The former dawazz spoke forcefully. “Pay the price. Immediately—and in full. I agree completely with Garmat.”
The murmur of protest was swelling. Ousanas fixed the assembled regimental commanders with his eyes. If the gaze of Garmat was stony, his was that of a basilisk.
“These sounds of protest you hear, King of Kings,” said Ousanas, indicating the officers with an accusing finger, “are the sounds of petty greed. Nothing more.”
The officers—most of them, at least; not Wahsi—glared at Ousanas. The former dawazz glared back. And made instantly clear, whatever his official status was now, that a former slave was not hesitant to clash with army commanders.
“Stupid boys,” he sneered, “coveting their stupid little marbles, and unwilling to share them with the other boys on the playground.”
Antonina took a deep breath. She understood what lay beneath this quarrel. She had been well-briefed by her own excellent advisers, one of whom—the Armenian cataphract Ashot—was very familiar with Ethiopia and the complexities of Red Sea trade and politics.
Unlike Rome, Axum made no distinction between its army and its navy. Each of the regiments had its own fleet of ships, which were manned by its soldiers. For all that they were highland-born-and-bred, Ethiopia’s soldiers were as much seamen as they were infantry. Seamen—and traders. Whenever the navy was not at war, or not on patrol, the regiments’ ships carried trade goods. And took a percentage of the profits from civilian ships, on the grounds that their suppression of piracy was all that enabled civilian merchants to prosper.
Ethiopia’s army, in short, had an immediate and vested interest in maintaining the supremacy of seaborne trade in the Red Sea—which was precisely the condition that squeezed the camel caravans of the Quraysh and the other trading tribes of Mecca and the Hijaz.
Antonina realized that she was holding her breath. This quarrel had the potential to erupt into a bitter brawl which could be disastrous for her plans. Belisarius’ strategy depended on the support of a strong—and united—Axum.
When Eon spoke, his voice was low. Like a lion, growling at cubs.
“You—will—obey—me.”
Startled by the majesty in that voice, the eyes of the officers left Ousanas and settled on the negusa nagast.
Eon sat in his throne, almost unmoving. In the time which followed, he used no grand gestures to give emphasis to his words. It was quite unnecessary. The words themselves seemed carved in stone.
“Do not forget, commanders of the sarawit, why Ethiopia is ruled by me—and not you. You are the nagast, but I am the negusa nagast. King of Kings. Our ancestors realized that kings are prone to folly, and thus they instituted the dawazz and required the approval of the regiments before a prince could become a king. But they also realized that officers—nobles of all stripes—are prone to a different folly. They forget to think of the kingdom, and think only of their own little piece of the realm. And thus the negusa nagast was set above you.”
He stared down at them, like a sphinx. “You think only of your profits, as if they were the sum of things. But I was at Ranapur, where Malwa butchered two hundred thousand people. Flayed them, fed them to animals, trampled them under elephants, tore them apart with oxen.”
He was stone, stone: “Two hundred thousand. Can you comprehend that number—you coin-counters? All the towns in Ethiopia and Arabia, put together, do not contain half so many people. You think Malwa will not do the same to Axum and Sana? Do you?”
Finally, he moved. A finger lifted from the arm of the throne and pointed to Ousanas.
“My dawazz, at my command, took the Talisman of God in his own hand and saw Axum’s future, if Malwa is not crushed. By the time of his death in battle, we were nothing but refugees fleeing into central Africa—and with no great hope of finding a haven there.”
He leaned forward, just a bit. “What use will your treasure be in central Africa, merchants? Do you plan to buy the finest grass huts, and sleep on the best dirt?”
Eon stared at his commanders. After a moment, they lowered their heads.