The Tide of Victory (36 page)

No one took any notice of the beggar squatting outside Venandakatra's palace. He was simply one among many beggars. The old man had been plying his trade there for several weeks, and had long since become a familiar part of the landscape. Few people paid any attention to him at all, in truth—and certainly not the arrogant Ye-tai who guarded the Goptri.

Some of the other denizens of the city's slums noticed him, of course. For all the old man's apparent poverty, his garments were a bit unusual. Not in their finery—they were rags, and filthy at that—but simply in their extent. Most beggars wore nothing more than a loincloth. This old man's entire body was shrouded, as if by a winding sheet.

There was a reason for that, which was discovered by a small band of street toughs when they assaulted the old beggar. The attack occurred a few days after he first began plying his trade, in the crooked alley where the old beggar slept at night. The toughs had noticed that the beggar's bowl had been particularly well-endowed that day, and saw no reason such a miserable creature should enjoy that largesse.

The first thug who seized the old beggar by the arm was almost paralyzed with shock. Beneath the filthy garment, that arm was not the withered limb he had been expecting to feel. It was thick, and muscled so powerfully that the thug thought for a moment that he had seized a bar of iron.

The impression was reinforced an instant later—very briefly—when the elbow attached to the arm swept back and crushed the thug's throat. And that first attacker's new wisdom was shared, within a matter of a few seconds, by his three comrades. A very brief enlightenment, it was.

A few days later, another gang of toughs made the same discovery. Thereafter, the old beggar was left alone. The word spread, as it always did in such crowded and fetid slums, that the new beggar who lived in that alley was guarded by a demon. How else explain the mangled and battered corpses which had appeared of a morning—twice, now—in the mouth of that alley? While the beggar himself emerged unharmed, at the break of day, to resume plying his pathetic trade.

No word of this, of course, ever came to the ears of the authorities. Nor, if it had, would they have paid any attention. The slums of any city—especially a great metropolis like Bharakuccha—are full of superstition and rumor.

And so, day after day, the old beggar plied his trade against the wall of the palace. And so, day after day, the Ye-tai who guarded the entrance gave him no more than a casual glance.

Venandakatra himself did not give the beggar so much as a glance, in his own comings and goings. Such creatures were simply beneath the Goptri's notice. So he was completely oblivious to the way in which, without seeming to, the beggar's eyes followed his every movement while the beggar's head remained slumped in abject misery. Showing, in their hidden depths, a gleam which would have seemed odd in such a man. Almost yellow eyes, they were, like those of a watchful predator.

Belisarius and his army encountered the first Malwa force shortly after rounding the southern slopes of the Kot Diji hills and crossing the Nara. Fortunately, the Romans had received forewarning that enemy troops were in the vicinity—not from any spies or scouts, but from the stream of refugees coming south from the Indus.

Abbu and his scouts captured a small group of the refugees, what appeared to be an entire extended family. Not knowing their language, he brought the group to the general. Belisarius' fluency in foreign tongues was a byword among his troops. The Talisman of God allowed him to understand any language—even, some said, the speech of animals.

The truth, of course, fell far short of that legend. Aide did provide Belisarius with a great facility for
learning
foreign languages. But it was not magic, and did not allow Belisarius to understand and speak a language in an instant.

So the group of peasants huddling on the ground before him, with their few belongings strapped to their backs and their one precious cow "guarded" in the center, were unable to communicate with him. In truth, the people were so terrified that Belisarius doubted they would have been able to speak in any event. The eyes of the men and women were downcast. They stared at the soil before them as if, by ignoring the armed and armored men who surrounded them, they could change reality itself.

The children were less bashful. Or, at least, less ready to believe that reality was susceptible to such easy manipulation. They ogled the Roman soldiers around them, wide-eyed and fearful. One young girl—perhaps six or seven—was sobbing wildly, ignoring the way her mother was trying to shake her into silence. Because of the mother's own terror, the shaking was a subdued sort of thing, not the kind of ferocious effort which could hope to subdue such sheer hysteria.

