Destiny's shield

Listened, again, to the growl:

'Depends.'

The first cannon fired when Shakuntala's flagship, in the van of the fleet, was not more than three miles from the entrance to the harbor. The Empress and her peshwa, standing in the bow, saw the cloud of gunsmoke; moments later, heard the roar.

Another cannon fired. Then, a third.

'Are they firing at us?' queried Holkar. Ruefully: 'I'm afraid my eyes aren't as good as they used to be.'

The Empress of Andhra had young eyes, and good ones.

'No, Dadaji. They are firing at something in the harbor. Malwa warships, I assume.'

Holkar sighed. 'Kungas has done it, then. He has taken the fortress.'

Young eyes, good eyes, suddenly filled with tears.

'My Mahadandanayaka,' she whispered. 'Bhatas-vapati.'

She clutched Holkar's arm, and pressed her face against his shoulder. For all the world, like a girl seeking shelter and security from her father.

'And you, my peshwa.'

As the huge fleet sailed toward the harbor of Suppara, Dadaji Holkar held his small Empress in his arms. Thin arms, they were, attached to the slender shoulders of a middle-aged scholar. But, in that moment, they held all the comfort which the girl needed.

If an Empress found shelter there, the man himself found a greater comfort in the sheltering. His own family was lost to him, perhaps forever, but he had found another to give him comfort in his search. A child, here. A brother, there on the fortress above.

A bigger, tougher kind of brother. The kind every bookish man wishes he had.

'Mine, too,' he murmured, staring at the clouds of gunsmoke wafting over the distant harbor. 'My Mahadandanayaka. My Bhatasvapati.'

Chapter 30

The Euphrates

Autumn, 531 A.D.

'Tell me again,' said Belisarius.

Standing next to the general on top of the giant pile of rocks which the Kushans had hauled out of the Nehar Malka, Maurice decided to misunderstand the question.

'Fifteen thousand cavalry they've got now,' he gruffed. He pointed a stubby, thick finger at the cloud of dust rising out of the desert some ten miles to the southeast. 'Five thousand of them, by my estimate, are Lakhmid Arabs. They're riding camels, the most, and-'

Belisarius smiled crookedly.

'Tell me again, Maurice.'

The chiliarch puffed out his cheeks. Sighed. 'This is not my province, general. I don't have any business mucking around in-'

'I'm not asking you to muck around,' growled Belisarius. 'And spare me the protestations of humble modesty. Just tell me what you think.'

Again, Maurice puffed out his cheeks. Then, exhaled noisily.

'What I think, general, is that the Emperor of Persia is offering the Roman Empire a dynastic marriage. Between Photius and the eldest daughter of his noblest sahrdaran.'

Maurice glanced down at Baresmanas. The father of the daughter in question was perched sixty feet away on a large boulder further down the man-made hill. Out of hearing range. Maurice continued:

'He'd offer one of his own daughters in marriage-Khusrau made that clear enough-but he doesn't have any. So Baresmanas' daughter is the best alternative, other than choosing from one of his brothers' or half-brothers' various girls.'

Belisarius shook his head. 'That's the last thing he'd do. Khusrau's trying to bridle that crowd of ambitious brothers. And, if I'm reading him right, trying to cement the most trustworthy layers of the nobility to his rule.'

The general scratched his chin, idly staring at the cloud of dust in the desert. His eyes were not really focussed on the sight, however. From experience, he knew that the Malwa army advancing on him would not be in position to attack until the following day. In the meantime-

'Khusrau's canny,' he said. 'Part of our conversations in Babylon consisted of his questions regarding the Roman methods of organizing our Empire. I think he's planning-groping, is maybe a better way to put it-to break Persia from its inveterate-'

He paused. The word 'feudalism' would mean nothing to Maurice. It had meant nothing to Belisarius, either, until Aide explained it to him.

'— traditions,' he concluded, waving his hand vaguely.

'Think he can do it?' asked Maurice. 'Persians are set in their ways.'

Belisarius pondered the question. Aide had given him, once, a vision of the Persia which Khusrau Anushirvan had created, in the future which would have been if the 'new gods' hadn't intervened in human history. The greatest Emperor of the Sassanid dynasty had tried to impose centralized, imperial authority over the unruly Aryan nobility, inspired by Rome's example, to some degree; guided by his own keen intelligence, for the rest.

In many ways, Khusrau would succeed. He would break the military power of the great aristocracy. He would win the allegiance of the dehgans, transform them into the social base for a professional army paid and equipped by the Emperor, and place them under the authority of his own generals-spahbads, he would call them. Never again would ambitious sahrdarans or vurzurgans pose a threat to the throne.

Khusrau would succeed elsewhere, too. His greatest reform-the one for which history would call him 'Khusrau the Just'-would be his drastic overhaul of taxation. Khusrau would institute a system of taxation which was not only far less burdensome to the common folk but which also stabilized the imperial treasury.

Yet-

If there was one thing which Aide had shown Belisarius, it was that human history never moved in simple, clear channels. Khusrau's dynasty-the Sas-sanid dynasty-would vanish into history, as all dynasties did. But his tax system would remain. The Arab conquerors of Persia would be so impressed by it that they would use it as the model for the tax system of the great Moslem Caliphates.

Belisarius' mind was now wandering very far from the moment. He knew of the Moslem Caliphates of the future that would have been. Aide had shown him. Just as Aide had shown him the fall of the Roman Empire, almost a thousand years in the future. The sack of Constantinople at the hands of the so-called Fourth Crusade. The final conquest of Byzantium, a quarter of a millennium later, by a new people called the Turks.

Belisarius wondered, now, as he often had before, what he thought of all that Aide had shown him. He was a general in the service of the Roman Empire. Indeed, one of the greatest generals which Rome ever produced. He knew that for a simple fact. And knew, also, that he was the only general in the long history of that great Empire who fought for it while understanding, all along, that the Empire was doomed.

He hoped to saved Rome, and the world, from the Malwa tyranny. But he would not save Rome itself. Rome would fall-someday, somehow. If not by the hand of Sultan Mehmet and his Janissaries, by the hand of someone else. All human creations fell, or collapsed, or simply decayed. Someday, somehow, somewhere.

Mentally, Belisarius shrugged. His was not the task of creating a perfect human future. His was the task of making sure that people had a future they could create. Create badly, perhaps-but create. Not be forced into a mold created for them.

Maurice was still waiting patiently for an answer. Belisarius smiled, and gave him the simple one.

'Yes, he can do it. He will do it.'

Maurice grunted. The grunt carried a great deal of satisfaction-which was odd, really, for a Roman soldier. But Maurice had met Khusrau Anushirvan, and, like many people, even that crusty veteran had come under the spell of the Persian Emperor's powerful personality.