“Yes, yes,” he mused. “I foresee no problems from the Mazda priests. Even less from the matrons! It is in every Persian’s interest to avoid the shame of illegitimacy, after all. The absence of a legal father is a small thing to explain—especially if there is a subsidy for the child.”
He eyed the general, a bit skeptically.
Understanding the look, Belisarius shrugged.
“The subsidy is not a problem. The army is rich. Well over half of that booty is in my personal possession. Much of it is my personal share. The rest is in my trust as a fund for the disabled, along with widows and orphans. Between the two, there’s plenty to go around.”
“And your soldiers?”
“I can’t promise you that all of them will act responsibly, Baresmanas. I do not share the commonly-held opinion that soldiers have the morals of street cats, mind you. But I’m hardly about to hold them up as models of rectitude, either. Many of my troops won’t care in the slightest what bastards they leave behind them—even leaving aside the ones who like to boast about it. But I will spread the word. If my commanders support me—which they will—”
He paused for an instant, savoring the words.
Which they will. Oh, yes, I have my army now.
“—then the soldiers will begin to develop their own customs. Armies tend to be conservative. If taking a Persian wife while on campaign in Mesopotamia—a wife of convenience, perhaps, but a wife nonetheless—becomes ingrained in their habits, they’ll frown on their less reputable comrades. Bad thing, being frowned on by your mates.”
He gave Baresmanas his own skeptical eye.
“You understand, of course, that many of those soldiers will already have a wife back home. And that any Persian wife will not be recognized under Roman law?”
Baresmanas laughed. “Please, Belisarius!” He waved his hand in a grand gesture of dismissal. “What do we pure-blood Aryans care about the superstitious rituals of foreign barbarians, practiced in their far-off and distant lands?”
A thought came from Aide.
“Thou hast committed fornication!”
“But that was in another country, and besides, the wench is not patixsayih.”
It’s from a future poet. A bit hesitantly: It’s appropriate, though, isn’t it?
Belisarius was astonished. He had never seen Aide exhibit such a subtle grasp of the intricacies of human relationships.
The “jewel” exuded quiet pride. Belisarius began to send a congratulatory thought, when his attention was drawn away by Baresmanas’ next words:
“What are you reading?”
Belisarius glanced down at the book in his lap. For a moment he was confused, caught between his interrupted dialogue with Aide and Baresmanas’ idle query. But his attention, almost immediately, focussed on the question. To Baresmanas, the matter had been simply one of polite curiosity. To Belisarius, it was not.
“As a matter of fact, I was meaning to speak to you about it.” He held up the volume. “It’s by a Roman historian named Ammianus Marcellinus. This volume contains books XX through XXV of his Rerum Gestarum.”
“I am not familiar with the man. One of the ancients? A contemporary of Livy or Polybius?”
Belisarius shook his head. “Much more recent than that. Ammianus was a soldier, actually. He accompanied Emperor Julian on his expedition into Persia, two centuries ago.” He tapped the book on his lap. “This volume contains his memoirs of the episode.”
“Ah.” The sahrdaran’s face exhibited an odd combination of emotions—shame, satisfaction.
“The thing began badly for us, true,” he murmured. “Most of the towns we just marched through—Anatha, for instance—were destroyed by Julian. So was Peroz-Shapur, now that I think about it. Burnt to a shell. In the end, however—”
Satisfaction reigned supreme. Belisarius chuckled.
“In the end, that damned fool Julian burned his boats in one of those histrionic gestures you’ll never see me doing.”
He snorted. A professional deriding the flamboyant excesses of an—admittedly talented—amateur.
“The man won practically every battle he fought, and every siege he undertook. And then—God save us from theatrical commanders!—stranded his army without a supply line. Marched them to surrender from starvation, after losing his own life.”
He shook his head. “Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Yes, it ended well for you Persians. You got Nisibis and five other provinces in ransom, for allowing the Romans to march out of Mesopotamia.”