"I wish you'd stop doing this," grumbled Agathius. "It's embarrassing." The powerful hands draped on the arms of the wheelchair twitched, as if Agathius were about to seize the wheel rims and propel himself forward. Then he had to hastily snatch the maps and logistics records before they slid off his lap onto the tiled floor.
Seeing the motion, Maurice snorted. "Are you crazy?" The grizzled veteran, striding alongside the wheelchair, glanced back at the young general pushing it. "It's good for him, doing some honest work for a change instead of plotting and scheming."
Belisarius grinned. "Certainly is! Besides, Justinian insisted on a full and detailed report—from me personally. How can I do that without operating the gadget myself?"
Agathius grumbled inarticulately. The wheelchair and its accompanying companions swept into one of the vaulted and frescoed chambers of the imperial palace. A cluster of Persian officers and courtiers scrambled aside. By now, many days into the ongoing strategy sessions at Ctesiphon, they had all learned not to gawk in place. Belisarius did not maneuver a wheelchair with the same cunning with which he maneuvered armies in the field. Charge!
When they reached the stairs at the opposite side of the chamber, leading to the residential quarters above, Belisarius and Maurice positioned themselves on either side of the wheelchair. As Agathius continued his grumbling, Belisarius and Maurice seized the handles which Justinian had designed for the purpose and began hauling Agathius and his wheelchair up the stairs by main force, grunting with the effort. Even with his withered half-legs, Agathius was still a muscular and heavy burden.
Below, the knot of Persian notables watched the operation with slack jaws and open eyes. They had seen it done before, of course—many times—but still . . .
Unseemly! Servants' work! The top commander of the greatest army since Darius should not—
At the first landing, Belisarius and Maurice set the contraption down and took a few deep breaths. Agathius looked from one to the other, scowling fiercely. "I can climb stairs myself, you know. I do it at home all the time."
Belisarius managed a grin. "Justinian, remember? You think the Roman Empire's Grand Justiciar—not to mention Theodora's husband—is going to settle for a secondhand account?"
"He's way off in Adulis," protested Agathius. "And he's completely preoccupied with getting his beloved new steam-powered warships ready." But it was weak, weak.
Belisarius shrugged. "Yes—and he's blind, to boot. So what? You think he doesn't have spies?"
Maurice snorted sarcastically. "And besides, Agathius, you know how much Justinian loves designing his gadgets. So just shut up and resign yourself to the inevitable." Sourly: "At least you don't have to lift this blasted thing. With an overgrown, over-muscled ex-cataphract in it."
They'd rested enough. With a heave and a grunt, Belisarius and Maurice lifted Agathius and the wheelchair and staggered their way upward. When they reached the top of the stairs and were in the corridor leading to Agathius' private chambers, they set the wheelchair down.
"All . . . right," puffed Belisarius. "You're on your own again. Justinian wants to know how the hand grips work also."
"They work just fine," snapped Agathius. To prove the point, he set off down the corridor at a pace which had Belisarius and Maurice hurrying to catch up—puffing all the while. Agathius seemed to take a malicious glee in the sound.
At the entrance to his chambers, Agathius paused. He glanced up at Belisarius, wincing a bit and clearing his throat.
"Uh—"
"I'll speak to her," assured Belisarius. "I'm sure she'll listen to reason once—"
The door was suddenly jerked open. Agathius' young wife Sudaba was standing there, glaring.
"What is this insane business?"she demanded furiously. "I insist on accompanying my husband!"An instant later, she was planted in front of Belisarius, shaking her little fist under his nose. "Roman tyrant! Monstrous despot!"
Hastily, Maurice seized the wheelchair and maneuvered Agathius into the room, leaving Belisarius—Rome's magister militum per orientem, Great Commander of the Allied Army, honorary vurzurgan in the land of Aryans—to deal alone with Agathius' infuriated teenage wife.
"A command responsibility if I ever saw one," Maurice muttered.
Agathius nodded eagerly. "Just so!" Piously: "After all, it was his decision to keep the baggage train and camp followers to a minimum. It's not as if we insisted that the top officers had to set a personal example."
"Autocrat! Beast! Despoiler! I won't stand for it!"
"Must be nice," mused Maurice, "to have one of those meek and timid Persian girls for a wife."
But Agathius did not hear the remark. His two-year old son had arrived, toddling proudly on his own feet, and had been swept up into his father's arms.
"Daddy go bye-bye?" the boy asked uncertainly.
