Destiny's shield

Belisarius spurred his horse into motion. 'Let's get to Callinicum. I'll have a word or two with this garrison commander.'

'Just one or two?' asked Coutzes. He seemed a bit aggrieved.

Belisarius smiled. 'Five, actually. You are relieved of command.'

'Oh.'

' 'Deadly with a blade, is Belisarius,' ' murmured Maurice.

They entered Callinicum two hours later, in mid-afternoon.

The general's first order of business was to ensure that the last group of builders and artisans still with him were adequately housed. When he left Con-stantinople, Belisarius had brought no less than eight hundred such men with his army. Small groups of them had been dropped off, at appropriate intervals, to begin the construction of the semaphore stations which would soon become the Roman Empire's new communication network. Callinicum would be the final leg of the Constantinople-Mesopotamia branch of that web.

That business done, Belisarius went off to speak his five words to the garrison commander.

Five words, in the event, grew into several hundred. The garrison commander's replacement had to be relieved, himself. After the general took a few dozen words to inform the new commander that Belisarius would be taking half the town's garrison with him into Mesopotamia, the man sputtered at length on the imperative demands of the war against illicit trade.

Belisarius spoke five more words.

His replacement, in turn, had to be relieved. After Belisarius used perhaps two hundred words, more or less thinking aloud, to reach the decision that it made more sense to take the entire garrison except for a token force, the third commander in as many hours shrieked on the danger of brigand raids.

Belisarius spoke five more words.

In the end, command of the Roman forces in Callinicum fell on the shoulders of a grizzled, gap-toothed hecatontarch.

'Hundred men'll be dandy,' that worthy informed the general. 'Just enough to keep reasonable order in the town. Nothing else for them to do. Callinicum's a fortress, for the sake of Christ-the walls are forty feet high and as wide to match. The sorry-ass brigands in these parts'd die of nosebleed if they climbed that high.'

Cheerfully: 'As for smuggling, fuck it. You couldn't stop it with the whole Roman army. Soon as the sun goes down, you throw a rock off these walls in any direction you'll bounce it off three smugglers before it hits the ground. At least one of them'll be a relative of mine.'

Very cheerfully: 'Any given Tuesday, prob'ly be my wife.'

At sunset, Belisarius led his army out of Callinicum toward the military camp a few miles away where the forces from the Army of Syria were awaiting them. The freshly-conscripted soldiers from the town's garrison-seven hundred very unhappy infantrymen-were marched out between units of the general's bucellarii. The Thracians encouraged the new recruits with tales of glory in the past, booty in the future, and drawn bows in the present. Cataphract bows, with hundred-pound pulls and arrowheads you could shave with.

Baresmanas, riding at the head of the column, was out of earshot of the Callinicum garrison. But he had no difficulty imagining their muttered conversation.

Crazy fucking Thracian.

How did this lunatic ever get to be a general, anyway?

Chapter 8

Kurush's pavilion was far smaller than the gigantic construct which the Emperor of Malwa had erected at the siege of Ranapur. But, thought Belisarius, it was possibly even more richly adorned and accoutered. And with much better taste.

As he reclined on a pile of plump, silk-covered cushions placed at one end of a low table, Kurush himself placed a goblet of wine before him. Belisarius eyed the thing uneasily. It was not the wine which caused that trepidation. The general had no doubt that it was the finest vintage produced by Persia. No, it was the goblet itself. The drinking vessel was easily the most elaborate and expensive such object Belisarius had ever seen. For all the goblet's massive size, the design was thin and delicate, especially the flower-shaped stem-and, worst of all, made entirely of glass. Embedded throughout the bowl was gold leaf, highlighting the intricate facets cut in the form of overlapping, slightly concave disks. The finishing touch was the four medal-lions inset around the side of the bowl, standing out in high relief. About an inch in diameter, each carried a marvelous etching of a winged horse.

Gold medallions, naturally. Except for the silver wings, and the tiny little garnet eyes.

Belisarius glanced around the table. Bouzes, Coutzes and Maurice were all staring at their own identical goblets. The brothers with astonishment, Maurice with deep gloom.

'Afraid to touch the damned thing,' he heard Maurice mutter.

Fortunately, Baresmanas intervened.

'Have no fear, comrades,' he said, smiling. 'My nephew has two chests full of these things.'

He gestured gaily. 'Besides, even if you should happen to drop one, it would hardly break on this floor.'

The four Romans eyed the carpet. In truth, the pile was so thick that the cushions on which they sat were entirely redundant.

Kurush, taking his place at the other end of the table from Belisarius, frowned. Not with irritation, but simply from puzzlement. 'Is there a problem?' he asked. His Greek, like that of most Persian noblemen, was accented but fluent.

Baresmanas chuckled. 'Not everyone, nephew, is accustomed to drinking wine out of a king's ransom.'

The young Persian stared at the goblet in his hand. 'This thing?' He looked up at his uncle. 'It is valuable?'

All four of the Romans joined Baresmanas in the ensuing laughter. Their reaction was not diplomatic, perhaps, but they found it impossible to resist.

Fortunately, Kurush proved to be the affable type. He seemed to possess little of the prickly hauteur of most Persian noblemen. After a moment, he even joined in the laughter himself.

'I'm afraid I don't pay any attention to these matters,' he confessed. Shrugging: 'My retainers take care of that.' He made a sweeping gesture. 'But-please, please! Drink up! You must all be dying of thirst, after that miserable desert.'

Kurush's words swept hesitation aside. All four Romans drank deeply from their goblets. And found, not to their surprise, that the vintage was marvelous.

Belisarius took advantage of the distraction to give Kurush a careful study. He had already learned, from Baresmanas, that Kurush had been charged by Emperor Khusrau to be the Persians' principal military liaison with Belisarius and his Roman forces.

The nobleman was in his mid-twenties, he estimated. The young officer was tall and slender, with a narrow face and rather delicate features.

At first glance, he reminded Belisarius of certain hyper-cultured Athenian aesthetes whom the general had occasionally encountered. The sort of soulful young men who could not complete a sentence without two or three allusions to the classics, and whose view of the world was, to put it mildly, impractical.

The likeness was emphasized by the way in which Kurush wore his clothing. The garments themselves were expensive and well-made. (As were those of Athenian aesthetes-all of whom were aristocrats, not shepherds.) But they seemed to have been tossed on with little care for precision of fit and none at all for color coordination.

Closer examination, however, undermined the initial impression. Kurush's hands, though slim-fingered, were strong-looking. And Belisarius did not miss the significance of the worn indentation on Kurush's right thumb. Unlike Romans, who favored the three-fingered draw, Persians drew their bows with thumb-rings.

Then, there was the way he moved. Kurush's stride, his gestures-even his facial expressions-all had a nervous quickness about them. Almost eager, like a spirited thoroughbred before a race. They bore no resemblance whatever to the affected languor of aesthetes.