not the speaker of it.
“Oh, no-it’s quite true, I assure you.”
“Hard to believe,” muttered Belisarius resentfully. “In my experience-”
He fell silent, again. “Ah, what’s the use?” he mumbled. “Emperors are emperors, and that’s that.” He seemed lost in his own thoughts. Bleak, bitter thoughts. Black thoughts, drunken thoughts.
Time. As Valentinian says, be economical with the blade.
He lurched to his feet; planted his hands on the table to steady himself.
“I must be off,” he announced. Belch. “ ’Scuse me. Afraid I’ve had too much to drink. You’ll forgive me, I trust?”
Venandakatra nodded graciously. “I’ve been known to do it myself, friend.” A happy thought: “Men of affairs, you know. Much on our minds. Much to deal with. Bound to drink a bit, now and then.”
“The truth, that!” Belisarius smiled at the Vile One. Never, in the history of the world, did a drunk bestow such a cheerful smile of camaraderie on a fellow sot.
“You are most pleasant company, Venandakatra,” he said, carefully enunciating the words. A man deep in his cups, determined to project sincerity.
“Most pleasant. Sorry we got off to a bit of a bad start, back there-” The general waved his hand vaguely, more or less in the direction of the sea. Belch. “Back there, in the beginning. On the ship.”
“Think nothing of it! Long forgotten, I assure you.” Venandakatra rose to his feet. “May I call one of my servants? To assist you back-”
Belisarius waved off the offer.
“Not necessary!” he barked. “Can make it mack, byself-back, myself. Not a problem.”
He bowed at Venandakatra, with exaggerated, careful stiffness, and reeled to the entrance. He pulled back the heavily embroidered drapery which served the Malwa lord’s pavilion for a tent flap. By the studied care of his movements, he was obviously trying not to inflict damage on the precious fabric. As he was about to pass through into the darkness beyond, he paused, steadying himself with one hand on a tent pole. Then, he looked back at the Malwa lord.
For a few seconds, Venandakatra and Belisarius exchanged a stare. The expression on the Malwa’s face registered a subtle invitation. The face of the Roman general was that of a man consumed by old grievances, brought to the surface by hours of heavy carousing.
Bleak, bitter thoughts. Black thoughts. Drunken thoughts.
Belisarius turned away, shook his head, and stumbled into the night.
He did not need to look back again. He knew what he would see on the Vile One’s face. Calculation, overlaying contempt. Contempt, overlaying worry. Worry, buried, freed of suspicion, worming its way into a maggotty soul.
He managed to keep from smiling all the way back to his own tent. Spies, everywhere. He even managed to keep from glancing into the forest which surrounded the caravan. Spies, everywhere. And it would be pointless, anyway, for he would see nothing. In that darkness, there would be nothing to see except a grin. And the hunter never grins, when he is stalking the prey.
When he reached his own tent, he staggered within, and then straightened up. Good Roman leather, that tent. Impossible to see through.
“Well?” asked Garmat.
His next words, the general regretted for years, for he was a man who despised boasting. But he didn’t regret them much. They were, after all, irresistible:
“Deadly with a blade, is Belisarius.”
Early the next morning-even before daybreak-a party of Mahaveda priests and mahamimamsa “purifiers” left the caravan on horseback, escorted by a Rajput cavalry troop. They were being sent to the palace ahead of the caravan, on a special mission ordered by Lord Venandakatra.
In the heart of mighty Malwa, it did not occur to them to look back on the trail, to see if anyone followed. It would have made no difference if they had. The one who tracked them had been taught his skills by lionesses and pygmies, the greatest hunters in the world.
Chapter 22
Insofar as that term could ever be applied to that man, he was frantic.
An observer watching him would not have realized his state of mind, however. For the man seemed utterly calm and still, crouching in the thick foliage of the brush and trees which came within a few feet of the walls of Venandakatra’s palace.
True, an observer might have wondered what he was doing there. A man of average height; black-haired; black-bearded, with a few grey hairs to indicate approaching middle age; barefoot; wearing nothing but a dirty loincloth. But, even there, the conclusion was obvious: a menial, from one of the lower sudra castes, relieving himself in the woods.
No thought of danger would have crossed such an observer’s mind. The man was obviously poor, stoop- shouldered from years of drudgery, and quite unarmed. There was no room in that soiled, torn, scanty loincloth to conceal any weapon.
Had such an observer approached, however, he might have begun to question his assumption. For, up close, there were certain things about the man crouching in the woods which did not quite jibe with his appearance.
He was too still, for one thing. Motionless, in fact. No dim-witted menial can prevent himself from idle twitching and scratching.
His musculature, on closer examination, was puzzling. True, the shoulders were stooped-but that can result from deliberate posture. And, while the man was not heavily muscled, the muscles themselves were extraordinarily well-defined. Iron-hard, to all appearance. Not the sort of physique which results from menial toil.
Then, there were the arms and the hands. Very long arms, for a man of his size. Long and powerful. And the hands, in proportion to his build, were huge. Sinewy hands. Scarred, callused hands also-but those scars and calluses were not, quite, the scars produced by years of simple toil.
Finally, the eyes. Hazel eyes, they were-almost yellow-orange. An unusual color for a man of obvious Maratha descent. And then, had the observer come close enough to look into them, another strange feature of the eyes would be noted. There was nothing in those eyes of the dull gaze of a menial. No, the gaze of those eyes was like Recognition would come, finally. For the man in the woods was called many things. In one case, because the color of his eyes, and the gaze of his eyes, so closely matched those of the predator for which he was named.
The observer would have no time to shout a warning, then. He would be dead within two seconds. A panther does not need weapons, beyond those provided by nature.
There was an observer, in fact. But the panther did not slay him, because he did not spot him. The one observing him was no stranger to woods himself, nor to predators. And he was certainly not fool enough to come near that man. Not at that moment. Not when the man, had he been a panther in truth, would have been lashing his tail in fury.
No, best to wait. The observer had already found the panther’s lair. He would wait for him there, and catch him when he was not quite so prepared for slaughter. The observer knew how to trap predators in their lairs. He had done it before, times beyond counting, and would do it again.
The observer faded away, vanished into the forest without a sound. Had the panther turned at that very moment, he might have caught a sign of his stalker. Not of the stalker himself, for that one was a master of hidden movement. Just an odd, quick, flash of white, gleaming in the darkness of the foliage like a beacon. Just for an instant.
But the panther did not turn. He twitched, slightly. Some buried part of his brain tried to transmit a signal. But it was a dim, confused, uncertain signal, and the conscious part of the panther’s mind suppressed it.
For two days, now, he had been getting those subconscious signals. Something is watching. The first day, he had taken them very seriously. But he had been able to detect nothing. Nothing-and he was a man who rarely failed to detect danger. By the second day, he shrugged off the signals. Nervous tension, no more. It was not logical, after