"Yes," replied Agathius. "But I'll be back. I promise."
The boy gurgled happily as Agathius started tickling him. "Daddy beat the Malwa!" he proclaimed proudly.
"Beat 'em flat!" his father agreed. His eyes moved to the great open window, staring toward the east. The Zagros mountains were there; and then, the Persian plateau; and then—the Indus valley, where the final accounts would be settled.
"They'll give me my legs back," he growled. "The price of them, at least. Which I figure is Emperor Skandagupta's blood in the dust."
Maurice clucked. "Such an intemperate man you are, Agathius. I'd think a baker's son would settle for a mere satrap."
"Skandagupta, and nothing less," came the firm reply. "I'll see his empty eyes staring at the sky. I swear I will."
When Belisarius rejoined them, some time later, the Roman general's expression was a bit peculiar. Bemused, perhaps—like a stunned ox. Quite unlike his usual imperturbable self.
Agathius cleared his throat. "It's not as if I didn't give you fair warning."
Belisarius shook his head. The ox, trying to shake away the confusion.
"How in the name of God did she get me to agree?" he wondered. Then, sighing: "And now I'll have Antonina to deal with! She'll break my head when I tell her she's got another problem to handle on shipboard."
Maurice grinned. "I imagine Ousanas will have a few choice words, too. Sarcasm, you may recall, is not entirely foreign to his nature. And he is the military commander of the naval expedition. Will be, at least, once the Ethiopians finish putting their fleet together."
Belisarius winced. His eyes moved to the huge table at the center of the chamber. Agathius had already spread out the map and the logistics papers which he had brought with him to the conference. They seemed a mere outcrop in the mountain of maps, scrolls, codices and loose sheets of vellum which practically spilled from every side of the table.
"That's the whole business?" he asked.
Agathius nodded. "Yes—and it's just as much of a mess as it looks. Pure chaos!" He glowered at the gigantic pile. "Who was that philosopher who claimed everything originated from atoms? Have to ask Anastasius. Whoever it was, he was a simpleminded optimist, let me tell you. If he'd ever tried to organize the logistics for a combined land and sea campaign that involved a hundred and twenty thousand men—and that's just the soldiers!—he would've realized that everything turns into atoms also."
"Thank God," muttered Belisarius, eyeing the mess with pleasure. "Something simple and straightforward to deal with!"
In the event, Antonina was not furious. She dismissed the entire matter with an insouciant shrug, as she poured herself a new goblet of pomegranate-flavored water. Belisarius had introduced her to the Persian beverage, and Antonina found it a blessed relief from the ever-present wine of the Roman liquid diet. Especially when she was suffering from a hangover.
The goblet full, she took it in hand and leaned back into her divan. "Sudaba and I get along. It'll be a bit crowded, of course, with her sharing my cabin along with Koutina." For a moment, suspicion came into her eyes. "You didn't agree to letting her bring the boy?"
Belisarius straightened proudly. "There I held the line!"
Aide flashed an image into his mind. Hector on the walls of Troy. Belisarius found himself half-choking from amusement combined with chagrin.
Antonina eyed her husband quizzically. Belisarius waved a weak hand. "Nothing. Just Aide. He's being sarcastic and impertinent again."
"Blessed jewel!" exclaimed a voice. Sitting on another divan in his favored lotus position, Ousanas cast baleful eyes on Belisarius. "I shudder to think what would become of us," he growled, "without the Talisman of God to keep you sane."
Antonina sniffed. "My husband does not suffer from delusions of grandeur."
"Certainly not!" agreed Ousanas. "How could he, with a mysterious creature from the future always present in his mind? Ready—blessed jewel!—to puncture inflated notions at a moment's notice."
Ousanas took a sip from his own goblet. Good red wine, this—no silly child's drink for him. "Not that he has any reason for such grandiosity, of course, when you think about it. What has Belisarius actually accomplished, these past few years?"
The aqabe tsentsen of the kingdom of Axum—empire, now, since the Ethiopians had incorporated southern Arabia into their realm—waved his own hand. But there was nothing weak about that gesture. It combined the certainty of the sage with the authority of the despot.
"Not much," he answered his own question. "The odd Malwa army defeated here and there, entirely through the use of low-minded stratagems. The occasional rebellion incited within the Malwa empire itself." His sniff was more flamboyant than Antonina's, nostrils fleering in contempt. "A treasure stolen from Malwa and then given away to Maratha rebels—a foolish gesture, that!—and a princess smuggled out of captivity. Bah! There's hardly a village headman in my native land between the great lakes who could not claim as much."
