The Dance of Time

"Be silent!" Khusrau roared again. This time, thankfully, it was the Spandiyad who was the recipient of his imperial glare. "We are not at war with the Kushans," he stated. "All of the west Punjab to the Hindu Kush. We will stop once we have reached the passes into the Vale of Peshawar held by our allies the Kushans."

The emperor glanced down at the half-crumpled pile of messages. "As all have now agreed," he finished, more softly.

When he looked up at Maurice, he seemed considerably calmer. "Will your gunships provide us with protection from the Malwa ironclads?"

Maurice shook his head. Not angrily, but firmly nonetheless. "We can't, Your Majesty. I'm sorry, but we just can't. Neither the Justinian nor the

Victrix is a match for them. Not even one of them, much less the two they have stationed on the Indus. That's why we laid the mine fields across the rivers. Once you move north of those minefields, you'll be on your own. I recommend you keep your army away from the rivers. Far enough away to be out of range of the ironclads' guns."

Khusrau didn't seem surprised by the response. Or angry, for that matter. He simply grunted softly and turned away.

"To the Hindu Kush!" he bellowed, striding toward the exit of the bunker.

Within a minute, they were all gone.

"Thank God," muttered Maurice. "Can't stand Persians. Never have liked the arrogant bastards. Think their shit doesn't stink."

"It certainly does,

" sniffed Anna. She'd happened to be present in the bunker, visiting her husband, when the Persian delegation arrived. "I've visited their camps, on the way up here. Their sanitary practices would cause a hyena to tremble."

Maurice chuckled. "Worse than the natives here?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact," Anna replied stiffly. "Even before I started governessing them. Today, the Punjabi habits are much better. A week from now—well, a month—there'll be no comparison at all."

Maurice didn't doubt it, although he thought Anna's estimate of one month was wildly optimistic. The difficulty wasn't so much native resistance—perhaps oddly, the Punjabis seemed quite taken by their new "Governess"—as it was the sheer scale of the problem.

Malwa armies were always notorious for their rough habits with local populations. The huge Malwa army dug in to the north of the Triangle was behaving especially badly, as packed in as those soldiers were and suffering all the miseries and frustrations of siege warfare. The Iron Triangle had become a refuge for untold thousands of Punjabis in the area. They came across the rivers, on small skiffs or even swimming through the minefields.

By now, the population density of the Triangle was almost that of a huge city. Worse, really, since most of the land area had to be left available for farming. The Triangle got much of its supplies from the Sind, brought up by the river boats, but it still had to provide the bulk of its own food. Controlling the raw sewage produced by such a population was enough to make Hercules' legendary cleaning of the Augean Stables look like an afternoon's easy chore.

"You'll see," said Anna.

* * *

"There'll be enough, General," said Ashot. "Just barely."

Belisarius nodded, after he finished wiping his face with a cloth. That was to clean off the dust, mostly. Despite the heat, the Thar was so dry that sweat didn't have time to really accumulate.

He was careful not to let his worry show. This was the third well they'd reached, and all of them had had just enough water—just barely—for his expedition. They had almost no reserve left at all. If even one of the wells was empty, or near-empty...

But there was no point in fretting over the matter. The long war with the Malwa was nearing its end, and there remained only to drive home the lance—or die in the attempt. It was in the hands of Fate, now.

"Let's be off," he said. He glanced at the horizon, where the dawn was beginning. "There's still enough time for three hours' travel before the sun's up high enough to force us to camp for the day."

"I feel like a bat," complained Ashot. "Live by night, sleep by day."

He said it fairly cheerily, though. Ashot had plenty of experience with desert campaigns, and knew perfectly well that no sane man traveled through an area like the Thar when the sun was up. Like all the cataphracts on the expedition, he was wearing loose-fitting Arab-style robes instead of armor—the only difference being that Ashot knew how to put them on without help from one of Abbu's men.

* * *

"Something's happening," Kujulo stated. Slowly, he swept the telescope across the terrain below the pass. "I'm not sure what, but there's too much movement down there."

"Are they preparing another attack?" asked one of the other Kushans.

"After the way we butchered the last one? Doubt it," grunted Kujulo. "No, I think they're pulling out some of their forces. And I think—not sure about this at all—that there's some sort of troop movement in the far distance. But it doesn't seem to be reinforcements."