untouchable could scrape up the coins to buy himself a hag. There would be few untouchables who could afford the price. But there would be some, among the teeming multitude of that ever-growing class.
The iron elephant huffed its steamy breath, wheezing and gasping. Had it truly been an animal, Belisarius might have hoped it was dying, so horribly wrong was the sound of the creature’s respiration. But it was no creature, Belisarius knew. It was a creation-a construct made of human craft and inhuman lore. Still, watching the monstrous thing creeping its slow way forward, surrounded by Ye-tai warriors howling with glee at their anticipated final triumph, the general found it impossible to think of it as anything other than a demonic beast.
Belisarius, seeing one of the cataphracts take up a captured thunderflask, bellowed a command. The cataphract subsided. They possessed few of the infernal devices, and Belisarius was determined to make good use of them. The range was still too great.
He stroked his grey beard. Of his youth, nothing remained save whimsy; it amused him to see how old habits never die. Even now, when all hope had vanished from the mind of the general, the heart of the man still beat as strongly as ever.
It was not a warrior’s heart. Belisarius had never truly been a warrior, not, at least, in the sense that others gave the name. No, he was of unpretentious Thracian stock. And, at bottom, his was the soul of a workman at his trade.
True, he had been supreme in battle. (Not war, in the end; for the long war was almost over, the defeat total.) Even his most bitter enemies recognized his unchallenged mastery on the field of carnage, as the display of force coming down the Mese attested. Why else mass such an enormous army to overcome such a tiny guard? Had any other man but Belisarius commanded the Emperor’s last bodyguard, the Mahaveda would have sent a mere detachment.
Yes, he had been supreme on the battlefield. But his supremacy had stemmed from craftsmanship, not martial valor. Of the courage of Belisarius, no man doubted, not even he. But courage, he had long known, was a common trait. God’s most democratic gift, given to men and women of all ages, and races, and stations in life. Much rarer was craftsmanship, that odd quality which is not satisfied merely with the result sought, but that the work itself be done skillfully.
His life was at an end, now, but he would end it with supreme craftsmanship. And, in so doing, gut the enemy’s triumph of its glee.
A cataphract hissed. Belisarius glanced over, thinking the man had been hit by one of the many arrows which were now falling upon them. But the lancer was unharmed, his eyes fixed forward.
Belisarius followed the eyes and understood. The Mahaveda priests had appeared now, safely behind the ranks of the Ye-tai and the Malwa kshatriyas manning the iron elephant. They were drawn forward on three great carts hauled by slaves, each cart bearing three priests and a mahamimamsa torturer. From the center of each cart arose a wooden gibbet, and from the gibbets hung the new talismans which they had added to their demonic paraphernalia.
There, suspended three abreast, hung those who had been dearest to Belisarius in life. Sittas, his oldest and best friend. Photius, his beloved stepson. Antonina, his wife.
Their skins, rather. Flayed from their bodies by the mahamimamsa, sewn into sacks which bellied in the breeze, and smeared with the excrement of dogs. The skin-sacks had been cleverly designed so that they channeled the wind into a wail of horror. The skins hung suspended by the hair of those who had once filled them in life. The priests took great care to hold them in such a manner that Belisarius could see their faces.
The general almost laughed with triumph. But his face remained calm, his expression still. Even now, the enemy did not understand him.
He spit on the ground, saw his men note the gesture and take heart. As he had known they would. But, even had they not been watching, he would have done the same.
What cared he for these trophies? Was he a pagan, to mistake the soul for its sheath? Was he a savage, to feel his heart break and his bowels loosen at the sight of fetishes?
His enemies had thought so, arrogant as always. As he had known they would, and planned for. Then he did laugh (and saw his men take note, and heart; but he would have laughed anyway), for now that the procession had drawn nearer he could see that the skin of Sittas was suspended by a cord.
“Look there, cataphracts!” he cried. “They couldn’t hang Sittas by his hair! He had no hair, at the end. Lost it all, he did, fretting the night away devising the stratagems which made them howl.”
The cataphracts took up the cry.
“ Antioch! Antioch! ” There, the city fallen, Sittas had butchered the Malwa hordes before leading the entire garrison in a successful withdrawal.
“ Korykos! Korykos! ” There, on the Cilician coast, not a month later, Sittas had turned on the host which pursued him. Turned, trapped them, and made the Mediterranean a Homeric sea in truth. Wine-dark, from Ye-tai blood.
“ Pisidia! Pisidia! ” There was no wine-dark lake, in Homer. But had the poet lived to see the havoc which Sittas wreaked upon the Rajputs by the banks of Pisidia’s largest lake, he would have sung of it.
“Akroinon! Akroinon!”
“Bursa! Bursa!”
At Bursa, Sittas had met his death. But not at the hands of the mahamimamsa vivisectors. He had died in full armor, leading the last charge of his remaining cataphracts, after conducting the most brilliant fighting retreat since Xenophon’s march to the sea.
“And look at the face of Photius!” shouted Belisarius. “Is it not a marvel, how well the flayers preserved it? Look, cataphracts, look! Is that not the grin of Photius? His merry smile?”
The cataphracts looked, and nodded, and took up the cry.
“So did he laugh at Alexandria!” cried one. “When he transfixed Akhshunwar’s throat with his arrow!” The Ye-tai commander of the siege had disbelieved the tales of the garrison leader’s archery. He had come to the walls of Alexandria himself to see, and scoff, and deride the courage of his warriors. But his warriors had been right, after all.
New cries were taken up by the cataphracts, recalling other feats of Photius during his heroic defense of Alexandria. Photius the Fearless, as he had been called. Photius, the beloved stepson. Who, when his capture was inevitable, had taken a poison so horrible that it had caused his face to freeze into an eternal rictus. Belisarius had wondered, when he heard the tale, why his sensible son had not simply opened his veins. But now he understood. From beyond the grave, Photius sent him a last gift.
The best, Belisarius saved for last.
“And look! Look, cataphracts, at the skin of Antonina! Look at the withered, disease-ruptured thing! They have dug her up from the grave, where the plague sent her! How many of the torturers will die, do you think, from that desecration? How many will writhe in agony, and shriek to see their bodies blacken and swell? How many? How many?”
“ Thousand! Thousands! ” roared the cataphracts.
Belisarius gauged the moment, and thought it good. He scanned the cataphracts and saw that they were with him. They knew his plan and had said they would follow, even though it was an act of personal grace which would bring death to them all. He needed only, now, a battlecry. He found it at once.
Through all the years he had loved Antonina, there was a name he had never called her. Others had, many others, even she herself, but never he. Not even the first night he met her, and paid for her services.
“For my whore!” he bellowed, and sprang upon the barricade. “For my pustulent whore! May she rot their souls in hell!”
“ FOR THE WHORE! ” cried the cataphracts. “ FOR THE WHORE! ”
The captured thunderflasks were hurled now, and hurled well. The iron elephant erupted in fire and flame. The cataphracts fired a volley, and another, and another. Again, as so often before, the Ye-tai had time to be astonished at the force of the ravening arrows as they ripped through their iron armor like so much cloth. Little time, little time. Few but cataphracts could draw those incredible bows.
Those Ye-tai in the front ranks, those who survived, then had time to be further astonished. They had been awaiting a cavalry charge, fully confident that the dragonbolts would panic the great horses. Now they gaped to see the lancers advancing like infantry.
In truth, the cataphracts were slower afoot than on saddle. But they were not much slower, so great was
