When he came up to Maurice, the gray-haired chiliarch was studying the galleys themselves. His expression seemed one of grim satisfaction.
"They haven't seen it yet," he said. "Our elevation's better."
He handed Belisarius the telescope. Grim satisfaction was replaced by-
Before he even got the telescope up, in a motion so quick he almost gave himself a black eye, Belisarius knew. He only heard Maurice's next words dimly, through the rushing blood in his ears.
"Yeah, I thought you'd want to see it, lad. It's not often, after all, that a man gets to watch Venus rise from the waves."
Belisarius saw the glint before he spotted the masts. He had been looking for sails, until he realized there wouldn't be any. This close to their final destination, the Ethiopian warships would be advancing under oar.
But there was no doubt of what he was seeing. Belisarius was not a seaman, but he could tell the difference between a warship and a cargo vessel at a glance. The twelve vessels whose masts he could see, perhaps ten miles away, were obviously fighting craft. And he had enough experience, with perhaps a minute's study, to be able to distinguish the upperstructure of an Axumite warship from a Malwa galley.
"They're ours, all right," he muttered happily. "No doubt about it. But-" He brought the telescope back to the lead ship in the oncoming flotilla. There it was again. Something glinting.
He pulled the telescope away from his eye, frowning. Not worried, simply puzzled. "There's something odd-"
Maurice nodded. "You spotted it too? Something shining on and off, on the lead ship?" The chiliarch's eyes fixed on the horizon. "I saw it myself. First thing I spotted, in fact. Still haven't been able to figure out what it is. Might be a mirror, I suppose, if Antonina wanted to signal-"
Both men, simultaneously, realized the truth. And both, simultaneously, burst into laughter.
"Well, of course!" shouted Maurice gaily. "She's Venus, isn't she? Naturally she's got the biggest damn brass tits in the world!"
Belisarius said nothing coherent, until he stopped leaping about in a manner which was halfway between a drunken jig and a war dance. Then, before the astonished eyes of the cataphract bodyguards who had finally puffed their way onto the roof, the strategos of the Roman Empire and the commander of its finest army-normally as cool as ice in the face of the enemy-began taunting the distant Malwa troops like an eight-year-old boy in a schoolyard.
"That's my lady! That's my lady!" was the only one of those expressions which was not so gross, so obscene, so foul, so vile, and so vulgar, that Satan's minions would have fled in horror, taloned paws clasped over bat-ugly ears.
In the hours which followed, as Maurice and Vasudeva organized the escape from Charax, Belisarius paid no attention to the doings of his army.
There was no need for him to do so, of course. The plans for the escape had been made weeks before Charax was even seized. Ever since the Romans had taken the city, a large portion of the soldiers had been working like beavers to get ready for departure. The cargo ships were loaded with provisions. The city was mined for final destruction. All that remained to be done was drive out the horses, collect the civilians, and organize the fighting retreat back to the docks.
The horses were driven out within the first two hours. Released from their holding corrals near the docks, the panicked creatures were driven through broken streets toward the Malwa lines. It was a task which the Roman soldiers carried out with reluctance but, perhaps for that reason, as quickly as possible.
Most of the horses would die, they knew. Many would be killed by the Malwa themselves, either because they were mistaken for a cavalry charge or simply from being struck by stray missiles or grenades. Others would break their legs clambering through the rubble. Most of the horses who escaped the city, except for those captured by the Malwa, would probably die of starvation in the desert and swamps beyond. And even those horses which found themselves in the relative safety of Malwa captivity would, in all likelihood, be eaten by the Malwa troops as they themselves became desperate for food.
But the only alternative was to destroy them along with the city. There was absolutely no way to load them aboard the cargo ships. Transporting large numbers of horses by sea was a difficult enough task, under the best of circumstances. It would be impossible for an army making a hurried escape under enemy fire. Given the alternatives, the Romans would drive the horses out. Some would survive in the desert, after all, long enough to be captured by bedouin.
So, at least, Belisarius had explained the matter to his troops. And, so far as it went, the explanation was not dishonest. But the general's ultimate reason for the choice had not been humanitarian. When he needed to be, Belisarius could be as ruthless as any man alive. He knew full well that as soon as Link discovered that enemy warships were approaching Charax, it would understand-finally-the full extent of Belisarius' plan. At which point Link would order an all-out, frenzied assault on Charax, driving the Malwa troops forward as if they were beasts themselves. Stampeding herds of horses, meeting those incoming human herds, would create as much confusion as possible-confusion which would delay the Malwa advance, and give the escaping Romans that much greater a chance to save their own lives.
It took even less time to organize the evacuation of the civilians. The civilians were all women. There had been a handful of male Persian civilians when the Romans took the city. Within a day, after the women told their tales, they had been executed along with the Malwa soldiers with whom they had collaborated.
The female civilians had been warned days in advance, and now were being rounded up. But there was hardly any "rounding up" to do. Since the Romans had arrived and freed them from Malwa subjugation, none of Charax's women had strayed more than a few yards away from a Roman soldier at any time of the day or night. That was from their own choice, not coercion. They had been like half-drowned kittens, desperately clutching a log for survival.
As poor women thrust into such a wretched state have done throughout history, the survivors of Malwa Charax had become camp followers of the Roman army. Depending on their age, appearance, and temperament, they had become concubines, cooks, laundresses, nurses-more often than not, all of those combined. And if their current status was dismal, by abstract standards, it seemed like a virtual paradise to them.
The Roman soldiers, crude as they might be, were rarely brutal to their women. Belisarius' soldiers, at least. Other Roman armies might have been. But, between Belisarius' discipline-to which they had long been accustomed-and their own horror at Malwa bestiality, the soldiers had conducted themselves in a manner which might almost be called chivalrous. So long, of course, as the term "chivalrous" is understood to include: vulgarity; coarse humor; the unthinking assumption that the women would feed them, clean up after them and do the washing; and, needless to say, an instant readiness to copulate using any means short of outright rape.
In truth, the social position of most of the women was no worse than it had been before the Malwa invasion. More licentious, true. But there was this by way of compensation: the new men in their lives had proven themselves to be tough enough to give those women a real chance for survival. That is no small thing, in the vortex of a raging war. Belisarius, through his officers, had already told the women that they would be reunited with whatever families they might still have. But, not to his surprise, the majority had made clear that they would just as soon remain camp followers of his army-wherever it went.