He rolled his eyes, following the thumb. His next words were whispered. A promise, hissed: “I will be alive, monster. And I will give you Operation Bagration, and the destruction of Army Group Centre. And I will give you Sicily and D-Day, and the Falaise Pocket—except this time, beast, the pocket will be closed in time.”
He turned his eyes back to Coutzes. Fury faded, replaced by wry humor. “As I said, this frenzied assault is quite a compliment. Feeds my pride no end, it does. Just think, Coutzes. Great gods of the future, convinced of their own perfection, have set themselves the single task of killing one pitiful, primitive, imperfect, preposterous, ridiculous, pathetic Thracian goddam fucking son-of-a-bitch.”
Coutzes laughed. “Can’t say I blame them!”
Another volley of arrows sailed overhead. Behind them came a volley of words—the sounds of Ye-tai bellowing commands. Coutzes popped his head over the wall. When he brought it down, he was frowning.
“I think—” He transferred the frown to Belisarius. “I want you out of here, General. They’ll be starting the next assault any minute. A stray grenade—” He shook his head.
Belisarius did not argue the matter. He rose to a half-crouch and scuttled out of the room. In the roofless chamber beyond, Anastasius was waiting, along with the other cataphracts who were now serving as his additional bodyguards. Maurice had replaced Valentinian with two of them, after Valentinian’s capture. The cataphracts chosen had not taken offense at that relative estimation of their merits compared to Valentinian’s. They had been rather pleased, actually, at the compliment. They had expected Maurice to choose twice that number.
Anastasius snorted, seeing the general scurry into the room. But he refrained from any further expression of displeasure.
Belisarius smiled. “It’s important for a commanding officer to be seen on the front lines, Anastasius. You know that.”
As the small body of Romans hurried out of the shattered ruins of an artisan’s former workshop, heading south toward relative safety, Anastasius snorted again. But, again, he refrained from further comment. He had been through this dance with Belisarius so many times that he had long since given up hope of teaching new steps to his general.
One of the other cataphracts, new to the job, was not so philosophical. “For Christ’s sake, Isaac,” he whispered to his companion, “the general could lounge on the docks, for all the army cares. Be happier if he did, in fact.”
Isaac shrugged. “Yeah, Priscus, that’s what I think too. But maybe that’s why he’s Rome’s best general—best ever, you ask me—and we’re spear-chuckers.”
Priscus’ response, whatever it might have been, was buried beneath the sounds of grenades exploding a few dozen yards behind them. The Malwa were beginning a new assault. Seconds later, the shouts of charging men were blended with musket fire and more grenade explosions. And then, within half a minute, came the first sounds of steel meeting steel.
The cataphracts did not look back. Not once, in all the time it took them, guarding Belisarius, to clamber through the rubbled streets and shattered buildings which were all that days of Roman demolition and Malwa shelling had left of Charax’s center district. Not until they finally reached the relatively undamaged harbor which made up the city’s southern area did the cataphracts turn and look back to the north.
“Besides,” said Isaac, renewing their conversation, “what are you complaining about, anyway?” He thrust his beard northward. “Would you rather be back there again? Fighting street to street?”
Priscus grimaced. Like Isaac, he had become Belisarius’ bodyguard only a few days before. The initial pair of bodyguards whom Maurice had selected to replace Valentinian had been replaced themselves, after the siege of Charax began. Maurice, determined to keep Belisarius alive, had made his final selection based on the most cold-blooded reasoning possible. Whichever soldiers among the bucellarii could demonstrate, in days of savage battle in the streets of Charax, that they were the most murderous, got the job.
Isaac and Priscus had been at the top of the list. They had earned that position in one of the most brutal tests ever devised by the human race. Neither of them had heard of Stalingrad, nor would they ever. But either of them, planted amongst the veterans of Chuikov’s 62nd Army, would have felt quite at home. Language barriers be damned.