"Tell me something. When the time comes, do you intend to hurl your soldiers at the walls of Peroz-Shapur?" He almost-not quitesneered. "You don't have too many Ye-tai left, either, so the soldiers you'll use up like sheep at a slaughterhouse will all be Rajput."
Rana Sanga didn't rise to the bait. He simply chuckled. Damodara laughed outright.
"Not likely!" exclaimed the Malwa lord. He leaned over the table himself. The months of arduous campaigning had shrunk Damodara's belly enough that the movement was almost graceful.
Damodara's finger traced the Tigris river, from Ctesiphon upstream toward Armenia.
"I won't go near Peroz-Shapur." Another laugh. "Any more than I'd enter a tiger's cage. I won't try to besiege Ctesiphon either. I'll simply use the Tigris to keep my army supplied and move north into Assyria. From there, I can strike into Anatolia-or Armenia-while most of Khusrau's army is tied up fighting our main force on the southern Euphrates."
He leaned back, exuding self-satisfaction. "Belisarius will have no choice," pronounced Damodara. "All that work he's done to fortify Peroz-Shapur will be wasted. He'll have to come out and face me, somewhere in the field."
Narses' eyes left Damodara and settled on Rana Sanga. The Rajput king nodded his agreement with Damodara's explication.
"Ah," said Narses. "An excellent strategy. I am enlightened.Except -why hasn't Belisarius figured the same thing out himself? The man has never, to put it mildly, been accused of stupidity."
Silence. Damodara squirmed a bit in his chair. Sanga maintained his usual stiff composure, but the very rigidity of the posture indicated his own discomfort.
Narses sneered. "Ah, yes. You've wondered that yourselves, haven't you? Now and again, at least."
The eunuch relinquished the sneer, within a few seconds. He was too canny to risk offending the two men across the table from him. And, if the truth be told, he had a genuine respect for them.
"Let's leave that broad problem, for a moment, and move on to some seemingly minor questions. Of these, there are three that stand out."
Narses held up a thumb. "First. Why has Belisarius, since the very beginning of this campaign in the Zagros, always been willing to let us move north?"
Narses nodded toward the Rajput. "As Rana Sanga was the first to point out, many weeks ago." He gave another nod, this time at Damodara. "As you yourself remarked at the time, Lord, that makes no sense. It should be the other way around. He should be fighting like a tiger when we move north, and put up only token resistance when we maneuver to the south. That way, he would be keeping us from threatening Assyria."
Silence.
Narses held up his forefinger alongside the thumb.
"The second small problem. In all the skirmishes we've fought over the past months-even during the battle at the pass when his situation was desperate-Belisarius has never used his mercenaries.Why? He's got two thousand of the Goth barbarians, but he handles them like they were the only jewels in his possession."
Sanga cleared his throat. "Doesn't trust them, I imagine." The Rajput king scowled. "I don't trust mercenaries either, Narses."
The eunuch snorted. "Of course you don't!" Narses slapped his hand down on the table. The sharp sound seemed to fill the confines of the tent.
"Belisarius has never trusted mercenaries," hissed Narses. The eunuch's eyes were fixed on Sanga like a serpent's on its prey. "He never has. He is well known for it, in the Roman army-which, as you know, is traditionally an army which uses mercenaries all the time. But Belisarius never uses them except when he has no choice, andthen he only uses mercenaries as auxiliaries. Hun light cavalry, for the most part."
Narses jabbed at the map. "So why would he bring two thousand Goth heavy cavalry with him, in a campaign like this one? There's nothing in this kind of campaign which would keep a mercenary's interest. No loot, no plunder. Nothing but weeks and weeks of arduous marches and countermarches, for nothing beyond a stipend."
The eunuch laughed sarcastically. "Belisarius never would have brought Goth mercenaries along with him for the good and simple reason, if no other, that he would have known they'd desert within two months. Which brings me-"
He held up a third finger.
"Point three. Whyhaven't those mercenaries deserted?" Another sarcastic, sneering laugh. "Goths are about as stupid as the horses they ride, but even horses aren't that stupid."
Narses planted both hands on the table and pushed himself against the back of his chair. For just an instant, in that posture, the small old eunuch seemed a more regal figure than the Malwa dynast and the Rajput king who faced him.
