The Tide of Victory

"Not much," mumbled Sittas, waving what was left of the chowpatti. An instant later, that fragment joined its fellows in his maw. Once he finished swallowing, Sittas was able to speak more coherently.

"Only real problem was the organ guns. A few places, here and there, they managed to put together a little line of them. Firing at once, that makes for a pretty ferocious volley. Killed and injured probably more of my men than everything else put together."

Despite the grim words, Sittas was still exuding good cheer. Which became still cheerier with the next words, which were downright savage:

"Of course, that ended soon enough. Once my cataphracts made clear that there'd be no quarter given to organ gun crews, the rest of them left the damned gadgets lying where they were and scampered off with all the others. Tried to, at least."

Belisarius started to speak, but Sittas waved him silent. "Oh, do be still! Yes, we took as many prisoners as possible. We're already starting to shepherd the sorry bastards to the south. Tame as sheep, they are. You'll have plenty more men to add to your labor gangs. At least five thousand, I'd say."

Belisarius nodded. Then, resuming his study of the map which depicted the complex details of his inner line of fortifications, he said: "We'll need them. The civilians need a rest, as hard as they've been working. So do the prisoners we took earlier."

Sittas laughed. "From what I've been told, those civilians of yours will need as many guards to keep them from working as you need to keep the prisoners at it."

Maurice echoed the laugh. "Not far from the truth, that. Once they sized up the new situation, the Malwa civilians—"

"Punjabis," interrupted Belisarius forcefully. "It's a war of liberation now, Maurice. Those people are Punjabi—not Malwa."

Maurice nodded cheerfully, accepting the correction without quarrel. "Punjabis, right. Anyway, once they saw what was happening, they became the fiercest Belisarius loyalists you could ask for. Their necks are on the chopping block along with ours, and they know it perfectly well—and know the Malwa ax better than we do."

"What about the prisoners?" asked Sittas. The casual way in which he reached for another chowpatti suggested he was not too concerned with the answer. "Any trouble there?"

Gregory shrugged. "Since Abbu and his scouts aren't much use in the siege warfare we're starting, the general put them to work guarding the Malwa prisoners."

Sittas choked humor, spitting pieces of chowpatti across the table. "Ha! Not much chance of any prisoner rebellion, then. Not with bedouin watching them!"

For all the cruel truth which lurked beneath those words, Belisarius couldn't help but smile. Abbu and his Arabs had made as clear as possible to the Malwa under their guard that the penalty for rebellion—even insubordination—would be swift and sure. As much as anything, Abbu had explained to their officers, because bedouin hated to do any work beyond fighting and trading.

Far easier to behead a man than to do his work for him, after all. A point which the old man had demonstrated by beheading, on the spot, the one Malwa officer who had raised a protest.

Thereafter, the Malwa prisoners had set to work with a will—and none more so than the officers who commanded them. Abbu had also explained that he was a firm believer in the chain of command. Far easier to behead a single officer, after all, than twenty men in his charge. A point which the old man had demonstrated by beheading, the next day, the Malwa officer whose unit had done a pitiful day's work.

Under other circumstances, Belisarius might have restrained Abbu's ferocious methods. But siege warfare was the grimmest and cruelest sort of war, and now that he had put the arch stone of his entire daring campaign into place, he would take no chances of seeing it slip. So long as Belisarius could hold the area within the fork of the Indus and the Chenab—the "Iron Triangle," as his men were beginning to call it—the Malwa would have no choice but to retreat from the Sind entirely. Belisarius would be in the best possible position to launch another war of maneuver once his forces recuperated and were refitted. He would have bypassed the Sukkur bottleneck entirely and opened the Punjab for the next campaign. The Punjab, the "land of five rivers," where all the advantages of terrain would lie with him and not his enemy. And he would have saved untold Roman lives in the process—even Malwa lives, when all was said and done.

If he could hold the Iron Triangle long enough to relieve the pressure on Khusrau and Ashot at Sukkur and allow a reliable supply route to become established on the Indus, using Menander's little fleet of steam-powered warships to clear the way.