Fortune's stroke b-4 Page 13

  Vasudeva heard the remark. His smile returned. It was a very thin smile.

  "Nobody does," he said. "The fact remains that Kushans have been skilled artisans for centuries. Appearances to the contrary, we aren't barbarian nomads." He looked down at his hands, flexing his fingers. "My father was a very good jeweler. I wanted to follow in his footsteps. But the Malwa had other plans for me."

  Belisarius felt a sudden rush of empathy for the stocky Kushan mercenary. He, as a boy, had wanted to be a blacksmith rather than a soldier. Until the demands of his class, and Rome, decreed otherwise.

  "Damodara is smart enough," he mused. He leaned back from the table. "More than smart enough."

  Belisarius began slowly pacing around. His softly spoken words were those of a man thinking aloud. "If he had good enough intelligence, that is. The Malwa spymaster, Nanda Lal, is a capable man-very capable-but I never got the sense, in the many days I spent in his company, that he thought much about manufacturing and artisanry. His orientation seemed entirely political and military. So where would Damodara have learned-?"

  Narses!

  "Narses," snarled Maurice. "He's got that stinking traitor working for him."

  Belisarius stopped his pacing and stared at the Thracian chiliarch. His own eyes held nothing of Maurice's angry glare. They were simply calm. Calm, and thoughtful.

  "That's possible," he said, after a few seconds. "I've never spotted him, through the telescope. But if he's with Damodara's army, Narses would be sure to stay out of sight."

  Belisarius scratched his chin. "Possible, possible," he mused. "Narses was an expert on central Asia." He gave Kurush a half-rueful, half-apologetic glance. "We always let him handle that side of our affairs with the Aryans. He was-well, I've got to be honest: superb-when it came to bribing and maneuvering barbarians into harassing Persia's eastern provinces."

  For a moment, Kurush began to glower. But, within a couple of seconds, the glower turned into a little laugh.

  "I know!" he exclaimed. "The grief that man caused us! It wasn't just barbarians, either. He was also a master at keeping those damned eastern noblemen stirred up against imperial authority."

  Kurush took four quick strides to the entrance. He stared out and up, toward the crest of the pass. To all appearance, he was listening to the sound of the Malwa barrage. But Belisarius knew that the man's thoughts were really directed elsewhere, both in time and space.

  Kurush turned his head. "Assuming that you're right, Belisarius, what's the significance of it?"

  "The significance, Kurush, is that it means this Malwa army is even more dangerous that we thought." The Roman general moved toward the entrance, stopping a few feet behind Kurush. "What it means is that this army could ravage Mesopotamia on its own, regardless of what happens to the main Malwa army in the delta."

  Startled, Kurush spun around.

  "They're not big enough!" he exclaimed. "If Emperor Khusrau wasn't tied up keeping the Malwa in Charax-" He stumbled to a halt; then, glumly: "And if we didn't have the traitor Ormazd to deal with in upper Mesopotamia-" His words trailed off again. Stubbornly, Kurush shook his head.

  "They're still not big enough," he insisted.

  "They are, Kurush," countered Belisarius. "If they have their own armament center-and I'm now convinced they do-then they are more than big enough."

  He stepped up to the entrance, standing right next to Kurush. His next words the general pitched very low, so that only the Persian nobleman could hear.

  "That's as good an army as any in the world, sahrdaran. Trust me. I've been fighting them for weeks, now." He hesitated, knowing Kurush's touchy Aryan pride, but pushed on. "And they've defeated every Persian army that was sent against them."

  Kurush tightened his jaws. But, touchy or not, the Persian was also honest. He nodded his head curtly.

  Belisarius continued. "I thought they'd be limited by the fact that Emperor Skandagupta sent Damodara and Sanga into eastern Persia with very little in the way of gunpowder weapons. But if that's not true-if they've created their own weapons industry along the way-then we are looking at a very different kind of animal. A tiger instead of a leopard."

  Kurush frowned. "Would Skandagupta permit Damodara such freedom? I always got the impression, from what you told me of your trip to India, that the Malwa gunpowder industry was kept exclusively in their capital city of Kausambi-right under the emperor's nose."

