The Tide of Victory (58 page)

That worry led to another.
Supplies.
They were starting to get low again. Not so much in terms of food as gunpowder. Even with the Malwa gunpowder which Sittas' men would have captured in their sally this day . . .

Belisarius' train of thought was cut short by another burst of chatter from the telegraph. This time, he charged out of the bunker himself as soon as he read enough of the message to understand the drift. After Sittas read it, the big Greek nobleman came fast on his heels.

"No glory for you today!" Sittas cheerfully informed Maurice, as soon as he trotted his horse alongside the Thracian's. "Just as well, really. You would have been
so
disappointed by the libation cup."

Maurice, perhaps oddly, didn't seem discomfited in the least. "I don't think the local beer is really all
that
bad," he said. "I've tried it already. No worse than the stuff a Thracian villager grows up with, after all." The chiliarch stroked his gray beard complacently. "We Thracians are a lot tougher than you pampered Constantinople Greeks, you know. What's more to the point, we're also a lot smarter."

He pointed to the three Malwa ships drifting down the Indus, wreathed in flame and smoke. Five others could be seen frantically trying to reach the opposite bank. "Let Eusebius and his artisans do all the work, what we say. Charging into battle on a horse—all that damned armor and equipment—is too much like farm labor. Hot, sweaty, nasty business, when you get right down to it."

"That last one's not going to make it," opined Gregory. The artillery commander was perched on his own horse on Maurice's left, opposite Sittas. "Anyone want to make it a wager?"

Sittas was known to be an inveterate gambler. But, after a moment's pause while he gauged the situation, the Greek nobleman shook his head firmly. "I don't know enough about these newfangled gadgets to figure out the odds. But since Eusebius is a
Greek
artisan—best in the world!—I don't think I'll take the bet. He'll catch it, you watch."

Five minutes later, Eusebius did catch the trailing ship. Another spout of hellfire gushed from the
Victrix
, and yet another Malwa would-be landing craft became a scene of hysterical fear and frenzy, as hundreds of Malwa soldiers stripped off their armor and plunged into the river.

Those who could swim started making their way toward the west bank of the Indus. The others—perhaps half of them—floundered helplessly in the water. Most of them would drown. Those who survived did so only because they were close enough to the lines which the
Victrix
's sailors tossed from the stern to be towed ashore into Roman captivity.

"Reminds me of fishing," mused Maurice. "A good catch, that. Maybe we'll be able to get enough latrines dug to stave off an epidemic after all."

Belisarius took no part in that exchange. He had ridden his horse directly to the pier which his combat engineers had started erecting from the first day the Iron Triangle was seized. Even the pier itself was still unfinished, much less the massive armored "sheds" which Belisarius had ordered built to provide shelter from enemy fire for the Roman warships once they arrived. But enough of it was in place to allow Menander and his barges to start offloading.

"We lost most of the gunpowder and shot," Menander confessed, as soon as he came ashore. "Their damned fortress in the gorge did for that. We'll need to take that, as soon as possible, or we'll probably lose supplies on every trip. Might even lose the
Justinian.
"

The news about the gunpowder was of some concern to Belisarius, but not much. "We'll have enough gunpowder to get by, through at least two more major assaults. Maybe three. By that time, hopefully, the
Photius
will have brought more supplies. But there's no chance at all of the
Justinian
being sunk—not by that fortress, at least. You're staying here, Menander. You and Eusebius both. With the
Justinian
and the
Victrix
here, the Malwa have no chance at all of bypassing the fortified lines across the neck of the Triangle with an amphibious attack."

That cheerful thought drove all worries about gunpowder aside. "And wait till you see what those fortifications look like! Even now, before they're completely finished, those earthworks are the strongest the world's ever—"

He broke off, seeing a figure being helped onto the pier by one of Menander's sailors. Even with the bandage covering half the man's head, Belisarius immediately recognized him. All trace of gaiety vanished.

"Oh, Christ in Heaven," he murmured. "Forgive me my sins. That boy wasn't more than eighteen years old."

