The tide of victory

Chapter 6

Mesopotamia

Spring, 533 A.D.

"What's the matter, large one? Are you sick?" asked Belisarius. "You haven't complained once since we left Ctesiphon."

Sittas smiled cheerfully. Planting his feet firmly in the stirrups, he raised himself off the saddle and heaved his huge body around to study the army following in their tracks.

"Complain?" he demanded. "Why should I complain? God in Heaven, would you look at the size of that thing!"

Belisarius copied Sittas' maneuver, albeit with considerably more ease and grace. The army following them seemed to cover the entire flood plain. To inexperienced eyes-such as those of the peasants who stared at it from the relative safety of their huts-it would have seemed like a swarm of locusts. And, for the peasants, just about as welcome. True, Emperor Khusrau had promised to pay for any damage done by the army in its passage. Mesopotamian peasants, from the experience of millennia, viewed imperial promises with a skepticism that would have shamed the most rigorous Greek philosopher.

Belisarius had no difficulty finding the underlying order in the seeming chaos.

Kurush's Persian dehgans, fifteen thousand strong, maintained their position on the prestigious left flank. They had done so since the moment the army's core passed through the gates of Ctesiphon and began collecting the units gathered outside the city. The gesture was a bit pointless, since there was no danger of a flank attack here in Mesopotamia. But the Persian aristocracy treasured its little points of honor.

Sittas' own units, the ten thousand heavy cataphracts from Constantinople and Anatolia, were assuming the equivalent position on the army's right wing. Whatever disgruntlement they might still be feeling at the implied slight was being exercised by their vigilance in keeping raiders from the desert at bay. Not that any Arab freebooter in his right mind would attack such an army, even if Belisarius didn't have his own Arab camel contingents riding on the flank of the cataphracts.

Belisarius smiled at the sight, but his study was soon concentrated on the army's center. The cataphracts and dehgans were familiar things. They had dominated warfare in the eastern Mediterranean for centuries. It was the units marching in the army's center which were new. Very new.

Sittas' own scrutiny had also reached the army's center. But, unlike Belisarius, his gaze was not one of pleasure and satisfaction.

"Silliest damned thing I've ever seen," he grumbled.

"Thank God," sighed Belisarius, apparently with great relief. "A complaint! I was beginning to wonder seriously about your health."

Sittas snorted. "I just hope you're right about this-this-what's his name?"

"Gustavus Adolphus." Belisarius turned back around and faced forward. He'd seen enough, and the position was awkward to maintain even with stirrups.

"Gustavus Adolphus," he repeated. "With an army more or less designed like this one, he defeated almost every opponent he ever faced. Most of whom had armies which, more or less, resembled the Malwa forces."

Sittas snorted again. " 'More or less, more or less,' " he echoed in a sing-song. "That does not precisely fill me with confidence. And didn't he get himself killed in the end?"

Belisarius shrugged. "Leading one of his insanely reckless cavalry charges in his last battle-which his army won, by the way, even with their king dead on the field."

Belisarius smiled crookedly. For a moment, he was tempted to turn around in the saddle and look at his bodyguards. He was quite certain that the faces of Isaac and Priscus, that very moment, were filled with solemn satisfaction at hearing such antics on the part of commanding generals described as "insane."

But he resisted the impulse. For all that he enjoyed teasing Sittas for his inveterate conservatism-

Damned dinosaur, came Aide's sarcastic thought.

— Belisarius also needed to have Sittas' confidence. So:

"You've already agreed, Sittas-or do we have to go through this argument again-that armored cavalry can't face unbroken gun-wielding infantry in the field."

"I know I did. Doesn't mean I have to like it." He raised a thick hand, as a man forestalls an unwanted lecture. "And please don't jabber at me again about Morgarten and Laupen and Morat and all those other heathen-sounding places where your precious Swiss pikemen of the future stood their ground against cavalry. I'm sick of hearing about it."

Sittas' voice slipped into an imitation of Belisarius' baritone. " 'As long as the gunmen are braced with solid infantry to protect them while they reload, they'll butcher any cavalry that comes against them.' Fine, fine, fine. I won't argue the point. Although I will point out"-here Sittas' tone grew considerably more enthusiastic-"that's only true as long as the infantry doesn't break and run. Which damn few infantry don't, when they see cataphracts thundering down on them."