  Belisarius stared at the pass above them, as if he were trying to peer through the rock of the mountains and study the enemy on the other side.

  "Interesting question," he murmured. "Offhand, I'd say-no. But what does Skandagupta know of things in far-off Marv?" Belisarius smiled himself, now-a smile every bit as thin as Vasudeva's had been.

  "Narses," he said softly, almost lingering over the name. "If Damodara does have Narses working for him, then he's got one of the world's supreme politicians-and spymasters-helping to plan his moves. Narses is not famous, to put it mildly, for his slavish respect for established authority. And he worships no god but Ambition."

  Kurush stared at Belisarius, wide-eyed. "You think-"

  Belisarius' shoulders moved in a tiny shrug. "Who knows? Except this: if Narses is on the other side of that pass, then I can guarantee that he is spinning plans within plans. Never underestimate that old eunuch, Kurush. He doesn't think simply of the next two steps. He always thinks of the twenty steps beyond those."

  Kurush's smile was not thin. "That description reminds me of someone else I know."

  Belisarius did not smile in return. He simply nodded, once. "Well, yes. It does."

  For a few seconds, the two men were silent. Then, after a quick glance into the interior of the tent to make sure no one could overhear, Kurush whispered: "What does this mean-in terms of your strategy?"

  Again, Belisarius made that tiny shrug. "I don't know. At the moment, I don't see where it changes anything." He thrust out his chin, pointing at the enemy hidden from their sight by the pass above. "I can delay that army, Kurush, but I can't stop it. So I don't see that I have any choice but to continue with the plan we are already agreed on."

  Belisarius gave his own quick glance backward, to make sure no one was within hearing range. Kurush was familiar with his plans, as were Belisarius' own chief subordinates, but he knew that none of the other Persian officers were privy to them. So far as they knew, Belisarius and his Roman army were in the Zagros simply to fend off Damodara's advance. He wanted to keep them in that happy state of ignorance.

  "I do know this much," he continued, turning his eyes back to Kurush. "The rebellion in south India is now more important than ever. If our strategy works, here, and we drive the main Malwa army out of the delta-and if the rebellion in Majarashtra swells to gigantic proportions-then the Malwa will have no choice." Again, he pointed with his chin to the pass. "They will have to pull that magnificent army out of Persia. And use it, instead of Venandakatra's torturers, to crush the Deccan."

  Kurush eyed him. He knew how much Belisarius liked and admired the Marathas and their Empress Shakuntala. "That'll be very tough on the rebels."

  Belisarius winced, but only briefly. "Yes-and then again, maybe not."

  He paused, staring at the mountains. "Those men are far better soldiers than anything Venandakatra has. And there's no comparison at all between their leaders and the Vile One. But that army is Rajput, now, at its core. And Damodara has welded himself to them. Rajputs have their own hard sense of honor, which fits their Malwa masters about as well as a glove fits a fish tail. I'm not sure how good they'll be, when the time comes for murder instead of war."

  Kurush scowled. The expression made clear his own opinion. Malwa was Malwa.

  Belisarius did not argue the point. He was not at all sure that Kurush was wrong. But, inwardly, he made another shrug. As much as Belisarius prided himself on his ability to plan ahead, he had never forgotten that the heart of war is chaos and confusion. Between the moment-now-and the future, lay the maelstrom.
Who could foresee what combinations, and what contradictions, that vortex would produce? In the months-years-ahead?

  Now intervened, breaking his train of thought. The sounds of the Malwa barrage abruptly ceased. Looking up the slope, Belisarius saw a courier racing toward the field headquarters. One of Bouzes' Syrians, he thought.

  Belisarius did not wait for the man to arrive. He turned back into the tent and announced, to the Roman and Persian officers who had remained by the table: "Gentlemen, there's a battle to be fought."

  Chapter 12

  On his way back up the slope, Belisarius stopped when he came to the trenches where the handcannon soldiers were dug in. He turned to Maurice, waving his hand.

  "Go on ahead, and see to the rest of the army. I want to go over our plans one last time with Mark and Gregory."

