Under the best of conditions, giant armies on the march throw up enormous clouds of dust. And these were not the best of conditions.
Belisarius was leading a hundred and twenty thousand men into India against the Malwa, along with as many horses, camels and mules. His army had now left the flood plains of Khuzistan province, and had entered the narrow strip of lowlands bordering the Persian Gulf.
Technically, they were marching through Pars province, the historic homeland of the ancient Achaemenid dynasty as well as the Sassanids. But this was not the Pars province that most people thought of, with its ancient cities of Persepolis and Shiraz and the irrigated regions around them.
Partly, Belisarius had chosen the southern route to avoid the inevitable destruction of farmland which a marching army produces, even if the army is under discipline. But, mostly, he had done so because of overriding logistical concerns. There was no way that an army that size could be provisioned by farmers along their route. Until they reached the Indus valley, Belisarius and his army would be entirely dependent on seaborne supplies. So, whatever other problems that route created, they would be forced to hug the coast of the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea.
A coast which, sad to say, was one of the bleakest coasts in the world: as arid as a desert, with little in the way of vegetation beyond an occasional palm grove.
Kurush reined in his horse next to Belisarius. The Roman general was sitting on his own mount atop a small rise, observing the army marching past. Sittas was alongside him; his bodyguards, Isaac and Priscus, were a few yards away.
"Did I mention the roses and nightingales of Shiraz?" asked Kurush. "And the marvelous vineyards?"
Sittas scowled. Belisarius simply smiled.
"Several times," he replied. "Each day of our march."
The Persian general grimaced. "Can't help it, I'm afraid." He reached up a hand and wiped dust from his face, leaving little streaks behind in the veil of sweat. Then, scowling himself: "Wouldn't be quite as bad if we weren't doing this in summertime."
Belisarius shrugged. "We've got no choice, Kurush. Without the monsoon blowing to the east this time of year, this whole expedition would be impossible."
The statement was about as pointless as Kurush's remark about roses and nightingales. The Persian general was just as familiar with the logistical facts of life as Belisarius.
"So I've heard you say," muttered Kurush sourly. "Several times, in fact—each day of our march."
Belisarius' lips quirked, but he made no response. He was busy studying the marching order, trying to determine if there was any possible improvement to be made.
"Forget it," said Sittas, as if he'd read Belisarius' mind. He waved a large and thick-fingered hand at the troops. "Sure you could tidy it up—theoretically. But it'd take you three days to do it, with the army standing still. And then within another three days it'd be a mess all over again."
Belisarius sighed. He had already reached the same conclusion. The army marching past him was far larger than any army he had ever led in the past. Than any Roman general had led in centuries, in fact. It had not taken Belisarius long to realize that, at a certain point, quantity transforms into quality. The kind of tight and precise marching order he had always managed to maintain in the past was simply an impossibility here.
"Given, at least," he murmured, "that we're under such a tight time schedule."
Kurush and Sittas said nothing. Again, the statement was pointless. They, along with all the other top commanders of the allied army, had planned this expedition for months. They knew just as well as Belisarius that the march to the Indus valley had to be completed before the monsoon season ended in November. Or the army would die of thirst and starvation.
It might die anyway, even if they kept to the schedule. The Indus valley was fertile, true, but Belisarius was quite certain that Link would order a scorched earth campaign in the valley once the Romans and Persians arrived at Barbaricum and began their march upriver to the Malwa heartland.
That is what he would do, after all. The Malwa had no real chance of holding Barbaricum and the coast, once Belisarius arrived at the Indus delta. The shocking and unexpected destruction of their great army in Mesopotamia the year before had forced the Malwa to concentrate on fortifying their own homeland, and to shelve—at least for a time—any plans for conquest.
But fortifications strong enough to withstand the forces Belisarius was bringing to India simply could not be erected quickly, not even with the manpower available to the Malwa. So, according to Belisarius' spies, Link had done exactly what he would do: concentrate on fortifying the upper Indus valley, the region called the Punjab. So long as the Malwa controlled the Punjab, they controlled the entrances to the Ganges. Losing the lower valley would be painful, but not fatal.
