by Eric Flint
He turned away from the river. "It's as good a plan as any-and I'm not going to try to second-guess Belisarius."
* * *
"But there have been no communications from the Great Lady since she reached the headwaters of the Sutlej!" protested the chief priest.
Lord Samudra was no longer even trying to be polite to the man-or any of the other pestiferous priests Sati had left behind in the Punjab to "oversee" him. He rarely even let them into his command bunker.
"Of course we haven't!" he snarled. "Until I can get an army up there to bottle them back up in the Vale of Peshawar, the Kushans will have raiding parties all over the area. For sure and certain, they'll have cut the telegraph lines. And they'll ambush any couriers she might have sent."
"You should-"
"You should! You should!" He clenched his fist and held it just under the priest's nose. "I've got eighty thousand Romans just to the south-"
"That's nonsense! There can't be more than-"
"— and fifty thousand Persians threatening to penetrate our lines in the north. In the middle of this, you want me to-"
"— can't be more than thirty thousand-"
"Be silent!" Samudra shrieked. It was all he could do not to strike the priest with his fist.
With a great effort, he reined in his temper. "Who is the expert at gauging the size of armies, priest? Me or you? If I say I'm facing enemy forces numbering one hundred and thirty thousand men-barely smaller than my own-then that's what I'm facing!"
He lowered his fist by the expedient of throwing his whole hand to the side. The fist opened, and the forefinger indicated the door to the bunker.
"Get. Out. Out! The Great Lady instructed me to hold our lines, no matter what, and that is what I shall do. The Kushans are a distraction. We will deal with them when the time comes."
* * *
"He's panicking," mused Maurice, peeking over the fortified wall and looking to the north. "He's hunkering down everywhere, barely moving at all."
"Except for getting those ironclads into the Indus," Menander said grumpily. "The latest spy reports say that canal he's having dug is within two miles of the river."
Maurice thought about it. "Better leave off any more forays upriver with the Justinian, then. We'll need to get those minefields laid again."
"Eusebius is already working on it. He's got the mines mostly assembled and says he can start laying them in three days. That leaves me enough time-"
"Forget it. What's the point, Menander? We've already panicked them enough. From here on in, all we have to do is squat here."
He lowered his head and pointed over the wall with an upraised finger. "Belisarius asked us to keep that huge army locked up, and by God we've done so. The last thing I want is to take the risk that some mishap to the Justinian might boost their confidence."
"But-"
"Forget it, I said."
"We accept!" Anna exclaimed, as soon as she finished reading the radio message from Bharakuccha. Then, with a tiny start, glanced at Calopodius. "Assuming, of course, you agree."
Her husband grinned. "I can imagine the consequences if I didn't! But I agree, anyway. It's a good idea."
He hesitated a moment. Then:
"We'd have to live there ourselves, you understand."
"Yes, of course. Perhaps it would be best if we asked Antonina to find us a villa. ."
"Yes." He instructed the operator to send that message.
A few minutes later, listening to the reply, Calopodius started laughing softly.
"What's so funny?" asked Anna. "I can't make any sense out of that bzz-bzz-bzz."
"Wait. You'll see in a moment, when you can read it yourself."
The radio operator finished recording the message and handed it to Anna. After she skimmed through, she smiled ruefully.
"Well, that's that."
MUST BE JOKING STOP WHY GET VILLA WHEN CAN HAVE PART OF GOPTRI PALACE STOP WILL SET ASIDE CHOICE SUITE FOR YOU STOP PREFER RUBY OR EMERALD DECOR STOP
* * *
Reading the same message, Lord Samudra's gloom deepened. The Romans weren't even bothering to hide their communications any longer. Using the radio openly, when they could have used the telegraph!
"They're already carving us up," he muttered.
"Excuse me, Lord? I didn't quite hear that," said one of his lieutenants.
Samudra shook his head. "Never mind. What's the situation at Multan?"
"We just got a telegraph message from the garrison commander. He says the refugees are still pouring into the city. Much more, he says, and the city's defenses will be at risk."
The Malwa commander took a deep breath; then, slowly, sighed it out. "We can't hold Multan," he said quietly, speaking more to himself than to the lieutenant.
Shaking his head again, he said more loudly: "Send orders to the garrison commander to evacuate his troops from Multan and bring them south. We'll need his forces to reinforce our own down here. And start building fortification across our northern lines. The Persians will be attacking us, soon enough."
"Yes, Lord. And the city's residents? The refugees?"
"Not my affair!" snapped Samudra. "Tell the commander to abandon them-and if any try to follow his army, cut them down. We do not have room for those refugees here, either. Soon enough, we'll be fighting for our lives."
* * *
The next morning, the group of priests left behind by Link forced their way into Samudra's bunker.
"You cannot abandon Multan!" shouted the head priest.
But Samudra had known they would come, and had prepared for it. By now, all of his officers were as sick and tired of the priests as he was.
"Arrest them," he commanded.
It was done quickly, by a specially selected unit of Ye-tai. After the squawking priests were shoved into the bunker set aside for them, the commander of the Ye-tai unit reported back to Samudra.
"When, Lord?"
