Kungas followed his eyes. On the horizon, barely visible, were the sails of a fleet. A vast fleet, judging from their number.
“Ah,” he grunted. “Just in time.”
He bestowed his crack-in-the-iron version of a smile on the Malwa officer. “Such a pleasure, you know, when things happen when they’re supposed to. Don’t you think?”
The garrison commander transferred his stare from the distant fleet to Kungas. Again, Kungas pointed to the three galleys in the harbor below.
“Depends,” he growled. The Malwa’s eyes bulged.
“You can’t be serious!” he exclaimed.
Kungas flicked his eyes toward Kujulo. The Malwa’s eyes followed. Kujulo, standing fifteen feet away, grinned savagely and grabbed his crotch.
The Malwa recoiled, pallid-faced.
“Depends,” growled Kungas. “Depends—on whether you and your men destroy those three ships for us. Depends—also—on whether you show us how to use the cannons.”
Silence followed, for a minute. The garrison commander stared at the galleys below. At Kujulo.
Listened, again, to the growl:
“Depends.”
The first cannon fired when Shakuntala’s flagship, in the van of the fleet, was not more than three miles from the entrance to the harbor. The Empress and her peshwa, standing in the bow, saw the cloud of gunsmoke; moments later, heard the roar.
Another cannon fired. Then, a third.
“Are they firing at us?” queried Holkar. Ruefully: “I’m afraid my eyes aren’t as good as they used to be.”
The Empress of Andhra had young eyes, and good ones.
“No, Dadaji. They are firing at something in the harbor. Malwa warships, I assume.”
Holkar sighed. “Kungas has done it, then. He has taken the fortress.”
Young eyes, good eyes, suddenly filled with tears.
“My Mahadandanayaka,” she whispered. “Bhatas-vapati.”
She clutched Holkar’s arm, and pressed her face against his shoulder. For all the world, like a girl seeking shelter and security from her father.
“And you, my peshwa.”
As the huge fleet sailed toward the harbor of Suppara, Dadaji Holkar held his small Empress in his arms. Thin arms, they were, attached to the slender shoulders of a middle-aged scholar. But, in that moment, they held all the comfort which the girl needed.
If an Empress found shelter there, the man himself found a greater comfort in the sheltering. His own family was lost to him, perhaps forever, but he had found another to give him comfort in his search. A child, here. A brother, there on the fortress above.
A bigger, tougher kind of brother. The kind every bookish man wishes he had.
“Mine, too,” he murmured, staring at the clouds of gunsmoke wafting over the distant harbor. “My Mahadandanayaka. My Bhatasvapati.”
Chapter 30
THE EUPHRATES
Autumn, 531 a.d.
“Tell me again,” said Belisarius.
Standing next to the general on top of the giant pile of rocks which the Kushans had hauled out of the Nehar Malka, Maurice decided to misunderstand the question.
“Fifteen thousand cavalry they’ve got now,” he gruffed. He pointed a stubby, thick finger at the cloud of dust rising out of the desert some ten miles to the southeast. “Five thousand of them, by my estimate, are Lakhmid Arabs. They’re riding camels, the most, and—”
Belisarius smiled crookedly.
“Tell me again, Maurice.”
The chiliarch puffed out his cheeks. Sighed. “This is not my province, general. I don’t have any business mucking around in—”
“I’m not asking you to muck around,” growled Belisarius. “And spare me the protestations of humble modesty. Just tell me what you think.”
Again, Maurice puffed out his cheeks. Then, exhaled noisily.
“What I think, general, is that the Emperor of Persia is offering the Roman Empire a dynastic marriage. Between Photius and the eldest daughter of his noblest sahrdaran.”
Maurice glanced down at Baresmanas. The father of the daughter in question was perched sixty feet away on a large boulder further down the man-made hill. Out of hearing range. Maurice continued:
“He’d offer one of his own daughters in marriage—Khusrau made that clear enough—but he doesn’t have any. So Baresmanas’ daughter is the best alternative, other than choosing from one of his brothers’ or half-brothers’ various girls.”
Belisarius shook his head. “That’s the last thing he’d do. Khusrau’s trying to bridle that crowd of ambitious brothers. And, if I’m reading him right, trying to cement the most trustworthy layers of the nobility to his rule.”