“The hell it was,” snarled Antonina. “Sloppy.”
Scowling, the little woman stalked forward and began yelling orders at her grenadiers. Her clear, soprano voice—trained by an actress mother—projected right through the shrieking din of the Hippodrome.
Now steadied, the grenadiers began following her commands. Their volleys became concentrated, targeted salvoes.
Antonina aimed the first volley at the kshatriya. All of the rocket troughs were shattered or upended. Again, most of the Malwa soldiers escaped harm by sheltering behind the bulwarks. The bulwarks were solidly built—heavy timbers fastened with bolts. The grenades did no more than score the wood.
But Antonina didn’t care. She simply wanted to cow the Malwa, put them out of action. She was quite confident in her ability to deal with a few hundred kshatriya. Her grenadiers, with their slings, easily outranged the Malwa grenades. And the rocket troughs were too fragile and cumbersome to be much of a threat in this kind of battle.
What she was really worried about—despite her confident proclamation to Maurice—was that the huge mob of faction thugs would swarm her with their numbers. There were forty thousand of them, against less than a thousand grenadiers and cataphracts—and the grenadiers would be of little use in a hand-to-hand melee.
So, while the Malwa soldiers coughed dust out of their lungs, crouching from the fury, Antonina began dismembering the mob.
Chop. Chop. Chop.
The next three volleys landed—in series, north to south—on the nearest fringes of the crowd. When the dust settled, and the bodies stopped flying, hundreds of faction thugs were scattered in heaps over the stone tiers. Dead, dying, wounded, stunned.
The crowd, shrieking, began piling away. More thugs died, trampled to death.
The nearest members of the mob were on the northern tiers of the Hippodrome. Antonina sent two volleys that way. The packed mass shredded, disintegrated. The survivors packed even tighter, pushing their fellows back, back. Back toward the far exits. Dozens more were trampled to death.
The kshatriya were stirring again. Small groups of Malwa soldiers were raising the two rocket troughs which had only been upended instead of destroyed. The rest were hurling their own grenades. But, without slings, those grenades fell harmlessly in the center of the Hippodrome.
Still—
Keep them cowed.
Antonina sent another volley at the kshatriyas. The Malwa soldiers, again, suffered relatively few casualties. But, as before, they were forced to retreat behind their bulwarks, out of action.
Back to the mob.
Chop. Chop. Chop.
Maurice, standing a few feet behind Antonina, smiled grimly. He said nothing. There was no need.
A knife fight in a kitchen.
The first members of the mob who fled from the Hippodrome escaped. Perhaps two thousand of them, less the hundred or so who were trampled to death squeezing through the northeastern gates.
The rest ran into Belisarius.
Marching up with his army, and seeing the Blue and Green thugs pouring out of the Hippodrome, Belisarius ordered half of the infantrymen to form lines on either side of the gates.
“Make them run the gauntlet, Hermogenes,” he commanded. “Kill as many as you can—without breaking your lines.”
“Most of them will escape,” protested Hermogenes. “We should box them in. Kill all the stinking traitors.”
Belisarius shook his head.
“We don’t need that kind of bloodbath. Just enough to terrorize the factions for the next twenty years.”
He turned to Irene, who was riding next to him. The spymaster had wanted to stay with Theodora, but Belisarius had insisted she accompany him to the Hippodrome. Theodora was safe, now. She and Justinian were being guarded in the Gynaeceum by Theodora’s surviving excubitores, five hundred infantrymen, and most of Sittas’ cataphracts. Irene could do nothing for Theodora, at the moment, whereas Belisarius had wanted her expertise.
“Can you identify the faction leaders?” he asked.
Irene nodded.
Belisarius whistled and waved to Sittas. The general trotted over, along with the hundred or so cataphracts he still had with him.
Belisarius pointed to the infantrymen lining up on either side of the gates. Already, the soldiers were cutting down those faction members who stumbled against their lines. The thugs who managed to stay out of sword range were in no danger from the soldiers. But, pushing away from the threatening infantrymen, the crowd was squeezing itself into a packed torrent of hurtling bodies. Within seconds, another dozen were trampled to death.