Fortune's stroke b-4 Page 21

  The first, howled with glee: "And will you look at those fucking Kushans? God-damn!"

  And the response, growling bemused wonder: "I'm glad Kungas is on our side, boys. Or we'd be so much dog food."

  So am I. Oh, dear God, so am I.

  In the time which followed, as a Malwa army was ripped to pieces between Ethiopia's shield wall and a Kushan avalanche, Irene went away. This was not her place. She had no purpose here.

  She needed to find herself, again. For perhaps the first time in her life.

  Herself appeared, and demanded the truth. Don't ask why you came, woman. You know the answer. And don't tell me lies about clever stratagems, and ruses, and battle plans. Tell others, but not me. You know why you came.

  "Yes," she choked, closing her eyes. Tears leaked through the lids. "I know."

  A sarwen, hearing the soft sobs, glanced down at her. For a moment, no more, before he looked away. A woman, her wits shattered. Nothing to puzzle over. Women were fragile by nature.

  But he was quite wrong. The tears streaking Irene's cheeks were tears of happiness, not fear. Fear there was, of course, and fear aplenty. But it was not fear of the moment. No, not at all. It was the much greater fear-the deep terror, entwined with joy-of a human being who had finally, like so many others before her, been able to give up a hostage to fortune. A woman who, finally, understood her friend Antonina and could-finally-make the same choice.

  "He would have gone into the fire, anyway," she whispered to herself. "No matter what I did."

  Herself nodded. And you could not bear the thought. Of staying behind, staring at a horse.

  Then, he was there. She saw the legs of the sarwen around her ease and stretch. Saw them move aside. Heard the shouts of greeting and glee. In the distance, a muted roar. The first of the Malwa guns was being destroyed-overcharged powder blowing overcharged shot, rupturing the huge weapon like a rotten fruit.

  He squatted next to her, where she knelt. "Are you all right?"

  Irene nodded. Smiled. He placed a hand on her shoulder.

  He had never touched her before. She reached up and caressed the hand with her own. Feeling, with her long and slender fingers, the short ones, heavy with flesh and sinew, which held her shoulder so gently.

  She pressed her face into his thick chest. His hand slid down her arm, his arm became a shield, his touch an embrace. Suddenly, fiercely, she pressed open lips against his muscular neck. Kissing, nuzzling. Her breath came quick and short. She flung her arms around him and drew him half-sprawling across her. Her left leg, kicking free of the long tunic, coiled down his out-thrust right leg. Her sandal scraped the bare skin of his calf.

  For a moment-pure heat, bolting out of a stable like a wild horse-Irene felt Kungas respond. His hard abdomen pressed her own, desire meeting desire. But only for a moment. Kungas chuckled. The sound carried more delight than humor. Much more. Much more. It was the choked laugh of a man who discovers, unexpectedly, that an idle dream has taken real form. Yet, despite that little cry, his strong arms and body went rigid, pinning her-not like a wrestler pins an opponent, but simply like a man restrains a child from folly. Seconds went by, while his lips nuzzled her lovely, thick, chestnut hair. Irene felt his breath; heavy, hot at first, but cooling quickly.

  She chuckled herself, then, as his restraint brought her own. "I guess it's not a good idea," she mumbled. "The Ethiopians would probably insist on watching."

  "Worse, I'm afraid," he responded dryly, still kissing her hair. "They'd accompany us with drums. Placing bets, all the while, on when we'd stop."

  Irene laughed outright. The sound was muffled against his chest.

  "No," whispered Kungas gently. "Not for us, and not now. Passion always comes, after death's wings flap away. But it is cheap, and gone with the morrow. And you will wonder, afterward, whether it was you or your fear."

  He chuckled again. Delight was still in that sound, but it was warm rather than ecstatic. "I know you, Irene. You would resent me. And what's worse, you would study books trying to find the answer."

  "Think I couldn't find it?" she demanded.

  She heard his soft laugh, rustling through her hair. Felt the little movement of his chest. Knew the economic subtlety she had come to cherish so. "I don't doubt you would. But reading takes so much time. I don't want to wait that long."

  Smiling, she raised her head. The clear brown eyes of Greek nobility, looking past a long and bony nose, stared into eyes of almond, in a flat and barbarous face. "How long, then?" she asked.

