Belisarius I Thunder at Dawn

by David Drake

  Not the sea itself, nor the wind. No, the southeast monsoon maintained its unwavering force, fierce and blustery. (Quite unlike, Garmat assured the Romans, the pleasant and balmy monsoon which would bear them westward some months hence.) And the sea seemed always the same, as did the dimly-seen coastline to their north. The coast of Persia, now, for they had crossed the Straits of Hormuz, leaving Arabia and its dangers behind.

  The same, also, was Eon's daily grousing on the subject of land lubberly Indians; and his adviser's frequent comments on the contrasting habits of such true seafaring folk as Ethiopians and Arabs (and Greeks, of course) who eschewed the creeping coast and set forth boldly across the open ocean; and the inevitable remarks which followed from Ousanas, on the inseparable bond between seamanship and braggadocio.

  But everything else changed.

  The first change was in the attitude of Venandakatra toward his "guests." The Indian grandee lost not a trace of his hauteur, and his cold, serpentine arrogance. But he no longer ignored the foreigners. Oh no, not at all. Daily he came to visit, trailing a gaggle of priests, spending at least an hour at the bow in discourse with Belisarius, Eon, and Garmat. (The others he ignored; they were but common soldiers or, in the case of Ousanas, the most grotesque slave in creation.)

  Daily, also, he invited Belisarius and Eon (and, grudgingly, Garmat) to dine with him in his cabin that evening. The invitation was invariably accepted. By Belisarius, eagerly; by Garmat, dutifully; by the prince, with the sullen discipline of a boy hauled by his ears.

  The general's eagerness for these evening meals did not arise from any pleasure in Venandakatra's company. In person, in private, the Indian lord was even more loathsome than he was at a distance. Nor was Belisarius' enthusiasm occasioned by the meals themselves, though they were truly excellent repasts. Belisarius was not a gourmand, and he had always found that the most important seasoning for food was good company at the table. The meals served in Venandakatra's cabin were splendid, but they were seasoned with a spiritual sauce so foul it might have been the saliva of Satan himself.

  Neither was the general's joy in these social encounters produced by any misreading of Venandakatra's motives. Belisarius knew full well that the sudden Malwa hospitality did not result from gratitude for the decisive role played by Belisarius and his men in the battle with the pirates.

  No, the truth was quite the opposite, and Belisarius knew it as surely as he knew his own name. Venandakatra's new cordiality was the product of the battle, true. A product, however, which was born not of gratitude but fear.

  Venandakatra had never witnessed Romans in combat, nor Axumites. Now he had, and knew them for his future enemy, and knew—with that bone-chilling certainty known only by those who have actually seen the mace-crushed skulls and the spear-sundered chests, and the guttering blood and severed limbs—that his enemy was terrible beyond all former comprehension. What had seemed, in the conspiring corridors of Malwa palaces and the scented chambers of Malwa emperors, to be a surety of the future, seemed so no longer. Rome would be conquered, and enslaved. But it would be no easy task, nor a simple one.

  And so, Belisarius knew, Venandakatra made his daily visits, and his daily invitations to dinner. Just so does the cobra raise its head, and swell its hood, and flick its tongue, and sway its sinuous rhythm, the better to put its prey into a trance.

  And just so, joyfully, does the mongoose enter the trap.

  Crooked as a root was the mind of Belisarius. And now, finally, inside the gnarls and twists of his peculiar mind, a plot was sprouting and spreading.

  The growing plot was as cunning as any stratagem the general had ever devised. (And he was a man who treasured cunning much as another might treasure gold, or another the beauty of concubines.) Of itself, however, the cleverness produced only satisfaction in the heart of Belisarius, not joy. No, the joy derived elsewhere. The joy—it might be better to say, the savage and pitiless glee—derived from the fact that the entire plot pivoted on the very soul of the man against whom it was aimed. The Vile One, Venandakatra was called. And it would be by his own vileness that Belisarius would bring him down.

