Fortune's stroke

Belisarius smiled crookedly. 'It is said that an army marches on its belly, you know. I will do my best to drive a lance into the great gut of Malwa, once you have drawn the shield away.'

Kurush chuckled. '`An army marches on its belly,'' he repeated. 'That's clever! I don't recognize the saying, though. Who came up with it?'

Good move, genius, said Aide sourly. This will be entertaining, watching you explain to a sixth-century Persian how you came to quote Napoleon.

Belisarius ignored the quip. 'I heard it from a Hun. One of my mercenaries, during my second campaign in the trans-Danube. I was rather stunned, actually, to find such a keen grasp of logistics in the mind of a barbarian. But it just goes to show-'

Father of lies, father of lies. It's a good thing my lips are sealed, so to speak. The stories I could tell about you! They'd make even Procopius' Secret History look like sober, reasoned truth.

Lord Damodara leaned back in his chair, studying Narses' scowling face.

'So what is it that bothers you, exactly?' he asked the eunuch.

'Everything!' snapped Narses. The old Roman glared around the interior of the pavilion, as if searching its unadorned walls for some nook or cranny in which truth lay hidden.

'None of what Belisarius is doing makes any sense,' stated Narses. 'Nothing. Not from the large to the small.'

'Explain,' commanded Damodara. The lord waved his pudgy little hand in a circular motion. The gesture included himself and the tall figure of the Rajput king seated next to him. 'In simple words, that two simpletons like myself and Rana Sanga can understand.'

The good-humored quip caused even Rana Sanga to smile. Even Narses, for that matter, and the old eunuch was not a man who smiled often.

'As to the `large,' ' said Narses, 'what is the purpose of these endless maneuvers that Belisarius is so fond of?' The eunuch leaned forward, emphasizing his next words. 'Which are not, however-and cannot be- truly endless. There is no way he can stop you from reaching Mesopotamia. The man's not a fool. That must be as obvious to him, by now-' Narses jabbed a stiff finger toward the pavilion's entrance '-as it is to the most dim-witted Ye-tai in your army.'

'He's bought time,' remarked Sanga.

Narses made a sour face. 'A few months, at most. It's not been more than eight weeks since the battle of the pass, and you've already forced him almost out of the Zagros. Your army is much bigger than his. You can defeat him on an open battlefield, and you've proven that you can maneuver through these mountains as well as he can. Within a month, perhaps six weeks, he'll have to concede the contest and allow you entry into Mesopotamia. At which point he'll have no choice but to fort up in Ctesiphon or Peroz-Shapur, anyway. So why not do it now?'

'I don't think it's odd,' countered Damodara. 'He's used the months that he kept us tied up in the Zagros to good advantage, according to our spies. That general of his that he left in charge of the Roman forces in Mesopotamia-the crippled one, Agathius-has been working like a fiend, these past months. By the time we get to Ctesiphon, or Peroz-Shapur, he'll have the cities fortified beyond belief. Cannons and gunpowder have been pouring in from the Roman armories, while we've been countermarching all over these damned mountains.'

Sanga nodded. 'The whole campaign, to my mind, has Belisarius' signature written all over it. He always tries to force his enemy to attack him, so that he can have the advantage of the defensive. By stalling us for so many months here in the mountains, he's been able to create a defensive stronghold in Mesopotamia. It'll be pure murder, trying to storm Peroz-Shapur.'

Narses stared at the two men sitting across the table from him. There seemed to be no expression at all on the eunuch's wizened, scaly face, but both Damodara and Sanga could sense the sarcasm lurking somewhere inside.

Neither man took offense. They were accustomed to Narses, and his ways, by now. There was a bitterness at the center of the eunuch's soul which was ineradicable. That bitterness colored his examination of the world, and gave scorn to his every thought.

Thoughts, however-and a capacity to examine-which they had come to respect deeply. And so a kinsman of the Malwa dynasty, and Rajputana's most noble monarch, listened carefully to the words of a lowborn Roman eunuch.

Narses leaned over and pointed with his finger to a location on the great map which covered the table.

'He will make his stand at Peroz-Shapur, not Ctesiphon,' predicted Narses. 'Belisarius is a Roman, when all is said and done. Ctesiphon is Persia's capital, but Peroz-Shapur is the gateway to the Roman Empire.'

Damodara and Sanga both nodded. They had already come to the same conclusion.

Narses studied the map for a few seconds. Then:

'Tell me something. When the time comes, do you intend to hurl your soldiers at the walls of Peroz-Shapur?' He almost-not quite-sneered. 'You don't have too many Ye-tai left, either, so the soldiers you'll use up like sheep at a slaughterhouse will all be Rajput.'

Rana Sanga didn't rise to the bait. He simply chuckled. Damodara laughed outright.

'Not likely!' exclaimed the Malwa lord. He leaned over the table himself. The months of arduous campaigning had shrunk Damodara's belly enough that the movement was almost graceful.

Damodara's finger traced the Tigris river, from Ctesiphon upstream toward Armenia.

'I won't go near Peroz-Shapur.' Another laugh. 'Any more than I'd enter a tiger's cage. I won't try to besiege Ctesiphon either. I'll simply use the Tigris to keep my army supplied and move north into Assyria. From there, I can strike into Anatolia-or Armenia-while most of Khusrau's army is tied up fighting our main force on the southern Euphrates.'

He leaned back, exuding self-satisfaction. 'Belisarius will have no choice,' pronounced Damodara. 'All that work he's done to fortify Peroz-Shapur will be wasted. He'll have to come out and face me, somewhere in the field.'

Narses' eyes left Damodara and settled on Rana Sanga. The Rajput king nodded his agreement with Damodara's explication.

'Ah,' said Narses. 'An excellent strategy. I am enlightened. Except-why hasn't Belisarius figured the same thing out himself? The man has never, to put it mildly, been accused of stupidity.'

Silence. Damodara squirmed a bit in his chair. Sanga maintained his usual stiff composure, but the very rigidity of the posture indicated his own discomfort.

Narses sneered. 'Ah, yes. You've wondered that yourselves, haven't you? Now and again, at least.'

The eunuch relinquished the sneer, within a few seconds. He was too canny to risk offending the two men across the table from him. And, if the truth be told, he had a genuine respect for them.

'Let's leave that broad problem, for a moment, and move on to some seemingly minor questions. Of these, there are three that stand out.'

Narses held up a thumb. 'First. Why has Belisarius, since the very beginning of this campaign in the Zagros, always been willing to let us move north?'

Narses nodded toward the Rajput. 'As Rana Sanga was the first to point out, many weeks ago.' He gave another nod, this time at Damodara. 'As you yourself remarked at the time, Lord, that makes no sense. It should be the other way around. He should be fighting like a tiger when we move north, and put up only token resistance when we maneuver to the south. That way, he would be keeping us from threatening Assyria.'

Silence.

Narses held up his forefinger alongside the thumb.

'The second small problem. In all the skirmishes we've fought over the past months-even during the battle at the pass when his situation was desperate-Belisarius has never used his mercenaries. Why? He's got two thousand of the Goth barbarians, but he handles them like they were the only jewels in his possession.'

Sanga cleared his throat. 'Doesn't trust them, I imagine.' The Rajput king scowled. 'I don't trust mercenaries either, Narses.'

The eunuch snorted. 'Of course you don't!' Narses slapped his hand down on the table. The sharp sound