Fortune's Stroke

The fishermen/bandits had taken no offense at Ousanas' grisly taunts. But they were deeply offended by his last statement.

Again, Antonina had no difficulty interpreting the gist of their hot-tempered remarks.

What? Do we look like fools? Why would you do all the dangerous work and let us take the loot? Snort, snort. Do you take us for idiots? Lies, lies.

Antonina decided to interject the voice of sweet, feminine reason.

"Nobody said you'd get all the loot, you stupid oafs. Do we look like fools, ourselves?" She pointed imperiously at the fleet of Ethiopian warships moored in the bay. The ships were quite visible in the moonlight, since the tent flaps had been pulled aside to allow the cooling breeze to enter.

"Those, you ignorant dolts, are what are called warships." Snort, snort. "As different from your pitiful canoes as a lion from a sheep." Sneer, sneer. "You do know what a sheep is, don't you? You should. You've fucked them often enough, since you're too ugly to seduce a woman and too clumsy to catch one."

The Arabs laughed uproariously. Then, settling comfortably on their haunches, they readied for some serious bargaining. Clearly, the Roman was a woman they could do business with. A marvelous command of insult, even if her words were stumbling and prosaic. But allowances had to be made. Arabic was not her native tongue, after all.

Antonina clapped her hands, like a schoolteacher commanding the attention of stupid and unruly students. The Arabs grinned.

"The Axumite warships are quite capable of bringing down the Malwa vessels. The problem is—they're fighting ships. Not much room, with all the soldiers, to carry off loot." Her next words, Antonina spoke very slowly, so that imbeciles might be able to follow her simple reasoning.

"We . . . will . . . take . . . what . . . we . . . can. You . . . get . . . the . . . rest. Do . . . you . . . understand?"

Suspicion came back, in full force.

Why would you offer us charity? Are we fools? A trap! A trap! One of them began warning his fellows that the treacherous Romans and Ethiopians were trying to steal their dhows, but he was silenced by scowls. Insulting, that was, to their intelligence. The Arabs knew perfectly well the Ethiopians were about as interested in patched-together dhows as they were in camel dung. Still—

Why?

"We are at war with Malwa," was Antonina's reply. "We will strike their convoy, but we are not seeking loot as such. After we are done, we will sail east, to storm their fortress at Barbaricum. Burn it to the ground. In war, you must move quickly. We will not have time to plunder the entire convoy and make sure it is completely destroyed. We simply cripple it, take what we can—quickly—and be on our way. You will finish them off."

She leaned back, gazing on them serenely. Like a schoolteacher, satisfied that she had—finally—hammered home the simple lesson. "With your help, we strike the hardest blow at Malwa. With our help, you get much plunder. That's the bargain."

It took two more hours. But it was not really difficult. Most of the time was spent haggling over the peripheral details.

The Arabs would stay out of sight of land, like the Ethiopians. They would obey the orders of the flotilla commander. (Here, Antonina pointed to Ousanas; the hunter began honing his spear.) They would not wander off if they spotted a lone merchant ship. And so on, and so forth.

Not difficult. Those men knew a good bargain when they saw one. Even if they weren't geniuses.

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Framed

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Chapter 27

THE TIGRIS

Autumn, 532 A.D.

"You seem unhappy, Sanga," commented Damodara. "Why is that?"

The Malwa lord had drawn up his horse next to the Rajput king, on a slope of the foothills. Damodara gestured at the floodplain below them. A large river was clearly visible, a few miles in the distance, wending its slow way to the sea. "I should think you'd be delighted at the sight of the Tigris. Finally."

Rana Sanga rubbed the scar on his left cheek. Then, realizing what he was doing, drew away the hand. He was a king of Rajputana. Battle scars should be ignored with dignity.

Still frowning, Sanga twisted in his saddle and stared back at the mountains. The peaks of the Zagros front range loomed behind them, like unhappy giants. They, too, seemed creased with worry.

"Something's wrong," he muttered. Sanga brought his gaze back, staring down at the slope before them. The rolling ground was sprinkled with Rajput cavalrymen. Each cavalry platoon was accompanied by a Pathan tracker, but the presence of the trackers was redundant. The huge trail left by the Roman army would have been obvious—quite literally—to a blind man. Ten thousand horses, and as many pack mules, tear up soil like a Titan's plow.