The rest of his mind screamed in despair, and his ruined body tried to obey. But the monster’s left hand shifted a bit, the iron claws worked again, and the scream died with the shredded throat which carried it.
“You may bleed to death from that wound, but I doubt it. It certainly won’t kill you before the other.”
The claws worked again, again, again.
“Not that it probably matters. There are no guards left in this palace to hear you. It seems a great wind has scoured it clean.”
Venandakatra now stood naked, his expensive clothing lying tattered about the chamber. The iron claws raked his ribs, the iron left hand turned him. He was now facing away from the chair. His throat and joints leaked blood and ruin.
Despair of the mind, to multiply agony of the body. That was Venandakatra’s last, fully conscious thought, except for the final words of his executioner.
“I thought you would appreciate it, Vile One. You always did favor a short stake.”
Chapter 33
THE INDUS
Autumn, 533 a.d.
Abbu leaned over the map and studied it. His face was tense, tight; half-apprehensive and half-angry. The lighting shed by the lamps hanging in Belisarius’ command tent brought out all the shadows in the old man’s hawk face. Brow and nose were highlighted; thick beard framed a mouth and cheeks in shadows; the eyes were pools of darkness. He looked, for all the world, like a sorcerer on the verge of summoning a demon. Or, perhaps, about to sup with the devil—and wishing he had a longer spoon.
Belisarius glanced quickly around the table. Judging from their stiff expressions, he thought Maurice and Sittas and Gregory were fighting the same battle he was—to keep from laughing outright at the scout chief’s reluctance to have anything to do with the cursed new-fangled device. The detested, despised—map.
Maps were toys for children! At best. Real men—father teaching son, generation after generation!—relied on their own eyes to see; their memory to recall; the verbal acuity of a poetic race to describe and explain!
Too bad he doesn’t mutter, except in his own mind, mused Aide. I’m sure he could give even Valentinian an education in the art.
Belisarius’ lips tightened still further. If so much as a single chuckle emerged . . .
“Here,” rasped Abbu, pointing with a finger at a bend in the Chenab. The mark on the map was recent. So recent the ink had barely dried. Which was not surprising, since Belisarius had just drawn that stretch of the Chenab himself, following Abbu’s stiff directions.
“A bit far to the north,” rumbled Sittas. Now that real business was being conducted, the big general was no longer having any trouble containing his amusement. His heavy brows were lowered over half-closed eyes, and his lips were pursed as if he’d just eaten a lemon.
Abbu flashed him a dark glance. “Here!” he repeated. “The ships at Uch are big. Both of them. The whole army could be transferred across the river in a single day. And there are good landings at three places on the opposite bank.”
He leaned over the map again, his earlier reluctance now lost in the eagerness of a prospective triumph.
“Here. Here. Here.” Each word was accompanied by a jab of the finger at a different place on the map, indicating a spot on the opposite bank of the Chenab. “I would use the second landing. Almost no risk there of grounding the ships.”
For a moment, Abbu hesitated, reluctant again. But the reluctance, this time, stemmed from simple tradition rather than outrage at newfangled ways. Like any master scout, Abbu hated to allow any imprecision into his description of terrain.
But . . . Abbu was the best scout Belisarius had ever had because the man was scrupulously honest as well as infernally capable. “I can’t be certain. We did not cross the river ourselves, because there is no ford. But the river looks to run deep at that second landing, with no hidden sandbars. Not even a beach. So the fishing village built a small pier over the water. Too small for these ships, of course, but the simple fact it is there at all means that we could unload the big ships without running aground.”