by Eric Flint
Belisarius snorted. "Pain in the ass? It'd be better to say—pain in the belly." He gave the young officer squatting next to him a look which was both serious and solemn. "Know this, Coutzes. Whether we survive or not, we have already gutted Malwa. Whatever happens, the invasion of Persia is over. Finished. Malwa can no longer even hope to launch another war of conquest. Not for years, at least. Link will try to salvage what it can of this army—which won't be much. But after the Nehar Malka, and Charax—"
He groped for an illustration. Aide provided it.
In not much more than a year, Belisarius, you have given the Malwa their own Stalingrad and Kursk. Link can only do, now, what Hitler did. Try to hold what it can, and retreat as little as possible. But it is the defender, from this day forward, not the aggressor.
Belisarius nodded. He did not attempt to provide his young subordinate with all the history which went behind Aide's statement, but he gave him the gist.
"Coutzes, there will be another great war against evil, in the future—or would have been, at least. Aide just reminded me of it."
He had Coutzes' undivided attention, now. The young Thracian knew of Aide. He had seen him. But, like all of Belisarius' officers, he thought of the crystal being as simply the Talisman of God. A pronouncement from Aide, so far as Coutzes was concerned, was as close to divine infallibility as any man would ever encounter.
Belisarius smiled, seeing that look of awe.
What are you grinning about? demanded Aide. The facets flashed. For an instant, Belisarius had an image of a crystalline rooster, prancing about with unrestrained self-glory. I think "divine infallibility" fits me to perfection. Why don't you understand that obvious truth?
Again, the facets flashed. Belisarius choked down a laugh. The crystalline rooster, for just a split second, had been staring at him with beady, accusing eyes. A barnyard fowl, demanding its just due. A combed and feathered deity, much aggrieved by agnostic insolence.
Belisarius waved his hand, as much to still Aide's humor as to illustrate his next words. "There came a time in that war, Coutzes, when the armies of wickedness were broken. Broken, not destroyed. But from that time forward, they could only retreat. They could only hold what they had, in the hopes that someday, in the future, they might be able to start their war of conquest anew."
Belisarius snarled, now. "Those foul beasts—they were called Nazis—were never given that chance. Their enemies, after breaking them, pressed on to their destruction." He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder, pointing to the inhuman monster lurking somewhere behind the wall. "Link knows that history as well as I do. And the thing, whatever else, is bound and determined to see that neither I—nor any of the soldiers of this magnificent army—are alive to participate in any future wars. Or else, it knows full well—"
He rolled his eyes, following the thumb. His next words were whispered. A promise, hissed: "I will be alive, monster. And I will give you Operation Bagration, and the destruction of Army Group Centre. And I will give you Sicily and D-Day, and the Falaise Pocket—except this time, beast, the pocket will be closed in time."
He turned his eyes back to Coutzes. Fury faded, replaced by wry humor. "As I said, this frenzied assault is quite a compliment. Feeds my pride no end, it does. Just think, Coutzes. Great gods of the future, convinced of their own perfection, have set themselves the single task of killing one pitiful, primitive, imperfect, preposterous, ridiculous, pathetic Thracian goddam fucking son-of-a-bitch."
Coutzes laughed. "Can't say I blame them!"
Another volley of arrows sailed overhead. Behind them came a volley of words—the sounds of Ye-tai bellowing commands. Coutzes popped his head over the wall. When he brought it down, he was frowning.
"I think—" He transferred the frown to Belisarius. "I want you out of here, General. They'll be starting the next assault any minute. A stray grenade—" He shook his head.
Belisarius did not argue the matter. He rose to a half-crouch and scuttled out of the room. In the roofless chamber beyond, Anastasius was waiting, along with the other cataphracts who were now serving as his additional bodyguards. Maurice had replaced Valentinian with two of them, after Valentinian's capture. The cataphracts chosen had not taken offense at that relative estimation of their merits compared to Valentinian's. They had been rather pleased, actually, at the compliment. They had expected Maurice to choose twice that number.
Anastasius snorted, seeing the general scurry into the room. But he refrained from any further expression of displeasure.
