He had obtained the Kushans’ new armor and uniforms, through intermediaries, from the Ostrogoths. Ironically, although the workmanship—certainly the filth—of the outfits was barbarian, they were patterned on Roman uniforms of the previous century. As armor went, the outfits were quite substantial. They were sturdier, actually, than modern cataphract gear, in the way they combined a mail tunic with laminated arm and leg protection. That weight, of course, was the source of some of the grumbling. The Kushans favored lighter armor than Roman cataphracts to begin with—much less this great, gross, grotesque Ostrogoth gear.
But it was the helmets for which the Kushans reserved their chief complaint. They were accustomed to their own light and simple headgear, which consisted of nothing much more than a steel plate across the forehead held by a leather strap. Whereas these—these—these great, heavy, head-enclosing, silly-horse-tail-crested, idiot-segmented-steel-plate fucking barbarian fucking monstrosities—
They obscured their topknots! Covered them up completely!
“Which,” Belisarius had patiently explained at the time, “is the point of the whole exercise. No one will realize you are Kushans. I must keep your existence in my army a secret from the enemy.”
The Kushans had understood the military logic of the matter. Still—
Belisarius felt Vasudeva’s glare, but he ignored it serenely. “Oh, surely you have some opinion,” he stated.
Vasudeva transferred the glare onto the countryside below. “Maurice is correct,” he pronounced. “You are a lunatic. A madman.”
For a moment, Vasudeva and Maurice exchanged admiring glances. In the months since they had met, the leader of the Kushan “military slaves” and the commander of Belisarius’ bucellarii—his personal contingent of mostly Thracian cataphracts who constituted the elite troops of his army—had developed a close working relationship. A friendship, actually, although neither of those grizzled veterans would have admitted the term into their grim lexicon.
Observing the silent exchange, Belisarius fought down a grin. Outrageous language, he thought wryly, from a slave!
He had captured the Kushans the previous summer, at what had come to be called the battle of Anatha. In the months thereafter, while Belisarius concentrated on relieving the Malwa siege of Babylon, the Kushans had served his army as a labor force. After Belisarius had driven the main Malwa army back to the seaport of Charax—through a stratagem in which their own labor had played a key role—the Kushans had switched allegiances. They had never had any love for their arrogant Malwa overlords to begin with. And once they concluded, from close scrutiny, that Belisarius was as shrewd and capable a commander as they had ever encountered, they decided to negotiate a new status.
“Slaves” they were still, technically. The Kushans felt strongly that proprieties had to be maintained, and they had, after all, been captured in fair battle. Their status had been proposed by Belisarius himself, based on a vision which Aide had given him of military slaves of the future called “Mamelukes.”
Vasudeva’s eyes were now resting on him, with none of the admiration those same eyes had bestowed on Maurice a moment earlier. Quite hard, those eyes were. Almost glaring, in fact.
Belisarius let the grin emerge.
Slaves, of a sort. But we have to make allowances. It’s hard for a man to remember his servile status when he’s riding an armored horse with weapons at his side.
“How disrespectful,” he murmured.
Vasudeva ignored the quip. The Kushan pointed a finger at the landscape below. “You call this magnificent?” he demanded.
Snort. The glare was transferred back to the plateau. The rocky, ravine-filled landscape stretched from the base of the mountains as far as the eye could see.
“If there is a single drop of water in that miserable country,” growled Vasudeva, “it is being hoarded by a family of field mice. A small family, at that.”
He remembered his grievance.
“So, at least,” he added sourly, “it appears to me. But I am blind as a bat because of this fucking stupid barbarian helmet. Perhaps there’s a river—even a huge lake!—somewhere below.”
He cocked his head. “Maurice?”
The Thracian cataphract shook his head gloomily. “Not a drop, just as you said.” He pointed his own accusing finger. “There’s not hardly any vegetation at all down there, except for a handful of oak trees here and there.”