Maurice shook his head. “He’s not dead, general.” Grimacing: “Not quite, anyway. But he’s lost one leg, for sure, and I don’t know as how he’ll still be alive tomorrow.”
“What happened?”
Maurice swiveled, staring back at the dam. “They really pushed hard this time, especially at the eastern anchor. Solid Ye-tai, that was—fighting on their own, not just chivvying Malwa regulars.”
Still looking to the southwest, the chiliarch muttered an incoherent curse. “They’re mean, tough, gutsy bastards—I’ll give ’em that. I don’t even want to think how many casualties they took before they finally broke through.”
He turned back to Belisarius. “The Syrian dragoons couldn’t hold them, so Agathius led a lance charge. In pitch dark, can you believe it? Man’s got brass balls, I swear he does. That broke the Ye-tai—crushed ’em—but he got hit by a grenade blast. Took off his right leg, clean, just above the knee. Mangled his left foot, too. It’ll have to be amputated, I think. Beyond that—” He shrugged. “Shrapnel tore him up pretty fierce. He’s lost a lot of blood.”
“Get him off the dam,” commanded Belisarius. He turned and pointed to the small fleet of barges anchored in the middle of the Euphrates about a mile to the north.
“Get him to one of the ambulance barges.”
Maurice rubbed his face. “That’s not going to be easy. He’s still conscious, believe it or not.” A half-wondering, half-admiring chuckle. “Still wants to fight, even! When I left the dam, he was yelling at the doctor to tie up the one leg and cut off the fucking useless foot on the other so he could get back on a horse.”
Valentinian and Anastasius laughed. Belisarius couldn’t help smiling himself.
“Hit him over the head, if you have to, Maurice. But I want him out of there.”
Again, he pointed to the barges. “There’s better medical care available in the ambulance barges. And his wife’s on one of those boats, too. I don’t know which one, but I’ll find out. She’ll probably be more help keeping him alive than anyone else.”
Maurice’s eyes widened. “His wife? Sudaba’s here? What in the world is that young girl doing on a battlefield? That’s the craziest—”
He broke off, remembering. Belisarius’ own wife, Antonina, had had the habit of accompanying her husband on campaign also. All the way to the battlefield.
Belisarius clasped Maurice’s shoulder firmly.
“I want him alive, Maurice. Get him out of there. Now. Put Cyril in command of—”
“Already done it,” gruffed Maurice.
Belisarius nodded, took a deep breath. “All right. What else?”
The chiliarch scowled. Strangely, the expression cheered Belisarius up. Maurice—scowling morosely—meant a problem. Which was not the same thing as bad news.
“They’re going to change tactics,” Maurice announced. “Even the Malwa won’t keep throwing troops away like this forever.”
“They might,” countered Belisarius mildly, “if they think they’re wearing us down fast enough.”
Maurice shook his head. “They’re not. We’re taking pretty heavy casualties, sure, but we’re giving out four or five to every one we take. At that rate, attrition will chew them up before it does us.” His scowl darkened. “And I’m sure they know it, too. I’ll tell you something, general. Whoever’s running the show on their side is no fool. The frontal attacks have been beaten off, but that’s because the terrain favors us and we’re on the defensive. The attacks themselves have been organized and direc-ted as good as you could ask, given that Godawful riverbed they have to plow through. There’s been none of their usual cocksure stupidity, thinking they can roll over everybody just with their numbers. Ye-tai and Kushans have been leading every attack, and the Malwa regulars have been backing them up the way they should.”
A thought came instantly from Aide:
Link. Link itself is here.
I know, replied Belisarius.
Maurice was shaking his head again.
“They tried the straight-up tactic, to see if it would work. Pressed it home, hard. But now that we’ve proven to them that they can’t just roll over us, they’ll try a flank attack. I’m sure of it.”
Belisarius scratched his chin, nodded. “I’m not arguing the point, Maurice. As it happens, I agree with you.”