Belisarius smiled. "It's important for a commanding officer to be seen on the front lines, Anastasius. You know that."
As the small body of Romans hurried out of the shattered ruins of an artisan's former workshop, heading south toward relative safety, Anastasius snorted again. But, again, he refrained from further comment. He had been through this dance with Belisarius so many times that he had long since given up hope of teaching new steps to his general.
One of the other cataphracts, new to the job, was not so philosophical. "For Christ's sake, Isaac," he whispered to his companion, "the general could lounge on the docks, for all the army cares. Be happier if he did, in fact."
Isaac shrugged. "Yeah, Priscus, that's what I think too. But maybe that's why he's Rome's best general—best ever, you ask me—and we're spear-chuckers."
Priscus' response, whatever it might have been, was buried beneath the sounds of grenades exploding a few dozen yards behind them. The Malwa were beginning a new assault. Seconds later, the shouts of charging men were blended with musket fire and more grenade explosions. And then, within half a minute, came the first sounds of steel meeting steel.
The cataphracts did not look back. Not once, in all the time it took them, guarding Belisarius, to clamber through the rubbled streets and shattered buildings which were all that days of Roman demolition and Malwa shelling had left of Charax's center district. Not until they finally reached the relatively undamaged harbor which made up the city's southern area did the cataphracts turn and look back to the north.
"Besides," said Isaac, renewing their conversation, "what are you complaining about, anyway?" He thrust his beard northward. "Would you rather be back there again? Fighting street to street?"
Priscus grimaced. Like Isaac, he had become Belisarius' bodyguard only a few days before. The initial pair of bodyguards whom Maurice had selected to replace Valentinian had been replaced themselves, after the siege of Charax began. Maurice, determined to keep Belisarius alive, had made his final selection based on the most cold-blooded reasoning possible. Whichever soldiers among the bucellarii could demonstrate, in days of savage battle in the streets of Charax, that they were the most murderous, got the job.
Isaac and Priscus had been at the top of the list. They had earned that position in one of the most brutal tests ever devised by the human race. Neither of them had heard of Stalingrad, nor would they ever. But either of them, planted amongst the veterans of Chuikov's 62nd Army, would have felt quite at home. Language barriers be damned.
"Good point," muttered Priscus. He turned, along with Isaac, and plodded after Belisarius. The general was heading toward the heavy-walled warehouse where the Roman army had set up its headquarters. Priscus eyed the figure of his tall general, stooping into a small door. "At least he's got the good sense to leave before the blades get wet."
"So far," grunted Isaac. He tugged at one of the straps holding up his heavy cataphract gear. "Damn, I'm sick of walking around in this armor."
The cataphracts plodded on a few more steps. As they came to the door, Isaac repeated: "So far. But don't get your hopes up. Two weeks from now, three at the outside, the Malwa will have reached the harbor. You know what'll happen, when that day comes."
Priscus scowled. "Sallies, lance charges, the whole bit—with the general right in the middle of it. We'll wish Valentinian were here, then."
On that gloomy note, the two cataphracts stooped and forced their armored way through a door designed for
midgets. The door led into what seemed to be a six-foot-long tunnel in the massive wall of the warehouse. The effort of that passage left them practically snarling.
Five minutes later, they were smiling like cherubs.
Chapter 37
As soon as Belisarius straightened after squeezing through the narrow passage, he saw Bouzes rushing toward him. Except for a well-lit area against the far wall, where Belisarius had set up his writing desk and map table, the interior of the cavernous warehouse was dark. Bouzes was in such a hurry that he tripped over some debris lying on the floor and wound up stumbling into Belisarius' arms.
"Easy, there, easy," chuckled Belisarius. He set Bouzes back up straight. "Things can't be that bad."
Bouzes muttered a quick apology. Then, pointing toward a door on the opposite wall: "Maurice says you've got to go up and see something. He told me to tell you as soon as you arrived."
Belisarius brow was creased, just slightly. "What's the problem?"
Bouzes shook his head. "Don't know. Maurice wouldn't tell me anything else. But he was very emphatic about it."
