The tide of victory b-5 Read online

  Ousanas seemed to read her thoughts. "It's still stupid," he murmured. "Eusebius is perfectly correct-there's nothing further you can do now."

  She stared up at him. Even squatting as they both were, the tall African hunter towered above her.

  "You are a truly magnificent man, Ousanas of the lakes," she said softly. "I don't think I've ever told you that. If I weren't in love with Belisarius, I would set my sights on you."

  He stared back at her. In another man, the dark eyes would have had a speculative gleam in them. Wondering if her words were a subtle invitation. But Antonina would not have spoken those words to another man. And so the eyes of Ousanas contained nothing but a soft glow of warmth and affection.

  "I dare say you'd succeed, too," he chuckled. "You are quite magnificent yourself."

  He shook his head, slightly. "But it probably wouldn't work, anyway. I fear with my new-found august status that my eventual marriage will be a thing of state. And I can't really see you as a concubine. A wife or a courtesan, but never a concubine."

  "True," she nodded. For a moment, she paused, gauging the sounds of another oncoming Malwa volley. But her now-experienced ear recognized another miss, even before the sailor who had taken her place at the viewslit exclaimed: "Stupid bastards! They're still two hundred yards off. Waste of rockets."

  "True," she repeated. Her curiosity was now aroused, and she found a welcome relief in it from the tension of simply waiting for battle to erupt. She cocked her head, smiling.

  "But why wouldn't you select a high-placed Roman wife?" she asked. "Not me, of course, but someone else. It would seem a natural choice, given the new realities. I would think-certainly hope-that Axum intends to retain its alliance with Rome even after the Malwa are broken. And I'm quite sure Theodora would be delighted to round up three dozen senators' daughters for you to select from."

  She spread her hands, palms up, as if weighing two things in the balance. "Granted that empires and kingdoms are fickle creatures, and not given much to sentiment. But I still can't see where the future holds any serious reason for conflict between Rome and Ethiopia. We'd gotten along well for two centuries, after all, even before the Malwa drove us into close alliance."

  "I agree," said Ousanas. The abrupt forcefulness of the statement, Antonina suspected, was a reflection of Ousanas' own tension at being forced to remain idle while others prepared to fight. "But that's part of the reason why I won't. The truth is, Antonina, there's no real reason for closer ties between Rome and Axum. The same distance that keeps us from being enemies, also makes close friendship unnecessary."

  Ousanas paused for a moment, staring at the fire cannon in front of him. Something in the deadly shape of the device seemed to concentrate his thoughts. His expression became sternly thoughtful.

  "Eon and I have discussed this at length, many times now. And twice-I'm not sure you even know about this-I spent hours with Belisarius, questioning Aide through him."

  Antonina hadn't known of those sessions, as it happened, but she wasn't particularly surprised. Ousanas was one of the few people in the world, beyond Belisarius himself, who had "communed" directly with Aide. And so he understood, in a way that almost no one else would, just how encyclopedic was the crystal's knowledge of human history-including the vast centuries and millennia that would have unfolded, had the "new gods" not brought Malwa into existence. Antonina realized that Ousanas, canny as always, would have taken advantage of that opportunity to provide himself with the knowledge he would need as the aqabe tsentsen of Axum.

  Translated literally, the term meant "keeper of the fly whisks." But the position was the highest in the Axumite realm, second only to that of the negusa nagast himself. His responsibility, in essence, was to guide the Ethiopian King of Kings in shaping the destiny of his people.

  "Africa is the future of Ethiopia, Antonina. Not Rome, or any other realm of the Mediterranean or Asia."

  He spread his own hands, palms down, as if cupping the head of a child. "A vast continent, full of riches. Populated only-except for Ethiopia and the Mediterranean coast-with tribes of hunters and farmers. Many of whom, however, are also skilled ironworkers and miners. Organized and shaped by Ethiopian statecraft, there's a great empire there to be built."

