The Tide of Victory (51 page)

Ajatasutra began to say something, but Anastasius waved him down. "Don't bother! I understand the logic, you damned schemer. Five men—two of them injured, and one of them elderly—a woman, and three children can make their way across the Ganges plain without being noticed much. No way a large party of armed men could. Especially not Kushans. Not when we got to Kausambi, for sure."

Valentinian had finished devouring the savory by then, and Anastasius' last words brought back his normal gloom.

"I still say this plan is insane. We could get Lady Sanga and the children out
now
." He pointed to the southwest. "Easy enough—well, after a hard trek through the Thar—to reach the general's forces. Then—"

Ajatasutra began to speak again, but, again, Anastasius waved him down. "I'll deal with the little weasel." Glowering: "Valentinian, that'd be even more insane. This whole little rescue operation was a side trip added on at the last moment. We
still
have the main thing to accomplish. If we brought out Lady Sanga now that would expose the whole scheme—no way it wouldn't come out, in the middle of a whole army—and make the rest of it impossible. The only way to keep the secret is to hide it in the belly of the beast. In Kausambi, the last place Nanda Lal would think to look."

"
Narses!
" hissed Valentinian. "Too clever by half!" But he left off arguing the point.

The supremacy of logic having been restored, Anastasius went back to his own worries. "I just miss having the Kushans around. I don't begrudge it to them, mind you, getting back to their own folk. And since they'll pass through the Sind on their way, they can probably give the general word of how we're doing. But—" He sighed, even more heavily than before. "It's going to be tricky, with just the three of us, if we get attacked by
real
bandits."

Lady Sanga and the children had eaten earlier, and she had given the two wounded Rajputs what care she could. So now she and her children were sitting around the campfire listening to the exchange. No sooner had Anastasius finished than Rajiv sprang to his feet, drawing his sword and waving it about.

"Bandits—
pah
! Against the Mongoose? And there are
four
of us!"

The twelve-year-old boy's enthusiasm did not seem to mollify Anastasius. Ajatasutra shared the giant cataphract's skepticism. Having an overconfident and rambunctious lad as an "additional warrior" struck him as more trouble than help.

And, judging from the fierce scowl on his face, Valentinian felt even more strongly about it. But Valentinian's displeasure, it became immediately apparent, had a more immediate focus.

"You hold a sword that way in a fight, boy, you're a dead man."

Rajiv lowered the blade, his face a study in contradiction. One the one hand, chagrin. On the other, injured—even outraged—pride.

"My father taught me to hold a sword!" he protested. "Rana Sanga himself!"

Valentinian shook his head, rose with his usual quick and fluid speed, and drew his own sword. "He didn't teach you
that
grip," he growled. "If he had, I wouldn't have this scar on my head and he'd be buried on a mountainside in Persia."

The cataphract stalked off a few paces onto an empty patch of ground. The sun had set over the horizon, but there was still enough light to see. He turned, and made a come-hither gesture with his sword.

"May as well start tonight, boy. If you're going to be any help against bandits, your swordwork has got to get better."

Eagerly, Rajiv trotted forward to begin his new course of instruction. Behind him, Lady Sanga shook her head, not so much ruefully as with a certain sense of detached irony.

"There's something peculiar about all this," she chuckled. "The son being trained by the father's great enemy. To fight whom in the end, I wonder?"

"God is prone to whimsy," pronounced Ajatasutra.

"Nonsense," countered Anastasius. "The logic seems impeccable to me. Especially when we consider what Aristotle had to say about—"

Belisarius went across on the first ship, leaving Maurice to stabilize the Roman defensive lines at Uch. He had no intention of trying to hold Uch, beyond the two or three days necessary to transfer the entire army across the Chenab. But keeping an army steady while it is making a fighting withdrawal requires a very firm hand in control, a characterization which fit Maurice perfectly.

Belisarius wanted to get a sense of the land he would be holding as soon as possible, which was why he decided to take the risk of being part of the initial landing. His subordinates had protested that decision, rather vehemently, but Belisarius fit the description of "very firm" quite well himself.

