The commander of her Thracian bucellarii nodded.
She grinned. “Well, he’s had a day. Just how solid do you think he’s made himself? With his troops?”
Frowning.
Generals.
She pointed at the fortress. “How long have those men—the soldiers, I mean—been stationed here? Hermogenes?”
The young merarch shrugged.
“Years. Most of the garrison—the troops, anyway—spend their entire term of service in Egypt. Even units that get called out for a campaign elsewhere are always rotated back here.”
“That’s what I thought. Now—another question. Where do those men live? Not in the fortress, I’m sure. Years of service, you said. That means wives, children, families. Outside businesses, probably. Half of those soldiers—at least half—will have married into local families. They’ll have invested their pay in their father-in-laws’ shops. Bought interests in grain-shipping.”
“The whole bit,” grumbled Ashot. “Yeah, you’re right. Fucking garritroopers. Always takes weeks to shake ’em down on a campaign. Spend the first month, solid, wailing about their declining property values back home.”
The light of understanding came, finally, to her officers.
Or so, at least, she thought.
“You’re right, Antonina!” cried Hermogenes excitedly. “That’ll work!”
He cast eager eyes about, scanning the immediate environment of the fortress. “Most of ’em probably live right here, right in Nicopolis. We’ll start by burning everything to the ground. Then—”
“Find their wives and daughters,” chipped in his executive officer, Callixtos. “Track ’em down wherever they are and—”
“Won’t need to,” countered Ashot. “Any women’ll do. At this distance, the garrison won’t be able to make out faces anyway. Just women being stripped naked in the street with us waving our dicks around and threatening to—”
Antonina erupted. “Stupid generals!”
Startled, her horse twitched. Antonina drew back on the reins savagely. Wisely, the horse froze.
“Cretins! Idiots! Morons—absolute morons—the whole lot! You want me to end a small civil war by starting a big one? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
They shrank from her hot eyes. Antonina turned in her saddle and transferred the glare back to Menander.
“You! Maybe you’re not too old to have lost all your wits! Maybe. How would you handle it?”
For a moment, Menander was too stunned to speak. Then, clearing his throat, he said, “Well. Well. Actually, while you were talking I was thinking about how the general—Belisarius, I mean—handled the situation with the Kushans. The second situation with the Kushans, I mean—not the first one where he tricked Venandakatra out of using them as guards—but the other one, where he—well, they were guarding us but didn’t know the Empress—Shakuntala, I mean, not Theodora—was hidden in—well.”
He stopped, floundering. Drew a deep, shaky breath.
“What I mean is, I was struck by it at the time. How the general used honey instead of vinegar.”
Antonina sighed. Relaxed, a bit.
“You’re promoted,” she growled. “Tribune Men-ander, you are.”
The eyes which she now turned on her assembled officers were no longer hot.
Oh, but they were very, very cold.
“Here—is—what—you—will—do. You will find the wives and daughters—and the sons and fathers and mothers and brothers and for that matter the second cousins twice-removed—of those soldiers forted up in that place.”
Deep breath. Icy cold eyes.
“More precisely, you and your cataphracts will escort the Knights Hospitaler while they do the actual finding. You and your soldiers will stand there looking as sweet and polite as altar boys—or I’ll have your guts for breakfast—while the Knights Hospitaler convince the soldiers’ families that a potentially disastrous situation for their husbands and fathers and sons and brothers—and for that matter third cousins three times removed—would be resolved if the families would come back to their homes and reopen the shops. And—most important—would cook some meals.”
“Cook meals?” choked Hermogenes.
A wintry smile.
“Yes. Meals. Big meals, like the ones I remember from my days here. Spicy meals. The kind of meals you can smell a mile away.”
She gazed at the fortress, still smiling.
“Let the soldiers smell those meals, while they’re chewing on their garrison biscuits. Let them think about their warm beds—with their wives in them—while they sleep on the battlements in full armor. Let them think about their little shops and their father-in-laws’ promises that they’ll inherit the business, while Ambrose gives speeches.”