The first thug who seized the old beggar by the arm was almost paralyzed with shock. Beneath the filthy garment, that arm was not the withered limb he had been expecting to feel. It was thick, and muscled so powerfully that the thug thought for a moment that he had seized a bar of iron.
The impression was reinforced an instant later—very briefly—when the elbow attached to the arm swept back and crushed the thug’s throat. And that first attacker’s new wisdom was shared, within a matter of a few seconds, by his three comrades. A very brief enlightenment, it was.
A few days later, another gang of toughs made the same discovery. Thereafter, the old beggar was left alone. The word spread, as it always did in such crowded and fetid slums, that the new beggar who lived in that alley was guarded by a demon. How else explain the mangled and battered corpses which had appeared of a morning—twice, now—in the mouth of that alley? While the beggar himself emerged unharmed, at the break of day, to resume plying his pathetic trade.
No word of this, of course, ever came to the ears of the authorities. Nor, if it had, would they have paid any attention. The slums of any city—especially a great metropolis like Bharakuccha—are full of superstition and rumor.
And so, day after day, the old beggar plied his trade against the wall of the palace. And so, day after day, the Ye-tai who guarded the entrance gave him no more than a casual glance.
Venandakatra himself did not give the beggar so much as a glance, in his own comings and goings. Such creatures were simply beneath the Goptri’s notice. So he was completely oblivious to the way in which, without seeming to, the beggar’s eyes followed his every movement while the beggar’s head remained slumped in abject misery. Showing, in their hidden depths, a gleam which would have seemed odd in such a man. Almost yellow eyes, they were, like those of a watchful predator.
Chapter 27
THE SIND
Autumn, 533 a.d.
Belisarius and his army encountered the first Malwa force shortly after rounding the southern slopes of the Kot Diji hills and crossing the Nara. Fortunately, the Romans had received forewarning that enemy troops were in the vicinity—not from any spies or scouts, but from the stream of refugees coming south from the Indus.
Abbu and his scouts captured a small group of the refugees, what appeared to be an entire extended family. Not knowing their language, he brought the group to the general. Belisarius’ fluency in foreign tongues was a byword among his troops. The Talisman of God allowed him to understand any language—even, some said, the speech of animals.
The truth, of course, fell far short of that legend. Aide did provide Belisarius with a great facility for learning foreign languages. But it was not magic, and did not allow Belisarius to understand and speak a language in an instant.
So the group of peasants huddling on the ground before him, with their few belongings strapped to their backs and their one precious cow “guarded” in the center, were unable to communicate with him. In truth, the people were so terrified that Belisarius doubted they would have been able to speak in any event. The eyes of the men and women were downcast. They stared at the soil before them as if, by ignoring the armed and armored men who surrounded them, they could change reality itself.
The children were less bashful. Or, at least, less ready to believe that reality was susceptible to such easy manipulation. They ogled the Roman soldiers around them, wide-eyed and fearful. One young girl—perhaps six or seven—was sobbing wildly, ignoring the way her mother was trying to shake her into silence. Because of the mother’s own terror, the shaking was a subdued sort of thing, not the kind of ferocious effort which could hope to subdue such sheer hysteria.
Belisarius winced and looked away. His eyes met those of a boy about the same age. Perhaps the girl’s brother; perhaps a cousin. Between the dirt and grime which covered the peasants, and the distortion which fear produced in their faces, it was hard to detect family resemblance. More accurately, family resemblance was buried under the generic similarity which makes all desperate people look well-nigh identical.