Calopodius' first words, almost stammered, were an apology if his presence proved to be nothing but a burden for the general. But he was sure there was
something
he could do—quartermaster work, maybe, or—

"I've got plenty of clerks to do that!" snapped Belisarius. "What I
really
need is an excellent officer who can take command of this mare's nest we've got of telegraph communications." A bit hurriedly: "Blindness is no handicap for that work, lad. You have to listen to the messages anyway, and we've got plenty of clerks to transcribe them and transmit orders."

Calopodius' shoulders seemed to straighten a bit. Belisarius continued. "What I
really
need is an officer who can bring the thing under control and make it work the way it needs to. The telegraph is the key to our entire defensive plan. With instant communications—
if
the system gets regularized and properly organized—we can react instantly to any threat. It multiplies our forces without requiring a single extra man or gun, simply by eliminating confusion and wasted effort."

He took Calopodius by the shoulders and began leading him the rest of the way off the pier himself. "I can't tell you how delighted I am to see you here. I don't think there's a better man for the job."

Calopodius' lips quirked in that wry smile which Belisarius remembered. The sight lifted at least some of the weight from his heart.

"Well, there's this much," said the young officer. "I got excellent marks in grammar and rhetoric, as I believe I mentioned once. So at the very least I'm sure I can improve the quality of the messages."

By the end of the following day, Belisarius had withdrawn his entire army behind the inner lines of fortification. The final shape of the Iron Triangle—the term was now in uniform use throughout the army, and even most of the Punjabis were picking it up—was in place.

The Iron Triangle measured approximately three miles in width, across the narrow neck between the Indus and the Chenab. The other two legs of the triangle, formed by the meandering rivers, were much longer. But those legs were guarded by the two Roman warships, which made them impervious to Malwa assault by water. The
Justinian
, a faster ship than the
Victrix,
guarded the wide Indus. The
Victrix,
whose paddles made the risk of sandbars less of a menace, patrolled the narrower Chenab.

In the week that followed, the Malwa launched two mass assaults on the fortifications across the neck of the Triangle. But the assaults were driven back with heavy casualties. Belisarius had not been boasting, when he told Calopodius about the strength of those fortifications. In the world which would have been, the Dutch earthworks which Belisarius and Agathius and Gregory had used for their model would hold off the mighty Spaniards for almost a century. So long as his supplies held out, and epidemic could be averted by the rigorous sanitation regimen which the Romans were maintaining, Belisarius was certain he could withstand the Malwa as long as he needed to.

And, every night, as he gazed down on the map in his command bunker and listened to Calopodius' calm and cultured voice passing on to him the finest military intelligence any general had possessed thus far in history, the shape of that Roman-controlled portion of the map filled Belisarius with fierce satisfaction.

It was only a small part of the Punjab, true enough. And so what? An arrowhead is small, too. But, lodged in an enemy's heart, it will prove fatal nonetheless.

After the second assault, the Roman gunpowder supplies were running very low. Belisarius ordered a change in tactics. The big twenty-four pounders which Menander had brought would no longer be used. The great guns went through powder as quickly as they slaughtered attackers with canister and grapeshot. The three-pounders would only be used in case of absolute necessity.

Henceforth, the defense would rely entirely on the mitrailleuse and the old-fashioned methods of sword and ax atop the ramparts. Roman casualties would mount quickly, of course, depending so much on hand-to-hand methods. But Belisarius was sure he could fight off at least three more assaults before the decline in his numbers posed a real threat. Calopodius was doing as good a job as Belisarius had hoped. With the clear and precise intelligence Belisarius was now getting, he was able to maximize the position of his troops, using just as many as he needed exactly where they were needed.

The third mass assault never came. The Malwa began to prepare it, sure enough, but one morning Belisarius looked across the no-man's-land which had been the deathground of untold thousands of Malwa soldiers and saw that the enemy was pulling back. As the morning wore on, it became clearer and clearer that the tens of thousands of troops were being put to building their own great lines of fortification. As if they were now the besieged, instead of being the besieger.