  Antonina's eyes widened. "I've never pictured you-or Eon-as conquerors. Neither of you seems to have the, ah, temperament-"

  "Not bloodthirsty enough?" he demanded, grinning. Then, with a chuckle: "Statecraft, I said."

  He shrugged. "I'm quite sure we will have our share of battles with barbarian tribes. But not all that many, truth to tell, and more in the nature of short wars and skirmishes than great campaigns of conquest and slaughter. Keep in mind, Antonina-I am Bantu myself-that Africa is not heavily populated. And there is no great Asian hinterland producing Huns and such to drive the other tribes forward. We expect most of the task to be one for missionaries and traders, not soldiers. Peaceful work, in the main."

  He broke off. Another Malwa volley was coming-and would strike home or come close, judging from the sound.

  "Two rockets!" shouted the sailor at the viewslit. "One of them-"

  An instant later, the shield shook under the impact of a missile. Antonina was a bit startled. Unconsciously, she had been expecting the same deep booming sound which she remembered from her experience in the battle outside Charax's harbor the year before. But the Victrix's bow shield was no primitive, jury-rigged thing of leather stretched over poles. This warship was not a hastily converted galley. The Victrix had been designed from the keel up for this kind of battle, and the shield was a solid thing of timber clad with metal sheathing. It shrugged off the rocket as easily as a warrior's shield might shrug off a pebble thrown by a child.

  "Ha!" shrilled Eusebius. "John was right! They need cannons-big ones, too, not piddly field guns-to break through this thing. And they don't have any!"

  The sailor at the viewslit next to him shook his head. Antonina couldn't actually see the grin splitting his face, but she had no doubt it was there. "Not on this miserable priest-ship, anyway. Probably be a different story when we come up against the Malwa main fleet."

  He turned his head toward Eusebius, showing his profile to Antonina. He was grinning. "But that's for a later day."

  The sailor's grin faded. "Captain, I can handle this from here on. We're only a hundred yards off. Better see to the cannon. You're still the only one who can really use it very well."

  Eusebius nodded. Watching, Antonina was struck by the little exchange. A different commander might have taken umbrage at such a semi-order coming from a subordinate. But although Eusebius had, more or less, become comfortable in his new role as a ship captain, he still had the basic habits and instincts of an artisan accustomed to working with others.

  She didn't think John would have approved, really. But John was gone, and Antonina herself was not much concerned over the matter. She suspected that Eusebius' methods would probably work just as well.

  And it was not her business, anyway. She forced her eyes away from Eusebius and looked at Ousanas. "Continue," she said. She spoke the word so forcefully that she was reminded, again, of her own tension.

  "Not much else to say, Antonina. Axum has slowly been extending its rule to the south anyway, over the past two centuries. But heretofore the process was basically unplanned and uncoordinated. Most of our attention was focused on the Red Sea and southern Arabia. We will retain those, of course. But we will seek no further expansion in that direction. The Arab farmers and townsmen and merchants of Yemen and the Hijaz are content enough with our rule. But if we press further, we would simply embroil ourselves in endless conflicts with the bedouin of the interior-not to mention the certainty of an eventual clash with Persia. No point to any of it!"

  He broke off. Another rocket volley. Both rockets, this time, struck the shield. And both were deflected just as easily and harmlessly.

  "So after the war with Malwa," Ousanas resumed, "we will concentrate on the African inter
ior-and do it properly. We will start by sending an expedition, led by myself, to incorporate the land between the great lakes which is my own homeland. That is the first step-along with seizing and settling the east African coast. At least as far south as the Pangani river. We will also seize the island of Zanzibar and build a fortress there. And we will found a new city on the coast, which will be destined to become a great seaport."

  He smiled whimsically. "There are definite advantages, you understand, to Aide's knowledge of the future. Eon has even decreed that we will give that city the name it would have had, centuries from now. Mombasa."

