Again, Sanga barked a few laughs. 'I, too! Ah, Belisarius, we are but children at the feet of a master.' He shook his head. 'Truly, Lord Harsha's name belongs in the company of such as Alexander the Great and Ashoka.'
'Truly,' agreed Belisarius. The Roman general scanned the battleground. To his experienced eye, it was obvious that the Malwa had long been preparing for this massive assault on the eastern wall of the city.
'I see that Lord Harsha places no great store in surprise and deception,' he commented.
Sanga's lips curled. 'Such methods are beneath Lord Harsha's contempt,' he replied acidly. 'The tactics of bandits, he has been heard to call them.'
For a moment, the Roman and Rajput generals stared at each other. Both smiled, then, faintly but quite warmly, before Sanga sighed and looked away.
'But, then, he is a very great man and does not care to stoop,' the Rajput murmured. A shrug. 'And, with the enormous force at his disposal, he does not perhaps need to.'
They were now but two hundred yards from the Malwa emperor's gigantic pavilion. Skandagupta's camp headquarters, to Belisarius, seemed like something out of fable. He had never seen its like before, on a field of battle. Not even the haughtiest Persian emperor-not even the ancient Xerxes or Darius-had ever brought such an incredible structure to the clash of armies.
The pavilion rose a full sixty feet in the air, suspended on ten enormous poles-upended logs, rather. A multitude of inch-thick hawsers, stretching tightly in every direction, anchored the poles to the ground. The fabric of the tent itself was cotton-not even the ruler of Malwa could afford that much silk-but all of the many canopies which provided entry into the pavilion were made of silk, as were their tassels and cords. And the cotton of the tent was marvelously dyed, not in simple swaths and colors, but in complex geometric designs and subtle shades.
A small squad of Ye-tai began to approach them on horseback. From their gaudy uniforms and the red and gold pennants trailing their lances, Belisarius recognized them as members of the Emperor's personal bodyguard. Eight thousand strong, that bodyguard was reputed to be-although, from his quick assessment, Belisarius did not think there were more than half that many present on the scene.
At that moment, drums began sounding the signal for the advance. The front line of Malwa infantrymen began a slow, undulating movement. The advance was ragged, not so much due to indiscipline as to the simple fact that the ground was so chewed up by trenches and artillery fire that it was impossible for the Malwa soldiers to maintain an even line. The enormous mass of the army added to the confusion. Belisarius estimated that there were perhaps as many as forty thousand infantrymen in that slow-moving charge, with an additional five thousand Ye-tai barbarians bringing up the rear.
About three-fourths of the Malwa soldiers stumbling across that terrain were armed with traditional hand weapons. Most of the infantrymen favored spears and swords, although some were armed with battle-axes and maces.
Belisarius knew from his prior observations that these weapons would be cheap and poorly made, as would be their armor. The Ye-tai who chivvied those Malwa common troops were equipped with mail tunics and conical iron helmets. But the infantrymen themselves were forced to make do with leather half-armor reinforced with scale mail on the shoulders. Their helmets were not much more than leather caps, although the scale mail reinforcement was a bit less frugal than with their armor. The difference in shields was also striking. The Ye-tai shields, like Roman shields, were sturdy laminated wood reinforced with iron rims and bosses. The shields of the common Malwa troops, on the other hand, were almost pitiful: wicker frames, covered with simple leather.
Outside of the mass of troops carrying traditional weapons, however, Belisarius noted that the remainder were divided evenly between soldiers carrying ladders and scaling equipment, and grenadiers armed with a handful of the pestle-shaped Malwa grenades. This would be the Romans' first opportunity to observe grenades in action, and Belisarius was determined to make the most of the opportunity.
Belisarius and Rana Sanga stopped to watch the advance. Out of the corner of his eye, Belisarius saw that the oncoming Ye-tai patrol had stopped also. But he paid them little attention, for his interest was riveted on the battleground. He was struck again by the well-worn and oft-trampled nature of the terrain. Obviously, the siege here had been long, arduous, and filled with no surprises. It was exactly the kind of siege terrain that offended his craftsman's instincts, and he found his mind toying with the alternate methods that he would have tried had he been in charge of the siege.
Or of the forces defending the city.
A thought came to him then, a half-formed idea born of old experience and newly-acquired knowledge. He turned to Sanga.
'Didn't you tell me, a few days ago, that Ranapur is a mining province?'
Sanga nodded. 'Yes. Almost a third of the empire's copper is mined here.'
Belisarius squinted at the terrain over which the Malwa army was making its slow way. He noted that the rebels were not meeting the oncoming advance with catapult fire. That was odd, on the face of it. The vague thought in his mind began to crystallize.
Sanga noticed his companion's sudden preoccupation.
'You are thinking something, Belisarius. May I ask what it is?'
Belisarius hesitated a moment. For all that he liked Sanga, the Rajput was, after all, a future enemy. On the other hand-for the moment, the fate of Belisarius and his men was bound up with that of the Rajputs.
'Forgive my saying so, Rana Sanga, but I have found that your Malwa siege techniques are a bit-how shall I put? —
Sanga tugged his beard, thinking. 'That's quite possibly true. I have never observed Roman sieges, of course. But it is certainly true one of the reasons the Maratha have always been such a thorn in our side is because of their rocky terrain, and their cunning use of hillforts. A siege in Majarashtra is always twice as difficult as a siege in the Ganges plain.'
He peered closely at the Roman. 'You suspect something,' he announced.
Again, Belisarius hesitated. He was watching the Malwa advance intently. The first line of the infantrymen was now almost halfway across the five hundred yards of no-man's land which separated the Malwa front trenches from the wall of Ranapur. Still, there was no catapult fire.
Belisarius straightened.
'Three factors strike me as significant here, Rana Sanga. One, the rebels have experienced miners in their ranks. Two, they have known for weeks-if not months-that the main assault would come here. Lord Harsha has obviously made no attempt to feint elsewhere. Three, there is no catapult fire-as if they were hoarding their remaining gunpowder.'
He scratched his chin. 'Now that I think about it, in fact, it seems to me that the rebel catapult fire has been very sporadic for several days, now. Let me ask you-do you know if Lord Harsha has had sappers advancing counter-mines?'
The answer was obvious from the blank look on the Rajput's face.
Belisarius still hesitated. The suspicion taking shape in his mind was incomplete, uncertain-as much guesswork as anything else. The capabilities of gunpowder, and the permutations of its use on a battlefield, were still new and primarily theoretical for him. He was not even sure if-
The facets erupted in a shivering frenzy. Human battlegrounds, for Aide, were an entirely theoretical concept. (An utterly bizarre one, besides, to its crystalline consciousness.) But now, finally, the strange idea forming in Belisarius' mind gelled enough for Aide to grasp its shape. A knowledge of all history ruptured through the serried facets.
Danger! Danger! The siege of Petersburg! The battle of the Crater!
Belisarius almost gasped at the force of the vision which plumed into his mind.