Belisarius strode toward the door. Behind him, he heard the heavy footsteps of his armored cataphracts following. The door, like the one he had just passed through, was low and narrow. Again, Belisarius had to stoop to pass through. Except for the huge doors designed for freight, the entire warehouse seemed to have been built by dwarves.
Once through the door, he clambered up a wooden staircase leading to the roof. As quickly as Belisarius was moving, the effort of negotiating the steep and narrow stairs was considerable, even for a man in his excellent condition and wearing only half-armor. He felt a moment's sympathy for his cataphract bodyguards. They'd be huffing by the time they made the same climb.
The staircase debouched into a small chamber. Again, Belisarius squeezed through a tiny door, and emerged into open air. Behind him, the northern wall of the warehouse reared up like a battlement. Ahead of him, the brick roof—braced underneath by heavy beams—formed a flat expanse stretching toward the sea. He could see the delta, glistening under a midday sun.
Belisarius had selected this warehouse for his headquarters because of its odd design. At one time, he suspected, the north wall of the building had been the outer wall of Charax. It was built like a fortification, at least—which might explain the tiny doors. When Charax expanded, and new walls were built, some enterprising merchant had simply built his warehouse against the six-foot-thick northern wall. The end result, so far as the Roman general was concerned, was as good a field headquarters as he could ask for. The massive north wall gave some protection from artillery while, at the same time, the flat roof provided him with a perfect vantage point from which to observe the delta.
He saw Maurice standing on the southern edge of the roof. There was no railing to keep someone from pitching over the side onto the docks thirty feet below, but Maurice seemed unconcerned. The chiliarch had apparently heard the squeaking of the door, for he was already looking at Belisarius when the general emerged onto the roof.
"Come here!" he hollered, holding up the telescope. "There's a new development I think you should consider."
Belisarius hurried over. As he made his way across the fifty-foot-wide expanse, he quickly scanned the entire area. From the roof, he could see all of southern Charax as well as the great delta which extended southward to the Persian Gulf itself, perhaps ten miles away. Charax had been built on the east bank of the largest tributary which formed the Tigris-Euphrates delta, on a spit extending south and west of the Mesopotamian mainland. The tributary could hardly be called a river. It was so broad that it was almost a small gulf in its own right. For all practical purposes, Charax was a port city which was surrounded by water from the west all the way around to its east-by-southeast quadrant.
His eyes scanned right, then left. He could see nothing that would cause Maurice such apparent concern. There were masses of Malwa troops on both banks of the tributary, but they had been there since the first few days of the siege. The Malwa had tried to position siege guns on those banks, where they could have fired into the harbor area, but had given up the effort after a week. The ground, as the reeds which covered the banks indicated, was much too soggy. The troops were there simply to keep the Romans from escaping while the main forces of the Malwa tried to hammer their way into the city from the north. They also kept the galleys patrolling the delta supplied with provisions.
He turned his eyes to the fore, looking for the galleys. Again, he could see nothing amiss. There had been upwards of twenty galleys stationed in Charax, when Belisarius broke into the city. Half of them had been on patrol, and all but three of the ones moored to the docks had managed to get free before Roman troops could seize them.
Since then, the Malwa had used the galleys to maintain a blockade. Belisarius' obvious escape route was to sail out on the cargo ships he had captured. But there was no way to get those ungainly vessels through a line of war galleys. The huge Malwa cargo ships might have been able to withstand ramming—some of them, at least—but the galleys were armed with rockets as well as rams. At close range, with no room to maneuver, rocket volleys would turn unarmored cargo ships into floating funeral pyres.
As it was, Belisarius' soldiers had been hard-pressed to extinguish the small conflagrations started on the moored ships by long-range rocket fire. Link was making no pretense of saving the cargo ships to evacuate the Malwa troops. Even though the vast majority of the rockets never came close to the docks, the galleys as well as the troops stationed on the banks had kept up a steady barrage since the beginning of the siege. Belisarius didn't want to think about the disciplinary measures which Link must be taking, to keep its troops driving forward into what, by now, even the dimwits among them must have realized was a suicide mission.
