Destiny's Shield

Three of those skiffs carried barrels of gunpowder. Two hauled cannons—brass three-pounders, one in each skiff. And two more carried the small band of Syrian grenadiers, and their wives and children, who had volunteered to accompany Irene to India. Trainers, if all went well, for whatever forces the Empress Shakuntala might have succeeded in gathering around her. Trainers, and their gear, for the future gunpowder-armed rebellion of south India.

Antonina's little hands gripped the rail. Her husband Belisarius, while he was in India, had done everything in his power to help create that rebellion. He was not a man to forget or abandon those he had sent in harm's way.

Not my husband, she thought, proudly, possessively.

She did not know the future. But Antonina would not have been surprised to learn that in humanity's future—any of those possible futures—the name of Belisarius would always be remembered for two things, if nothing else.

Military brilliance.

Loyalty.

She cast a last glance at the small and distant figure of her friend Irene and turned away from the rail. Then, walked—marched, rather—to the bow of her own ship and stared across the waters of the Mediterranean.

Stared to the southwest, now. Toward Alexandria.

She gripped the rail again, and even more tightly.

Silently, she made her vows. If Irene reached India safely, she would not be stranded. If Belisarius' determination to support the Andhra rebellion was thwarted, it would not be because Antonina failed her share of that task.

She would take Alexandria, and Egypt, and reestablish the Empire's rule. She would harness the skills and resources of that great province and turn it into the armory of Rome's war against Malwa.

That armory, among other things, would be used to support Shakuntala and her rebels. Many of those guns would go south. Guns, cannons, rockets, gunpowder—and the men and women needed to use them and train others in their use.

South, to Axum. Then, across the Erythrean Sea to Majarashtra. Somehow, someway, those weapons would find their way into the hands of the young Empress whom Belisarius had freed from captivity.

She clutched the rail, glaring at the still-unseen people who would resist her will. The same people—the same type of people, at least—who had sneered at her all her life.

Had a shark, in that moment, caught sight of the small woman at the prow of the Roman warship, it would have recognized her. It would not have recognized the body, of course—Antonina's shapely form did not evenly remotely resemble that of a fish—nor would its primitive brain have understood her intellect.

But it would have known. Oh, yes. Its own instincts would have recognized a kindred spirit.

Hungry. Want meat.

Back | Next

Contents

Framed

Back | Next

Contents

Chapter 23

MESOPOTAMIA

Summer, 531 A.D.

At Peroz-Shapur, Belisarius ordered the first real break in the march since they had left Constantinople, three months earlier. The army would rest in Peroz-Shapur for seven days, he announced. All the soldiers were given leave to enjoy the pleasures of the city, save only those assigned—by all units, on a rotating basis—to serve as a military police force.

After announcing this happy news, before the assembled ranks of the army, Belisarius departed for his tent as quickly as possible. (Ten minutes, in the event, which was the time the troops spent cheering his name.) He left it to Maurice to make the savage, bloodcurdling and grisly warnings regarding the fate of any miscreant who transgressed the proper bounds of Persian hospitality.

The army was not taken aback by Maurice's slavering. His sadistic little monologue was even cheered. Though not, admittedly, for ten minutes. The grinning soldiers had no doubt that the threats would be made good. It was simply that the warnings were quite superfluous.

Those soldiers were in a very good mood. As well they should be.

First, there was the prospect of a week with no marching.

Second, there was the prospect of spending that week in a large and well-populated city. The Persians had already arranged billeting. Beds—well, pallets at least.

Finally—O rapturous joy!—there was the delightful prospect of spending those days in a large and well-populated city when every single man in the army had money to burn.

More money that most of them had ever seen in their lives, in fact. Between the Persian Emperor's involuntary largesse—there might have been three ounces of gold left in the villa when the army departed; probably not—and the considerable booty of the destroyed Malwa army, Belisarius' little army was as flush as any army in history.