Ezana groaned. “Antonina, that’s already the best-planned and best-prepared military expedition in the history of the world.” Scowling: “The only uncertainty—you said so yourself, just this morning!—was the reliability of the Greek fire weapon. Which we just tested this very day!”
Rally. “There are still some minor logistical matters to be settled!” Antonina insisted.
Ezana groaned again. Ousanas clapped his hands.
“Ridiculous!” he stated. “Petty stuff which can be well enough handled by your host of underlings.” The aqabe tsentsen drained his goblet and placed it on the small side table nearby.
“We have much more important matters to discuss. I got into an argument with Irene, just the day before she and Kungas set off on that harebrained expedition of theirs. Can you believe that the crazed woman has been studying these idiot Buddhist philosophers lately? Mark my words! Give it a year and she’ll be babbling the same nonsense as that Raghunath Rao fellow. Maya, the so-called ‘veil of illusion.’ All that rot!”
Ousanas leaned forward on his divan, hands planted firmly on knees. “Our duty is clear. We must arm ourselves in advance—re-arm ourselves, I should say—with the principles of Greek philosophy. I propose to begin with a survey of the dialectic, beginning with Socrates.”
Antonina and Ezana stared at each other. Even the black Ethiopian’s face seemed pale.
“Logistics,” choked Ezana. “Critical to any successful military enterprise.” Hastily he rose and began pacing about. “Can’t afford to overlook even the slightest detail. The matter of the brass fittings for the stays is particularly critical. Can’t ever have enough! And the metalsmiths here in Charax are already overworked.”
He slammed hard fist into firm palm. “So! I propose the following—”
Chapter 8
BARBARICUM
Spring, 533 a.d.
The first rocket was a flare, one of the newly designed ones with a small parachute. After it burst over the ramparts at Barbaricum, it drifted down slowly, lighting the area with an eerie glow. Within seconds, several other flares came to add their own demonic illumination.
“Open fire!” roared John of Rhodes.
Immediately, the small fleet of Roman warships under John’s command began firing their cannons into the shipping anchored in the harbor. Under cover of night, John had sailed his flotilla into gunnery range without being spotted by the sentries on the walls of the city. The larger fleet of Ethiopian warships following in his wake began adding their own gunfire to the brew.
John’s ships, pure sailing craft, would be limited to one pass at the Malwa shipping. The Axumite vessels, with their oared capability, would wind up doing most of the damage even though none of those galleys carried the same weight of cannon. Without the necessity of tacking back upwind in order to escape—not something John wanted to do once the huge siege cannons on Barbaricum’s walls began firing—the Ethiopians would be able to take the time to launch the fireships.
For that reason, John was all the more determined to wreak as much havoc as he could in the short time available. In particular, he was determined to strike at the Malwa warships—which, unfortunately, were moored behind a screening row of merchant vessels. Now that the flares were burning brightly, he could see those war galleys moored against the piers.
“Closer!” he bellowed, leaving it to his sailing master to translate the command into nautical terms.
Standing on the deck at John’s side, Eusebius winced. Through his thick spectacles—another of the many new inventions which Aide’s counsel had brought into the Roman world—the gunnery officer could see the mouths of the siege cannons overlooking the harbor, illuminated by the cannon fire and the flares. Once they came into action, those guns would be firing stone balls weighing more than two hundred pounds. True, the siege cannons were as awkward to load and fire as they were gigantic, and the weapons were wildly inaccurate. Unlike smaller cannons, whose bores could be hand-worked into relative uniformity and for which marble or iron cannon balls could be polished to a close fit, the giant siege guns and their stone missiles were the essence of crudity. But if one of those balls did hit a ship . . .
Eusebius winced again.