I'm sure that Link has promised the Ye-tai commanders that Malwa would save the Ye-tai, if the barbarians kept the regular troops under control.
Belisarius agreed with Aide's assessment. But, as he advanced toward Maurice, Belisarius could still see nothing in the delta to cause any concern. Outside of three galleys moored to a makeshift pier on the east bank, taking on supplies, the rest were on patrol. As usual, the Malwa kept five galleys close to the harbor, with the remainder spread out between one and two miles away.
When he came up to Maurice, the gray-haired chiliarch was studying the galleys themselves. His expression seemed one of grim satisfaction.
"They haven't seen it yet," he said. "Our elevation's better."
He handed Belisarius the telescope. Grim satisfaction was replaced by—
Before he even got the telescope up, in a motion so quick he almost gave himself a black eye, Belisarius knew. He only heard Maurice's next words dimly, through the rushing blood in his ears.
"Yeah, I thought you'd want to see it, lad. It's not often, after all, that a man gets to watch Venus rise from the waves."
* * *
Belisarius saw the glint before he spotted the masts. He had been looking for sails, until he realized there wouldn't be any. This close to their final destination, the Ethiopian warships would be advancing under oar.
But there was no doubt of what he was seeing. Belisarius was not a seaman, but he could tell the difference between a warship and a cargo vessel at a glance. The twelve vessels whose masts he could see, perhaps ten miles away, were obviously fighting craft. And he had enough experience, with perhaps a minute's study, to be able to distinguish the upperstructure of an Axumite warship from a Malwa galley.
"They're ours, all right," he muttered happily. "No doubt about it. But—" He brought the telescope back to the lead ship in the oncoming flotilla. There it was again. Something glinting.
He pulled the telescope away from his eye, frowning. Not worried, simply puzzled. "There's something odd—"
Maurice nodded. "You spotted it too? Something shining on and off, on the lead ship?" The chiliarch's eyes fixed on the horizon. "I saw it myself. First thing I spotted, in fa
ct. Still haven't been able to figure out what it is. Might be a mirror, I suppose, if Antonina wanted to signal—"
Both men, simultaneously, realized the truth. And both, simultaneously, burst into laughter.
"Well, of course!" shouted Maurice gaily. "She's Venus, isn't she? Naturally she's got the biggest damn brass tits in the world!"
Belisarius said nothing coherent, until he stopped leaping about in a manner which was halfway between a drunken jig and a war dance. Then, before the astonished eyes of the cataphract bodyguards who had finally puffed their way onto the roof, the strategos of the Roman Empire and the commander of its finest army—normally as cool as ice in the face of the enemy—began taunting the distant Malwa troops like an eight-year-old boy in a schoolyard.
"That's my lady! That's my lady!" was the only one of those expressions which was not so gross, so obscene, so foul, so vile, and so vulgar, that Satan's minions would have fled in horror, taloned paws clasped over bat-ugly ears.
* * *
In the hours which followed, as Maurice and Vasudeva organized the escape from Charax, Belisarius paid no attention to the doings of his army.
There was no need for him to do so, of course. The plans for the escape had been made weeks before Charax was even seized. Ever since the Romans had taken the city, a large portion of the soldiers had been working like beavers to get ready for departure. The cargo ships were loaded with provisions. The city was mined for final destruction. All that remained to be done was drive out the horses, collect the civilians, and organize the fighting retreat back to the docks.
The horses were driven out within the first two hours. Released from their holding corrals near the docks, the panicked creatures were driven through broken streets toward the Malwa lines. It was a task which the Roman soldiers carried out with reluctance but, perhaps for that reason, as quickly as possible.
Most of the horses would die, they knew. Many would be killed by the Malwa themselves, either because they were mistaken for a cavalry charge or simply from being struck by stray missiles or grenades. Others would break their legs clambering through the rubble. Most of the horses who escaped the city, except for those captured by the Malwa, would probably die of starvation in the desert and swamps beyond. And even those horses which found themselves in the relative safety of Malwa captivity would, in all likelihood, be eaten by the Malwa troops as they themselves became desperate for food.