The tide of victory

He turned away and began walking toward the entry to the chamber. 'As it is, I think we'll be working a miracle. By tomorrow night.'

Shakuntala, Empress of Andhra, spent four hours searching her palace at Deogiri before she finally accepted the truth. It had been a waste of time, and she knew it. Not by accident, the search ended with her standing in her baby's room. She took the boy from his nurse's arms and cradled him in her own.

'He's gone, Namadev,' she whispered, fighting back the tears. Then, slumping into a chair, she caressed the little head. 'Once he knew his son was healthy. '

The baby smiled happily at his mother's face, and gurgled pleasure. Namadev was a cheerful boy. Cheerful and healthy. As good an assurance that the ancient Satavahana dynasty would continue as anyone could ask for.

Which, therefore, freed the father for a long-postponed task. Once again, the Wind of the Great Country was free to roam, and wreak its havoc.

Chapter 24

The Indus

Autumn, 533 A.D.

As soon as Belisarius emerged at daybreak from his small cabin on the cargo vessel which was slowly moving up the Indus, he began scanning the area on both sides of the river with his telescope.

He was relieved by what he saw. The monsoon season, by all reports as well as his own experience escaping from India three years before, ended earlier in the Indus valley than it did in the subcontinent itself. The view through the telescope seemed to confirm that. Everywhere he looked, the fertile grasslands which constituted the alluvial plains of the Indus seemed dry and solid. Except for the canals and small tributaries which divided the landscape into wedges-doabs, as the natives called them-he could not spot any indications of the wet terrain which would be a serious obstacle to his campaign plans.

For a moment, basking in the knowledge and the bright, dry, early morning sunshine, he spent a few idle seconds following the flight of a kingfisher up the riverbank. Then, his eyes arrested by the sight of a white heron perched on the back of a water buffalo, he burst into laughter.

Maurice had arisen still earlier, and was standing at his side. The chiliarch, when he saw what Belisarius was laughing at, issued a chuckle himself. For once, it seemed, even Maurice was in a good mood.

Belisarius lowered the telescope. 'Wheat and barley, everywhere you look. Some rice, too. And I saw a number of water buffaloes. Say whatever else you will about the Malwa, at least they maintained the irrigation canals. Extended and developed them, it looks like.'

Maurice's inevitable scowl returned. 'We still don't have a labor force. There aren't any people anywhere. At least, I haven't seen any except a small fishing craft at sundown yesterday. And they beached the boat and scuttled into the grasslands as soon as we came near.'

'Do you blame them?' Belisarius turned his head and looked back down the river. As far as his eye could see, moving up the Indus behind his own ship, the great Roman fleet was bringing as many of his troops as could be fit into their hulls into the interior of the river valley. The bulk of his army, including most of the infantry, was marching up the river under the command of Bouzes and Coutzes. Belisarius and his waterborne troops were now almost entirely out of the coastal province called Thatta, and entering the heartland of the Sind.

After the seizure of Barbaricum-the rubble that had been Barbaricum, it might be better to say-Belisarius had immediately begun building a new port. The work would go slower than he had originally planned, because his decision to accept Antonina's change of schedule meant that the preparations for that port had lagged behind. But his combat engineers assured him they could get the harbor itself operational within days.

Fortunately, Belisarius' attack seemed to have caught the Mahaveda in the middle of their own preparations as well. The fanatic priests had succeeded in destroying the city, along with most of its population and garrison, but they had been able to do little damage to the breakwater. The biggest problem the engineers faced was erecting enough shelter for the huge army that was beginning to offload behind the initial wave which had taken Barbaricum.

There too, the change in timing had worked to Belisarius' advantage. Even along the coast, the monsoon season was ending. They were now entering India's best time of year, the cool and dry season Indians called rabi. That season would last about four months, until well into February, before the heat of garam arrived. But garam, for all its blistering heat and the discomfort of dust, was a dry season also. Not until next May, when the monsoon returned, would Belisarius have to deal with the inevitable epidemics which always accompanied large armies on campaign. Until then there would be some disease, of course, but not the kind of plagues which had crippled or destroyed armies so many times in history.

Movement would be easy, too. And even though Belisarius knew full well that the kind of fluid, maneuver warfare which he preferred would be impossible soon enough-fighting his way through the Malwa fortifications in the gorge above Sukkur would be slogging siege warfare-he intended to take full advantage of the perfect campaign conditions while he still could.

That thought brought the telescope back to his eye. This time, however, he was not scanning the entire countryside. His attention was riveted to the north. There, if all had gone according to plan-or even close to it-the Persian army of Emperor Khusrau would be hammering into the mid-valley out of the Kacchi desert. Between Belisarius coming from the south, and Khusrau from the northwest, the Roman general hoped to trap and crush whatever Malwa forces hadn't yet been able to seek shelter in the fortifications along the river.

He hoped to do more than that, in truth. He hoped that the Malwa army stationed in the lower valley would still be confused and disorganized by the unexpectedly early Roman assault-and the completely unexpected heavy Persian force coming out of the western desert. Disorganized enough that he might be able to shatter them completely and actually take the fortifications all along the lower Indus. According to his spies, none of those river fortifications except for the city of Sukkur had been completed yet. He might be able to drive the Malwa out of the lower valley altogether. They would have to regroup at Sukkur and the upper valley north of the Sukkur gorge.

If Belisarius could accomplish that-and provided his army and Khusrau's could salvage enough of a labor force from the Malwa massacre-he would have a position from which the Malwa could not hope to dislodge him. Not, at least, so long as Rome and its Axumite allies retained naval superiority. The entire lower valley of the Indus would be securely in Roman and Persian hands. An area sizeable enough and rich enough to provide them with far more than a mere 'beachhead.' The theater of war would have been irrevocably shifted entirely into Indian territory.

'All of the Sind. ' he murmured.

Maurice, as was usually true except when Belisarius' crooked mind was working through some peculiar stratagem, was following his commander's thoughts. 'Remind me to compliment Antonina on her feminine intuition,' he said, with a little smile.

'Isn't that the truth!' laughed Belisarius. His own smile was not little at all-nor even in the least bit crooked.

The experience of the past few days had driven home to him quite forcefully how much Antonina's insistence on moving up the invasion schedule had ultimately worked to his advantage. Impulsive and narrowly focused that insistence might have been, but in the end it had proven wiser than the sagacity of experienced soldiers. From everything Belisarius could determine, the Malwa had been caught by surprise. As much surprise, at least, as an opponent could be when faced by an inevitable invasion route.

He chuckled harshly. 'I suspect Nanda Lal's excellent spy service worked against him, too. He knew we wouldn't attack this soon. He had hundreds of spies feeding him information on every stage of our preparations and planning. Down to every amphora full of grain, I don't doubt. Of course, once we changed plans and started scrambling, he would have heard of that as well. But-'

'Too late,' finished Maurice. 'That's the problem with having such a gigantic and powerful empire. It's just too