  Another muted roar swept the pavilion; and then another. But the Kushan's eyes never left her own. The destruction of Venandakatra's guns-the rubble of Malwa's schemes-the salvation of a dynasty-these were meaningless things, in that moment, for those two people embracing on a road.

  "First, I must learn to read," he said. "Not before." His face was stiff, and solemn, but Irene did not miss the little twitch in his lips.

  She smiled. "You are a good student, you know. Amazingly good."

  Kungas' smile could have been recognized by anyone, now. "With such an incentive, who could fail?"

  There was another roar, as a siege gun ruptured; and another. This time, Kungas did look.

  "That's the last of them," he said. "We must be off, now, before they rally and Venandakatra sends more. We can make the coast, if we don't dawdle."

  With easy grace, he rose to his feet and extended his hand. A moment later, Irene was standing at his side.

  The realities of war had returned. Irene could see the sarwen and the Kushan troops forming their columns in preparation for the forced march to the sea, and the Ethiopian ships waiting there to carry them back to Suppara.

  But Kungas did not immediately relinquish his grip on her hand. He took the time to lean over and whisper: "We will know."

  Irene, grinning, squeezed his hand. "Yes. We will always know."

  She burst into laughter, then. Riotous, joy-filled laughter. Ethiopian and Kushan soldiers nearby, hearing that bizarre sound on a bloody battlefield, looked her way.

  For a second or two, no more. A woman, her wits frayed by the carnage. Nothing to puzzle over. Women were fragile by nature.

  Chapter 19

  Persia

  Summer, 532 A.D.

  "Can you disguise the entrance afterward?" asked Belisarius. He waved his hand, in a gesture which encompassed the valley. "The whole area, actually. Keep in mind, Kurush, there'll be more than ten thousand soldiers passing through here-and as many horses."

  The Roman general turned his head, looking down at the river. The river flowed west by northwest. Like the valley itself, the river was small and rather narrow. The pass where it exited the valley was barely more than a gorge. They were almost in the foothills of the western slope of the Zagros, but the surrounding mountains seemed to have lost none of their usual ruggedness.

  "I assume you'll be taking the horses out that way," Belisarius said, pointing toward the gorge. "By the time they pass through, the whole valley will be churned into mush. No way to disguise the tracks."

  Kurush shook his head, smiling. "We won't try to hide the tracks, Belisarius. Quite the opposite! The more Damodara's mind is on that gorge, the more he'll be diverted from the real exit."

  Belisarius scratched his chin. "I understand the logic, Kurush. But don't underestimate Damodara and Sanga-and their scouts. Those Pathan trackers can trail a mouse. They won't simply trot after the horses, salivating. They'll search the entire valley."

  Belisarius turned his head and studied the entrance to the qanat. The timber-braced adit was located about a hundred yards up the mountainside, not far from the small river which had carved out this valley. The sloping ramp, after a few feet, disappeared into darkness.

  He hooked a thumb in that direction. "There'll be tracks there too," he pointed out. "No way to disguise them, either. Even if you collapse the entrance, the tracks will be all over the area. Ten thousand troops leave a big trail."

  Kurush's smile w
idened. He shook his head. "You're worrying too much. We can cover the soldiers' tracks by running the horses through afterward. Everywhere except this immediate area. Then-"

  The Persian nobleman leapt onto a small rock a few feet away. From that perch, he leaned over and pointed along the steep slope of the mountain. "This is mining country, Belisarius. Silver, mostly. There are small deposits in this valley."

  He spread his hands apologetically. "Nothing more than traces, really, according to the miners I brought with me. But the miners will be gone before Damodara arrives. And I doubt very much if an army of Rajput cavalrymen will be able to tell him that the ore in the area isn't worth mining."

  Aide made a mental snort. Rajputs?

  Belisarius chuckled. "Hardly! And their Pathans, outside of hunting, consider all forms of labor to be women's work."

  The Roman general nodded. "Yes, that'll work. After we pass through, you'll have this whole slope turned into a mining operation. Cover our tracks with tailings." He pointed at the adit. "And I assume that you'll have your miners cover our tracks well into the qanat. Fifty yards should do it. Pathans are outdoorsmen. They won't be comfortable more than a few feet into that blackness."

