The Dance of Time

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 major domo. "And be quick about it. I am not in a good mood."

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Framed

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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.

Maurice glared at him, still pointing at the west wall. "Why are you here, hissing at me—instead of fighting to take the land you claim is yours?"

Shahrbaraz started to respond angrily, but the emperor waved him down.

"Be silent!" Khusrau commanded. He gave Maurice a fine glare of his own. "May I then assume that you will not object if I launch my own offensive?"

"Not in the least."

"And you will not object if we retain the land we conquer?"

Maurice snatched up the messages on the center table and shook them at the emperor. Those were copies of the exchange between Belisarius and Damodara that had taken place days earlier. "How many times do I need to show this to you? Your Majesty. Whatever you can take west of the river is yours. As far north as you can manage to get."

"To the Hindu Kush!" shouted one of the other sahrdaran. Maurice couldn't remember his name, but he was a prominent member of the house of the Spandiyads.

By a mighty struggle, Maurice managed not to sneer. "I'd recommend you stop at the foot of the Hindu Kush. Keeping in mind that King Kungas counts the Vale of Peshawar as part of it. Everything north of Kohat Pass and west of Margalla Pass belongs to him, he says. But if you think you can roll over the Kushans as well as the Malwa, so be it."

"And when have the Aryans cared—"