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"Patience, Maloji, patience. They were disunited, and the Malwa terrified them for decades. Now that we've shown they can be beaten, even if Damodara's rebellion fails and Skandagupta keeps the throne, the rest of the Deccan will cleave to us. They'll have no choice, anyway. But with our foreign allies-all the aid we can expect through Bharakuccha, if we need it-they'll even be sanguine about it."
"Bharakuccha," Maloji muttered.
Rao laughed. "Oh, leave off! As great an empire as Andhra has now become, we can well afford to give up one city. Two cities, if you count the Axumite presence in Chowpatty. What do we care? There are other ports we can expand, if we desire it. And having the Ethiopians with their own interests in the Indian trade, we'll automatically have their support also, in the event the Malwa start the war up again."
"They're not that big."
"No-which is exactly why we agreed to let them have Bharakuccha. They're no threat to us. But they probably have the most powerful navy in the Erythrean Sea, today. That means the Malwa won't be able to prevent the Romans from sending us all the material support we need."
Judging from the expression on his face, Maloji was still not entirely mollified. "But would they?"
"As long as Belisarius is alive, yes," replied Rao serenely. "And he's still a young man."
"A young man leading an army into the middle of the Gangetic plain. Who's to say he's even still alive?"
Rao just smiled.
Belisarius himself was scowling.
"As bad as Persians!" He matched the old Rajput kings glare for glare. "You've heard the reports. Sati will have at least thirty thousand infantry, half of them armed with muskets and the rest with pikes. We have no more chance of breaking them with cavalry charges that we do riding our horses across the ocean."
As indignant as they were, the kings were quite familiar with warfare. The two brothers Dasal and Jaisal looked away, still glaring, but no longer at Belisarius. One of the other kings, Chachu, was the only one who tried to keep the argument going.
"You have rockets," he pointed out.
Belisarius shrugged. "I've got eight rocket chariots with no more than a dozen rockets each. That's enough to harass the Malwa. It's not the sort of artillery force that would enable me to smash infantry squares."
Chachu fell silent, his angry eyes sweeping across the landscape. It was quite visible, since the command tent they were standing under was no more than an open pavilion. Just enough to shelter them from the hot sun. They were out of sight of the Yamuna, by now, marching north toward the Ganges. Well into garam season, the flat plain was parched and sere.
"It is dishonorable," he muttered.
Belisarius felt his jaws tighten. There was much to admire about Rajputs. There was also much to despise. He thought it was quite typical that Rajput kings would be solely concerned with their honor-when what bothered Belisarius was the destruction he'd soon be visiting upon i
"We… have… no… choice," he said, rasping out the words. "The tactical triangle is simple."
He held up his thumb. "Cavalry ca
His forefinger came up alongside the thumb. "Artillery can smash infantry squares-but we have no artillery worth talking about."
Another finger. "On the other side, Sati has only enough cavalry to give her a scouting screen. Not enough-not nearly enough-to drive us off."
He lowered his hand. "So, we keep the pressure on them-from a bit of a distance-and force them to remain in formation. That means they move slowly, and ca
In a slightly more conciliatory tone, he added: "If you were mounted archers in the ma
Chachu's head came back around. "Rajput archers are as good-!"
"Oh, be quiet!" snapped Dasal. The oldest of the Rajput kings shifted his glare from the landscape to his fellow king. "I have seen Persian dehgans in combat. You haven't. What the Roman general is talking about is not their individual skill as bowmen-although that's much greater than ours also, except for a few like Sanga. Those damn Persians grow up with bows. He's talking about their tactics."
Dasal took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "We do not fight in that ma
Belisarius nodded. "And there's no way to train an army in such tactics quickly. My own bucellarii have been trained to fight that way, but there are only five hundred of them. Not enough. Not nearly enough."
Chachu's face looked as sour as vinegar. "Where did you learn such a disgraceful method?"
Belisarius' chuckle was completely humorless. "From another Roman defeat, how else? I propose to do to Sati's Malwa army exactly what the Persians did to the army of the Roman Emperor Julian, when he was foolish enough to march into the Mesopotamian countryside in midsummer with no secured lines of supply."
Belisarius' gaze moved across the same landscape. It was richer than that of Mesopotamia, but every bit as dry this time of year. Just more things to burn.
"Julian the Apostate, he was called," Belisarius added softly. "A brilliant commander, in many ways. He defeated the Persians in almost every battle they fought. But he, too, was full of his own inflated sense of glory. I am not. And, Roman or no, I command this army. Your own emperor has so decreed."
He let the silence settle, for a minute. Then, brought his eyes back to the assembled little group of kings. "You will do as I say. As soon as our scouts make the first contact with Sati's army, we will start burning the land. Behind her as well as before her. On both sides of the Ganges, so that even if she manages to find enough boats, it will do her no good."
After the kings had left the pavilion, Belisarius turned to Jaimal and Udai Singh.
"And you?"
Udai shrugged. "It is a low tactic, no doubt about it. But who cares, when the enemy is Malwa?"
Jaimal just smiled.
Two days after the battle at Mayapur-such as it was-Kungas and his army had covered thirty-five miles in their retreat to Peshawar. It was a "retreat," of course, only in the most technical sense of the term. They'd left Sati in command of the battlefield, true enough. But they'd accomplished their purpose, and it was now time to hurry back lest the Malwa take advantage of their absence to invade the Vale.
The first of Irene's couriers reached them while they were still in the hills.
Kungas read her message several times over, before showing it to Vima and Kujulo.
"What do you want to do?" asked Vima.
Kungas was already looking back toward the east. After a moment, he turned and gazed at the distant peaks of the Himalayas.
So far off, they were. So majestic, also.
He decided it was an omen.
"We'll go back," he said. "I want that bitch dead. No, more. I want to see her dead."
After traveling perhaps a hundred miles north of the Vindhyas, following the route Damodara and his army had taken, the captain of the assassination team had had enough.
"This is a madhouse," he said to his lieutenant. "Half the garrisons vanished completely, leaving the countryside open to bandits. What's worse, the other half roaming the countryside like bandits themselves."