Agathius shifted his weight on his crutches. "Your Majesty," he said mildly, "I just arrived here from Barbaricum. I have no idea beyond the sketchiest telegraph messages-which certainly didn't mention these issues-what the general has planned in terms of a postwar distribution of the spoils. But I'm quite sure he has no intention of denying the Iranians their just due."
Another surge of muttered growls came. The phrase he'd better not! seemed to be the gist of most of them.
"He'd better not!" roared Khusrau. His clenched fist pounded the heavy armrest of his throne. Three times, synchronized with bet-ter-not.
"I'm sure the thought has never crossed his mind," said Agathius firmly. He contemplated a sudden collapse on the floor, but decided that would be histrionic. He wasn't that crippled, after all. Besides, he'd said the words with such complete conviction that even the angry and suspicious Persians seemed a bit mollified.
And why not? The statement was quite true. Agathius was as certain as he was of the sunrise that the thought of swindling the Persians out of their rightful share of the postwar spoils had not, in fact, "crossed" Belisarius' mind.
Been planted there like a sapling, yes. Been studied and examined from every angle, to be sure. Weighed, pondered, appraised, considered, measured, gauged, adjudged, evaluated, assessed-for a certainty.
Crossed, no.
* * *
Belisarius studied the telegram.
"Pretty blistering language, sir," Calopodius said apologetically, as if he were somehow responsible for the intemperate tone of the message.
"Um." Belisarius scanned over it quickly again. "Well, I agree that the verbs 'cheat' and 'rob' are excessive. And there was certainly no need to bring up my ancestry. Still and all, it could be worse. If you look at it closely-well, squint-this is really more in the way of a protest than a threat."
He dropped the Persian emperor's message onto the table. "And, as it happens, all quite unnecessary. I have no intentions of 'cheating' the Persians out of their fair share of the spoils."
He turned to Maurice, smiling. "Be sure to tell Khusrau that, when he arrives."
Maurice scowled back at him. "You'll be gone, naturally."
"Of course!" said Belisarius gaily. "Before dawn, tomorrow, I'm off across the Thar."
* * *
Before Maurice could respond, Anna stalked into the headquarters bunker.
She spoke with no preamble. "Your own latrines and medical facilities are adequate, General. But those of the Punjabi natives are atrocious. I insist that something be done about it."
Belisarius bestowed the same gleeful smile on her. "Absolutely! I place you in charge. What's a good title, Maurice?"
The chiliarch's scowl darkened. "Who cares? How about 'Mistress of the Wogs'?"
Anna hissed.
Belisarius clucked his tongue. "Thracian peasant. No, that won't do at all."
He turned to Calopodius. "Exercise your talent for rhetoric here, youngster."
Calopodius scratched his chin. "Well. . I can think of several appropriate technical titles, but the subtleties of the Greek language involved wouldn't mean anything to the natives. So why not just call her the Governess?"
"That's silly," said Maurice.
"My husband," said Anna.
"Done," said Belisarius.
* * *
A full hour before sunrise, Belisarius and his expedition left the Triangle. To maintain the secrecy of the operation, they were ferried south for several miles before being set ashore. By now, Roman patrols had scoured both banks of the Indus so thoroughly that no enemy spies could be hidden anywhere.
As always with water transport, the horses were the biggest problem. The rest was easy enough, since Belisarius was bringing no artillery beyond mortars and half a dozen of the rocket chariots.
By mid-morning, they were completely out of sight of the river, heading east into the wasteland.
* * *
At approximately the same time, Sati started her own procession out of the Malwa camp to the north. There was no attempt at secrecy here, of course. What can be done-even then, with difficulty-by less than a thousand men, cannot possibly be done by thirty thousand. So huge was that mass of men, in fact, that it took the rest of the day before all of them had filed from the camps and started up the road.
Preceded only by a cavalry screen and one Ye-tai battalion, the Great Lady herself led the way. Since the infantry would set the pace of the march, she would ride in the comfort of a large howdah suspended between two elephants.
The "howdah" was really more in the way of a caravan or a large sedan than the relatively small conveyance the word normally denoted. The chaundoli, as it was called, was carried on heavy poles suspended between two elephants, much the way a litter is carried between two men. Its walls and roof were made of thin wood, with three small windows on each side. The walls and roof were covered with grass woven onto canes and lashed to the exterior. The grass would be periodically soaked with water during the course of the journey, which would keep the interior cool as the breeze struck the chaundoli.
Since none of the Great Lady's special bodyguards or assassins were horsemen, those of them who could not be fit into her own chaundoli rode in a second one just behind her. They could have marched, of course. But the thing which possessed the body of the Great Lady had no desire to risk its special assistants becoming fatigued. Link didn't expect to need them, but the situation had become so chaotic that even its superhuman capacity for calculation was being a bit overwhelmed.
* * *
Lord Samudra watched Great Lady Sati's army depart from the great complex of fortresses and camps which had by then been erected facing the Roman lines in the Iron Triangle. Come evening, he returned to his own headquarters-which was, in fact, built much the same way as a chaundoli except the walls were of heavy timber. The water-soaked grass wasn't quite as effective a cooling mechanism with such a massive and stationary structure. But it was still far superior to the sweltering heat of a tent or the sort of buried bunkers the Roman generals used.
Idiots, they were, in Samudra's opinion. The only reason they needed bunkers was because of their flamboyant insistence on remaining close to the fighting lines. Samudra's own headquarters was several miles beyond the farthest possible range of Roman cannons or rockets.
"Have more water poured on the grass," Samudra commanded his majordomo. "And be quick about it. I am not in a good mood."
Chapter 27
The Iron Triangle
At least Emperor Khusrau had enough sense to leave his Persian army on the west bank of the Indus, when he came storming into Maurice's bunker on the Iron Triangle. In point of fact, Maurice wouldn't have allowed him to bring them across-and he, not the Persians, controlled the rivers. The Iranians had nothing to match the Roman ironclad and fireship.
Still, even Khusrau alone-in his current mood-would have been bad enough. Surrounded as he was with enough sahrdaran to pack the bunker, he was even worse. And the fact that Maurice was sure the Persian emperor was mostly playing to the audience didn't improve his own mood at all.
"— not be cheated!"
Maurice had had enough. "Cheated?" he demanded. "Who is 'cheating you,' damnation?" He had just enough control of his temper left to add: "Your Majesty."
Maurice pointed to the west wall of the bunker. "Take as much as you can over there, for all I care! But don't expect me to do your fighting for you!"
Several of the sahrdaran hissed angrily, one of them very loudly. That was a sahrdaran in his early forties whose name was Shahrbaraz. He was the oldest son of the leader of the Karin family, which was one of the seven great sahrdaran houses and perhaps the most influential after the Suren.