Fortune's Stroke

Judging by the size of the pitiful little corpse, the Goth had been not more than five years old. Belisarius' soldiers had set a sharpened stake in the ground, impaled the boy, castrated him—and cut off his penis for good measure—amputated his arms, and then, mercifully, cut his throat. But neither Belisarius nor Maurice, surveying the scene, doubted the sequence in which the soldiers had committed their atrocities. For minutes which must have seemed an eternity to their victim, Roman troops had subjected a helpless child to the cruelest tortures imaginable.

The naked and disemboweled body of a girl had been lying nearby. The boy's mother, perhaps, but more likely his sister. The corpse's face was nothing but a pulp, covered with half-dried, crusted blood. It was impossible to discern her features, but the body itself seemed not far past puberty. The girl had obviously been gang-raped before she was murdered.

Remembering, Maurice could still hear Belisarius' quiet and anguished words. "And these men call themselves Christians?"

Prior to that day, Belisarius had simply tried to restrain his army. Thereafter, he instituted the draconian policy regarding atrocities for which he was famous—notorious, from the viewpoint of some soldiers and all mercenary troops. As it happened, by good fortune, the men responsible for that particular atrocity had been identified and arrested within a week. Belisarius immediately ordered their execution. The army had almost mutinied, but Belisarius already had his corps of hand-picked Thracian bucellarii to enforce his orders.

Still, the atrocities continued, if not as often. It was almost impossible to restrain troops completely in war against barbarians, since so many of the soldiers in the campaigns were borderers. Barbarians were guilty of their own brutal practices, and the soldiers burned for vengeance. In the dispersed nature of such combat, troops soon learned to keep their savageries hidden.

Maurice banished the memory. Again, he glanced at Belisarius. The general's gaze was still on the Rajput troops, where Sanga commanded, and his lips were moving. Maurice could not hear the words he spoke, but he thought he knew what they were. Belisarius had told him of the message which the Great Ones of the future had given to Aide, to guide the crystal in its search for help in the ancient past of humanity.

Find the general who is not a warrior, had been part of that message. But there had also been: See the enemy in the mirror, the friend across the field.

Belisarius emitted a little sigh, and shook his head. The motion was quick and abrupt, as if he were tossing something off. When the general turned back to Maurice, there was no sign of anything in his brown eyes but the calm self-control of an experienced commander on a battlefield.

"We've got some time," Belisarius pronounced. As if to verify his words, the distant Malwa batteries erupted in new salvos. After a quick glance, Maurice ignored them. From their trajectories, none of the missiles would strike in their vicinity. He gave his attention back to the general.

"At least an hour," continued Belisarius, "before they start their first assault." He began walking toward the cross-trench which gave access to the back slope. From habit, Belisarius stayed in a semicrouch, but it was obvious from the casual way he looked back at Maurice that he had come to the same assessment of the current barrage's accuracy.

"Kurush should still be in the field headquarters. I want to talk to him." Belisarius pointed to the enemy. "There's a bit of a mystery here that I'd like to clear up, if we can. I don't like bad news of any kind, but I especially don't like surprises."

* * *

As Belisarius had hoped, Kurush was in the field headquarters. The young Persian nobleman had arrived just the day before, accompanied by three subordinate officers. He had been sent by Emperor Khusrau to reestablish liaison with the Romans. Since Belisarius had led his army into the Zagros, in hopes of delaying Damodara's advance while Khusrau set Mesopotamia in order, the Persian emperor had had no contact with his Roman allies.

Khusrau Anushirvan—Khusrau of the Immortal Soul, as the Aryans called him—had not chosen Kurush for the assignment by accident. Partly, of course, his choice had been dictated by the prickly class sensitivities of Aryan society. Kurush was a sahrdaran, the highest-ranked layer of the Persian aristocracy. To have sent a lesser figure would have been insulting—not to Belisarius, who didn't care—but to other members of the sahrdaran. Faced with his half-brother Ormazd's treasonous rebellion, Khusrau could not afford to lose the loyalty of any more Persian aristocrats.