Belisarius I Thunder at Dawn

by David Drake

  Finally, he took the remains of Antonina into his arms and stepped upon the ledge. A moment later Justinian joined him, bearing the mummy of the Empress.

  The slave thought it was fitting that the Emperor, who had always preceded his general in life, should precede him in death. So he pushed Justinian first. He had guessed the Emperor would scream, at the end. But the old tyrant was made of sterner stuff. Sensing the approach of the slave behind him, Justinian had simply said:

  "Come, Belisarius. Let us carry our whores to heaven. We may be denied entrance, but never they."

  Belisarius had said nothing. Nor, of course, had he screamed. As he turned away from the vat, the old slave grinned.

  The general, for all the suppleness of his mind, had always been absurdly stiff-necked about his duty. The Christian faith forbade suicide, and so the slave had performed this last service. But it had been a pure formality. At the end, the slave knew, as soon as he felt the first touch of the powerful hands at his back, Belisarius had leapt.

  But he would be able to tell his god that he had been pushed. His god would not believe him, of course. Even the Christian god was not that stupid. But the Christian god would accept the lie. And if not he, then certainly his son. Why should he not?

  The slave, all the duties of a long lifetime finally done, moved slowly over to the one chair in the chamber and took his seat. It was a marvelous chair, as was everything made for the Emperor. He looked around the chamber, enjoying the beauty of the intricate mosaics, and thought it was a good place to die.

  Such a strange people, these Christians. The slave had lived among them for decades, but he had never been able to fathom them. They were so irrational and given to obsessiveness. Yet, he knew, not ignoble. They, too, in their own superstitious way, accepted bhakti. And if their way of bhakti seemed often ridiculous to the slave, there was this much to be said for it: they had stood by their faith, most of them, and fought to the end for it. More than that, no reasonable man could ask.

  No reasonable god, so much was certain. And the slave's god was a reasonable being. Capricious, perhaps, and prone to whimsy. But always reasonable.

  Those people whom the slave had cast into the molten metal had nothing to fear from God. Not even the Emperor. True, the fierce old tyrant would spend many lifetimes shedding the weight of his folly. Many lifetimes, for he had committed a great sin. He had taken the phenomenal intelligence God gave him and used it to crush wisdom.

  Many lifetimes. As an insect, the slave thought. Perhaps even as a worm. But, for the all the evil he had done, Justinian had not been a truly evil man. And so, the slave thought, the time would come when God would allow the Emperor to return, as a poor peasant again, somewhere in the world. Perhaps, then, he would have learned a bit of wisdom.

  But perhaps not. Time was vast beyond human comprehension, and who was to know how long it might take a soul to find moksha?

  The old slave took out the dagger from his cloak.

  Belisarius had given that dagger to him, many years before, on the day he told the slave he was manumitting him. The slave had refused the freedom. He had no use for it any longer, and he preferred to remain of service to the general. True, he no longer hoped, by then, that Belisarius was Kalkin. He had, once. But as the years passed in the general's service, the slave had finally accepted the truth. Great was Belisarius, but merely human. He was not the tenth avatara who was promised. The slave had bowed to the reality, sadly, knowing the world was thereby condemned to many more turns of the wheel under the claws of the great asura who had seized it. But, truth was what it was. His dharma still remained.

  Belisarius had not understood his refusal, not really, but he had acquiesced and kept the slave. Yet, that same day he had pressed the dagger into his slave's hand, that the slave might know that the master could also refuse freedom. The slave had appreciated the gesture. Just so should mortals dance in the eyes of God.

  He weighed the weapon in his hand. It was an excellent dagger.

  In his day, the old slave had been a deadly assassin, among many other things. He had not used a dagger in decades, but he had not forgotten the feel of it. Warm, and trusting, like a favorite pet.

  He lowered it. He would wait awhile.

  All was silent, beyond the walls of the Hagia Sophia. The cataphracts who had stood with Belisarius for one final battle were dead now.

  They had died well. Oh, very well.

  In his day, the old slave had been a feared and famous warrior, among many other things. He had not fought a battle in decades, but he knew the feel of them. A great battle they had waged, the cataphracts. All the greater, that there had been no purpose in it save dharma.

  And, perhaps, the slave admitted, the small joy of a delicious revenge. But revenge would not weigh too heavily on their destiny, the slave thought. No, the cataphracts had shed much karma from their souls.

  The slave was glad of it. He had never cared much for the cataphracts, it was true. Crude and boastful, they were. Coarse and unrefined, compared to the kshatriya the slave had once been. But no kshatriya could ever claim more than the dead cataphracts outside the walls of the Hagia Sophia. Arjuna himself would adopt their souls and call them kinfolk.

  Again, he thought about the dagger and knew that his own karma would be the better for its use. But, again, he thrust the thought aside.

  No, he would wait awhile.

  It was not that he feared the sin of suicide. His faith did not share the bizarre Christian notion that acts carried moral consequences separate from their purpose. No, it was that he, too, could not bear to leave this turn of eternity's wheel without a small, delicious revenge.

