Fortune's stroke

dull fear in their faces, they would not survive any longer than their many predecessors.

That should finish the work, thought Nanda Lal. He turned his head to the Rajput officer standing guard by the pavilion's entrance.

'Take them out'-he pointed to the girls-'and kill them. Do it now.'

Seeing the rigidity in the Rajput's face, Nanda Lal snorted. 'Behead them, that's enough.' The Rajput nodded stiffly and advanced on the girls. A moment later, he was leading them out of the pavilion by their chains.

The girls did not protest, nor make any attempt to struggle. Nanda Lal was not surprised. Marathi-speaking peasant girls, from their look. They probably didn't understand Hindi and, even if they did-

His eyes fell on Venandakatra, gasping with outrage.

I probably did them a favor, and they know it.

Nanda Lal waited until the sound of a sword cleaving through a neck filtered into the pavilion.

'So, Venandakatra, let us deal with your duty. With no further distractions. Now that I have investigated the situation, I will recommend to the emperor that your request for siege guns be granted.'

The spymaster nodded toward the north. 'But you will have to be satisfied with the guns at Bharakuccha. Six of them-that should be enough. And there will be no other reinforcements. The war in Persia has proven more difficult than we foresaw, thanks to Belisarius.'

He shrugged. 'It would take too long to bring siege guns across the Vindhyas, anyway. As it is, hauling the great things here will take months, even from Bharakuccha.'

Venandakatra's face lost its expression of outrage. Anger came, instead-anger and satisfaction.

'At last!' he exclaimed. 'I will take Deogiri!' He clenched his bony fingers into a fist. 'Rao will be mine! He and the Satavahana bitch! I will stake them side by side!'

Nanda Lal studied him for a moment. 'Let us hope so, Venandakatra.'

He turned away and strode to the pavilion entrance. There, the spymaster filled his nostrils with clean air.

Let us hope so, Venandakatra. For the sake of the Empire. Were it not for that, I would almost wish for your failure.

His eyes fell on the execution ground. The six Maratha rebels were all dead, now. Their bodies were draped over the stakes. Their heads lolled, as if they were mourning their sisters sprawled on the ground in front of them. Five heads, and five headless corpses, naked in a spreading lake of blood.

You would look good on a stake, Venandakatra. Splendid, in fact.

Chapter 6

Suppara

Spring, 532 A.D.

Irene Macrembolitissa, the Roman Empire's ambassador to the rebels of south India, strode down one of the corridors in Empress Shakuntala's small palace, head deep in thought. The Empress of Andhra-it was a grandiose title, for a young girl leading a rebellion against Malwa, but one to which she was legitimately entitled-had requested Irene's presence in the imperial audience chamber. It seemed that Kungas had finally returned from his long journey to the rebel-held city of Deogiri. Shakuntala wanted Rome's envoy present, to hear his report.

Irene had never met Kungas. She knew of him, of course. Kungas was one of the top military commanders of Shakuntala's small army. He bore the resplendent titles of Mahadandanayaka and Bhatasvapati-'great commandant' and 'lord of army and cavalry.' He was also the head of Shakuntala's personal bodyguard, an elite body made up entirely of Kushans.

Before she left Constantinople, Belisarius had provided Irene with a full and thorough assessment of Kungas. He knew the Kushan from his trip to India, and was obviously taken by him. Without quite saying so, Belisarius had left Irene the impression that Kungas' advice and opinions should be given the utmost care and consideration.

Privately, Irene had her doubts. She was one of the Roman Empire's most accomplished spymasters-an unusual occupation for a woman, especially a Greek noblewoman-and she had generally found that male military leaders were too heavily influenced by the martial accomplishments of other men. That Kungas was shrewd and cunning on the battlefield, Irene did not doubt for a moment. That did not necessarily translate into the kind of skills which were necessary for an imperial adviser.

Head down, striding along in her usual brisk and long-legged style, Irene tightened her lips. The upcoming session, she thought, would be difficult.

The young empress doted on Kungas, so much was obvious. Knowing the history of Shakuntala and Kungas' relationship, Irene did not find the girl's attitude odd. Kushans were Malwa vassals, and Kungas had been the man assigned as Shakuntala's guard and captor after the Malwa had conquered her father's empire of Andhra. He had saved her from rape, at the sack of Amaravati. Had held her safe, until Belisarius and Rao rescued her-and had then, learning the secret of that rescue, held his tongue and kept the secret from his Malwa masters. In the end, he and his men had thrown off their loyalty to Malwa and smuggled Shakuntala to south India. Since then, they had saved her life more than once from Malwa assassination teams.

The fact remained, he was nothing more than a semibarbarian warlord. Not even literate, by all accounts.

Irene was not looking forward to the upcoming session. She would have to steer a delicate course between offending the empress and-

Paying no attention to anything but her thoughts, Irene swept into a junction with another corridor and crashed into an unseen obstacle.

For a moment, she almost lost her footing. Only a desperate hand, reaching out to clutch the object into which she had hurtled, kept her from an undignified landing on her backside.

Startled, she looked up and found herself gazing into the statue of a steppe warrior. Into the face of the statue, more precisely. A bronze and rigid mask, apparently part of a single casting. Stiff, still, unmoving. Extremely well done, she noted, all the way down to the lifelike armor and horsehair topknot.

But the artistry of the piece did not leave her mollified.

'What idiot left a statue in the middle of a corridor?' she hissed angrily. Then, after a brief second scrutiny: 'Ugly damned thing, too.'

The statue moved. Its lips, at least. Irene was so startled she actually jumped.

'Horses think I'm pretty,' said the statue, in heavily accented but understandable Greek. 'Why else do they give me such playful nips?'

Irene gasped, clasping a hand over her mouth. She stepped back a pace or two. 'You're real!'

The statue gazed down at its body. 'So I am told by my scholarly friend Dadaji,' the thing rasped. 'But I am not a student of philosophy, myself, so I can't vouch for it.'

For all that she was startled, Irene's quick mind had not deserted her. 'You must be Kungas,' she stated. 'You fit Belisarius' description.'

At first, Irene thought she was several inches taller than he. But closer examination revealed that Kungas was not more than an inch below her own height. It was just that the man was so stocky, in a thick-chested and muscular fashion, that he looked shorter than he actually was. Beyond that, his whole body-especially his face- looked as if it were made of metal, or polished wood, rather than flesh. She did not think she had ever seen a human being in her life who seemed so utterly-hard.

His features were typically Kushan. Asiatic, steppe features: yellowish complexion, flat nose, eyes which seemed slanted due to the fold in the corners, a tight-lipped mouth. His beard was a wispy goatee, and the mustache adorning his upper lip was no more than a thin line of hair. Most of his scalp was shaved, except for a clot of coarse black hair gathered into a topknot.

Kungas returned Irene's scrutiny with one of his own. His next words startled her almost as much as the collision.

'You have beautiful eyes,' he announced. 'Very intelligent. And so I am puzzled.'