  So, every day, on the sunlit bow of the ship, Belisarius greeted Venandakatra with cordiality and respect. So, every evening, in the lantern-gloom of the cabin, Belisarius returned the grandee's slimy bonhomie with his own oily camaraderie, the lord's lecherous humor with his own salacious wit, and the flashes of Malwa depravity with glimpses of his own bestial corruption.

  The shrewd old adviser Garmat, under other circumstances, would have reacted with still-faced, diplomatic, silent disgust. The impetuous and elephant-hearted young prince, with words of scorn and contempt. But the circumstances here had changed also, since the battle. And this change was no product of guile and duplicity.

  Before the battle, true, Romans and Axumites had been on good terms.

  Kaleb had made clear to Eon and Garmat, in private council after they returned to Axum in the company of Belisarius, the importance which the negusa nagast attached to forging an alliance with Rome. It was for that very reason that he had assented to their proposal to accompany the Byzantines to India, perilous though such a trip might be for his young son.

  Belisarius, though he carried no such precise and definite imperial instructions, had his own reasons for seeking such a bond. Already, if only in outline, he was shaping the grand strategy of Rome's coming war with the Malwa Empire. The role of Axum in that conflict would be crucial.

  His cataphracts and Eon's sarwen, experienced soldiers, had quickly detected the attitude of their superiors, and had shaped their own conduct accordingly. Menander, on his own, filled with the thoughtless certainties of youth, might have given vent to certain prejudices and animosities, but not with the two veterans watching him like a hawk.

  So, during the many months prior to the battle with the pirates, in the company which they shared through the trip to Syria, and the sojourn at Daras, and the voyage to Egypt and then to Adulis, through the trek upcountry to the city of Axum, through the lengthy stay at Axum itself, through the return to Adulis and the embarkation aboard the Malwa vessel bearing its envoys back to India, the Romans and Axumites had maintained their good relations and the disciplined propriety of their conduct.

  So they had. But—still, still, they were each foreign to the other, for all that the Ethiopians spoke good (if accented) Greek, and the Romans began to speak poor (and very accented) Ge'ez. To be sure, no words were ever uttered which might have given offense. (Save by Ousanas, of course. But since the dawazz insulted everybody equally, including tribes and nations no one else had even heard of, his outrageous behavior soon became accepted, much as one accepts the rain and the wind, and noxious insects.) But, through all the months of joint travel, and mutual good will, there had not been much in the way of open trust and confidence. And even less in the way of genuine intimacy.

  Now, all that was changed. Since the battle, all former propriety and stiff good conduct had vanished. Vanished like it had never existed, especially among the common soldiers. In its place came insults and derision, mockery and ridicule, grousing and complaint—in short, all the mechanisms by which blooded veterans seal their comradeship.

  The sarwen were no longer nameless. The one whose black skull had gained a new scalp scar in the battle was named Ezana. The other, Wahsi. The Romans now learned of a long-standing Ethiopian custom. The true name of a sarwen was never told to any but members of the sarawit, lest the warrior be subject to sorcery from his enemies. Upon receiving acceptance from his own sarwe into its ranks, an Axumite boy was given the name by which he would henceforth be known, in private, by his comrades.

  Shortly after the battle with the pirates, in their own little ceremony held while the lords were carousing with Venandakatra, the two sarwen officially enrolled the three cataphracts into the ranks of the Dakuen, and spoke their true names.

  The Roman soldiers thought the custom odd, in its particulars. But they did not sneer at it,
for they found nothing odd in the general thrust of the thing. Valentinian and Anastasius carried about their persons various amulets and charms with which to ward off witchcraft. And Menander, through the long bouts of fever and delirium produced by his wound, never once relinquished his grip upon the little icon which he had been given the day he proudly rode off to answer the summons of his lord Belisarius. The village priest who gave him the icon had assured the young cataphract that it would shield him from evil and deviltry.

