The Malwa commander looked away. “Much as you predicted. Cunning as a mongoose.” Damodara blew out his cheeks. “With barely ten thousand men, Belisarius managed to force our army all the way back to the sea.”
“And now?” asked Sanga.
Damodara shrugged. “It is not certain. The Persian Emperor is marshalling his forces to defeat his brother Ormazd, who betra—who is now allied with us—while he leaves a large army to hold Babylon. Belisarius went to Peroz-Shapur to rest and refit his army over the winter. After that—”
Again, he blew out his cheeks.
“He marched out of Peroz-Shapur some weeks ago, and seems to have disappeared.”
Sanga nodded. He turned toward the many Rajput soldiers who were now standing nearby, gathering about their leader.
“Does one of you have any wine?” He lifted the sword in his hand. “I must clean it. The blood has dried.”
One of the Rajputs began digging in the pouch behind his saddle. Sanga turned back to Damodara.
“He will be coming for us, now.”
The Malwa commander cocked a quizzical eyebrow.
“Be sure of it, Lord Damodara,” stated Sanga. He cocked his own eye at the Roman traitor.
Narses nodded. “Yes,” he agreed. “That is my assessment also.”
Listening to Narses speak, Sanga was impressed, again, by the traitor’s ability to learn Hindi so quickly. Narses’ accent was pronounced, but his vocabulary seemed to grow by leaps and bounds daily. And his grammar was already almost impeccable.
But, as always, Sanga was mostly struck by the sound of Narses’ voice. Such a deep voice, to come from an old eunuch. He reminded himself, again, not to let his distaste for Narses obscure the undoubted depths to the man. A traitor the eunuch might be. He was also fiendishly capable, and an excellent advisor and spymaster.
“Be sure of it, Lord Damodara,” repeated Rana Sanga.
His soldier handed him a winesack. Rajputana’s greatest king began cleaning the blade of his sword.
The finest steel in the world was made in India.
He would need that steel. Belisarius was coming.
Chapter 1
PERSIA
Spring, 532 a.d.
When they reached the crest of the trail, two hours after daybreak, Belisarius reined in his horse. The pass was narrow and rocky, obscuring the mountains around him. But his view of the sun-drenched scene below was quite breath-taking.
“What a magnificent country,” he murmured.
Belisarius twisted slightly in the saddle, turning toward the man on his right. “Don’t you think so, Maurice?”
Maurice scowled. His gray eyes glared down at the great plateau which stretched to the far-distant horizon. Their color was almost identical to his beard. Every one of the bristly strands, Maurice liked to say, had been turned gray over the years by his young commander’s weird and crooked way of looking at things.
“You’re a lunatic,” he pronounced. “A gibbering idiot.”
Smiling crookedly, Belisarius turned to the man on his left. “Is that your opinion also, Vasudeva?”
The commander of Belisarius’ contingent of Kushan troops shrugged. “Difficult to say,” he replied, in his thick, newly learned Greek. For a moment, Vasudeva’s usually impassive face was twisted by a grimace.
“Impossible to make fair judgement,” he growled. “This helmet—” A sudden fluency came upon him: “Ignorant stupid barbarian piece of shit helmet designed by ignorant stupid barbarians with shit for brains!”
A deep breath, then: “Stupid fucking barbarian helmet obscures all vision. Makes me blind as a bat.” He squinted up at the sky. “It is daylight, yes?”
Belisarius’ smile grew more crooked still. The Kushans had not stopped complaining about their helmets since they were first handed the things. Weeks ago, now. As soon as his army was three days’ march from Peroz-Shapur, and Belisarius was satisfied there were no eyes to see, he had unloaded the Kushans’ new uniforms and insisted they start wearing them.
The Kushans had howled for hours. Then, finally yielding to their master’s stern commands—they were, after all, technically his slaves—they had stubbornly kept his army from resuming its march for another day. A full day, while they furiously cleaned and recleaned their new outfits. Insisting, all the while, that invented-by-a-philosopher-and-manufactured-by-a-poet-civilized-fucking caustics were no match for hordes of rampaging-murdering-raping-plundering-barbarian-fucking lice.
Glancing down at Vasudeva’s gear, Belisarius privately admitted his sympathy.