Besides, he thought the risk was minimal. The small triangle of land formed by the confluence of the Chenab and the Indus was not well situated to defend
against
an invasion of the Punjab. For that purpose, it made far more sense to fortify the Indus south of the fork—which was exactly what the Malwa had done. So Belisarius expected to encounter no enemy troops beyond cavalry patrols. And against those, the cataphracts and Arab scouts crammed into the ship should suffice.

"Crammed" was the operative term, however, and Belisarius was thankful that the river crossing took not much more than an hour. By the time his own ship began offloading its soldiers, the second ship the Romans had captured when they took Uch was halfway across the river bearing its own load of troops.

Belisarius landed on the bank of the Chenab just north of Panjnad Head, which marked the confluence of the Chenab and the Sutlej. That position was much too far north for him to hold for long. The Indus was fifteen miles away, and the confluence of the Indus and the Chenab was twenty-five miles to the southwest, forming a triangle well over sixty miles in circumference—more likely eighty or ninety miles, considering all the loops and bends in the two rivers. With the twenty thousand men he still had left, he could not possibly hope to defend such a large territory for more than a few days.

But unless the Romans encountered a sizeable Malwa force in the triangle—which he didn't expect to happen—Belisarius
could
hold that position for those few days. Just enough time to begin throwing up his fortifications further south, in a much smaller triangle, while his men foraged as much food and fodder as possible. Their supplies were now running very low. They had captured a fair amount of gunpowder in Uch, but not much in the way of provisions.

Even more important, perhaps, than rounding up food would be rounding up the civilian population. The Punjab was the most fertile region of the Indus, and the population density was high. Here, the Malwa had not conducted the savage massacres of civilians which they had in the Sind—although word of those massacres had undoubtedly begun spreading. Which, from Belisarius' point of view, was all to the good. The peasants in the triangle would not have fled yet, but they would be on edge. And more likely to fear their Malwa overlords than the Roman invaders.

Once again, Belisarius intended to use mercy—defining that term very loosely—as a weapon against his enemy. His cavalry would cut across to the Indus and then, much like barbarian horsemen in a great hunt on the steppes, drive the game before them to the south, penning them into a narrower and narrower triangle. Except the "game" would be peasants, not animals. And the purpose of it would not be to eat the game, but to use them as a labor force. The kind of fortifications Belisarius intended to construct would require a
lot
of labor—far more than he had at his disposal from his own soldiers, even including the thousands of Malwa prisoners that they had captured.

How many, Aide, do you think? 
 

Aide gave that shivering image which was his equivalent of a shrug. Impossible to say. There are no records of such things, at this point in history. In later times, the Punjab would hold a population numbering in the millions, with a density of five hundred people to a square mile. It won't be that high today, of course, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was half that. So you may well wind up with tens of thousands of people for a work force. Many of them will be oldsters and children, of course. 

Belisarius paused to exchange a few last words with Abbu. The Arab scouts were offloading first. As always, Abbu and his men would provide Belisarius with reconnaissance. That done, he returned to his mental conversation with Aide.

So many? Better than I had hoped. With twenty thousand, I am confident I can erect the fortifications I need before the Malwa can organize a serious siege. 
 

I cannot be positive. But—yes, I think so. With no more civilians than that, Gustavus Adolphus was able to erect the fortifications at Nürnberg in two weeks time. On the other hand . . . 
those
civilians were enthusiastic partisans of the Protestant cause. These Punjabi peasants you will be rounding up could hardly be described as "partisans" of Rome. 

Belisarius chuckled. True, true. But that quip of Dr. Johnson's will apply here as well, if I'm not mistaken. I think the Malwa savagery in the Sind will come back to haunt them. If you were a Punjabi peasant conscripted to build fortifications for Roman troops fending off a Malwa siege, would you be a reluctant laborer? 

