The tide of victory

Chapter 24

The Indus

Autumn, 533 A.D.

As soon as Belisarius emerged at daybreak from his small cabin on the cargo vessel which was slowly moving up the Indus, he began scanning the area on both sides of the river with his telescope.

He was relieved by what he saw. The monsoon season, by all reports as well as his own experience escaping from India three years before, ended earlier in the Indus valley than it did in the subcontinent itself. The view through the telescope seemed to confirm that. Everywhere he looked, the fertile grasslands which constituted the alluvial plains of the Indus seemed dry and solid. Except for the canals and small tributaries which divided the landscape into wedges-doabs, as the natives called them-he could not spot any indications of the wet terrain which would be a serious obstacle to his campaign plans.

For a moment, basking in the knowledge and the bright, dry, early morning sunshine, he spent a few idle seconds following the flight of a kingfisher up the riverbank. Then, his eyes arrested by the sight of a white heron perched on the back of a water buffalo, he burst into laughter.

Maurice had arisen still earlier, and was standing at his side. The chiliarch, when he saw what Belisarius was laughing at, issued a chuckle himself. For once, it seemed, even Maurice was in a good mood.

Belisarius lowered the telescope. "Wheat and barley, everywhere you look. Some rice, too. And I saw a number of water buffaloes. Say whatever else you will about the Malwa, at least they maintained the irrigation canals. Extended and developed them, it looks like."

Maurice's inevitable scowl returned. "We still don't have a labor force. There aren't any people anywhere. At least, I haven't seen any except a small fishing craft at sundown yesterday. And they beached the boat and scuttled into the grasslands as soon as we came near."

"Do you blame them?" Belisarius turned his head and looked back down the river. As far as his eye could see, moving up the Indus behind his own ship, the great Roman fleet was bringing as many of his troops as could be fit into their hulls into the interior of the river valley. The bulk of his army, including most of the infantry, was marching up the river under the command of Bouzes and Coutzes. Belisarius and his waterborne troops were now almost entirely out of the coastal province called Thatta, and entering the heartland of the Sind.

After the seizure of Barbaricum-the rubble that had been Barbaricum, it might be better to say-Belisarius had immediately begun building a new port. The work would go slower than he had originally planned, because his decision to accept Antonina's change of schedule meant that the preparations for that port had lagged behind. But his combat engineers assured him they could get the harbor itself operational within days.

Fortunately, Belisarius' attack seemed to have caught the Mahaveda in the middle of their own preparations as well. The fanatic priests had succeeded in destroying the city, along with most of its population and garrison, but they had been able to do little damage to the breakwater. The biggest problem the engineers faced was erecting enough shelter for the huge army that was beginning to offload behind the initial wave which had taken Barbaricum.

There too, the change in timing had worked to Belisarius' advantage. Even along the coast, the monsoon season was ending. They were now entering India's best time of year, the cool and dry season Indians called rabi. That season would last about four months, until well into February, before the heat of garam arrived. But garam, for all its blistering heat and the discomfort of dust, was a dry season also. Not until next May, when the monsoon returned, would Belisarius have to deal with the inevitable epidemics which always accompanied large armies on campaign. Until then there would be some disease, of course, but not the kind of plagues which had crippled or destroyed armies so many times in history.

Movement would be easy, too. And even though Belisarius knew full well that the kind of fluid, maneuver warfare which he preferred would be impossible soon enough-fighting his way through the Malwa fortifications in the gorge above Sukkur would be slogging siege warfare-he intended to take full advantage of the perfect campaign conditions while he still could.

That thought brought the telescope back to his eye. This time, however, he was not scanning the entire countryside. His attention was riveted to the north. There, if all had gone according to plan-or even close to it-the Persian army of Emperor Khusrau would be hammering into the mid-valley out of the Kacchi desert. Between Belisarius coming from the south, and Khusrau from the northwest, the Roman general hoped to trap and crush whatever Malwa forces hadn't yet been able to seek shelter in the fortifications along the river.