  Maurice nodded, and continued plodding toward the crest of the pass. His progress was slow. The trench through which he was moving had been recently dug. The soil was still loose, making for unfirm footing. His biggest difficulty, however, came from the sheer weight of his weapons and armor. Cataphract gear was heavy enough, sitting on a horse. For a man on foot, climbing uphill, the armor seemed made of lead ingots instead of steel scale. The weapons weighed more than Nero's sins.

  Belisarius felt a moment's sympathy for Maurice-but only a moment. He was wearing his own cataphract gear, and would be making that trek himself soon enough. If the war against Malwa dragged on for years, Belisarius thought the day would come when Roman soldiers could finally be rid of that damned armor. In visions which Aide had given him of gunpowder armies of the future, soldiers had worn nothing but a plate cuirass and a helmet. Just enough to stop a bullet, except at close range.

  He sighed. That day was still far off. Belisarius had spent hours-and hours and hours-studying the great generals of the future, especially those of the first centuries of gunpowder warfare. Aide knew all of human history, and the crystal had shown Belisarius the methods and tactics of those men. Jan Zizka; Gonzalo de Cordoba and the Duke of Parma; Maurice of Nassau; Henry IV of France; Tilly and Wallenstein, and Gustavus Adolphus; Turenne and Frederick the Great; Marlborough; Napoleon and Wellington; and many others.

  Of all those men, the only one Belisarius truly admired was Gustavus Adolphus. To some degree, his admiration was professional. Gustav II Adolf, King of Sweden, had reintroduced mobility and fluid tactics into a style of war which had become nothing more than brutal hammering. Massive squares of musket and pike slamming into other such squares, like the old Greek phalanxes.

  But, for the most part, Belisarius was attracted by the man himself. Gustavus Adolphus had been a king-a very self-confident and ambitious king, in point of fact-who was by no mean immune from monarchy's vices. Still, he had been scrupulous about consulting the various estates of his kingdom, as he was required to do by Swedish law. He had managed to win the firm loyalty of his officers and soldiers by his fair and consistent conduct. He was as good a king as he was a general-Sweden was, by far, the best administered realm of his time. He had been the only king of his day who cared a fig for the needs of common folk. And his troops, when they entered the Thirty Years War under his command, had been the only soldiers who did not ravage the German countryside.

  I would have liked to meet that man, he mused.

  Aide's voice came into his mind. The crystal's thoughts were hesitant, almost apologetic.

  He will never exist, now. Whatever happens. If Malwa wins this war, and Link establishes its domination over mankind, there will be no kings like that. Not ever.

  Belisarius' face tightened. Link, the secret master of the Malwa dynasty, was an artificial intelligence sent back in time by the "new gods" of the future. Belisarius had met the creature, once, when he was in India. It had taken the form of Great Lady Holi, the aunt of the Malwa emperor. Aide called it a cybernetic organism.

  Belisarius' eyes drifted across the landscape of the Zagros, as if that rugged mountain range was a metaphor for human destiny. The slopes of those mountains were rocky, treacherous, and at least half-hidden by spurs and crests. Belisarius had learned much, over the past four years, about mankind's future-it would be better to say, futures, because the "new gods" had their own plans for shaping human destiny. But he still did not know much about the "new gods" themselves. Aide, he was sure, was not withholding information from him. The crystal was simply incapable of understanding such mentalities.

  Belisarius thought he understood them. They reminded him of religious fanatics he had met. Orthodox or Monophysite, it mattered not. All such men were imbued with the certainty that they-and they alone-understood the Will of God. Those who opposed them were not simply in error, they were the minions of Satan. To be scourged, that others might be cleansed.

  That was the vision, he thought, which animated the "new gods" of the future. Outraged by the chaotic kaleidoscope of humanity, as it spread through the stars, they were seized by a determination to purify the race.

  There had been no conceivable way to accomplish that goal, in their future time. Humanity had settled throughout the galaxy, and all the galaxies nearby. Isolated by incredible distances and the speed of light, each human planet went its own way. The human species was evolving in a million different directions, like the branches of a great tree, with nothing to bind it but a common heritage and the slender threads of the Great Ones in their travels.

