The Dance of Time

By the next day, Damodara's army was out of the mountains and marching up the Chambal river. The Chambal was the main tributary of the Yamuna, whose junction was still five hundred miles to the north. Once they reached that junction, they'd still have three hundred miles to march down the Yamuna before reaching Kausambi.

Even with every man in his army mounted, either as cavalry or dragoons, Damodara could not hope to make faster progress than twenty miles a day—and the long march would probably go slower than that. True, now that they were out of the Vindhyas, the countryside was fertile and they could forage as they went. But his army still numbered some forty thousand men. It was simply not possible to move such a huge number of soldiers very quickly.

Six weeks, at least, it would take them to reach Kausambi. Conceivably, two months—and if they had to fight any major battles on the way, longer than that. They simply could not afford to be delayed by any of the fortresses along the way.

The first fortress they encountered on the river was deserted.

So was the next.

So was the next.

"They've heard of us, it seems," said Rana Sanga to the emperor.

"I prefer to think it's the majestic aura of my imperial presence."

"Yes, Your Majesty. Though I'm not sure I understand the difference."

Damodara smiled. "Neither do I, as it happens. You'd think I would, since I believe I'm now semi-divine. Maybe even three-quarters."

* * *

The Bihari miner straightened up from his crouch. "They're getting close, master. I think so, anyway. It's hard to tell, because of all the echoes."

The term "echoes" seemed strange to Valentinian, but he understood what the miner meant. At the first dogleg, they'd dug two short false tunnels in addition to the one that led—eventually—to the exit in the stables. What the miner was hearing were the complex resonances of the sounds being made by the Malwa miners as they neared the end of clearing away the rubble that the Romans had left behind when they blew the charges.

"Will you know when they break through?"

"Oh, yes. Even before the charges go off."

The miner grimaced as he made the last statement. As someone who had spent all of his adult life and a good portion of his childhood working beneath the earth, he had an automatic sympathy for men who would soon be crushed in a series of cave-ins. Enemies or not.

Valentinian didn't share any of his sentiments. Dead was dead. What difference did it make if it came under tons of rock and soil, the point of a lance—or just old age?

He turned to Rajiv. "Are you willing to do this? Or would you prefer it if I did?"

The young Rajput prince shrugged. "If everything works right, the charges will go off automatically, anyway. I won't have to do anything."

"'If everything works right,'" Valentinian jeered. "Nothing ever works right, boy. That's the cataphract's wisdom."

* * *

But Valentinian proved to be wrong.

When their miners finally broke through the rubble into a cleared area, two Malwa officers pushed them aside and entered the tunnel. For all the risk involved, they were both eager. Emperor Skandagupta had promised a great reward for whatever officers captured Damodara's family.

Both of them moved their torches about, illuminating the area. Then, cursed together.

"Three tunnels leading off!" snarled the superior officer. "But which is the right one?"

His lieutenant gestured with his torch to the tunnel ahead of him. "I'll explore this one, if you want. You take one of the others. We can leave some men to guard the third, until we have time to investigate it."

"As good a plan as any, I guess." The captain swiveled his head and barked some orders. Within a minute, three guards had entered the tunnel along with one of the mining engineers.

"Make a diagram of the three tunnels," he commanded the engineer. "Nothing fancy. Just something that shows us—the Emperor—what direction they lead."

He ordered the guards to remain at the head of the third tunnel, while he and the lieutenant explored the other two.

The engineer was done with his task in less than two minutes. "Nothing fancy," the man had said—and the engineer didn't want to stay there any longer than he had to. His sketch completed, he crawled back through the opening into the area that had now been cleared of the rubble left behind by the great explosions.

He straightened up with a great sense of relief.

* * *

The lieutenant spotted the booby-trap in his tunnel just in time to keep his foot from triggering the trip-wire.

His superior was less observant.

The charges in all three tunnels were wired together, of course. So the lieutenant's greater caution only gave him a split-second longer lifespan, before the tunnels collapsed. The guards at the third tunnel were just as surely crushed.

The engineer was knocked off his feet by the explosion, and then covered with the dust blown through the opening. He had just enough presence of mind to keep a grip on the sketch he'd made and protect it from harm.

* * *