Henceforth, the defense would rely entirely on the mitrailleuse and the old-fashioned methods of sword and ax atop the ramparts. Roman casualties would mount quickly, of course, depending so much on hand-to-hand methods. But Belisarius was sure he could fight off at least three more assaults before the decline in his numbers posed a real threat. Calopodius was doing as good a job as Belisarius had hoped. With the clear and precise intelligence Belisarius was now getting, he was able to maximize the position of his troops, using just as many as he needed exactly where they were needed.
* * *
The third mass assault never came. The Malwa began to prepare it, sure enough, but one morning Belisarius looked across the no-man’s-land which had been the deathground of untold thousands of Malwa soldiers and saw that the enemy was pulling back. As the morning wore on, it became clearer and clearer that the tens of thousands of troops were being put to building their own great lines of fortification. As if they were now the besieged, instead of being the besieger.
Which, indeed, was the truth. And Belisarius knew full well who had been able to see that truth.
“The monster is here,” he announced to his subordinates at their staff meeting that evening in the bunker. “In person. Link has arrived and taken direct charge. Which means that it’s ending.”
Gregory frowned. “What’s ending? I’d think—”
Belisarius shook his head. “Ending. Our campaign, I’m talking about. We won—and Link knows it. So it’s not going to order any more mass assaults. Not even Malwa can afford to keep paying that butcher’s bill. Finally—finally!—even that monster has to start thinking about the morale of its troops. Which is piss poor and getting worse, every time they spill an ocean of blood against our walls.”
His subordinates were all frowning, now. Seeing that row of faces, Belisarius was reminded of schoolboys puzzling at a problem.
A very difficult problem in rhetoric and grammar, to boot, chimed in Aide. Awful stuff!
The quip caused Belisarius to chuckle softly. Then, as the reality finally began pouring through him, he raised triumphant fists over his head and began laughing aloud.
“We won, I tell you! It’s finished!”
* * *
In the hours that followed, as Belisarius began sketching his plans for the next campaign—the one which would drive Malwa out of the Punjab altogether, the following year, and clear the road for the final Roman advance into their Ganges heartland—the frowns faded from his subordinates’ faces. But not, entirely, from their inner thoughts.
Maybe . . .
True enough, their great general wasn’t given to underestimating an enemy, so . . . maybe . . .
But . . .
* * *
Then, just before dawn three days later, the telegraph began chattering again and Calopodius relayed the message to Belisarius’ tent. The general had already awakened, so he was able to get himself to the pier—what Menander and his sailors were now calling Justinian’s Palace—within half an hour.
Maurice had gotten there ahead of him. Within no more than fifteen minutes, all of the other commanders of the Roman army were gathered alongside Belisarius atop the platform which the Roman engineers had thrown up to protect the Justinian and the Victrix. A great, heavy thing that platform was—massive timbers covered with stone and soil, which could shrug off even the most powerful Malwa mortars which the enemy occasionally sent out in riverboats in an attempt to destroy the warships which gave Rome its iron grip on the Indus.
By then, Maurice had made certain of his count. The Photius, steaming toward them out of the dawn, was towing no fewer than three barges. If even only one of those barges was loaded with gunpowder, it no longer mattered whether Belisarius was gauging his enemy correctly. Even Maurice—even gloomy, pessimistic Maurice—was serenely confident that with enough gunpowder the Iron Triangle could withstand years of mass assaults.
“It’s over,” he pronounced. “We won.”
* * *
Those were the very same words pronounced by Ashot, as he came ashore.
“It’s over. We won.” The stubby Armenian pointed back downriver. “The Malwa lifted the siege of Sukkur five days ago. God help the poor bastards, trying to retreat back through the gorge, with Khusrau and his Persians pursuing them and no supplies worth talking about. They’ll lose another twenty thousand men before they get to the Punjab, unless I miss my guess, most of them from starvation or desertion.”