Belisarius winced and looked away. His eyes met those of a boy about the same age. Perhaps the girl's brother; perhaps a cousin. Between the dirt and grime which covered the peasants, and the distortion which fear produced in their faces, it was hard to detect family resemblance. More accurately, family resemblance was buried under the generic similarity which makes all desperate people look well-nigh identical.

The boy was not sobbing. He was simply staring at the general with eyes so open they seemed to protrude entirely from his face. Belisarius gave him a smile. The boy's only reaction was to—somehow—widen his eyes further.

There was nothing of childlike curiosity in those wide eyes. Just a terror so deep that the lad was like a paralyzed rodent, facing a cobra.

"Oh, Christ," muttered Maurice.

Belisarius sighed. He dismissed any thought of trying to interrogate the peasants. They would tell him nothing, in any event.
Could
tell him nothing, even if he spoke their language. The war had smote the peasants as war always does—like a thunderstorm cast down by distant and uncaring deities, sweeping them aside like debris in a river raging in flood. They would understand nothing of it, beyond chaos and confusion. Troop movements, maneuvers, terrain as a military feature rather than just a path of panic-stricken flight—these were beyond their ken and reckoning.

"Let them go," he ordered. "Make sure you have our own Thracians escort them to the rear. I don't expect there'd be any trouble with other soldiers, but . . ."

"There's no reason to risk the temptation," finished Maurice, scowling a bit. "Not that these have anything worth stealing, but some of the Greeks—the new ones, not Cyril's men—are starting to complain about the lack of booty."

He eyed one of the peasant girls. Older, she was—perhaps sixteen or seventeen. "They might take out their frustration with other pleasures. And then—" He grated a harsh little laugh. "You'd give the army another demonstration of Belisarius discipline, and we'd look a bit silly charging into battle dragging executed cataphracts behind us."

Belisarius nodded. "The fact these people are here at all tells me what I need to know. The Malwa have started their massacre."

He gathered up the reins of his horse. His brown eyes, usually as warm as old wood, glinted like hard shells in a receding tide. "Which means they'll be spread out and disorganized. So it's time for another demonstration." The next words were almost hissed. "
I will put the fear of God in those men. Old Testament fear.
"

He fell on the Malwa less than two hours later. Early afternoon it was, by then. The Arab scouts had begun bringing in further reports, this time based on direct observation of the enemy. As Belisarius had expected, the Malwa soldiers were spread out across miles of terrain.

"Some burning, not much," summarized Abbu. The old desert chief's face was tight with anger. "Probably they plan to do the burning later. Now it is just the killing."

That too, Belisarius had also deduced. As they marched forward, the Roman army had encountered other refugees since the first group. The trickle had become a stream, until the entire countryside seemed to have little rivulets of frantic people pouring through it. The Malwa were butchering everyone in the area they could catch. A scorched earth campaign Tamerlane would have been proud to call his own. Tear out the ultimate roots of the land by destroying the work force itself, not simply the products of its labor.

"Is there a depression in the land we can drive them toward?" he asked.

Abbu pointed east by north. "Yes, General. That way, not far—maybe five miles. A little riverbed, almost dry. Runs northwest by southeast."

The scout leader's face tightened still further. The anger was still there, but it was now overlaid with anticipation. He understood immediately Belisarius' purpose.

"Good killing ground," he snarled. "The opposite bank will channel them downriver. Not high, but sharp and steep."

He pointed again, this time more east than north. "There. A small rise slopes down toward our bank of the river, which is shallow."

Belisarius nodded. Then:

"Sittas, take all your cataphracts and flank them on the west. Take Cyril's, too. Roll the bastards up. Don't try to smash them, just herd them toward Abbu's river. As disorganized as they are, they'll run, not fight."

He gave the big Greek general a hard stare. "Run, not fight. As long as you don't corner them."

Sittas returned the stare with a grin. "Stop fussing at me. I do know how to do something other than charge, you know." He began turning his horse. "Besides, I like this plan. We'll show these swine how to run a
real
slaughter."