"The prospect of being hanged . . ." mused Aide. No, I think not, especially if you maintain discipline among your own soldiers and do not allow the civilians to be abused. Beyond being forced into hard labor, at least. They will know full well that if the Malwa overrun you, they will be butchered along with the Roman troops. The Malwa will consider them "rebels," and they showed at Ranapur the penalty for rebellion. 

Three days later, Maurice came across with the last of the Roman forces. By then, Belisarius had an approximate count.

"Better than twenty thousand civilians, for sure," were the first words he spoke when Maurice entered the command tent Belisarius had erected near the village of Sitpur. "Probably at least twenty-five. Maybe even thirty thousand."

Maurice grunted satisfaction. He removed his helmet and hung it on a peg attached to a nearby pole supporting the small pavilion. The helmets of Gregory and Felix and Mark of Edessa were already hanging there.

That grunt of satisfaction was the last sign of approval issued by the chiliarch. Before he had even reached the table where a new map had been spread, showing the first sketched outlines of the terrain, he was already accentuating the negative.

"You're too far north, still. If you think you can hold this much land with so few troops, you're out of your mind. What is it to the Indus from here? It must be a good ten miles!"

Gregory and Felix and Mark of Edessa burst into outright laughter. Belisarius satisfied himself with a crooked smile.

"Oh,
do
be quiet. I have no intention of building my principal lines up here, Maurice. I intended to erect them—have started to already, in fact—ten miles southwest of here." He pointed to a place on the map where lines indicating heavy fortifications had been drawn. "That far down into the tip of the triangle, the distance from the Chenab to the Indus is no more than six miles. And I'm building the outer line of fortifications here, a few miles north of that."

"We're just setting up field camps here," added Gregory. "Nothing fancy. Enough for large cataphract units to sally out and keep the first Malwa contingents held off for another few days. We have
got
to keep Sitpur in our hands as long as possible."

"Why?" demanded Maurice.

Belisarius' three other top commanders grinned. "Would you believe—talk about luck!—that Sitpur is the bakery center for the whole area?"

Maurice exhaled so forcefully it was almost as if he were spitting air. His hard gray eyes fell on Belisarius, and grew harder still.

"You don't deserve it, you really don't. This is almost as bad as the silly
Iliad,
where every time that reckless Achilles gets himself into a jam Athena swoops in and saves him."

Belisarius winced, acknowledging the hit. Then, shrugged. "I'll admit I assumed the local bread would be made by village women. Like trying to collect pebbles on a beach, that would have been. But I was prepared to do it."

"Instead," interrupted Mark, "we've had the villagers rounding up everything else—mostly lentils, and lots of them—while we keep the bakers in Sitpur working night and day. The biggest problem we're having right now is finding enough carts to haul the bread off to the south."

By this time, even Maurice was beginning to share in the excitement. Although he did make a last rally, attempting to salvage some portion of sane pessimism. But the effort was . . . feeble.

"I suppose the so-called 'bread' is that flat round stuff. Tastes awful."

"It's called
chowpatti
," chuckled Felix, "and I think it tastes pretty good, myself."

Maurice did not argue the point. Culinary preference, after all, was a small issue in the scope of things. Food was food, especially in a siege. Before it was all over—assuming things went
well—
Maurice fully expected that at least half of the Roman horses would have been eaten.

"Lentils too, eh?" he murmured, stroking his beard and staring down at the map. "And we'll be able to get fish from the rivers."

That last thought seemed to relieve him. Not because it suggested that the Roman army would be able to stave off starvation, even in a long siege, but because it brought a new problem to the fore.

"We'll have enough fishing boats for that," he growled, "but don't think the Malwa don't have plenty of boats of their own. And no little fishing vessels, either. They have enough large river craft in the Punjab, from what I can see, to start ferrying their own troops across to the triangle before we'll have the fortifications finished."

He turned and pointed back in the direction of Uch. "The whole area is starting to crawl with Malwa troops. With a lot heavier artillery than anything we have. As we were pulling out of Uch, the Malwa were starting to set up twenty-four pounders around the town. Real siege guns, those, not like these little popguns we've got."