The Tide of Victory (38 page)

Scowling, Antonina kept peering. She wasn't sure what annoyed her the most—the total darkness, or the endless hammering of rain on the roof.

"What if we go aground?" she muttered. Then, hearing Ousanas' heavy sigh, she restrained herself.

"Sorry, sorry," she grumbled sarcastically. "I forget that Ethiopian seamen all sprang full-blown from the brow of Neptune. Can see in the dark, smell a lee shore—"

"They
can
, as a matter of fact," said Ousanas. "Smell the shore, at least."

"Easiest thing in the world," chimed in Eon. The negusa nagast of Axum was standing right next to Ousanas, leaning on one of the four cannons in the bow. In the covered foredeck of the large Ethiopian flagship, there was far more room than there had been in the relatively tiny bow shield of the
Victrix.
 

"People call it the 'smell of the sea,' " he added. "But it's actually the smell of the seacoast. Rotting vegetation, all that. The open sea barely smells at all." He gestured toward the lookout, perched on the very bow of the ship. "That's what he's doing, you know, along with using the lead. Sniffing."

"How can anyone smell
anything
in this wretched downpour?" Antonina studied the lookout. The man's position was well forward of the roof which sheltered the foredeck. She thought he looked like a drowned rat.

At that very moment, the lookout turned his head and whistled. Then whistled again, and twice again.

Antonina knew enough of the Axumite signals to interpret the whistles.
Land is near. Still no bottom.
 

For a moment, she was flooded with relief. But only for a moment.

"We're probably somewhere on the Malabar coast," she said gloomily. "Six hundred miles—or more!—from Chowpatty."

Suddenly she squealed and began dancing around. Eon was tickling her!

"Stop that!" she gasped, desperately spinning around to bring her sensitive ribs away from his fingers.

Eon was laughing outright. Ousanas, along with the half dozen Axumite officers positioned in the foredeck, was grinning widely.

"Only if you stop making like Cassandra!" boomed Eon. Who, at the moment, looked more like a very large boy than the Ethiopian King of Kings. A scamp and a rascal—royal regalia and vestments be damned. The phakhiolin, as Ethiopians called their version of an imperial tiara, was half-askew on Eon's head.

With a last laugh, Eon stopped the tickling. "
Will
you relax, woman? Ethiopian sailors have been running the Malwa blockade of Suppara for almost two years now. Every ship in this fleet has half a dozen of those sailors aboard as pilots. They know the entire Maratha coastline like the back of their hand—good weather or bad, rain or shine, day or night."

He went back to lounging against the cannon, and patted the heavy flank of the great engine of war with a thick and powerful hand. "Soon enough—soon enough—we will finally break that blockade. Break it into pieces."

Antonina sighed. Abstractly, she knew that Eon was right. Right, at least, about the dangers of the voyage itself.

A long voyage that had been, and in the teeth of the monsoon's last days. The entire Axumite warfleet had sailed directly across the Erythrean Sea, depending entirely on their own seamanship—and the new Roman compasses which Belisarius had provided them—to make landfall. A voyage which would, in itself, become a thing of Ethiopian legend. Had the negusa nagast not led the expedition personally, many of the Ethiopian sailors might well have balked at the idea.

But, just as Eon and his top officers had confidently predicted weeks before, the voyage had been made successfully and safely. That still left . . .

A voyage, no matter how epic, is one thing. Fighting a successful battle at the end of it, quite another.

Antonina went back to fretting. Again, her eyes were affixed to the view through the foredeck.

"Silly woman!" exclaimed Eon. "We are still hours away. That Malwa fleet at Chowpatty is so much driftwood. Be sure of it!"

Again, for a moment, her fears lightened. Eon's self-confidence was infectious.

To break the Malwa blockade . . . Break it into pieces! 
 

Such a feat, regardless of what happened with Belisarius' assault on the Sind, would lame the Malwa beast. The Maratha rebellion had already entangled the enemy's best army. With Suppara no longer blockaded, the Romans would be able to pour supplies into Majarashtra. Not only would Damodara and Rana Sanga be tied down completely—unable to provide any help to the larger Malwa army in the Indus—but they might very well require reinforcements themselves. Especially if, after destroying the Malwa fleet at Chowpatty which maintained the blockade of Suppara, the Ethiopian fleet could continue on and . . .

