As ever, having a technical problem posed immediately engrossed Eusebius. The naval officer was still an artisan at heart. He ran fingers through his hair, staring at the tile floor through thick spectacles.
“Could be done. Easier to make her a stern-wheeler, but a side-wheeler would have a lot of advantages in a river like the Indus. Slow and muddy as it is, bound to be hidden sandbars all over the place. With a side-wheeler you can sometimes walk your way over them. That’s what Aide says, anyway.”
“Can’t armor a side-wheeler,” countered Menander immediately. Although he was not exactly an artisan himself, the young cataphract had quickly picked up the new technological methods which Aide had introduced. He was comfortable in that mechanical world in a way in which older cataphracts were not.
Eusebius lifted his head, his eyes opening wide. “Why are we messing with paddle wheels, anyway? The Justinian and her sister ship were designed for screws. It wouldn’t be that much harder to redesign the Victrix for screw propulsion.”
Menander got a stubborn, mulish look on his face. Seeing it, Eusebius sighed. “Forgot. You’ve only got one spare screw, don’t you? And as many problems as the Justinian has already—typical prototype stuff—you don’t want to find yourself stranded somewhere on the Indus without an extra propeller.”
By now, Antonina and the Ethiopians were completely lost. Seeing the blank expressions on their faces, Eusebius explained.
“You can’t just slap together a propeller. Tricky damn things. In the letter he sent with the Justinian, the emperor—I mean, the Grand Justiciar—told us he had to fiddle for months—his artisans, I mean—until they got it right. No way we could make one here, without the facilities he’s got at Adulis.”
Their faces were still blank. Menander sighed.
“You do know what a propeller is?”
Blank.
Menander and Eusebius looked at each other. Then, sighed as one man.
“Never mind, Antonina,” said Menander. “Eusebius and I will take care of it. You just go and have yourself a nice ocean cruise.”
Chapter 22
BARBARICUM
Autumn, 533 a.d.
The pilot in the bow of Belisarius’ ship proved to be just as good as his boasts. Half an hour before dawn, just as he had promised, the heavily laden ship slid up onto the bank of the river. The bank, as could be expected from one of the many outlets of the Indus, was muddy. But even a landsman like Belisarius could tell, from the sudden, half-lurching way in which the ship came to a halt, that the ground was firm enough to bear the weight of men and horses.
For two weeks, once it had become clear that monsoon season was drawing to a close, Belisarius had been sending small parties to scout the Indus delta. Landing in small boats under cover of night, the scouts had probed the firmness of the ground along the many mouths of the river. Every year during the monsoon season, the great flow of the Indus deposited untold tons of silt in the delta. Until that new soil was dry enough, the project of landing thousands of men, horses and equipment was impossible.
“Nice to have accurate scouting,” said Maurice, standing next to the general.
“It’ll still be a challenge, but the ground should be firm enough. Barely, but enough.”
Belisarius turned his head. In the faint light shed by a crescent moon, he could make out the shape of the next ship sliding alongside his own onto the bank. Other such ships, he knew, were coming to rest beyond that one—and many more still along two other nearby outlets of the river. Over the course of the next three days, Belisarius intended to land a large part of his entire army. Thirty thousand men, in all. Aide claimed it was the largest amphibious assault in all of human history to that day.
The general’s eyes now moved to the bustling activity on his own ship. Already, the first combat engineers—a new military specialty which Belisarius had created over the past year—were clambering over the side of the ship. Those men were completely unarmored and bore no weapons of any kind beyond knives. Their task, for the moment at least, was not to fight. Their task was to make it possible for others to do so.