  As it most surely did—for the youth recovered, did he not? And from a wound which, in the experience of his veteran companions, Roman and Ethiopian alike, almost invariably resulted in a lingering death from hideous disease. Truly, an excellent icon!

  But, excellent icon or no, some of the credit for the young Thracian's recovery was surely due to the Ethiopians. To their strange and exotic poultices and potions, perhaps; to the comfort and companionship given him through the long, pain-wracked days and nights by the less seriously wounded Ezana, certainly.

  In time, young Menander came to speak Ge'ez fluently, and more quickly than any of the other Romans. The lad's speech, moreover, was afflicted with almost none of the horrible accent which so disfigured the Ge'ez of all the other Romans. (Except Belisarius, of course, whose Ge'ez was soon indistinguishable from a native; but Belisarius was a witch.)

  In his time, Menander would become the most popular of Roman officers, among the Axumite troops with which his own forces were so frequently allied. And, in a time far distant from the disease-infected agony of that wound, the cataphract would finally return to his beloved Thrace. No youth now, unknown to all but his own villagers, but an iron-haired warrior of renown. Who bore his fame casually, in the pleasant years of his retirement, and saved all his pride for his great brood of dark children, and his beloved Ethiopian wife.

  Ezana, too, would survive the wars. From time to time, the sarwen would come to Thrace to visit his old comrade Menander, and the half-sister who had become Menander's wife. Ezana would bring no great entourage with him to Thrace, though he himself was now famous, and such a retinue was always offered to him by the negusa nagast; simply himself and his own collections of scars and memories.

  In that future, Ezana would enjoy those visits, immensely. He would enjoy watching the sun set over the distant mountains of Macedon, his cup in his hand; the company of Menander and his half-sister; their great brood of attentive offspring, and the even greater horde of scruffy village children for whom Menander's modest estate was a giant playground; and the memories.

  Sad, memories, some. Wahsi would not survive the wars. He would die, in a sea battle off the coast of Persia, his body unrecovered. But he would die gloriously, and his name would remain—carved on a small monument in the African highlands; spoken in prayers in a quiet monastery in Thrace.

  Always, in those visits of the future, the time would come when Menander and Ezana would remember that ship on the Erythrean Sea, and speak of it. At those times, the children would cease their play, grow silent, and gather around. This was their favorite tale, and they never tired of it; neither they, nor the old veterans who told it once again.

  (Menander's wife tired of it, of course, and grumbled to the village matrons who were her friends. But the men ignored the grumbling with the indifference of long experience; wives were a disrespectful lot, as was known by all veterans.)

  The children who listened to the tale loved all the parts of it. They loved the drama of the sea battle: the dragon-fire and the boarding, the cut-and-thrust at the bow, and—especially!—the charge to the stern led by the legendary Belisarius. Oh, marvelous charge!

  And if the description of the fury at the stern bore certain small improvements to the uncouth truth of history, there was none to set them wrong. Ezana said nothing while Menander embroidered—just a bit—the tale of his great wound. (Here, as always, the children would demand to see the grotesque scar on his belly, and Menander would oblige.) The sword which caused that wound had become, through the transmutation of veteran tales, the blade of a mighty Arab warrior, who overcame, through his legendary cunning, the skill of a valiant young Roman foe. There was nothing in the tale, now, of the confusion of inexperience in the chaos of battle, and the sheer luck which had enabled a nameless and unknown pirate to stab, without even knowing his exact target, a brave but clumsy novice.

  No, Ezana said nothing. Nor did Menander speak, when, in the course of the tale, Ezana came to show his own honorable scar. The sarwen would bend his head, here, that the eager children might gather and spread the mat of kinky grey hair, and shriek with delighted horror, as always. Menander said nothing of what he might, now, from the experience of the many battles which had come after. He said nothing to the children of the panic which he knew had filled Ezana's heart at that moment, blood-blinded in the midst of murder.

