Fortune's Stroke

The prisoners were pouring through now, spilling onto the flat expanse inside the walls. The column barely fit the gate, even as wide as it was. The Kushans were chivvying the captives mercilessly, driving them in like a human flood.

"But they're better than the broken-down cunts in the brothels." Cackling: "Last week, half the crew of a cargo ship got through one of the bitches before they noticed she was dead."

He cackled again. The Kushan joined in the humor, laughing uproariously. Apparently, he found the thing so funny that he couldn't stop squeezing the captain's arms. The Kushan was very strong. The captain began to wince.

The wince turned into a gasp. A horse had kicked him in the stomach. The captain couldn't understand where the horse had come from.

He was on his knees. He didn't understand how he'd gotten there. And he saw, but didn't understand, how a sword was in the Kushan's hand.

The sword moved. The captain's vision was blurred, for an instant, as if he were being tumbled about in a barrel. He heard vague and muffled sounds, like shouts and screams filtered through wool.

When the captain's eyes refocused, his cheek was pressed to the stone floor of the rampart. A few feet away, blood was pumping out of the neck of a headless corpse. The noise was soft, rhythmic. Splash. Splash.

He just had time, before everything went dark, to realize that he was staring at his own body.

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Framed

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Chapter 32

"I thought, at first, that you'd moved too quickly," said Belisarius. He finished cleaning the blood from his sword and tossed the rag into a corner of the room. The tattered piece of cloth, torn from a Malwa soldier's tunic, landed soddenly on a large pile of its fellows. From the grisly mound of linen, a pool of blood was spreading slowly across the stone floor, reflecting the light from the lamps on the walls.

It was a large floor. The room had once been the audience chamber of Charax's viceroy, before the Malwa turned it into their military headquarters. But even that floor was now half-stained. The blood pooling from the heap of bodies in one corner had almost joined that spilling from the rags.

Vasudeva shrugged. "I had planned to wait, until everyone was through the gates. But there was always the danger of someone spotting something wrong, and besides—"

He shrugged again. Coutzes, sitting at a nearby table with his feet propped up, laughed gaily. "Admit it, maniac of the steppes!" The young Syrian general lifted his cup, saluting the Kushan. "You just couldn't resist! Like a wolf, with a lamb in its jaws, trying to withstand temptation."

Coutzes downed the cup in a single gulp. Then grimaced.

"God, I hate plain water. Even from a well." But Coutzes didn't even glance at the amphorae lining the shelf on a nearby wall. Belisarius had given the most draconian orders, the day before, on the subject of liquor. The general had seen what happened to an army, storming a city, if it started to drink. Troops could be hard enough to control, at such times, even when they were stone sober. It was essential—imperative—that Charax stay intact until the Roman army was ready to leave. Drunken troops, among their multitude of other crimes, are invariably arsonists. Let fire run loose in Charax, with its vast arsenal of gunpowder, and ruin was the sure result.

Belisarius slid the sword back into its scabbard. "I wasn't criticizing," he said mildly. "Once I realized what caliber of opponent we were facing, I was only surprised that you'd waited so long."

Bouzes came through the door. His sword was still in his hand, but the blade was clean. A few streaks indicated that it had been put to use; but not, apparently, in the past few minutes.

Coutzes' brother was scowling fiercely. "Where did they find this garbage?" he demanded. "Did they round up every pimp in India and station them here?" He seemed genuinely aggrieved.

Maurice, leaning against a nearby wall, chuckled. "What did you expect, lad?" He tossed his head, northward. "Every soldier worth the name is marching along the Euphrates, ready to fight Khusrau. The Malwa must have figured they could garrison a place this well fortified with anybody who could walk."

"Some of them couldn't even do that!" snapped Bouzes. "Half the garrison was already drunk, before we even started the assault. The sun hadn't gone down yet!" His scowl became a thing purely feral. "They won't walk now, for sure. Not ever."

"I would like as many prisoners as possible, Bouzes," said Belisarius. As before, his tone was mild.

Yes, agreed Aide. The more enemy soldiers we can shove out the gates, the more mouths Link will have to feed. With nothing to feed them with.

Bouzes flushed under the implied reproof.

"I tried, General." He gave a quick, appealing glance at the other commanders in the room. "We all tried. But—"