The Dance of Time

Could. . not. . afford. . it.

Finally, his breathing slowed. 'See to the city's defenses!' he barked. 'Leave me, you-you-dogs!'

The generals scuttled from the audience chamber.

* * *

Once outside, one of them said to the others: 'Perhaps we should have told him that Damodara will surely be bringing the big guns from Mathura. .'

'Don't be a fool,' hissed one of the others.

'He'll hear them anyway, once they start firing.'

The third general shook his head. 'Don't be so sure of that. Within a day he'll be hiding below the palace in the deep bunkers. They say-I've never been down there myself-that you can't hear anything, so deep.'

* * *

You couldn't, in fact. That evening, Skandagupta went down to the inner sanctum. Seeking. .

Whatever. Reassurance, perhaps. Or simply the deep silence there.

He got none, however. Neither reassurance, nor silence. Just a stern command, in the tones of an eight- year-old girl, to return above and resume his duties.

Now.

He did so. The girl was not yet Link. But someday she would be. And, even today, the special assassins would obey her.

* * *

Belisarius studied the sketch that one of the Pathan trackers had made in the dirt. It was a good sketch. Pathans served the Rajput kings as scouts and skirmishers, just as Arabs did for Roman emperors. The man was even less likely to be literate than an Arab, but he had the same keen eye for terrain, the same superb memory for it, and the same ability to translate what he'd seen into symbols drawn in dirt with a knife.

'Two days, then,' Belisarius mused. 'It would take the monster at least that long to retreat to the Ganges, with such a force.'

The Pathan, naturally, had been far less precise in his estimate of the size of Link's army. It could be anywhere between twenty and sixty thousand men, Belisarius figured. Splitting the difference would be as good a guess as any, until he had better reports.

Forty thousand men, then. A force almost twice as large as his own.

Almost all infantry, though. That had been suggested by the earliest reports, and the Pathan scout was able to confirm it. If the man could not tell the difference between five thousand and ten thousand, he could easily distinguish foot soldiers from cavalry. He could do that by the age of four.

'Start burning today?' asked Jaimal.

Belisarius shook his head. 'I'd like to, but we can't risk it. The monster could drive its men back across two days' worth of ashes. Even three days' worth, I think.'

'With no water?' Jaisal asked skeptically.

'They'll have some. In any event, there are streams here and there, and we can't burn the streams.'

'Not much water in those streams,' grunted Dasal. 'Not in the middle of garam. Still. . the monster would lose some men.'

'Oh, yes,' agreed Belisarius. Then, he shrugged. 'But enough? We're outnumbered probably two to one. If we let them get back to the Ganges, they'll be able to cross eventually.'

'No fords there. Not anywhere nearby. And we will have burned all the trees they could use for timber.'

'Doesn't matter. First of all, because you can't burn all the trees. You know that as well as I do, Jaisal. Not down to the heartwood. And even if you could, what difference would it make? A few days' delay, that's all, while the monster assembled some means to cross. It would manage, eventually. We could hurt them, but not kill them. Not with so great a disparity in numbers. They'd get hungry, but not hungry enough-and they'd have plenty of water. Once they were on the opposite bank of the Ganges, they'd be able to make it to Kausambi. Nothing we could do to stop them.'

'By then, Damodara might have taken Kausambi,' pointed out Jaimal.

'And he might not, too,' said Dasal. The old Rajput king straightened up. 'No, I think Belisarius is right. Best to be cautious here.'

* * *

A day later, three more Pathan scouts came in with reports. Two from the south, one from the north.

'There is another army coming, General,' said one of the two scouts in the first party. He pointed a finger to the south. 'From Mathura. Most of the garrison, I think. Many men. Mostly foot soldiers. Maybe five thousand cavalry. Some cannons. Not the great big ones, though.'

'They're moving very slowly,' added the other scout.

Belisarius nodded. 'That's good news, actually-although it makes our life more complicated.'

Jaisal cocked his head. 'Why 'good' news?'

His brother snorted. 'Think, youngster. If we've drawn the garrison at Mathura to leave the safety of the city's walls to come up here, we've opened the door to Kausambi for Damodara.'

'Oh.' Jaisal looked a bit shame-faced.

Belisarius had to fight down a smile. The 'youngster' thus admonished had to be somewhere in his mid- seventies.

'Yes,' he said. 'It makes our life more difficult, of course.'

He began to weigh various alternatives in his mind. But once he heard the second report, all those alternatives were discarded.

'Another army?' demanded Dasal. 'From the north?'

The scout nodded. 'Yes. Maybe two days' march behind the Great Lady's. They're almost at the Ganges. But they move faster than she does. Partly because they're a small army-maybe one-third as big as hers-but mostly because. .'

He shook his head, admiringly. 'Very fast, they move. Good soldiers.'

All the Rajput kings and officers assembled around Belisarius were squinting northward. All of them were frowning deeply.

'From the north?' Dasal repeated. The old king shook his head. 'That makes no sense. There is no large Malwa garrison there. No need for one. Not with that great huge army they have in the Punjab. And if they were coming back to the Ganges, there'd be many more of them.'

'And why would they bother with the northerly route, at all?' wondered Udai Singh. 'They'd simply march through Rajputana. No way we could stop them.'

As he listened to their speculations, Belisarius' eyes had widened. Now he whispered, 'Son of God.'

Dasal's eyes came to him. 'What?'

'I can think of one army that could come from that direction. About that size, too-one-third of the monster's. But. .'

He shook his head, wonderingly. 'Good God, if I'm right-what a great gamble he took.'

'Who?'

Belisarius didn't even hear the question.

Of course, he is a great gambler, said Aide.

So he is.

Decisively, Belisarius turned to the Pathan scout. 'I need you to return there. At once. Take however many scouts you need. Find out-'

His thoughts stumbled, a moment. Most Pathans were hopelessly insular. They'd have as much trouble telling one set of foreigners from another as they would telling one thousand from two thousand.

He swept off his helmet, and half-bowed. Then, seized his hair and drew it tightly into his fist. 'Their hair. Like this. A 'topknot,' they call it.'

'Oh. Kushans.' The scout frowned and looked back to the north. 'Could be. I didn't get close enough to see. But they move like Kushans, now that I think about it.'

He nodded deeply-the closest any Pathan ever got to a 'salute'-and turned to his horse. 'Two days, General. I will tell you in two days.'