That "and" brought a new flood of worries. "It'll never work," Antonina hissed. "I was an idiot to agree to it!"

"It was your idea in the first place," snorted Ousanas.

"Silly woman!" she barked. "What possessed sane and sensible men to be swayed by such a twaddling creature?"

The Roman army made camp that night eight miles further north of the "battle" ground. North and, thankfully, upwind.

Just before they did so, they came upon the ruins of a peasant village. Bodies were scattered here and there among the half-wrecked huts and hovels.

There was a survivor in the ruins. An old man, seated on the ground, leaning against a mudbrick wall, staring at nothing and holding the body of an old woman in his arms. The woman's garments were stiff with dried blood.

When Belisarius rode up and brought his horse to a halt, the old man looked up at him. Something about the Roman's appearance must have registered because, to Belisarius' surprise, he spoke in Greek. Rather fluent Greek, in fact, if heavily accented. The general guessed that the man had been a trader once, many years back.

"I was in the fields when it happened," the old man said softly. "Far off, and my legs are stiff now. By the time I returned, it was all over."

His hand, moving almost idly, stroked the gray hair of the woman in his arms. His eyes moved back to her still face.

Belisarius tried to think of something to say, but could not. At his side, Maurice cleared his throat.

"What is the name of this village?" he asked.

The old peasant shrugged. "What village? There is no village here." But, after a moment: "It was once called Kulachi."

Maurice pointed over his shoulder with a thumb. "Today, we destroyed the army which did this. And now, as is Roman custom, we seek a name for the victory."

Belisarius nodded. "Quite right," he announced loudly. "The Battle of Kulachi, it was."

Around him, the Roman soldiers who heard growled their satisfaction. The peasant studied them, for a moment, as if he were puzzled.

Then, he shrugged again. "The name is yours, Roman. It means nothing to me anymore." He stroked the woman's hair, again, again. "I remember the day I married her. And I remember each of the days she bore me a child. The children who now lie dead in this place."

He stared to the south, where a guilty army was bleeding its punishment. "But this day? It means nothing to me. So, yes, you may have the name. I no longer need it."

On the way out of the village, several soldiers left some food with the old man. He seemed to pay no attention. He just remained there, stroking a memory's hair.

Aide did not speak for some time thereafter. Then, almost like an apology:

If you had been a blacksmith, this would have happened also. Ten times over, and ten times worse. 
 

Belisarius shrugged. I know that, Aide. And tomorrow the knowledge will mean something to me. But today? Today it means nothing. I just wish I could have been a blacksmith. 

Just after daybreak, the first Malwa ship at Chowpatty was sunk by ramming. Unfortunately, the maneuver was completely unplanned and badly damaged an Ethiopian warship in the process. Coming through the pouring rain into the bay where the Malwa kept their fleet during the monsoon season, the lead Ethiopian warship simply ran over the small Malwa craft stationed on picket duty.

The Malwa themselves never saw it coming. The crew—exhausted by the ordeal of keeping a small ship at sea during bad weather—had been preoccupied with that task. They had no lookouts stationed. The thought that enemy warships might be in the area didn't even occur to them.

As it was, they considered their own commander a lunatic, and had cursed him since they left the docks. Nobody, in those days, tried to actually "maintain a blockade" during the stormy season. The era when English warships would maintain year-round standing blockades of French ports was in the far distant future.

In times past, once the monsoon came, the Malwa fleet blockading Suppara had simply retired to the fishing town of Chowpatty further south along the coast, which the Malwa had seized and turned into their naval base. There, for months, the sailors would enjoy the relative peace and pleasures of the grimy town which had emerged on the ruins of the fishing village. The fishermen were long gone, fled or impressed into labor. Those of their women who had not managed to escape had been forced into the military brothels, if young enough, or served as cooks and laundresses.

