Belisarius, by taking a relatively small force of men and striking so swiftly into the Punjab, had shattered the Malwa plans for grinding the Roman advance to a bloody stalemate in the Sind. Like a bullet piercing the soft vitals, tumbling through flesh leaving a trail of wreck and ruin, Belisarius had effectively disemboweled the enemy.
The Malwa who faced him had larger forces—and would, even after Bouzes and Coutzes arrived at Sukkur—but those forces were like so many vital organs spilled on the ground. One army here, another there, yet another stranded over there . . . none of them able to coordinate properly, and none of them with what they needed to put up an effective resistance.
As he gazed serenely over the landscape—which was perhaps a useless exercise, since on a moonless night he could see almost nothing—Eusebius basked in his invincibility. One of the many Malwa vital organs which Belisarius had spilled on the floor of the arena was their control of the Indus.
The Malwa had not expected to be contesting the Indus at all, until Belisarius destroyed their army at Charax. Then, realizing that they were now on the defensive, they had begun a belated program of shipbuilding.
But—too late, after Belisarius struck at the Punjab. Too late, in any event, to provide them this year with armored and steam-powered warships which could contest the Indus with such craft as the Justinian and the Victrix.
Next year might be different. Eusebius knew that the Malwa were creating a major shipbuilding complex near Multan, the city which the enemy had turned into their military headquarters for the Punjab. According to spies, the Malwa were starting to build their own steam-powered riverboats—and these would apparently be ironclads. Once those warships came into action, Menander’s two screw-driven warships and the Victrix would be hard-pressed.
But—that was still many months away. And by then, Eusebius was certain, Belisarius would have figured out a way to stymie the Malwa again.
How? He had no idea. But he was serene in his confidence in his great commander. And so, as the Victrix paddled its slow way up the Indus, still more was added to its momentum. For that, too, the former artisan Eusebius had come to understand about warfare. The tide of victory was flowing with the Romans, as much because of their own confidence as the weight of men and material they brought with them.
* * *
The next morning, just after daybreak, Eusebius spotted a Malwa warship under construction tied up to a small pier along the river bank. The effort had all the earmarks of a last-minute, jury-rigged project. From what he could see of the half-completed ship, the Malwa had taken a small oar-powered river barge and were attempting to armor it with iron plate and place a handful of field guns aboard.
A pitiful thing, really, even had it been completed.
But, pitiful or not, no lion allows a jackal to contest its domain. So, after a quick exchange of signals with Menander—the flags were working quite well—Eusebius paddled over to put paid to that upstart nonsense.
Before he got there, the Malwa managed to wrestle around one of the field guns and fire two shots at the Victrix. One shot missed entirely. The second struck the heavy bow shield a glancing blow which did no worse than loosen a few bolts and scatter some chips of wood into the river.
Thereafter, the enemy gunners ceased their efforts and scampered hurriedly off the half-finished little warship. Which, within a few minutes, made a splendid bonfire to warm Roman souls as they continued chugging up the river toward Belisarius.
They were not far away now, if Menander was reading the skimpy charts correctly. (Charts which had become very far from skimpy as they made their way upriver. Future expeditions would not have to guess and grope their way through hidden sandbars.) And Eusebius had no doubt at all that the great uncertainty in the equation—had Belisarius reached the fork of the Chenab and seized it?—was no longer uncertain at all. Everything about the Malwa behavior that he could see practically shrieked panic and confusion.
Which, of course, is what you expect from a pack of jackals after a lion enters their lair.