Destiny's Shield

First things first! he snarled at himself. For the next few seconds, until he was through the carnage on the villa's eastern grounds, he ignored everything but leading his horse forward. Only a cold, distant, and detached part of his mind took note of the terrible losses the enemy had suffered in their first assault. Arrow wounds, in the main, although a number of the Malwa casualties had apparently been caused by their own grenades, bouncing off the screens.

Finally, he was through the mounded bodies and could concentrate on the active enemy.

His first concern was with the katyushas. He could already hear the hissing shriek of the rockets—unmistakably different from the sound produced by Malwa rockets. The Roman missiles, following Belisarius' instructions, had been fitted with machined bronze venturi. The evenly-distributed thrust provided by those exhaust nozzles made his katyusha rockets far more accurate than their Malwa counterparts. They also made a distinctively different noise.

He could not see the rocket-chariots themselves. The katyushas would be charging at the Malwa from their hiding place in the northeast woods, followed by the Thracian and Illyrian cataphracts. A screen of trees blocked Belisarius' view in that direction. But he could see the rockets themselves. The first volley was even now impacting on the enemy. He watched a line of explosions stitching its way across the Malwa army's right flank, knocking cavalrymen out of saddles and their horses to the ground.

He held his breath. That first volley had come perilously close to landing in the very center of the enemy formation, where the Mahaveda priests were perched atop the gunpowder wagons. It was no part of his plan to have that ammunition—

His held-in breath exploded. The second and third volleys did land in the center of the enemy—several of them right among the wagons. Many of the priests standing on those wagons were swept off as if by a broom. One of the wagons was tipped over by a rocket exploding almost directly beneath it. The ammunition cart teetered on two wheels. Teetered, teetered, before finally slamming back down. One of the wheels collapsed under the shock.

Belisarius hunched low, waiting for the whole ammunition supply to blow up. He turned his head and began yelling at the men behind him to brace themselves for the eruption.

Then, abruptly, stopped. There had been no explo-sion.

Astonished, he turned his head back and saw that, for all the destruction strewn by the katyushas, the Malwa ammunition had not caught fire.

An arrow sailing past his head reminded him that there were other dangers. The first ranks of dismounted Malwa regulars were less than a hundred and fifty yards away. The enemy soldiers were obviously confused by the sudden and unexpected attack on their flank. But many of them still had enough presence of mind to fire arrows at the Romans sallying from the villa.

Their arrows were neither well-aimed nor fired in coordination, however. Belisarius was about to congratulate himself for surprising his enemy—again—when another flight of arrows erased all sense of self-satisfaction.

Those arrows were well-aimed, and had been fired in a coordinated volley from a hundred yards away. The volley looked like a flight of homing pigeons, coming toward him unerringly from his right front. The general raised his shield, crouching in the saddle as best he could.

No less than three glanced off his shield; another, off the armor guarding his mount's withers; and a fifth, painfully, on his heavily armored right arm. Fortunately, the bow which had launched that arrow lacked the power of a cataphract bow. The arrowhead failed to penetrate the scale armor, although Belisarius was quite sure he would be sporting a bad bruise by morning.

The rest of the volley landed amidst the cataphracts following him. From the cries of pain and surprise, he knew that many had hit their targets.

When the general peeked over the rim of his shield, looking forward and to his right, he saw what he expected to see. The Kushans were already forming a square—shields interlocked, spears bristling, with a line of archers standing right behind the shield wall. The Kushan commander had instantly assessed the new situation and was doing the best thing he could under the circumstances—hunker down, snarl, and bristle like a porcupine surrounded by wolves.

Smart wolves hunt easier prey. So did Belisarius. He angled his horse to the left, guiding his men away from the Kushan formation. He would ride in a shallow arc around the Kushans and fall on the disorganized mass of Malwa regulars who had been following the Kushan vanguard.