  He paused for a moment, his eyes becoming slightly unfocused. "The thing is, Eon and I are also thinking far into the future. We will not live to see it, of course-neither us nor our great-grandchildren-but we think our plans will eventually produce a very different Africa than the one which existed in the old future. In that future, Axum became isolated very soon by the Moslem conquests. And so, instead of being the conduit into Africa for that Mediterranean civilization of which we are becoming a part, Ethiopia retreated into the highlands. And there it remained, century after century, still more or less intact-but playing no further role in the history of the world or even Africa."

  He cocked his head, gauging the sounds of the next Malwa volley. They were very close now, and both rockets missed entirely. Clearly enough, the priests manning the rocket troughs were getting rattled.

  Eusebius and one of the sailors were now wrestling with the fire cannon's barrel, swiveling it to starboard. Unlike the rigid, single-piece construction of a normal cannon, the flamethrower was designed in such a way that the barrel could be positioned in any one of five locations, covering an arc of ninety degrees, without moving the main body of the device. One of the other sailors was removing the shield covering the rearmost firing slit on the starboard side. Eusebius, following Antonina's earlier terse instructions, intended to sail the Victrix right down the length of the Malwa galley, bathing it in hellfire as it passed. Hopefully, by the time the ship exploded, the Victrix would have sailed past far enough to avoid any catastrophic damage. Unless-

  Again, Ousanas seemed to read Antonina's thoughts. "Let's hope one of those damned priests doesn't decide to blow the ship while we're alongside," he muttered. Then, a bit more brightly: "But probably not, since we're only one ship-and they'll have no way of knowing you are aboard."

  "Or you," she retorted. "You are Axum's aqabe tsentsen. A Mahaveda might decide that was a satisfactory prize to take to hell with him."

  Ousanas chuckled. "In the dark of night? Just another heathen black savage, that's all." He took Antonina's hand in his own and squeezed it. Then, gently, turned her wrist over and opened his palm. Her small hand, dusky-Egyptian though it was, was pale across the breadth of his own hand, black with African color.

  "It means little to us, in our day," he mused, staring down at the contrast. "But a day will come-would have, at least-when that will not be so. A day when milk-white north Europeans, barbarians no longer but in some ways even more barbarous, will enslave Africans and claim that the difference in race is justification enough. A claim which they will be able to make because, for over a millennium, Africa remained isolated from world civilization."

  He shook his head, smiling slightly. "Isolation is a bad thing, for a people as much as a person. So Eon and I, as best we can, will see to it that it never happens. Ethiopia's new destiny is to mother a different Africa. And I-"

  His smile spread into a grin. "I am destined, I fear, to marry some half-savage creature who is even now squatting by the edge of one of the great lakes. But whose father can claim to be the 'great chief' of the land." He sighed. "Hopefully, I will be able to convince the creature to learn how to read. Or, at least, not to use my books for kindling."

  "Get ready!" shrilled Eusebius. One of the sailors began frenziedly working the lever which filled the fire cannon's chamber. From beyond the shield, Antonina could hear the indistinct shrieks of Mahaveda priests shouting their own orders. She thought-she hoped-to detect confusion in those sounds.

  But, for the moment, she blocked all of that from her mind. She would give that moment to the man named Ousanas, for whom, over the years, she had come to feel a great loving friendship.

  "You will do well," she whispered. "And I have no doubt the girl will find you just as magnificent as I do."

  He grinned, gave her hand a last little squeeze, and rose to his feet. Then, reaching over and grasping the great spear which he had left propped securely against the wall of the shield, he turned toward the entrance facing aft.

  "First, we must survive this battle. And I suspect the Malwa priests will be pouring over the side onto our decks." His lip curled. "Screaming refugees, pretending to be fierce boarders."

  Antonina said nothing. She just basked, for a few seconds, in her enjoyment at watching Ousanas move. Antonina had always had a purely sensuous side, which reveled in the sight of handsome and athletic men. And, in the case of her husband, who was one himself, the feel of such a male body.

  But no man, in her life, had ever displayed such pure masculine grace and power as Ousanas. Watching him move reminded her of nothing so much as the Greek legends of Achilles and Ajax. So, for those few seconds, Antonina was able to forget all her tension in the simple pleasure of admiration.

