The Dance of Time b-6

by Eric Flint

  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."

  "And now what?" asked Jaimal, after the scout was gone.

  "Start burning-but only behind them. Leave them a clear path forward."

  The Rajput officer nodded. "You want them away from the Ganges."

  "Yes. But mostly, I want someone else to see a signal. If it's the Kushans, when they see the great smoke from the burning, they'll know."

  "Know what?"

  Belisarius grinned at him. "That I'll be back. All they have to do is hold the Ganges-keep the monster pinned on this side-and I'll be back."

  The oldest of the kings grunted. "I understand. Good plan. Now we go teach those shits from Mathura that all they're good for is garrison duty."

  "Indeed," said Belisarius. "And we move quickly."

  * * *

  After they began the forced march, Aide spoke uncertainly.

  I don't understand. You must be careful! Link is not stupid. When it sees you are only burning behind its army, it will understand that you are trying to lure it further from the river. It will return, then, not come forward.

  I know. And by then Kungas will already be there. They will not cross the Ganges against Kungas' will. Not though they outnumbered him ten-to-one.

  There was silence, for a bit.

  Oh. What you're really doing is keeping Link at the Ganges, not drawing it overland-which gives you time to crush the army coming up from Mathura.

  Yes. That's where we'll kill the monster's army. Right on the banks of the holy river, caught between two enemies.

  They'll have plenty of water.

  Man does not live by water alone. Soon, they'll have nothing to eat-and we have all the time we need to watch them starve. We'll have Link trapped up here-when it needs to be in Kausambi. If Damodara can't do the rest, against Skandagupta alone, he's not the new emperor India needs.

  Silence again, for a bit.

  What if that new army isn't the Kushans?

  Then we're screwed, said Belisarius cheerfully. I'm a pretty good gambler myself, you know-and you can't gamble if you're not willing to take the risk of getting screwed.

  That produced a long silence. Eventually, Aide said:

  I can remember a time when I wouldn't have understood a word of that. Especially "screwed." How did a proper little crystal fall into such bad company?

  You invited yourself to the party. As a matter of fact, as I recall, you started the party.

  That's a very vulgar way of putting it.

  Chapter 35

  The Punjab

  By the time Khusrau and his army reached the Kohat Pass, the emperor of the Persians was in an excellent frame of mind.

  First, because he'd succeeded in taking most of the western Punjab for his empire. Formally speaking, at least, even if Persian occupation and rule was still almost meaningless for the inhabitants. He h
adn't even bothered to leave behind detachments of dehgans under newly appointed provincial governments to begin establishing an administration.

  He would, soon enough. In the meantime, there was still a war to be won and he only had thirty thousand troops at his disposal. Not enough to peel off even small detachments for garrison duty. Not with a Malwa army still in the Punjab that numbered at least one hundred and fifty thousand.

  Second, because-here and there-he'd been able to grind up some more sahrdaran and vurzurgan hotheads in foolish charges against Malwa garrisons. It was amazing, really, how thick-headed those classes were.

  Or, perhaps, it was simply their growing sense of desperation. For centuries, the grandees had been the real power in Persia. True, none of the seven great sahrdaran families or their vurzurgan affiliates ever formally challenged the right of an emperor to rule. Or that the emperor would always come from the imperial clan. But the reality had been that emperors were made and broken, at each and every succession, by the grandees. Those contestants for the throne who got their support, won. Those who didn't, lost their heads.

  Their power had stemmed, ultimately, from two sources. One was their control of great swathes of land in a nation that was still almost entirely agricultural, which made them phenomenally wealthy. The other was their ability to field great numbers of armored heavy cavalry, which had been the core of Persia's might for centuries, because of that wealth.

  They were losing both, now. Not quickly, no, but surely nonetheless. The huge areas of western India formerly ruled by the Malwa that Khusrau was incorporating into his empire, all of Sind and a third of the Punjab, were not being parceled out to the grandees, as they would have been in times past. Instead, Khusrau was adapting the Roman model and setting up an imperial administration, staffed by dehgans who answered directly to him and his appointed governors-most of whom were dehgans themselves.

  Worse still, the grandees were witnessing the death knell of the armored horseman as the king of battles. Within a generation, even in Persia, it would be infantry armed with guns who constituted the core of imperial might. Infantry whose soldiers would be drawn, as often as not, from the newly conquered territories. Indian peasants from the Sind or the Punjab, who would answer to the emperor, not the grandees-and would do so willingly, because the Persian emperor had given their clans and tribes a far more just and lenient rule than they'd ever experienced at the hands of the Malwa.

  The continued insistence of the grandees to launch their beloved cavalry charges, Khusrau thought, was simply the willful blindness of men who could not accept their coming fate.

  So be it. Khusrau was quite happy to oblige them. Why not? They were ferocious cavalry, after all, so they generally managed to seize the small cities and towns they attacked. And every sahrdaran and vurzurgan who died in the doing was one less the emperor would have to quarrel with on the morrow.

  By the time the war was over, only the Suren would remain as powerful as they had been, of the seven great families. And under Baresmanas' sure leadership, the Suren were reaching an accommodation with the emperor. They'd long been the premier family of the seven, after all, and now they had the emperor's favor. Unlike the rest, the Suren would accept a role that diminished them as a family but would expand their power and influence as individuals within the empire.

  Last-best of all-there were the dehgans. The knightly class of Persia's nobility had always chafed under the yoke of the grandees. But they'd accepted that yoke, in the past, since they saw no alternative.

  Khusrau was giving them an alternative, now, and they were seizing it. For a modest dehgan from a small village, the chance to become an imperial administrator or governor was a far better prospect than anything the grandees would offer. In the increasingly unlikely event that the grandees tried to launch a rebellion against Khusrau, he was not only sure he could crush them easily-but he'd have the assistance of most of the grandees' own feudal retainers in doing so.