  So, the "new gods" had sent Link back in time, to alter history when humanity was still living on a single planet. To crush the mongrel empire called Rome, and to build a world state centered in north India. The "new gods" intended to use the Hindu caste system as the germ for what they called a "eugenics program." They would purify the race-and if, in the doing, they slaughtered millions, they cared not the least. Those were cattle, at best, if not outright vermin. Only the "new gods," and those they would shape in their image, were truly human.

  Aide was right. If Malwa won, there would be no kings in the future like Gustavus Adolphus.

  And if we win? he asked. But he knew the answer, before Aide even gave it.

  Then you will have changed history also. The course of it will remain, like a broad river, but the banks will be altered. There may not even be a country called Sweden, in that future. There certainly won't be a man named Gustavus Adolphus. Or, if there is, he's as likely to be a peasant or a glassmaker as a king.

  For a moment, the thought saddened Belisarius. The Roman general had no doubt of the righteousness of his cause. None at all. But even the most just war causes destruction. Saving that great, flowering tree of humanity's future, Belisarius would crush many of its buds. There would be no Gustavus Adolphus. No Shakespeare; no Cervantes; no Spinoza and Kant; no Sir Isaac Newton.

  The moment passed. But there will be others, like them.

  Yes, came Aide's reply. Quietly: And there will be a place, too, for others like me. We are also people, with our own rightful place in that great tree.

  Belisarius' musings were interrupted by a voice.

  "How soon do you want us ready, general?"

  Belisarius snapped out of his reverie and focused his eyes on the speaker. It was Mark of Edessa, the commander of Belisarius' new unit of handcannon soldiers.

  An idle thought crossed Belisarius' mind. I have got to come up with a new name for them. "Handcannon soldiers" is just too much of a mouthful.

  Belisarius took a moment to examine the man. Mark was in his early twenties. He was a Syrian, of predominantly Arab ancestry. That was useful, given that most of his men were of similar stock. Like all Roman soldiers, the men spoke Greek-or learned to, at least, shortly after enlisting. But Mark's fluency in Arabic and several of the Aramaic dialects had proven valuable many times.

  But that was not the principal reason Mark had been given this new command. The young officer, during the course of the previous year's campaign in Mesopotamia, had shown himself to be resourceful and reliable. He also-this was quite unusual for a cavalryman-had no objection to fig
hting on foot, and had proven to have a knack for the new gunpowder weapons.

  Belisarius remembered the first time he met Mark, almost four years earlier. The general had just taken command of the army at Mindouos. His predecessor had let that army rot, and Belisarius had found it necessary to purge many of the existing officers. A number of men had been promoted from the ranks. Mark had been one of them, recommended by Belisarius' cataphract, Gregory.

  He saw two more figures scuttling up the trench.

  "Speak of the devil," he murmured. Gregory himself was arriving. He and Mark had become good friends, and had shown they could work together well in combat. That was one of the reasons that Belisarius had put Gregory in command of another new unit, the pikemen who served as a bulwark for the handcannon soldiers.

  Call them "musketeers," came Aide's thought. Technically, it would be more accurate to call them arquebusiers, but-

  "Arquebusiers" is ridiculous. Musketeers it is!

  Belisarius broke into a smile. The new name was a minor triumph, true. Picayune, perhaps. But he was a firm believer in the axiom that large victories grow out of a multitude of small ones.

  Gregory had arrived, now. He and Mark were eyeing their general quizzically, wondering why he was smiling. Almost grinning, in fact.

  "I've got a new name for your men, Mark," he announced. "From now on, we'll call you musketeers."

  Mark and Gregory looked at each other. It was almost comical the way each began mouthing the word.

  "I like it," pronounced Gregory, after a moment's experimentation. Mark nodded his head. "So do I!"

  The third man came up, and now Belisarius did break into a grin.

  "And what have we here?" he asked. "The three musketeers?"

  Oh, that's gross! There followed a mental, crystalline version of a raspberry. Low, low.

  Gregory gave the new man, whose name was Felix Chalcenterus, an unkind look. The same little glare was transferred to Mark of Edessa.