The Dance of Time

In the event, nothing did go wrong. Skandagupta ordered another major search of the city. But, as with the initial search, the effort was undone by its very ambition.

'Scour Kausambi' was an easy order to give, from the imperial palace. From the viewpoint of the mass of soldiers on the ground who had to carry it out, the task looked very different. All the more so because they were never given any clear instructions or explanations as to exactly what they were looking for, beyond 'the Lady Damodara and her entourage.' Most of the soldiers who conducted the search were peasants, other than the Ye-tai, who were usually semi-barbarians and almost as likely to be illiterate. Their assumptions concerning where a 'great lady' could expect to be found hiding simply didn't include stables.

A squad of soldiers searched the stables, to be sure. But their investigation was perfunctory. They didn't even enter the stall where the entrance to the tunnels below was located, much less give it the kind of search that might have uncovered the well-hidden trapdoor.

Not surprising, of course. That stall had more manure in it than any of them.

* * *

Still, Valentinian insisted that everyone stay below for three days following the search. Only after Tarun, the stable-keeper's oldest son, reported that the search seemed to have ended all over the city, did Valentinian let the people from the palace come up to enjoy the relative comforts of the stable.

* * *

'See?' demanded Anastasius, grinning.

Valentinian's scowl was just as dark as ever. 'Don't be an idiot. This isn't going as well as we'd thought it would.'

'What are you talking about?' Still grinning, Anastasius waved a huge hand in the direction of the imperial palace. 'Tarun says they added four more heads to Skandagupta's collection, perched on pikes outside the palace gates. He thinks one of them was even a member of the dynasty.'

'All that philosophy has rotted your brains. What do you think will happen next, Anastasius? I'll tell you what'll happen. Whoever the new batch of officers are in charge of the search, they'll throw still more men at digging out the rubble. Put enough hands to the work, and they could dig up the whole city. We're only a few hundred yards from the lady's palace, you know. That's really not that far, no matter how much we confused them with the doglegs.'

The grin faded from Anastasius' face. 'You think?'

'You're damn right 'I think.' I didn't worry about it, before, when we first came up with this scheme. Most of the tunnel passes under other buildings. To find out which direction it goes, once we collapsed the beginning of it, they can't just dig up soil. They have to level whole city blocks, in their own capital. Who's going to do that?'

Valentinian was literally chewing on his beard. 'But I never expected Skandagupta to carry out this kind of reign of terror. I figured he'd be satisfied with one or two searches, and then give it up, figuring the lady had somehow managed to get out of the city altogether.'

'Stop chewing on your beard. It's disgusting.' As if to give his fellow cataphract a better example, Anastasius started tugging on his own beard. 'How soon do you think Damodara and Sanga can get here?'

Valentinian shrugged. At least the gesture dislodged the beard from his mouth. 'Who knows? Be at least another month. And even when they do get here, so what? They still have to get into the city. There's no way to break down these walls without siege guns-and there's no way Damodara could have brought them with him from the Deccan.'

'I'm sure he has a plan,' said Anastasius. Uncertainly.

'Sure he does,' sneered Valentinian. 'Use his new imperial semi-divine aura to overawe the garrison.' Again, he shrugged. 'It might even work, actually. But not quickly enough to save our necks. We've got to come up with a new plan.'

'What?'

'I don't know. I'm thinking.'

* * *

By the next morning, he had his plan. Such as it was.

Everyone agreed with the first part of the plan. The Bihari miners were sent back underground to prepare new false tunnels-with charges in them, naturally-at the two remaining doglegs.

They made no protest, other than technical ones. Even leaving aside the fact that they were intimidated by Valentinian, the miners knew full well that their lives were now completely bound up with that of Lady Damodara and her entourage. If the Malwa caught them, they'd be staked alongside the others.

'Where will we get the wood?' asked the chief miner. 'There's no way to shore tunnels without wood. Even flimsy tunnels we're planning to blow up.'

'Don't be stupid.' Valentinian swept his head in a little half-circle. 'We're in a stable, if you hadn't noticed. Several stables, in fact. Take the wood from the stalls. Just use every other board, so the horses can't get out.'

* * *

The stable-keeper protested, but that was more a matter of form than anything heartfelt. He, too, knew what would happen to himself and his entire family if the Malwa found them.

* * *

It was the second part of Valentinian's plan that stirred up the ruckus. Especially the part about Rajiv.

Rajiv himself, of course, was thrilled by the plan.

His mother was not.

'He's only thirteen!'

'That's the whole point,' stated Valentinian. 'Nobody notices kids. Especially if they're scruffy enough.' He gave Rajiv a pointed look, to which the youngster responded with a grin.

'I can do 'scruffy.' Tarun will help.'

The fourteen-year-old Tarun smiled shyly. He wasn't quite as thrilled by the plan as Rajiv, being a Bengali stable-keeper's son rather than a Rajput prince. But he had the natural adventurousness of a teenage boy, to which had been added something close to idol worship. Despite being a year older than Rajiv, Tarun was rather in awe of him-and delighted beyond measure that the Rajput prince had adopted him as a boon companion in time of trouble.

His parents, naturally, shared Lady Sanga's opinion.

'He's only fourteen!' wailed Tarun's mother.

'And small for his age,' added his father.

'He's only a little bit small for his age,' countered Rajiv. 'But he's stronger than he looks-and, what's more important, he's very quick-witted. I don't have any hesitation at all about Tarun's part in the plan.'

Tarun positively beamed.

Before the argument could spin around in another circle, Lady Damodara spoke. Hers was ultimately the authoritative voice, after all.

'Let's remember that there are two parts to Valentinian's plan, and it's the second part that everyone's arguing about. But we may never have to deal with that, anyway. So let's concentrate today on the first part, which is the only part that involves the two boys. Does anybody really have any strong objection to Rajiv joining Tarun in his expeditions into the city?'

Lady Sanga took a deep breath. 'No.' But the hostile look she gave Valentinian made her sentiments clear. Like all mothers since the dawn of time, Lady Sanga knew perfectly well that the difference between 'part of the way' and 'all of the way,' when dealing with a teenage son, could not be measured by the world's greatest mathematicians. Or sorcerers, for that matter.

No more than Valentinian, did she think that we may never have to deal with that was an accurate prediction of the future.

* * *

Neither did Rajiv.

'It can be done,' he told Valentinian four days later, after he and Tarun had finished their first round of scouting. 'By you, at least. But not easily.'

'I didn't think it would be easy.' Valentinian and Anastasius exchanged a glance.