All the more so because of the geography of the region. The Indus "valley" was really two valleys, which—at least from a military point of view—were shaped somewhat like an hourglass. The lower valley, the Sind, was broad at the coast and the Indus delta but narrowed as it extended north toward the city of Sukkur and the gorge beyond. Past the Sukkur gorge, the upper valley widened again. The name "Punjab" itself meant "land of five rivers." The upper valley was shaped much like a fan, with the Indus and its main tributaries forming the blades.
If Belisarius could break into the Punjab, where he would have room to maneuver again . . .
That would truly press the Malwa against the wall. So, just as Belisarius would have done, Link would fortify the Punjab and the Sukkur "bottleneck"—but leave the Sind to its own devices. The monster would station soldiers there, to be sure. But their main task was not to prevent Belisarius from taking the lower valley, but to delay him long enough to allow Link to transform the Punjab and Sukkur into an impregnable stronghold. Those Malwa forces would retreat slowly northward, burning and destroying everything in the valley as they went. "Scorched earth" tactics with a vengeance.
Conceivably, if the Malwa could wrest control of the sea from the Romans and the Ethiopians, they could even turn the Sind into a death trap. Do to Belisarius' great army the same thing he had done to them at Charax.
Belisarius knew that unless he could break Link's plans before they came to fruition, he was faced with years of fighting a brutal, slogging campaign which had more in the nature of siege warfare than battles in the open field. A war of attrition, not maneuver, which would charge Rome with a price in blood and treasure which it could probably not afford. He had bloodied Malwa badly, over the past two years, and the Maratha rebellion in the Deccan which he had helped set into motion was bleeding it further still. But the fact remained that the Malwa empire could still draw on greater resources than Rome and Persia and Ethiopia combined. A long war of attrition was far more likely to work in favor of the Malwa than Belisarius.
Link would certainly do its best to make it so. The cybernetic organism was just as familiar with human history as Aide. The Malwa empire was now on the defensive, and they would adopt the methods and tactics which would be used in a future world by the Dutch rebels against the Spanish.
And those tactics worked for almost a century, came Aide's voice. Until the Spanish finally gave up.
Belisarius made the mental equivalent of a shrug. True. But the Spanish were never able to outflank the Dutch defenses, because the Dutch backs were protected by the sea. Malwa is not. I know Link's plans. I also believe I can foil them, when the time comes. Don't ask me how, because I don't know yet. But war is a thing of chaos, not order, and I think my understanding of that is far superior to Link's. "Superhuman intelligence" be damned. War is not a chess game. It is, in the end, more a thing of the soul than the mind. And that thing has no soul. It will try to control the chaos, where I will revel in it.
Belisarius could sense the hesitation in Aide's mind. But the only thoughts which finally came were simply: I trust your judgement.
Belisarius chuckled. Hearing the soft sound, Sittas cocked an inquisitive eye at him.
"Aide was just expressing his confidence in my judgement," murmured Belisarius. "I wish I felt as much."
He expected to hear Sittas make one of his usual quips—at Belisarius' expense—but his large friend simply chuckled himself. "As it happens, I agree with the cute little fellow. I think your strategy for this campaign is damned near brilliant. Hell, not even `damned near,' when I think about it."
Belisarius scowled. "It's too complicated. Too intricate by half. Too much step one, step two, step three. Maurice hasn't stopped nattering at me about it for a single day. And I don't disagree with him, either. It's going to start coming apart at the seams, soon enough, and I'll be back to making strategic decisions on a saddle." The scowl faded, replaced by a slight, crooked smile. "Which, I admit, seems to be something I have a certain aptitude for. More than Link does, I'm willing to bet. Am betting."
Sittas lifted his great bulk up on the stirrups for a moment, his eyes scanning the huge army. "Where is the old grouch, anyway?"
After a moment, he eased back in the saddle. The task of spotting a single man in that great horde of soldiers and moving equipment, even a top officer with his banners and entourage, was essentially hopeless.
"Of course he's grumbling," grumbled Sittas. "What would life be for the morose old bastard, without the pleasure of grousing to fill it up? But the fact is—this time—he's just plain wrong."