Antonina grinned. As a rule, disrespect toward her husband was guaranteed to bring a hot response. But from Ousanas—
Axum's aqabe tsentsen was not Ethiopian himself. Ousanas had been born and bred in the heartland of Africa far to the south of the highlands. But he had spent years as the dawazz to Prince Eon, a post whose principal duty was to nip royal self-aggrandizement in the bud. Eon was now the negusa nagast of Axum, the "King of Kings," and Ousanas had become the most powerful official in his realm. But the former hunter and former slave still had his old habits.
And, besides, they were close friends. So close, in fact, that Ousanas was the most frequently cited "lover" of the huge male harem which Antonina was reputed to maintain. By now, of course—after Antonina had played a central role in crushing the Malwa-instigated Nika rebellion in Constantinople, reestablished imperial authority in Egypt and the Levant, and led the naval expedition which had rescued Belisarius and his army after their destruction of the Malwa logistics base at Charax—not even the scandal-mongering Greek aristocracy gave more than token respect to the slanders. The Malwa espionage service had long since realized that the rumors had been fostered by Antonina herself, in order to divert their attention from her key role in her husband's strategy.
So, knowing Ousanas, Antonina responded in kind. "Yes, surely. But what Bantu headman can claim to have put his stepson on the throne of the Roman Empire?"
Ousanas snorted. "Rome? Bah!" He leaned forward, gesticulating eagerly. "A realm of peddlers and peasants! No, no, Antonina—for true grandeur you must visit the great and mysterious empires in central Africa! The cities are paved with silver and jade, the palaces cut from pure crystals. The emperors—every one of them a former headman from my native region, you understand—are borne to the gold-inlaid toilets on elephants draped with—"
"And the elephants shit diamonds themselves," interrupted Ezana. The Axumite naval commander—he was a native-born Ethiopian—gave Ousanas a sour glance. "It's odd how these marvelous African empires of his keep moving further south as we Axumites extend our rule." Another sniff was added. "So far, though, all we seem to encounter are illiterate heathen savages scrabbling in the dirt."
Ousanas began some retort, but Ezana drove over it. "The Persian girl does not concern me, Belisarius. Not by herself. As young as she is, Sudaba is not a stranger to campaigns. She was with Agathius at the Nehar Malka, after all. Any Persian noblewoman who could manage on board one of those miserable river barges"—the inevitable Axumite pride in their naval expertise surfaced—"can surely manage aboard one of our craft."
That contented thought gave way to a scowl: "But if this starts a mudslide of women demanding to accompany their men—" Ezana swiveled his head and brought another occupant of the salon under his cold scrutiny. "My own half-sister, soon enough!"
Under that hard gaze, the pale face of young Menander turned pink with embarrassment. The Roman officer knew that Ezana was aware of his intimate relationship with Deborah, but he still found the casual manner in which Ethiopians handled such things unsettling. Menander was too close enough to the Thracian village of his upbringing not to be a bit edgy. In his village, the half-brother of a seduced sister would have blood in his eye. And no Thracian villager was half as skilled and experienced in mayhem and slaughter as Ezana!
"I've already spoken to her about it," he muttered. "She agreed to stay behind." Guiltily: "Well . . . in Charax, anyway."
"Marvelous," grunted Ezana. "Our precious naval base is about to become as populous as Bharakuccha. The women will be bad enough." His next words caused Menander to turn beet red. "The inevitable squalling brats which follow will practically carpet the city. Our stevedores will be tripping all over them trying to load our warships. Our soldiers will have to fight their way to the docks."
Belisarius sighed and spread his hands. "Yes, Ezana—I know. But I can't accomplish miracles. As it is, we'll still manage to keep the camp followers to a bare minimum." He tried to rally his pride. "In proportion, we'll have the smallest baggage train since Xenophon's march to the sea."
"Marvelous," grunted Ousanas. "Perhaps we should follow his lead then. Strand ourselves in the middle of the Malwa empire and try to fight our way out."
Menander recovered his aplomb. Young and sometimes bashful he might be, but no one had ever accused him of cowardice. "We already did that," he pointed out cheerfully. "Only a handful of us, of course, not Xenophon's fabled ten thousand. I much prefer the current prospect. Marching into Malwa, with over a hundred thousand!"
