Ousanas and Antonina burst out laughing. Belisarius, for all his ferocious frown, was hard-pressed not to join them.
After a moment, however, the amusement faded. They were hunting a monster, after all. And they were no longer lurking in ambush, hidden in a blind.
Behind him, Belisarius heard Maurice sigh. “All right, all right,” the chiliarch muttered. “Fair’s fair. You were right again, general. But I still don’t know how you figured it out.”
“I didn’t ‘figure it out,’ exactly. It was a guess, that’s all. But we had nothing to lose, except wasting a few days here in the Strait while the rest of the cargo ships carried the troops to Adulis.”
Belisarius pointed north, sweeping his finger in a little arc. They were well into the Strait of Hormuz, now. The Persian mainland was a dim presence looming beyond the bow of the huge cargo vessel.
“That’s about the worst terrain I can think of, to try to march an army through, without a reliable supply route. Any size army, much less that horde Link’s got.”
Maurice snorted. “Not much of a horde now! Not after we got done with them.”
Belisarius shook his head. “Don’t fool yourself, Maurice. We inflicted terrible casualties on them, true. And God knows how many died in the final destruction of the city. But I’m quite sure two thirds of the Malwa army is still intact.” He grimaced, slightly. “Well—alive, anyway. ‘Intact’ is putting it too strongly.”
He paused, studying the oncoming Malwa vessels. There were six ships in that little flotilla. The five galleys which had avoided the Ethiopians in the delta were escorting a cargo ship. That vessel, though it was larger than the galleys, was far smaller than the huge ship Belisarius was standing upon.
The general interrupted his own discourse. Leaning back from the rail, he shouted a question toward Gersem. The Axumite commander was perched in the very bow of the ship, bestowing his own intense scrutiny on the enemy.
“Three hundred tons, Belisarius!” came the reply. “Probably the largest ship they had left.”
Belisarius chuckled, seeing Gersem’s scowl. The Malwa vessel had been used as a supply ship on the Euphrates. The Ethiopian, a seaman, was half-outraged at the idea of using such a craft for a river barge. And he was already disgruntled, having been forced to captain this great, ugly, clumsy, ungainly Malwa vessel—instead of one of the Ethiopian warships which formed the rest of his fleet.
Belisarius returned to the subject. “Link has to try to save as many of those soldiers as it can, Maurice. It can save a few of them—they’ll be Ye-tai, to a man—by using what’s left of the supply ships on the river. But the only way to salvage the main forces is to use the supply fleet at Bharakuccha, waiting for the westbound monsoon. Thirty ships, according to the report Antonina got from Irene. Irene wrote that report just before she left Suppara, not many days ago. The ships were already loading provisions.”
Mention of Irene’s report brought a moment’s silence, as the four people standing at the rail joined in a heartfelt smile of relief, delight, and bemusement. Relief, that they knew Irene was still alive to write reports. Delight, at the report itself. And bemusement, at the workings of fate.
Irene had written that report more out of sentiment than anything else. The odds of getting it into Antonina’s hands were well-nigh astronomical. But—why not? There were no secrets in the report, after all, to keep from Malwa. And the captain of the Ethiopian smuggling ship had sworn—scoffing—that he could get the message through the Malwa blockade and back to Axum. Whether it would ever reach Antonina, of course, he could not promise.
In the event, that smuggler’s ship had encountered the Ethiopian flotilla waiting at the Strait to ambush Link. The message had found its way into Antonina’s hands the day before.
“I’d like to have been at that wedding,” mused Belisarius. “Just to finally see Rao dance, right before me.”
He closed his eyes, for a moment. He had seen Rao dance, but only in a vision. In another time, in another future, Belisarius had spent thirty years in Rao’s company. He admired the Maratha chieftain—imperial consort, now—perhaps more than any other man he had ever known. And so, for a moment, he savored Rao’s joy at being—finally, in this turn of the wheel—united with his soul’s treasure.