  Again, Belisarius studied the gorge at the far end of the valley. "All that will be left, after a few days," he mused, "are the tracks of Roman horses. Passing, by pure coincidence, through a mining area on their way into Mesopotamia."

  He paused, thinking. "One thing, however. Those Pathans know their business, Kurush. You'll have to make sure-"

  Kurush was grinning. "Yes, yes!" he interrupted. "I'll have the horses carrying sacks filled with dirt. Weighing about what a Roman soldier does. Their tracks will be deep enough."

  Belisarius returned the grin with one of his own. "You've thought of everything, I see."

  Kurush shrugged. Belisarius almost laughed. The modest gesture fit the Aryan sahrdaran about as well as a curtsy fits a lion.

  His humor faded. "You understand, Kurush, that the hammer will fall on you? Once Damodara understands what has happened-and it won't take him long-he won't waste time trying to chase after me. He'll strike directly into Mesopotamia."

  Kurush shrugged again. The gesture, this time, did not even pretend at modesty. It was the twitch of a lion's shoulders, irritated by flies.

  "That is only fair, Roman, after all you've done for the Aryans."

  Kurush sprang off the rock and strode over to Belisarius. He jabbed his chin toward the south, using his stiff Persian-cut beard as a pointer. "As soon as he gets the word, the emperor will begin retreating toward Babylon. He's on the verge of doing it, anyway, so it won't seem odd at all." Kurush scowled. "The Malwa have been pressing him very hard."

  Belisarius eyed the sahrdaran. The Roman general had no difficulty interpreting Kurush's frowning face. He could well imagine the casualties which Emperor Khusrau's soldiers had taken over the past months. While Belisarius had been maneuvering with Damodara in the Zagros mountains all through the spring, Khusrau had been keeping the huge main army of the Malwa invasion penned up in the Tigris-Euphrates delta. The task would have been difficult enough, even without-

  He decided to broach the awkward subject.

  "Has the rebellion-?"

  Khusrau's frown vanished instantly. The Persian nobleman barked a laugh.

  "The head of the emperor's half-brother has been the main ornament of his pavilion for two weeks, now." Kurush grimaced. "Damn thing was a mass of flies, by the time I left. Stinky."

  His good humor returned. "Ormazd's rebellion has been crushed. And that of the Lakhmids. We took Hira almost two months ago. Khusrau drove the population into the desert and ordered the city razed to the ground."

  Belisarius let no sign of his distaste show. He had never been fond of "punitive action" against enemy civilians, even before he met Aide and was introduced to future standards of warmaking.

  But he did not fault Khusrau. By the standards of the day, in truth, driving the population of Hira out of the city before destroying it was rather humane. The Lakhmids had been Persian vassals before they gave their allegiance to the Malwa invaders. Most Persian emperors-most Roman ones, for that matter, including Theodora-would have repaid that rebellion by ordering the city's people burned inside it.

  And let's not get too romantic about the Geneva Convention and the supposedly civilized standards of future wars, either, remarked Aide. They won't prevent entire cities being destroyed, with their populations. Purely for "strategic reasons," of course. What difference does that make, to mangled children in the ruins of Coventry? Or to thousands of Korean slave laborers incinerated at Hiroshima?

  Kurush was pointing with his beard again, this time to the west.

  "The emperor has instructed me to defend Ctesiphon, while he retreats to Babylon. I will have ten thousand men. That should be enough to hold our capital city, for a few months. Damodara does not have siege guns."

  Kurush turned his eyes to Belisarius. There was nothing in the Persian's gaze beyond a matter-of-fact acceptance of reality.

  "In the end, of course," he said calmly, "we will be doomed. Unless your thrust strikes home."

  Belisarius smiled crookedly. "It is said that an army marches on its belly, you know. I will do my best to drive a lance into the great gut of Malwa, once you have drawn the shield away."

  Kurush chuckled. "`An army marches on its belly,'" he repeated. "That's clever! I don't recognize the saying, though. Who came up with it?"

  Good move, genius, said Aide sourly. This will be entertaining, watching you explain to a sixth-century Persian how you came to quote Napoleon.

