Yet, at the moment, the fierce old desert warrior reminded the general of nothing so much as a rustic matron, her proprieties offended beyond measure by the latest escapade of the village idiot.
“No army has skirmishers so incompetent!” Abbu insisted. “It is not possible. They would have drowned by now, marching all of them into a well.”
With gloomy assurance:
“The only explanation—obvious, obvious!—is that the enemy is perpetrating a cunning ruse upon our trusting, babe-innocent selves. You have finally met your match, general Belisarius. The fox, trapped by the wilier wolf.”
Maurice grunted sourly, much as the Cassandra of legend, seeing all her forebodings realized.
Belisarius, on the other hand, did not seem noticeably chagrined. Rather the contrary, in fact. The general was practically beaming.
“I take it you had to chivvy the Malwa vanguard, to get them to follow you to our camps?”
Abbu snorted. “For a while, we thought we were going to have to dismount and explain it to them. ‘See this, Malwa so-called scout? This is a campfire. That—over there—is known as a tent. These fellows you see lounging about are called Roman troops. Can you say: Ro-man? Can you find your way back in the dark? Do you need us to make the report to your commanders? Or have you already mastered speech?’ ”
His lips pursed, as if he had eaten a lemon. “No enemy is so—”
“Yes, they are,” interrupted Belisarius. The humor was still apparent on the general’s face, but when he spoke, his tone was utterly serious. He addressed his words not to Abbu alone, but to all the commanders.
“Understand this enemy. They are immensely powerful, because of their weapons and the great weight of forces they can bring to bear on the field of war. But the same methods which created that gigantic empire are also their Achilles heel. They trust no-one but Malwa. Not even the Ye-tai. And with good reason! All other peoples are nothing but their beasts.”
He scanned the faces staring at him, ending with Abbu’s.
“They have scouts as good as any in the world, Abbu. The Kushans, for instance, are excellent. And the Pathan trackers who serve the Rajputs are even better. But where are the Kushans? At the rear. Where are the Rajputs?” He gestured to the northeast. “Being bled dry in the mountains, that’s where. Here, in Mesopotamia, they are using common cavalrymen for skirmishers.” He shrugged. “Without Ye-tai to shepherd them, those soldiers will shirk their duty at every opportunity.”
“They’re arrogant bastards, all right,” chimed in Coutzes. “It’s not just that their vanguard elements are sloppy—they’ve got almost no flankers at all.”
Belisarius glanced at the rising sun. “How soon?” he asked.
Coutzes’ reply was immediate. “An hour and a half, general. Two, at the most.” The young Thracian gave Abbu an approving look.
“Despite all his grumbling, Abbu and his men did a beautiful job last night. The Malwa are headed directly for us, and they’ve assumed a new marching order. A battle formation, it looks like to me—although it’s like none I’ve ever seen.”
“Describe it,” commanded Belisarius.
“They’ve got their regular cavalry massed along the front. It’s a deep formation. They’re still in columns, but the columns are so wide they might as well be advancing in a line.”
“Slower than honey, they’re moving,” chipped in one of Coutzes’ tribunes. Coutzes nodded. “Then, most of their barbarians—Ye-tai—are on the flanks. But they’re not moving out like flankers should be. Instead, they’re pressed right against—”
“They’re not flankers,” interrupted Belisarius, shaking his head. “The Ye-tai are used mainly as security battalions. The Malwa commander has them on the flanks in order to make sure that his regular troops don’t break and run when the battle starts.”
Coutzes snorted. “I can believe that. They’re some tough-looking bastards, that’s for sure.”
“Yes, they are,” agreed Belisarius. “That’s their other function. The Malwa commander will be counting on them to beat off any flank attack.”
One of the other tribunes sneered. “They’re not that tough. Not against Thracian and Illyrian cataphracts, when the hammer comes down.”
Belisarius grinned. “My opinion—exactly.” To Coutzes:
“The Kushans are still in the rear? Pressed up close, I imagine, against the formation in the center—the war wagons with the priests and the kshatriya?”