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 tunnelsagain ?" 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.

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 Kungas, but simply in...

Disbelief?

No, not that. Sitting on his horse on a small knoll with a good view of the battlefield, Menander couldsee 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.

Against demoralized troops already half-ready to surrender or flee, the charge might have worked. It wouldn't work here. The morale of the Malwa army had suffered a great deal, to be sure, from their defeats over the past two years. But they were still the largest and most powerful army in the world, and their soldiers knew it.

They knew something else, too. They knew that trying to surrender to-or flee from-an assault like the Persians had launched, was impossible anyway. If they broke, they'd just get butchered.

It didn't help any, of course, that the Persians were shouting the battle cry ofCharax! as they charged.

Whether because their emperor had ordered it or because of their own fury, Menander didn't know. But he knew-and so did the Malwa soldiers manning the fortresses-that the Persians might as well have been using the battle cry ofNo Quarter.

"Let's go, lad," said Maurice quietly. "We made an appearance as observers, since Khusrau invited us.

But now that the diplomacy's done, staying any longer is just pointless. This isn't really a battle, in the first place. It's just an emperor ridding himself of troublesome noblemen."

He turned his horse and began trotting away. Menander followed.

"You think?" asked Menander.

"You've met Khusrau. Did he strike you as being as dumb as an ox?"

Menander couldn't help but smile, a little. "No. Not in the least."

"Right." Maurice jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Not even an ox would be dumb enough to think that charge might succeed."

Maurice was slandering the Persian emperor, actually. It was true that breaking the power of the sahrdaran and vurzurgan families was partof the reason Khusrau had ordered the charge. But it wasn't the only reason. It wasn't even the most important reason.

There would be no way to eliminate the great families simply through one battle, after all. Not allof their men had come to India, even leaving aside the Suren, and not allof them would die before the walls of the Malwa.

Not even most of them, in fact. Khusrau was no stranger to war, and knew perfectly well that no battle results in casualties worse than perhaps one-quarter of the men engaged, unless they get trapped, and many of those would recover from their wounds. It was amazing, really, how many men survived what, from a distance, looked like a sheer bloodbath.

There was no chance of a trap here, nor of enemy pursuit once the Persians cavalrymen finally retreated.

Many sahrdaran and vurzurgan would die this day, to be sure. But most of them wouldn't. He'd bleed the great families, but he wouldn't do more than weaken them some.

So, the emperor hadn't even stayed to watch, once he ordered the assault. Quietly, almost surreptitiously-and far enough from the Malwa lines not to be observed-he'd slipped away from his camp with two thousand of his best imperial cavalry.

Light cavalry. Over half of them Arabs, in fact.

He'd be gone for several days. Khusrau didn't believe in cavalry charges against heavy fortifications any more than Maurice did. But since he came from a nation that had always been a cavalry power, he'd given much thought to the proper uses of cavalry in the new era of gunpowder.

Assaults against fortresses were pointless. Raids against a specific target, were not.

Two days later, he was vindicated.

"You see?" he demanded.

Next to him, also sitting on a horse carefully screened from the river by high reeds, the chief of the emperor's personal cavalry smiled.

"You were right, Your Majesty. As always."

"Ha! Coming from you!"

Almost gloating, the emperor's eyes went back to the target of the raid. One of the two ironclads had its engines steaming, but it was still tied to the dock like the other. From the casual manner of the sailors and soldiers moving about on the docks, Khusrau thought the engines were running simply as part of routine care. What the Roman naval expert Menander called "maintenance." Khusrau didn't know much about the newfangled warships, but he knew they needed a lot of it. The things were cantankerous.

"No point in trying to capture them," he said, regretfully.

The Persians had no one who could operate the things. Even the Roman experts would need time to figure out the different mechanisms-and time was not going to be available. Khusrau was quite sure his two thousand cavalrymen could break through the small garrison protecting the Malwa naval base and burn the ships before reinforcements could arrive. But it would have to be done very quickly, if they were to survive themselves. They'd had to cross a ford to get to this side of the Indus, far upstream from the battlefield-upstream from the naval base, in fact-and they'd have to cross the same ford to make their escape.