  Belisarius ignored the quip. "I heard it from a Hun. One of my mercenaries, during my second campaign in the trans-Danube. I was rather stunned, actually, to find such a keen grasp of logistics in the mind of a barbarian. But it just goes to show-"

  Father of lies, father of lies. It's a good thing my lips are sealed, so to speak. The stories I could tell about you! They'd make even Procopius' Secret History look like sober, reasoned truth.

  Lord Damodara leaned back in his chair, studying Narses' scowling face.

  "So what is it that bothers you, exactly?" he asked the eunuch.

  "Everything!" snapped Narses. The old Roman glared around the interior of the pavilion, as if searching its unadorned walls for some nook or cranny in which truth lay hidden.

  "None of what Belisarius is doing makes any sense," stated Narses. "Nothing. Not from the large to the small."

  "Explain," commanded Damodara. The lord waved his pudgy little hand in a circular motion. The gesture included himself and the tall figure of the Rajput king seated next to him. "In simple words, that two simpletons like myself and Rana Sanga can understand."

  The good-humored quip caused even Rana Sanga to smile. Even Narses, for that matter, and the old eunuch was not a man who smiled often.

  "As to the `large,' " said Narses, "what is the purpose of these endless maneuvers that Belisarius is so fond of?" The eunuch leaned forward, emphasizing his next words. "Which are not, however-and cannot be-truly endless. There is no way he can stop you from reaching Mesopotamia. The man's not a fool. That must be as obvious to him, by now-" Narses jabbed a stiff finger toward the pavilion's entrance "-as it is to the most dim-witted Ye-tai in your army."

  "He's bought time," remarked Sanga.

  Narses made a sour face. "A few months, at most. It's not been more than eight weeks since the battle of the pass, and you've already forced him almost out of the Zagros. Your army is much bigger than his. You can defeat him on an open battlefield, and you've proven that you can maneuver through these mountains as well as he can. Within a month, perhaps six weeks, he'll have to concede the contest and allow you entry into Mesopotamia. At which point he'll have no choice but to fort up in Ctesiphon or Peroz-Shapur, anyway. So why not do it now?"

  "I don't think it's odd," countered Damodara. "He's used the months that he kept us tied up in the Zagros to good advantage, according
to our spies. That general of his that he left in charge of the Roman forces in Mesopotamia-the crippled one, Agathius-has been working like a fiend, these past months. By the time we get to Ctesiphon, or Peroz-Shapur, he'll have the cities fortified beyond belief. Cannons and gunpowder have been pouring in from the Roman armories, while we've been countermarching all over these damned mountains."

  Sanga nodded. "The whole campaign, to my mind, has Belisarius' signature written all over it. He always tries to force his enemy to attack him, so that he can have the advantage of the defensive. By stalling us for so many months here in the mountains, he's been able to create a defensive stronghold in Mesopotamia. It'll be pure murder, trying to storm Peroz-Shapur."

  Narses stared at the two men sitting across the table from him. There seemed to be no expression at all on the eunuch's wizened, scaly face, but both Damodara and Sanga could sense the sarcasm lurking somewhere inside.

  Neither man took offense. They were accustomed to Narses, and his ways, by now. There was a bitterness at the center of the eunuch's soul which was ineradicable. That bitterness colored his examination of the world, and gave scorn to his every thought.

  Thoughts, however-and a capacity to examine-which they had come to respect deeply. And so a kinsman of the Malwa dynasty, and Rajputana's most noble monarch, listened carefully to the words of a lowborn Roman eunuch.

  Narses leaned over and pointed with his finger to a location on the great map which covered the table.

  "He will make his stand at Peroz-Shapur, not Ctesiphon," predicted Narses. "Belisarius is a Roman, when all is said and done. Ctesiphon is Persia's capital, but Peroz-Shapur is the gateway to the Roman Empire."

  Damodara and Sanga both nodded. They had already come to the same conclusion.

  Narses studied the map for a few seconds. Then:

  "Tell me something. When the time comes, do you intend to hurl your soldiers at the walls of Peroz-Shapur?" He almost-not quite-sneered. "You don't have too many Ye-tai left, either, so the soldiers you'll use up like sheep at a slaughterhouse will all be Rajput."