Kurush’s smile widened. He shook his head. “You’re worrying too much. We can cover the soldiers’ tracks by running the horses through afterward. Everywhere except this immediate area. Then—”
The Persian nobleman leapt onto a small rock a few feet away. From that perch, he leaned over and pointed along the steep slope of the mountain. “This is mining country, Belisarius. Silver, mostly. There are small deposits in this valley.”
He spread his hands apologetically. “Nothing more than traces, really, according to the miners I brought with me. But the miners will be gone before Damodara arrives. And I doubt very much if an army of Rajput cavalrymen will be able to tell him that the ore in the area isn’t worth mining.”
Aide made a mental snort. Rajputs?
Belisarius chuckled. “Hardly! And their Pathans, outside of hunting, consider all forms of labor to be women’s work.”
The Roman general nodded. “Yes, that’ll work. After we pass through, you’ll have this whole slope turned into a mining operation. Cover our tracks with tailings.” He pointed at the adit. “And I assume that you’ll have your miners cover our tracks well into the qanat. Fifty yards should do it. Pathans are outdoorsmen. They won’t be comfortable more than a few feet into that blackness.”
Again, Belisarius studied the gorge at the far end of the valley. “All that will be left, after a few days,” he mused, “are the tracks of Roman horses. Passing, by pure coincidence, through a mining area on their way into Mesopotamia.”
He paused, thinking. “One thing, however. Those Pathans know their business, Kurush. You’ll have to make sure—”
Kurush was grinning. “Yes, yes!” he interrupted. “I’ll have the horses carrying sacks filled with dirt. Weighing about what a Roman soldier does. Their tracks will be deep enough.”
Belisarius returned the grin with one of his own. “You’ve thought of everything, I see.”
Kurush shrugged. Belisarius almost laughed. The modest gesture fit the Aryan sahrdaran about as well as a curtsy fits a lion.
His humor faded. “You understand, Kurush, that the hammer will fall on you? Once Damodara understands what has happened—and it won’t take him long—he won’t waste time trying to chase after me. He’ll strike directly into Mesopotamia.”
Kurush shrugged again. The gesture, this time, did not even pretend at modesty. It was the twitch of a lion’s shoulders, irritated by flies.
“That is only fair, Roman, after all you’ve done for the Aryans.”
Kurush sprang off the rock and strode over to Belisarius. He jabbed his chin toward the south, using his stiff Persian-cut beard as a pointer. “As soon as he gets the word, the emperor will begin retreating toward Babylon. He’s on the verge of doing it, anyway, so it won’t seem odd at all.” Kurush scowled. “The Malwa have been pressing him very hard.”
Belisarius eyed the sahrdaran. The Roman general had no difficulty interpreting Kurush’s frowning face. He could well imagine the casualties which Emperor Khusrau’s soldiers had taken over the past months. While Belisarius had been maneuvering with Damodara in the Zagros mountains all through the spring, Khusrau had been keeping the huge main army of the Malwa invasion penned up in the Tigris–Euphrates delta. The task would have been difficult enough, even without—
He decided to broach the awkward subject.
“Has the rebellion—?”
Khusrau’s frown vanished instantly. The Persian nobleman barked a laugh.
“The head of the emperor’s half-brother has been the main ornament of his pavilion for two weeks, now.” Kurush grimaced. “Damn thing was a mass of flies, by the time I left. Stinky.”
His good humor returned. “Ormazd’s rebellion has been crushed. And that of the Lakhmids. We took Hira almost two months ago. Khusrau drove the population into the desert and ordered the city razed to the ground.”
Belisarius let no sign of his distaste show. He had never been fond of “punitive action” against enemy civilians, even before he met Aide and was introduced to future standards of warmaking.
But he did not fault Khusrau. By the standards of the day, in truth, driving the population of Hira out of the city before destroying it was rather humane. The Lakhmids had been Persian vassals before they gave their allegiance to the Malwa invaders. Most Persian emperors—most Roman ones, for that matter, including Theodora—would have repaid that rebellion by ordering the city’s people burned inside it.