Before Sittas had finished, Belisarius was issuing new orders. "Gregory, set up the artillery on that rise. But
don't
use the mitrailleuse or the mortars unless I give the command. In fact, keep them covered with tarpaulins. I want to keep those weapons a secret as long as possible, and they require special ammunition anyway. Which we need to use sparingly, this early in the campaign. Abbu, guide them there—or have one of your men do it."

As Gregory and Abbu peeled off to set their troops into new motion, Belisarius continued to issue orders. They were obeyed instantly, with one exception.

"No, Mark," said Belisarius forcefully. "I know you want to give your sharpshooters their first real taste of battle, but this is not the time and place. We can't replenish your ammunition from the general stock, and we'll need it later."

He eased any sting out of the rebuke with a slight smile. "You'll have plenty of combat, soon enough. At Sukkur and elsewhere. For today, I just need you to guard the guns. They'll do the killing."

Mark, as always, was stubborn. It was a trait Belisarius had managed to wear down some, over the years. But not much, because in truth he had never really made much of an effort to do so. If there was any single word which captured the spirit of Mark of Edessa, it was
pugnacious—
a characteristic which Belisarius prized in his officers.

At the Battle of the Pass, that pugnacity had broken a Ye-tai charge like so much kindling. That it would do so again, and again—or die in the trying—was one of the lynchpins of Belisarius' entire campaign
.
 

"The damn artillery doesn't have much ammunition either," grumbled Mark. "And they chew it up like a wolf chews meat."

"They can also chew up enemy troops like a wolf," pointed out Belisarius. "Especially at close range, with canister. And I can keep them restocked from any kind of gunpowder. Even that cruddy Malwa stuff, if I have to. I can't replace your special cartridges easily."

Mark of Edessa knew he had pushed the general as far as he could. Stubborn he was, yes, but not insubordinate. So, still scowling, he trotted off on his horse, venting his resentment by barking his commands to the sharpshooters. He sounded like a wolf himself.

"God help the Malwa if they try to overrun the batteries," said Maurice, smiling grimly. "Mark's been wanting to test the bayonets, too. And don't think he won't, if he gets half a chance."

Maurice too, it seemed, had caught the general bloodlust. "Not that I wouldn't enjoy watching it, mind you. But, you're right—this is not the time and place." He sighed with happy satisfaction. "This is just a time and place for butcher's work."

By the time the real butchery began, the Malwa were already badly blooded. Sittas, if he had not violated the letter of his orders, had obviously stretched the spirit of them as far as he could. Watching the Malwa soldiers pouring down the river bed in complete disorder, Belisarius knew that Sittas and his Greek cataphracts had "rolled them up" the way a blacksmith rolls a gun barrel—with hammer and flame.

Belisarius had chosen to take his own position with the artillery and the sharpshooters. These were his least experienced troops—in the use of these weapons, at any rate—and he wanted to observe them in action.

The slant of the terrain gave him a view of at least half a mile of the riverbed. The first Malwa units had almost reached the slight bend where he intended to hold them. Behind, moving more like fluid water than solid men, came enough enemy soldiers to fill the riverbed from bank to bank.

"How many, do you think?"

Maurice shook his head. "Hard to say, exactly, with a mob like that. At a guess, we'll wind up facing maybe twelve thousand."

That was a little higher than Belisarius' own estimate, but not by much. He nodded, continuing to study the oncoming enemy. Some of the Malwa soldiers, perhaps instinctively sensing a trap, were trying to clamber out of the riverbed over the shallow southwestern bank. But Sittas—who, for all the fury with which he could drive home a charge, was as shrewd as any cataphract commander in the Roman army—had foreseen that likelihood. So he had peeled off Cyril's men to flank the enemy yet again. The Greek cataphracts were already on the southwestern bank, ready and eager to drive the Malwa back with lance and saber.

A few Malwa tried to clamber over the opposite bank. But, as Abbu had said, that far bank was steep if not especially high. Close to vertical, in many places; and, nowhere that Belisarius could see, shallow enough to allow a man to scamper rather than climb.