Rao was not only an experienced commander, he had the natural aptitude of a guerrilla fighter. So, almost from the day he returned to Majarashtra, he had set the young men rallying to his banner to the first, simplest, and most essential task of the would-be rebel.
Intelligence.
Watch. Observe. Nothing moves south of the Vindhyas without our knowledge.
The fastest of all the Malwa couriers finally made his way through the Gangetic plain, and through the Vindhya mountains which were the traditional boundary between north India and the Deccan. Bharakuccha was not far away, now.
He did not get thirty miles before he was ambushed. Brought down by five arrows.
Rao, as it happened, was camped not far away, in a hillfort some twenty miles distant. Within hours, the young Maratha ambushers brought him the courier’s message case. Rao had no fear of the royal seal, and he was quite literate. A very fast reader, in fact.
Immediately after reading the message, he issued his own set of rapid commands. Within minutes, the hillfort was emptied of all but Rao himself and his two chief lieutenants. All the others—all three hundred or so—were racing to spread the news.
Malwa couriers are coming. All of them must be stopped. Kill them. Take their message cases. Rao himself commands.
After the young warriors were gone, Rao and his lieutenants enjoyed a simple meal. Over the meal, they discussed the significance of this latest event.
“Can we aid the Romans in some other way?” asked Maloji.
Rao shrugged. “Perhaps. We will see when they arrive. I do not know their plans, although I suspect the Malwa are right. The Romans and the Africans will try to take ship in Bharakuccha. If so, it will be enough for us to stop the couriers.” He smiled grimly. “Those men are very capable. They will manage, if we can keep the garrisons from being alerted.”
“What if the Empress is with them?” asked his other lieutenant, Ramchandra.
Rao shook his head firmly. “She will not be.”
“How do you know?”
Rao’s smile, now, was not grim at all. Quite gay, in fact.
“I know the mind of Belisarius, Ramchandra. That man will never do the obvious. Remember how he rescued Shakuntala! In fact—” Rao looked down at the message scroll, still in his hand. “I wonder . . .” he mused.
He rolled up the scroll and slapped it back into the case. The motion had a finality to it.
“We will know soon enough.” His smile, now, was a veritable grin. “Expect to be surprised, comrades. When you deal with Belisarius, that is the one thing you can be sure of. The only thing.”
With a single lithe movement, Rao came to his feet. He strode to the nearest battlement and stood for a moment gazing across the Great Country. The stone wall of the hillfort rose directly from an almost perpendicular cliff over a hundred yards in height. The view was magnificent.
His two lieutenants joined him. They were both struck by the serenity in the Panther’s face.
“We will see the Empress, soon enough,” he murmured. “She will arrive, comrades—be sure of it. From the most unexpected direction, and in the most unexpected way.”
That same day—that same hour—the young officer in command of a guardpost just south of Pataliputra found himself in a quandary.
On the one hand, the party seeking passage through his post lacked the proper documentation. This lack weighed the heavier in the officer’s mind for the fact that he was of brahmin ancestry, with all the veneration which that priest/scholar class had for the written word. Brahmin ancestry was uncommon for a military officer. Such men were normally kshatriya. He had chosen that career due to his ambition. He was not Malwa, but Bihari. As a member of a subject nation, he could expect to rise higher in the military than in the more status-conscious civilian hierarchy.
Still, he retained the instincts of a pettifogging bureaucrat, and the simple fact was that these people had no documents. Scandalous.
On the other hand—
The nobleman was obviously of very high caste. Not Malwa, no—some western nation. But no low-ranking officer is eager to offend a high-caste dignitary of the Empire, Malwa or otherwise.