He hoped to do more than that, in truth. He hoped that the Malwa army stationed in the lower valley would still be confused and disorganized by the unexpectedly early Roman assault-and the completely unexpected heavy Persian force coming out of the western desert. Disorganized enough that he might be able to shatter them completely and actually take the fortifications all along the lower Indus. According to his spies, none of those river fortifications except for the city of Sukkur had been completed yet. He might be able to drive the Malwa out of the lower valley altogether. They would have to regroup at Sukkur and the upper valley north of the Sukkur gorge.

If Belisarius could accomplish that-and provided his army and Khusrau's could salvage enough of a labor force from the Malwa massacre-he would have a position from which the Malwa could not hope to dislodge him. Not, at least, so long as Rome and its Axumite allies retained naval superiority. The entire lower valley of the Indus would be securely in Roman and Persian hands. An area sizeable enough and rich enough to provide them with far more than a mere "beachhead." The theater of war would have been irrevocably shifted entirely into Indian territory.

"All of the Sind. " he murmured.

Maurice, as was usually true except when Belisarius' crooked mind was working through some peculiar stratagem, was following his commander's thoughts. "Remind me to compliment Antonina on her feminine intuition," he said, with a little smile.

"Isn't that the truth!" laughed Belisarius. His own smile was not little at all-nor even in the least bit crooked.

The experience of the past few days had driven home to him quite forcefully how much Antonina's insistence on moving up the invasion schedule had ultimately worked to his advantage. Impulsive and narrowly focused that insistence might have been, but in the end it had proven wiser than the sagacity of experienced soldiers. From everything Belisarius could determine, the Malwa had been caught by surprise. As much surprise, at least, as an opponent could be when faced by an inevitable invasion route.

He chuckled harshly. "I suspect Nanda Lal's excellent spy service worked against him, too. He knew we wouldn't attack this soon. He had hundreds of spies feeding him information on every stage of our preparations and planning. Down to every amphora full of grain, I don't doubt. Of course, once we changed plans and started scrambling, he would have heard of that as well. But-"

"Too late," finished Maurice. "That's the problem with having such a gigantic and powerful empire. It's just too big to react quickly."

Like a stegosaurus, chimed in Aide, flashing an image of a bizarre giant reptile into Belisarius' brain. By the time the nerve impulse gets to the brain. True, that brain is Link's, not a stupid reptile's. But Link can't be everywhere. The monster has no magic powers. It's not clairvoyant. It relies on information provided by others.

Aide's words reminded Belisarius of a phrase the crystal had used occasionally, when Aide lapsed into the language of a future accustomed to artificial intelligence. The expression had never quite made sense to Belisarius, until this moment.

Again, he smiled. Garbage in, garbage out. GIGO.

Belisarius' good cheer was not entirely shared by Maurice. "They'll recover from the surprise soon enough. Not quick enough, maybe, to keep us from taking the Sind up to Sukkur and the gorge. But that won't do us much good if we don't get a labor force to bring in the food. Not to mention maintaining the irrigation works. Not to mention keeping the towns and cities working."

The gray-bearded chiliarch glared at the carpet of doabs which stretched to the horizon. The multitude of canals and riverlets winkled in the sun, holding the dry patches of land in place like lead holding stained glass. "Picture soldiers doing that, will you? Even if most of them were peasants not too long ago. It'd take us half the army to keep the other half working."

The telescope was back at Belisarius' eye. "Unless I miss my guess, Maurice, those grasslands are practically crawling with peasants and their families. Laying low, out of sight. By now, the Malwa must have begun their butchery, and word travels fast.

"Besides," he added, sweeping his telescope around to the north, "they can't be too thrilled to see us coming, either."

Maurice didn't argue the point. He knew from his own experience, both as a peasant and a cataphract, how astute a rural population could be when it came to keeping out of sight of a passing army. And knew, as well, that they usually had good reason to do so.

As it happened, they had little to fear from Belisarius' army. That army, in fact, was all that would save their lives. But Maurice knew perfectly well that the Romans had as much chance of "convincing" the Indus peasantry of that as a cat would have convincing mice it was a vegetarian. Especially a peasantry which had been yoked by Malwa for half a century now. First they would have to force the peasantry out of hiding. Only then, as experience unfolded, could they hope to gain their allegiance. Or, at the least, their acquiescence in the new regime. And it would all have to be done fairly quickly, or the Roman army pouring into the Sind would begin starving.

