“I’m counting on it,” came the firm reply. “It’s a gamble, I know. If they don’t—if they stand their ground—then we’ll be in one bloody mess of a brawl. It’ll last all day.”
He shrugged. “We’ll still win, but half the Malwa army will make their escape.”
Cyril and Agathius looked at each other. Then, at Belisarius.
“Glad I’m not a general,” muttered Cyril. “I’d die from headache.”
Agathius tugged at his beard. “If I understand correctly, general, you’re planning to wreck the Malwa by isolating their best troops while we concentrate on chewing the rest of them to pieces.”
Belisarius nodded. Agathius’ beard-tugging grew intense.
“What’s to stop the Kushans from sallying themselves? Coming to the aid of—”
Bouzes grinned. “Of what? The same stupid fucking Malwa jackasses who got them treed in the first place?”
Belisarius shook his head. “They won’t, Agathius. The Malwa don’t trust the Kushans for the good and simple reason that they can’t. The Kushans will fight, in a battle. But they’ve got no love for their overlords. When the hammer falls, the Kushans will look out for themselves.”
He turned to Bouzes. “After the initial sally—after we break them—move your Syrian troops to cover the Kushans. The infantry can’t play any useful role, anyway, in a pursuit. But don’t attack the Kushans—be a bloodbath if you do—just hold them there.”
He grinned himself, now.
“Until tomorrow morning.”
“We’ll finish the Kushans then?” asked Coutzes.
Belisarius’ grin faded to a crooked smile. He made a little fluttering motion with his hands.
“We’ll see,” he said. “Maybe. Maybe not. They’re tough, Kushans. But I saw a girl work wonders with them, once, using the right words.”
Half an hour later, the attack began. With a rocket barrage, as Belisarius had predicted.
As he watched the rockets soaring all over the sky, exploding haphazardly and landing hither and yon, Belisarius realized that the Malwa were actually doing him a large favor. Although his troops had always maintained a soldierly sangfroid on the subject, he knew that they had been quite apprehensive about the enemy’s mysterious gunpowder weapons. Except for Valentinian and Anastasius, who had accompanied him to India, none of Belisarius’ men had any real experience with gunpowder weapons. True, most of the soldiers had seen grenades used—some of them had even practiced with the devices. But even his katyusha rocket-men had never seen gunpowder weapons used in the fury and chaos of an actual battle.
Now, the men were getting their first taste of Malwa gunpowder weapons. And the main result, after the first five minutes of that barrage, was—
“They’d do better to use scorpions and onagers,” commented a Syrian infantryman, crouched behind a plaque-strengthened window not far from the general.
A Greek cataphract pressed against a nearby wall barked a laugh. “They’d do better to build an assault tower and piss on us,” he sneered.
The Syrian watched a skittering rocket sail overhead and burst in midair. The man, Belisarius noted, did not even flinch. In the first moments of the barrage, the Roman soldiers had been shaken by the sound and fury which the rockets produced. But now, with experience, they were taking the matter in stride.
The same Syrian, catching a glimpse of Belisarius, cocked his head and asked:
“What’s the point of this, sir, if you don’t mind my asking?” The infantryman made a little gesture toward the window. “I don’t think more than a dozen of these things have exploded anywhere in the compound. And only a few of them’s done any real damage—the ones that blew up over the gardens.”
“Don’t get too overconfident, men,” said Belisarius. He spoke loudly, knowing that all the soldiers crammed into the large room were listening.
“In the proper circumstances, these rockets can be effective. But you’re right, in this situation they’d do a lot better to use old-style catapults. Rockets are an area-effect weapon—especially their rockets, which aren’t anywhere near as accurate as ours.”
He paused, allowing the happy thought of Roman rockets to boost morale, before continuing:
“They’re almost useless used against a protected fixed position like this one. The reason the Malwa are using them”—he grinned—”is because the arrogant bastards are so sure of themselves that they didn’t bother to bring any catapults. Like we did.”