But this monsoon season had been different. The Malwa ruler of southern India—Lord Venandakatra, Goptri of the Deccan—had always been a foul-tempered man. As the strength of the Maratha rebellion had grown, he had become downright savage. Not all of that savagery was rained down upon the rebels. His own subordinates came in for a fair portion of it.

So . . . the Malwa commander of the Suppara blockade had taken no chances. As preposterous and pointless as it might be, he would keep one ship stationed at sea at all times. Lest some spy of Venandakatra report to the Goptri that the blockade was being managed in a lackadaisical manner—and the commander find himself impaled as several other high-ranked officers had been in the past. Their flayed skins hung from the ceiling of the audience chamber of the Goptri's palace in Bharakuccha.

The Ethiopian ship did have a lookout posted in the bow. But he, too, had not been expecting to encounter enemy ships at sea. He had been concentrating his attention—with his ears more than his eyes—on spotting the first signs of approaching landfall. So he didn't see the Malwa vessel until it was too late to do anything but shout a last-minute warning.

Seconds later, the Ethiopian seaman died. When the prow of the Axumite craft struck the Malwa vessel amidships, he was flung from his roost into the enemy ship and broke his neck against the mast. His body then flopped onto two Malwa sailors huddling next to the mast, seeking shelter from the rain. Panic-stricken, the sailors heaved his corpse aside.

They had good reason to panic. The Ethiopian ship was not only heavier and larger, its bow was designed to serve as a platform for cannons. The hull structure was braced to support weight and withstand recoil. The small Malwa craft, on the other hand, was nothing more than a small fishing boat refitted as a warship. Even that "refitting" amounted to nothing more than mounting a few rocket troughs along the side.

The Ethiopian ship, running with the wind, caved in the hull of the Malwa vessel and almost ran over it completely before falling away. Within half a minute of the collision, half the Malwa sailors were in the water and the other half would be within another minute.

Cursing, the captain of the Ethiopian ship raced below deck to check the extent of the damage. His lieutenant, in the meantime, hastily ordered the signal rockets fired which would alert the rest of the Axumite fleet that they had reached their target.

Those signal rockets, of course, would also alert the Malwa defenders of the port. But Eon and his top advisers had already decided that it was too risky to attempt a complete surprise attack in bad weather. The Axumite ships might very well destroy or strand themselves by running ashore. Besides, Eon and his officers were confident that prepared and ready Axumite marines could overwhelm any Malwa garrison caught off guard during monsoon season. Half of those garrison sailors and soldiers—at least half—would be carousing or sleeping or foraging. And the ones on duty would be concentrated primarily on the inward walls of the town, guarding against attacks from Rao's guerrillas.

The negusa nagast even took the time, as his ship loomed out of the rain-drenched sea, to pull alongside the crippled Ethiopian warship. By then, the captain had returned from below, scowling more fiercely than ever.

"What's the damage?" hailed Eon.

The captain shook his head. "Taking water badly!" he shouted back. "She'll sink soon enough if we don't beach her for repairs!"

On his flagship, Eon didn't hesitate for more than a few seconds. Nor did he bother to consult with Ousanas or Ezana or Antonina, all of whom had gathered by the rail next to him.

"Forget repairs!" the Ethiopian king shouted. "Beach her in the middle of the Malwa fleet and do what damage you can! We'll salvage what we can after we take the port!"

Before he had even finished, the captain was shouting new orders. The fact that he had just been sent on what seemed to be a suicide mission did not faze him in the least.

Nor did it faze Ousanas and Eon, although Antonina's face registered a bit of shock.

"Good plan," grunted Ezana. Seeing the distress on the Roman woman's face, he chuckled harshly and shook his head. "Have no fear, Antonina. Those men will hold off the Malwa until we get there. Axumite marines!"

And so it was that the Ethiopian assault on the Malwa fleet at Chowpatty was led by a crippled ship limping into the harbor. The few sailing ships possessed by the Malwa—again, refitted sailing craft—were sheltered behind a small breakwater. The war galleys which constituted the heart of the fleet had simply been drawn up on the beach itself. That great beach had been the main reason the Malwa had chosen Chowpatty for their monsoon naval base.