Samudra hesitated. But not for long. This step, like all the others he had taken, was being forced upon him. He had no choices, any longer.
"Do it now. There's no point in waiting. But make sure-certain, you understand-that there is no trace of evidence left. When"-he almost said if-"we have to answer to Great Lady Sati, there can be no questions."
"Yes, Lord."
* * *
The Ye-tai commander got promoted that evening. The explosion that destroyed the bunker and all the priests in it was splendidly handled. Unfortunate, of course, that by sheer chance a Roman rocket had landed a direct hit on it. Still more unfortunate, that the priests had apparently been so careless as to store gunpowder in the bunker.
The mahamimamsa who might have disputed that-which they would have, since they would have been the ones to handle the munitions-had vanished also. Nothing so fancy for them, however. By now, the open sewers that had turned most of the huge Malwa army camp into a stinking mess contained innumerable bodies. Who could tell one from the other, even if anyone tried?
* * *
By the following day, in any event, it was clear that no one ever would. The epidemic Samudra feared had arrived, finally, erupting from the multitude of festering spots of disease. Soon, there would be too many bodies to burn. More precisely, they no longer had enough flammable material in the area to burn them. The sewers and the rivers would have to serve instead.
Perhaps, if they were lucky, the bodies floating down the Indus and the Chenab would spread the disease into the Roman lines in the Iron Triangle.
* * *
By the time Link and its army returned to the banks of the Ganges, the cyborg that ruled the Malwa empire was as close to what humans would have called desperation as that inhuman intelligence could ever become. It was a strange sort of desperation, though; not one that any human being would have recognized as such.
For Link, the universe consisted solely of probabilities. Where a human would have become desperate from thinking doom was almost certain, Link would have handled such long o
dds with the same uncaring detachment that it assessed very favorable probabilities.
The problem lay elsewhere. It was becoming impossible to gauge the probabilities at all. The war was dissolving into a thing of sheer chaos, with all data hopelessly corrupted. A superhuman intelligence that could have assessed alternate courses of action and chosen among them based on lightning-quick calculations, simply spun in circles. Its phenomenal mind had no more traction than a wheel trapped in slick mud.
Dimly, and for the first time, a mentality never designed to do so understood that its great enemy had deliberately aimed for this result.
Bizarre. Link could understand the purpose, but slipped whenever it tried to penetrate the logic of the thing. How could any sane mind deliberately seek to undermine all probabilities? Deliberately strive to shatter all points of certainty? As if an intelligent being were a mindless shark, dissolving all logic into a fluid through which it might swim.
For the millionth time, Link examined the enormous records of the history of warfare that it possessed. And, finally, for the first time-dimly-began to realize that the ever-recurrent phrase "the art of war" was not simply a primitive fetish. Not simply the superstitious way that semi-savages would consider the science of armed conflict.
It almost managed something a human would have called resentment, then. Not at its great enemy, but at the new gods who had sent it here on its mission. And failed to prepare it properly.
But the moment was fleeting. Link was not designed to waste time considering impossibilities. The effort it had taken the new gods to transport Link and its accompanying machinery had almost exhausted them economically. Indeed, the energy expenditure had been so great that they had been forced to destroy a planet in the doing.
Their own. The centuries of preparation-most of it required by the erection of the power and transmission grids that had blanketed the surface-could not possibly have been done on any other planet. Not with the Great Ones moving between the star systems, watching everything.
The surviving new gods-the elite of that elite-had retreated to a heavily fortified asteroid to await the new universe that Link would create for them. They could defend themselves against the Great Ones, from that fortress, but could not possibly mount another intervention into human history.
They had taken a great gamble on Link. An excellent gamble, with all the probability calculations falling within the same margin of near-certainty.
And now. .
Nothing but chaos. How was Link to move in that utterly alien fluid?
* * *
"Your commands, Great Lady?"
Link's sheath looked up at the commander of the army. Incredibly, it hesitated.
Not long enough, of course, for the commander himself to notice. To a human, a thousandth of second was meaningless.
But Link knew. Incredibly, it almost said: "I'm not sure. What do you recommend?"
It did not, of course. Link was not designed to consider impossibilities.
Chapter 36
The Ganges plain, north of Mathura
As he'd hoped he would, Belisarius caught the Mathura garrison while it was still strung out in marching order.
"They're trying to form up squares," Abbu reported, "but if you move fast you'll get there before they can finish. They're coming up three roads and having trouble finding each other. The artillery's too far back, too." The old bedouin spat on the ground. "They're sorry soldiers."
"Garrison duty always makes soldiers sluggish, unless they train constantly." Ashot commented. "Even good ones."
The Armenian officer looked at Belisarius. "Your orders?"
"Our cataphracts are the only troops we've got who are really trained as mounted archers. Take all five hundred of them-use Abbu's bedouin as a screen-and charge them immediately. Bows only, you understand? Don't even think about lances and swords. Pass down the columns and rake them-but don't take any great risks. Stay away from the artillery. If they're already too far back, they'll never get up in position past a mass of milling infantrymen."
Ashot nodded. "You just want me to keep them confused, as long as I can."