Almost angrily, Sittas gestured at the arid landscape ahead of them. "That's what it's going to be like, Belisarius, from here on. I'm not even sure the Malwa will bother to contest the delta, when we finally arrive at Barbaricum. Just cede it and let us get well established. Then, when the monsoon shifts, watch us starve beneath the walls of their fortifications upstream. By the time we get there, you know they'll have stripped the delta clean."
"Easier said than done."
Sittas shrugged. "Sure, I know." He barked a little laugh. "Easy for historians to say: `they ravaged the countryside.' Never catch one of those languid fellows trying to destroy croplands. Hard work, that is—harder than growing stuff, that's for sure. Wouldn't wish it on a peasant."
Belisarius smiled. He doubted if Sittas had actually ever read any of those historians he was denouncing. But Belisarius knew that Sittas had once gotten embroiled in a loud argument with three historians at an imperial feast. In the end, Theodora had sent her personal guards to quell the large and outraged general.
Belisarius had read many of those historians, on the other hand. And while he felt none of Sittas' sputtering fury at the stupidities of over-educated and over-sheltered intellectuals, he understood it perfectly well. Aristocratic scribblers suffered from the inevitable habit of turning prosaic and complex reality into simple metaphors. Almost poetry, really, which they blithely assumed was an accurate representation of reality.
Destroy the countryside. Ravage the land.
As it happened, Belisarius had given those very orders himself over the years. Especially in his earliest years as an officer, campaigning against barbarians in the trans-Danube and Persians in the Mesopotamian borderlands. But both he and his men had understood the prose between the poetry, the unspoken qualifiers attached to the muscular verbs and nouns:
As best you can—in the time allowed. To the extent possible—given the number of men available. Whatever you can do—with military equipment instead of agricultural implements, and teams of mules instead of oxen.
He could remember hearing his men cursing bitterly, wrestling with the endless and exhausting work of trying to destroy the tough vines and wood of grape fields and olive groves. Or the backbreaking work of cutting and assembling grain in piles suitable for burning. Not to mention the well-nigh hopeless task of finding all the food caches hidden away, by peasants who were far more experienced than soldiers at hiding such things—and had a far greater incentive to do the job properly.
It could almost never be done really successfully. Time after time, throughout the future history which Aide had shown him, Belisarius recognized the same pattern. An army marching through a region, "devastating the land," and then—not a year later—everything was back again. Half of it, at least. "Mother Nature," especially when assisted by poor and industrious peasants, was far tougher than any army of soldiers.
In truth, the most successful method was the most ruthless. The method the Mongols would use in Central Asia: kill everyone. Don't just destroy the irrigation works and the infrastructure, but kill all the people living there as well. Eliminate the labor force which could rebuild what was destroyed.
Those were methods Belisarius would never use. Precious few armies in history ever had. But he had no doubt at all the Malwa would use them in the delta of the Indus. The last order Link would give, after its soldiery destroyed everything they could, was to kill all the peasants living there. The multitude of that poor and humble folk, whose calloused hands were so much better at rebuilding than the sinewy hands of soldiers ever were at destroying. And then heap their corpses atop their own ravaged land, so that their putrefaction could finish the work of destruction.
Malwa's own peasants. Who would not even be given the one mercy which peasants throughout time had usually been able to expect from their rulers, no matter how tyrannical: to be left alive, that they might be exploited further.
He found his own eyes searching the passing horde, looking for Maurice. A humble fellow himself, Maurice, in his own way. Born into the Thracian peasantry, and, despite his now exalted rank, not given to pretensions. The thought filled Belisarius with a strange, grim satisfaction. The first of the many blows he intended to rain on Malwa would be to send that man to rescue the enemy's own people.
He had thought Maurice would grumble at the order. Not because of its content, but because of the intricacy of the maneuvers involved. But, for once, the old veteran had not complained. Had not, even, ritually intoned his precious "First Law of Battle."
"Makes sense," he had grunted. "We'll need them for a labor force." The smile which followed had been almost seraphic. "War's a stupid, silly business, anyway. So why not turn it completely upside down?"
Oddly enough, Belisarius did spot Maurice in the horde. And did so in the oddest place.