He began to say something to that effect. But then, seeing the sudden tension in the way Belisarius pressed the telescope to his eye, Maurice fell silent. Something was happening.

"I think-" Belisarius muttered. "I think-"

An instant later he removed the telescope and nodded his satisfaction. "Sure of it. That's Abbu in the prow of that oncoming galley. And those oars are beating to double time."

He folded up the telescope with a vigorous motion. The cleverly designed eyepiece collapsed with not much more than a slight clap. The superb workmanship involved reminded Maurice of John of Rhodes, who had built the thing, and a little wave of sadness rolled over him.

Just a little wave, however, and not for long. Maurice had been a soldier for decades. Men died in war; it was the nature of the beast. Often enough, as with John, from pure and simple bad luck.

"Finally!" exclaimed Belisarius. "We'll get some real news. Abbu wouldn't be returning-not in a war galley beating double-time, for sure-unless he had something to report."

Maurice grunted his own satisfaction. Like Belisarius-like any soldier worthy of the name-he hated being forced to maneuver blindly. And since the capture of Barbaricum, and a few initial clashes with Malwa detachments down in the delta, the Romans had lost contact with their enemy. Someone in Malwa command had moved quickly, so much was clear enough, and ordered a withdrawal.

But where had they withdrawn? How many? To what end? Those questions and a hundred others remained unanswered.

* * *

Abbu provided some of the answers as soon as he clambered aboard Belisarius' little "flagship." The old Arab was grinning, and practically danced across the deck.

"Khusrau hit them like a sledge!" he barked. Then, slapping one hand into the other: "Broke the Malwa outside Sukkur when the fools sallied, thinking they faced only light cavalry-ha! Persian dehgans! They must have voided their bowels when they realized-and then-" The scout leader paused for dramatic effect and, again, slammed one hand into the other. "Then he took the city itself!"

Belisarius and Maurice were frozen, for an instant.

"He took Sukkur?" demanded Belisarius. "But-that city was supposed to be walled. I even got descriptions of the walls from two of my spies!"

"He had no siege guns," protested Maurice.

Abbu grinned. "It is a walled city, General. Very great walls, too-I have seen them myself." The grin widened. "Great enough to withstand even the great Malwa army which is now besieging it themselves."

Maurice was still groping with the puzzle. Belisarius' quick mind leapt immediately to the only possible solution.

"The populace rebelled. The moment word arrived that Khusrau had broken the Malwa in the field, the populace rose up against the garrison."

Abbu nodded vigorously. "Butchered plenty of the bastards, too, before Khusrau arrived. Of course, they couldn't have subdued the garrison once it rallied. They would have been massacred. But they drove them off a section of the walls long enough to open the gates. And once the Persians were into the city, the Malwa were so much carrion."

Belisarius' thoughts were still ranging far. His eyes were fixed on the northern horizon, as if by force of will he could study everything that was transpiring there. Then, slowly, he scanned the surrounding countryside.

"I was wrong," he murmured. "I saw only their fears." His tone was half-bemused-and half-sad. "I have been a soldier too long."

Aide understood, if no one else did.

Malwa has terrorized them for two generations. And now the fabled Emperor of Persia arrives, in his splendor and his glory, thundering out of the desert and surrounded by the might of his iron dehgans. The thoughts came soft and warm. Even peasants in the Sind will have heard tales of Rustam and his great bull-headed mace. Dim legends, and those of another people to boot. But for all their scarred memories, they will want to believe those legends. Especially now, with Malwa sharpening the ax.

"Yes," said Belisarius. "Yes. It's become a war of liberation. In name as well as in deed. And with Khusrau here himself, there is an immediate pole around which confused and frightened-and angry-people can rally. Khusrau will bring a legitimacy to the thing, which a purely military invasion force could not. A foreign ruler, true enough-but so what? The Sind has been ruled by foreigners for centuries. Now, at least, they will have one who is splendid as well as mighty. Just, as well as fearsome."

He turned to Maurice. "Pass the word. Make sure everyone understands it. Brand it into their foreheads if you have to-or I will brand it into their corpses. Any Roman soldier who commits any crime in this valley will be summarily executed. Any crime, Maurice, be it so much as pilfering a goat."

