Hold it they had, through four savage assaults. But they had driven back each charge, and added their own heavy charges onto the enemy’s butcher bill.
The sounds of battle were fading rapidly now. It was obvious that the Malwa were retreating. Within a minute, Belisarius could see streams of enemy soldiers retreating from the dam. They were bearing large numbers of wounded with them, chased on their way by rocket volleys fired from the katyushas.
Belisarius glanced up at the sky. The sun was beginning to set.
“There’ll be a night attack,” he predicted. “A mass assault all across the line.” He pointed to the eastern anchor. “The crunch will come there. Count on it.”
“Agathius’ll hold them,” said Anastasius confidently. “Come what may, Agathius will hold.”
Valentinian grunted his agreement.
Belisarius glared at the distant enemy. Then, glared at his bodyguards. If he could have turned his eyes inside out, he would have glared at Aide.
“I’m too far away!” he roared.
The attack began two hours after dusk, and it lasted halfway through the night. The worst of it, as Belisarius had predicted, came on the eastern anchor of the dam.
Hour after hour, the general spent, perched on his cursed observation platform. Leaning over the wall, straining to hear what he could.
Cursing Khusrau. Cursing Valentinian and Anas-tasius. Cursing Aide.
He got a little sleep in the early hours of the dawn, after the enemy assault had been clearly beaten off. At daybreak, Valentinian awakened him.
“A courier’s coming,” announced the cataphract.
Belisarius scrambled to his feet and went over to the side of the platform where the path came up from below. Peering down, he could see an armored man making his laborious way up that narrow, twisting trail through the rocks.
“I think that’s Maurice,” said Anastasius.
Startled, Belisarius looked closer. He had been expecting one of the young cataphracts whom Maurice had been using to keep the general informed of the battle’s progress—not the chiliarch himself.
But it was Maurice, sure enough. Belisarius stiffened, feeling a chill in his heart.
Valentinian verbalized his thought. “Bad news,” he announced. “Sure as taxes. Only reason Maurice would come himself.”
As soon as Maurice made his way to the crest, Belisarius reached down and hauled him over the wall.
“What’s wrong?” he asked immediately. “From the sound, I thought they’d been beaten off again.”
“They were,” grunted Maurice. He took off his heavy helmet and heaved a sigh of relief.
“God, it’s like being in a furnace. Forgotten what fresh air tastes like.”
“God damn it, Maurice! What’s wrong?”
The chiliarch’s gray eyes met Belisarius’ brown ones. Squarely, unflinchingly. Sternly.
“The same thing that’s usually wrong in a battle, whether it’s going well or not. We’re hammering the bloody shit out of them, sure, but they get to hammer back. We’ve taken heavy casualties—especially the Greeks.”
Maurice drew in a long, deep breath.
“Timasius is dead. He led the Illyrians in a charge against some Malwa—Kushans, worse luck—who made it over the wall. Horse got hamstrung and gutted, and—” Maurice shrugged, not bothering to elaborate. There were few things in a battle as certain as the fate of an armored cavalryman brought down by infantry. Timasius wouldn’t have survived ten seconds after hitting the ground.
“Liberius?” asked Belisarius.
“He’s taken command of the Illyrians,” replied Maurice. “He’s doing a good job, too. He organized the counter-attack that drove the Kushans back down the dam.”
Belisarius studied Maurice’s grim face. He felt his chill deepen. Maurice hadn’t climbed all the way up that hill just to tell him that a dull, dimwitted commander had been succeeded by a more capable subordinate.
“I’m sorry about Timasius,” he said softly. “He was a reliable man, if nothing else. His family’ll get his full pension—I’ll see to it. But that’s not what you came here to tell me. So spit it out.”
The grizzled Thracian wiped his face wearily. “It’s Agathius.”
“Damn,” hissed Belisarius. There was a real anguish in that hiss, and the three cataphracts who heard it understood that it was the pain of a man losing a treasured friend, not a general losing an excellent officer.
“Damn,” he repeated, very softly.