"That is only fair, Roman, after all you've done for the Aryans."
Kurush sprang off the rock and strode over to Belisarius. He jabbed his chin toward the south, using his stiff Persian-cut beard as a pointer. "As soon as he gets the word, the emperor will begin retreating toward Babylon. He's on the verge of doing it, anyway, so it won't seem odd at all." Kurush scowled. "The Malwa have been pressing him very hard."
Belisarius eyed the sahrdaran. The Roman general had no difficulty interpreting Kurush's frowning face. He could well imagine the casualties which Emperor Khusrau's soldiers had taken over the past months. While Belisarius had been maneuvering with Damodara in the Zagros mountains all through the spring, Khusrau had been keeping the huge main army of the Malwa invasion penned up in the Tigris-Euphrates delta. The task would have been difficult enough, even without—
He decided to broach the awkward subject.
"Has the rebellion—?"
Khusrau's frown vanished instantly. The Persian nobleman barked a laugh.
"The head of the emperor's half-brother has been the main ornament of his pavilion for two weeks, now." Kurush grimaced. "Damn thing was a mass of flies, by the time I left. Stinky."
His good humor returned. "Ormazd's rebellion has been crushed.
Belisarius let no sign of his distaste show. He had never been fond of "punitive action" against enemy civilians, even before he met Aide and was introduced to future standards of warmaking.
But he did not fault Khusrau. By the standards of the day, in truth, driving the population of Hira out of the city before destroying it was rather humane. The Lakhmids had been Persian vassals before they gave their allegiance to the Malwa invaders. Most Persian emperors—most Roman ones, for that matter, including Theodora—would have repaid that rebellion by ordering the city's people burned inside it.
And let's not get too romantic about the Geneva Convention and the supposedly civilized standards of future wars, either, remarked Aide. They won't prevent entire cities being destroyed, with their populations. Purely for "strategic reasons," of course. What difference does that make, to mangled children in the ruins of Coventry? Or to thousands of Korean slave laborers incinerated at Hiroshima?
Kurush was pointing with his beard again, this time to the west.
"The emperor has instructed me to defend Ctesiphon, while he retreats to Babylon. I will have ten thousand men. That should be enough to hold our capital city, for a few months. Damodara does not have siege guns."
Kurush turned his eyes to Belisarius. There was nothing in the Persian's gaze beyond a matter-of-fact acceptance of reality.
"In the end, of course," he said calmly, "we will be doomed. Unless your thrust strikes home."
Belisarius smiled crookedly. "It is said that an army marches on its belly, you know. I will do my best to drive a lance into the great gut of Malwa, once you have drawn the shield away."
Kurush chuckled. "`An army marches on its belly,'" he repeated. "That's clever! I don't recognize the saying, though. Who came up with it?"
Good move, genius, said Aide sourly. This will be entertaining, watching you explain to a sixth-century Persian how you came to quote Napoleon.
Belisarius ignored the quip. "I heard it from a Hun. One of my mercenaries, during my second campaign in the trans-Danube. I was rather stunned, actually, to find such a keen grasp of logistics in the mind of a barbarian. But it just goes to show—"
Father of lies, father of lies. It's a good thing my lips are sealed, so to speak. The stories I could tell about you! They'd make even Procopius'
* * *
Lord Damodara leaned back in his chair, studying Narses' scowling face.
"So what is it that bothers you, exactly?" he asked the eunuch.
"Everything!" snapped Narses. The old Roman glared around the interior of the pavilion, as if searching its unadorned walls for some nook or cranny in which truth lay hidden.
"None of what Belisarius is doing makes any sense," stated Narses. "Nothing. Not from the large to the small."