  The asura's vermin would need time to find the chamber where the old slave sat. Time, while the Ye-tai dogs and their Rajput fleas slunk fearfully through the great cavern of the cathedral, dreading another strike of the Mongoose.

  The old slave would give them the time. He would add considerable karma to his soul, he knew, but he could not resist.

  He would taunt the tormentors.

  So had Shakuntala taunted them, so long ago, before opening her veins. And now, at the end of his life, the old slave found great joy in the fact that he could finally remember the girl without pain.

  How he had loved that treasure of the world, that jewel of creation! From the first day her father had brought her to him, and handed her into his safe-keeping.

  "Teach her everything you know," the emperor of great Andhra had instructed. "Hold back nothing."

  Seven years old, she had been. Dark-skinned, for her mother was Keralan. Her eyes, even then, had been the purest black beauty.

  As she aged, other men were drawn to the beauty of her body. But never the man who was, years later, to become the slave of Belisarius. He had loved the beauty of the girl herself. And had taught her well, he thought. Had held back nothing.

  He laughed, then, as he had not laughed in decades. At the sound of that laugh, the Ye-tai and Rajput warriors who were creeping beyond froze in their tracks, like paralyzed deer. For the sound of the slave's joy had rung the walls of the cathedral like the scream of a panther.

  And, indeed, so had the slave been called, in his own day. The Panther of Maharashtra. The Wind of the Great Country.

  Oh, how the Wind had loved the Princess Shakuntala!

  The daughter of the great Andhra's loins, it might be. Who was to know? Paternity of the body was always a favorite subject of God's humor. Yet this much was certain: her soul had truly been the cub of the Panther.

  She alone of the Satavahana dynasty they had spared, the asura's dogs, when they finally conquered Andhra. She alone, for the beauty of her body. A prize which the Emperor Skandagupta would bestow on his faithful servant, Venandakatra. Venandakatra the Vile. The vermin of vermin, was Venandakatra, for the Malwa emperor himself was nothing but the asura's beast.

  The Panther had been unable to prevent her capture. He had lain hidden in the reeds, almost dead from the wounds of that las
t battle before the palace at Amavarati. But, after he recovered, he had tracked the dogs back to their lair. North, across the Vindhyas, to the very palace of the Vile One.

  Shakuntala was there. She had been imprisoned for months, held for Venandakatra's pleasure upon his return from the mission whence the emperor had sent him the year before. Unharmed, but safely guarded. The Panther had studied the guards carefully, and decided he could not overcome them. Kushans, under the command of a shrewd and canny veteran, who took no chances and left no entry unguarded.

  The Panther inquired. Among many other things, he had been a master spy in his time, and so he discovered much. But the outstanding fact discovered was that the Kushan commander was, indeed, not to be underestimated. Kungas, his name was, and it was a name the Panther had heard. No, best to bide his time.

  Then, time had run out. Venandakatra had returned and had entered his new concubine's chamber at once, a horde of Ye-tai guards clustering outside. The Vile One was eager to taste the pleasure of her flesh, and the greater pleasure of her defilement.

  Remembering that day, the old slave's sinewy fingers closed about the haft of the dagger. But he released his grip. He could hear the shuffling feet of the vermin beyond. He would bide awhile. Not much longer now, he thought.

  Just long enough to torture the torturers.

  On the last day of the girl's life, the Panther had knelt in the woods below Venandakatra's palace. Knelt in fervent prayer. A prayer that Shakuntala would remember all that he had taught her, and not just those lessons which come easily to youth.

  The old slave had been a noted philosopher, in his day, among many other things. And so, long years before, he had prayed that the treasure of his soul would remember that only the soul mattered, in the end. All else was dross.

  But, as he had feared, she had not remembered. Everything else, but not that. And so, when he heard the Vile One's first scream, he had wept the most bitter tears of a bitter lifetime.

  Years later, he heard the tale from Kungas himself. Odd, how time's wheel turns. He had met the one-time commander of Shakuntala's guard on the same slave ship which bore him to the market at Antioch. The Panther had finally been captured in one of the last desperate struggles before all of India was brought beneath the asura's talons. But his captors had not recognized the Wind of the Great Country in their weary, much-scarred captive, and so they had simply sold him as a slave.

  Kungas, he discovered, had long been a slave. His hands were missing now, cut off by the Ye-tai guards who had blamed him for Shakuntala's deed. Cut off by the same guards who had shouldered him and his Kushans aside, avid to watch their master at his sport. (And hopeful, of course, that the Vile One might invite them to mount the child after he had satiated himself.)

  Kungas was missing his eyes and his nose, as well. But the mahamimamsa had left him his ears and his mouth, so that he might hear the taunts of children and be able to wail in misery.

  But Kungas had always been a practical man. So he had taken up the trade of story-telling and mastered it. And if people thought the sight of him hideous, they bore it for the sake of his tales. Great tales, he told. None greater and more eagerly sought by the poor folk who were his normal clientele—though it was forbidden—than the tale of the Vile One's demise. Sitting in the hold of the slave ship (where he found himself, he explained cheerfully, because his fluent tongue had seduced a noblewoman but his sightless eyes had not spotted her husband's return), he told the tale to the Panther.

