The tide of victory

the bloodlust of maddened wolverines.

When Eon's body was brought aboard the flagship and carried into the negusa nagast's cabin, Antonina had accompanied it. Had done what she could, with the aid of an Axumite healer, to minimize the damage of the horrible wound. But, long before Ousanas came into the cabin, his face drawn and haggard, Antonina had faced the truth. The negusa nagast would live, for a time. Might even, if she and the healer used every method at their disposal, regain consciousness and speak. But he would not live to see another month go by. Probably not more than two weeks. Not with that wound. The spear had cut great slices of his intestines; damage that would inevitably bring fatal disease in its train.

In her heartbreak and despair, Antonina thought of summoning Belisarius and Aide-somehow, someway-but gave up that thought soon enough. Aide would know of some method of the future which could save Eon- did know, for her husband had ordered experiments begun to create the medications of the future. But there had been no time-no time-for that, along with everything else. And now, time had run out. Even if-somehow, someway-she could summon Aide, the crystal being from the future would be able to do no more than Antonina herself.

Weep, and weep, and weep. And, as she wept, nestled in Ousanas' arm while he joined her in the weeping, Antonina wondered, now and then, how a crystal might weep as well.

Not whether. Simply how.

Chapter 29

Sukkur

Autumn, 533 A.D.

When Belisarius first heard the guns roaring at Sukkur, he felt a great sense of relief. Granted, Abbu's scouts had already reported that the Roman and Persian forces at Sukkur were holding back the Malwa besieging the city. Still, there was nothing quite as comforting as hearing the sound of those Roman cannons himself.

Even at a distance-Sukkur and the Indus were still a mile away-he could tell the difference in the sound between the Roman and the Malwa guns. The difference, ironically, was not in the guns themselves. Most of the siege guns which Belisarius had brought with him to the Indus-and all of the forty-eight-pounders-were Malwa in origin. Belisarius and the Persians had captured them in Mesopotamia the year before. But the Roman powder was uniformly 'corned' powder, whereas the Malwa often used the older 'serpentine' powder.

Here, as in many areas, the Malwa were handicapped by their sluggish economy-a handicap which was inevitable, given their insistence on maintaining rigid caste distinctions. The enemy had corned powder, but not enough of it to keep all their units supplied through a long battle or siege. Just as they were perfectly capable of making horseshoes and the new harnesses for draft animals-but, making them without replacing caste handicraft methods by the 'industrial' system the Romans had adopted, they weren't able to supply enough for their entire army. Where every single one of Belisarius' cavalryman rode a shod horse, and all of his supply train animals used the new harnesses instead of the old collars, at least half of the Malwa army was not so equipped.

With large, small-number items like cannons or even muskets, the Malwa could compensate for their more primitive methods by substituting a mass of production. Even workers using older methods, remaining within caste boundaries, could produce a lot of such items-given that enough of them were put to work on the projects. Where the Malwa's reactionary fanaticism tended to really show up was in their inability to mass produce small and cheap items like horseshoes and large quantities of corned powder.

What pleased Belisarius the most, listening, was the comparative rate of fire. The Malwa were firing volleys, where Ashot's guns were firing individually. Under some circumstances, that would have concerned Belisarius. A volley was more effective in breaking a charge than uncoordinated fire. But Ashot knew that as well as anyone, and the fact that he was allowing his gun crews to set their own pace meant that he was not repelling any assaults. He was simply engaged in an artillery duel.

'Good,' grunted Maurice, who had reached the same conclusion. The chiliarch leaned back in his saddle. 'We're still in time, then.'

He scanned the surrounding area, his gray beard bristling. 'Which is a good thing, since this little part of your plan came all to pieces. Greedy damn Greeks!'

Belisarius' jaws tightened a little. He shared Maurice's anger at the indiscipline of the Greek cataphracts, and had every intention of chewing on Sittas' ear about it. But.

He sighed heavily. 'I suppose it couldn't have been avoided.' His eyes moved to the right, where what was left of Rohri was being plundered by Sittas' Constantinople cataphracts. Then, with considerably greater satisfaction, moved on to examine the ordered ranks of his Thracian bucellarii and the Greeks who were under the command of Cyril.

The 'old Greeks,' as they were called by the rest of Belisarius' troops, were the cataphracts who had served with Belisarius in Mesopotamia. Along with the Thracians and the field artillery, they were almost back in formation after the assault which took Rohri. Belisarius would be able to resume his advance with them within the hour.

The others.

'Leave them to it,' he growled. 'I'll have words with Sittas later. Not fair to him, really, since he's been doing his best to rein them in. But he'll take out his anger at getting reprimanded on his own troops. All the better. Sittas will gore them worse than I would, with his temper up.'

Maurice nodded, stroking his beard. 'Then, after Sittas rages at them, you can give them a calm little speech about the need for discipline-if we're to win this campaign and get ten times more in the way of booty than this piddly little river town provides.'

'Bound to happen, I suppose,' repeated Belisarius. 'They've been complaining for weeks about the lack of booty. As if our men last year just walked into a treasure room without fighting for months!'

'Well, look on the bright side. The Greeks paid for it, well enough.'

Maurice's words didn't bring Belisarius much in the way of satisfaction. True, the enthusiastic assault of Sittas' cataphracts had overwhelmed the Malwa garrison in Rohri, far quicker than Belisarius could have done with the siegecraft he had been planning to use. And, true also, had thereby gained him more precious days in which to continue outmaneuvering the enemy.

But the cost had been steep. At a rough estimate, he had lost a thousand cataphracts in that pell-mell-and completely impromptu-charge. And he knew he would lose as many afterward to wounds suffered in the course of taking the city. As always, war had been an unpredictable mistress. Gain something, lose something, then shift plans accordingly.

There was no point dwelling on it. And there was this much to be said: at least the 'Greek fury' was not producing the atrocities against native civilians which usually accompanied the uncontrolled sacking of a city. Not because the Greeks were restraining themselves-they had already put the entire Malwa garrison to the sword, refusing any and all attempts at surrender-but simply because there were no civilians left in Rohri. The Malwa garrison had already massacred them.

'It's insane,' snarled Belisarius. 'The Malwa are still carrying out their orders long after the situation which called for those orders has changed. No point in a scorched earth policy in the Sind now. We're already at the gates of the Punjab. They ought to be corralling the populace in order to use them for a labor force themselves.'

Half-gloomily, half with philosophical satisfaction, he studied the ruins of Rohri's outer fortifications. The only reason the first charge of the Greek cataphracts had broken through, for all its headlong vigor, was that the fortifications had not been completed before the Roman army arrived unexpectedly from the south. The civilians who could have finished the work were dead before it got well underway.

'Insane,' he repeated. Then, shaking his head, looked away and studied the terrain ahead. What was done was done.

'Send a courier to Sittas and tell him to follow us whenever he can get those maniacs back under control. If we wait here for them, we'll lose the initiative. I think, judging from Abbu's report and the sound of those guns, that