  No, Menander held his tongue. There was no purpose in antiquarian pettifoggery. Perhaps the children would never need to know such things. Menander and Ezana had done all they could, in their bloody lives, to ensure that they wouldn't. And if, in the course of time, some of the children learned these ancient lessons for themselves, well—best they came to the lesson filled with the innocent and simple courage imparted by veterans' tales.

  But, for all their infantile blood-lust, the children's favorite part of the tale was always the aftermath. The story of those wondrous days when the seeds of that Roman-Axumite alliance, which the children accepted as the nature of their world, first bore fruit. The days when a comradeship was forged, a comradeship which had long since entered the legends of Thrace and Ethiopia (and Constantinople and Rome, and Arabia; and India, come to it).

  Above all, the children loved the tale when it finally told of the night when great Belisarius first spoke to that company of heroes of his purpose, and his mission, and his quest; and bound them to it, with oaths of iron. Of the rise of Satan, and the warning of a monk; of a captured princess, and a hero to be found, and a dagger delivered.

  And the Talisman of God.

  They would tell the tale, anew, would Menander and Ezana. And tell it well, each augmenting what the other forgot or misremembered. But, even in that practiced telling, the minds of the two veterans would drift and wander, back to the time itself.

  They would tell the children, and hold back nothing. (For there were no secrets, now, to be kept from Satan and his hosts. The hosts were gone. And, though Satan was not, the monster was paralyzed for a time, chained in the Pit and gnashing at his own terrible wounds.) No, they would hold back nothing, but the children would never truly understand the tale. The children would understand only the grand adventure, and the glory of Belisarius, and the faithful heroism of his companions.

  They would never understand the heart of that moment, that night when Belisarius bound his brotherhood.

  The sheer, pure, unadulterated wonder of it.

  Another change had taken place, the day after the battle. At Belisarius' request—firm request, but there had been no need for belligerence—Venandakatra had agreed to provide his guests with quarters in the hold below. Heretofore, the Romans and Axumites had been forced to make their quarters on the deck, sheltered only by their own tents.

  In truth, neither the Romans nor the Ethiopians had minded the previous accommodations. Except for Belisarius, in fact, none of them had given the matter any thought at all. Sleeping on deck was the normal procedure, in those times, when traveling by ship. Few vessels were of a size to provide enclosed sleeping quarters for any but the captain. Decent quarters, at any rate. Common sailors often slept in the hold, under conditions which were so cramped and noisome that passengers would have recoiled in horror.

  For all its size, the Indian craft was not much different. In his cabin amidships, and the smaller cabins which adjoined it, Venandakatra and his priests enjoyed comfortable surroundings. Luxurious ones, in the case of Venandakatra. The officers of the ship, and the commanders of the Malwa and Ye-tai troops, also possessed smal
l cabins of their own, located in the stern. As for the rest—the soldiers enjoyed the comparative comfort of the deck, accepting the elements as the price for relative spaciousness and fresh air; the common sailors festered in the hold.

  But there were a few quarters available for Belisarius' company. A storage cabin was found, in the bow, whose contents could be removed. Foodstuffs, in the main: amphorae filled with the grain and oil out of which the common fare of the soldiers was prepared. Some of the amphorae were stowed elsewhere, including all of the oil. Many of the amphorae filled with grain were simply pitched overboard. The amphorae were crude and cheap, and the extra grain was no longer needed due to the heavy casualties suffered by the Ye-tai in the battle.

  Belisarius' companions had not been filled with joy, actually, upon learning of the new arrangement. The storage cabin was filthy until they cleaned it, and rat-infested until the weapons of cataphract and sarwen were put to inglorious use.

  True, they were now sheltered from the wind and the rain and the sea-spray. They were also sheltered from clean air and sunlight, and crowded as badly as if they were in a dungeon. And if the seeping planks of the gloomy cabin were any less damp than the deck above, it was not noticeable to its disgruntled inhabitants.