So, at least, Belisarius had explained the matter to his troops. And, so far as it went, the explanation was not dishonest. But the general’s ultimate reason for the choice had not been humanitarian. When he needed to be, Belisarius could be as ruthless as any man alive. He knew full well that as soon as Link discovered that enemy warships were approaching Charax, it would understand—finally—the full extent of Belisarius’ plan. At which point Link would order an all-out, frenzied assault on Charax, driving the Malwa troops forward as if they were beasts themselves. Stampeding herds of horses, meeting those incoming human herds, would create as much confusion as possible—confusion which would delay the Malwa advance, and give the escaping Romans that much greater a chance to save their own lives.
It took even less time to organize the evacuation of the civilians. The civilians were all women. There had been a handful of male Persian civilians when the Romans took the city. Within a day, after the women told their tales, they had been executed along with the Malwa soldiers with whom they had collaborated.
The female civilians had been warned days in advance, and now were being rounded up. But there was hardly any “rounding up” to do. Since the Romans had arrived and freed them from Malwa subjugation, none of Charax’s women had strayed more than a few yards away from a Roman soldier at any time of the day or night. That was from their own choice, not coercion. They had been like half-drowned kittens, desperately clutching a log for survival.
As poor women thrust into such a wretched state have done throughout history, the survivors of Malwa Charax had become camp followers of the Roman army. Depending on their age, appearance, and temperament, they had become concubines, cooks, laundresses, nurses—more often than not, all of those combined. And if their current status was dismal, by abstract standards, it seemed like a virtual paradise to them.
The Roman soldiers, crude as they might be, were rarely brutal to their women. Belisarius’ soldiers, at least. Other Roman armies might have been. But, between Belisarius’ discipline—to which they had long been accustomed—and their own horror at Malwa bestiality, the soldiers had conducted themselves in a manner which might almost be called chivalrous. So long, of course, as the term “chivalrous” is understood to include: vulgarity; coarse humor; the unthinking assumption that the women would feed them, clean up after them and do the washing; and, needless to say, an instant readiness to copulate using any means short of outright rape.
In truth, the social position of most of the women was no worse than it had been before the Malwa invasion. More licentious, true. But there was this by way of compensation: the new men in their lives had proven themselves to be tough enough to give those women a real chance for survival. That is no small thing, in the vortex of a raging war. Belisarius, through his officers, had already told the women that they would be reunited with whatever families they might still have. But, not to his surprise, the majority had made clear that they would just as soon remain camp followers of his army—wherever it went.
The difficulty in evacuating the women, therefore, was not in collecting them. Those women who could move were gathered on the docks sooner than anyone else. The problem was that, even weeks after the liberation of Charax, many of the women could not move. At least a third of the women who had been enslaved in the military brothels were still too weak or sick to move under their own power. Their evacuation posed a major medical undertaking.
That evacuation took three hours, before all the litters were carried aboard the ships. In the end, only twelve women were left behind, in the medical ward set aside for the most badly abused slaves. All of them were unconscious, and so close to death that moving them seemed impossible.
The Roman officer in charge of evacuating that medical ward danced back and forth, fretful and indecisive. A nurse, who had herself been chained in one of the brothels, whispered to a Kushan soldier. He handed her his dagger. The nurse, cold-faced, ordered everyone out of the ward, using a tone which Empress Theodora would have approved. When she emerged, five minutes later, her face was calm, her manner relaxed. She had even taken the time to clean the dagger.