Which, indeed, was the truth. And Belisarius knew full well who had been able to see that truth.

"The monster is here," he announced to his subordinates at their staff meeting that evening in the bunker. "In person. Link has arrived and taken direct charge. Which means that it's ending."

Gregory frowned. "What's ending? I'd think—"

Belisarius shook his head. "Ending. Our campaign, I'm talking about.
We won
—and Link knows it. So it's not going to order any more mass assaults. Not even Malwa can afford to keep paying that butcher's bill. Finally—finally!—even that monster has to start thinking about the morale of its troops. Which is piss poor and getting worse, every time they spill an ocean of blood against our walls."

His subordinates were all frowning, now. Seeing that row of faces, Belisarius was reminded of schoolboys puzzling at a problem.

A very difficult problem in rhetoric and grammar, to boot, chimed in Aide. Awful stuff! 

The quip caused Belisarius to chuckle softly. Then, as the reality finally began pouring through him, he raised triumphant fists over his head and began laughing aloud.

"We won, I tell you! It's finished!"

In the hours that followed, as Belisarius began sketching his plans for the
next
campaign—the one which would drive Malwa out of the Punjab altogether, the following year, and clear the road for the final Roman advance into their Ganges heartland—the frowns faded from his subordinates' faces. But not, entirely, from their inner thoughts.

Maybe . . .

True enough, their great general wasn't given to underestimating an enemy, so . . . maybe . . .

But . . .

Then, just before dawn three days later, the telegraph began chattering again and Calopodius relayed the message to Belisarius' tent. The general had already awakened, so he was able to get himself to the pier—what Menander and his sailors were now calling Justinian's Palace—within half an hour.

Maurice had gotten there ahead of him. Within no more than fifteen minutes, all of the other commanders of the Roman army were gathered alongside Belisarius atop the platform which the Roman engineers had thrown up to protect the
Justinian
and the
Victrix
. A great, heavy thing that platform was—massive timbers covered with stone and soil, which could shrug off even the most powerful Malwa mortars which the enemy occasionally sent out in riverboats in an attempt to destroy the warships which gave Rome its iron grip on the Indus.

By then, Maurice had made certain of his count. The
Photius,
steaming toward them out of the dawn, was towing no fewer than three barges. If even only one of those barges was loaded with gunpowder, it no longer mattered whether Belisarius was gauging his enemy correctly. Even Maurice—even gloomy, pessimistic Maurice—was serenely confident that with enough gunpowder the Iron Triangle could withstand years of mass assaults.

"It's over," he pronounced. "We won."

Those were the very same words pronounced by Ashot, as he came ashore.

"It's over. We won." The stubby Armenian pointed back downriver. "The Malwa lifted the siege of Sukkur five days ago. God help the poor bastards, trying to retreat back through the gorge, with Khusrau and his Persians pursuing them and no supplies worth talking about. They'll lose another twenty thousand men before they get to the Punjab, unless I miss my guess, most of them from starvation or desertion."

His enthusiasm rolled all the eager questions right under. "Bouzes and Coutzes are pressing them, too! They got to Sukkur a day after the Malwa started their retreat and just kept going, with the whole army. We've got over seventy thousand men coming through the gorge, not one of them so much as scratched by enemy action, and with nothing in their way except that single miserable damn fortress along the river."

His lip curled. "If the Malwa even
try
to hold that fortress, Coutzes swears his infantry will storm it in two hours. I wouldn't be surprised if he's right. Those men of his haven't done anything for weeks except march. By now, they're spoiling for a fight."

The pent-up enthusiasm burst like a dam. Within a minute, the officers atop Justinian's Palace were babbling a hundred new plans. Most of them, initially, involved the ins-and-outs of logistics. Keep one of the screw-powered warships on station at the Triangle at all times, using the other to tow more barges—no risk from that stinking miserable fortress once Coutzes gets his hands on it!—alternate them, of course, so all the sailors can share in the glory of hammering those wretched Malwa so-called riverboats—don't want anyone to get sulky because his mates are starting to call him a barge-handler—