Aide's voice came again. Stubborn as a mule. Best give him a stroke or two. Or he'll sulk for the rest of the day.

Belisarius had reached the same conclusion. His next words were spoken perhaps a bit hastily. "I'm certainly not arguing that cavalry isn't irreplaceable. Nothing like it for routing the enemy and completing their destruction-after their formations have been broken."

So did Belisarius pass the next hour or so, with Aide grousing in his mind and Sittas grumbling in his ear, extolling the virtues of cavalry under the right circumstances. By the time Maurice and Agathius arrived with a supply problem which needed Belisarius' immediate attention, Sittas seemed to be reasonably content.

Have to do it all over again tomorrow, concluded Aide sourly.

* * *

Sittas rode off less than a minute after Agathius began explaining the problem. The big Greek nobleman's enthusiasm for logistics paralleled his enthusiasm for infantry tactics.

How did he ever win any campaigns, anyway? demanded Aide.

Belisarius was about to reply. But Maurice, as if he'd somehow been privy to the private mental exchange, did it for him.

The Thracian cataphract, born a peasant, gazed after the departing aristocratic general. Perhaps oddly, his face was filled with nothing more than approval. "Still trying to make him happy? Waste of time, lad, until Sittas has had a battle or two under his belt. But at least we won't have to worry about him breaking under the lesson. Not Sittas. If there's a more belligerent and ferocious general in the world, I don't know who it is. Besides, who really knows the future anyway? Maybe Sittas will lead one of his beloved cavalry charges yet."

* * *

By midafternoon, Agathius' problem was well on the way to solution. Agathius had only brought the problem to Belisarius because the difficulty was purely social, rather than technical, and he felt the commanding general needed to take charge. Some of the Persian dehgans were becoming vociferously indignant. Their mules, laden with burdens which were far too heavy for them, were becoming indignant themselves. Mules, unlike horses, cannot be driven beyond a certain point. The Persian mules reached that point as soon as the sun reached the zenith, and had promptly gone on what a future world would have called a general strike. And done so, moreover, with a solidarity which would have won the unadulterated approval of the most doctrinaire anarcho-syndicalist.

Even Persian dehgans knew that beating mules was pointless. So, turning upon less redoubtable opponents, they were demanding that room be made for their necessities in the supply barges which were streaming down the Tigris. The Mesopotamian and Greek sailors who manned those craft-no fools, they-steadfastly ignored the shouted demands of the dehgans on the banks and kept their barges a safe distance from the shore. So-

"They've been hollering at me for two hours, now," grumbled Agathius. "I'm getting tired of it."

Dehgans! grumbled Aide. Only thing in the world that can make Greek noble cataphracts seem like sentient creatures.

Belisarius turned to one of his couriers. For a moment, he hesitated. In campaigns past, Belisarius had always used veteran professionals for his dispatch riders. But on this campaign, he had felt it necessary to use young Greek nobles. Partly, to mollify the sentiments of the Roman empire's aristocracy, which was slowly becoming reconciled to the Justinian dynasty. But, mostly, to mollify the Persian aristocracy, which would take umbrage at orders transmitted to them by a commoner.

This particular dispatch rider was named Calopodius. He was no older than seventeen, and came from one of the Roman empire's most notable families. Belisarius had, tentatively, formed a good opinion of the boy's wits and tact. Both of which would be needed here.

Calopodius immediately confirmed the assessment. The boy's face showed no expression at all beyond calm alertness. But his words carried a certain dry humor, under the aristocratic drawl.

"I received excellent marks from both my rhetorician and grammarian, sir."

Belisarius grinned. "Splendid! In that case, you should have no difficulty whatsoever telling Kurush to get down to the river immediately and put a stop to this nonsense."

Calopodius nodded solemnly. "I don't see any difficulty, sir. Be much like the time my mother sent me to instruct my father's sister to quit pestering the stable boys." A moment later, he was gone, spurring his horse into a canter.

"I wonder if Alexander the Great had to put up with this kind of crap," mused Maurice.

"Of course not!" derided Belisarius. "The man was Achilles reborn. Who's going to give Achilles an argument?"

But the retort failed of its purpose. Lowborn or not, Maurice and Agathius were every bit as familiar with the Greek epics as any senator.

"Agamemnon," they chorused in unison.