was a giant playground; and the memories.
Sad, memories, some. Wahsi would not survive the wars. He would die, in a sea battle off the coast of Persia, his body unrecovered. But he would die gloriously, and his name would remain-carved on a small monument in the African highlands; spoken in prayers in a quiet monastery in Thrace.
Always, in those visits of the future, the time would come when Menander and Ezana would remember that ship on the Erythrean Sea, and speak of it. At those times, the children would cease their play, grow silent, and gather around. This was their favorite tale, and they never tired of it; neither they, nor the old veterans who told it once again.
(Menander’s wife tired of it, of course, and grumbled to the village matrons who were her friends. But the men ignored the grumbling with the indifference of long experience; wives were a disrespectful lot, as was known by all veterans.)
The children who listened to the tale loved all the parts of it. They loved the drama of the sea battle: the dragon-fire and the boarding, the cut-and-thrust at the bow, and-especially! — the charge to the stern led by the legendary Belisarius. Oh, marvelous charge!
And if the description of the fury at the stern bore certain small improvements to the uncouth truth of history, there was none to set them wrong. Ezana said nothing while Menander embroidered-just a bit-the tale of his great wound. (Here, as always, the children would demand to see the grotesque scar on his belly, and Menander would oblige.) The sword which caused that wound had become, through the transmutation of veteran tales, the blade of a mighty Arab warrior, who overcame, through his legendary cunning, the skill of a valiant young Roman foe. There was nothing in the tale, now, of the confusion of inexperience in the chaos of battle, and the sheer luck which had enabled a nameless and unknown pirate to stab, without even knowing his exact target, a brave but clumsy novice.
No, Ezana said nothing. Nor did Menander speak, when, in the course of the tale, Ezana came to show his own honorable scar. The sarwen would bend his head, here, that the eager children might gather and spread the mat of kinky grey hair, and shriek with delighted horror, as always. Menander said nothing of what he might, now, from the experience of the many battles which had come after. He said nothing to the children of the panic which he knew had filled Ezana’s heart at that moment, blood-blinded in the midst of murder.
No, Menander held his tongue. There was no purpose in antiquarian pettifoggery. Perhaps the children would never need to know such things. Menander and Ezana had done all they could, in their bloody lives, to ensure that they wouldn’t. And if, in the course of time, some of the children learned these ancient lessons for themselves, well-best they came to the lesson filled with the innocent and simple courage imparted by veterans’ tales.
But, for all their infantile blood-lust, the children’s favorite part of the tale was always the aftermath. The story of those wondrous days when the seeds of that Roman-Axumite alliance, which the children accepted as the nature of their world, first bore fruit. The days when a comradeship was forged, a comradeship which had long since entered the legends of Thrace and Ethiopia (and Constantinople and Rome, and Arabia; and India, come to it).
Above all, the children loved the tale when it finally told of the night when great Belisarius first spoke to that company of heroes of his purpose, and his mission, and his quest; and bound them to it, with oaths of iron. Of the rise of Satan, and the warning of a monk; of a captured princess, and a hero to be found, and a dagger delivered.
And the Talisman of God.
They would tell the tale, anew, would Menander and Ezana. And tell it well, each augmenting what the other forgot or misremembered. But, even in that practiced telling, the minds of the two veterans would drift and wander, back to the time itself.
They would tell the children, and hold back nothing. (For there were no secrets, now, to be kept from Satan and his hosts. The hosts were gone. And, though Satan was not, the monster was paralyzed for a time, chained in the Pit and gnashing at his own terrible wounds.) No, they would hold back nothing, but the children would never truly understand the tale. The children would understand only the grand adventure, and the glory of Belisarius, and the faithful heroism of his companions.
They would never understand the heart of that moment, that night when Belisarius bound his brotherhood.
The sheer, pure, unadulterated wonder of it.
Another change had taken place, the day after the battle. At Belisarius’ request- firm request, but there had been no need for belligerence-Venandakatra had agreed to provide his guests with quarters in the hold below. Heretofore, the Romans and Axumites had been forced to make their quarters on the deck, sheltered only by their own tents.
In truth, neither the Romans nor the Ethiopians had minded the previous accommodations. Except for Belisarius, in fact, none of them had given the matter any thought at all. Sleeping on deck was the normal procedure, in those times, when traveling by ship. Few vessels were of a size to provide enclosed sleeping quarters for any but the captain. Decent quarters, at any rate. Common sailors often slept in the hold, under conditions which were so cramped and noisome that passengers would have recoiled in horror.
For all its size, the Indian craft was not much different. In his cabin amidships, and the smaller cabins which adjoined it, Venandakatra and his priests enjoyed comfortable surroundings. Luxurious ones, in the case of Venandakatra. The officers of the ship, and the commanders of the Malwa and Ye-tai troops, also possessed small cabins of their own, located in the stern. As for the rest-the soldiers enjoyed the comparative comfort of the deck, accepting the elements as the price for relative spaciousness and fresh air; the common sailors festered in the hold.
But there were a few quarters available for Belisarius’ company. A storage cabin was found, in the bow, whose contents could be removed. Foodstuffs, in the main: amphorae filled with the grain and oil out of which the common fare of the soldiers was prepared. Some of the amphorae were stowed elsewhere, including all of the oil. Many of the amphorae filled with grain were simply pitched overboard. The amphorae were crude and cheap, and the extra grain was no longer needed due to the heavy casualties suffered by the Ye-tai in the battle.
Belisarius’ companions had not been filled with joy, actually, upon learning of the new arrangement. The storage cabin was filthy until they cleaned it, and rat-infested until the weapons of cataphract and sarwen were put to inglorious use.
True, they were now sheltered from the wind and the rain and the sea-spray. They were also sheltered from clean air and sunlight, and crowded as badly as if they were in a dungeon. And if the seeping planks of the gloomy cabin were any less damp than the deck above, it was not noticeable to its disgruntled inhabitants.
But the general’s companions made no objection, after they gave the matter a bit of thought. For the storage cabin in the bow had one outstanding feature, which they knew was Belisarius’ purpose in obtaining it. Privacy.
Belisarius had needed that privacy, two nights after the battle, when his small company had settled into their new quarters. He had things to tell, and a thing to show, which no Malwa must hear or see.
For that purpose, the storage cabin served to perfection. Much better, in fact, that would one of the comfortable cabins amidships. The storage cabin was isolated, far distant from any Indian sleeping (or feigning sleep), and easily guarded from spies and eavesdroppers.
It was in those noisome surroundings, thus, that Belisarius imparted his great secret to his companions. He did so with neither reluctance nor hesitation. Nor, now, simply from a sense of obligation, or a need to forestall rumors of sorcery and demonism.
Those reasons remained, of course. But his overriding purpose in telling his companions his secret was that he now had a plan-or, at least, the beginnings of one. It was a plan which would require their combined efforts to succeed and would, moreover, require several members of his company to do things which would seem utterly bizarre unless they understood the reasons which underlay them. And for that, they needed to know the secret. Not so much for its own sake, but for the sake of his stratagem.
In some strange manner, in the very fury of the battle, the framework of his plot had come to him. Had sprung into his mind, actually, in midstroke of his sword.
Later, so magical had that moment been, that he had suspected the jewel was its cause. In the quiet hours which followed, he had probed the barrier relentlessly. But the jewel had reacted not at all. It was exhausted again, he realized, and with the realization came an understanding of just how feverishly the jewel had worked to augment his senses during the battle.
