The Dance of Time

"Yes. Well."

He cleared his throat again. "I'll be going, now."

* * *

When he reached the landing of the stairs that led down to the inner sanctum, he was puffing heavily from the climb. Not for the first time, wishing he could make the trip in a palanquin carried by slaves.

Impossible, of course. Not only was the staircase much too narrow, but Link would have forbidden it anyway.

Well, not exactly. Link would allow slaves to come down to the inner sanctum. It had done so, now and then, for an occasional special purpose.

But then the Khmer assassins killed them, so what was the point? The emperor would still have to climb back up.

* * *

He was in a foul mood, therefore, when he reached his private audience chamber and was finally able to relax on his throne.

After hearing what his aides had to report, his mood grew fouler still.

"They blew up the tunnels again?" Angrily, he slapped the armrest of the throne. "That's enough! Tear down every building in that quarter of the city, within three hundred yards of Damodara's palace. Raze it all to the ground! Then dig up everything. They can't have placed mines everywhere."

He took a deep breath. "And have the commander of the project executed. Whoever he is."

"He did not survive the explosion, Your Majesty."

Skandagupta slapped the armrest again. "Do as I command!"

* * *

His aides hurried from the chamber, before the emperor's wrath could single out one of them to substitute for the now-dead commander. Despite the great rewards, serving Skandagupta had always been a rather risky proposition. If not as coldly savage as his father, he was also less predictable and given to sudden whims.

In times past, those whims had often produced great largesse for his aides.

No longer. The escape of Damodara's family, combined with Damodara's rebellion, had unsettled Skandagupta in ways that the Andhran and Persian and Roman wars had never done. For weeks, his whims had only been murderous.

"This is madness," murmured one aide to another. He allowed himself that indiscretion, since they were brothers. "What difference does it make, if they stay in hiding? Unless Damodara can breach the walls—if he manages to get to Kausambi at all—what does it matter? Just a few more rats in a cellar somewhere, a little bigger than most."

They were outside the palace now, out of range of any possible spies or eavesdroppers. Gloomily, the aide's brother agreed. "All the emperor's doing is keeping the city unsettled. Now, the reaction when we destroy an entire section..."

He shook his head. "Madness, indeed."

But since they were now walking past the outer wall of the palace, the conversation ended. No fear of eavesdroppers here, either. But the long row of ragged heads on pikes—entire rotting bodies on stakes, often enough—made it all a moot point.

Obey or die, after all, is not hard to understand.

* * *

Abbu returned the next day, with his Arab scouts.

"Ashot stayed behind, with the Rajputs," he explained tersely. "Just keep out of the sun and don't move any more than you must. They'll be here tomorrow. Thousands of camels, carrying enough water to fill a lake. We won't even lose the horses."

Belisarius laughed. "What an ignominious ending to my dramatic gesture!"

Now that salvation was at hand, Abbu's normally pessimistic temperament returned.

"Do not be so sure, general! Rajputs are cunning beasts. It may be a trap. The water, poisoned."

That made Belisarius laugh again. "Seven thousand Rajputs need poisoned water to kill five hundred Romans?"

"You have a reputation," Abbu insisted.

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Framed

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Chapter 31

The Punjab,

North of the Iron Triangle

"This is the craziest thing I've ever seen," muttered Maurice. "Even for Persians."

Menander shook his head. Not because he disagreed with Maurice, but simply in...

Disbelief?

No, not that. Sitting on his horse on a small knoll with a good view of the battlefield, Menander could see the insane charge that Emperor Khusrau had ordered against the Malwa line.

He could also see the fortifications of that line itself, and the guns that were spewing forth destruction. He didn't even want to think about the carnage that must be happening in front of them.

He could remember a time in his life when he would have thought that furious charge might carry the day. However insane it was, no one could doubt the courage and the tenacity of the thousands of Persian heavy cavalrymen who were hurling themselves and their armored horses against the Malwa. But, even though he was still a young man, Menander had now seen enough of gunpowder warfare to know that the Persian effort was hopeless. If the Malwa had been low on ammunition, things might have been different. But the fortifications they'd erected on the west bank of the Indus to guard their flank against just such an attack could be easily re-supplied by barges crossing the river. In fact, he could see two such barges being rowed across the Indus right now.