Belisarius nodded. “Yes, that.” His chin-scratching went into high gear. “I can’t help but wondering if what we’re seeing here isn’t a master grammarian at work. Parsing a very long sentence, so to speak.”
Valentinian threw up his hands with exasperation. “I still say it’s silly!” He planted his hands firmly on the table and leaned forward.
“We’ll do it, General. If it can be done at all. But I’m giving you fair warning—”
He pushed himself back and took a deep breath. “If we run into Rana Sanga, I’m surrendering right off! No way in hell am I going to fight that monster again!”
Chapter 5
BIHAR
Spring, 533 a.d.
The knuckles on Rana Sanga’s right hand, gripping the tent pole, were as white as bone. For a moment, Lord Damodara wondered if the pole would snap. The thought was only half-whimsical. The Malwa commander had once seen the leader of his Rajput troops cut an armored man in half—Vertically. Sanga’s sword had come down through the shoulder, split the sternum and the ribs, and only come to a halt when the sword broke against the baldric’s buckle.
True, his opponent had been a lightly armored rebel, and as small as Bengalis usually were. Still—
“I’m glad I’m using bamboo to hold up my tent,” he remarked casually.
Startled, Rana Sanga’s eyes came to his master. Then, moved to his hand. Slowly, with an obvious effort, the tall Rajput king released his grip.
The hand became a fist and the fist slammed into his left palm. Damodara winced at the noise. That punch would have broken the hands of most men. Sanga didn’t even seem to notice. There were times when Damodara wondered if the Rajput was entirely human. For all Sanga’s courtesy and stiff honor, there was something about the Rajput king—something that went beyond his towering stature and tigerish frame—that made the Malwa general think of the asuras of the ancient chronicles and legends. Demons . . .
Lord Damodara shook the thought away, as he had so often before. The asuras had been evil creatures. However ferocious in combat, Rana Sanga could not be accused of the same. Not by any sane man, at least; and whatever else Damodara was, he was most certainly sane.
The Malwa general heaved a very faint, very controlled sigh. And that is perhaps all I am. Sane. He turned away from the sight of his silent, seething, enraged subordinate and studied the new maps which had been brought to the command tent. Damodara’s keen mind found comfort in those maps. The lines drawn upon them were clean and precise. Quite unlike the human territory which they so glibly claimed to represent.
Honor. Morality. Those are for others. For me, there is only sanity.
“There is no leeway in the orders, Rana Sanga,” he said harshly. “None whatsoever.”
Sanga was now glaring at an idol perched on a small pedestal next to the tent’s entrance. The very expensive ivory carving was a miniature statue of the four-armed, three-headed and three-eyed god called Virabhadra. In each of his hands, the god bore a bow, an arrow, a shield and a sword. The weapons were all made of pure gold. A necklace of sapphire skulls adorned his bare chest, and each cyclops eye was a ruby. The scarlet color of the gems seemed to reflect Sanga’s rage with blithe indifference.
Virabhadra had once been a minor god, one of Siva’s variations. But the Mahaveda cult which dominated the Malwa empire’s new version of Hinduism had elevated him to much higher status. Damodara rather loathed the statue, himself, despite its value. But it helped to keep the ever-suspicious priests of Malwa from prying too closely into his affairs.
“I have already come under criticism for my methods of suppressing rebellion here in eastern India,” he added softly. He gestured at one of the scrolls on his large desk. “I received that from Nanda Lal just two days ago. The emperor’s spymaster is wondering why we have made such infrequent use of impalement.”
Sanga tore his eyes away from the statue. “That idiot,” he snarled, utterly oblivious to the fact that he was insulting one of the emperor’s close kinsmen in front of another. For some reason—or, rather, a reason he chose not to examine closely—Damodara found that unthinking trust something of a small treasure in its own right.