The general's brown eyes were glaring hot, something which was almost as rare as a solar eclipse. Maurice turned his own head and gazed at the three couriers who accompanied him at all times.

"You heard the general," he said curtly. "Do it. Now. Use as many men as you need to pass the word."

His eyes fell on Leo. Antonina had insisted that Belisarius add Leo to his personal bodyguard, retaining only Matthew for herself. The ugliest and most savage-looking of Belisarius' small squad of bodyguards-and they were all enormous, savage-looking men-was standing well within earshot.

"You heard?" Leo nodded heavily.

"You understand?" Leo nodded heavily.

Maurice glanced at Belisarius. The general smiled crookedly. "I shouldn't imagine I'll need Leo for a bit," he murmured.

Maurice turned back to Leo. "Would you like a break from your normal duties?"

Leo nodded heavily.

For a moment, Maurice hesitated. Outside of battle, where his strength and trained reflexes were quite sufficient, Leo was so dull-witted he was often mistaken for a deafmute.

"You sure you understand what-"

Leo interrupted. "Not hard to understand. Do what the general says or I will hit you."

Leo hefted the huge mace which was his favored weapon. True, the thing was simply-made; no fancy bull-headed carving here. But perhaps not even the Rustam of Aryan legend could have hefted it so lightly.

"Hit you very hard. Two, three, maybe ten times. General burns his name into what's left. Not much."

Everyone standing on the deck of the ship who was close enough to hear burst into laughter. Even Abbu laughed heartily, despite the fact that maintaining discipline over his own scouts during the days to come would tax him greatly. For the most part those scouts were bedouin, who considered pillaging a conquered village an act as natural as eating. Nothing outrageous, of course, unless the village had done something to aggravate them. But-goats?

Before Leo and the couriers had even begun lowering themselves over the rail into the galley tied up alongside, Belisarius was issuing new orders. For one of the few times in his life, Belisarius' normally relaxed and calm demeanor had vanished. He was pacing back and forth on the deck like a tiger in a cage.

"This breaks it wide open!" he exclaimed. He slapped both hands together like a gunshot. Once, twice, thrice. Then, come to a decision, he abruptly halted his pacing and spun around to face his officers.

"Separate the army, Maurice. I want the sharpshooters and the engineers in the galleys. As many field guns as you can manage also, along with their crews, as long as you leave room for Felix's musketeers to defend the counter-siege. The galleys can get there faster than the sailing ships, with this damn erratic wind."

Belisarius now turned to Ashot, the Armenian cataphract whom Belisarius considered the best independent commander among his subordinates, save Maurice himself. "You're in charge of pinning the Malwa at Sukkur, from the south. You'll have to hold them, Ashot. It won't be easy. You'll be heavily outnumbered. But unless I miss my guess, the Malwa are still fumbling at the new situation. They'll be so preoccupied with trying to storm into Sukkur that if they're building lines of circumvallation at all they'll be doing so only fitfully. Probably haven't even started yet."

Ashot nodded, immediately grasping the implication of the general's words. "Lines of circumvallation" meant the fortifications which a besieging army built to protect itself from other armies while, using their "lines of countervallation," they tried to reduce the fortress or city. The terms came from a future history, but did not confuse him in the least. Over the past year, as they prepared for this campaign, Belisarius had spent countless hours training his top subordinates in the complex methods of siege warfare he expected to witness in the Indus. Aide had taught Belisarius those methods, from the experience of future wars. The Roman general had no doubt at all that Link had done as much for its own Malwa subordinates.

"Without good lines of circumvallation," Ashot elaborated, "the sudden appearance of Roman soldiers relieving the siege-seeming to, anyway-will pose an immediate threat. They'll have to attack us. No choice."

He cocked his head. "Which, I assume, is exactly what you want. We're not really a relief column. We're a decoy."

"Exactly," replied Belisarius. He paced back and forth again, just for a few steps. Stopped, jabbed a finger to the north, then swept it to the east. "If we can get you planted just south of the Malwa besieging Khusrau in Sukkur-"

He broke off and looked to Abbu. "Two questions: Are all of the Persians forted up in Sukkur? And is there any suitable terrain to the south where Ashot can set his lines?"