"Look!" he barked, pointing an accusing finger. "He's finally going soft on us!"
Sittas' eyes followed Belisarius' fingers. When he spotted Maurice himself, he burst into laughter. So did Kurush.
"He'll claim he had to work over some logistics with Agathius," chortled the Persian general. "You watch! Swear, he will, that only dire necessity forced him into it."
When Maurice finally came alongside the little rise where Belisarius and Sittas and Kurush were positioned, he glared up at them. Almost down at them, actually, perched as he was in the spacious comfort of Agathius' howdah atop a great war elephant.
"Had some logistical problems to sort out," he claimed loudly.
Agathius looked up from the papers he was studying and spotted Belisarius and the others. Then, heaving his crippled but still powerful body erect with a muscular arm on the edge of the open howdah, he grinned. "He's lying through his teeth," he shouted. "We've spent the whole morning playing with artillery positions, against these different sketches."
Even without being able to see into the howdah, Belisarius understood what Agathius was talking about. Among the many tasks he had set himself, in the months spent in Ctesiphon planning the Indus expedition, was overseeing the work of a dozen artists-become-draftsmen. Transcribing, onto parchment, Aide's descriptions of the fortifications of a future world. The designs of fortresses created in Renaissance Italy and Holland, as engineers and architects of the future grappled with the challenge of gunpowder artillery used in sieges.
Engineers and architects—and artists. Michelangelo, who would become famous to later generations as a painter and sculptor, had been famous in his own day as well; primarily, however, as one of Renaissance Italy's best military architects. He had been the city of Florence's Commissary General of Fortifications. He had lavished, over many months, as much care and attention on the critical hill of San Miniato as he would the Sistine Chapel, diverting the Mugnone and guiding the stream into a moat, as he would guide a brush; and bestowing San Miniato with as many intricate details—bastions and fascines—as he would a fresco depicting creation.
Then, having given Agathius the wherewithal to study the siege methods of the future, Belisarius had set him to work on designing, with the vast knowledge Agathius had gained from his long work as Belisarius' chief of logistics, the best methods to counter those fortresses.
Belisarius had no doubt at all that Link would distill the wisdom of Europe's best military architects in the first centuries of gunpowder warfare as it created Malwa's fortresses in the Indus valley. Of course, Belisarius would counter that with his own knowledge of history, given to him by Aide. Most of all, though, he would counter it with the keen brain of Agathius. As canny and meticulous a man as Belisarius had ever met in his life. And one whose own origins were as humble as Maurice's. Which, for Belisarius at least, added a certain zest to the whole affair.
"And how does that work go, then?" he demanded.
Agathius fluttered his hand vaguely. "Well enough. Given, at least, that Maurice picks holes in all my finest schemes. Pessimistic grouch, he is. `If anything can do wrong, it will.' The usual."
Maurice was still half glaring at Belisarius. "Hate riding in this thing, myself. Give me a horse any day."
Kurush and Sittas immediately responded to that disclaimer with a variety of scoffing jests. Belisarius smiled, but said nothing.
As it happened, he didn't really doubt Maurice's claim. But even Maurice, as conservative as he was, had bowed to the inevitable.
The Roman army, throughout the centuries, had never favored the war elephants which so many of their opponents had treasured. True, the monsters could be ferocious in battle. But they could often wreak as much havoc in their own army as in the enemy's. Still, Belisarius had brought a number of the great beasts with him on this expedition. He had no intention of actually using them in combat. But the elephants could bear officers in howdahs, after all, along with the maps and charts and documents needed for the huge army's staff. Why waste the mind of a man like Agathius by perching him on a saddle for weeks? When the same man, even though crippled, could spend those weeks of marching engaged in the same crucial work he had overseen for months?
So, Belisarius did not join in the badinage. After a few seconds, he blocked it out of his mind entirely and returned to his study of the army passing before him.
What a hodge-podge! he thought, half-ruefully and half-cheerfully. War elephants from ancient armies, plodding alongside men armed with our version of the Sharps rifle of the American Civil War. And look over there, Aide—a mitrailleuse in a chariot! I swear they found that relic in some Sumerian vault.
It'll work, came the serene thought in reply. You'll make it work.