The tide of victory

His eyes returned to the enemy warship. But the commander had fought Axumites, before, and. he could sense the fury under those drums, and he could sense what the strange sight of that royal figure on the flagship held in store.

'They will not stop, Goptri. That is not a raiding fleet. That is an army bent on destruction. They will accept the casualties to get into the harbor. And then-'

Venandakatra spluttered fury, but the commander pressed on. He was a kshatriya, after all, bred to courage even in Malwa lands. The commander squared his shoulders. 'I have fought Axumite marines. We will need the Rajputs.'

* * *

When the first Malwa gun was fired, it did not signal the start of a volley. It was a single shot, and the missile fell far short of the Ethiopians. Pieces of flesh have poor aerodynamic properties, after all, and Venandakatra the Vile had chosen to start the battle of Bharakuccha by blowing his top commander out of the barrel of a siege gun.

* * *

The sound of a cannon shot startled Antonina. She lifted her head from the book in her lap and stared at the still-distant ramparts which protected the fleet sheltered in Bharakuccha's harbor.

'Why have they-'

Standing on the other side of Eon's throne, Ousanas shrugged. 'Nerves, I suppose. No way that shot could reach us.' He chuckled savagely. 'God help the commander of that battery. Venandakatra will punish him, be sure of it.'

The sound also seemed to stir Eon. His drooping head lifted, bringing the tiara and phakhiolin which was the symbol of Axumite royalty against the headrest of the great throne which his sailors had erected on the deck of his flagship. For a moment, his eyes opened again.

The wasted, pain-wracked body which was all that a mortal wound had left of his once-Herculean physique, was invisible now. The full robes and imperial regalia which Eon had not worn since the weddings at Ctesiphon shrouded him completely. He was strapped to the throne, lest he slip aside; and the spear held proudly in his hand, the same. Even his fist was bound to the spear with cloths. Come what may, Eon would sail through this battle.

'What-?' he murmured.

'Nothing, negusa nagast,' pronounced Ousanas. 'The Malwa squall in fear. Nothing more.'

Eon nodded heavily. Then, his eyes closing, he whispered: 'Keep reading, Antonina.'

Antonina's eyes went back to the book. A moment later, finding the place, she continued her recitation of the feats of ancient warriors beneath the walls of Troy. Eon had always loved the Iliad.

* * *

He did not hear the end of it. Perhaps an hour later, when the battle was in full fury, Eon stirred to wakefulness and spoke again.

'No more, Antonina,' he whispered. 'There is no time. I am done with battles forever. Read from the other.'

Clenching her jaws to keep from sobbing openly, Antonina lowered the Iliad to the deck. Then, picked up the book which lay next to it. She spent a few seconds brushing aside the splinters of wood which covered it. A Malwa cannonball, minutes before, had struck the rail of the flagship. Eight Axumite marines had been killed or badly injured. Many others, including Antonina herself, had suffered minor wounds from the splinters sent flying everywhere.

It had been a lucky shot. Eon would have risked himself, but not Antonina or Ousanas. So he had ordered the flagship to stay out of the battle once it began, just beyond cannon range. But Venandakatra, either because he recognized what a blow sinking the flagship would have struck at Ethiopian morale or simply because he was beside himself with rage, had ordered a volley with overloaded powder charges. One of the cannonballs had struck the flagship. Four had missed widely. The last shot had barely cleared the rampart-the gun had exploded, killing most of its crew.

The effort of lifting the heavy tome opened the gash in her hand. Blood seeped anew through the cloth bandage, staining the pages of the book as she opened it. That was a shame, really. It was a beautiful book. But Antonina thought it was perhaps appropriate.

She began reading from the New Testament. The Gospel According to Mark was Eon's favorite, and so that was the one she selected. She read slowly, carefully, enunciating every word. Throughout, until she came to the end, she never lifted her eyes from the book, never so much as glanced at the king beside her.

* * *

Eon bisi Dakuen died somewhere in those pages, as Antonina had known he would. But she never knew when or where, exactly. And, to the day of her own death, would thank the gentle shepherd for allowing her that blessed ignorance.

Chapter 32

Venandakatra squalled, scrambling from the masonry collapsing not more than three yards away. He tripped and fell, knocking the wind out of himself. As he gasped for breath, he stared spellbound at the cannonball that had shattered that portion of Bharakuccha's defenses. The ugly iron thing, almost all its energy lost in the impact with the wall, rolled slowly toward him. Then, following some unseen little imperfection in the stone platform, veered away until it dropped out of sight over the edge. A second or two later, dimly, Venandakatra heard the thing come to its final rest. From the sound, the horrid missile had taken yet another life in the doing, falling on one of the Malwa soldiers cowering in the supposed shelter below.

Silently, still fighting for breath, Venandakatra cursed that soldier and savored his destruction. Just as he cursed all the soldiers who cowered beside him, and all the others who had failed to drive back the Axumite assaults and the Roman cannonade.

Almost glazed, his eyes now stared at the hole that the cannonball had made in the ramparts. Venandakatra was astonished by the power of the gun that had fired it. He had not expected that.

He should have-and would have, had he paid any attention to his military advisers or Damodara. But Venandakatra, whose last personal experience with naval warfare had been years before, had not really grasped the rapid advances that both the Malwa and their enemies had made in gunpowder weaponry since the war began. His memory had been of war galleys armed with rockets, not cannons. And his logic had told him that galleys, by their nature, could never carry many guns in any event.

On that, of course, he was correct. Like all war galleys armed with cannon, the Axumite vessels carried only as many guns as could be fit in the bow and stern. Firing a 'broadside' was impossible because of the rowers' benches. And the Ethiopian ships, for all that they were designed to cross the open sea under sail, were still essentially oared galleys in time of battle.

So, yes, they had few guns on each ship-four only, on most of them, two in the bow and two in the stern. Nor were the guns particularly powerful. But the Ethiopians had many ships-and still had, even after running through Venandakatra's volleys. And the Roman ships coming behind them were designed to fire broadsides, and did carry powerful guns. Venandakatra was not certain, but he thought every Roman vessel was firing what his own gunners called 'elephant feet.' The Romans, if he remembered correctly, called them thirty-two-pounder carronades. For the most part, the Romans were firing grapeshot, designed to kill the men manning the huge Malwa guns. But they fired solid shot at regular intervals also, and those heavy balls had proven more than powerful enough to begin shattering the ramparts which protected Malwa's batteries. The ramparts were old stonework, erected long ago in an era of medieval warfare, not the newer style of fortifications designed to withstand cannon fire. The Malwa had simply never expected to be defending Bharakuccha against such an attack-at least, Venandakatra hadn't-so the Goptri had not ordered new construction to replace the ancient walls.

The battle had now been raging for hours. The Ethiopians had lost many ships to gunfire, true. But even those losses had been turned to their purpose, as often as not, by the sheer fury of the Ethiopian assault. Unless a