"You won't be in that number," retorted Ezana. "No, boy. You're for the cut and thrust of boarding parties."
"Me?" Menander's eyes widened in mock astonishment. "Nonsense. I'm the gunnery specialist. I am required to stay back while Axumite marines storm across the decks. My duties—"
The last occupant of the salon now spoke. "Bullshit, boy!" John of Rhodes rose from his divan and planted his arms akimbo. "The real gunnery specialist is Eusebius—who's too nearsighted to storm a latrine, anyway. And since I'm the commander of the gunship fleet, that leaves you as the top Roman officer in the armada to show these haughty black fellows"—he and the two Africans exchanged grins—"how to wield hand weapons properly in the close quarters of a desperate boarding operation."
"That's nonsense, also," said Antonina. She drained the rest of her goblet. "If all goes as planned, there won't be any boarding operations. Just the dazzling maneuvers of warships firing cannons at long range, destroying the Malwa with precision and style."
And that, of course, brought a storm of criticism and outrage.
Idiot! Have you learned nothing?
The First Law of Battle!
Every battle plan in history—
"—gets fucked up as soon as the enemy arrives," she finished. "Men. Such slobs. Everything always has to be messy and untidy." Serenely: "Fortunately, this expedition will have a woman's hand on the rudder."
Five pairs of male eyes, ranging in color from bright blue to deepest brown, joined in condemnation of such folly.
Antonina poured herself another goblet. "Trust me," she said, still with absolute serenity. "You'll see."
Belisarius' final meeting of the day took place late that night, in the back room of a small tavern to which he had come cloaked in secrecy.
"There's nothing more I can tell you," he concluded. "If we hear anything further, of course, I'll let you know. But since you'll be off as soon as Ezana can finish assembling his small fleet, I don't imagine there'll be anything else."
Anastasius grunted. "Not if you're right, and Narses is behind it all." He shrugged his massive shoulders. "Speaking for myself, I hope he is. Information's valuable, but I'd rather trust my life to Narses' fine and subtle hand."
Valentinian glared at him. Clearly enough, the weasel-thin cataphract did not share his giant companion's equanimity.
"Speak for yourself," he snarled. "I'd rather trust a scorpion than Narses." The glare shifted to Belisarius. "And don't repeat Irene's fancy phrases to me. Fine for her to talk about trusting Narses' so-called `craftsmanship.' She'll be on the other side of the Hindu Kush from the bastard, with thirteen thousand Kushan bodyguards."
The last occupant of the room spoke up. "Ah, but you forget. She'll be without me. And since I'll be coming with you, I think that fairly evens the odds."
Valentinian was now glaring at Kujulo. But, even for Valentinian, the glare was hard to maintain. After Belisarius' rescue of then-princess Shakuntala from her captivity at Venandakatra's palace in Gwalior, Valentinian had fought his way out of India with Kushans at his side—Kujulo among them. He had then spent two years fighting against Kushans and, after Vasudeva and his men took service with Belisarius, with them at his side. There were perhaps no soldiers in the world, beyond the general's own Thracian bucellarii to whom Valentinian belonged, that he respected and trusted more than he did Kushans. And, of them, more than Kujulo himself.
Still—
"I'm not complaining," he complained. He took his own quaff of wine, and then squinted bitterly at the Persian vintage as if all the sourness of the universe were contained therein. "If it can be done, we'll get the girls out. Although I still don't understand why Narses would go to all this trouble—not to mention huge risks for himself—just to get Dadaji's daughters back to their father."
Belisarius shrugged. "That part doesn't make sense to any of us, Valentinian. Irene no more than me. But—"
His crooked smile made its appearance. "That's all the more reason to investigate. There's got to be more involved."
"What do you think?" asked Anastasius.
Belisarius scratched his chin. "I have no idea." He glanced at Valentinian. "But I can't help remembering the last words Lord Damodara said to you, before he released you from captivity."
Valentinian scowled. "That silly business about you having a proper respect for grammar?"
Belisarius nodded. "Yes, that." His chin-scratching went into high gear. "I can't help but wondering if what we're seeing here isn't a master grammarian at work. Parsing a very long sentence, so to speak."
Valentinian threw up his hands with exasperation. "I still say it's silly!" He planted his hands firmly on the table and leaned forward.
"We'll do it, General. If it can be done at all. But I'm giving you fair warning—"
He pushed himself back and took a deep breath. "If we run into Rana Sanga, I'm surrendering right off! No way in hell am I going to fight that monster again!"