-unless they see a real chance of winning. Of which there is none, so long as the Malwa dynasty stays intact and commands the allegiance of the Ye-tai and Rajputs.

Again, a moment's silence. Then, in a thought filled with satisfaction: Still. I think it's fair to say that cracks are showing. Big ones.

Belisarius said nothing in response. In the minutes that followed, as one great explosion after another announced the rolling destruction of Barbaricum, he never even bothered to watch. He was turned in the saddle, staring to the northeast. There, somewhere beyond the horizon, lay Rajputana. That harsh and arid hill country was the forge in which the Rajputs had been created.

And if they begin to crack.

The Malwa will still have the Ye-tai, cautioned Aide. The Ye-tai have nowhere else to go. Especially if Kungas succeeds in reconquering the lands of the former Kushan empire, where the Ye-tai once had their stronghold. Before they accepted the Malwa offer to become the most privileged class in India after the Malwa themselves.

Belisarius smiled crookedly. "Nowhere else to go?" Don't be too sure of that, Aide. Enterprising men-especially ones who can see the handwriting on the wall-can find avenues of escape in many places. What was it that fellow said? The one you told me about in the future that would have been, who made so many fine quips.

Dr. Samuel Johnson. "Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."