A part of his mind noticed that their formations were good—reasonably orderly, and, best of all, well organized. The rest of his mind, briefly, wrestled with a mystery.
“How did you get here?” he asked again. This time, to the man already mounted and ready at his side.
“Don’t ask,” hissed Valentinian. The cataphract gave Anastasius a weasel glare. “His doing. ‘Impossible,’ I told him. ‘Even Moses couldn’t part that mob.’ ”
Anastasius, trotting up on his horse, caught the last words. A grin split his rock-hewn face.
“Moses wasn’t as big as I am,” he said. He extended his enormous hand, like an usher.
“After you, sir. Victory is waiting.”
“So it is!” cried Belisarius. “So it is!”
He spurred his mount into a gallop. He was not worried about exhausting his horse, now. They didn’t have far to go. He was only concerned with getting to the front of the charge, and leading it to victory.
By the time he pounded around the villa, and saw the nearest portal, he had achieved that immediate goal. The Syrian infantrymen who were hastily opening the gates—tossing aside the splintered wreckage of the gates, more precisely—barely had time to dodge aside before Belisarius drove past. Valentinian and Anastasius came right behind, followed by droves of cataphracts.
The infantrymen were cheering wildly; the cata-phracts were bellowing their battle cries. But Belisarius only had ears for an expected mutter.
It never came. He glanced over his shoulder, cocking a quizzical eye.
A weasel’s glare met his gaze. A weasel’s hiss:
“Ah, what’s the fucking use?”
Chapter 20
The general’s first thought, as he came around the villa onto its eastern grounds, was to make a quick assessment of the tactical situation. He had seen nothing of the battle directly, since his return to the villa after the first cavalry charge.
That urgent purpose almost led him to an immediate and humiliating downfall.
Downfall, in the literal sense. Dead, dying and badly wounded Malwa soldiers were scattered all across the grounds in front of the villa. In places, the bodies were piled two and three deep. Belisarius was concentrating so intently on the live Malwa troops that he was oblivious to the obstacles posed by the dead ones. His mount stumbled on a corpse and almost spilled his rider. Only the superhuman reflexes which Aide gave him enabled Belisarius to keep himself in the saddle and his horse on its feet.
First things first! he snarled at himself. For the next few seconds, until he was through the carnage on the villa’s eastern grounds, he ignored everything but leading his horse forward. Only a cold, distant, and detached part of his mind took note of the terrible losses the enemy had suffered in their first assault. Arrow wounds, in the main, although a number of the Malwa casualties had apparently been caused by their own grenades, bouncing off the screens.
Finally, he was through the mounded bodies and could concentrate on the active enemy.
His first concern was with the katyushas. He could already hear the hissing shriek of the rockets—unmistakably different from the sound produced by Malwa rockets. The Roman missiles, following Belisarius’ instructions, had been fitted with machined bronze venturi. The evenly-distributed thrust provided by those exhaust nozzles made his katyusha rockets far more accurate than their Malwa counterparts. They also made a distinctively different noise.
He could not see the rocket-chariots themselves. The katyushas would be charging at the Malwa from their hiding place in the northeast woods, followed by the Thracian and Illyrian cataphracts. A screen of trees blocked Belisarius’ view in that direction. But he could see the rockets themselves. The first volley was even now impacting on the enemy. He watched a line of explosions stitching its way across the Malwa army’s right flank, knocking cavalrymen out of saddles and their horses to the ground.
He held his breath. That first volley had come perilously close to landing in the very center of the enemy formation, where the Mahaveda priests were perched atop the gunpowder wagons. It was no part of his plan to have that ammunition—
His held-in breath exploded. The second and third volleys did land in the center of the enemy—several of them right among the wagons. Many of the priests standing on those wagons were swept off as if by a broom. One of the wagons was tipped over by a rocket exploding almost directly beneath it. The ammunition cart teetered on two wheels. Teetered, teetered, before finally slamming back down. One of the wheels collapsed under the shock.