“Not much,” rumbled Anastasius. “The Kushans are no fools. They won’t waste much effort trying to find an escape route. Not on foot, knowing we’ve got cavalry.” The giant sighed. “Not Kushans. They’ll be working like beavers, instead, doing what they can to turn the barns and corrals into a fortress. Ready to bleed us when we come in after them tomorrow.”
“I hope to avoid that problem,” said Belisarius.
“You think you can talk them into surrendering?” asked Valentinian skeptically. “After they’ll have spent half a day listening to the rest of their army being massacred?”
“That’s my plan.” Oddly, the general’s voice lost none of its confident good cheer.
Neither did Valentinian’s its skepticism. “Be like walking into a lion’s den, trying to talk them out of their meat.”
“Not so hard, that,” replied Belisarius. “Not, at least, if you can speak lion.”
He eyed Valentinian. Smiled crookedly. “I speak Kushan fluently, you know.”
The smile grew very crooked. Anastasius scowled. Valentinian hissed.
“Now that I think about it, both of you speak Kushan too. Not as well as I do, perhaps. But—well enough. Well enough.”
He cocked his ear toward Valentinian.
“What? No muttering?”
The cataphract eyed Belisarius with a weasel’s glare.
“Words fail me,” he muttered.
That evening, just as the sun was setting on the horizon, Belisarius approached the forted Kushans for a parley. He was unarmed, accompanied only by Valentinian and Anastasius.
Anastasius, also, was unarmed.
Valentinian—well, he swore the same. Swore it on all the saints and his mother’s grave. Belisarius didn’t believe him, not for a minute, but he didn’t push the matter. Whatever weapons Valentinian carried would be well-hidden. And besides—
He’d rather try to talk lions into surrendering than talk a weasel out of its teeth. An entirely safer proposition.
In the end, talking the Kushan lions out of their determination to fight to the last man proved to be one of the easiest things the general had ever done. And the doing of it brought him great satisfaction.
Once again, a reputation proved worth its weight in gold.
Not a reputation for mercy, this time. Kushans had seen precious little of mercy, in their harsh lives, and would have disbelieved any such tales of a foreign general.
But, as it turned out, they were quite familiar with the name of Belisarius. It was a name of honor, their commander had been told, by one of the few men not of Kushan blood that he trusted.
“Rana Sanga told me himself,” the man stated. He drew himself up proudly. “I visited Rajputana’s greatest king in his palace, at his own invitation, before he left with Lord Damodara for the Hindu Kush.”
The man leaned over, pouring a small libation into Belisarius’ drinking cup before doing the same in the one before him. The vessels were plain, utilitarian pieces of pottery, like the bottle from which the wine was poured. After Belisarius had taken his seat, sitting cross-legged like his Kushan counterpart on a thin layer of straw spread in a corner of the stable, the Kushan soldiers gathered around had produced the jug and two cups out of a field kit.
Belisarius took advantage of the momentary pause to study the Kushan commander more closely. The man’s name, he had already learned, was Vasudeva.
In appearance, Vasudeva was much like any other Kushan soldier. Short, stocky, thick-chested. Sturdy legs and shoulders. His complexion had a yellowish Asiatic cast, as did his flat nose and narrow eyes. Like most Kushans, the man’s hair was drawn up into a topknot. His beard was more in the way of a goatee than the thicker cut favored by Romans or Persians.
And, like most Kushans, his face seemed carved from stone. His expression, almost impossible to read. The Kushan Belisarius knew best—the former Malwa vassal named Kungas, who was now commander of Empress Shakuntala’s personal bodyguard—had had a face so hard it had been like a mask.
An iron mask—but a mask, nonetheless, disguising a very different soul.
Remembering Kungas, Belisarius felt his confidence growing.
“And how was Rana Sanga, when you saw him?” he asked politely.
The Kushan shrugged. “Who is to know what that man feels? His wife, perhaps his children. No others.”