Belisarius turned back, satisfied, and glanced at the sun. It was not yet noontime. He thought the Malwa commanders would not be able to drive their army back into battle for at least two hours. Possibly three.
Plenty of time. He had taken no pleasure in the killing. He never had, in any battle he had ever fought. But he did take satisfaction in a job well done, and he intended to do the same again. In two hours. Possibly three.
Plenty of time, for a craftsman at his trade.
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Framed
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Chapter 19
Two and a half hours later, the enemy began taking positions for the assault on the villa. The Malwa forces lined up on the open ground east of the royal compound, at a distance of half a mile. The front lines were composed of cavalry regulars, backed by Ye-tai. The rocket wagons, guarded by the Kushans, were brought to a halt fifty yards behind the front ranks. The kshatriya, overseen by Mahaveda priests, removed the tarpaulins covering the wagons and began unloading rockets and firing troughs. Within a few minutes, they had the artillery devices set up. There were eighteen of the rocket troughs, erected in a single line, spaced thirty feet apart.
From a room on the second floor of the villa, Belisarius studied the Malwa formation with his telescope. Standing just behind him were the top officers of the Syrian and Constantinople troops forted up in the imperial compound—Bouzes and Coutzes, Agathius and Cyril. They were listening intently as Belisarius passed on his assessment of the situation.
The general began by examining the rockets, but spent little time on that problem. Once the first two or three had been erected, he was satisfied that he understood them perfectly. The rockets were the same type he had seen—at much closer range—during the sea battle he had fought against pirates while traveling to India on a Malwa embassy ship. In that battle, the rockets had wreaked havoc on the Arab ships. But, he told his officers, he did not think they would have that effect here.
"Most of the damage done by the rockets in the pirate battle," he explained, lowering the telescope for a moment, "was incendiary. The pirate galleys, like all wooden boats, were bonfires waiting to happen."
Seeing the puzzlement on the faces of Bouzes and Coutzes, the two Constantinople officers chuckled.
"Farm boys!" snorted Cyril. "You think 'cause a boat's floating on water that she won't burn? Shit. The planks are made of the driest wood anyone can find, and what's worse—"
"—they're caulked with pitch," concluded Agathius. Like his fellow Greek, the chiliarch was smirking—that particular, unmistakable, insufferable smirk which seafarers the world over bestow upon landlubbers.
"Not to mention the cordage and the sails," added Cyril.
Bouzes and Coutzes, Thracian leaders of a Syrian army, took no offense at the Greeks' sarcasm. On some other day, they might. But not on the day when those same Greeks had given the enemy such a thorough pounding. They simply grinned, shrugged at their ignorance, and studied the interior of the villa with new and enlightened eyes.
"A different matter altogether, isn't it?" commented Belisarius.
Under the fancy trappings and elaborate decorations, the royal compound was about as fireproof as a granite tor. The walls were made of kiln-fired brick, and the sloping roof was covered with tiles. Neither would burn—those bricks and tiles had been made in ovens—and he was quite sure the thick walls could withstand the explosive power of the rockets' relatively small warheads.
True, the roof tiles would probably shatter under a direct hit by a rocket. Belisarius did not think there would be many such hits, if any. He knew from experience that the Malwa rockets were not only erratic in their trajectories, but erratic in their destruction as well. They had no contact fuses. They simply exploded whenever the burning fuel reached the warhead. In order to shatter the roof, a rocket would have to hit directly—not at a glancing angle—and explode at just the right time.
The likelihood of that happening, in his estimation, was not much greater than being hit by lightning. And if, against all odds, a rocket should score a direct hit—
"Might break in the roof tiles," commented Bouzes.
Belisarius shrugged. "The tiles are supported by heavy beams. Wooden beams, yes. But these beams aren't anything like the thin planks of pirate galleys. They're much thicker, and, what's more important, not saturated with inflammable pitch."
He began studying the positions of the Malwa cavalry, now. Again, passing on his conclusions.
"They'll start with a rocket barrage, and then follow it up with a direct assault." A moment's silence, then:
"I thought so. They're dismounting, now. It'll be an infantry attack."
"Those are cavalry!" protested Coutzes.
Belisarius pressed his lips together to keep from smiling. He remembered, from three years before, that Coutzes and Bouzes had been trained in the cavalry tradition. The young Thracian commander, it was obvious, had still not quite abandoned his contempt for foot-fighting.
His brother, however, had.
"Don't be stupid. We've been training our own men to be dragoons. Why shouldn't the Malwa?"
"Well said," murmured Belisarius. For a moment, he took his eye from the telescope and glanced at Coutzes.
"You're about to see why I insisted on training our cavalry to fight on foot. I know you think that was a waste of time—"
He drove over Coutzes' little protest. "—but the reason I did so was because I knew the time would come when we'd be able to arm those dragoons with grenades. And handcannons, I'm hoping."
He nodded toward the enemy, visible through the window.
"They already have grenades. The kshatriya are starting to pass them out to the regulars."
He took up the telescope again, and continued his scrutiny.
"They'll come in waves. Probably be one grenadier for every ten soldiers. The Ye-tai will be scattered through the lines in small squads, driving the regulars forward and pressing the assault. Some of the kshatriya will be in those lines, too, but most of them will stay at the center with the priests, manning the rockets. They'll also help the Kushans guard the wagons. They might—damn!"
He stiffened, staring through the telescope intently.
"Damn," he repeated. "They're bringing up the Kushans. All two thousand of them."
"On foot?" asked Agathius.
Belisarius lowered the telescope, nodded. Then, with a bit of a rueful smile:
"Kushans, in my experience, don't have any fetishes when it comes to fighting. On foot, on horse, on boats—it doesn't matter to them. Whatever, they'll do it well. Very well."
He turned away from the window. It was obvious from his stance and expression that he had reached a decision. His officers gathered closer.
"This changes things," Belisarius announced. "As you know, I'd wanted to wait until tomorrow before bringing in Maurice and his boys."
He tapped the palm of his hand with the telescope, emphasizing his words.
"We're going to beat these bastards, one way or the other. But I want more than that—I want to pulverize them. The best way to do that is to rout them early in the morning, so we've got a full day for pursuit."
The officers nodded. All of them—even the two young brothers—were experienced combatants. They knew that a battle won at the end of day was a battle half-won. The kind of relentless, driving pursuit which could utterly destroy a retreating enemy was simply impossible once daylight was gone.
Agathius glanced out the window. "It's still before noon," he mused. "If the battle starts soon enough—"
Belisarius shook his head. "I'd wanted to let the Malwa spend all day hammering their heads against us here. Bleed them dry, exhaust them—then hit them at dawn with a massive flank attack by Maurice and Kurush. The attack would break their army, and then we'd sally out of the villa and drive over them."