Again, a moment’s silence. Then, in a thought filled with satisfaction: Still . . . I think it’s fair to say that cracks are showing. Big ones.
Belisarius said nothing in response. In the minutes that followed, as one great explosion after another announced the rolling destruction of Barbaricum, he never even bothered to watch. He was turned in the saddle, staring to the northeast. There, somewhere beyond the horizon, lay Rajputana. That harsh and arid hill country was the forge in which the Rajputs had been created.
And if they begin to crack . . .
The Malwa will still have the Ye-tai, cautioned Aide. The Ye-tai have nowhere else to go. Especially if Kungas succeeds in reconquering the lands of the former Kushan empire, where the Ye-tai once had their stronghold. Before they accepted the Malwa offer to become the most privileged class in India after the Malwa themselves.
Belisarius smiled crookedly. “Nowhere else to go?” Don’t be too sure of that, Aide. Enterprising men—especially ones who can see the handwriting on the wall—can find avenues of escape in many places. What was it that fellow said? The one you told me about in the future that would have been, who made so many fine quips.
Dr. Samuel Johnson. “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”
Chapter 23
THE DECCAN
Autumn, 533 a.d.
Rana Sanga kept his eyes firmly fixed on the ivory half-throne which supported the flaccid body of Lord Venandakatra. Not on the Goptri of the Deccan himself. Much like Venandakatra’s face—with which Sanga had become all too familiar in the weeks since Damodara’s army had arrived in the Deccan—the chair was carved into a multitude of complex and ornate folds and crevices.
But the Rajput king found it far easier to look at the chair than at the Malwa lord who sat in it. The piece of furniture, after all, had been shaped by the simple hand of a craftsman, not the vices and self-indulgences which had shaped Venandakatra’s fat toad-lizard parody of a human face.
The Rajput king dwelled on that comparison, for a moment. He found it helped to restrain his fury. The more so since, whenever the rage threatened to overwhelm him, he could deflect it into a harmless fantasy of hacking the chair into splinters instead of . . .
Lord Venandakatra finally ceased his vituperative attack on the Rajput troops which formed the heart of Damodara’s army. Lord Damodara began speaking. The sound of his commander’s calm and even-tempered voice broke through the red-tinged anger which clouded Sanga’s brain.
Sanga lifted his eyes and turned them to Damodara. The commander of the Malwa forces newly arrived in the Deccan was leaning back comfortably in his own chair, apparently relaxed and at ease.
“—are more than welcome to transmit your displeasure to the emperor and Nanda Lal,” Damodara was saying. His tone was mild, almost serene. “Please, Lord Venandakatra! Do me the favor! Perhaps the emperor might heed your words—unlikely though that is—and send me and my army elsewhere. To fight a war instead of attempting to indulge a spoiled child.”
Venandakatra hissed at the insult. He began gobbling incoherent outrage and indignation, but Damodara’s still-calm voice slid through it like a knife.
“A stupid child, as well as a spoiled one. I told you from the beginning that not even Rajputs with Pathan trackers could hope to match Rao’s Maratha hillfighters on their own terrain. The Panther has hillforts scattered throughout the Great Country. If we match him in the hills and valleys, he retreats to the hilltops. If we besiege the forts—which is easier said than done, Venandakatra—he fades down the slopes. Not without, each time, bleeding us further.”
Gobble, gobble, gobble.
Damodara heaved a little half-snort, half-sigh. Derision mingled with exasperation. “From the day I arrived, I told you to cease your terror campaign. Butchering and torturing Maratha villagers does nothing beyond swell the ranks of Rao’s army. By now, that army is at least as large as my own. Half again the size, I estimate.”
The gobbling began producing coherent half-phrases. Have you impaled yourself . . . I am the emperor’s first cousin . . . you only distantly related . . . insubordination and mutiny and treason . . . on a short stake . . .