With his superb light cavalry, the emperor thought they could do it. But not if they dawdled, trying to make complex foreign equipment work.

And why bother? These were the only two ironclads the Malwa had built on the Indus. Once they were destroyed, they had no way-no quick and easy way, at least-to bring their ironclads from the other rivers. All of the rivers in the Punjab connected to the Indus eventually-but only at the Iron Triangle.

Which was held by the Romans. Who had an ironclad of their own. Which they had not dared to use because of these two ironclads. Which would shortly no longer exist.

"Do it," the emperor commanded.

He did not participate personally in the charge and the battle that followed. He was brave enough, certainly, but doing so was unnecessary-would even be even foolish. Persians did not expect their emperors to be warriors also.

What theydid expect was that their emperors would present them with victories.

The ironclads burned very nicely. Khusrau had worried, a bit, that they might not. But the Malwa built them the same way the Romans did, just as Menander and Justinian had said they would. An iron shell over a wooden hull.

Burned very nicely, indeed.

Almost as nicely as the emperor's victory would burn in the hearts of his soldiers, after he returned to his camp. Where the sahrdaran and vurzurgan who hadinsisted on that insane assault-the emperor himself had been doubtful, and made sure everyone knew it-would be low-spirited and shamefaced.

As well they should be.

"I don't care if those sorry bastards up north are getting hammered by the Kushans!" General Samudra shouted at the mahaveda priest. Angrily, he pointed a finger to the west. "I've got Persians hammering on me right here! They just destroyed our ironclads on the Indus!"

The priest's face was stiff. He was one of several such whom Great Lady Sati had left behind to keep an eye on the military leadership. Without, however, giving them the authority to actually over-ride any military decisions made by Samudra.

From the priests' point of view, that was unfortunate. From Samudra's point of view, it was a blessing.

What priests knew about warfare could be inscribed on the world's smallest tablet.

"Absolutely not!" he continued, lowering his voice a little but speaking every bit as firmly. "I've already sent couriers with orders to the expedition I sent in relief to turn back. We need them here."

The priest wasn't going to give up that easily. "The Kushans are out of the Margalla Pass, now!"

"So what?" sneered Samudra. "Fifteen thousand Kushans-twenty at most, and don't believe that nonsense about fifty thousand-can't do anything to threaten us here. Sixty-maybe seventy-thousand Romans and Persianscan. "

"They can threaten Great Lady Sati!"

For a moment, that caused Samudra to pause. But only for a moment, before the sneer was back.

"Don't meddle in affairs that you know nothing about, priest. If you think the Kushans are going to leave their kingdom unprotected while they hare off trying to intercept the Great Lady-"

He shook his head, the way a man does upon hearing an absurd theory or proposition. "Ridiculous.

Besides, by now she'll have reached the headwaters of the Sutlej. That's a hundred miles from the Margalla Pass. It would take an army of twenty thousand men-assuming they have that many to begin with-a week and a half to cover the distance."

He cleared his throat sententiously. "Had you any experience in these matters, you would understand that a large army cannot travel faster than ten miles a day."

He hoped the words didn't ring as false to the priest as they did to him, the moment he said them. That ten mile a day average was...

An average. No more, no less. It did not apply toevery army. Samudra had had Kushan forces under his command, in times past, and knew that a well-trained and well-led Kushan army could march two or three times faster than that-even while fighting small battles and skirmishes along the way.

Still...

"By the time they got to the headwaters of the Sutlej-assuming they were foolish enough to make the attempt in the first place-Great Lady Sati's forces will have already reached the headwaters of the Ganges. It's conceivable, I suppose, that the Kushans might be mad enough to venture so far into the northern Punjab, but no enemy force-not that size!-will be lunatic enough to enter the Ganges plain.

The garrison at Mathura alone has forty thousand men!"

The priest stared at him from under lowered brows. Clearly enough, he was not persuaded by Samudra's arguments. But, just as clearly, he did not have the military knowledge to pick apart the logic.

So, after a moment, he turned and walked away stiffly.

Samudra, however, did have the knowledge. And, now that he thought upon the matter more fully, be was becoming more uneasy by the minute.