"Not all the Persians, General. After he broke the Malwa in the open field-maybe thirty miles northwest of Sukkur-and then heard the city had risen in rebellion, Khusrau sent a good part of his army back to Quetta. Almost all his infantry, except the gunners."

For a moment, Belisarius' face registered confusion. Then: "Of course. He was thinking ahead. His dehgans could hold the walls of Sukkur, with the populace in support. The biggest danger would be starvation, so the fewer soldiers the better. And his infantry can stabilize the supply lines back to Quetta-and Quetta itself, for that matter, which controls the pass into Persia."

For the first time since he got the news of Khusrau's seizure of Sukkur, Belisarius seemed to relax. He scratched his chin, chuckling softly. "Bold move, though. And he's counting on me a lot. Because if we don't relieve that siege. "

"And relieve it pretty soon!" barked Maurice. "Fewer soldiers be damned. He's still got thousands of dehgans in that city, and dehgans mean warhorses. Each one of those great brutes will eat six to seven times as much as a man."

Belisarius nodded, and cocked an eye at Abbu. "And the other question?"

The old Arab glowered. "Am I a be-damned gun-man?" The last term was almost spit out. Abbu was a ferocious traditionalist. He transferred the glare to Gregory. "Who knows what those newfangled devices need in the way of terrain?"

Gregory laughed. "Nothing special, Abbu. Something flat, with soft soil my gun crews and the engineers can mound up into berms." He glanced at Felix Chalcenterus. The Syrian officer was the youngest member of the staff of superb officers which Belisarius had forged around him since the war began. Although Felix was primarily a commander of musketeers, both Belisarius and Gregory thought his knowledge of artillery tactics was good enough for this purpose. Which Felix immediately proved by chiming in confidently:

"Trees would be useful, for bracing. Beyond that, anything which allows the guns to control the approaches, at least a bit. And lets me station musketeers and pikemen to protect the guns from Malwa sallies. Rivers would be ideal, or canals. Marshes will do."

"Bad for horses," muttered Abbu, who was reputed to sleep with his own.

"That's more or less the idea," retorted Gregory. "The Malwa will have the cavalry, not Ashot. The more they have to slog to get at him-in the face of Felix's guns-the better."

Abbu ran fingers through his thick beard. "Yes. I will leave you the men who went with me to Sukkur, and many of my other scouts. They can find you such ground. There is a great bend in the Indus, just below Sukkur. Little creeks and rivers and loops-like Mesopotamia. Somewhere in there will be a place where your be-damned guns can strike at Malwa. While they-"

Good cheer returned. "While they feed themselves against your gunfire. Nowhere wide enough to extend their lines. No way to flank you without boats. Many boats."

The fingers stroking the beard turned into a fist, tugging it. "Malwa don't have so many boats." Now he was practically bearding himself. "My Arabs-true bedouin! — will burn those boats they have. You watch."

He turned to Belisarius and gave the general a little bow. "Your plan will work, General. So long as you get there in time." Abbu's eyes ranged the northeast like a hawk's. Beyond those grasslands lay the edge of the great Thar desert. "It will be a difficult march. But if you can circle to the east-especially if you keep the Malwa from seeing you-"

Belisarius shrugged. "We'll get spotted, sooner or later. But by then-if all goes well-it will be too late for the Malwa to extricate themselves from their entanglement with Ashot and Felix. Thousands of their soldiers will be mired in flood river terrain. They simply can't maneuver them quickly. And they also can't release too many of their troops from the lines around Sukkur. Not with Khusrau and his dehgans inside, ready to sally. They'll be trapped between Ashot to the south and Khusrau to the north-and me hitting them from the east. With every cataphract Sittas can bring along. And once Bouzes and Coutzes get the mass of our infantry up to Sukkur, the Malwa there will be finished. They'll have to retreat back to the Punjab, with all the losses that kind of forced march always brings."

As always, Abbu was unmoved by the subtlety of a Belisarius maneuver. "Fancy, fancy. Maybe. But it will work. Provided you get there in time."