The slave pulled back the flap and entered the tent. He saw his master squatting on a pallet, staring into nothingness, mouthing words too soft to hear.
Hatred vanished. Replaced, first, by devotion to his master’s person. Then, by devotion to his master’s purpose. And then, by devotion itself. For the slave had closed the demon world of Malwa behind him and had entered the presence of divinity.
He knelt in prayer. Silent prayer, for he did not wish to disturb his master’s purpose. But fervent prayer, for all that.
Across the ancient, gigantic land of India, others also prayed that night. Millions of them.
Two hundred thousand prayed in Ranapur. They prayed, first, for deliverance from the Malwa. And then, knowing deliverance would not come, prayed they would not lose their souls as well as their bodies to the asura.
As Holkar prayed, his family prayed with him, though he knew it not. His wife, far away in a nobleman’s mansion in the Malwa capital of Kausambi, hunched on her own pallet in a corner of the great kitchen where she spent her days in endless drudgery, prayed for her husband’s safety. His son, squeezed among dozens of other slave laborers on the packed-earth floor of a shack in distant Bihar, prayed he would have the strength to make it through another day in the fields. His two daughters, clutching each other on a crib in a slave brothel in Pataliputra, prayed that their pimps would allow them to remain together another day.
Of those millions who prayed that night, many, much like Holkar, prayed for the tenth avatara who was promised. Prayed for Kalkin to come and save them from the Malwa demon.
Their prayers, like those of Holkar, were fervent.
But Holkar’s prayers, unlike those of others, were not simply fervent. They were also joyous. For he, almost alone in India, knew that his prayers had been answered. Knew that he shared his own tent with the tenth avatara. And knew that, not more than five feet away, Kalkin himself was pouring his great soul into the vessel of the world’s deliverance. Into the strange, crooked, cunning, mongoose mind of his foreign master.
Chapter 3
The sun beat down on a nightmare landscape. Once, these had been fields and orchards. Now, the ground was criss-crossed with deep trenches; stripped bare of any life beyond a few splintered trees, handfuls of crushed wheat, a single stalk of corn.
“Where are we?” asked Belisarius. He spoke in a low mutter. His eyes were closed, the better to concentrate on the images flashing through his mind. “And when?”
Near a place called Kursk, replied Aide. The facets flashed for a microsecond, translating the crystalline precision of Time’s Arrow into the bizarre fiats of human calendrical custom. A millenia and a half from now.
A line of monsters surged onto the field. Gigantic things, tearing the soil with strange continuous belts—metal slats running over wheels. Forward, from cupolas, immense snouts protruded. The snouts belched flame and smoke. Emblazoned on their flanks were crosses—some, square with double lines; others, bent.
“Iron elephants,” whispered Belisarius. “Like the ones the Malwa will build—but so much better!”
Tanks. They will be called tanks. These are the type which will be called PzKw V “Panthers.” They will weigh 45 tons and travel up to 34 miles per hour. They fire a cannon whose size will be called 75 millimeter.
From the opposite side of the field, a new line of monsters—tanks—charged forward. They began exchanging cannon fire with the other tanks. Belisarius could sense that these new tanks were of a slightly different design, but the only feature which registered clearly on his uneducated eye was that, instead of crosses, their flanks were marked by red stars.
This was the best tank of that era. It will be called the T-34.
The battle was horrible and dazzling at the same time.
Horrible, in its destruction. Belisarius saw a tank cupola—
Turret.
—turret blown off. Tons of metal sent sailing, like a man decapitated. The body of the tank belched flame, and he knew the men inside were being incinerated. Saw men clambering from another burning tank, shrieking, their uniforms afire. Saw them die, suddenly, swept down by an invisible scythe.
Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182