  * * *

  "You're certainly looking cheerful, Your Majesty," said Irene. She'd come to meet him in a pavilion she'd had hastily set up at the crest of the pass, once she got word that the Persian army was approaching the borders of the Kushan kingdom.

  Well, not quite at the crest. The pavilion was positioned on a small knoll a few hundreds yards below the crest, and the fortresses the Kushans had built upon it.

  Khusrau-very cheerfully-gazed up at those fortifications.

  "Very nicely built," he said. "I'd certainly hate to be the one who ever tried to storm them."

  Lowering his eyes, and seeing the questioning look in Irene's eyes, Khusrau grinned. "Oh, don't be silly. Yes, I'm in a very good mood. For many reasons. One of them is that I don't have the prospect of watching my army bleed to death on these horrid-looking rocks."

  Irene smiled. Khusrau, still grinning, turned slightly and pointed with his finger to the plain below. "I thought I'd found a small town there. With a modest garrison. Just big enough to formally mark the boundary of the Persian empire. And another town like it, a similarly discreet distance below the Margalla Pass. Any objection?"

  Irene's smile widened considerably. "Of course not, Your Majesty. The kingdom of the Kushans would not presume to quarrel with whatever the Emperor of Iran and non-Iran chose to do within his own realm."

  "Splendid. I'll be off, then. Still many more battles to fight. The Romans-staunch fellows-have most of the Malwa army pinned down at the Triangle, so I thought I'd take advantage of the opportunity to plunder and ravage their northerly towns. I might even threaten Multan. Won't try to take it, though. The garrison's too big."

  The grin seemed fixed on his face. "Where's King Kungas, by the way?"

  Before Irene could answer, he waved his hand. "None of my business, of course."

  Irene hesitated, a moment. Then, sure that the Persians had no intentions upon the Vale of Peshawar, she said: "Actually, it is your business. We are allies, after all. My husband took most of our army east, to intercept and ambush the army Great Lady Sati is leading back to the Gangetic plain to fight Damodara. I've gotten word from him. The ambush was successful and he's continuing the pursuit."

  That caused the emperor's grin to fade away. His eyebrows lifted. "We'd heard from our spies that she had something like forty thousand troops. Kungas can't possibly-"

  " 'Pursuit' is perhaps not the right term. He thinks Belisarius is somewhere out there, also, although he's not sure. He'll stay at a distance from Sati's force and simply harass them, until he knows."

  "Ah." Khusrau's head swiveled, toward the east. "Belisarius. . Yes, he might well be there, by now. He was gone from the Triangle, when I arrived. Maurice was very mysterious about it. But I suspect-I have spies too, you know-that he reached an agreement with the Rajputs. If I'm right, he crossed the Thar with a small force to organize and lead a Rajput rebellion."

  Irene's gaze followed his. "I wondered. I could see no way-neither could my husband-that he could lead a sizeable Roman force from the Triangle into the Ganges. But through Rajputana. ." She chuckled softly. "It would be quite like him. I worry about that man's soul, sometimes. How will the angels cope with so many angles?"

  Khusrau's chuckle was a louder thing. "Say better, how will the devils?"

  He gave her a little bow. "And now, Queen of the Kushans, I must be off."

  * * *

  Belisarius drove the march south even more ruthlessly than he'd driven the one north.

  "I want to catch them strung out in marching order," he explained to the Rajput kings, after sending out a host of Arab and Pathan scouts to find his target.

  "Good plan," said Dasal.

  "It's so hot," half-complained his brother.

  "Stop whining, youngster. Hot for the Malwa, too. Still hotter, when we catch them."

  * * *

  Kungas studied the scene on the opposite side of the Ganges. As dry and hot as it was, the fires that had been started over there were burned out by now, although plumes of smoke w
ere rising here and there from still-smoldering ashes.

  "How far?" he asked.

  "As far down the river as we've gotten reports," Kujulo replied, "from the scouts that have come back."

  "It must have been Belisarius," said Vima. "But I don't understand why he burned here. I'd have thought he'd be burning in front of her."

  "Who's to say he isn't?" Kungas left off his examination of the opposite bank and studied the river itself. As big as it was, the Ganges had already swept downriver whatever traces of the burning had fallen into it.

  "I think he wants to pin the bitch here, at the river. That's why he burned behind her. To trick her into coming back."

  Vima frowned. "But why? If she's here, she's got water. It'd be better to burn her out when she's stranded between the rivers."

  Kujulo shrugged. "If it worked, yes. But it's not that easy to 'strand' an army that big. She'd probably have enough supplies with her to make it to the Yamuna."

  "She could get stored food from the garrisoned towns, too," said Kungas. "Belisarius is probably bypassing them, just burning everything else. I don't think he can have so big an army that he'd want to suffer casualties in a lot of little sieges and assaults. Especially if he's trying to move quickly."

  Finally, he spotted what he was looking for, far down the river. A small cluster of little fishing boats.

  "No, it makes sense. If he tricks her into coming back here, he can pin her against the river. Especially with us on the other side to keep her from crossing-which we will."

  He pointed at the boats. "We'll use those to ferry a party across the river. Then we'll send cavalry up and down both banks of the river. Seize any boats we find, and wreck or burn any bridges, any timber-anything; ropes, whatever-that could be used to build new bridges or boats. We'll keep the bitch from crossing, while Belisarius lets her army starve to death. They'll have water, but that's all they'll have."

  "She'll try to march down the Ganges," Vima pointed out.

  "Yes, she will. With Belisarius burning everything before her on that side, and us doing the same on this side. And killing any foraging parties she tries to send out. I don't think she'll make it to a big enough garrisoned city-it'd have to be Kangora-before her army starts to fall apart."