“Are you so certain, Belisarius?” he asked. The Illyrian general’s tone was not hostile, simply—serious. Like most Roman soldiers he had the deepest respect for Belisarius.
Belisarius nodded his head firmly. “Trust me in this, Germanicus. If Malwa is not checked, the day will come when the Roman Empire will vanish as if it had never existed.”
After a moment, Germanicus sighed. “Very well, then. I will defer to your judgement. I’m not happy about it, but—” He sat up, squaring his shoulders. “Enough. I withdraw my objections.”
Theodora saw that all of her advisers had reached the same conclusion.
“So be it,” she announced. “We’ll tell the Persian ambassador that we accept the offer of alliance. In principle, at least. Let’s move on to the specifics of their proposal.”
She turned to Irene Macrembolitissa. Officially, Irene was the most junior member of the high bureaucracy, having been elevated only recently to the post of sacellarius, the “keeper of the privy purse.” Her actual power was immense. She was Theodora’s spymaster and the chief of the Empire’s unofficial secret police, the agentes in rebus. She had also become one of Theodora’s few—very, very few—genuine friends.
“Begin by summarizing the situation with the invasion, if you would.”
Irene leaned forward, brushing back her thick brown hair. “The Malwa attack on Persia began two months ago,” she said. “As Belisarius had predicted, they began with a massive sea-borne invasion of the Tigris-Euphrates delta. Within two days, they captured the great port at Charax and have been turning it into the entrepot for their invasion of Mesopotamia.”
“Aren’t they attacking in the north as well?” asked Hermogenes.
Irene nodded. “Yes. They have a large army pressing into Persia’s eastern provinces. That army, however, seems to be only lightly equipped with gunpowder weapons. For the most part, they’re made up of traditional forces—Malwa infantry backed by Ye-tai security battalions, with a very large force of Rajput cavalrymen.”
“Second-raters, then,” stated Germanicus.
Belisarius shook his head.
“Not at all. The Rajput cavalry are excellent, and they’re under the command of Rana Sanga. I know him from my trip to India. Know him rather well, in fact. He’s as good a general as you’ll find anywhere. And while I don’t personally know the top Malwa commander of the northern expedition, Lord Damodara, I do know that Rana Sanga respected him deeply.”
Germanicus frowned. “Why—?”
Belisarius chuckled. “There’s a method to the Malwa madness. The Rajputs are the heart of Damodara’s army, and the Malwa don’t trust their Rajput vassals. So they put their best general in charge of the toughest campaign, gave him little in the way of gunpowder weapons, and placed almost all the Rajput cavalry at his disposal. Damodara will have no choice. He’ll have to rely on Rana Sanga and the Rajputs for his shock troops, slugging it out for months against Persian cavalry in some of the worst terrain you can imagine. The Malwa are killing two birds with one stone. The Persians can’t ignore the threat, so they have to divert much of their army from the main campaign in Mesopotamia. And, at the same time, the Malwa will be—”
Germanicus nodded. “Bleeding the Rajputs white.”
“Exactly.”
Sittas grunted. “That means the northern expedition isn’t something we need to worry about. Not for some time, at least. That’ll be up to the Persians to deal with.”
He eyed Irene. “How big is the Malwa army in Mesopotamia?”
She hesitated, knowing that her next words would be met with disbelief. “At least two hundred thousand men. Probably more.”
“That’s nonsense!” exclaimed Germanicus.
Belisarius overrode him. “It is not nonsense. Believe it, Germanicus. The Malwa Empire is the one power in the world which can field that big an army. And keep it supplied, so long as they hold Charax. When I was in Bharakuccha, India’s great western seaport, I saw with my own eyes the huge fleet of supply ships they were constructing.”
Germanicus’ face was pale. “Two hundred thousand,” he whispered.
“At least,” emphasized Belisarius. “And they’ll have the bulk of their gunpowder units, too. About their only weakness will be in cavalry.”
Irene shook her head. “Not even that, Belisarius. Not light cavalry, at least. I just got word yesterday that the Lakhmite dynasty has transferred its allegiance from Persia to the Malwa. That gives the Malwa a large force of Arab cavalry—and a camel force that can operate in the desert regions on the right bank of the Euphrates. Which, by the way, seems to be the river which the Malwa are using as their invasion route.”