Belisarius chuckled, making clear his opinion on the likelihood of Ormazd ordering any massive sally. The Persian Emperor’s half-brother, it was clear, intended to sit on his hands while the Romans and the Malwa army slugged it out on the other side of the Euphrates.
“How did he explain it?” demanded Baresmanas angrily.
Belisarius shrugged. “In all truth, he didn’t have much explaining to do. I didn’t press him on the matter, Baresmanas. I want him where he is.”
Baresmanas’ scowl deepened. Intellectually, the sahrdaran understood Belisarius’ stratagem. Emotionally, however, the Aryan nobleman still choked at the idea of actually using another Aryan’s expected treachery. A Sassanid, no less.
Baresmanas eyed the Roman general. “I forget, sometimes, just how incredibly cold-blooded you can be,” he muttered. “I cannot think of another man who would develop a battle plan based on his expectation that an ally would betray him. Take such a possibility into account, certainly—any sane commander does that, when fighting with foreign allies. But to plan on it— No, more! To actually engineer it, to maneuver for it!—”
Baresmanas fell silent, shaking his head. Belisarius, for his part, said nothing. There was nothing to say, really. Despite the many ways in which he and Baresmanas were much alike, there were other ways in which they were as different as two men could be.
For all his sophistication and scholarship, Bares-manas was still, at bottom, the same man who had spent his boyhood admiring Persian lancers and archers. Spent hours of that boyhood watching dehgans on the training fields of his father’s vast estate, demonstrating their superb skill as mounted archers.
Whereas Belisarius, for all his own sophistication and subtleties, was still—at bottom—the same man who had spent his boyhood admiring Thracian blacksmiths. Spent hours of that boyhood watching the blacksmiths on his father’s modest estate, demonstrating their own more humble but—when all is said and done—much more powerful craft. Men die by the dehgan’s steel. People live by the blacksmith’s iron.
Even as a boy, however, Belisarius had had a subtle mind. So, where other boys admired the strength of the blacksmith, and gasped with awe at the mighty strokes of hammer on anvil, Belisarius had seen the truth. A blacksmith was a strong man, of necessity. But a good blacksmith did everything he could to husband that strength. Time after time, watching, the boy Belisarius had seen how cunningly the blacksmith positioned the glowing metal, and with what a precise angle he wielded the hammer.
So, he said nothing to Baresmanas. There was nothing to say.
* * *
A few minutes later, called down by one of his tribunes with a problem, Maurice left the artificial hilltop. Belisarius and Baresmanas remained there alone, studying the huge Malwa force advancing toward them.
They did not speak, other than to exchange an occasional professional assessment of the enemy’s disposition of its forces. On that subject, not surprisingly, they were always in agreement. If Baresmanas did not have his Roman ally’s sheer military genius, he was still an experienced and competent general in his own right.
Underlying that agreement, however, and for all their genuine friendship, two very different souls readied for the coming battle.
The one, an Aryan sahrdaran—noblest man of the noblest line of the world’s noblest race—sought strength and courage from that very nobility. Sought for it, found it, and awaited the battle with a calm certitude in his own valor and honor.
The other, a Thracian born into the lower ranks of Rome’s parvenu aristocracy, never even thought of nobility. Thought, not once, of honor or of valor. He simply waited for the oncoming enemy, patiently, like a blacksmith waits for iron to heat in the furnace.
A craftsman at his trade. Nothing more.
And nothing less.
Chapter 31
ALEXANDRIA
Autumn, 531 a.d.
“This is madness!” shouted one of the gym-nasiarchs. The portly notable was standing in the forefront of a small crowd packed into the audi-ence chamber. All of them were men, all of them were finely dressed, and most were as fat as he was.
Alexandria’s city council.
“Madness!” echoed another member of the council.
“Lunacy!” cried a third.
Antonina was not certain which particular titles those men enjoyed. Gymnasiarchs also, perhaps, or possibly exegetai.