"Exactly." Belisarius turned and looked at the huge column of Rajput cavalry following them. Using the term "column" loosely. Most of the cavalry were young men, eager for glory now that a real battle finally looked to be in the offing. Their ranks, never too precise at the best of times, were getting more ragged by the minute as the more eager ones pressed forward.
"I'm not going to be able to hold them, Ashot," Belisarius said. "That's all right-provided you can keep that Malwa army from forming solid musket-and-pike squares before I get there."
Seconds later, Ashot was mounted and leading his cataphracts forward.
Belisarius turned to the Rajput kings and top officers, who had gathered around him.
"You heard," he stated. "Just try to keep the charge from getting completely out of control."
Dasal grinned. "Difficult, that. Young men, you know-and not many of them well-blooded yet."
Belisarius winced, a little. Young, indeed. At a guess, close to a third of the twenty thousand cavalrymen he had under his command were still teenagers. Being Rajputs, they were proficient with lances and swords, even at that age. But, for many of them, this would be their first real battle.
If the Malwa had solid infantry squares, it'd be a slaughter before Belisarius could extricate his soldiers. Hopefully, the speed of his approach and Ashot's spoiling charge would keep the enemy off-balance just long enough. As impetuous as the Rajputs were certain to be, they'd roll right over that Malwa army if it wasn't prepared for them, even though it outnumbered Belisarius' army by something close to a three-to-two margin.
"We'll just have to hope for the best," he said, trying not to make the lame expression sound completely crippled. "Let's go."
* * *
Kungas and his men had no difficulty at all driving back the first Malwa attempt to force the river. It was a desperate undertaking, as few boats as the enemy had managed to scrounge up. Kungas was a little surprised they'd made the attempt at all. Not a single one of the enemy boats got within thirty yards of the north bank of the Ganges.
"What's that bitch thinking?" wondered Vima. "I thought she was supposed to be smarter than any human alive."
Kujulo shrugged. "How smart can you be, when you've run out of options? Trap a genius in a pit, and he'll try to claw his way out just like a rat. What else can he do?"
* * *
By the time Ashot reached the vanguard of the Malwa army, its commander had managed to get the columns on two of the roads to join forces. But he hadn't had time to get them into anything resembling a fighting formation.
Even moving at the moderate canter needed for accurate bow fire, Ashot needed no more than a few minutes to shred what little cohesion the forward units had. It was becoming obvious that the officers were either inexperienced or incompetent. Perhaps both.
That was not surprising, really. After years of war, the Malwa army like any other would have gone through a selection process with the most capable and energetic officers sent to the front; the sluggards and dull-wits, assigned to garrison duty.
Ashot even considered disobeying Belisarius' order and passing onward to find the artillery. The odds were that he'd be able to rip them up badly, also.
But he decided to forego the temptation. The scattered musket fire being directed at his men didn't pose much of a danger, but if he had the bad luck of catching even a few guns ready to fire and loaded with canister, he'd suffer some casualties-and he only had five hundred men to begin with.
"Back!" he bellowed. "We'll hit the forward units again!"
All he had to do, really, was keep the advance regiments of enemy infantry in a state of turmoil. When the Rajputs struck them, they'd scatter them to the winds-and the fleeing infantrymen would transmit their panic all the way back through the long columns.
Belisarius didn't have to crush this army. All he had to do wa
s send them into a panicky retreat to Mathura. The Malwa officers wouldn't be able to rally their army until it was all the way back into the city. And then, getting them to march out again would take several days.
Long enough, Ashot thought, to enable Belisarius to return to the Ganges and crush the army that really mattered. Link's army.
* * *
The raking fire of the Roman cataphracts on their return did exactly what Ashot thought it would. By the time the last cataphract passed out of musket range, the enemy's front lines were a shambles. Not a single one of the squares the Malwa officers had tried to form was anything more than a mass of confused and frightened men.
The Romans suffered only twenty casualties in the whole affair, and only seven of those were fatalities.
Just blind, bad luck, that Ashot was one of them. As he was almost out of range, a random musket ball fired by a panicked Malwa soldier passed under the flange of his helmet and broke his neck.
* * *
Belisarius didn't find out until later. At the time, he was cursing ferociously, trying to keep the Rajput charge from dissolving into a chaos even worse than that of the enemy's formations.
He failed, utterly, but it didn't matter. The young Rajputs suffered much worse casualties than they needed to have suffered, but their charge was so headlong that they simply shattered the front of the Malwa army. Twenty thousand cavalrymen charging at a gallop would have been terrifying for any army. Experienced soldiers, in solid formations and with steady officers, would have broken the charge anyway. But the Mathura garrison hadn't been in a real battle since many of its units had participated in the assault in Ranapur, years earlier.
They broke like rotten wood. Broke, and then-as Ashot had foreseen-began shredding the rest of the army in their panicked rout.
Belisarius and the kings tried to stop the Rajputs from pursuing the fleeing enemy. There was no need to destroy this army in a prolonged and ruthless pursuit. But it was hopeless. Their blood was up. The glorious great victory those young men eagerly wanted after the wretched business of being simple arsonists was finally at hand-and they wanted all of it.