Chapter 18
MAJARASHTRA
Summer, 532 a.d.
Irene stared nervously at the Malwa milling around the impromptu field camp which Ezana’s soldiers had set up alongside the road to Deogiri. There appeared to be thousands of them—especially leering Ye-tai, who were making no attempt to hide their ogling of her. Muttered phrases swelled from the mob. The content of those coarse words was not quite audible, but their meaning was more than clear enough—like surf, frothing lust. Ezana’s four hundred sarwen, standing guard with their spears in hand, reminded her of a pitiful dike before a surging ocean. A child’s sand castle, with the tide about to come in.
Why did I ever agree to do this? Irene demanded of herself.
Herself babbled reassurance: “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
That was then; this is now.
“Get a grip on yourself, woman. The whole idea was to distract them, which has definitely been done.”
Sure has. I’ll bet they’ll be even more distracted when all four thousand of them start gang-raping me. Wonderful!
“You and your husband, Ezana, are supposed to be envoys from the King of the Vandals, seeking an alliance against Rome. Surely they wouldn’t—”
Surely, my ass! Do those drooling thugs look like diplomats to you? Whoever came up with this insane scheme?
“Well, actually—you did.”
Thanks for reminding me. I forgot I’m an idiot.
“It’s a good plan,” herself repeated stubbornly. Herself reminded Irene of one child reassuring another that there really aren’t any monsters, as the ogre stuffs them into his gullet.
I’m an idiot. Idiot—idiot—idiot! This is the stupidest plan—
Ezana entered the small pavilion—not much more than a canopy, really, shielding the richly garbed “Vandal” noblewoman from the blistering sun. Her “noble African husband” had to stoop, in order to keep his elaborate ostrich-plume headdress from being swept off.
“Good plan!” he grunted, as soon as he straightened. Ezana gazed placidly on the Malwa soldiery swarming around them. In the far distance, to the north, the first of the siege guns in the column was now visible, being painfully hauled another few feet south to Deogiri.
“Will you look at that rabble?” he demanded. “They make bedouin look like a Macedonian phalanx. The officers are worse than the men.”
“Don’t remind me,” snarled Irene. She glanced apprehensively at the cluster of officers sitting their horses nearby. The officers were perched a few yards up a slope, giving them a better view of Irene than that enjoyed by the common troops. Behind them reared the crest of one of Majarashtra’s multitude of ridges.
The officers were ogling her even more openly than the Ye-tai. She saw one of them say something, followed by a round of leering laughs.
“What is wrong with these animals?” she demanded, half-angrily and half-nervously. “Haven’t they ever seen a woman before? If I looked like Antonina, I might understand it. She could make the sun stop in its tracks. But I’m—”
She gestured at herself. Again, anger was mixed with apprehension. “I’m not ugly, I suppose. But with my big nose—”
Ezana chuckled. “You are quite an attractive woman, Irene, in my opinion. But it really doesn’t matter.”
He hooked a thumb toward the Malwa. “This is why we agreed to the plan, Irene. If you hadn’t volunteered to come, we never would have considered it. Kungas and I both knew what would happen, if the Malwa encountered a large party of foreigners claiming to have been shipwrecked on the coast. They are not diplomats. They would have just attacked us, on general principle. Even if they weren’t guarding their precious siege guns.”
He gazed at her with approval. “But with you here, all dressed up in such finery—” His gaze, falling on her bosom, became very approving. “Such provocative finery—scandalous, the way foreign women dress! And they’re all sluts, those heathens, everybody knows it.”
Irene scowled. “Those monkeys know as much about Vandals as I do about—” She groped for a simile, but couldn’t find an appropriate one. With her voracious reading habits, Irene couldn’t think of any subject that she didn’t know more about than Ye-tai and Malwa soldiers did about the people and politics of North Africa.