Or of the forces defending the city.
A thought came to him then, a half-formed idea born of old experience and newly-acquired knowledge. He turned to Sanga.
“Didn’t you tell me, a few days ago, that Ranapur is a mining province?”
Sanga nodded. “Yes. Almost a third of the empire’s copper is mined here.”
Belisarius squinted at the terrain over which the Malwa army was making its slow way. He noted that the rebels were not meeting the oncoming advance with catapult fire. That was odd, on the face of it. The vague thought in his mind began to crystallize.
Sanga noticed his companion’s sudden preoccupation.
“You are thinking something, Belisarius. May I ask what it is?”
Belisarius hesitated a moment. For all that he liked Sanga, the Rajput was, after all, a future enemy. On the other hand—for the moment, the fate of Belisarius and his men was bound up with that of the Rajputs.
“Forgive my saying so, Rana Sanga, but I have found that your Malwa siege techniques are a bit—how shall I put?—simple, perhaps, by Roman standards. I suspect it is because most of your wars have been fought in this huge river valley. I do not think you have our experience with campaigns in mountainous country.”
Sanga tugged his beard, thinking. “That’s quite possibly true. I have never observed Roman sieges, of course. But it is certainly true one of the reasons the Maratha have always been such a thorn in our side is because of their rocky terrain, and their cunning use of hillforts. A siege in Majarashtra is always twice as difficult as a siege in the Ganges plain.”
He peered closely at the Roman. “You suspect something,” he announced.
Again, Belisarius hesitated. He was watching the Malwa advance intently. The first line of the infantrymen was now almost halfway across the five hundred yards of no-man’s land which separated the Malwa front trenches from the wall of Ranapur. Still, there was no catapult fire.
Belisarius straightened.
“Three factors strike me as significant here, Rana Sanga. One, the rebels have experienced miners in their ranks. Two, they have known for weeks—if not months—that the main assault would come here. Lord Harsha has obviously made no attempt to feint elsewhere. Three, there is no catapult fire—as if they were hoarding their remaining gunpowder.”
He scratched his chin. “Now that I think about it, in fact, it seems to me that the rebel catapult fire has been very sporadic for several days, now. Let me ask you—do you know if Lord Harsha has had sappers advancing counter-mines?”
The answer was obvious from the blank look on the Rajput’s face.
Belisarius still hesitated. The suspicion taking shape in his mind was incomplete, uncertain—as much guesswork as anything else. The capabilities of gunpowder, and the permutations of its use on a battlefield, were still new and primarily theoretical for him. He was not even sure if—
The facets erupted in a shivering frenzy. Human battlegrounds, for Aide, were an entirely theoretical concept. (An utterly bizarre one, besides, to its crystalline consciousness.) But now, finally, the strange idea forming in Belisarius’ mind gelled enough for Aide to grasp its shape. A knowledge of all history ruptured through the serried facets.
Danger! Danger! The siege of Petersburg! The battle of the Crater!
Belisarius almost gasped at the force of the vision which plumed into his mind.
A tunnel—many tunnels—underground, shored with wooden beams and planks. Men in blue uniforms with stubby caps were placing cases filled with sticks—not sticks, some kind of gunpowder devices—along every foot of those tunnels. Stacking them, one atop the other. Laying fuses. Leaving.
Above. Soldiers wearing grey uniforms atop ramparts.
Below. Fuses burning.
Above. Armageddon came.
Belisarius began dismounting from his horse. He glanced at his cataphracts and made a little gesture with his head. Immediately, the three Thracians followed their general’s lead. Fortunately, the Romans were only wearing half-armor. Had they been encumbered with full cataphract paraphernalia, they would have found it difficult to dismount unassisted, and impossible to do it swiftly.
“I may be wrong, Rana Sanga,” he said quietly, “but I would strongly urge you to dismount your men. If I were the rebel commander of Ranapur, I would have riddled that no-man’s land with mines and crammed them full of every pound of gunpowder I had left.”