“These other men be civilized folk, Axumites and Romans. Hence filled with silly superstitions. Think witchcraft evil. I savage from far south, too ignorant to be confused. I know witchcraft like everything else in this world. Some good. Some bad.”
A great laugh suddenly rang out, startling in its loudness.
“Most excellent!” pronounced the dawazz. “Never had good witch before, on my side.”
“Can you truly see that well, in the night?” asked the prince shakily. “How is that possible?”
“Yes, Eon, I can. How is it possible?” Belisarius hesitated, but only for an instant. The die was cast.
“There is no time now. But after the battle, I will explain.” A glance at Garmat. “I will explain everything.” A glance at his cataphracts and the sarwen. “To all of you.”
Ousanas lounged forward, hefting his javelin.
“Where is steersman?” he asked idly. Belisarius pointed again. Ousanas squinted.
“Still too dark,” he muttered.
At that moment, Venandakatra’s voice cried out a command. A volley of rockets was fired in all directions. Several kshatriyas squealed with pain, caught by the back-blasts which flared over the hide mounds.
“Fucking idiot,” growled Anastasius. “The cowardly bastard, he’s just panicking.”
It was true enough. The volley was completely unaimed. The six rockets snaked their fiery path into nothingness. A total waste.
To all, that is, save Ousanas. For the rockets’ glare had, whatever else, bathed the sea with a sudden flare of red illumination. The pirate ships were clearly visible, and even, with difficulty, individual members of their crews.
“I see him steersman!” cried the dawazz gleefully. He hurled the javelin like a tiger pouncing on its prey. The weapon vanished into the fading red glare. Almost at once it was invisible, to all save Belisarius.
The general watched the javelin rise, and rise, and rise. He had never seen such a tremendous cast. Then, the general watched it sail downward. Downward, and truer than Euclidean dreams.
A terrible, brief cry filled the night.
Anastasius hunched his shoulders, staring grimly out to sea.
“I can’t bear to look, Valentinian. Is that damned black bastard grinning at me?”
Valentinian chuckled. “It looks like the Pharos at Alexandria. A blinding beacon in the night.”
A sudden little flight of arrows came out of the darkness. None of them came close, however. The pirates were simply reacting out of rage.
“It won’t be long now,” announced Belisarius. He smiled. “By the way, you might want to shift over to the other side, Anastasius. The ship on your side isn’t the closest, anymore. In fact, it’s wallowing in the waves. No steersman.”
Anastasius grunted his disgust. Ousanas took up another javelin.
“Maybe fucking idiot cowardly bastard Indian lord fire another useless volley,” he said cheerfully. “Then I make other pirate galley wallow in waves.”
“I’ll kill him,” muttered Anastasius.
“I doubt it,” retorted Valentinian. Suddenly, he too was grinning. “And don’t be a spiteful idiot. You’re like some petty boy in a playground. Would you rather he was chucking those spears the other way?”
Anastasius winced. “No, but-”
He got no further. A pirate ship loomed out of the darkness, like a dragon rising from the sea. A medley of war cries erupted from it. A moment later, another volley of rockets flared.
Now all was bright glare, redness and fury, and the ancient battle clangor. Anastasius drew his great bow and slew a pirate, and then another, and another, and another, and another. At that range, his arrows split chests like a butcher splits a chicken. Even had the pirates been wearing full armor, it would have made no difference. At that range, the arrows of Anastasius drove through shields.
And now, when he saw the other pirate galley suddenly wallow in the waves, bereft of its steersman, there was no emotion in his heart beyond a fierce surge of comradeship. For the cataphract Anastasius was not, in truth, a spiteful schoolboy filled with petty pride. He was a soldier plying his trade.
And he was very, very good at it.
Chapter 16
Even though it was a moonless night, the battle itself was fully illuminated, in a hideous, flashing way. Belisarius had time, even in the press and fury of the fray, to marvel at the scene.
If one could be said to marvel at a scene from Hell.
By the time the first pirate ships came alongside the Indian vessel, attaching themselves with grappling hooks, all but four of the Arab craft were burning infernos. The erratic trajectories of the rockets was now irrelevant. At point-blank range, the rockets did not explode upon impact. Instead, they continued to burn from their tails, with the same fierce dragon-hiss that sent them skittering through the air. Fascinated, Belisarius saw one rocket punch through the hull of a ship, glance off a rower’s bench, carom off another bench on the opposite side, and then roar its way down the length of the pirate craft until it embedded itself in the bow. Its trail was marked by a horde of screaming Arabs, frantically trying to beat out the flames in their garments, which had been set afire by the rocket in its passage. Once brought to a halt by the thicker planking at the bow, the rocket continued to burn as brightly as ever. To all appearances, the mindless device seemed like a stubborn animal trying to force its way through a hedge. It was several seconds before it finally exploded, shattering the bow into splinters. But, by that time, the tail-fire burning down the length of the pirate craft had done as much damage as the explosion itself.
I don’t think these rockets have any way of knowing when to explode, mused Belisarius. aim hurled the serried facets at the same breach in the barrier, much like a human general might launch his troops at a shattered section of a fortified wall. Another crude thought was forced through. no fuses.
Sensing the puzzlement in Belisarius’ mind, the facets retreated. But aim rallied them immediately. With success, crude though it was, confidence was growing. aim sent the facets through the breach anew, and now, filled with the fanatic purpose of explanation.
Finally-finally! — true success. The facets flashed their exultation. aim itself broke into kaleidoscopic joy.
The knowledge which now erupted in the mind of the general Belisarius was no crude, simple thought. Instead, it was like a living diagram, a moving reality. He saw, as clearly as anything in his life, the way of the rockets. He saw the strange powder [gunpowder, he now knew] packed in the length of the rocket; the same powder, in greater quantities, which was packed in the front tip [warhead] of the device. He saw the gunpowder ignited by a long match held by a kshatriya warrior. He saw the powder erupt into flame, and saw how the flame burned. (And knew that the vision was moving at an inhuman pace, slowed by the jewel that he might follow the course of it.)
He saw the flame burn its way up, inside the length of the bamboo tube [fuselage]. He saw the raging gasses which were expelled from the rocket’s rear [exhaust], and knew the fury of the gasses was the force which drove the device into motion.
(A concept- action/reaction — flashed through his mind. He almost understood it, but was not concerned; soon, soon, he would.)
Watching, in his mind’s eye, the course of the flame burning its way through the gunpowder, Belisarius now understood the reason for the rocket’s erratic trajectory.
Part of it, he saw, was that the gunpowder was poorly mixed. (And he knew, now, that gunpowder was not a substance itself, but a combination of substances.) The powder was uneven and lumpy, like poorly threshed grain. Different pockets and sections of the powder burned unevenly, which produced a ragged and unpredictable exhaust.
Most of the problem, though, was that the rear opening through which the exhaust poured [venturi — but the thought was saturated with scorn] was itself poorly made. In fact, it wasn’t “made” at all. The venturi was nothing more than a ring of wood. The Indians simply cut the bamboo after one of the joints in the wood, and used the joint itself as the nozzle which concentrated and aimed the exhaust gasses. But the hole was ragged to begin with, no
