An Oblique Approach

Time for the cutting.

"Oh God, yes!" cried Belisarius. "When I discovered there were Kushan whores in Bharakuccha, I sent Valentinian and Anastasius straight off to round up a few." Guffaw, guffaw, guffaw. "They raced like the wind, let me tell you—and that's something to see, with a man built like Anastasius!"

Giggle. "I can imagine! He's the large one, isn't he?" Giggle.

Belisarius waited. Timing was the key to a trap. Timing.

He waited until the puzzled frown had almost taken shape on the Vile One's brow. Then remarked casually, "Most lascivious women in the world, Kushans. Most lascivious people, for that matter. The men even more than the women." He coughed on a gulp of wine. "Don't misunderstand!" he exclaimed, waving off a disreputable notion. "I'm not interested in men that way. But it's true, believe me. It's why I got rid of all my Kushan mercenaries. Good men in a battle, no question about it. But they're just too much of a bother. Can't keep their hands off any woman in the vicinity. Even started sniffing around my own wife!"

The frown on the Vile One's brow thickened. The scaly wrinkles collected around his deep-set eyes.

"Really?" he asked. "I wasn't aware you were acquainted with the folk."

"Kushans? To the contrary. Find them all over the Roman Empire. Soldiers and whores, mostly. It's the only things they're good at. Fighting and fucking. Especially fucking."

Venandakatra sipped at his wine, thoughtfully.

"I had heard, now that you mention it, that you yourself spoke excellent Kushan." He shrugged. "I assumed it was just a false rumor, of course. There seemed no way you—"

He fell away from completing the sentence. Venandakatra had enjoyed some wine, but he was not inebriated. (Quite unlike the Roman sot.) The Malwa lord realized that he was on the verge of revealing too much of his spying operations.

You arrogant idiot, thought Belisarius, reading the sudden silence correctly. I always assumed you knew everything, and planned accordingly.

Belisarius filled the silence, then, with a bevy of amusing tales, one after the other. The sort of tales with which one veteran lecher entertains another. A less egotistical man than Venandakatra might have wondered why the tales exclusively concerned Kushans. And might have wondered, especially, why so many of the tales concerned the sexual exploits of Kushan men.

Oh, such exploits! Their unbridled lust. Their strangely seductive ways. Their uncanny ability to weedle open the legs of women—young women, especially. And virgins! Lambs to the slaughter, lambs to the slaughter. Didn't matter who they were, where they were, what they were. If the girl was a virgin, no Kushan could resist the challenge. And rise to it! Oh, yes! No men on earth were more skilled at defloration than Kushans. Especially the older men, the middle-aged veteran types. Uncanny, absolutely uncanny.

Throughout the tales, Venandakatra said not a word. But he did not seem bored. No, not at all. Very attentive, in fact.

Every good blade has two edges. Time for the backstroke.

"Enough of that!" exclaimed the general. He held out his cup. "Would you be so good?"

Venandakatra refilled the cup. Belisarius held it high.

"But I'm being a poor guest. And you are much too modest a host. I hear rumors myself, you know, now and then. And I hear you have come into a particularly good piece of fortune." Here, a wild guffaw. "A great piece, if you'll pardon the expression. A royal piece!"

He quaffed down the wine in a single gulp.

"My congratulations!"

Venandakatra struggled to maintain his own composure. Anger at the crude foreigner's insolent familiarity warred with pride in his new possession.

Pride won, of course. Trap the prey by reading its soul.

"So I have!" he exclaimed. "The Princess Shakuntala. Of the noblest blood, and a great beauty. The black-eyed pearl of the Satavahana, they call her."

"You've not seen her yourself?"

Venandakatra shook his head.

"No. But I've heard excellent descriptions."

Here, Venandakatra launched into his own lengthy recital, extolling the qualities of the Princess Shakuntala. As he saw them.

Belisarius listened attentively. Partly, of course, for the sake of his stratagem. But partly, also, because he was undergoing the strangest experience. Like a sort of mental—spiritual, it might be better to say—double vision. The general had never laid eyes on the girl in his life. But he had seen her once, in a vision, through the eyes of another man. A man as different from the one sitting across the table from him as day from night. As different as a panther from a cobra.

Once Venandakatra was finished, Belisarius saluted him again with his cup and poured himself another full goblet. Venandakatra, he noticed, had stopped drinking some time ago.