  A gleeful tale, as Kungas told it, the more so because Kungas had come to accept that his own punishment was just. He had been responsible for the Vile One's demise, and had long since decided that it was perhaps the only pure deed of a generally misspent life.

  Kungas had always despised Venandakatra, and the Ye-tai who lorded it over all but the Malwa. And, in his hard and callous way, he had grown fond of the princess. So he had not cautioned them. He had held his tongue. He had not warned them that the supple limbs of the girl's beauty came from the steel muscle beneath the comely flesh. He had watched her dance, and knew. And knew also, watching the fluid grace of her movements, that she had been taught to dance by an assassin.

  Kungas had described the first blow, and the Panther could see it, even in the hold of the slave ship. The heel strike to the groin, just as he had taught her. And all the blows which followed, like quick laughter, leaving the Vile One writhing on the floor within seconds.

  Writhing, but not dead. No, the girl had remembered everything he taught her, except what he had most hoped for. Certainly, he knew, listening to the tale of Kungas, she had remembered the assassin's creed, when slaying the foul. To leave the victim paralyzed, but conscious, so that despair of the mind might multiply the agony of the body.

  Hearing the asura's dogs finally enter the chamber, the old slave closed his eyes. Just a bit longer, just a bit, so that he could savor that moment in his mind's eye. Oh, how he had loved the Black-eyed Pearl of the Satavahana!

  He could see her dance now, the last dance of her life. Oh, great must have been her joy! To prance before the Vile One, tantalizing him with the virgin body that would never be his, not now, not as Venandakatra could watch his life pour out of his throat, slashed open by his own knife, bathing the bare quicksilver feet of his slayer as they danced her dance of death. Her own blood would join his, soon enough; for she cut her own throat before the Ye-tai guards could reach her. But the Vile One had found no pleasure in the fact, for his eyes were unseeing.

  It was time. Just as the Ye-tai reached out to seize him, the old slave leapt from the chair and sprang onto the rim of the flaming vat. The Ye-tai gaped, to see an old man spring so. So like a young panther.

  Time to flay the flayers.

  Oh, well he did flay them, the slave. Taunting them, first, with the bitterness of their eternally-lost trophies. No skin nor bone of great Romans would hang on Malwa's walls, no Roman treasure fill its coffers!

  And then, with himself. Not once in thirty years had the old slave used his true name. But he spoke it now, and it thundered in the cathedral.

  "Raghunath Rao is my name. I am he. I am the Panther of Maharashtra. I slew your fathers by the thousands. I am the Wind of the Great Country. I reaped their souls like a scythe. I am the Shield of the Deccan. My piss was their funeral pyre.

  "Raghunath Rao am I! Raghunath Rao!

  "The Bane of False Gupta, and the Mirror of Rajputana's Shame.

  "Raghunath Rao! I am he!"

  Well did they know that name, even after all these years, and they drew back. Incredulous, at first. But then, watching the old man dancing on the rim of goldfire, they knew he spoke the truth. For Raghunath Rao had been many things, and great in all of them, but greatest of all as a dancer. Great when he danced the death of Majarashtra's enemies, and great now, when he danced the death of the Great Country itself.

  And finally, he flayed them with God.

  Oh yes, the old slave had been a great dancer, in his day, among many other things. And now, by the edge of Rome's molten treasure, in the skin-smoke of Rome's molten glory, he danced the dance. The great dance, the terrible dance, the now-forbidden but never-forgotten dance. The dance of creation. The dance of destruction. The wheeling, whirling, dervish dance of time.

  As he danced, the Mahaveda priests hissed their futile fury. Futile, because they did not dare approach him, for they feared the terror in his soul; and the Ye-tai would not, for they feared the terror in his limbs; and the Rajputs could not, for they were on their knees, weeping for Rajputana's honor.

  Yes, he had been a great dancer, in his day. But never as great, he knew, as he was on this last day. And as he danced and whirled the turns of time, he forgot his enemies. For they were, in the end, nothing. He remembered only those he loved, and was astonished to see how many he had loved, in his long and pain-filled life.

  He would see them again, perhaps, some day. When, no man could know. But see them he would, he thought.

 
And perhaps, in some other turn of the wheel, he would watch the treasure of his soul dance her wedding dance, her bare quicksilver feet flashing in the wine of her beloved's heart.

  And perhaps, in some other turn of the wheel, he would see emperors bend intelligence to wisdom, and the faithful bend creed to devotion.

  And perhaps, in some other turn of the wheel, he would see Rajputana regain its honor, that his combat with the ancient enemy might again be a dance of glory.

  And perhaps, in that other turn of the wheel, he would find Kalkin had come indeed, to slay the asura's minions and bind the demon itself.

  What man can know?

  Finally, feeling his strength begin to fade, the old slave drew his dagger. There was no need for it, really, but he thought it fitting that such an excellent gift be used. So he opened his veins and incorporated the spurting blood into his dance, and watched his life hiss into the golden moltenness. Nothing of his, no skin nor bone, would he leave to the asura. He would join the impure emperor and the pure general, and the purest of wives.