  "Now!" shrilled Eusebius. The sailor pumping the lever ceased; another turned a valve; Eusebius himself-this was the most dangerous task-ignited the deathspew gouting from the barrel.

  "Just as I said," Antonina murmured to herself, "they're so handy to have around when the crude stuff starts happening."

  Chapter 17

  The interior of the bow shield, despite its small apertures, was suddenly filled with the reflected light of the fire cannon's effects. Antonina realized, even before she heard Eusebius' shout of triumph, that the very first blast must have struck the target perfectly.

  "Like painting with fire!" shrieked Eusebius gleefully. "Look at it burn!"

  Before his last words were even spoken, the sound of screams came through the shield, piercing Antonina's ears.

  Mahaveda priests who had been positioned at the bow, she realized. Suddenly turned into so many human torches.

  For all the horror in the thought, Antonina felt not even a twinge of remorse. Truth be told, with a few exceptions such as Bishop Anthony Cassian-Patriarch Anthony, he was now-Antonina had never been fond of any kind of priest, even Christian ones. She had been denounced by such too many times, in her reprobate youth.

  Mahaveda priests had all the vices of any clerics, and none of their virtues. Their cult was a bastard and barbaric offshoot of Hinduism, more savage than that of any pagan tribe, and with the added evil which the sophistication of civilized India provided.

  Burn in hell, then. As far as Antonina was concerned, the Mahaveda priests were finding their just reward.

  During the few seconds which had elapsed, Eusebius and his cannon crew had been working feverishly. The cannon's fire-chamber was refilled; the sailor pumping the lever ceased abruptly; the valve was reopened by his mate. In those few seconds, Antonina realized, the Victrix must have carried alongside the Circe's beam.

  "Again!" cried Eusebius. Ignition.

  Another flare filled the interior of the bow shield, brighter this time. Antonina knew in the instant that the hideous weapon had struck true yet again. More screaming filtered through the shield. Less distant.

  She heard Ousanas mutter: "They'll be coming now. No choice." The aqabe tsentsen, still standing in the rear entrance of the shield, hefted his great spear.

  Antonina's gaze was torn away from Eusebius and his men working at the cannon. For the first time, through the opening in the rear, she was able to see the destruction wreaked by the fire cannon. The Circe slid into view. The bow of the Greek merchant vessel seized by the Malwa was wreathed in flames. Even as she watched, a Mahaveda priest-she assumed it was a priest; hard to tell, from the way he was burning-stu
mbled on the railing and plunged into the sea.

  "Again!" Ignition. Another flare. Most of the starboard side of the enemy vessel, Antonina realized, was now a raging inferno. More of the Circe slid into her view.

  She hissed. Whether through deliberate effort or simply accident, the two ships were almost touching. Not more than five or six feet separated them-close enough to pose the danger of fire spreading.

  A slight motion caught her eye. Antonina saw that Ousanas was shifting his stance. Clearly enough, the African was getting ready to fight.

  For a moment, Antonina was puzzled. Granted, the deck of the Circe was level with that of the Victrix. Granted, also, the two ships were close enough for boarders to leap across. But-

  What enemy could possibly hurl their bodies through that inferno?

  The answer came almost as soon as the question.

  Mahaveda priests.

  Fanatics. This was a suicide mission in the first place.

  Antonina scrambled to her knees and began opening the valise. Before she even managed to lay hands on her gun, she caught sight in the corner of her eye of the first priest leaping onto the Victrix.

  The sight froze her, for an instant. The Mahaveda was like a demon-screaming and waving a sword-burning from head to foot. His garments were afire, and his face was already blackened and peeling away. She realized he must have been almost blind by now.

  The priest managed to land on his feet. He stood for perhaps a second, before Ousanas leapt forward and decapitated him with a great sweep of his spear. The aqabe tsentsen was such a powerful man that he was quite capable of using that spear like a Goth barbarian would use a two-handed sword. The more so since the blade of the spear was a huge leaf, fully eighteen inches in length and as sharp as a razor.