Gently, Dadaji Holkar stripped the horse of her saddle and began wiping the mare down. He was fond of horses and, by her nuzzle, knew the fondness was reciprocated. He knew, also, that Belisarius’ invariable kindness to him was partly the transference of his feelings for Rao onto another of his countrymen. Belisarius had said to him, once, that in a lifetime where he had met many fine men, he had never known a finer than Raghunath Rao. But Dadaji Holkar had come to know his new master well, in the months since he had been purchased in Bharakuccha to train a newly arrived foreigner in India’s tongues and scripts. And so he knew that he was himself a man to Belisarius, not simply a surrogate for another, and that the heart of the Roman’s love for him belong to he himself. He, and his loyalty, and his service, and the memory of his broken people and his shattered family.
The slave Dadaji Holkar began feeding his master’s horse. There were none to see, now, so he let the tears flow freely. Then, after a moment, raised his blurry vision and gazed at the distant, splintering, brick walls of rebel Ranapur.
Ranapur will fall, soon. The Malwa beasts will savage its people, even worse than they savaged my own.
He lowered his gaze, wiped the tears from his face, watched the horse feed. He enjoyed watching the mare’s quiet pleasure as she ate. It reminded him, a bit, of the joy he had taken watching his wife and children eat the food he had always placed on their table. Until the Malwa came, and devoured his family whole.
Enjoy your triumph, Malwa cobras. It will not last. You have let the mongoose himself into your nest.
The horse was done feeding. Holkar led her into the thatched stalls which the Roman soldiers had erected for their horses. The stalls were very large, and completely shielded from outside view. An outside view which might have wondered, perhaps, why such a small body of men would need such a large number of horses. And such fine horses!
Indeed, they were very fine. Holkar was fond of the mare, but he knew she was the poorest of the mounts which rested in the stalls. The Romans never rode the fine ones, the superb riding steeds which Holkar himself had purchased, one by one, from the various merchants scattered about the siege of Ranapur. Horses which were always purchased late in the day, and led into their stalls in the dark of night.
His master had never explained the reasons for those purchases, nor had Holkar inquired.
Nor had Belisarius explained the reason for purchases which were still more odd.
Not two days ago, at his master’s command, Holkar had purchased three elephants. Three small, well-tamed, docile creatures, which were kept in a huge but simple tent located in a small clearing in the forest, many miles from the siege, and many miles from the official camp of the Romans and Ethiopians.
Holkar had asked no questions. He had not asked why the tent should be so far away, and so different in appearance from the grandiose pavilion which the Ethiopian prince Eon had erected for himself and his concubines. Nor why the elephants themselves should be so different in their appearance from the two huge and unruly war elephants which the Ethiopians maintained as their public mounts. Nor why the elephants were only fed at night, and only by the African slave named Ousanas, whose invisibility in the darkness was partly due to the color of his skin, but mostly to his incredible skill as a hunter and a woodsman.
No, Holkar had simply obeyed his master’s commands, and not asked for any explanation of them. The Maratha did not think that his master could have explained, even had he asked. Not clearly, at least. Not precisely. The mind of Belisarius did not work that way. His thoughts never moved in simple straight lines, but always at an angle. Where other men thought of the next step, Belisarius thought of the next fork in the road. And where other men, coming upon that fork, would see a choice between right and left, Belisarius was as likely to burrow a hole or take to the trees.