"All. right," puffed Belisarius. "You're on your own again. Justinian wants to know how the hand grips work also."
"They work just fine," snapped Agathius. To prove the point, he set off down the corridor at a pace which had Belisarius and Maurice hurrying to catch up-puffing all the while. Agathius seemed to take a malicious glee in the sound.
At the entrance to his chambers, Agathius paused. He glanced up at Belisarius, wincing a bit and clearing his throat.
"Uh-"
"I'll speak to her," assured Belisarius. "I'm sure she'll listen to reason once-"
The door was suddenly jerked open. Agathius' young wife Sudaba was standing there, glaring.
"What is this insane business?" she demanded furiously. "I insist on accompanying my husband!" An instant later, she was planted in front of Belisarius, shaking her little fist under his nose. "Roman tyrant! Monstrous despot!"
Hastily, Maurice seized the wheelchair and maneuvered Agathius into the room, leaving Belisarius-Rome's magister militum per orientem, Great Commander of the Allied Army, honorary vurzurgan in the land of Aryans-to deal alone with Agathius' infuriated teenage wife.
"A command responsibility if I ever saw one," Maurice muttered.
Agathius nodded eagerly. "Just so!" Piously: "After all, it was his decision to keep the baggage train and camp followers to a minimum. It's not as if we insisted that the top officers had to set a personal example."
"Autocrat! Beast! Despoiler! I won't stand for it!"
"Must be nice," mused Maurice, "to have one of those meek and timid Persian girls for a wife."
But Agathius did not hear the remark. His two-year-old son had arrived, toddling proudly on his own feet, and had been swept up into his father's arms.
"Daddy go bye-bye?" the boy asked uncertainly.
"Yes," replied Agathius. "But I'll be back. I promise."
The boy gurgled happily as Agathius started tickling him. "Daddy beat the Malwa!" he proclaimed proudly.
"Beat 'em flat!" his father agreed. His eyes moved to the great open window, staring toward the east. The Zagros mountains were there; and then, the Persian plateau; and then-the Indus valley, where the final accounts would be settled.
"They'll give me my legs back," he growled. "The price of them, at least. Which I figure is Emperor Skandagupta's blood in the dust."
Maurice clucked. "Such an intemperate man you are, Agathius. I'd think a baker's son would settle for a mere satrap."
"Skandagupta, and nothing less," came the firm reply. "I'll see his empty eyes staring at the sky. I swear I will."
* * *
When Belisarius rejoined them, some time later, the Roman general's expression was a bit peculiar. Bemused, perhaps-like a stunned ox. Quite unlike his usual imperturbable self.
Agathius cleared his throat. "It's not as if I didn't give you fair warning."
Belisarius shook his head. The ox, trying to shake away the confusion.
"How in the name of God did she get me to agree?" he wondered. Then, sighing: "And now I'll have Antonina to deal with! She'll break my head when I tell her she's got another problem to handle on shipboard."
Maurice grinned. "I imagine Ousanas will have a few choice words, too. Sarcasm, you may recall, is not entirely foreign to his nature. And he is the military commander of the naval expedition. Will be, at least, once the Ethiopians finish putting their fleet together."
Belisarius winced. His eyes moved to the huge table at the center of the chamber. Agathius had already spread out the map and the logistics papers which he had brought with him to the conference. They seemed a mere outcrop in the mountain of maps, scrolls, codices and loose sheets of vellum which practically spilled from every side of the table.
"That's the whole business?" he asked.
Agathius nodded. "Yes-and it's just as much of a mess as it looks. Pure chaos!" He glowered at the gigantic pile. "Who was that philosopher who claimed everything originated from atoms? Have to ask Anastasius. Whoever it was, he was a simpleminded optimist, let me tell you. If he'd ever tried to organize the logistics for a combined land and sea campaign that involved a hundred and twenty thousand men-and that's just the soldiers! — he would've realized that everything turns into atoms also."
"Thank God," muttered Belisarius, eyeing the mess with pleasure. "Something simple and straightforward to deal with!"
* * *
In the event, Antonina was not furious. She dismissed the entire matter with an insouciant shrug, as she poured herself a new goblet of pomegranate-flavored water. Belisarius had introduced her to the Persian beverage, and Antonina found it a blessed relief from the ever-present wine of the Roman liquid diet. Especially when she was suffering from a hangover.
The goblet full, she took it in hand and leaned back into her divan. "Sudaba and I get along. It'll be a bit crowded, of course, with her sharing my cabin along with Koutina." For a moment, suspicion came into her eyes. "You didn't agree to letting her bring the boy?"
Belisarius straightened proudly. "There I held the line!"
Aide flashed an image into his mind. Hector on the walls of Troy. Belisarius found himself half-choking from amusement combined with chagrin.
Antonina eyed her husband quizzically. Belisarius waved a weak hand. "Nothing. Just Aide. He's being sarcastic and impertinent again."
"Blessed jewel!" exclaimed a voice. Sitting on another divan in his favored lotus position, Ousanas cast baleful eyes on Belisarius. "I shudder to think what would become of us," he growled, "without the Talisman of God to keep you sane."
Antonina sniffed. "My husband does not suffer from delusions of grandeur."
"Certainly not!" agreed Ousanas. "How could he, with a mysterious creature from the future always present in his mind? Ready-blessed jewel! — to puncture inflated notions at a moment's notice."
Ousanas took a sip from his own goblet. Good red wine, this-no silly child's drink for him. "Not that he has any reason for such grandiosity, of course, when you think about it. What has Belisarius actually accomplished, these past few years?"
The aqabe tsentsen of the kingdom of Axum-empire, now, since the Ethiopians had incorporated southern Arabia into their realm-waved his own hand. But there was nothing weak about that gesture. It combined the certainty of the sage with the authority of the despot.
"Not much," he answered his own question. "The odd Malwa army defeated here and there, entirely through the use of low-minded stratagems. The occasional rebellion incited within the Malwa empire itself." His sniff was more flamboyant than Antonina's, nostrils fleering in contempt. "A treasure stolen from Malwa and then given away to Maratha rebels-a foolish gesture, that! — and a princess smuggled out of captivity. Bah! There's hardly a village headman in my native land between the great lakes who could not claim as much."
Antonina grinned. As a rule, disrespect toward her husband was guaranteed to bring a hot response. But from Ousanas-
Axum's aqabe tsentsen was not Ethiopian himself. Ousanas had been born and bred in the heartland of Africa far to the south of the highlands. But he had spent years as the dawazz to Prince Eon, a post whose principal duty was to nip royal self-aggrandizement in the bud. Eon was now the negusa nagast of Axum, the "King of Kings," and Ousanas had become the most powerful official in his realm. But the former hunter and former slave still had his old habits.
And, besides, they were close friends. So close, in fact, that Ousanas was the most frequently cited "lover" of the huge male harem which Antonina was reputed to maintain. By now, of course-after Antonina had played a central role in crushing the Malwa-instigated Nika rebellion in Constantinople, reestablished imperial authority in Egypt and the Levant, and led the naval expedition which had rescued Belisarius and his army after their destruction of the Malwa logistics base at Charax-not even the scandal-mongering Greek aristocracy gave more than token respect to the slanders. The Malwa espionage service had long since realized that the rumors had been fostered by Antonina herself, in order to divert their attention from her key role in her husband's strategy.