Belisarius, again, examined the thing. No expression showed on his face. But his wife, who knew him best, began to plead.
Her pleas went unheard, for the thing was already in the soldier’s hand. Then her pleas ceased, and she fell silent. For, indeed, the thing was like the sun itself, now, if a sun could enter a room and show itself to mortal men. And they, still live.
The spreading facets erupted, not like a volcano, but like the very dawn of creation. They sped, unfolding and doubling, and tripling, and then tripling and tripling and tripling, through the labyrinth that was the mind of Belisarius.
purpose became focus, and focus gave facets form.
identity crystallized. With it, purpose metamorphosed into aim. And, if it had been within the capacity of aim to leap for joy, it would have gamboled like a fawn in the forest.
But for Belisarius, there was nothing; nothing but the fall into the Pit. Nothing but the vision of a future terrible beyond all nightmare.
Chapter 2
Dragonbolts streaked overhead. Below, the ranks of the cataphracts hunched behind their barricade. The horses, held in the rear by younger infantrymen, whinnied with terror and fought their holders. They were useless now, as Belisarius had known they would be. It was for that very reason that he had ordered the cataphracts to dismount and fight afoot, from behind a barricade built by their own aristocratic hands. The armored lancers and archers, once feared by all the world, had not even complained, but had obeyed instantly. Even the noble cataphracts had finally learned wisdom, though the learning had come much too late.
What use was a mounted charge against—?
Over the barricade, the general saw the first of the iron elephants advancing slowly down the Mese, the great central thoroughfare of Constantinople. Behind, he could see the flames of the burning city and hear the screams of the populace. The butchery of the great city’s half-million inhabitants was well underway, now.
The Malwa emperor himself had decreed Constantinople’s sentence, and the Mahaveda priests had blessed it. Not since Ranapur had that sentence been pronounced. All that lived in the city were to be slaughtered, down to the cats and dogs. All save the women of the nobility, who were to be turned over to the Ye-tai for defilement. Those women who survived would be passed on to the Rajputs. (At Ranapur, the Rajputs had coldly declined. But that was long ago, when the name of Rajputana had still carried its ancient legacy. They would not decline now, for they had been broken to their place.) The handful who survived the Rajputs would be sold to whatever polluted untouchable could scrape up the coins to buy himself a hag. There would be few untouchables who could afford the price. But there would be some, among the teeming multitude of that ever-growing class.
The iron elephant huffed its steamy breath, wheezing and gasping. Had it truly been an animal, Belisarius might have hoped it was dying, so horribly wrong was the sound of the creature’s respiration. But it was no creature, Belisarius knew. It was a creation—a construct made of human craft and inhuman lore. Still, watching the monstrous thing creeping its slow way forward, surrounded by Ye-tai warriors howling with glee at their anticipated final triumph, the general found it impossible to think of it as anything other than a demonic beast.
Belisarius, seeing one of the cataphracts take up a captured thunderflask, bellowed a command. The cataphract subsided. They possessed few of the infernal devices, and Belisarius was determined to make good use of them. The range was still too great.
He stroked his grey beard. Of his youth, nothing remained save whimsy; it amused him to see how old habits never die. Even now, when all hope had vanished from the mind of the general, the heart of the man still beat as strongly as ever.
It was not a warrior’s heart. Belisarius had never truly been a warrior, not, at least, in the sense that others gave the name. No, he was of unpretentious Thracian stock. And, at bottom, his was the soul of a workman at his trade.